Article marketing has been around nearly as long as print media. It has become a big deal with the arrival of the internet. There are many content aggregators that make it simple for marketers to submit content. As a result, marketers meet a number of internet marketing benchmarks. Unfortunately, there are some disadvantages to article marketing. This article will examine the three article marketing disadvantages and provide some guidance on implementing an ethical article marketing campaign.

What is Article Marketing?

Article marketing is an advertising method that generally benefits both the publisher and the content provider. Article marketing is as old as print media. In print media, publications accepted article marketing advertisements as these publications were on a limited budget. As a result, a business interested in providing an article covered empty space in the publication while receiving a mention in the publication –for free.

When print media was the only venue for article marketing, the quality of the articles was less of an issue. There were editors extremely familiar with the level of quality and writing guidelines of their publications. As communications strategies evolve with the culture they communicate with, it was inevitable the internet would get in on this strategy.

Article Marketing Sites: Content Aggregators

Article marketing has its benefits and disadvantages. Since publishing is as simple as clicking a button, the quality of article marketing has deteriorated. There are hundreds of directories for submitting articles. These directories are called content aggregators.

Content aggregators are companies or individuals that collect information for their sites. They fall under two categories.

• Companies or individuals who gather information for their sites
• Companies or individuals who gather information for sale or republishing to make a profit

Generally, article marketing strategies target content aggregators that sell or republish articles for profit. The idea is that by having your articles republished, you expand your reach and advertise to more potential customers. There is also the expert factor. The more articles you submit, the more knowledgeable you appear about your niche. But what are the disadvantages to article marketing?

Article Marketing Disadvantage #1: Duplicate Content

Ideally, the internet would be a good place where people could find valuable information on the fly. Unfortunately, that’s just not always the case. There are many companies dedicated to managing the wealth of information on the internet. For instance, Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

The very nature of online article marketing causes duplicate content to become an issue. Since article marketing is a form of advertising most internet marketers submit the same articles to multiple sites. There is a “myth” that Google penalizes for this type of duplicate content.

From Google’s website:

“Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.”

Since the myth is not necessarily a myth, let’s examine how you can avoid duplicate content concerns.

How to Avoid Duplicate Content

Let’s say you have an article on your site titled “The Top 10 Tips for Gardening Grapes” (I know you don’t garden grapes). You decide to submit the article to EzineArticles. In order to avoid your worries over duplicate content, don’t submit the same version to the directories.

Start by changing your title to “The Top Five Tips for Gardening Grapes”. Don’t include the first five from your site’s copy. Try tips 1, 7, 3, 9 and 4. Additionally, it would be even more helpful to edit the tips you have selected.

If you follow this plan you will substantially limit the opportunity for duplicate content. You will also do us all a favor by helping avoid multiple search results for the same information. Try this search and see what I mean. The same article appears on the first and second pages from different domains as of the time of this writing.

Article Marketing Disadvantage #2: Poor Link Quality

Article marketing is a definite method for increasing search engine rankings – if you obtain quality linking. The chances of getting quality links is based on a number of factors beyond your control. Following are some of the factors link quality is based on:

• Link Keyword Text
• Quantity of Links
• External Link Popularity
• Diversity of Link Sources
• Global Link Popularity
• Relevancy of External Links

For more information, see the seomoz.org site.

Link popularity affects your search engine rankings and link popularity is a big factor at 71%. (seomoz.org, 2010). While you can receive a large number of links depending on your strategy, the quality of those links can affect your bottom line.

How to Limit the Affects of Poor Link Quality

Define an article marketing strategy that targets highly ranked article directories. Only write high quality articles. Don’t write garbage. You will increase the chances your articles will be linked to or republished by higher ranking sites – if you don’t write garbage. Unfortunately, there is not much more you can do. If you have additional tips or tricks, feel free to comment.

Article Marketing Disadvantage #3: Time Invested

If you’re going to market articles to increase your positioning, it’s going to take time to create valuable content users will enjoy. Remember, don’t write garbage. The very nature of good article writing takes time, research and editing. If you’re going to churn out good articles your time will be a major factor.

How to Cut Back on Time Invested

If you have money to burn you have several options. You can hire freelance writers to develop your articles by going to Elance.com. Or hey, I could write your articles for you! Either way, you can pay for the service and indicate the conditions of the project. Make sure you retain all rights to the material that has been produced. Many website owners and companies use this method. The beauty of this method is it employs freelance writers, people who are trying to make a living just like you.

Another time saving article marketing method is to utilize software like Mass Article Control. This program creates articles for you based on your niche market pulled from an internal database. In addition, you don’t have to worry with submitting your articles because the system does it for you. For $77.00, it’s not a bad investment.

