The Article Marketing Handbook – Will it Help Article Marketers?

This review is my personal opinion of 'The Article Marketing Handbook' I'll tell you:

1) What it's about
2} Did I learn anything?
3} Is it worth the asking price?

I’ve read a lot of articles, ebooks and forum posts about article marketing and have found that the information and advice offered can be conflicting and confusing to new article marketers. As an article marketer I have studied the results from my own campaigns and come to my own conclusions. As an article directory owner I can see from studying the site stats month after month which articles are working for the authors. I can also see from Google searches which articles have been found on my site and republished on blogs or websites.

With the double insight of article marketer and directory owner it can be frustrating to see articles being submitted that you know will not be effective for the authors. On the other hand you learn to recognise articles that are going to do well for the authors and your directory.

With this in mind I was curious to read ‘The Article Marketing Handbook’ written by Allen Graves – an experienced article directory owner and article marketer. I’ve come across Allen in forums and have to admit that we don’t always agree, but it is plain to see that Allen cares about article marketing. Because Allen has been involved with article marketing longer than I have I hoped that I would learn something from his handbook. I also felt that as he had the same opportunity of double insight as I have albeit for longer that ‘The Article Marketing Handbook’ should be as good as if not better than anything that I have previously read. My expectations were high so lets see if the handbook lived up to them.

The Content

At first I was impatient to get to the ‘meat’ of the ebook and wasn’t happy with the long introduction and theorising in the first couple of chapters, but then I saw that Allen was expressing why it is important to get your article marketing campaign right. It isn’t just information - it’s plain common sense that every article marketer should consider before embarking on a marketing campaign and worth reading.

Allen then guides you through selecting your niche, ways of discovering what information your readers are searching for and spending money on and how to find the best keywords. All useful information and if used correctly should help you to write more effective articles.

You learn why you should use pen names and how to select them. How to write titles that grab a reader’s attention while appealing to search engines. How to best summarise your articles and how to format the article body to capture the reader’s attention and keep them reading. Some tips are also included on how to write your author resource box to gain higher click throughs to your website.

Did I learn Anything?

Yes I did. I was particularly interested in a chapter explaining how to find the best places to submit your articles to and why. Also how to get more click throughs by promoting your articles after your submissions have been accepted. Both ideas are so obvious that I wondered why I hadn’t thought of them.

There are several more article marketing tricks that I have noticed used by authors who submit to my directories and hadn’t really thought about. To find out if they work I checked my site stats and sure enough those articles were getting more than the average hits. That could be a coincidence or those tricks could be working for the authors and my directories.

What I Think

There is a whole lot more information but now I’m going to tell you what I think about ‘The Article Marketing Handbook’. The ebook is well written and in a no BS style that I personally like. For anybody familiar with article or Internet marketing it’s easy to understand, but those new to the field may struggle without more basic information about for instance the importance of keywords and phrases. But, that and other basic information can be readily found with an Internet search.

Is It Worth The $47 Asking Price?

For most ebooks I would say absolutely not. That is because there are thousands of ebooks available on the Internet free or at incredibly low prices and that muddies the water on perceived value. The Article Marketing Handbook is different in that it provides a lot of information and advice that I haven’t seen before in any article, forum or ebook. Information and advice that I know from experience is correct even if I hadn’t thought about some of it before reading the handbook.

The Article Marketing Handbook is by far the best guide I have read on the subject of article marketing, so I wasn’t disappointed. As Allen will be providing updates as the market changes I would consider the one off $47 payment to be a good investment for ongoing success in the article marketing field.


The author Patricia Jones writes for several websites including The Creative Writer and Make Money From Writing

Visit Eprofits Centre for free digital downloads

Progress

I've been very lax with this blog lately, too much to do and not enough time to do it in. I've made lots of progress which I will tell you about.

I rebuilt my membership sites Eprofits Centre and Articles Abroad on my new server. It was very time consuming, but the good news is that an upgrade of the Memberspeed software had just come out with added features, so the result is that the sites are now better than before and with more features still to be added.

