Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian
(reprinted with permission)

We’ve seen many discussions about what to do with articles you’ve written (or had written for you) in the wake of Google’s Panda/Farmer update and the resulting drop of EzineArticles.com ranking in Google’s eyes.

A lot of good advise is scattered all through the forum, on multiple discussion threads, sometimes buried among other conversations. And it isn’t cohesive or coherently organized to help a struggling article marketer figure out what exact sequence she should follow with the work she has created.

Here’s an attempt to put it all together into a formula (even though article marketing is anything BUT formulaic!)

Hope it helps.

1. Consider Your Purpose:

What do you intend using that article for?

* Getting more traffic to your website or blog?
* Attracting more fans to your writing?
* Solving a problem for your end-user audience?
* Being published across many other resources?

Each of these purposes will require a slightly different style of action, so knowing it before-hand can help guide you to doing the right thing.

2. Define Your Target and Goal:

A few weeks or months from now, where do you SEE this article being?

* At the top of Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages) for specific keywords?

* On dozens of directories around the Web?

* Featured on hundreds of blogs and sites, not necessarily connected to your topic?

* Spotlighted on the very best industry publications (online and off) in your niche?

* Reprinted in newsletters and ezines of other publishers?
Knowing this will help you plan a specific set of actions AND monitor the impact of what you do – so that you’ll learn what works or doesn’t… and then tweak your action steps the next time around.
3. Get Your Content Published:

The obvious question is “Where?”

The not-so-obvious answer is “It depends!”

Read this first. And also get an overview of what Google considers to be ‘duplicate content’ and how it deals with such content by reading this from Google Webmaster Tools.

Done? Now you have a fair idea of how a specific course of action will affect your content/article – and you will be able make a reasoned decision about where to submit first, where next, and so on. Here are some places you may want to publish your content:

* your own blog
* your own website or article directory/archive
* your own email newsletter
* article directories (for being viewed by others, and perhaps syndicated)
* private blog networks (for back links)
* other blogs, as guest posts
4. Get Your Article Indexed:

Once you have submitted your article to a content resource (your own or others), it is often desirable to have it ranked on search engines.

For that, it must first be ‘indexed’. The benefits are two-fold. Indexing is the first step to entering SERPs. And it also places on record the fact that you have published the content first.
Otherwise, it is possible that someone may rip-off your hard work, publish it and have THEIR version indexed faster… leaving you struggling to convince the world that it was originally yours!

Not desirable – at all

How to get an article indexed? Everyone has their own preferred method. Here are a few that work well for me:

* publish it to your blog, and then ping services like Pingomatic. As your blog grows established, indexing may happen literally within SECONDS!

* publish it to a popular article directory like EzineArticles.com – content often gets indexed within hours of ‘going live’ on the service

* Link to it from frequently spidered services and sites like social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Mixx, Digg, Diigo, Delicious etc.)

* Post a link to it from a popular forum
All work well to get fresh content ‘indexed’.

5. Get Your Content Syndicated:

The ‘Holy Grail’ of most effective article marketers is to make their content widely accessible… to the right audience, and in a manner that does not compromise their own best interests
in any way.

Why do I qualify my statement? Because some article marketers are arguing that publishing ALL their content on directories like EzineArticles.com is a viable strategy with long-term benefits – while in reality, such an approach may end up with your content on the directory’s website ranking HIGHER than your own resources under your control. Which means, any time a shift like the recent Google update happens, your “business” is at risk!

Another reason is to highlight that “less is sometimes more”. You don’t gain much value by having your content in front of unqualified viewers. You want to target your syndication to reach your best/ideal audience, and targeting your efforts to a certain extent will bring you much better results than taking a shotgun approach to “creating the widest damage”!

Here’s an action plan you could follow or adapt to suit you:
* Launch a blog of your own, and publish the articles there (and link back to it in ALL your syndication request messages to showcase your other work, in case a publisher likes another article better or wants to syndicate a lot more of your content!)

* Submit copies (rewritten, or as-is) to article directories (at least the top ones, EzineArticles.com, ArticlesBase.com, GoArticles.com and maybe few others)

* Contact ezine publishers in your niche and ask if they’d like to publish your articles in their newsletters – for free

* Submit your work to niche Web publications that are ‘authority sites’ and that are looking for (and accept) guest submissions

* Contact popular bloggers in your niche to ask if you can submit ‘guest posts’ from time to time (or on a regular basis)

* Use article distribution software (like ‘Article Bot’) or services (like ‘Unique Article Wizard’) to submit your content widely

* Look for ‘syndicators’ or ‘syndication services’ in your niche, or even publicists who work with content publishers, and ask if they’ll help spread your work (sometimes, you’ll have to pay for this service)

* Submit your work to offline publications like newsletters, magazines, newspapers etc. – and ask if you can become a regular columnist for them.