If you have more tips on article marketing don’t forget to leave a comment. Get the newsletter for more information.

Following an ethical internet marketing plan is critical to establishing your business on a strong foundation. Internet marketing strategies are essential to ensuring your products or services get the attention they need. In addition, ethical strategies are equally if not more important.

In this article, we will discuss some important concepts that are important to know prior to developing a strong ethical internet marketing plan. The following articles will each explore three of the seven steps to planning a strategy. Our case study business for this series will be Seedles. That may sound cheesy, but you’ll get my point soon.

Getting Past the Fear

If you do an online search for internet marketing or e-marketing, I’m sure you may be surprised at the number of results. Internet marketing is a highly competitive business with plenty of gurus and experts. Just because John the Internet Marketer has been internet marketing since 1964 doesn’t mean you can’t succeed. The most important things to remember are these:

• Usually, right when you’re ready to quit, your breakthrough is around the corner.
• This doesn’t happen overnight, or in the morning.
• Keep your nose to the grindstone. It’s called a grindstone for a reason. Keep going at it.
• It takes time to discover what works for you, your product and many other things that impact your business.

The bottom line is this – stay at it and it will pay off. John the Internet Marketer from 1964 had to do it, so will you. Get past the fear because only fear will prevent you from success.

Understand What Marketing is and is Not

Marketing is a strategic process that involves implementation and control. The process creates an opportunity for buyers and sellers to come together. Advertising is the announcement of a message that causes a targeted audience to take a specific action, hopefully purchasing, delivered via a medium (or media). Marketing is not advertising, but these two components are dependent upon each other.

We are bombarded daily by these messages. One important thing to remember is how many messages we see versus how many companies we purchase from. Here enters the brand.

How Your Brand Influences Your Success

Developing a powerful, positive and ethical brand is far more important and effective than spreading a message quick and dirty. If you are a reputation conscience individual, then developing a strong foundation for your brand will be an attractive alternative to selling a product just to get the hard earned cash of your audience.

Brand development may seem a difficult task. It’s really not that hard when integrated with e-marketing methods. Below you will find a few of these strategies. We will further explore them in upcoming articles in this series.

• Branded sponsorship
• Video advertisements
• Display advertisements
• Paid keyword searches

Ethical Marketing Considerations

Creating an ethical marketing campaign is a serious issue. If you’re reading this, chances are you have looked for opportunities to make supplemental income. Chances are you’ve run across sales pages that market overnight remedies to your financial problems. Chances could even be you’ve been a victim of false claims.

While advertising is not the focus of this article, I think it important to provide information about how sales letters are developed. In these letters, an individual will play to the emotion of their audience. The sales letters you run across have a proven formula. It’s all in how you use it. The following lists each of the ten parts of the formula:

• Headline
• Problem
• Solution
• Credibility
• Benefits
• Testimonials
• Guarantee
• Limited time
• The Call to Action

This is the general structure of sales letters. The problem is that some internet marketers promote lousy products. Products that play on a person’s dire financial situation and deliver ZERO for the little money they had in the first place. It’s my job to help you eliminate unethical marketing practices so that you can build a powerful and trustworthy brand.

In the next article, we will detail the following steps in the planning process:

• Analysis
• Strategic Planning
• Objectives

Stay tuned for the next article. Don’t forget to leave a comment and sign up for the newsletter!

Affiliate Marketing is marketing products that have been created by someone else. The concept is that you receive a percentage of each product a customer purchases. Companies like Clickbank then handle the purchasing process and credit your account.

There are many affiliate marketing programs and sites, though one of the best affiliate programs is Clickbank. Clickbank products are pretty decent and they provide tools and decent guidelines for marketing their products.

One method of affiliate marketing is advertising. If you have extra cash, you can create an advertising campaign to drive traffic to your products. A less expensive method is article marketing. I have heard so much about article marketing and affiliate marketing with Clickbank products, I decided to give it a shot. Since I don’t have a huge budget for advertising on Google and such, I’ve decided to go about this with article marketing.

After doing some research, I learned some information from the Earnersblog website. I’ve decided to utilize the method detailed at this site with a small tweak.

The purpose of my project is to see if I can leverage article marketing with Clickbank products without spending a dime. I’ve set a goal of $300 over the next thirty days. In this article, I’ll cover the first several steps I’ve taken to get this project up and running. As I see results, I’ll keep you posted. We should then have a proven method for making some extra money affiliate marketing using Clickbank products and article marketing.

