BB Articles Closed Down

After 2 years of running BB Articles as an article directory I have decided to close it down. I reached a point where I couldn't warrant spending any more time or money on what wasn't working for me.

I feel a bit sad because I remember how enthusiastic I was when I launched BB Articles, but I also feel relieved because now I can spend the time saved on projects that are working for me such as the stopping smoking blog. 6 weeks on I'm still not smoking, my business partner Gary has also stopped, we are healthier and saving money and the blog is making some brass too. We have added a quit smoking forum where members can support each other so everything is pretty good there.

I don't know what I'm going to use the bb-articles.com domain for yet. Unfortunately it's a bit constricting and should be something involving articles. Ideas put forward so far are a tikiwiki, forum, automated blog or a site selling article marketing products. I'm going away for the weekend so I'll have a think then. If you have any ideas please leave a comment.

Article Video Robot Review

Video marketing is gaining in popularity and increases targeted traffic for those who use this method of marketing. By submitting to video sites you get a new distribution channel for your content and more quality backlinks for your websites and blogs. I'm not a technical person but now I can convert my articles into videos quickly and easily.

Yesterday I heard about Article Video Robot and having tried it out free was impressed by how easy it was to convert articles into videos and felt that it was worth upgrading to the paid membership. You can see my first effort below. It isn't perfect by any means, but when you consider that it was my first try and only took a few minutes to make it isn't half bad.



Unaltered First Attempt!

You can try Article Video Robot out free before deciding whether or not it will work for you. If you have an ezinearticles.com account you can create your video in seconds by adding the link to your chosen article. Or you can input your article yourself. I think that is probably the best way and then you can adapt your article for the video and control things more.

One small problem when I was trying out the free version with an article about article directory scripts was that where I had used the initials AD for Article Dashboard and AF for Article Friendly those initials were spoken as they read. Without trying it I guess that it would be better to use A. D. and A. F. within my video article when I try it again.

You can edit your videos and add your own images to their stock images. You can also either use their selection of music soundtracks or upload your own. Their are a choice of different voices to use, or you can record your own and add that. That would probably work better if you have a clear speaking voice - with my Yorkshire accent it could be a problem except for converting my articles about Yorkshire into videos!

Video Distribution

You can download the videos to your computer and place them on video sites, websites and blogs yourself, or if you create a monthly account you get 125 credits to distribute your videos to 17 different video sites automatically - 1 credit per site. After you have used them up you need to purchase more, but if the videos are working for me I won't have a problem with that.

You can also add your videos to several different social networking sites from the distribution screen, that doesn't cost anything.

I'm pretty pleased with Article Video Robot so far but the proof of the pudding will be in how much extra traffic and sales this product generates. I will update with that once I can assess the results from several videos.

Now I'm going to have some fun and play around with it some more and create a better video!

Coupon Code

If you think that Article Video Robot is for you I can offer 20% off with the coupon code 25F481F3 just enter the code as you purchase.

Update

I made my second video and feel that it's much better. Instead of using the ezine articles link I pasted my article in and found that I had more control. I did a bit more editing and you can see the result of my second attempt below. While I was making this one I posted to Facebook and Myspace and then decided to make some changes. Those changes automatically updated on those sites without me having to upload again.



2nd Video

I think that is better and feel that with practice there will be more improvements. One of the things that I liked about this video was that the sea looked to be moving in the photo of the Blue Grotto in Malta. It looked so inviting that I could have dived in for a swim and inviting is what we want our promotional videos to be.

I think that I will make a training video for article marketing next - watch this space!

Coupon Code

If you think that Article Video Robot is for you I can offer 20% off with the coupon code 25F481F3 just enter the code as you purchase. But before making a decision have a go with the free trial first.

Update: 20th May

I should have updated this earlier but I've been busy building a new giving up smoking blog. I did as I said and made a training video for article marketing. It didn't turn out bad but there are a few errors. What I have found is that the quality deteriorates when submitted to sites such as YouTube, so I used the alternative publishing option and submitted it to my wordpress blog where you can see it in it's full glory. I tried to post it here but the size was too big for this theme.

I think that the video would have been better split into 2 or 3 parts and the sound quality isn't brilliant using their mechanical voices. I did try to record my own voice but I couldn't get my computer microphone to work. If I upgrade to the business package I will get better HD sound quality and more effects, plus an advanced video editor which will make videos easier to edit. I probably will upgrade once I've had more time to play with it and figure it out better.

In the meantime I will check to see how my videos are doing in the Google rankings. Article Marketing Directory Submission without quotes is ranked 7th but darn it the video on that site has an error message. With quotes blimey - 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 7th and 10th. That's 5 out of the top 10 and the rest of the sites have the video in it's full glory.

Now I'm going to check the other videos that I made. 'Singapore Festivals' hasn't got anywhere in the top 30, nor did 'travel for free' or 'travel writer'. Their full titles 'Travel For Free As A Travel Writer' and "How To Celebrate And Have a Real Good Time At Singapore Festivals" wiped out any competition. However those titles are less likely to be searched for than the main keywords 'Singapore Festivals', 'travel for free' and 'travel writer'.

What I have learned from that is that I need to focus on my keywords when naming the videos and my fourth attempt 'Singapore Beach Resorts' is 4th, 5th and 9th in Google rankings and the original article is in 6th place. I haven't done anything to promote the videos except for submitting them to several sites, so I'm very happy with their rankings and how quickly they got there - within a few hours.

The page I am directing the 3 Singapore videos to has had 1118 views during the last 20 days, whereas last month there were less than half those views for that page altogether. It could be the videos that have made the difference, or it could be the time of year.

