Why Blogs are a Necessity For A Website’s Success. November 30, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 3commentsI didn’t like blogs when I first became aware of them. I considered them “sissy”. Sorry, I grew up in Montana…rode horses and stuff.
Now my blog is the hub around which circle my websites. Sort of looks like a wagon wheel…or a wagon train circled by Indians.
Blogs have been around for a long time. They started out, at first, as great personal journals for Internet users who wanted to share their daily lives with their family and friends.
Now, in 2008, they are commonly used as business tools as well as private diaries of sorts.
I use mine as a chronicle of my personal journey into and through Internet Marketing.
My blog is the story of how I came to be involved in Internet Marketing. How I started… what I learned… how I failed and how I won.
It all started in the Summer of 2007. It’s an ongoing story. Things are a lot different for me now compared to a few months ago.
A blog is basically a mini-website authors use to post information about a specific topic or product.
Some blogs share experiences of an author’s career path, like mine, while others provide up to date news concerning the topic their blog represents.
What Makes Blogs Such a Great Tool?
Blogs can provide so many opportunities for businesses to reap rewards that no business website should be without one. My websites wouldn’t be taking in any money if it wasn’t for the traffic I generate from my blog. (read that twice)
Here are some of the benefits a blog can provide an online business owner.
Blogs gather up Targeted Traffic !!
I knew Les Schwab. He was just about the biggest tire dealer in the world.
Well, I knew about him. We spoke a few times. I own a building right next to his so I’d see him now and then. He knew what Targeted Traffic was.
He said, “The people who read my ads have bald tires!” I never forgot it.
Back to blogs…
I don’t know what I’d do without my blog. I write the posts and actually enjoy that. I picked the topic of Internet Marketing coming from my start to now in the field.
Then I edit the posts and turn them into articles for distribution. I send my articles to an article submission service. They, in turn, hand submit variations of my article to hundreds of article distributors.
That little move sends lots of traffic to my blog and it’s growing! You may have arrived here courtesy of an article.
Blogs are search engine favorites. They provide new content on a regular basis, so search engines will find them more easily. Search engines love fresh content.
Blogs can also be linked with other like-minded blogs to allow for more click-through visitors.
That last sentence came up in research. Until then I didn’t know that and it gives me some ideas! (I always said that you will learn a LOT when you do research and write about it.)
Social bookmarking sites, social media sites and even message board forums love them as well. People send their friends to them when they see something they like.
There are more reasons a business owner should take advantage of a blog and I’ll get to them in the next post.
One last thing…Blogs are easy! Especially the way I did it.
I chose Wordpress because everybody said it was the best. After using it for some time now, I can’t say it’s the best because I haven’t tried anything else. And I’m not going to!
A wordpress installation onto your hosting company’s servers could be a daunting task that would stop a lot of people.
Unless you use an installation program called fantastico. I went to hostgator and they set me up with a domain name for $15 a year and hosting at $10 bucks a month. One sale will cover your whole month’s overhead.
I went to Hostgators cpanel and clicked on Fantastico. It installed my wordpress blog in a few minutes while I had a cup of coffee.
Minutes later I was typing in my first post and the next day the site stats showed that Google and Yahoo had already been there. That’s fast.
Since it’s darn near free why don’t you just go over to Hostgator and get your own Wordpress blog up and running.
I kid you not, it’s fun. Hostgator will just walk you through it.
Write your first post. At that point you will be starting to generate traffic. And you can point that traffic where you need it!
Thanks again folks,
Riley West - An Oregon Pioneer Making His Way in the Trade
Learn to Build and Publish a Webpage in One Hour or Less! From Scratch! November 23, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 2comments
MacBook Pro
Hello Folks:
If you could make a simple website with a decent offer on it and make a little money for doing it…would you?
Apparently a lot of prospective Internet Marketers are right at that point.
I don’t know why it’s such a formidable barrier. But that’s because I can do it. Easily.
But it was impossible for me less than a year ago.
How did I do it? I made the decision to go forward.
I had been studying Internet Marketing for quite a while and the whole time I was looking into it I was avoiding the website thing.