Step One: Become a Clickbank Affiliate

First, get your Clickbank account. It’s a pretty simple process and it’s free. Once you have your account created, go to the Marketplace to look for Clickbank products you feel comfortable promoting. I can’t stress how important it is to promote products you are comfortable with. Look for Clickbank products that have some credibility. For instance, if someone marketing a product has been covered on MSN, that’s credibility.

Step Two: Select Clickbank Affiliate Products

Once you have signed up for your account and visited the Marketplace, there are several indicators for you to review. You want to focus closely on how much you will make on each sale and how much “gravity” the product has. Make sure you select a product with high “gravity”. The higher the gravity, the more sales affiliate marketers are making.

I selected two products to begin with. Ultimately, I’d like to select ten products and write two articles per product. Make sure you promote ethical products. Period. Just like you have searched for an answer that’s not a rip-off, you want to make sure you’re not promoting the rip-off of others. If you can, try the product yourself to provide a review based on factual information and your honest experience with the product.

Step Three: Getting Your Clickbank HopLink

A hoplink is a web address that identifies your Clickbank affiliate account. The only way for you to get paid is via your hoplink. Once you decide to promote a product, select “promote” on the Clickbank screen. Enter your account nickname and a tracking ID if you’d like. Once you have completed this form, get your hoplink. It’s a good idea to paste your hoplink into Notepad or some other text based application. This is very important because you’ll need it later.

Step Four: Keyword Research for Article Marketing

This is a very important step for article marketing. Your articles won’t rank well if you don’t spend time researching the right keywords. Additionally, if you use the wrong keywords, you won’t get qualified traffic.

I researched keywords using Google’s Keyword tool. Since I selected products about affiliate marketing, I entered “affiliate marketing” into the search tool. I then search variations of “affiliate marketing” like “affiliate”, “affiliate products”, “clickbank affiliate”, etc. Once I found a great keyword list, I downloaded my keywords into Excel CSV format.

I highlighted the keywords I wanted my articles to contain. See my previous post on search engine optimization for additional information.

Step Five: Creating Your Articles

Now that you have found your products and done your keyword research, you can write your articles. I decided to write four articles, two for each product. I made sure each article was keyword rich. I decided to provide informative articles about the product subjects. For example, I created an article that discussed the benefits of affiliate marketing programs. I then found a way to work in the product I had chosen to promote.

Make sure you create a fair promotional article free of tricky tactics. Some vendors at Clickbank will ban you from promoting their products if you write articles with words like scam in the title. Be very upstanding about your approach. Once you have created your articles, you can then create an advertisement.

Creating an Advertisement

Since article submission sites do not allow direct affiliate linking, you will want to create an advertisement at a free ad site like Craigslist. Remember your hoplink? It goes in your advertisement.

After creating a compelling advertisement, you can begin submitting your articles with a link to your advertisement. Since this is an article marketing strategy, make sure you submit ads that run for at least thirty days.

Additionally, you want your advertisements to rank well in the search engines. Creating and submitting the articles to many places with a link to the advertisement will increase the ads ranking.

Article Submission

I selected ten article submission sites. I found a great master listing of articles here. Select the sites you would like your article to appear on and begin the submission process.

Soon, you should begin getting hits to your advertisements and hopefully some sales.

Mass Article Marketing

There are some products that assist in the article creation process. Article writing can take time and effort. And if you’re not that great at writing you may want to try them. One of my favorite products is Mass Article Control.

Good luck and I’ll keep you posted on my progress! If you have some additional tips or have tried this, I’d love to hear from you.

Twitter has become one of the most powerful free marketing and public relations tools on the internet. But how do you gain that elusive quality following? Especially in a niche market like photography? This article will provide you with three must have tips to boosting your credibility and building a quality Twitter network.

The most important part of crafting your message is knowing what it is. You should know why you want to use Twitter before you sign up. Otherwise, you may become discouraged as your profile sits with three followers.

Ask yourself the following questions before you sign up:

You want to discover your reason behind your interest in Twitter. These are 5 great questions you can ask yourself to get started.

Don’t arrive on the scene like a hardcore salesman. Slow down. Many people make the mistake of instant marketing on Twitter. Never jump right in and start promoting. Twitter is an opportunity to build relationships. Don’t damage them by beating people over the head with your product. You may be online but people still don’t want to feel used.

Twitter is all about finding value in the expertise of others. It takes time to build good relationships — on or offline. Take the time to research people who may be interested in your niche. Follow people who already have a solid standing in your market. If you peruse their followers, you’ll find out what they’re talking about. And if you play it smart, you may be able to develop a targeted product offering.