I've been adding articles to both sites and there are now quite a lot of free digital downloads on Eprofits Centre. I made some products available for visitors to access which is good for rebrandable ebooks of my own and site members. So far there are just 2 levels of membership and one is free. Soon I will add another level of membership where those members can resell memberships at 100% profit should they choose.

I've noticed 2 things with the more developed site Eprofits Centre. First of all the articles are getting more hits than on the main directory. I think that is because the site is optimised for business and computer related articles and the software also lets me optimise the individual categories as well as each article. Another thing is that when I posted a mini review or comment to one of the articles hits shot up. I don't know why but in the software sales bumff you are told that it has been especially designed to add stickiness to sites built with it.

The review manager is an excellent add on. Members can review and give feedback or add information to articles, products, audio and video. Reviewers can set up a profile with up to 5 of their website links included, though I might increase that.

I'm still finding my way around the Memberspeed software but I'm glad that I splashed out for it and can see that it will help me to fulfill many of my business aims.

Article Marketing Success And Sheep Do not Mix

I like article marketing and find it an enjoyable and profitable way of promoting my websites. I never plan articles, the ideas just come out of the blue from something I have seen or heard. Once I start writing the words just flow, but before I write an article there are two things that I consider.

1. Why am I writing the article?
2. Would it be of any use to webmasters for their sites or for newsletter publishers?

It does not take rocket science to figure that I and every other article marketer am using articles to benefit our own promotions, but they will be of little benefit to us if we do not produce quality articles that others will actually want to read and use.

Owning my own article directory I have read thousands of articles, many of which I would never use on my other sites or in newsletters and many I have declined for various reasons. Let us consider the rights and wrongs of articles starting at the beginning.

Attention Grabbing

Your title is your headline, there to grab attention and many people never look past the first 2 or 3 words. I could have called this Sheep Do Not Mix With Article Marketing Success but I want people who are interested in article marketing and not sheep to read it. Another type of title that will not grab me is The Top 20 Tips For Passionate Sex. It would be more likely to create interest if it was Passionate Sex My Top 20 Tips.

Writing Standards

Spelling and grammar are important. You are promoting yourself and your business and you need to present yourself as professional to be taken seriously. I write my articles in Word first and use the spell checker. I sometimes fall out with it because I am English and prefer not to use Americanised spelling.

If you have problems with writing but good information the answer is to use a ghostwriter or copywriter. There are plenty of good writers advertising on the Internet and personally I think that one good quality article will do more for your business than 10 poor articles.

Know Your Subject

Good advice for writers is that they should always know and understand what they are writing about or their articles have no credibility. I was gobsmacked last week to read an article about my own country that I knew to be very ill informed and by somebody I suspected had never set foot on our shores. The guy could not even spell Britain right and as his misspelling was in the title he sunk without trace before he even started!

Original Copy

The best and most memorable articles are purely original, thought provoking and offer different viewpoints to a subject. Some writers submit zillions of slightly changed articles about the same subject over and over; yawn. They are boring and eminently unreadable after the first one or two. There are exceptions where writers are providing updates and news about their chosen subjects. I would use those articles for my sites.

Lists of quotes from the bible for instance are not original articles. At least 90% should be your own work and quotes only used as a point of interest not as the whole article. Submitting articles on behalf of others is suspect, how do readers know whether you have filched them or not? Plagiarism, not worth going there, eagle eyes and google will find you out!

Advertorial Blues

An advertorial is an advert written in article form. They carry no unbiased information or advice that would be of any help to anybody interested in that subject. There are plenty of places to advertise for free on the Internet, so trying to fob adverts off as articles is unfair on directory site owners or visitors who want to read articles not adverts.

Link Usage

The reason most of us use Article Marketing for promoting our businesses is to place links to our websites in the author resource boxes usually placed at the foot of articles.

I like to maximise the potential and use the up to 3 links usually allowed. Many article directories allow active links, but some do not. A problem can arise when articles are automatically submitted if the script the site uses strips the html. I prefer to submit manually mostly and then I can activate the links myself or just put my website address if the site doesn't accept html links.

