The Affiliates Center Blog » Article Marketing Training

Affiliate Marketing Tips: How To Come Up With Ideas For Articles?

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:09:57 +0000

How to come up with ideas for articles? This has got to be just about the most asked question along with how to find niche ideas we get here at TheAffiliatesCenterBlog.com and to tell you the truth, I never get tired of answering them.

One of the things we like to do here is present different views from different experts and Steve Shaw at Submit Your Article certainly knows his stuff when it comes to tips on article marketing.

Okay, article marketing is just one part of the affiliate marketing equation and you might think that once you’ve heard a bunch of tips once that’s it; not quite. You see, you should never stop learning and there are still methods that I know I haven’t heard about that others incorporate into their article marketing. So no two articles will be the same unless someone completely copies someone else’ article.

The following article marketing tips from Steve will be completely new to many of you but they are great ways to get your creative juices flowing. The problem most face is coming up with ideas for articles. Staring into a blank computer screen is no fun. You don’t have to. The following tips will get those creative juices going.

Beginning an article is the hardest part. You’re looking at a blank page and wondering how in the world to get started.

Your mind may be drawing a blank, and the longer you sit there the more discouraged you can get.

Here are 5 things that you can do to help get your creative juices flowing:

1 – Use Ezine Articles’ Title Suggestion tool.

Sometimes just seeing a great title is enough to inspire you to write a new article. It could be you’ve just thought about your topic so much that you’re missing some great topics.

If you haven’t used it yet, I highly recommend using Ezine Articles’ title suggestion tool. This is available for free to anyone who has an account there. The titles are supposed to be written by professional writers and keyword optimized.

You enter a keyword phrase, choose a category, and then the tool will come up with a list of suggested titles. It’s pretty cool–even if the title isn’t perfect for your exact niche, you can tweak it so that it is…..

Click here to visit the original source of this post

So, did you pick up anything new? Have you been having issues with how to come up with article ideas? Do you have some tips to share with others? We’d love to get your feedback so don’t be shy and leave a comment.

Meanwhile, we’ve been talking about the power of James Martell’s Affiliate Marketer’s Boot Camp over the past few weeks and if you haven’t had a chance to hear from James then what are you waiting for. There’s nothing to buy; just an introduction from James Martell to tell you a little about the course and then if you want to take it further.

Click here to check out James Martell’s Affiliate Marketer’s Super Boot Camp.

Article Marketing Tips: What Should I Write?

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 18:04:48 +0000

Article marketing has undergone somewhat of a transformation in recent months following the “famous Google update” but does that mean it’s dead? No way. Article marketing is alive and well and I always believe that when major changes like this happen, it’s when fortunes are made and those who do the right thing and capitalize are the ones who prosper.

One of the biggest obstacles for many and the question they ask the most about article marketing is “what should I write? Now I know this sounds like somewhat of a silly question when the obvious answer is write about your niche but the truth is, for newbies, it’s a little deeper than that and needs to be answered in steps.

I’ve got an excellent piece for you today from a guy who knows article marketing better than most and who is one of the select few who I allow to send me emails. His name is Steve Shaw and he runs a service called Submit Your Article. Steve sends out article marketing tips almost on a weekly basis and what I like about his emails are, he gives you value-added information you can implement right away.

In this piece, he talks about getting started with article marketing and answers several questions I know many of you are asking all the time such as “what do I write?” Here’s a short sample of Steve’s article:

Recently a beginner contacted me with some great questions about how to submit articles. Since we have so many beginners, I thought that it was worth it to share my reply.

This beginner asks:

What should I write? Having written an article, where should I put it? On my blog? Do I submit it to article directories, if yes which ones? If you submit to directories does this mean that the article has to be re-written every time because of duplicate content? What do you do with your articles Steve?

These are all excellent questions, and I’m happy to go through them with you…

1- What should you write?

The topic of your articles is determined by the topic of your website. Whatever the topic of your website, that is the sort of thing that you should write articles about. Ideally, your website would have a very focused topic.

I’ve looked at your website, and it sounds like you intend your website to be devoted to doing reviews and posts about “what’s hot at the moment”…..