140 characters is a very short writing form. Master the art of getting your message out succinctly. With so many people tweeting, it’s hard to wade through the trash and find good information. If you don’t want your information to be deemed trash, then start by building a trustworthy relationship and avoid spamming your followers. Don’t forget to offer help when you can.

Many people join Twitter and follow everyone that follows them. If you plan on using Twitter as a goldmine for marketing research, this is a bad strategy. While there are tools like Tweetdeck and Twitter lists that cut down the chatter, there’s nothing like good old fashioned discretion. Make sure you only follow people you are interested in hearing from. Have you ever noticed some tweeters have 10,000 followers and they’re only following 200? That’s a smart strategy. They only follow those individuals that interest them and add value to the constant stream of information they see daily.

While it may seem rude not to follow all of your followers, how will you manage 10,000 x 20 tweets x 24 hours x 7 days? Would you follow every Joe you met on the street? Then don’t follow everyone on Twitter. In addition, Twitter has rules that will only allow you to follow so many people. So make sure you manage your Twitter network like you manage your offline network — with discretion.

After you have found people you are interested in learning from, ease yourself into their conversations. Introduce yourself and find common ground. Don’t jump in on Jim’s conversation about his fifteenth anniversary gift. Do jump in on Jim’s conversation about healthy eating tips. Especially if this is your market. Leave the personal conversations between people who feel comfortable with each other.

The Photocritic blog has a great database full of must follow photographers. Check them out here.

The biggest turn off for many on Twitter is the constant stream of promotional Tweets. There’s nothing worse than someone who constantly toots their own horn. Remember, Twitter is about building trust by providing value. Manage your tweets consistently.Try sending promotional tweets with links to your product or blog once for every five or ten helpful tweets you send. Feel free to experiment with your own intervals. Twitter is a value based venue. Only those that provide valuable information consistently are successful in gaining a large targeted following.

Twitter will only be successful if you spend time building quality relationships. So, when you’re on Twitter, make sure you spend your time wisely. Don’t go in with a strictly promotional motive. Seek people in your niche you can learn from. Be careful who you follow and always remember to have fun!

For a comprehensive Twitter resource go to Prevential Blog. You don’t want to miss this.

Learning to optimize and market your site may seem a difficult task. Don’t fear, we’re here for you! Get advice, tips, tricks and tutorials on managing a marketing strategy –ethically. Our newsletter contains information on strategies we’ve tested ourselves.

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Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a technical marketing strategy.  Your online presence is heavily impacted by your search engine optimization efforts. What’s the point in all that great content if you don’t optimize your pages for Google or other search engines? It’s just like writing great articles for a magazine and neglecting the distribution process. Your hard work won’t reach your audience. In this article, we will discuss the basics of search engine optimization.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

If you run a website, you have heard of SEO. Haven’t you? The term has struck fear and loathing in the hearts of many. Search engine optimization can be a difficult endeavor for the novice internet marketer. The difficulty lies in the very technical nature of search engine optimization. The most successful search engines change their algorithms frequently. Gaining a basic understanding of how search engines work will maximize your search engine optimization skills.

Search engine optimization is the act of improving your site traffic by implementing a strategic placement strategy. It is also a very technical strategy that is integrated into traditional marketing concepts. There are two ways that count in improving your traffic: quantity and quality. It depends on the nature of your site which strategy you pursue. For example, if you are running a site for the sole purpose of spreading a general message, quantity may work for you. If you are interested in turning clicks into sales, quality is your best bet.

Search Engine Optimization Strategy One: Keywords

Keywords are the most important consideration when optimizing for search engines. When you decide you would like to find something on the internet, and don’t know where to start, the first thing you do is “Google it” or “Bing it” or use some other search method. When you type keywords into Bing’s search bar, Bing goes out to the internet and finds websites that rank highly based on your keyword search. You then happily click around until you find what you are looking for. The key to finding the information is in the key words.

One of the basic concepts of search engine optimization is managing your keywords. There are five areas you should pay close attention to when determining your keyword approach. In this article, we will discuss the first three:

• Keyword Choice
• Keyword Proximity
• Keyword Prominence
• Keyword Frequency
• Keyword Density

Keyword Choice

First things first, you’ve got to pick the right keywords. I cannot stress how important this is. For example, if you are running a site that promotes the use of baby padding in baby cribs, which list of keywords would you choose?

Keyword Choices 1 Keyword Choices 2
• Baby padding                                •Babies
• Baby cribs                                      •Baby
• Baby products                              •Baby pampers

I would definitely go with “Keyword Choices 1” because these words are far more descriptive and relevant to the site content. This is an illustration of the delicate nature of choosing relevant keywords. I’m sure you get my drift. If not, feel free to contact me for my free eBook on keyword management.

