The Cheap Internet Marketer

Article Marketing

However, there is a knack to writing a successful article.  After all, if it was simple, every article would be a hit.  If you fine tune your articles to reach their intended targets each and every time, you’ll have amazing results.

 The Basics

If you break article creation down to the basics, each article has a general structure.  First there’s the title, which is used to grab the reader’s attention.  When you read the Table of Contents in a magazine, you skim the titles of the articles to see if any grab your interest.  The title tells what the article is about, but with a twist, so the reader will be intrigued and want to read it.

 The article is divided into paragraphs.  On web sites, paragraphs are kept fairly short, usually just a couple of sentences, to make the information easier to read and absorb.  A paragraph that has too many sentences is  difficult to read and will lose more than one reader.

 The first paragraph is the introduction.  It states the reason for the article, and needs to be interesting.  If it leaves the readers scratching their heads, they won’t continue to read.

The next few paragraphs are the body of the article.  This is where you state your case and give examples to illustrate your subject.  Try to always give useful information, and make sure your examples make the subject clearer to the reader. 

The last paragraph sums up the main points of the article.  Always be sure your aticles have a conclusion — an article without a conclusion ends abruptly and doesn’t reiterate what you want the reader to remember. 

 Skills You Didn’t Learn in School

 Each article has a purpose.  If you don’t know that purpose, your article won’t reach anyone.  Know your target audience — if you are trying to reach gardeners, then the article shouldn’t be about cars.  That’s an obvious point, but some articles can be about gardening and still miss their target.  Why?  It could be lack of understanding of the topic or lack of the skills needed to convey your thoughts successfully to the audience.

Know your writing style and give it a convincing voice.  Trying to write humorous articles when you do not have a funny bone in your body will not work for someone trying to instruct potential comedians on breaking into stand-up comedy.  You may need to pass on that assignment.  Writing styles that are not compatible with your voice will come across as insincere to the reader.  They need to hear and feel your passion and expertise through your work.

Make your writing format easy to read.  Use bullet points and numbered lists when possible.  Both of these techniques break up the look of the article and make it easier on the eyes.  Readers can digest an article faster with changes in text like this, and they can skim the bullet points and numbered text to see if the article meets their needs.

Use numbers in your title whenever possible. Which title do you think will get more attention:  How to Sew a Pillow  or  5 Steps to the Perfect Pillow? Numbers let the reader know exactly what they are getting and in how many parts.

Try to incorporate these tips in your articles, and be sure you are creating articles that reach their audience.  A successful article can drive traffic to your site or an affiliate site as well as increase your sales.

Let’s just say it right now — a web site without traffic is a business that is doomed to failure.  If you’ve just started your first web site, don’t make the mistake of worrying too much at first about how many sales (also know as conversions in the IM field) you’re making.  Instead, concentrate on learning how to drive traffic to your site.  You must have traffic to get conversions (sales). 

There are a lot of different methods of generating traffic on the Internet.  Some that immediately come to mind are article marketing, buying Ads on Google, Yahoo, MSM and other sites (this is called PPC or Pay Per Click), posting ads on Free Ad sites, social bookmarking and Web 2.0, Forum Posting, Publicity Releases, Viral Marketing and others. 

If you are just starting out you will want to pick one or two of these methods and concentrate on learning how to use them effectively.   Each method has pluses and minuses, each has its own nuances you’ll have to learn.  If you know what you’re doing, each method works very well. 

Article Marketing is a very popular method of gaining traffic, so we’ll start our Traffic discussions with it.  Basically, you research and write short, informative articles and post them to free article directories.  Quite a few people go to these sites and read the articles and hopefully click on the links you are allowed to enclose, and these links take them to your website.  

More importantly, publishers of ezines and newsletters go to these article directories, looking for good, free content that they can publish.  The ultimate goal of article marketing is to have your articles published in newsletters and ezines, this can bring significant amounts of traffic to your site. 

There’s a lot more to know before you can successfully start an Article Marketing campaign, so stay tuned and we’ll discuss  more details about article marketing, plus some other traffic generating techniques.

One of the most popular internet selling methods today is purchasing and reselling  products with Resale Rights.   Resale Rights products can be ebooks, software, MP3 audios, single articles or a series of articles, videos, or reports.   Put very simply, you buy the  product and then resell it, depending on the type of Rights you purchased and what your License allows you to do.

There’s a lot of confusion about the differences in the type of Resale Rights products, so here’s a short explanation of the main types of rights.

Resale Rights (RR) – Some products come with Resale Rights automatically, other require you to purchase  the resale rights to the product separately, but you always have to purchase the product.  The product will come with a License, which tells you what you can and cannot do with the product, and you usually receive a Sales Page that you can set up on your website.  You are normally not allowed to make any changes to the product.