This last action is more time and effort intensive, as you’ll have to either get on the phone, or send a letter by post, or even get out of the house and go meet the people face to face. And because of this “barrier to entry”, you will have VERY little competition – so your chances of getting syndicated are much higher. Also, the reach you’ll get from offline syndication is extensive. All of this will help spread your name and brand widely.

Whenever a reader comes across your writing on a ‘remote’ site and likes it, they will search for more articles from you – and land on your blog, where they can read more, subscribe to your email list or RSS feed, and become your ‘fans’ and ‘followers’… or writing clients, if that’s what you want!

6. Get Your Content Repurposed:

Too many article writers stop after basic syndication efforts are done. They move on to the next article. And even with this minimal attempt, the benefits from article marketing are well
worth continuing.

But you’ve probably heard the phrase, “No traffic jams on the last mile”

It applies to article marketing, too.

Advanced syndication is one untapped avenue of article marketing. Re-purposing content is another.

What if you did any (or all) of these things?
a. add every article you write to your email auto-responder series

b. compile related articles into a short special report for sale or as an incentive to build your list

c. slap a rebrandible affiliate link on them and let your affiliates re-publish on their site, being paid for sales they refer

d. convert the article into a PDF document and distribute it online (various resources accept PDF submissions)

e. convert the article into a slideshow and do the same

f. turn it into a video and do it again

g. read it aloud and record it as an audio version, then turn it into a podcast or distribute it online

h. pack a big collection of relevant articles into a cohesive narrative, and turn it into a book (ebook, Kindle book, printed book, whatever!) There’s more you can do with every article you write or order. And that’s what will make it worth paying $50, $100, or even (like some of my writing clients do) $500 for a single article – because you can squeeze a LOT more from top quality content
over time.

On average, if you get this right, you can generate $1 PER WORD from every article you write – over the long-term.
(I do – which is why I write so much!  )

Do the math on your writing. See if you are hitting this target consistently. If not, change something so that you get closer to this mark.

I’ll leave you with an inspiring message I first learned from
Jeffrey Lant:

“I don’t start writing an article until I’ve figured out 26 different ways to profit from it!”

All success
Dr.Mani
Dr. Mani’s Infopreneur Blog, Turn Words Into Wealth

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There Are Very Few Exceptions
For the most part, you will find that the most successful people online do both of the above things: They create their own products AND they market products as an affiliate. Some start by creating an info product (an ebook) first and then move into affiliate marketing and some do it the other way around, but there are very few exceptions–most successful people do both.

Flashback To 2007
I had a couple of ebooks of my own I was marketing online and one of them was doing pretty well. I had never done anything in the way of affiliate marketing but I decided to give it a shot. There was a guy up in Canada, Craig Beckta, who came out with a product called Secret Affiliate Code a year earlier–and I had bought it.

Secret Affiliate Code 2
I learned from Craig that he was launching Secret Affiliate Code 2 in about two weeks. I took some of what I learned from his first product and set up a pre-sell page for his new product. It was a Clickbank launch so I got an affiliate link from his JV page and set to work.

I Got It Put Together Quickly!
I set up a free Squidoo lens promoting his product as well as a free Blogger blog. I wrote two articles reviewing his product (I didn’t have a copy yet) and submitted them to EzineArticles. I created about 20 back-links to the pages. I did all of this in one single day. I finished all of this up by about 11PM one evening.

I Did One Thing Right
I had been using a free auto-responder account and had grown a pretty anemic little list over the past couple years. I decided to go to AWeber and sign up for a quality auto-responder service. I had it up and running in about an hour. I put an opt-in form on both of my pre-sell pages (it took me a while to figure out how to do it on my Squidoo page). This was the one thing I did right!

What A Difference 24 Hours Can Make
I was hoping one of my pre-sell pages would show somewhere in Google and I would get some free organic traffic. If people came to my page I showed them the bonuses I was giving away if they bought through my link. I told them if they opted-in to my list I would notify them the instant the product launched (about 10 days away).

The day after I got this all set up I checked Google to see if either of my pages where showing anywhere for the exact name search of the product. I knew it takes time for that to happen and wasn’t disappointed when neither page showed anywhere that next day. I went on with my normal business.

And then, BANG, the very next day I got up in the morning and Googled up the exact name of Craig’s new product. Are you freakin’ kidding me? Here is a screen shot of what I found.