Keyword Proximity

In this part of your keyword strategy, you want to focus on how close together your keywords are. Make sure you place yourself in the shoes of internet users. How would you search for terms related to your site? What keywords would you use? After you have answered these questions, make sure your important keywords are resting near each other in your websites copy.

Keyword Prominence

Here, the important thing is how quickly your important keywords show up on your page. Make sure the title bar of your browser, your META tags (later discussion), the beginning of the page and paragraph contain your keywords.

In the next article, we will discuss the remaining keyword strategies. For more information or to go it alone, don’t forget to contact me for my free eBook on keyword management. You are always welcome to contact me for a quote tailored to your specific project. Have a happy time choosing your words carefully.

Welcome to the Managing Challenging Personalities series! In this three part series we will focus on resolving some of the issues presented by different personalities. We will discuss identification of personality traits (including ours), increasing positive communication skills and coping and conflict management techniques.

In the first part of the series, we will focus on developing an understanding of our personality traits and how the personalities of our peers work together. Some of the tools and concepts covered are:

• Personality Assessment Tools
• Identifying Spiritual Temperaments
• Understanding the Personality Trait Mix
• Discovering Positive Communication Techniques Based on Personality
• Conflict Management Strategies
• Pulling it all Together – Get out There and Make it Work

One of the most important aspects of how we get things done is our personality. You may not realize that some of your attributes are directly related to your personality.

Personality Assessment Tools

One of the best ways to determine a close approximation of your personality traits are assessment tools. I used the Disc assessment and spiritual temperaments to discover a deeper of who I am. Let me tell you, they were right on.

Disc Personality Assessment

This assessment is based on the work of William Moulton Marston Ph.D. . It indicates that different people prefer to manage different social situations based on certain styles and preferences. (wikipedia, 2009)

Wikepedia lists the following personality types:

Dominance: People who score high in the intensity of the “D” styles factor are very active in dealing with problems and challenges, while low “D” scores are people who want to do more research before committing to a decision. High “D” people are described as demanding, forceful, egocentric, strong willed, driving, determined, ambitious, aggressive, and pioneering. Low D scores describe those who are conservative, low keyed, cooperative, calculating, undemanding, cautious, mild, agreeable, modest and peaceful.

Influence: People with high “I” scores influence others through talking and activity and tend to be emotional. They are described as convincing, magnetic, political, enthusiastic, persuasive, warm, demonstrative, trusting, and optimistic. Those with low “I” scores influence more by data and facts, and not with feelings. They are described as reflective, factual, calculating, skeptical, logical, suspicious, matter of fact, pessimistic, and critical.

Steadiness: People with high “S” styles scores want a steady pace, security, and do not like sudden change. High “S” individuals are calm, relaxed, patient, possessive, predictable, deliberate, stable, consistent, and tend to be unemotional and poker faced. Low “S” intensity scores are those who like change and variety. People with low “S” scores are described as restless, demonstrative, impatient, eager, or even impulsive.

Conscientious: People with high “C” styles adhere to rules, regulations, and structure. They like to do quality work and do it right the first time. High “C” people are careful, cautious, exacting, neat, systematic, diplomatic, accurate, and tactful. Those with low “C” scores challenge the rules and want independence and are described as self-willed, stubborn, opinionated, unsystematic, arbitrary, and careless with details.

Usually, people carry a combination of one or more of each preference or style. I found that I am a DC combination with more preference for either trait considering the situation. The funny thing is, both D and C are in some situations, conflicting traits. How can I be forceful yet diplomatic?

Anyway, once I realized my personality preferences, I was better able to understand how I responded to certain situations. Once I gained the knowledge of my co-workers personality traits, I was definitely in a better position to manage conflict as I understood which approach to take considering my co-workers personality.

The Power of Knowing Your Personality

Once you have identified your personality traits and those around you, you have a deeper understanding how to manage conflict if it arises. You are able to connect those surface tendencies with more concrete reasoning. For example, I had a colleague who was very straightforward. At times he was considered abrasive. We used to clash all the time. I found out he was a DC as well which shed great light on our tendency to disagree. Low and behold, after reconsidering my approach, we managed to complete some pretty intense projects – together.

The bottom line is, once you have a firm understanding of your personality traits, and those around you, you have a leg up in resolving conflict, motivational techniques and managing productivity concerns.

In the next part of the series, we will focus on spiritual temperaments. You’d be surprised how your spiritual temperament reflects who you are. Additionally, knowledge of both spiritual temperaments and personality trait assessments provides each of us an opportunity for success in building positive relationships and managing challenging ones.