Question: With so many blogs, websites and article directories disappearing daily and losing influence in the search engines, how can we be sure that article marketing is not dead?

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Answer: You are in general talking about newbies who set up blogs and generally accept any content from anyone. Sites like that will never survive. Most will stop paying for hosting after only a few months, then the site and all of the links on it will disappear.

Sites with no form of quality control will not attract an audience, and they will cease to operate, when the site owner realizes that no audience = no revenue.

But, other website owners get it.

Audience = revenue.

Successful website/blog owners build their sites with the desire of building an audience.

For example:

• Mashable;
• Copyblogger
• Problogger
• WebProNews;
• About.com;
• Web MD;
• Social Media Today;
• Marketing Pilgrim;
• AdAge.com;
• InsiderMobile.com;
• Search Engine Land;
• etc.

These sites occasionally take content from third-parties such as myself — syndicated content from people like me.

But they are very selective about the content they are willing to accept from me. My article has to demonstrate good writing, good content, and more importantly, information that would appeal to their audience.

These sites are not going anywhere. They will be here most likely ten years from now, because they focus on publishing content that will be of value to their audiences.

And their audiences generally enjoy the content well enough to drop links to pages that have articles on them that they would like to share with others.

There is a reason why the above mentioned websites are as popular as they are. They start with great content, and their audiences find information of such quality that they are willing to share those links with their own audiences.

When I get an article syndicated, it will often end up on a few dozen junk websites that will not be there one year from now.

But my successful articles will be published on authority websites of the quality shown above.

Articles that I have written do still appear on WebProNews, About.com, and WebMd, as well as thousands of other authority websites, and not all of them in my own name.

The point is that these sites already have large and loyal audiences, generating loads of traffic every day, and they have a lot of credibility in the eyes of consumers and the search engines.

One of my articles on one of those websites will get a lot of traffic from targeted buyers, and my articles will have true link popularity to give to my linked websites, which will impress Google and the other search engines.

I write articles, because I want to attract huge audiences who will consider visiting my website. I write for my audience first, and the search engines second.

And so long as my articles find publication on sites with a butt-load of loyal users and traffic, then my business will continue to prosper with article marketing.

Were all Article Directories negatively affected by Google’s Farmer Update on February 24th, 2011? No.

Although we are only looking at 2 days worth of statistics at this point, it looks like The Phantom Writers has done well with the Farmer Update.

Our traffic is running at 10% over the daily average, and by day of the week, we are generally running 16% up on traffic.

We have looked at the keywords for which we have historically had good rankings in Google — those for the main part of the website and those keywords that direct searchers to articles in our directory. We are up, up, up!!!

On keywords that we track, one search phrase that we had been holding on page 8 of the search results, we are now on page 6. Outside of this one keyword, the search phrases we track have moved from the middle and bottom of page one to the top of page one, almost unanimously in slots 1-3. There are exceptions of course like famous waterfalls, where we were ranking at #9 today.

I strongly suspect that Quality Content is the Prodigal Son that has come home to Google.

Am I suggesting that Google has built an algorithm that can identify quality content? Certainly not. I don’t think that is something Google will ever be able to do by looking at just the content.

Instead, I think that Google has figured out how to better measure “social validation” of the quality of content.

Consider this…

When an authority website chooses an article for publication, a human editor is involved in that process. That is social validation of the quality of the content.

When people choose to link to an article manually, that again is a social validation of the quality of the content.

In social media, there are certain people who are “thought leaders”. These are the folks who have more followers than people they follow. And when they “tweet”, others “retweet” what they have shared. When thought leaders tweet, Google pays attention. And more so, when people who pay attention to the thought leaders repeat what they post, there is real social validation in that data, and Google pays attention.

Badly spun and poorly written articles will never have real social validation of their value. To a certain extent, people can rig some social validation of a particular article, but others do not repeat the Share. That is a nice signal concerning rigged results.

Real articles that offer real value to readers cannot help but receive the social validation that they need to prove their value to Google.

Yes it is still early in the game, but my initial gut instinct about the Google Farmer Update is that it is powered by Social Validation of content that offers value to its readers.

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Get my recent report that has been developed to help you write good quality articles quickly, without sacrificing quality: 20-Minute Articles Writing Guide.

Bill Platt

Title: “Is It Really Possible To Achieve Number One In Google?” by Bill Platt

Excerpt: Everybody wants to achieve a top ranking in Google… That has become the Holy Grail of Internet Marketing…

It is achievable, but it is not always necessary to achieve the treasured Google number one spot to make your placement in Google profitable for your business… Although it may not be necessary to reach Google number one, it sure does make you feel good when you get there…

Realistically, there are many variables that could make or break your business, regardless of whether you are #1 in Google or not…

Read the rest of the story here…

In any business, if you can reduce your effective advertising expenses, you will increase your profits. Many business owners will opt to push the additional savings into more advertising, and if you are utilizing the information described in this article, you could feasibly increase your paid traffic by 40-times, with the exact same advertising budget.

But before I can show you how to reduce your advertising expenses and increase your traffic, it is important for you to learn about proper keyword research.

When playing the search engine rankings game, it is important to know what people are “actually typing into the search engines” in an attempt to find your business…

Food For Thought

Think about this, if you were going to take a vacation to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and you needed to find accommodations in Ft. Lauderdale FL, what would your first search keywords be?

Would your first search be the generic search phrase, “travel”?

If you answered, “Certainly not”, then you and I are not much different…

Why would anyone type in the generic keyword “travel”, when they know specifically what they want, before doing the search?

They wouldn’t, would they?

Some people will abbreviate the “Fort” in Fort Lauderdale; others will not abbreviate. The same applies to the state information – some will abbreviate; others will not. Some web searchers will eliminate the state information, because they assume that Google will know “which” Fort Lauderdale they mean. (In the case of Fort Lauderdale, that is reasonable to believe. But search for something like “Paris”, and you might discover that 23 U.S. states have a town or city named, Paris, along with the country of France.)

People will search for a range of spellings for the locality, and then they would add niche-specific keywords to their search, utilizing words like:

• hotels
• hotel rooms
• hotel suites
• accommodations

Expand Your Thinking

Chances are that even if you sat down to generate a list of keyword phrases that people might use to find your business in the search engines, you will get stuck in the “keyword rut” that bogs down so many other webmasters… The “keyword rut” that I speak of is the one where we get a certain set of words and types of words stuck in our heads, and that prevents us from exploring the wider range of what might be available.

Even the best keyword research tools fail to show us the full-range of related keywords – keyword research tools tend to only show us the keyword phrases of a “similar root word”. For example, if you type in the word “hotel”, you can get vastly different results from the Google Keyword Research Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) and the WordTracker Keyword Tool (http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/).

Just to prove my point, I ran the keyword “hotel” through both keyword search tools. Google’s Keyword Research Tool performed better than the WordTracker tool, but WordTracker does provide better estimates of search-volumes outside of the Google universe.