Master Resale Rights (MRR) — You receive all the rights included with Resale Rights, PLUS you can sell the rights on to your customers.  This means you can choose to sell the product only, or sell the product with resale rights.   Check the License for details, but normally you are not allowed to make any changes to MRR products.

Private Label Rights (PLR) — You have quite a bit of flexibility in the way you use the product, and you will be given the source code so you can make changes.  You can edit it, break it apart into articles, claim authorship, add affiliate links, and sell or publish it in almost any form.  Again, always check the License for details.

Public Domain Content — Very similar to PLR, can be changed and edited or published as is, and can be sold commercially.  Content that is considered to be in the Public Domain will have been created between 1923 and 1963 and will have not had the copyright renewed.  

Print this list out and keep it for your reference.  The main thing to remember is that you will always receive a License that tells you what you can and cannot do with that specific product.   When in doubt, check the license.

Make Money Online with PLR

Here’s a link to a Free Report from Jimmy D. Brown titled “Private Label Rights (PLR) Secrets” that gives you some excellent information on how to use PLR products to create your own money-making Small Report business.  It’s free and it will give you great ideas on how to make some cash.

So you’ve decided to get into Internet Marketing — but now you’re not sure what to do next.  Okay, let’s start simply.

The first step you have to take is deciding HOW you’re going to sell — are you planning to sell affiliate products?  Do you want to create your own products, or sell Private Label Rights products?  Do you want to create and sell e-courses or coaching? 

There’s no right or wrong answer here, and there are other selling methods available to you, too, but these I’ve listed are the most commonly used methods.  As a beginner, you should pick one method and concentrate all you efforts there until you see results (sales), but you can certainly plan to eventually use several methods of selling. 

Once you’ve picked your method, the next thing to do is find your Target Market — the group of people you’re going to sell to.  You want to decide on a fairly broad Target Market, and then narrow your focus to come up with your first product.   You’re looking for a Market where you can build a list and then sell multiple related products to your list members.  Or to put it another way, you want a Market that contains many smaller Niches — then you’ll pick one of the Niches, find a product, and start selling.   (If Niches confuses you, download my Free report called “Simple Niches” and read it, it’ll make a lot more sense.  Look for the popover.)

Take your time here and do some careful research, it will definitely pay off.  If you jump into creating web or blog content or a product without doing enough research, you may find that your Market doesn’t buy, or is not looking for what you are selling.  You want to be sure you’re targeting a Market that has money and buys. 

If doing all this research sounds difficult and time consuming, take a deep breath and relax – Niche research is not difficult if you have a good system to follow.   The Niche Detector  gives you a step-by-step system to follow that is simple but effective, follow the methods and you’ll quickly find a good, targeted market full of buyers, and you’ll have done some great keyword research, too.  I really love the way it finds good Markets and Niches, and at the same time gives you grea keywords.   It’s good to do this research, but getting it done quickly is even better.  I follow The Niche Detector system, and it works very well for me.

For most people, internet marketing is all about setting up multiple income streams, most people make a few hundred dollars a month off of this project, another hundred or two from the next project, etc.  All the little (and every now and then, not so little) streams join together to create a large river of income.

If you want to get to that nice large river of income, the first step you must take is to sit down in a quiet spot with a pen and some paper, and make a Plan.  It can be a flow chart, or a couple of written paragraphs, or a bulleted list.  The format doesn’t matter, as long as it shows your objectives for your business, and how you are going to meet those objectives. 

Making a plan is extremely important because it helps you focus on What you want to do, and How you’re going to do it.  Once you have the plan, put it where you can look at it regularly, and than look at it often to make sure you’re staying with your plan.  

Now you may be thinking, what a crock, I need to spend my time making some money, not making a plan.   And I do understand, making money is everyone’s objective, but please  take the time to formulate your plan and write it down.  Why?

Well,  most people who go into Internet Marketing fail because of two main reasons.  The first — they read and research, and never actually do anything.  This is the number one reason for failure.  You have to make some decisions and Take Action.  Lots of people never make it past this.

Know what the number two reason for failure is?  Not sticking with anything long enough to see results, chasing every new product that’s lauched or every new method you read about.  People don’t have a plan of action, and flounder all over looking for magic to happen.  And there is no magic to Internet Marketing, it’s a business like any offline business — it takes work, and you need to have a Plan, and you need to Work The Plan.  

There are quite a few methods of selling in Internet Marketing, and you can be successful with any one of them if you stay focused and don’t allow yourself to get frustrated and give up and quit.   That’s where the Plan comes in.  Read it regularly, make sure you’re following it and not leaving things out.  Use it to help you stay on track.

So if you haven’t made your Plan yet, please do it today, you’ll need it sooner than you think.   It really is that important.