My two sites were ranked #1 and #2 on the front page of Google for the EXACT name of Craig’s product. The screen shot was actually taken a couple days before the product launched.

I Got My First Sale Within 10 Minutes Of The Launch
For a period of a week or two before the product launched I was getting visitors to my pre-sell pages and people were opting in to my AWeber list. On launch day I had accumulated about 160 names into that list. When the product launched I hit my list with a promotional email and I sold about a dozen copies of the product right off the gate.

A couple weeks went by and my pages held their position. After 10 days or so the Blogger page fell down 5-6 spots the the Squidoo page held tight at #1. I kept getting more sales.

I Continued Promoting One New Product Launch After Another
I continued with this process. I would create pre-sell pages for about-to-be-launched products and opted in names of visitors into my AWeber account. Yes–I was selling products but my list was growing with each new launch I promoted.

With each new launch I had a bigger and bigger list to promote it to. The sales came almost automatically as I hit my list with promotional emails for each new product launch. It became easier and easier to make money because of one thing: I had grown a responsive list to market the products to.

The Biggest Thing I Learned Here…
Yes, you can make money creating products and selling them. And yes, you can make money promoting products as an affiliate. But the single biggest thing I learned was the enormous importance of growing a list and email marketing to it. In short, if you don’t grow a list–you don’t have anything. Your list will become your single biggest asset in your online business.

List Building And Product Development
I know people who spend many months creating a cool product in one niche or another. They put a lot of work into it. And then, an hour or two before they turn their product loose they decide to create a squeeze page to opt visitors in to their list. Selling their product is their first priority and growing their list becomes a secondary concern. Sorry, but that’s exactly the ass-backwards kind of thinking that short-circuits earnings.

It’s The Squeeze Page Thing That’s Important
You need to think backwards. You need to reverse engineer the thing. Sure, developing a quality product is very important. But the big thing is creating a squeeze page (a page where you give away a product to encourage people to opt in to your list) that converts a significant number of visitors into subscribers.

So if you’re working on developing a product of your own–great. But that is a two-fold process. Develop your product, but also work on creating a value-laden mini-product related to that product you can give away on your opt-in page.

Making A Good First Impression
DO NOT skimp on creating a great giveaway product for your opt-in page. If someone joins your list the first impression they get of you comes from the quality of the product you give away as your opt-in bonus. It doesn’t need to be huge–a simple 3-4 page report can work well. But it needs to give people the impression that you know what you are talking about so that they immediately have trust and confidence in what you say.

To Your Subscribers, You Are What You Give Them!
If you give them a piece of junk as an opt-in bonus they will believe that other products you promote down the line will be weak as well. As a matter of fact, if you provide them with a cruddy little opt-in bonus they may never open future emails from you and your efforts will largely be in vain!

The single biggest mistake people make in terms of making money online is NOT BUILDING A LIST and getting started with that immediately.

Create a squeeze page to capture leads. Begin driving traffic to it.

You Must Aggressively Test Your Page
Don’t just create a squeeze page. Test it and retest it making changes and checking the conversion rate in your auto-responder stats. Continually tweak your optin page until you are getting very high conversions and keep driving traffic to it.

There Are Tools To Help You…
You can use free tools such as Statcounter or Google Optimizer (both free) or a paid service such as Hypertracker to test different versions of your squeeze page to see which versions work best at converting visitors into subscribers.

As soon as you start developing a list, start marketing other people’s products to that list. Clickank is a great place to start finding affiliate products to promote.

Once you get a decent list you can then think about developing a product of your own. Go through the process again. Create a sales page. Test, test, and retest it until you get some copy that starts converting well. Test your sales (earnings) per click to your page. It may start out quite low. Tweak your copy. Get it up to twenty cents per click, then 50 cents per click, then a dollar per click if you can.

Create a sales funnel with up-sells and OTOs to get your earnings per click to your site even higher. Only when you have established a good earnings per click count go after affiliates.

If you try to line up affiliates with a product and sales funnel that doesn’t produce decent earnings per click for them they will abandon you and never come back. Once you get a mini-army of affiliates promoting for you, create more products and they will promote those as well.

Don’t neglect your buyers. The people on your buyers list can become your greatest affiliates if you have good products and a good sales funnel. Once you can get affiliates to drive you traffic and your products are converting for them you are golden. You’ll soon be a power player and the whole thing will almost run on auto-pilot for you.

If you want to be a player in any niche you must become a list builder. End of story.

I hope that helps a bit. I cannot overemphasize the importance of building a list and creating a good relationship with them. If you can do just this one thing you will be successful in your online business!