Click here to visit the original source of this post

I would bookmark that page and refer back to it often. Meanwhile, James Martell uses articles as a major foundation of his successful affiliate marketing business but he teaches how to get the best from writing articles. In fact, I bet you haven’t been using articles the way you should be in your article marketing. James teaches this and more in his famous Affiliate Marketer’s Boot Camp training course which you can learn more about by clicking here.

Affiliate Marketing Warning: Be Careful Of The Google Manual Review

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 12:51:11 +0000

This is going to be a short post and an affiliate marketing tip with a stern warning.

Just reviewed a site from a reader who was distraught that after ranking on the first page of Google for several keywords, his site has suddenly lost it’s impact and has disappeared from the rankings.

He had at least six pages on page one of Google covering a variety of keywords and was ecstatic at his genius and ability to rank highly. But it’s all come to an end swiftly.

Dejected, he asked me if I had any reasons why he’s suddenly lost favor and while it’s hard to fathom why Google does what it does on occasions, I said I’d take a look and see if I could spot anything that might have “upset the applecart.”

The domain is seven years old so the usual Google dance which is common with many new sites was virtually ruled out and he supposedly had spent plenty of time making sure this site would be filled with original content.

Well, it didn’t take long to figure out what was wrong. He had original content alright but not from any English dictionary I’d ever seen. It was absolute jibberish and my immediate thought was either spun content or written by someone whose first language was not English.

After the recent Google rampage on unsuitable and bad content the message still doesn’t seem to have gotten through to many internet marketers. If you are using spun or content that doesn’t read well then sooner or later you will pay the consequences. It’s only a matter of time.

I’m convinced this person’s site was reviewed manually and that was the death knell for it’s high rankings. The big “G” just won’t tolerate illegible or bad reading content when they are trying to present the best product and search results possible to their audience.

If you want to build a site that people will take notice of and come back to it regularly then for goodness sake, write the content yourself or get someone with good writing skills to write it for you.

Affiliate marketing tips don’t come much clearer than that in 2011 so take heed.

If you want the best affiliate marketing training available then you need to learn from the best. Click here.

Affiliate Marketing Tips: How To Increase Email Conversions by 30% Or More

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 11:19:55 +0000

Want to know how to increase your conversions by 30% with email marketing? Here’s an article marketing tip…your headline will have a lot to do with it.

Headlines seem to be an area people struggle with in affiliate marketing. Whether it be for articles or emails, it’s one area that they just don’t seem to pay enough attention to.

The truth is, spam filters have become a heck of a lot more sophisticated today and unlike the “bad old days”, getting something to actually land in someone’s email inbox is a lot more difficult. But this shouldn’t stop you from crafting a good headline.

In report I wrote several years ago aimed at the article marketing audience, I said:

“The title is the window to your article or email. It needs to be compelling enough to want to make the reader step into your store and examine what you have available.”

You know what, nothing has changed and unless you grab their attention with the title then your email will be sunk in the water. It will more than likely end up in the trash folder.

So how do you improve conversions with email marketing? That’s a huge lesson all on it’s own but I ran across to excellent articles today, one by Jeff Greer at AffiliatePrograms.com and the other by Chris Dawson at Tamebay.com.

Jeff’s article is more pertinent to what we are discussing today, email subject line and he lists five ways to come up with great titles that get attention. You can read it by clicking here.

Chris looks at email marketing and social media and how to build your email marketing contact list. You can read it by clicking here.

Both articles are value-added and you will get some great tips from them.

Hope you enjoy!

What Articles Get Most Attention?

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:54:43 +0000

Ever found yourself skimming through the search results and then having your attention caught by certain topics or headlines? Or standing in line at your supermarket checkout and noticing the headlines on the magazines virtually jump out at you and almost beg you to read them? That’s the power of a strong headline based around a certain topic.

It’s one of the most asked questions in article marketing…”what articles get attention?” We’ve discussed and looked at the various pieces that go into an article that gets attention during the past few weeks but we haven’t really discussed exactly what topics get attention. There are certain topics people get drawn to and if you start applying them to your article marketing you’ll soon see more eyes reading your articles.