While not all-inclusive, I wanted to show you a list of suggested keywords that I was expecting to find using both tools. Behind each Keyword, I indicate in parenthesis which tools provided those suggestions to me…

• motels (Google – YES | WordTracker – YES) BOTH
• accommodations (Google – YES | WordTracker – no)
• bed and breakfast (Google – YES | WordTracker – no)
• b&b (Google – YES | WordTracker – no)
• vacation rentals (Google – no | WordTracker – no)
• vacation homes (Google – no | WordTracker – no)
• condos (Google – no | WordTracker – no)
• condominiums (Google – no | WordTracker – no)
• beach rentals (Google – no | WordTracker – no)

As you will note from this example, if you let the keyword research tools do all of your thinking for you, then you would have missed over half of the keyword phrases that are actually relevant to your business…

That my friend spells m-i-s-s-e-d o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-i-e-s!

How To Do Better Keyword Research

A trip to the library or your favorite bookstore could be the best thing you will ever do for your business research / keyword research…

Use book titles to narrow your search, but check the “back of the book” for the Index, before you make your selection…

Many of the best books in the non-fiction niche have an index at the end of the book, with page-after-page of topic related keywords, with page numbers.

If you have selected the most relevant book from the shelf, and it has a good Index at the end of it, you will have one of the best resources you will ever need to do keyword research in your niche.

Value The Long-Tail Keywords

Many people make the mistake of only chasing the high-volume keyword phrases that signal strong interest in a topic…

However, the high-volume keywords have some inherent shortcomings:

• Although 151 million searches are conducted using the word “travel” each month, that search will seldom generate a real click, because the person searching for it will realize that more specificity is to his or her best interest.
• If you are able to get a click from the search for “travel”, that click will cost an average of $2.25 in Google.
• If you are bidding high enough to be seen for a search for “travel”, you will find your competitors to be many. It is harder to be noticed among the crowd.
• If you do generate a click from your placement on the word “travel”, that visitor may hit your website and leave to do more shopping, since there are currently 11 paid listings on the front page of Google for that search phrase. People will spend less time on your site, if they know that they have more varied choices.

The still-generic search for “Fort Lauderdale travel” will require $1.72 per click, with 8,100 searches per month.

A more specific search for “Fort Lauderdale Florida hotels” will actually cost an amazing $3.48 per click, but the hotels that are paying for those leads are more likely to get a larger portion of the 60,500 monthly searches, since this search phrase is far more precise.

“Fort Lauderdale beach resorts” only costs $2.02 per click and has 27,000 monthly searches, which is really inexpensive compared to the still-generic “Fort Lauderdale Florida hotels”.

“Fort Lauderdale resort” is even cheaper at $1.93 click, with 50,000 monthly searches.

“Fort Lauderdale beach place” gets a surprisingly high, 3,600 searches per month. It has two competitors and can be purchased at an average of $1.06 per click.

…Do you see where we are going here?

Here is where I get to drive my point home… “Fort Lauderdale reservations” gets 40,000 searches per month, and it has an average Cost Per Click (CPC) in Google of a measly 5 cents per click!

As individual searchers drill down into the search results, your chances of appealing directly to them when they are likely to make a purchase is greatly increased… And more to the point of this article, you can generate a lot more traffic for a lot less money…

If you have fewer competitors on the long-tail keywords AND you pay less for those clicks, you could very well cobble together a large list of long-tail keywords that will give you access to the same volume of traffic you would get with one high-volume search, for much less money!

Let me make my point with “Fort Lauderdale beach resorts”, which has 27,000 monthly searches at a rate of $2.02 per click, and “Fort Lauderdale resort” with an 50,000 monthly searches and an average CPC of $1.93. These two long-tail keywords co-joined will be exposed to 77,000 people at Google, and those clicks will cost an average of less than $2.02 per click.

If you simply compared the above example with the 60,000 searches for “Fort Lauderdale Florida hotels” at $3.48 per click, you will find that you can reach more people, at more than a 38% discount in PPC pricing…

In Conclusion

There are many niches where you might advertise, where your competitors are paying $2 to $6 per click in a shark-feeding frenzy, and yet you can get 5 cent clicks all day long for other relevant, more specific, long-tail keywords, with less search volume… But, by bidding on more keywords, you could actually get as much exposure as your competitors are getting, at a much lower cost…

There is one niche where I am getting as much exposure as the competition, but I am only paying 5 cents a click in MSN and Google, while my competitors are fighting among each other for the shorter, less specific keywords in the niche, at $2 to $6 per click… In comparison, I am able to get 40 to 120 times more traffic for my websites than my competitors are getting for the exact same amount of money… And the people visiting my site have pre-qualified themselves by drilling down to my extremely relevant keywords for their searches…

As a business owner or manager, it is important to target your PPC and SEO towards the actual keyword phrases that your potential customers are using to find your website… But more importantly, if you leverage the knowledge found in this article and your efforts, you might be able to discover that you can tilt the odds towards you getting the sale, and you can do it at a cost that would make your competitors envious…

About The Author:

Bill Platt has been providing article distribution services since 2001 at http://thePhantomWriters.com/ Utilizing his nearly one decade of article marketing experience, Bill Platt created a free ebook titled, “Article Marketing: Beyond the Basics”, which will teach you why many people fail with article marketing, and how you can turn your articles into profitable and productive advertising tools. Get your copy of this article marketing ebook that has been receiving rave reviews. Download it for free here:
http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/advanced-article-marketing.html

Read more articles written by: Bill Platt

This article originally published here.

You can use disinformation to your advantage in the SEO game. Disinformation is false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. Disinformation is a tool that has been used brilliantly in war, as a tool of subterfuge to cause an enemy to make an error.

If you are a history buff, like I am, you will likely have seen the stories about successful “disinformation campaigns” waged during World War II by the Allies against the Axis-Powers.

Operation Fortitude

The first was called, “Operation Fortitude“. To soften the landing for the D-Day invasion, the British and the Americans devised a plan to convince Hitler that the anticipated D-Day invasion would arrive at a different location. Operation Fortitude was actually devised to not only convince the Germans that the invasion force would arrive some place other than Normandy, but it also sought to divide Germany’s army to protect to false targets of invasion.

Fortitude North suggested that the invasion party would cross the English Channel from Kent, England, and push its way into Norway.

Fortitude South was designed to convince the Germans that the main invasion of France would occur in Pas-de-Calais, France, 307-kilometers or 181-miles north of Normandy, France.

Operation Fortitude has been suggested by historians to be one of the most successful deception operations of WWII and arguably the most important deception campaign of the war. Both Fortitude North and Fortitude South were related to a wider deception plan called Operation Bodyguard, which laid the groundwork for the successful the invasion of France at Normandy Beach (Operation Overlord).

Operation Mincemeat

In Operation Mincemeat, British Intelligence outfitted a corpse with a locked briefcase, filled with war plans designed to convince the German High Command that the Allied invasion would occur in Greece and Sardinia in 1943.

The British dropped the corpse into the sea, equipped it with fake invasion plans, and arranged for the body to float up on the beaches of Spain, where the Axis-Powers would discover the corpse and the contents of the briefcase.