It seemed too complicated! Too technical. They talk in code!
I remember the day. It was a beautiful early summer day and I was in my van down by the river. No I wasn’t living in it.
I had my two little wiener dogs with me and a packed lunch, including dog treats.
I was also blessed with a MacBook Pro AND I had rigged up a high speed wireless antenna with a wire running the full length of the van that had a tendency to get caught on all sorts of stuff.
My van is a legendary mess but the stuff thats in it is all good stuff. Still, it does look like maybe a homeless soul dwells among the debris.
Anyway, I had everything I needed that day, except the ability to build a webpage, no matter how simple.
And I had come to that place in my heart of hearts where I knew I had to fish or cut bait.
I had a nice lunch, listened to the radio, watched people floating by on inner tubes, and played with the dachshunds a bit…all the while gathering up the determination this was going to take.
We got back into the van and I rotated my little computer table into position and got online…I was going to do it!
I wasn’t intimidated anymore, I was just going to do it. Get ‘er done.
So I found NVU and downloaded it onto my trusty Mac. It’s free software that has been in development for years by this group of people so altruistic that they are willing to work for the good of the people. FREE!
If you type NVU into Google it’ll come up number one. Wish my sites would do that.
So now I had it, right there in front of me. Nothing could stop me.
It took a while to boot, must be a big program, but soon there was a blank document with a tips box that I read and clicked off. I was good to go.
NVU isn’t intimidating. It looks like a word processor.
I had close by a special, not supplied by NVU, tutorial I had gotten somewhere. It looked a lot easier to follow than the instructions NVU provides, and it turns out it was!
First I saved the file as “firstattemptatwebsite” to the desktop so I wouldn’t lose it.
Second thing was, I had to look at the top of the blank document for a bit and notice all the little icons across the top.
No problem. Some of the icons were familiar but most of them were foreign to me. I decided not to let that bother me.
I moved the mouse arrow up to the “Table” icon. A box appeared on my formerly blank document, a little one, about an inch long. But it had those grabby things so I grabbed it and made a big box!
This is progress! I had a big, empty box! I moved the arrow up to the little icons for rendering text to be right, center,left, or fill space. I picked “center”
Voila! The box was centered. I decided to save this now because I didn’t want anything bad to happen and this was, after all, my first webpage! I chose to make the box light blue. Wow.
The box has a little blinking thing where you can do text. Wow, now I’m on text! What next?
I typed in “Riley’s First Webpage”. It was at the far left, centered vertically and was in small Times font. That would not do.
I “selected” that text and moved my mouse arrow up to the icons I had just used and chose “center”.
Nothing happened! I couldn’t believe it…something has gone wrong already.
The dogs are staring at me. Total elapsed time from start to here, about 5 minutes.
They don’t need to go out yet. I consult my tutorial. Aha!
I go up to the table icon and watch it drop down. It has two tabs. One for tables and one for cells. What’s a cell?
Anyway, in the “cell” box I find that I can move the selected text to center top and there it was, at the top in the center. I’ve come a long ways.
Not one to rest on past achievements I move my arrow to the upper right to “Headings”. I think it should be called “Headlines” but I’m not down there at NVU working for no wages.
I select Heading 1. My text gets big! It’s a headline! It’s black though and I want to change it to red even though I’m not at that part of the tutorial yet. So I do. It gets red. This is easy!
But somethings bothering me. The text is at top center but the tops of the letters are too close to the border of the box. It looks cramped.
So I go back up to the “table” pulldown and I discover “padding”. Padding? It is set at 2 pixels. Way too close! I change it to 10. Bam! The text moves down a little and looks a lot better.
I have a webpage! Sure it’s not fancy, but if it’s this easy so far it might stay easy all along. I’m a webmaster! Not much of one but a webmaster, nonetheless.
But it’s not up on the web! Oooh, FTP…I start to re-feel the intimidation vibes.
Thinking ahead I have already looked well into Cyberduck FTP and have it installed.
Another thing I have already is a domain and hosting package at Yahoo. They make it so easy.