Links within the articles are unacceptable on most directory sites, but as you get 3 chances in the resource boxes there is no point trying to cheat.

All Keyed Up

You will be asked to provide some keywords for your articles so choose wisely. Study your content and consider what somebody who might be interested in your article is most likely to enter into the search engines. A poor example is if you are writing about search engine optimisation and your title is SEO, Internet Business Bread And Jam, you would not use jam and bread as keywords unless you wanted to attract hungry people. Apart from that your articles credibility takes a nosedive if you do not know what a good keyword is.

Readability

Finally, your article should not be repetitive and should be interesting. Short paragraphs make it easier to read, text talk makes it more difficult. All capitals in the article body or title are a no no, they only stand out in the sense that the reader feels shouted at and nobody wants to feel like that.

I hope that you have found this interesting and useful and that we get lots more quality articles to read.

Article Source: bb-articles.com

Fresh Start?

Thankfully the automatic article submissions stopped but only when I took the script out. Articles are still filling up my inbox despite me emailing the article submission company several times asking them to stop sending them. I have deleted hundreds of articles, a waste of my time and I wonder how many good articles I'm losing because of this.

I've tried blocking the company but the email address they are sending from is hidden and with my email account used being on my domain you can't get at the source as you can with hotmail.

What I feel like at the moment is pulling the site down and starting all over again. A new design and far less articles. If I did that it would take time but the pros are starting to outweigh the cons.

Less articles would mean that the site would be faster and all of the functions would work. I would be able to get rid of articles that I don't want, for instance about weapons. Reduce the amount of categories and have all of the articles in the correct categories which would be better for the rss feeds and better for the writers. I would also lose all of the articles with incomplete resource boxes. In hindsight it would be like that now if I hadn't opted for the automatic submission company doh.

The only con really is time. I would have to save the old site on another server and gradually move the articles submitted manually and the best articles to the new site. But, I have been spending a lot of time moving articles to the correct categories etc. and I would guess that if I continue it will take me longer to go through all of the articles than start afresh.

It would be nice to have a fresh start so maybe I've talked myself into it!

Up To My Eyeballs In Articles

What an hectic week. An enormous amount of articles were waiting for approval on Tuesday and every time I approved some more came in. Most of them didn't have category suggestions so the approval process took longer because I had to figure out what category they belonged in. Some of the articles were pretty obscure which made it harder.

There was such a huge backlog by Friday that I pulled the automatic submission script and started to email members to ask them to post manually, hopefully that will slow things down but not bring things to a standstill. I realised that a lot of my time was being wasted unnecessarily and I was struggling to find time to promote the site or make improvements. My other sites are so neglected they might as well not exist.

Other problems that the automated script brought was that html was being stripped out of the articles resource boxes, that I got fixed with another script. Then I realised that the automatic submission was creating lots of unnecessary categories, for instance doubling up with computer and computers. It also created a main category called Speaking and sub categories under that of religion and online auctions - weird!

I'm now trying to sort out the categories and have already deleted quite a lot. I've decided not to accept any more political articles or articles about weapons. I don't think an article directory is the place for political debate and I don't want links to sites selling weapons on any of my sites. I'm toying with the idea of not accepting any more articles about religion too. I find some of those articles interesting although I'm an atheist, but some of them are just plain preaching and can hardly be called articles. I'll just refuse those for a while maybe.

The only bit of light relief this week was when I looked at the article website statistics. A searchstring that was - how to use covert hypnosis to get women to sleep with you - I laughed when I saw it but now I'm going to search to see if there is anything like that on the site. The thought of some creep using hypnosis to get sex makes me shudder, surely that would be classed as rape. Then it could be BS, and I don't think it's possible. However if it's on the site it won't be for long.

Wow nearly 40,000 articles

There have been times when I wondered if I was taking the right step with an article directory, but now I know that I have. Who would have imagined that there would be so many articles within 2 weeks of launching? I certainly didn't and more are still coming in. The articles mostly arrived through joining a company called Article Marketeer who submit articles for you.