This ruse successfully convinced the Germans to expect the invasion in Greece and Sardinia, instead of the real target of Sicily.

Operation Bertram

In 1941, British entertainment star and magician, Jasper Maskelyne was added to the mix of Allied tools in the battle against the Germans in Eastern Africa, when he was assigned to a unit called A Force, which was dedicated to counter-intelligence and deception.

Maskelyne wove together a number of illusions that tricked the Germans into dropping their bombs on realistic-looking harbors that did not exist and preventing German pilots from being able to see the Suez Canal during bombing raids.

But Maskelyne was most effective during Operation Bertram, prior to the battle of El Alamein, when he helped the Allies create deceptions that would help lead to the Allied-Forces defeating the Germans in Africa.

The Allies intended to attack the German line at the northernmost point of the German forces in Africa. Fortunately, Maskelyne was successful at creating an illusion that convinced the Germans that the focal point of the attack would come from 30-miles to the south, and that the attack would take longer to prepare than was actually necessary.

At the beginning of the operation, the Allies dumped waste containers at the northern end of the line and threw camouflage over the waste equipment. This the German aerial recognizance teams noticed immediately. Then the Germans continued watching this location for an extended period of time. After a measure of time passed and no additional activity appeared to be taking place at this location, the Germans began to ignore the location.

Once the Germans began to ignore the location, the Allied-Armies started replacing the refuse with actual supplies and equipment under the cover of night.

To support the idea that the attack would be launched further to the south, a fake water-pipeline was being constructed across the desert stretching to a southern point along the German line. The slow construction of this water-pipeline was what helped convince the German high command that the attack would come at a much later date.

Maskelyne’s brilliance was obvious when he created optical illusions that allowed the Allies to camouflage 1,000 tanks as lorries, at the northern end of the German line. But then Maskelyne’s team constructed 2,000 fake tanks and equipment that convinced German recognizance that the real build-up was taking place 30-miles to the south, a location that the water-pipeline was being designed to reach…

As a result, when the Allies moved to break the German line, they found easy penetration as the heavy build-up of defensive forces were located 30 miles to the south of the actual invasion force.

Disinformation and Deception in War has a Glorious History

Throughout the ages, disinformation and deception has played a role in military victories over their enemies. Even the Trojan Horse was a deception used to bring down the City of Troy in ancient times.

Disinformation and deception was even clearly in use during the first Gulf War, when U.S. Marines formed in the Persian Gulf, just off of the beaches of Kuwait, preparing for what appeared to be invasion from sea that resembled many great landings during WWII. As we know, General Schwarzkopf executed an end-around during the first Gulf War, where the primary invasion force entered Iraq from the deserts of Saudi Arabia and closed in on the Iraqi forces arrayed in Kuwait awaiting a full frontal-invasion from the Allies.

Of course, in the first Persian Gulf War, the anticipated invasion onto the beaches of Kuwait never came… Nor did the Northern invasion of Iraq from the Mediterranean Sea, through Turkey, in the second Gulf War.

The Art Of War

The Art Of War, by Sun Tzu, has historically taught generals how to fight battles and win wars, but in the modern age, it has also become required reading for many business schools in their MBA programs.

In understanding how to win wars, you can more easily understand the battles that you will engage in the course of business. I have read The Art Of War dozens of times and recommend it to anyone who is serious about becoming successful in the business world.

The Art Of War discusses not only the principles and tactics used in warfare, but it also discusses how to keep the loyalty of your soldiers and how to win the hearts and minds of the people, whose support you will need to survive, after conquest of the army.

This brings us to the point of this article…

Using Disinformation and Deception to Conquer your Competitors – Without Lying To Your Customers

It is important that you should never deceive your customers… After all, you need to maintain a good reputation in order for your business to survive the long-run.

But the Internet has created a unique set of tools that you can use to defeat your competition, without your competition realizing that you have used Disinformation and Deception to hurt them in the battle for customers.

There are literally dozens of SEO tools that one can purchase or use that will permit your competitors to “spy” on your website to see what it is that makes your website successful…

Software applications, like WebPosition Gold and IBP, are designed to help webmasters to do competitive research on keywords, in the search engines and on competitor websites.

If one of your competitors happens upon your website for competitive research, they are going to look at your Meta tags, including Title, Description and Keywords, and they will also look for the keywords that you have spread through your website.

But if you are like me, you have done the testing and tracking to see which keywords and keyword phrases will actually produce sales conversions on your website. Along the way, you may have discovered keywords are very competitive – even in Google Adwords and other PPC systems – where the keyword looks really attractive, but the keyword does not attract the kind of traffic that is likely to buy what you are selling…

The keywords of this sort are “red herrings”. They are keywords that look good on paper – they have heavy competition, high PPC bid prices, and lots of searches made on them. Yet, a thorough review of the “keywords that convert” will show that these keywords do not lead to sales for your website…

Enter an “opportunity” for disinformation campaigns intended to deceive your competition…

If specific keywords are money dumps for your advertising dollars, doesn’t it make sense to encourage your competitors to blow their money on advertising those keywords that will not produce a great ROI for them?

Not many search engines pay very close attention to your Meta Keywords. It was a really good tool for most search engines in the early days, but it was a spam-magnet for people trying to trick the search engines into giving them free traffic…

By 2009, most search engines had decided to diminish or ignore Meta Keywords in their search algorithms.

But your competitors who are using Keyword Research Tools for SEO are still drilling through your Meta Keywords, looking for those golden nuggets that will enable them to steal your rankings in the search engines, thereby giving them access to your customers…

If the search engines are mostly ignoring the Meta Keyword tag and your competitors are using it to uncover important business intelligence about your company, doesn’t it make sense to throw all of your junk keywords into the Meta Keywords tag?

Especially, when you have discovered keyword phrases that only cost you money, without providing you the Return-on-Investment you need to be profitable, then it is time to use those keywords in a disinformation campaign to lead your competitors to the wrong conclusions about how you drive traffic to your website…

Take those ugly keywords that siphon money away from your business and drop them into your Meta Keywords tag, to seed bad information to your competitors who are using SEO spy tools in an effort to uncover the secret to your success…

Give your competitors the keywords they will need to waste their advertising resources, so that they will not have the advertising resources necessary to be equally competitive with you for the keywords that really matter to you – keywords that actually bring in visitors to your website, who are likely to buy what you are selling…

Only Use Disinformation Campaigns to Cripple Your Competition – Brilliantly

All is fair in love and war…

If your competitors believe that the best place to go to get business intelligence for their SEO campaigns is your website, then they deserve to be fed your marketing disinformation…

In the end, if your competitor does not have the financial resources to compete with you on an equal footing, then your competitors will be less of a threat to your business’ survival…

Is this a “dirty dog” tactic to use against your competition? Sure…

But so is them mining your website for business intelligence, in an attempt to steal your fire and your traffic from you…

The beauty about this system of marketing disinformation is that it will only injure those who seek to take unfair advantage of you, by stealing your marketing intelligence…

Bill Platt, owner of ThePhantomWriters.com Article Distribution Service

I was in the Warrior Forum, and someone asked what kinds of Backlinks are worth pursuing. This is my answer to that query.