My name is Riley West and I have been using rwest as a short version since high school which was way before the computer era.
So I register rwestdotcom.com….I thought it was clever. Whatever.
Next I save my first HTML webpage file and I fire up cyberduck FTP. I’m growing comfortable with all these foreign terms. I am preparing to upload and publish. More new terminology.
I had to go to Yahoo! and get my secret code words so that Cyberduck can claim it represents me and none other, and be allowed access. More new things.
Cyberduck is waiting. I tell it which file I want uploaded to rwestdotcom.com.
In the pulldown menu in the window for Cyberduck I select “upload” and “choose file”. I select firstattemptatwebpage.html and click upload.
About four seconds later it’s done and declared “successfully uploaded”. Man!
I have come so far in the last half an hour that it just blows me away! I’m excited.
But now…the real test…is my webpage on the web with hungry hoards looking at it?
As it turns out…no hoards. The only person in the world that knows it is there at this point is me. And I never changed it from that day on.
Let’s go there. Ok. I go to Yahoo and get into my website management area and go to “File Manager”. OMG there it is! I click on it. It comes up on the web!
It has an address. Actually it’s a URL. Uniform Resource Locator. Who knew?
My first website is at http://rwestdotcom.com/firstattemptatwebpage.html Paste this URL into any browser and you are there. Incredible, really.
Go there. Prepare to be impressed. The whole thing took about 30 minutes. Now I could do it in 5, including changing or correcting text, etc. Typos happen!
I’m a webmaster. It feels good.
Now, if you need to be able to do this, just do it. That’s how I did it.
I actually became capable of making money online that day down by the river with my dogs. It took less than an hour.
I followed this tutorial which you can download right here - FREE!
I have webpages now that are more complicated but the basics stay the same.
It is actually easy and I was afraid of it. Human nature I guess.
To recap…Go to Yahoo and get a domain name and hosting. The cheapest one.
Then download NVU and Cyberduck. They’re FREE!
Next, make your simple webpage and upload it! You’re in business. Welcome!
If you’d like that tutorial I used, guess what? It’s FREE! And it’s right here! But you might have to endure a little salesmanship. It comes with the territory.
Here’s to your success,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
Riley West
Traffic from Article Marketing. It Works! November 14, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 1 comment so farHello Again:
Boy…I have a good one for you here. This will serve notice that I am more fallible than average!
I closed down a site several months back. I just hadn’t done it right and there were many things about it that no longer pleased me so …down it went.
The site had been rather quiet for some time due to me actually getting tied up into a Google adwords campaign for several months. I made some good money, about 7 to 8 thousand dollars net per month for 10 months in combination with a furniture store in my hometown that I own but don’t work in.
Well, it’s Nov of 2008 and as you know there is a big retail slowdown going on, out there in the real world. So that campaign has become unprofitable but for ten months it took me away from my interest in that other site and, right or wrong, I let it languish. I had considered it a starter site for learning purposes so I didn’t mind the idea of letting it go and starting something a lot better now that I knew more.
And I did!
But I forgot something. In 2006-2007 I had written about 30 articles and posted them to the 10 top article distribution outfits including ezinearticles, go-articles, article alley and the sort.
So I had 30 articles, written by me but forgotten, on 10 sites for about 300 links back to a website I had taken down! I had traffic! Going nowhere. What a waste. It was hundreds per day. I had changed url’s and failed to think of all that lost traffic!
I’m now in the process of converting all these articles, and rewriting bits of each, to have a link to this site that actually is up and running.
I told you a while back (appx 2-3 weeks) that I was going to push on article marketing for a while and see if I could get enough traffic to get excited about.
So, as well as converting articles I already had all over the place I started up with that new article submission service that I told you about.
It’s called www.submityourarticle.com and, so far I really like it, especially now that I am past the learning curve.
Here’s how it works. You write an article targeted to keywords you want traffic for.
Then you take your article into their section called “article leverage” where you write a few variations of your title, your intro, some random individual sentences, alternate resource boxes and article leverage takes these well done (because you did them) changes and applies them randomly across some 2000 article sites. What an idea!