The following tutorial reveals eight topics that are consistently hot and when you adapt anyone of them to fit in with your article, you should see an increase in the number of people who will read your piece.

How To Write A Resource Box That Gets Attention

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:36:45 +0000

The resource box is so often the achiles heel of many article marketers who rightly invest time in coming up with a great title and content but totally ignore the last runner in the article marketing relay.

When you know how to write a resource box that gets attention you will never have to worry again about low click through rates. This particular piece of article real estate is misunderstood by most. They seem to think it’s their chance to pat themselves on the back and tell their readers how great they are.

Please “leave your egos at the door” when writing articles for profits. Once you accept it’s not about you and it’s about the reader who found your article with a problem needing solving then you have arrived as an article marketer. It’s about them and the following video tutorial illustrates two powerful methods of creating a resource box that gets attention.

Free Article Marketing Tip – How To Make An Article Visually Attractive

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:06:43 +0000

In this free article marketing tip we will teach you how to make an article visually attractive. This is a step many overlook simply because they get caught up in the fact they have produced an article they are proud of and can’t wait to get it published so the whole world can see.

Article marketing is a relatively simple concept with the four main stages being keyword research, creating a title, creating content and crafting a good resource box. But there are some things in between which we’ve covered so far in this series that contribute to the popularity of the article and in the long run, being able to make you money.

While writing articles online serves the purpose of providing solutions to those searching for them and the content needs to be able to give some or all of what they need to solve their immediate problems don’t lose sight of the fact that they still need to make you money. In actual fact, it’s like going fishing – the article is the bait that reels in the fish and then you need to be able to direct them to a landing page where your offers are.

Here’s how to make an article visually attractive. Just making this small change can add up to more readers sticking around to read your entire article.

Our next lesson will focus on the resource box and what you need to be doing to guide your visitors to click on your links.

How To Write Internet Marketing Articles

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:14:50 +0000

Figuring out how to write internet marketing articles starts with putting yourself in the shoes of a searcher and mimicking what they would be looking for and how they would go about it.

That means thinking about what they would type into a search box and if thwhat they are typing had some intent about it. You see, the biggest mistakes inexperienced article marketers make is either writing an article from scratch without a rudder or writing the article around a broad term where the competition is just too much for them to see any concrete results.

What do we mean about “writing an article from scratch without a rudder?” Simply not optimizing their article around a keyword. Yes it happens and there must be literally millions of pieces of content floating around the internet basically drifting aimlessly without much attention.

How to write an article that gets attention begins with keyword research. It’s the first leg of a four leg relay in constructing an internet marketing article piece that will get noticed with the title, content and resource box completing the relay. Mess anyone of these up and you suddenly put yourself on the back foot against your competition.

The following video examines the first aspect of how to write an internet marketing article starting with keyword research. At the beginning, I give some crucial advice about what it takes to be successful at the article marketing game.

This is a simple method of keyword research which we’ve covered elsewhere on this site but it’s powerful and has served me extra well over a number of years or since Google began offering suggestions in the drop down menu of the search box. Practice it and the more you do it the better you will become at analyzing keyword terms quickly and efficiently.

The next lesson will look at the window to an internet marketing article – the title.

How To Analyze Keywords For Profit

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:55:51 +0000

Learning how to analyze keywords for profit becomes easy once you know how. Using expensive keyword tools is an option and something you should seriously consider once you start making money online but for now, all you need are the free resources offered at Google.

Choosing a keyword you think looks a winner is not enough. Even though it meets all the criteria you set including required number of monthly searches and competition numbers, knowing what competition you’re up against is vital.

For example, you may have a keyword that appears to have little competition for you to rank on the first page of Google so you go ahead and create an article or post around it and suddenly find you can’t make it to page one on the search results.

What’s the problem?

The strength of the competition you’re going up against. What if the sites ranking on the first page of Google for that keyword term are all top level domains with authority. Trying to compete against authority sites who have a ton of backlinks and are well established is going to end up in frustration for you.