As an article marketing guy, I bet you can guess my answer.

The answer is that you should have links everywhere your potential clients are looking to find you.

Very few link directories offer any real value to you.

Many article directories fall into the same trap.

The deal is that for your link to be worthwhile to you, it must meet one of two criteria:

1. It must be on a page where people actually go to find stuff.
2. It must be on a page that Google or the other search engines value as a reliable source of information.

If no humans will see your link and the search engines ignore that link, then your effort will have been wasted.

So, you will want to get your link on a page that someone will see or the search engines will value.

Article marketing when done correctly helps you achieve this, but you will find little value from most of the article directories.

Like I said, article directories must either be fully archived by the search engines, or people must find your article in the directory.

A lot of article directories are plagued by the fact that the only people using them are people submitting articles.

So it is important to try to give your articles an audience outside of the article directory, where your potential clients actually go to pick up information.

This is why quality content is most useful in article marketing. Sure, the cheap article spinners can give you a few links, but if those links do not meet the two criteria of human visitors or search engine recognition, then those links are worthless to you.

Pure link counts only serve to tease your ego. I don’t consider an article valuable until it can put money in my pocket.

So I focus on getting my articles to publishers who will use the content – preferably publishers that have lots of loyal visitors and possibly even serious recognition from the search engines.

If the article delivers either humans or search engines, then your article will have paid for its creation. If the article delivers neither, you will have wasted your money, time and efforts.

So lead with great content, and seek publication on websites that cater to your target audience, especially when some of those websites are authority websites that your target audience appreciates and respects.

Links is one thing, but links that put money in your pocket should always be the goal.

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Bill Platt, owner of The Phantom Writers Article Distribution Service

I have wanted to write this ebook for several years, but I just now got around to doing it.

When I set out on the path to finally developing this ebook, it was my intention to write about 40 pages of text, to better explain to people the promise and potential of Article Marketing as a promotional method.

When I finally wrapped up the ebook today, it contained 108 pages when it was completed.

“Article Marketing: Beyond The Basics” is a comprehensive look at what it takes to be successful with Article Marketing, how to get your articles published more often and in more authoritative websites and newsletters, and how to turn more of your readers into buying customers.

Free Article Marketing Ebook - Article Marketing: Beyond the Basics, written by: Bill Platt

Literally, I believe that if I sold this ebook for $97, the cost of the purchase would be justified.

But I feel that this information should be known by more people than it is. That means that I cannot sell this information, otherwise, I would be doing a disservice to those who are or would like to use Article Marketing to promote their online businesses.

So, I am going to go out on a limb here.

I am not going to sell this ebook for $37, $47 or $97. Nope. I am going to give it to you for FREE.

All I ask in return is that once you have finished reading, “Article Marketing: Beyond The Basics”, please come back to this page and leave a testimonial about the ebook.

Download our Free Ebook here.

Thank you,

Bill Platt, owner of The Phantom Writers Article Marketing Service

Twitter Tips And Questions

On Twitter, I post a lot of tips about various aspects of online marketing under my profile @contentmanager.

Because my Twitter account is very active, that should not be construed as I am playing on Twitter instead of working. The truth be known, my Twitter profile is mostly-automated using a couple of Twitter Tools.

If you would care to learn how I have my Twitter profile and Twitter Follower Growth on Autopilot, you need to read my FREE Twitter Marketing Ebook at http://twitusers.com/autopilot/index.php More than an ebook about how to grow your Twitter Followers list, it is a Twitter Marketing Strategy that is designed to help you build an audience of interested Twitter Followers – people who actually pay attention to your Tweets and click your links.

Now, on my Twitter profile, one of my Tweets generated a question today, from @KarenLKay of Mississippi. I could not answer the question in 140 characters, so I decided to answer it here in my blog instead.

Karen Tweeted, “Interesting…so you’re saying article marketing is more powerful than search engines? I am confused. Doesn’t article marketing rely on search?” (Yes, I expanded the original Tweet to make the question more easily understood.)

My answer: That is correct. Article marketing IS MORE POWERFUL than Search Engine Marketing, because search marketing is only one of the potential benefits of article marketing.

I know that many people suggest that the ONLY role of Article Marketing is to build link popularity and rankings in the search engines, but that is such a shortsighted and ill-informed view of article marketing.

I admit that I did not catch the article marketing bug until 1999, but I know from my own experience that article marketing has been in use on the Internet since 1995, when I first got online.

I know that I saw article marketing in use in 1995, but I did not understand what it was until about 1998. Then I started using it for myself in 1999-2000. One of my long-time customers says that he has actually been doing article marketing since 1995.

How I Got Started In Article Marketing

I had launched my first domain in March of 1999. In its first year of operation, my domain had received about 600 visitors in total. I had spent endless hours every day promoting that domain, using a variety of free advertising methods. I was able to attract subscribers to my newsletter, but traffic on the website was very slim indeed.

In 1999, I noticed in the sidebar of a now defunct newsletter called “Internet Day” that I could submit an article to them for consideration of publication. I read that newsletter everyday and sucked up all of the information I read in it, because it was geared to my interests – how to operate a profitable online business. At that time, Internet Day had about 100,000 readers.

After seeing that note about their interest to take articles from the public, I was prompted to write an article, especially for that newsletter. My article was based on my own limited experience in online marketing (specifically, how to grow a newsletter). I had been published before in offline channels, so I knew I could actually write an article. So I spent a couple hours writing my first online article and submitted it to Internet Day.

I waited anxiously for about one week, expecting to hear back from the editor of the publication. There was nothing but silence. I soon forgot all about it. Several months later, in early 2000, I received a note from the editor that said my article was scheduled for publication the next morning.

At first, my ego was gratified, but I did not expect much to come from it, other than seeing my name in print.

The response from my article in Internet Day was astonishing! In the five days following the publication of my article in Internet Day, my site received 9,000 visitors! Contrast that to the 600 visitors that the site had gotten in its first year, and you will begin to understand why I got excited about article marketing!

After the initial response from Internet Day, I sat down and wrote six articles in six weeks, then I distributed those articles to Internet publishers. At that time, distribution channels for articles were slim at best. I could literally count the available distribution channels for my articles on one hand.

After writing six articles in the spring of 2000, I promptly got sidetracked and did not think about articles for a while.

My oldest boy was born in February of 2000, so I was otherwise occupied with our new baby and making a living. I still promoted my website, but I really did not have a product or service at that time. My whole reason for existence online at that point was the promotion of my newsletter about computer troubleshooting.

I was always working on my site, but I never really took the time to check my site statistics, so I did not know what was happening on my website. I knew that I was picking up new subscribers to my newsletter on a regular basis, but I did not know the reason for those new subscribers. I was absolutely clueless!