I haven’t seen a traffic increase yet but I am just finishing as I write. I would expect to see something soon.
I’ll keep you posted.
In order to keep in focus what this blogs intent is here is the Mission Statement.
This blog, The Making of an Internet Marketer, is here to inform visitors about sales by way of the internet and to make money for it’s owner (yours truly) while concentrating on the basics of Internet Marketing. The basics…hear that. I found that until I had a good grounding in the basics I just couldn’t move ahead. See the link at the bottom of the page and download “The basics”
Here’s a great website software tutorial -
Here’s a great Wordpress blog tutorial.
http://rwestdotcom.com/wordpressguru/WPsalespage.html
Here’s a great Article Marketing for Targeted Traffic Tutorial
So there you have it. Webpages, Blogs, and Traffic to them.
Old school still works and works well!
Here’s to your success,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
PS: get the FREE “Basics” PDF here. Enjoy. Read. Learn. Do.
The Hottest Selling Stuff on the Internet! Redux! November 9, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , add a commentHello Folks:
This post has been reworked a little to give the visitors more of what they need.
Selling physical products online is huge AND a huge opportunity for those who feel writing is not their thing.
Yes, you can sell physical products online more easily AND with very little writing. The companies will supply most of the advertising material - even easier yet!
If you are looking to get into Internet Marketing you might be interested in what the hottest selling products are in the Internet Marketing world.
If you are not interested you may not be a good candidate for Internet Marketing.
Here’s a shock for some folks. The biggest category of products sold online may not be what you thought.
It isn’t information… or ebooks…or videos.
My guess is that ebooks are a VERY small slice of what gets sold.
Take a look. If you drive down the street, a business street, what do you see?
Tire stores, cleaners, sports shops, furniture stores, pharmacies, clothing, electronics. It goes on a long ways from there. I forgot groceries, shoes, and appliances.
These alone are bigger than the whole info biz.
Every once in a while, when you are driving down that business street you’ll go past a bookstore. Tell me , what’s the ratio of bookstores to other stores?
You see, a bookstore is selling info products.
Info products small, physical products big!
If you go look at the Fortune 500 you won’t see info biz’s. Maybe after this recession shakes out you will! But not now.
Although I sell info products it is my opinion that it would be easier to get started selling real stuff. Why? For one thing people have heard of Sony so when they search for a Sony csx-2, They’ll want to see what you sell it for, also!
Hard goods…physical products…things you can hold in your hand!
You hardly ever run across a “guru” type with a headline like “Who Else Wants to Get Rich Selling Golf Balls While Sitting in a Jacuzzi with No Clothes On?”
It could be done. Fairly easily.
So, if you are thinking about building a real business selling real things for real money, AND having it be rendered down to a doable idea then please allow me to introduce you to a man who really know this “selling physical products on the net” biz.
And then there’s Chris Malta, head of Worldwide Brands. He is a fellow motorcycle rider and head of Worldwide Brands, who knows every way there is for YOU to get ANY merchandise to sell that you could want. At prices that easily compete with the Big Guys.
I’m talking Name Brands. Like Coleman Stoves, Sony, and a thousand others
Just go have a look. Get ready to see something big! Get Chris’s Free ebooks on the business.
You don’t have to buy anything…just sign up for their promotional literature and you will get the picture.
You know…it might be in my head but I think I hear the stirring of entrepenurial boots on the ground.
Go for it. There’s a whole world out there.
Thanks Again - Comments Welcome
Riley West - An Oregon Pioneer making his way in the trade.
The Internet Marketing Kickstart Course - Is it Good? November 8, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 1 comment so farThis is A Review of the Internet Marketing Kickstart Course.
Hello again:
I hope to give you some reasons to consider signing up for what may be the best Internet Marketing Course.
This course, to me, looks like “The One” that, if only I’d had this a couple of years ago I would be a LOT further along and better off for it.
I expected this. Sara Brown and Tony Shepherd have impressed me to the point that I have purchased almost all of their work and have been applying it assiduously since.
