In days of old I’d spend a lot of money on PLR.  I’m sure you have as well.  Perhaps it was a monthly membership to something like Article Underground or anyone of the gurus out there selling monthly memberships or some such scheme to get you into their PLR distribution.  You don’t see a lot of that anymore, except for Article Underground that keeps trying to get people to buy into their “Fire Sales” (whatever that means).

You also find PLR through tons of spam offers from gurus that “once sold those very same articles for $47.00 per month” but are now giving them away for joining their mailing list or selling 100,000 articles (I kid you not) for $47.00 and if you happen to be smart enough to try and leave the site they try and grab you by reducing the price by another $30.00.

The problem with PLR is that is written for the masses - and by that I do not mean readers but for marketers.  Have you read some of the PLR out there?  It’s really crappy.  I mean seriously, it is very, very bad.  Broken english, no train of thought in the article at all, very disjointed and written to someone that has only a grade 8 education.

I don’t know about you but on many of my affiliate sites, the visitors are obviously more educated than that.

So you say “but I’ll rewrite the PLR, at least its given me a starting point”.  OK, if you say so.  I’ve tried to rewrite PLR recently by gorging on the hundreds of thousands of articles that I’ve accumulated – it was a fruitless task.  I ended up rewriting the article entirely to the point that there was no resemblance to the original article.  That’s how bad most of the articles are.  It took me twice as long to rewrite, and can honestly say that if I had written them from scratch it would have taken much less time.

You are much better off researching topics for articles in the niche your site(s) are in and writing well thought, logically flowing and informative articles instead of using PLR as a base or for anything.

Writing well researched articles using strong, long-tail keywords will also help you with your SEO – just take a look at this product Amazonian Profit Plan - they generate a 5-figure income (probably 6-figure by now) writing well thought articles and reviews.

There is a lot to SEO and writing good content is just one aspect.

Of course getting visitors to your site can be accomplished through other means as well, but content is the easiest and least expensive.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, article marketing, bum marketing, PLR Articles, Writing Articles

Hi,

If you are using articles as one item in your tool box to make money, you should be concerned with the optimal article length.

As you write articles, you need to keep one thing in mind – why are you writing the article?  Hopefully the answer is clear – to drive visitors to your website.  Your article should provide information, but also be a teaser to what the reader will get if they visit your website.

When writing articles to drive traffic to your website, make sure that it is a length that is optimal for search engine optimization.  Articles that are as short as 200 words or as long as 500 words should fit into this category.

Even if search engine optimization is not your goal, it is still a good idea to keep your articles at this length for your reader’s sake. They are likely to not finish your page if it is any longer. This could leave them with only half of the information you wanted them to have or leave them with the impression that your site is too “wordy”.

Most readers do not read a website page as they would a book, so the shorter the better even if this means splitting one long idea into 4 or 5 pages.  In fact using this technique will ensure that you have several articles and/or posts for your blog.  If you use this technique ensure that the post and/or article stands up by itself — it is fine to refer to the previous article/post but it should be understandable by teself.  If you will run the article/story as a series, then be sure to label them so that the reader can pick and choose which part they want to read or so they know what is coming up next to help them determine if they want to continue reading.

Regards,

Technorati Tags: article marketing, bum marketing, Internet Business, internet marketing

Hi,

So you have set-up your blog, and are blogging daily but now you are told that you need to post articles, but are questioning the reasons for it.

There are several reasons why you need to write articles.  Regardless of how you are running your business – entirely online or it is a bricks-and-mortar operation you need an article marketing strategy.  If you are not marketing your business, then you are missing out on a huge market out there.