Then suddenly in September of 2000, I noticed that my subscribers doubled in one week! I was baffled and confused. I wanted to know how that had happened! So I opened my site statistics and started looking for clues, but there was nothing really there to answer the question of how I doubled my subscribers practically overnight. (Most newsletters are distributed by email, and clicks from POP email accounts do not show up in your site statistics.)

My site received more than 10,000 visitors in one day! Another 3,000 came the second day and about 1500 visitors the third day. I wanted to know why!

So, I contacted everyone who had registered for my newsletter during those three days of activity. Few responded, but the ones who did respond said unanimously, “I read your article in the ArcaMax newsletter.”

I started researching and found that my article had been published in ArcaMax’s computer tips newsletter, which had 100,000 subscribers!

Then I got curious. If no one contacted me about the publication of my article in ArcaMax, how many others published my articles and did not tell me?

So I started searching for my articles on the Internet. I found that my articles had been published primarily in newsletters, and of those newsletters that had their archives online and had their subscriber numbers published in the newsletter, I was able to do a count of how many readers had been exposed to my articles.

What I found was that my six articles had been published in dozens of newsletters, with a combined subscriber base of 2 million readers!

This is the point where I started getting involved seriously in article marketing.

I helped develop an article marketing business, specifically a ghost writing business, in March of 2001. In September of 2001, I had a falling out with my original partner, so I started my own ghost writing business at that time.

I cannot say that I had the first article marketing service, but I can say with confidence that my article marketing service is the oldest, continuously operating article marketing service on the Internet. In September of 2001, I had a few competitors, including my previous partner. But the competitors I had in 2001 have been out-of-business for a number of years now. My previous partner went out of business in the spring of 2003.

Article Marketing IS MORE POWERFUL Than Just A Tool For Search Engine Marketing

In the early days of the article marketing business, the #1 goal of the online marketer was to be published in a newsletter. After all, a newsletter is home to an audience of 5,000 to 750,000 captive readers who will be exposed to your article and your marketing message (in your author’s resource box) in a single day!

If you can write an article that gets selected for publication by a newsletter publisher, then your article has the ability to be read by thousands or hundreds of thousands of potential customers in a single day!

Well actually, not everyone will read the issue on the date of publication. When published in a newsletter, the audience will read read your article and stream into your site over a period of about five days, with the bulk of that traffic coming in on the day of publication.

For me and my customers, GOAL #1 is to be published in a newsletter. We are hoping to be exposed to thousands or hundreds of thousands of readers in ONE DAY!

For me and my customers, GOAL #2 is to be published on a variety of websites and blogs. Publication on websites and blogs really does not send that much traffic – the actual amount of traffic will always depend on the site itself and the loyalty of its visitors. Publication in websites and blogs is what will help your search engine marketing. It is those live links from third-party websites that will influence your site’s link popularity and your search rankings.

I know that many guru’s are happy to tell you that the ONLY REASON for article marketing is those links from websites and blogs to help your link popularity and your search engine rankings. (If you are at all concerned about the so-called Duplicate Content Penalty, you should read Article Marketing and the Duplicate Content Penalty Myth, an article I wrote last week on the topic.)

But consider this. If an article is published in a newsletter with half a million readers, there is a strong possibility that many of the article’s readers will republish your article on their website too! So to increase the reprint rates of your articles, it is in your best interest to be published in newsletters, as well as websites and blogs.

Another thing to consider is TIMING. If newsletter publishers choose to give your article to their loyal readers, chances are good that those publishers will get your article into their rotation within just a few days or few weeks.

I have been published in major newsletters in as little as 24 hours after distributing the article. In other cases, major newsletters have published my article weeks after I distributed the article. In fewer cases, major newsletters have waited months before publishing my article.

My articles also start turning up in the search engine results within 24 hours after the distribution of the article. The site to which the article points in the resource box has started getting good rankings for desired keywords in as little as 8 days and as many as a few years.

I have had successes and failures with article marketing, but the failures can be measured more in terms of how stiff the competition is for a desired keyword or keyword phrase.

With keywords such as “travel”, it is hard to compete with the multi-million dollar bank accounts of corporations such as Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline and many others. But on more long-tail keywords and less-competitive keywords, I have been able to use articles to reach #1 for the website in the resource box in as little as 8 days.

Take for example keyword phrases such as “performance seo” and “pay for performance seo“. I was able to rank both of these keywords for my Pay For Performance SEO company in under 30 days, using article marketing as my primary SEO driver. Of course, I did utilize a couple of other techniques that I use within my SEO service, but article marketing is the primary driver of my SEO processes. For “performance seo”, my competitors are paying $3.37 per click for that traffic – and I pay nothing for my traffic, as related to my #1 ranked keyword phrase.

For “performance seo”, I still retain a #1 ranking in Google against 27.8 million search results, and I have held that position for more than one year.

For “pay for performance seo”, I still retain a #4 ranking in Google against 448,000 search listings – topped only by High Performance dot net and 2 listings on Search Engine Guide.

The other thing to consider that few article marketers actually do consider is this. Just like with the publication on a ordinary website, placement in the search engines will drive a minuscule amount of traffic to your website, when compared to what publication in a newsletter can do for you.

If you could get on page one of Google for the keyword “travel”, you would surely benefit from a ton of traffic. But getting page one results on Google for such a keyword phrase is nearly impossible, unless you have a multi-million dollar marketing budget.

But to tackle a keyword phrase such as, “rattlesnake festival oklahoma” is much easier. One site I manage is ranked for that term as well as a range of “rattlesnake” related information in one post about rattlesnake roundups on this travel blog. That particular post is rated at #3 in Google for the phrase, “rattlesnake festival oklahoma”. As you may well guess, that term is not that popular, but people do search for it. Over the last nine months, that particular post has drawn just over 250 visitors to the site it is on.

Another example is the search term “oklahoma owner finance”. As you can imagine, it is not going to be a heavily searched keyword, but using a few articles, I have managed to push this website to #7 in Google against 700,000 other search listings for that keyword phrase. A better keyword phrase for this website would be “oklahoma owner financed homes“, which has 28 million search results. It is a better keyword phrase, but with much stiffer competition. We have managed to get that site up to #38 in Google for that particular keyword phrase, even against 28 million results, and all advertising for this site has been done with article marketing. On the #7 “oklahoma owner finance”, the site has received 25 visitors in the last nine months. On the #38 “oklahoma owner financed homes”, the site has received 18 visitors in nine months.

The point that I am trying to make is that some keywords cannot be easily put on page one of Google with article marketing, due to heavy competition for those keyword phrases. Additionally, I want you to know that there are some really profitable keyword phrases that when on page one of Google will send you traffic, but it may not be as much traffic as you would expect from Google.

Now, I am not going to tell you my money keywords – those keywords that I rank for in Google, that enable me to earn a living online. I will describe them for you, but I won’t tell you what they are. (If this seems wrong for me to do, I am sorry, but I need to protect my income.)