What it is that I like about them..and maybe as it applies to following their instructions…is that they are very clear in their explanations and instructions.
And, I have to tell you, that, is a breath of fresh air.
If you are reading this post you want to know “Why them? Why KickStart? Why should I devote myself to their course of lessons when there are alternatives?”
Let me tell you what happened to me at first, through the winter of ‘06. I was totally unexposed to this world.
I got hung up in the pitch pages and kept leaping from plan to plan savoring the sales page and not doing much with the content, when there was some.
I did that for a while and spent a couple thousand dollars before you’d know it and I had 50 ebooks, a whole bunch of Internet Marketing trivia in my head and no way to put it to work.
I wanted to sell something. I have been in sales and marketing for 35 years and this is sales and marketing…only with a big twist. And I didn’t know how to do it.
In 2007 I ran across Ken McCarthy. I thought his writing and products were the very thing that would get me to making money and I still think maybe they are.
But it’s expensive, high end, and not for everybody. That’s where I learned all about Autoresponders, Domain Names, Hosting, Market Research, Copy writing, E mail marketing, and lots of other things…not the least of which was Google Adwords.
So when I came out of there I really had a head full. And I was down another 3 or 4 thousand bucks. Really. I bought one CD set for $1000 exact and others and…well…it adds up fast!
Now I still didn’t know what to do. But my interest is in sales and marketing and now I wanted to apply my Internet skills to leverage that marketing knowledge to make money.
Right then I decided to sort of “Fake” my way through building a business! I got a domain name and Hosting on Yahoo. I was calling my business “The Official Internet Income Guide” There are still vestiges of it floating around. No money though.
I slapped together a bunch of articles (about 30) and hand submitted them to about 6 directories - all the best…Like Ezinearticles and GoArticles…etc.
Wham! I had traffic. Oops…I’d better get a string of emails put together and I put affiliate links in there…products I had used and thought were good.
It was all a little off. I was dismayed that I was selling nothing. I was building a list but they weren’t buying. I guess I didn’t know how to offer it to them.
Before I had time to get this sorted out I’d spent another 2 thousand bucks and was starting to feel…well…stupid. Or at least like I had gone down the road wrong and should have seen it sooner.
Then I ran across a gig doing Google Adwords for a bricks and mortar store in my little town in Oregon. Wow! That worked! I made back ten times what I’d lost on the previous venture and I just sort of forgot about the website and the list.
The adwords job is locked down and ongoing and by now almost no work. Cool!
But that’s not why I came here. I came here to build an Internet Marketing Business and I am on my way.
I ran across Sara Brown and Tony Shepherd and something clicked. It helped that I had some experience prior but when I saw what they had to offer and how they offered it I decided right there that I was going to emulate them and that’s what I’ve been doing for some time now.
They’re who I want to be when I grow up! I feel like I’m on the right track.
So when they came out with their course “KickStart” (which sounds good to an old motorcycle freak) I decided to jump right into it and to chronicle my progress through the course right here in the blog.
I can tell you this so far.
The material is excellent and thorough AND fun to read. That’s the hallmark of excellence if you ask me.
Oh, and so far, The right content for bringing newcomers along from the start.
I’ll cover more about the content in the next post.
Thank you - and, as always, comments welcome.
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
The “Basics” of Internet Marketing November 5, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , add a commentHello Again:
What are the basics of Internet Marketing? Weren’t we just talking about that?
Oh, well, the basics are always fun to review. Usually profitable, too!
I say it’s putting the right offer in front of the right people by means of the Internet.
Still, I think we can paint a little picture here that may simplify the concept of Internet Marketing for you.
Let’s say you already know how to handle getting a webpage up. Let’s put a good offer on that webpage selling something people need and want. (Two different things…need and want)
Once you have the offer up and running with an autoresponder it’s time to get down to the real business. Yes! Up until this point we were only talking infrastucture!
Infrastructure is important because it’s the “setup” that let’s you run automatically. That’s important because you can hardly do without it. But guess what “it” can’t do without.
Traffic. Better yet Targeted Traffic. People coming to your website.