So how can you decipher what that competition is and your chances of getting a page one ranking without spending money to do it? In a word…Google. Check out the following video for a quick and easy way on how to analyze keywords for profit and how to determine the strength of the competition you’re up against.

This method is great for building mini affiliate sites when you are targeting a long tail keyword phrase or simply for article marketing purposes when you’re looking to save time on keyword research. The more you do it the better you’ll become at it and you’ll soon find that the analyzation process can be done in super quick time.

How To Make Money With Article Marketing – 8 Articles Which Get Attention

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:06:39 +0000

How to make money with article marketing is a question that comes across our desk several times a day. My response is usually “have you thought about the article you’re going to write and what topic you are going to write it around?”

You see, article marketing online is all about getting the attention of the reader. They are looking for a solution and answer to a problem and you need to get their attention right away. That is where your title comes in and it’s the hook and bait to get someone reading your article so you can guide them down to your resource box.

The next question is what type of articles usually get attention? Well, we are about to reveal eight types of articles that always get attention and if you based your writing around the following, you should never have any issues in attracting more than a curious glance from visitors.

So let’s take a look at the type of articles that get the most attention:

- Top Ten Lists
- Myths And Secrets
- Easy Ways Or Reasons
- Tips
- How To Articles
- Reviews
- Interactive Articles
- Truth Articles

Each one of the above works it’s magic in it’s own special way. Take a look at the magazines on a news stand the next time you’re near one. Check to see what they are using as their titles to attract people’s attention. You can be rest assured it will usually be something revolving around the topics we’ve mentioned in our list.

#1 Top Ten Lists

People love top 10 or top 7 or top 15 lists. They love a list because it suggests they don’t have to scroll through a maze of bunched up copy to find what they’re looking for. In fact, by using “The Top 10″ hook, it seems to convey that the article will be an easy read and the solutions will be laid out for them one by one. Try it and see if it makes a difference to your article marketing.

#2 Myths And Secrets

Myths and secrets is popular because people love a secret. Don’t you? If a title starts with “The Secret To…” doesn’t that more often than not, just want to make you know what the secret is? It’s something this author often can’t resist taking a peek at.

#3 Easy Ways Or Reasons

People are always looking for a shortcut to their problems. Just take the internet marketing field. People just want to know the quickest way to becoming successful and are continually on the lookout for the shortest route possible. That’s why articles title with either “Easy” or “Reasons” get plenty of mileage.

#4 Tips

Tips articles are proven winners. But there is a trick to making them more effective and that means highlighting both the problem and solution in your title like this…”5 Tips Guaranteed To Lower Your Gas Bill.” All you have to make sure of is providing the information you’ve promised in the title.

#5 How To Articles

How to articles are not as high on the list as they once were but are still very effective. The fact that many now use how to articles may have taken the edge off their effectiveness a bit. Many inexperienced internet marketers miss the mark with them and you’ve got to remember, you’ll make an impact with how to articles by creating and solving the problem in the title something like…”How To Knock 10 Years Off Your Life With Our Secret Age Defier.” Just make sure you back up the title with the information in the article.

#6 Reviews

Amazingly, reviews are still massively underutilized. Review articles are popular for the simple fact that you can get them ranking well when you attach the word review to a specific product or service. Your article can act as a conduit between the searcher and vendor and if you focus your reviews on more targeted products the more chance the searcher has of landing on your page.

#7 Interactive Articles

Interactive articles are very powerful and while you shouldn’t over use them, they are perfect for shock value. In other words, you are creating a problem and then offering a test to see if they have it. It’s funny how human nature behaves. Most times you wouldn’t give something a second thought but when you see a title like…”You May Be An Alien – Take Our Quick Alien Test To Find Out.” Alien test being the keyword. Can you see how powerful this can be?

#8 Truth Articles

Truth articles are great and in many ways, in a similar vein to review articles. People looking for some confirmation on a product or service and suddenly see them attached to a headline which says “The Truth About Samsung’s 50 Inch Plasma” are going to want to take a look if that’s the brand they are searching for. And again, the more specific you can be with the use of the truth tag the better your results will be. In other words, use it on targeted products or services.