I have one keyword that I rank for in Google at the #2 spot. That particular keyword puts a lot of money in my pocket every year. I have held this top ranking in Google for years. This particular keyword phrase is #2 of 58 million search results. And while that is awesome, it has only generated 681 clicks from Google in the last nine months. For this keyword, my competitors are paying $1.63 per click.

Another top money keyword is #6 in Google against 75 million search results. My competitors are paying $1 per click in Google Adwords for this traffic. I have had 620 visitors from Google on this keyword in the last 9 months.

While it is nice to hold top Google rankings for specific keywords, you should understand a couple of important points:

• On The Phantom Writers website, I receive about 22,000 unique visitors per month. Only 45% of that traffic comes from the search engines, 80% of it is from Google and 20% is from another 52 search engines. The other 55% (non-search traffic) of all of my visitors comes from six sources: 1) links in my articles in newsletters; 2) links in my articles on various third-party websites; 3) Twitter; 4) Forum signatures; 5) Referrals; 6) People who visit my site via a bookmark or by typing the name of my website into their browser.
• As the result of the publication of my articles in newsletters, I have had many weeks where I generated in excess of $10,000 in sales, as a result of the traffic gained from the publication of my articles in newsletters.

Leaving Money On The Table

Heading into the final stretch, if you think that the only reason for article marketing is to get great rankings in Google, then you are missing the big picture of article marketing.

Publication of an article in a newsletter is what I refer to as “today money“. Publication on a website or blog is what I refer to as “tomorrow money“.

The reason is that when you are published in a newsletter, you have the potential of generating a ton of sales NOW!

Whereas, the publication of your article on websites and blogs MAY AFFECT your search engine rankings in a positive and profitable way – down the road and not necessarily right away. Additionally, you may never see the value from article marketing in Google’s search results, and if that is the case, the “today money” is your best and only hope for making article marketing profitable for you!!!

When I advise people how to write articles, I am very adamant about the idea of NOT WRITING for the search engines.

I absolutely recommend that you always write your articles for newsletters, first and foremost. That means that you are writing the article to impress publishers, so that you can gain access to the publishers’ readers.

Granted, you may not get search engine value from the article when you are published in a newsletter. But then you may get the search engine value also, either because the newsletter is archived online OR more likely, because many of the newsletters’ readers will reprint your article on their website or blog, after reading it in a newsletter.

Even if you do or do not get search engine value from your article getting published in a newsletter, you do get access to an interested and excited audience – people who are likely impatiently waiting to receive their favorite newsletter. Sometimes this audience only numbers in the few thousand, but it is also possible that the audience will number in the hundreds of thousands. There are a couple of newsletters that I am regularly published in that reach 750,000 perfectly-targeted subscribers.

It must be noted that Google employee’s are not going to race to your website to buy what you are selling and Google’s users may not come running either, but the readers of the newsletter are often itching to buy what you sell. They are simply looking for you to show them why they should buy from you, and when your article impresses them, they are more likely to buy from you, rather than the other guy.

When I say to NOT WRITE for the search engines, that does not mean that you should not write for the search engines.

I am not just being contrary when I say that. There is a method to this madness.

I advise (and I practice in my own articles) that you should always write for the newsletter publisher first and the reader second.

You should write to gain the newsletter publisher’s acceptance of your article, as an article worthy of his or her audience.

You should also write the article to impress the person who is most likely to buy what you sell. If you can impress the reader, you can ATTRACT more readers to your website, where the real selling will take place.

Once you have written an article that you are satisfied a newsletter publisher will want to publish and a reader will be thankful for having read, then and only then should you take into account the desires of the search engines.

On your final edit, seed your target keywords into the article copy.

Where most writers fail with article marketing is they start writing with a list of keywords in mind.

To be more successful in article marketing – getting published in newsletters as well as on websites – one should not give any consideration to keywords during the writing process. During the writing process, all focus should be on telling a story that people will WANT TO READ.

Only after the article that people will want to read has been produced, then and only then should consideration be given to target keywords.

On your final edit of the article, look at the words that can be changed to your target keywords, without changing the context or the quality of the story being told in the article.

Your reader must always remain the number #1 priority of your article.

Change the words in the body of the article that can be changed to your target keywords. But never focus on a single keyword, but rather a family of keywords.

For example, the following keywords are among what I call a “family of keywords”:

• website
• websites
• web site
• web sites
• domain
• domains
• URLs
• home page
• vre
• virtual real estate

The concept of using a family of keywords is to tell Google, and to a lesser extent, the other search engines that your article is about the general topic of “websites”, as opposed to the singular keyword, “website”.

There are two key reasons why you should seek to seed your article with a “family of keywords”, as opposed to a “singular keyword or keyword phrase”:

1. It makes for a smooth, unhindered read of your article. When people notice your keywords in the article, then you will lose their attention and interest in your article;
2. Latent Semantic Indexing – Also referred to as LSI, Latent Semantic Indexing is a mathematical principle used by Google and other search engines to determine the true meaning of the words on a page. Take the word “traffic” for example. Traffic could refer to “transportation” or “roadway volume”, or it could refer to “visitors on a website”. Google utilizes LSI to figure out the context of the keywords used on a page. It looks at surrounding words on the page to make the determination as to whether you are talking about transportation “traffic” or website visitor “traffic”. The “family of keywords” helps Google make the appropriate assessment as to what your web page is about, so that they can quantify it and display it with the right search queries.

The final step in your article writing process is to include your target keywords in your article, but always, and I do mean always, your primary focus should be on getting a larger audience for your article AND delivering those readers to your website, so that you can have an opportunity to present to them your products or services.

In Conclusion

We started this article with one very simple question, “So you’re saying article marketing is more powerful than search engines? I am confused. Doesn’t article marketing rely on search?”

My answer should be crystal clear at this point. While your search engine marketing may rely on article marketing, article marketing does not rely on search engines.

When you can stop long enough to realize that search engine marketing is ONLY one aspect of the article marketing equation, then you should have no doubt in your mind that you should reach higher with your article marketing endeavors.

As I have often said, When you set your goals, AIM for the clouds. If you fall short, you may still reach the mountain top.

.

Bill Platt – owner of The Phantom Writers Article Marketing Service

I have long held the belief that most SEO Myths can be tracked back to someone who was benefiting financially from getting people to believe the myth.

Of course, you can read this article and suppose that I am simply calling something a myth, because I want you to believe the opposite point of view. I don’t have a problem with you viewing me as a biased spokesperson, because… well… I am… I am biased to my point of view.

Although I readily admit my own bias, I do encourage you to follow up my story with a bit of your own research. I believe that if you weigh my version of the story against the opposing viewpoint, more readers will agree that the “Duplicate Content Penalty” is a myth that needs to die.

Article Marketers have been told that they should not put the same article on more than one website. They have been told that doing so would generate a “Duplicate Content Penalty” from Google.

I am in good company calling the “Duplicate Content Penalty” a myth:

• Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com explains her reasons why she believes this to be a myth on Search Engine Land.
• Aaron Wall of SEObook.com also believes this to be a myth. Read his comments here.
• Neil Shearing, Ph.D. went a bit further than just saying the Duplicate Content Penalty is a myth. He developed a video to PROVE the myth.