They have 2 options, by email or with a nifty script. I chose the email option because it sounded easier. My mistake, my inbox was flooded with subscriptions and articles and I had to place these on the site. I was going bogeyed with the effort and decided to try out the script. Despite my fears it was easy to install and the subscriptions and articles are coming in automatically now.

I was worried that the automatic members wouldn't visit the site but I am seeing that many are and some are posting articles by themselves.

Another worry is that I wasn't getting to check the articles before they were posted. Article Marketer check them for you but I have thrown some out that I have seen. Either for being unethical or just complete advertorial with no personal experience or advice. I don't see the point in advertorials. Most readers will see that they are just ads and not what they are looking for when they do a search about a subject. Apart from that if they want to purely advertise they aren't getting a freebie.

Many of the articles that I have read are informative and of good quality. That I find pleasing but I have to admit to some cynicism as regards some who call themselves as Internet marketing experts. My cynicism arose when I read some of the articles giving advice about Internet marketing. What I couldn't understand was if they are experts why do they not use keywords appropriate to the articles?

Some just use a couple of words from the title. For instance the title might be 'Put some jam on your bread' they would use jam and bread as keywords. I am not an expert on Internet marketing and am reading the articles to gain more knowledge about that area, but even I know that somebody putting jam or bread into a search engine will not be looking for advice about Internet marketing.

Ok that's a wild example and I will be happy to be corrected if I'm wrong. If I'm right then I'm not 100% happy about advice from those who are not walking the talk.

Anyway on the bright side the site is getting lots of hits from unique visitors. More in the last 2 days than in 2 months on my other sites. It remains to be seen if it makes more money. I'm going to be good and wait a while before checking the various advertising sources.

What next? Unfortunately the category section on the home page has been messed up somewhat with the input from Article Marketer. I will be working on fixing that and making some improvements over the next few days. Then I will push the boat out with promotion. I have lots of articles kicking around and will be flooding other sites with them to get back links. That will be stage one and a continuing process until www.bb-articles is blasted all over the Internet. It looks like the Busy Bee is back in spades!

Welcome to my blog

What a frustrating week I've had trying to set up my article directory. I'm terrible at understanding technical instructions and had to do many a google search before what I have done so far clicked.

I had 2 false starts when I tried to set a directory up on my own webspace. First of all I tried to install an article beach site and couldn't get it working properly. Then I tried Article Dashboard. I got everything on the site and started to customise but realised that the email confirmation for new joiners wasn't working. After many hours of searches and hair pulling out I realised that a thing called cron jobs exists and couldn't find any mention in my cpanel. I emailed the guy that I bought the space from and was told that they didn't allow cron jobs because of security issues. I understood but when I looked at the advertisement that I bought the space from cron jobs was there large as life.

For those of you who I am baffling with 'cron jobs' it's something to do with the site automatically sending confirmation emails, newsletters and news of posts etc. If you want your own article directory type site then make sure that you get a host that offers cron jobs.

Anyway I wasn't too bothered because I didn't pay much for unlimited space for life and already have something like 7 personal sites hosted there and the ability to host myself. I decided to pay a monthly fee for hosting the article directory with the recommended hosts.

I bought the space and started to publish the site. Every step of the way was more difficult and time consuming with the recommended hosts than with my own space. I finally got there and guess what? I couldn't get the cron jobs to work when I signed up for an authors account.

I joined the article dashboard forum and went through every recommendation posted by users. Nothing worked and I would have been bald if I had literally torn my hair out. I was almost ready to give up but emailed the recommended hosts first.

It turned out that I was using an hotmail account for the test author sign up and hotmail was filtering out the confirmation emails as spam grrrr. I might have thought about that one earlier if I hadn't signed up as an author on the Article Dashboard site and received the confirmation email with no problem. I added the BB-article site to my hotmail safe list and now everything is working great - I hope! Just got lots of customising to do but the site is ready for posts.

What I find strange about Hotmail is that they filter out emails that you want to receive as spam, yet the only spam I have received in that account in 7 years must have come through hotmail selling the address to spammers and scammers. I know that because I used it as a private address for 7 years.