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Welcome, Mike McMillan here. Hope you’re interested in creating nonfiction digital products, (ebooks), and selling them online.

That’s what we do here. And–if you’re an affiliate marketer–we’ll have some cool stuff for you too! Basically, we talk about making money selling ebooks online. So have fun and learn some cool stuff here.

An Idea Is All It Takes To Begin!

I’ll be you have an idea for an info product percolating in your head right now, don’t you? Most people do–but most people never take action and turn their idea into a marketable product. It’s really all about selecting a niche you are interested in and filling a need of those interested in that niche.

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Highly Recommended Product

Whatever your level of involvement in Internet marketing, you should always have–or be working on a product of your own to sell. I say this with no uncertainty: My Info Product Earnings Exposed program is the premier product  development course available anywhere at any price. The twelve modules take you through the complete process of developing and marketing an ebook of your own. Learn More Here.

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Selling eBooks Is The Perfect Second Income

No inventory is involved. Products are delivered instantaneously. And the best part-you get paid instantly as well. I can guarantee that once you sell the very first copy of your ebook you’ll be hooked! It is a whale of a lot of fun and it costs next to nothing to get started.

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What's your pitch?

I work with people interested in creating their own info products to sell online. Whatever stage they are in… the first question I ask is, “What’s your pitch?” In one single sentence, and in under 10 seconds, what is your pitch for your product?

It’s easy to describe your product in a full sales page online. But when you have to distill every benefit, every feature, every component that your product represents… well, that can be a stumper. But I really suggest you do this exercise.

Pretend you are at a social gathering and you are talking to someone about your ebook. Another person comes up and asks you about your product. If you had one sentence and no more than 10 seconds to spit out your spiel… what would you say?

This is a good exercise because it forces you to define the main goal of your product. You may ending up using this one sentence as the headline or sub head on your sales page. And–as you continue on developing your ebook, it will help keep you focused on what you are trying to accomplish with your product! Give it a try. It’s worth the 5 minutes it takes to do!

So, what’s your pitch?

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Pretend that every customer is your next door neighbor. Pretend you go to their cookouts and their children play with yours. Pretend you interact with them at social events and you trust and respect them as good friends.

Now pretend you just sold them your product or service. Do you feel comfortable with that. Will they appreciate the value of that product or service, or will they think you have taken advantage of them by delivering a poor product or service to them? Don’t let doing business with people far away allow you to provide anything but the best you have to them.

So at your next cookout with your neighbors look around. If the people there, your friends and neighbors, bought your product would they still respect you? Something to think about!

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My Writer’s Block Pizza On A $5 Budget

Ya know, I just love pizza, but when I buy a twenty dollar pizza and realize there’s only a buck or two of ingredients in it, well–the getting cheap thing kicks in for me. I get an Appian Way pizza mix for a bout $1.50. There are two secrets here. First, you’ve got to juice it up a bit with extras, and second–you need to chop up the ingredients really well to let out the maximum amount of flavor.

Mix up the pizza dough. You’ll need your own Mozzeralla cheese, a small onion, a can of mushroom stems & pieces (their cheaper than the caps), maybe a red or green pepper, perhaps a few olives. I use a cheap little food chopper to get all of the ingredients chopped up pretty small. I usually add a little left over hamburger as well.

I add a little extra pizza sauce, the above ingredients, and then the cheese. Forget the 18-20 minutes it says on the box–this pizza cooks a little longer because of all of the goodies on it. You go by sense of smell and how it looks. This is better than 90% of the commercial pizzas and it won’t break your budget!

Easy Do Stew For Writers
I started making this when my kids were but wee tikes–they loved it and there’s nothing like it on a cold Michigan winter’s day. It’s so simple it should be illegal.

Just get two cans of Campbell’s vegetable beef stew and empty the contents into a casserole dish. Add just one can of water. Now cut up a largish potato (maybe two) into 3/4 inch cubes. (Pieces shaped like octahedron, icosahedron, or odecahedron will work just about as well–ha ha, just kidding–I used to be a math teacher.)

Anyway, add the potato pieces to the soup mix (add some onion if you like) and bake for one hour at 350. The last ten minutes add some grated cheddar cheese and let it melt over the surface. Take it out, scoop it up, and you’re good to go. It’s eating great on the cheap!

My Meat Fluff Is Brain Food For Creative Writers!
If you have a hard time following instructions this one shouldn’t challenge you too much. Add one pound of hamburger, one can of condensed tomato soup (no water), and one cup of instant rice to a casserole dish and mix it all together well with your hands–yup, it’s gooey, but it’s kind of fun! Bake one hour at 350 degrees F. or 623 degrees Kelvin (sorry, I used to be a chemistry teacher).