Targeted traffic is when people with bald tires are shown a new tire offer.
So how do we get targeted traffic in numbers big enough to sell something. Well, what’s that, for example?
I’ve seen it so often it must be true. Conversion rates rarely exceed 5%…more often 1-2%.
So if you want to sell 10 of these things (in your webpage offer) you must get a thousand people to come to your site AND they have to be the type of person (traffic) that wants what your offer.
So traffic…Targeted Traffic is what you need to work on. Lately I’ve been getting into that and I’m starting to make some progress.
But traffic is what you need after you have your infrastructure in place! That would put you in the market for Website Creation, Offers, Hosting and Domains, and Autoresponders!
You see… until you have the infrastructure in place you don’t need traffic. Unless you are generating traffic for someone else’s offer, which happens a lot, but I’m not going there right now.
After you have the structure in place you have to get the traffic! So you can get to that place where the simplest equation describing Internet Marketing dwells.
It’s here that the money is made… Traffic + Conversion = Sales. Think about it.
You get your offer all rigged up and ready to go. You drive Targeted Traffic to it. Some of that traffic convert into sales and you are on your way. Selling and building a list.
Don’t forget about the list. Customers that have visited your site and especially those who purchased, are likely to buy from you again. Unless you fail to treat them like you would want to be treated.
If you are in need of the skills necessary for success in IM and you’d also like to see the “big picture” I recommend the Internet Marketing Kickstart Course.
If you need website skills you should see this… WEBSITE!
If you need Hosting and Domains you should see this….HOSTING AND DOMAINS.
If you need an autoresponder you should see this….AWEBER!
If you need a List of the Basics, this is Good and This is FREE!
If you need Traffic you should consider this…ARTICLE MARKETING TUTORIAL
If you’d like a blog like this one that attracts it’s own targeted traffic then you’ll want to look at this…..WORDPRESS TUTORIAL
Well, that’s pretty straightforward…which is what you get here.
That’s it for today - Thank you - Please, leave a comment!
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
Are Blogs Old School - Can Article Marketing get you Traffic? November 3, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , add a commentHello Folks:
I read something that disturbed me this morning. It was an RSS rant that, essentially, said blogging is dead.
And I’m not going to get into it because I don’t know. I HOPE it is still a viable means of distributing information because I just started in September. (With a blog)
I will tell you where to read the article (I’m not all up on feeds yet but it came into me Nov 3 2008.
Go here if interested…but first…I am so technically messed up that it took me 5 minutes to find the RSS feed, then NOT KNOW how to feed it to you, so I uploaded to a website at Yahoo where I can upload a file, by hand, not FTP, in one or two minutes.
That’s old school and that’s me.
By the way if someone could tell me how to get this RSS thing going I’d appreciate it! Leave a comment and I’ll get right back to you.
Here’s the link to the article AND a side link to an article about the article.
Man, I’ll tell you what. Other people have more hours in the day or they are one heck of a lot more efficient.
Still, I gotta tell you that old age and treachery are formidably powerful in the face of youth and optimism.
But this isn’t what I came here to write about.
I guess this is going to be one of those post where I never get around to making a point or giving out content someone would care about.
Wait! There is something we could start looking at.
In my last post I was going on about getting targeted traffic to the blog with articles. I’m going to document my success or failure on a page here…not a post. This may take a while.
So, anyway, I fired off one article on the subject I’m interested in and that is “Is Article Marketing the Targeted Traffic Tool They Say it Is?”
I have, on this blog, an Article Marketing Tutorial that is just excellent and I thought I’d see if people who are typing in “Article Marketing” or “Targeted Traffic” would be interested in this tutorial.
It’s a neat experiment, especially if I manage to sell a few of them!
Here’s where we are so far… The Offer is hosted right here.
The First Article has been written and is at Ezinearticles (link above). I had submission issues but I hear they are the fussiest one.
And today I’m sending the article out broadcast via Isnare. Hundreds of publishers.
We’ll see what happens. The two webpages of that offer are rigged with Google Analytics so we should know everything.