But let’s not just listen to SEO Professionals. Let’s also consider what Google staff members have said:

• Brian White is a member of Matt Cutt’s Web Spam Team at Google. He describes the way Google handles Duplicate Content as a Filter. Here is his contribution to the story, in an interview with CNET.
• But Brian White is not Matt Cutts! You are right. In a WebProNews story in June of 2009, Matt Cutts said, “If you have the same content on 200 different sites… is it typical that we give a duplicate content penalty for that?  No.  Definitely not.”

Article Marketers Should Understand What Article Syndication Means…

Article Syndication is no different than News Syndication, except one is informational in nature and the other is a News story.

News typically has a lifespan of just a few weeks. If you think about it – it is no longer news that Michael Jackson died this summer. The lifespan of that news story has passed. Now we are talking about the investigation into his death, and those stories are new “news”.

Article Marketing should include information that has an evergreen nature – meaning that it will be as useful five years from now as it is today. Article Marketing can include seasonal information or news information, but the evergreen article will typically produce more results for the time and money invested into its development.

Article Syndication is simply the process of making article content available to other publishers. It is not at all different from News Syndication, except that News Syndication requires fees to be paid to the creator of the content.

The AP (Associated Press) and UPI (United Press International) are News Syndication services. They gather and write the news, and they sell the news stories to newspapers, radio stations, and television stations around the world. Media outlets, including websites, buy stories, photos and video from the AP and UPI news syndication services.

Article Marketers also syndicate their stories, but they syndicate the content for free, in exchange for a link back to the writer’s website.

Do News Sites Get Punished By Google For Duplicate Content?

They do not.

To validate this point of view, I hopped on over to AP.org and clicked on one of their news stories. I selected the story titled, “General Motors To Offer A Money-Back Guarantee“. That click carried me to the story on one of their hosted sites here.

If you click that link, you will find a story written by AP Marketing Writer, Emily Fredrix.

Since some editors choose to change the titles of articles they picked up on syndication, I searched for the first sentence of the article in Google. Although the news story was issued about 3 hours ago, there were 8 results in Google for that article – 5 of which turned out to be exact copies of the article – click the links to see for yourself:

• Yahoo Finance
• Forbes
• Bay News 9 – TV station
• The Sun News
• AOL Money

If instead you choose to search Google for the Title of the article, Google will show you one copy of the article on Google News in its News Results, and they will provide a link that shows 900 additional search results about the same topic – which does include the same article on other sites.

If you look below the News Listings into their regular search results, you will find 50 results for the article title in Google.

Do Articles Get The Short End Of The Stick, While News Sites Are Excused?

Absolutely not!

I pulled one of my articles as an example. Perhaps it is not an article that shows you the “Best Of Bill Platt”, but it will help me tell my story. The article in question is titled, “Masters Of The Google Universe: How To Achieve Top Google Rankings” and can be read on my site here.

To demonstrate this article, I will be including a description and some straight links to Google. This article was written and syndicated in April of 2009.

Since one can never turn to a single search engine to find out where an article has been published, I pulled the results from Google and Yahoo for the title of this article in quotes. Google will always show a low count of the article’s reprints, and Yahoo will always show a high count of reprints, since Yahoo typically includes more RSS feeds and the Yahoo Groups distribution in its results. I have always held that to get an idea where an article is published, one should look at Google, then Yahoo, and understand the real number is somewhere in the middle.

Google shows 44 results for this article. Yahoo shows 911 results for the article. But, if you try to drill down in the Yahoo results, they will only show 121 of the 911 references.

(Since websites die every month and every year, the results may have been better in April when the article was released, but as sites shut down, links disappear.)

Now the actual numbers shown by the search engines for this article are kind of pointless to this discussion, other than to point out that the article was published in a few places.

What is interesting about this article is when you do searches for keywords in the title, that do not include the full title.

On the first search, I tackled “Masters of the Google Universe” (without the quotes in the search), only because that was a really unique phrase, which actually contributed to the reason I chose that title. 4 of the top 5 listings in Google are my article.

Then I did same search in Yahoo. 6 of the top 6 results are my article.

Then I adjusted the search phrase to “Achieve Top Google Rankings” (again without the quotes in the search). The 5th and 12th listings in Google is my article. In Yahoo, 5 of the top 6 listings – excluding #5 – are my article.

Again, I adjusted the search phrase to “Top Google Rankings”, this time keeping the quotes since it is a really competitive term. On Google, my article was by itself at #12. But in Yahoo, my article held #12, #15 and #18 for that search phrase.

Like I said, this article is probably not the best one to use as an example, but it clearly shows that neither Google or Yahoo completely filter out duplicate copies of an article in their search results.

Syndicated In Any Format Does Not Get Penalized By Google or Yahoo

I started this article talking about how I believe that the “Duplicate Content Penalty” is a myth.

I also offered that I expect you to review my research material used in this article and to make your own decision as to whether this is a myth or I am simply too biased to see the truth of the matter.

What I have presented here is not just an opinion. It is an opinion backed by credible SEO Professionals. It is also a statement that is congruent with the opinions of Google employees.

Finally, I presented a case for Syndicated News Content not receiving a penalty from Google. And I was also presented one article that I wrote and syndicated, through the process of Article Marketing and distributed through my article distribution company at ThePhantomWriters.com

It Is My Hope That We Have Finally Put the Duplicate Content Penalty Myth To Bed

Now that I have come to the end of this story, ask yourself two questions:

1. Do you agree with me that the Duplicate Content Penalty is a Myth?
2. Who benefits most from you believing that the myth is the truth?

If you disagree with me, feel free to slap me around for being a biased fool.

If on the other hand you do agree with me, figure out who the con-men are in this story and slap them down. As far as I am concerned, that slap-down is long overdue.

Bill Platt – owner of ThePhantomWriters.com Article Distribution Service

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The world around us is concerned about the future. With Obama in the White House and record government spending during this economic recession, many of our neighbors are sweating what the future holds in store for them.

I worried about it for a bit, and then I realized that those of us who live our business lives on the Internet will not see the same depths of recession that our brick-and-mortar counterparts will experience.

All one has to do is to visit their local restaurants or the retail shop that offers the newest in cell phone products to realize that while people are fearful, they are not broke. People are still spending money to a large extent.

While people are still spending money in the marketplace, some businesses are continuing to fail around us… Not because the businesses do not have good products or people willing to buy those products, but because many industries rely upon bank loans to help them bridge the gap between production and payment from their clients.

For example, the automakers have to carry a huge burden of cost between the production of an automobile and when that vehicle is finally sold to a consumer. It is not the lack of customers that are killing the businesses we all know and respect, but instead, it is a lack of bridge capital (a.k.a. commercial credit) that is killing American businesses.

Look Out For Number One

If you are one of those people who are wondering whether your job will still be there next year, the only person who is going to look out for your best interests is you.