I enjoyed making that video and found that by using less speech and more visuals it is more effective. I'm not happy with the sound quality so I guess that I shall have to upgrade sooner rather than later. You can see what I mean below.



Next I am going to make some videos for my new quit smoking blog. I've found some pretty good key words and I will be able to see easier the effects on a new site rather than one that has been established for a while.

Coupon Code

If you think that Article Video Robot is for you I can offer 20% off with the coupon code 25F481F3 just enter the code as you purchase. But before making a decision have a go with the free trial first.

Facelift At BB Articles

I did a bit more work on BB Articles yesterday. Mainly updating the About Us and the Link Development pages. There are lots of tips on how you can make more from your articles and any good suggestions from members will be placed there.

I found an add on for the admin dashboard and one of it's functions is to find and remove duplicate articles. I've always had a duplicate title checker which stops articles from being accepted if the title is the same as one used previously, but this new add on checks the whole article. When I first ran it 85 articles were deleted. Since then I've run it every few days and about every other time it finds a duplicate amongst newer submissions. What sometimes happens is that an author decides that it's ok to submit the same article several times using a different titles. Sometimes I've spotted it straight away, but if enough time has lapsed I might not remember the article. Now I don't have to remember.

During the facelift I found that I hadn't optimised the article pages properly. As I set the site up 2 years ago when I didn't know much about site optimisation it's understandable. Now that I've sorted that out the articles should hopefully get more views, but authors can help that by optimising their articles and using keywords relevant to the content.

I've been having some fun during the last couple of weeks making videos out of some of my articles with Article Video Robot. I've been wondering about allowing videos to be submitted to BB Articles. Now that I've redesigned the article pages and removed the inset Google ad I can't see any reason not to.

BB Articles Facelift

I've been working hard all day on a facelift for BB Articles and I think it's looking better now though it's not perfect. It took me about 5 hours to design the logo and to get it to fit right in the header with the google search box. The search box was going all over the place and it must have seemed strange to anybody visiting the site. The smaller logo and less images in general should help to reduce page load time.

I've moved the latest articles list to below the category list, not ideal but because of the differing lengths of titles placing the most recent articles on the left in a 3 table design meant that the centre table was displaced and I didn't know how to sort that out. However, I have removed the sub categories from view and shortened my introduction so there isn't as much scrolling to do to find the most recent articles.

I've moved the advertising round a bit to see if it makes any difference to site earnings. Google ads are more prominent, but I haven't broken up the articles with ads and I have removed the box around the author bio. that should be an improvement because the author details look more part of the article now.

I've still got a lot of work to do with the CSS file and that's trial and error for me because I don't totally understand it, but I'm getting there.

I was quite pleased with todays work but when I tried to log in to check some articles it wouldn't let me. As it's now after 1.00 am I think that will have to wait to be sorted out tomorrow morning.

I would love to know what you think about the facelift and if you have any suggestions.

May 2009 Submission Guidelines Update

Again it's been too long since I've posted here. Busy building websites and blogs, writing and getting traffic.

Last week I updated the submission guidelines, not that many people read them before submitting. I can't say that I blame them there is a lot to take in, but if you don't include everything there is no point of reference for those whose articles are declined. I don't particularly like declining articles, but I have always wanted BB Articles to be a quality article directory where publishers know that they won't have to search hard to find quality content for their websites or ezines.

The update was needed because things change, somebody gets an idea how they can get more self promotion from their articles, they discuss their idea on forums and all of a sudden you get umpteen articles every day that would be perfectly good articles if it wasn't for the unnecessary self promotion.

The biggest change was clarifying self promotion more. In Section A. no 13 I wrote:

'Specific locations should only be used in the title, article body, summary if the information offered within the article is highly relevant to a location. i.e. Articles using unnatural self promotional keyphrases like 'washing machine repair Boston Mass' or 'Claims lawyer Sacramento Ca' anywhere but the author bio will be declined.'

There has been a growing trend of including specific locations in titles, summaries and article bodies of general articles about various topics other than travel articles for months and the only relevance for the locations is the advertising in the author bio. I feel that using a specific location will lessen the chances of syndication for authors. For instance if somebody is looking for content offering information and advice about computer repair for their websites or ezines they are going to bypass an article titled 'Repair Computer: London computer Repair' because a glance at the title will make them think that it is an advert for a London computer repair service and not a general article that they can republish. It's possible that anybody searching for information would also think the same.

I've also been clamping down on excessive use of keywords and phrases. It isn't necessary to have the main keywords in more than the title, first and last paragraph and author bio. There are always other related keywords and phrases that can be used throughout as long as an article reads naturally. Sometimes the main keywords are used in nearly every sentence, turning what could be a good article into a very unnatural read that is considered as keyword spamming by the search engines and I wonder what somebody looking for information who knows nothing of keywords would think of them.

So called reviews are also a bugbear. A review should be from genuine experience not information garnered from a sales page. In particular reviews about money making schemes are often obviously a sell with no real experience shown. I do not want visitors to my site misled by these promotional pieces from people who are purely affiliates and not experiencing the schemes firsthand. Sometimes there are fake positive reviews of numerous money making schemes from the same author in a short space of time. How could they possibly experience all of those different schemes to the full? I ask myself before I hit the decline button.

I'm thinking about giving BB Articles a facelift today. Apart from it not looking too good, revenue from the site is crap and has never anywhere near justified the hours spent administering every day. I have known for a long time that I need to monetise BB Articles better but haven't been sure how. I've even thought about selling and then it would be somebody else's problem, but I don't like to give up. I have never wanted the advertisements to be too obtrusive, feeling that the articles are what the site is about, but you can't keep on flogging a dead horse for the sake of being nice.