The rest of my comments regarding this whole Internet Marketing Oriented Blog + Article Marketing + Article Marketing Tutorial Might Equal Sales thing will be on it’s own page so look for it there.
See you back here soon - Comments Welcome and Needed,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
Testing for Targeted Traffic With Article Marketing November 1, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 2commentsHello Folks:
When I got up this morning this idea was already in my head. The idea I have is to write this post documenting what should be a positive traffic generation exercise.
It’s good old article writing.
I’ve done it many times but I never did it enough. I didn’t distribute enough articles. There are experts in this field who say that 3 articles a day is needed. Wow! And, when you take that times 25 article distribution sites that’s 75 articles per day.
Well, the gloves have left my face red, and the gauntlet is thrown down. We duel at dawn. I hope it’s nice weather.
I don’t yet know how I’d accomplish that but I am going to find a way to make article marketing bring targeted traffic to an offer on this blog and make money.
After all, this is a blog about making money!
So, first of all I am going to drive traffic to my tutorial on Article Marketing that is sprinkled around these pages. You can see it here.
If nothing else I get a few more sales BUT I’m going to tell you exactly what I did, which will include a professional article submission service.
There’s a lot to this and I am no way an expert, but there are issues.
Some people worry that you can’t put the same article out there to various article distribution outfits because of the duplicate content penalty. If there is one.
Other people are concerned that links back from a bunch of low page rank article sites will negatively impact you directly resulting in lowered page rank for you!
I’ve heard it argued both ways and I’m tired of it.
If duplicate content is punished by Google in some way how can it be that there is so much of it out there? Look at the news sites…they all have the same content!
Oh well, all I want is buying traffic and I’m going to go get it this way for now and if you want to follow along here I’ll post almost daily about it…BUT…I don’t want this blog to become an article marketing only blog.
A couple of years back, way before I was ready, I put up a website that had pretty good content around Internet Marketing and a few affiliate offers. I also had the basic autoresponder building a list and I felt like I was giving it a good try.
Then I ran into a Google Adwords gig that tied me up for months! I just let the site die. I don’t recommend that. Now I’m a believer that you should have a core business and that any work you do should be to build that business!
At least for a while! If it’s hard to succeed at one business how hard is it to succeed at two? I think the difficulty for me, at first especially, would be exponentially more difficult. I’m only guessing but I have two dogs. Little wiener dogs.
For a while we only had one. Then we lost him! One of our relatives rushed us over a replacement wiener dog. Then we found the lost one! Now we had two.
Why am I telling you this? Because I sometimes have trouble staying on track, but this dog thing made me state that one dog is the hassle of one dog but two dogs is 4 times the hassle since we imputed that dog hassles go up as the square of the number of dogs.
Then our son, who has a wiener dog, had to board the little devil at our house while he (our son) tried to recuperate from a horrible motorcycle accident. It took him a whole year to get back to 90% of what he was before the crash. And we had his great little wiener dog for six months!
That was when I discovered that 3 dogs is 9 times the hassle of one dog but only about twice the hassle of two dogs.
Anyway, for now at least this blog and it’s attendant work load are the only thing I’m doing for a while.
Believe or not this post is about article writing for targeted traffic. The only experience I have with this is the 30 articles I wrote and submitted in the course of two months about a year and a half ago.
Even though I did it as an amateur and without guidance the posting of 30 articles to about 8 directories caused lots of traffic. But I didn’t do it right and now I know that. More important is that I now know where to get the exact advice on how to do it right so I’m just going to follow that and report to you the results.
It should be interesting. I’m going to put the reporting on a page and not a post. It’d get too messy otherwise.
So, yesterday I submitted the first two articles written in the way this new tutorial tells me to so we are on the way. Now, I only started and only submitted to Ezinearticles. I have accounts at the top ten article distribution outfits that i set up a couple years back so I’m good to go, and, in a few days, I’m going to use a professional article submitter outfit and try to amp this thing up!
So, let’s see how it goes. Here’s the Tutorial sales page.
Thanks again - as always…please leave comments.
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