• Article Marketing Reason #1: It is FREE.  Advertising is an expense, whether that be the expense of blogging daily or hiring someone to write articles for you, there is a cost associated to it.  If you can sit down for as little as one hour every day and write 2-3 articles then in one month you have as many as 60-90 articles.  You can use these articles as posts on your website (or vice-versa) and submit these to the thousands of article directories out there.  Imagine this – you submit your article to  100 directories (lets be very conservative) using a article posting service or tool.  Lets say it’s picked up by 10 webmasters who publish it to their lists.  Each list has 100 people in it — you’ve now exposed yourself to 100 x 10 or 1,000 prospects!  Even if 10% of the people click on the resource box links that’s 100 more people visiting your site that you didn’t have before — and it only cost you a few hours work.
• Article Marketing Reason #2: Article marketing brands your business.  Why have some people in Internet Marketing or Internet Business become so well known?  They’ve had strategies in place, and executed their strategies well.  Like the example I gave you above – you get your name out to thousands of people.  You are getting your name out there.
• Article Marketing Reason #3: Article marketing makes you an expert.  Write articles about the subjects you know well and you will quickly become known as an expert in your field.
• Article Marketing Reason #5: Article marketing creates back links to your website. Back links to your website are good and you will want lots of them. Back links help boost your rankings in the search engines, thus gaining more exposure for your website.

Do you still need more reasons?  I hope not.

Get started right now – you can post your article to my Article Directory and I will approve them almost immediately.

Regards,

Mohamed

Technorati Tags: article directory, article marketing, bum marketing, Internet Business, internet business blog, internet marketing

Hi,

In my last post http://www.oibo.org/6-more-great-methods-for-a-building-a-massive-mailing-list I said I would expand on #5 – Bum Marketing or Article Marketing.

First off one of the URLs I provided to http://www.articlemarketer.com/ provide a free and pay service to market your articles.  I have not used them, so don’t know what their service is like.

Even when marketing your site/services/products using articles, there are some common sense guidelines to follow.

1. Keep the article focused on one subject – don’t go down several paths or talk about things that are not even part of the focus of the article.
2. Keep them short!  Generally 300-500 words but definately less than 1000 words.  The article should only be a teaser to get them to your site.
3. Follow the article submission guidelines.  Your articles will get banned or rejected if you don’t follow the article directories guidelines.
4. Your article should be a pre-sell.  Remember you want them to visit your site, therefore don’t write about one topic while you are trying to lead the visitor to a site about something totally different.  It won’t work.
5. As you write your articles, you are branding yourself as an expert in that topic.  Think about this as you write, about the image you want people to see.
6. Proof read!  Check for spelling and grammar.  Nothing worse than reading an article that has a lot of errors and poor grammar.
7. Use your ACTIVE voice – don’t tell them what they COULD DO tell them WHAT TO DO.

Most article directory sites will also allow you to provide a resource box.

The resource box basically tells the reader a little about you, and where to go to get more information (hopefully your website).  Some common guidelines (well, only two) to follow:

1. Include:

   Your Name

   URL to your site

   Your unique selling point?  What sets you apart from the crowd?  For example, my site provides a “Fresh Perspective on Running a Successful Internet Business“.

   Call to Action – don’t just present the information, tell the reader WHAT TO DO!  “Click Here to get more Fresh Perspectives on Running a Successful Internet Business”.

2. DO NOT INCLUDE:

   SPAM

   Affiliate links

   Brag about yourself / thump your own chest / go on, and on, and on about yourself.  It is NOT about you – but them.  Remember that!

Here is an example of a resource box:

Mohamed Bhimji is the owner of Online Internet Business Opportunities, and provides a Fresh Perspective on Running a Successful Internet Business.  Click Here for More Information.

It is that simple — yes, that is pretty simple but it gets the basic information across.  You can make your resource box a little better in terms of its content, just ensure you are providing information instead of spamming.

Here is another one (links removed):

Karen Scharf helps small business owners attract and retain more clients. Karen coaches and trains website owners on various tricks and techniques that have been proven to increase website conversion. She offers coaching programs and a Marketing Makeover to turn your ineffective advertising into a profit-pulling system. Grab your FREE checklists, whitepapers and reports at http://www.ModernImage.com – You can also get a FREE subscription to Successful Site Secrets at http://www.SuccessfulSiteSecrets.com

Notice that the resource box tells you about the author, what they do and how they can help you.  It also tells the reader where they can get FREE stuff from.

It contains the authors name, the URL, and her USP (unique selling point) which is “helps small business owners attract and retain more clients”.

Does your resource box measure up?

Regards,

Mohamed

Technorati Tags: article directory, article marketing, bum marketing, Internet Business, internet marketing, resource box