Starting an online business can be a very inexpensive process. Depending on the angle you take with your online business, you may only need to spend less than $50 per month to get on your feet with a viable online business.

For people who are just getting started with an online business, I strongly recommend Site Build It (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/sbi). SBI provides a system that enables anyone – and I do mean anyone – to build a commerce-ready website in just a couple hours. Beyond a user-friendly website building tool, SBI also offers training to help its members to be more successful.

One of the factors that make SBI so attractive in my book is its focus on Affiliate Products.

What Are Affiliate Products?

Affiliate products are products that are set up to enable third-party persons (affiliates) to advertise the product and earn a commission on any sale that is generated from the affiliate’s advertising.

For example, the affiliate program from which I have made the most money over the years – to be honest, thousands of dollars over the years – is the product line offered by World Wide Brands (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/wwb).

World Wide Brands is committed to helping online sellers find the companies who sell products wholesale and the companies who offer drop shipping services to online sellers. If you are not familiar with the term “drop shipping”, it means that you would be able to buy a product from them and have them “drop ship” the product directly to your customer, as if you had that product in stock when the product was purchased from you and you delivered the product from your own warehouse.

I introduce people to the products offered by World Wide Brands, through a special link that tracks my referrals, and if the person I delivered to the World Wide Brands website makes a purchase, I earn a commission on that sale. It is as simple as that.

Another affiliate program that is very similar to World Wide Brands is the program offered by Doba (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/doba). Rather than a catalog of drop-shipping companies, Doba is an Ebay-Certified drop shipper.

Simply put, an Affiliate Program is any product or service from which you can earn a commission, if you do your part by delivering a buying customer to the seller’s website.

Affiliate Networks

There are literally thousands of companies who offer affiliate commissions on the sale of their products or services. Fortunately, we don’t have to search the web for weeks on end to find available products and services that we would like to sell.

There are companies that have been built for the purpose of helping sellers initiate affiliate programs for their products and services. These companies literally represent hundreds and sometimes thousands of sellers who offer affiliate programs.

Within each network, you can shop for the products and services that you wish to sell from your own website. Within some affiliate networks, you can just plug in a product to your website and begin selling. Within other affiliate networks, you may have to request the right to promote a product and wait for the seller to approve your affiliate application.

Clickbank.com is an affiliate network company that enables you to start selling any product in their network, without forcing you to wait on approval to begin selling a product. This is the primary reason why most software developers choose to work almost exclusively with the Clickbank network.

Other affiliate network companies of note include:

* Commission Junction (www.cj.com)
* PepperJamNetwork.com
* CommissionSoup.com
* LinkConnector.com
* LinkShare.com
* ShareASale.com

Getting started with these affiliate networks is easy. You simply need to sign up for an account and verify your email address.

Personally, I have accounts with each of the above-mentioned affiliate networks.

Where Most Websites Fail

Where most webmasters fail in their quest to make a living online is in the final step. Once a website is set up with products and services to sell, the final and most important step in the process is to drive traffic to the website.

To be honest, I even failed in this part of the equation when I got started online. Fortunately, I got started way back in 1995 when the Internet was still brand new. Back then, there were not a lot of people who had mastered the Internet marketing concept – well, there were not many people bragging about how well they were doing online with Internet marketing anyway.

I finally started getting my head around this online marketing thing in 1999, when I discovered people who were teaching others how they could be successful with an online business – in the same way that I do now.

In 1998, I started reading articles like this one – articles intended to teach people how to be successful with an online business. But I was a bit slow on the uptake…

It was by chance in 1999 that I saw a link in the one marketing newsletter that I read every week. That link suggested that I could write an article and submit it to the newsletter for consideration of publication.

It is true that I did not know a lot about marketing a business online, but I thought that maybe I could share a lesson that I had learned while operating my online newsletter. So I wrote a short article of about 700 words and submitted it to that newsletter.

It was a full three months later when I received a message from the editor of the publication telling me that my article would be featured in his publication the next day. With that email, my future was forever changed.

When published in that newsletter, my website which had seen 750 visitors over the previous two years suddenly served several thousand visitors in one day. I was ecstatic.

With my initial success, I wrote six more articles in six weeks and sent them through a mailing list that told publishers about the availability of my articles. Then I got distracted for several months and forgot about articles.

By chance, six months later I noticed a sudden and huge surge of traffic to my website, so I did a bit of investigation as to how that had happened. Lo and behold, one of my articles had been published in another large newsletter.

Upon learning this information, I decided that I needed to check on the reprint success of those first six articles. I was able to track a pretty wide swath of newsletters that had reprinted my articles; although I am certain that I missed a few. But with the newsletters that I was able to find that had used my articles, they had a combined circulation of 1.5 million readers.

With this discovery, I never again let articles disappear from my marketing plan. These days, I write a new article every time that I launch a new website, and I strive to put new articles out as frequently as I can manage to do, for all of my income-generating websites.

The trick in using articles as an advertising platform is that the article should teach its readers something of value; otherwise publishers will not want to use them. Sure it is true that you can still get a lot of links to your website from websites that publish your articles, because webmasters tend to be much less selective about the articles they are willing to publish. But I figure that if I am going to take the time to write an article, then I should take the extra time to ensure that a newsletter publisher and any quality-oriented webmaster will be just as likely to publish that article, as the webmaster who has no standards at all.

At the end of every article is a paragraph that tells the author’s biography. When done right, the paragraph that tells you that this article was written by Bill Platt will also tell you what website I am wanting you to visit and why you would want to visit that website. When my article and my “about the author” information is done well, you will visit my website. And hopefully once at my website, you will decide that you may be interested in purchasing what I offer.

Advertising Is Available In Many Formats

Using articles to promote a website is what is referred to as “article marketing”, but it is only one method of dozens that are available to help you promote your new online business.

You should use whatever advertising methods work well for you. For me, article marketing is my primary method of advertising online, but others might prefer pay-per-click advertising in the search engines.

In the end, it does not matter what method of advertising you choose to promote your website, so long as you actually use some method of advertising to bring potential customers to your website.

The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Once you have your website built and traffic coming to your website, you will notice that light far off in the distance at the end of the tunnel. With your first sale, you will begin to realize that you really do have it in you to be successful online. After a number of sales, you will realize that it is simply a matter of time until you are earning an income substantial enough to protect your income, in the event that your employer decides that they need to cut your job to survive the current recession.

In the end, you are the only person who will do what is necessary to protect your financial future. By starting your own online business, you will begin to gain something even more powerful than money… You will gain a respect for yourself that you have never had before, and you will begin to understand how it is completely within your power to control your own destiny in this life.

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Bill Platt owns and operates ThePhantomWriters.com Article Distribution Service. Through his service, he can help you get your articles to newsletter publishers and webmasters interested in using articles written by other people. If you do not feel that you are able to write your own articles, you could always hire a ghost writer, or try out Bill’s new service called Sponsor Articles, which merges co-op advertising with article marketing. Learn more at: http://www.SponsorArticles.com/

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If you like reading about search engine optimization, you may want to read Bill’s latest article about SEO.