Anyway, this stuff is great. Eat is plain, or–try making a sandwich with a little mayo out of it and eating it with a fork. Oh yeah, I can taste it now. Enjoy!

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How would you like to sell major quantities of Clickbank products on a daily basis? There are such individuals and you probably know many of their names. In this article we will look at exactly the blueprint that can make this happen for you.

STEP 1: Develop a web presence. The easiest way to do this is with free blogging platforms such as Squidoo, Blogger, or WordPress.com blogs. Many of the biggest super-affiliates sell products in Clickbank’s Marketing & Ads category. Their main income does not come from setting up blogs like I mentioned, but that is where you need to start. Use your blogs as pre-sell pages to promote products from Clickbank’s Marketing & Ads section. Learn about SEO and try to get top organic Google listings for the products you promote.

STEP 2: Begin opting in names from your blogs. Subscribe to an auto-responder service such as aWeber or GetResponse. The cost is about $20 per month. Create an opt-in form and collect names and email addresses from visitors to your blogs. Offer visitors a free ebook or video if they subscribe to your list. Create your own bonus or buy some PLR (private label rights) materials to use.

STEP 3: Begin marketing to your list. Find Clickbank products to promote as an affiliate and promote them by sending emails to your list 2-3 times a week. Provide useful content in your emails and include affiliate links for the products you promote. This will start some income rolling in on a small scale to keep you going.

STEP 4: Develop a product of your own in the Internet marketing niche. This is the the fulcrum at which you will leverage your business to the next level. Not only will you generate some larger income from your product launch, but as your JV partners mail to their lists during your launch week and send traffic to your sales page, you can opt that traffic in to your list as well. This is where the real money comes in. A good product launch can grow your list by tens-of-thousands of names in a few months. Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula is expensive, but it is the premier blueprint used in some manner by most of the big Clickbank product vendors.

STEP 5: As you begin getting close to finishing the development of your product, begin lining up joint venture partners. You need to find the big super-affiliates in your niche and convince them to do promotional emailings for you at product launch time. Do a search online for JV forums and announcement services. You need to get your information on your launch in to these places 2-3 months ahead of time. The premier JV site is Mike Merz’s JVNotifyPro. You can get your launch info out to all of the big super-affiliates in the IM marketing niche using his service.

STEP 6: When your product launches you will have a tremendous influx of visitors to your site. Create an opt-in form on your sales page and grow your list. Sure, you want to make sales and a lot of them, but you MUST opt-in huge numbers of names during this period.

STEP 7: Begin marketing to the list you have grown my emailing them 2-3 times a week promoting affiliate products. This is where the real money is made. You can market to your list day after day, week after week, and year after year.

I have greatly simplified this process, but the main points are sound. You must grow a huge list and market to it religiously.

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One thing I highly recommend (and this may seem obvious) is to make sure that your name is prominently displayed on the page as the creator. You would be surprised how many pre-sell pages that rank on the first couple pages of Google, especially in the IM niche, are zombie pages–no one’s name appears on the page. Personally, I would never consider buying a product through a page put up by an anonymous marketer.

Another thing that does more harm than good has to do with AdSense ads on pre-sell pages. Look, if your goal is to create an AdSense empire, of course you want some good content and, of course, your AdSense ads. However, if your main goal is to make money by affiliate sales–get those freakin’ AdSense ads off your pages. You’re creating leakers and making pennies per click in AdSense revenue, and losing tens or hundreds of dollars in affiliate commissions.

A good pre-sell page doesn’t look like a sales page, it should look more like a letter to a friend. Too many banner ads, AdSense ads, and things like that can over-commercialize the page and distract from your main message. The sole goal of a great pre-sell page is to get visitors to click on the affiliate links. Anything that distracts visitors from doing that should not be on the page.

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Creating your own product helps to establish you as an authority figure in your niche. It also means  you will have affiliates driving visitors to your sales page where you can opt them in to your list. And as you know, list building is one of the very biggest factors of success in online marketing. Once you get a person on your list, you can market to them again and again by email. This is where the real profits come into play.

As your list grows, you will be able to JV with other online marketers in your list. If you promote their products, they will be more likely to promote yours.

If you are interested in developing your own book or ebook, I would suggest you check out my newly revamped Big Money Writing Little Books. I have added some huge bonuses just this past week, but they won’t be there forever. Stop by now and check it out. Get your own product out in the marketplace and working for you now!

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