OK, gone wild may not be the words of choice… But Copywriter Stephen Dean is giving away a free DVD that I believe has a retail value of $100 and following it up by with his upcoming product. Check out the juicy details here:

http://www.stephensblog.com/?p=342

Next up is his WYSIWYG sales page writer which sounds really interesting! I have seen and use several of Stephen’s products including how to add Digital Scarcity to your sales pages, expert information on writing killer copy in Tapping Michel Fortin’s Brain and the very nifty Wordpress plugin LinkOMatic that automatically creates links you define based on keywords and phrases in your blog posts… All top notch stuff.

***UPDATE***

The WYSIWYG Killer has been unleased! I really like this concept as I write all HTML by hand and ditched using any of those other programs that pump out bloated code that is impossible to read of modify by hand (*cough Word*). Stick around as I check out the program and give you a full review or if you head on over to that link I provided above you can get your own FREE copy!

Recently there was a good article/book excerpt posted at the Four Hour Work Week blog that discusses lean principles and gives some good push and pull examples.

Push Pull Systems

That article is reminiscent of some past articles you will find in the archives of this blog… in particular the segue from the article on the importance of having good process documentation. That is a critical thing to have for any business, be it Internet based or not and the author provides some good reasoning and practical advice for doing so.

Back when I watched television I occasionally would catch a show about a business building custom motorcycles. The business consisted of a dad and his sons and some others guys. Most of the time the dad would bark out orders while sitting in the office when he wasn’t ragging on one of his sons. For all the negativity that went on they did build some cool looking bikes.

Now one of the punch lines the dad often used when somebody was being foolish or said something that didn’t make sense was to give them a stern look by pulling down his sunglasses and say “don’t be stupid.” At times it was out of line but more often he was spot on.

What’s my point?

After posting an article talking about my unfavorable position when it comes to using article directories for article marketing… don’t comment spam me with a link to an article directory you are trying to promote.

If you look back through approved comments on blog entries you will find I don’t mind legit comments and will approve then, so if you want your “anchored link text” back to your site then fine but add something useful to the discussion.

In short “don’t be stupid”

I keep getting questions about article directories when it comes to article marketing… so I think now may be a good time to clear the air about this once and for all. I don’t use them! If you find an article pointing to my site on any of the big directories everyone is talking about it is simply a result of using iSnare article submission service which sends your articles to these types of sites.

But everyone says you have to submit to the directories! Oh really? Let’s break down the article directories form and function… What types of people perusing the Internet know about the big directories and use them anyway? People in the Internet Marketing circles! Most of these Internet marketing folks are submitting articles or taking them to use as filler for their own junky content sites and not reading other articles.

Unless you are specifically going after the make money online or Internet marketing crowd your probably not going to get a whole lot of traffic or readers clicking your links back from the article directory sites.

So why use the directories? Two main thoughts come to mind. First you can get lots of links back to your site and second you have the chance of an article showing up in the search engines where a potential prospect in your target market will read the article and click the link back to your site or sales page. Neither are a bad thing. However you can reach more readers and get your message across a lot more eyeballs by submitting directly to publictions and sites that people in your target market visit regularly.

What are the drawbacks? If a legit publication does in fact pickup your article its going to be duplicate content… The other issue I already touched on is that your really at the mercy of the search engines to find your articles and rank them in the search results… Who knows how long that can take or when that site falls out of the good graces of the search engines which seems to be happening more and more. There has got to be a better way.

Cut out the middle man and go right to the source instead. Printed glossy magazines don’t pull content from these sites, they work directly with writers to provide good quality content, the same is true for online publications. Build a big list of publishers working your target market and submit articles directly to them instead. Your building links to your sites and most importantly placing your message right in front of your target audience without having to rely on them to do a search.

Article marketing really rocks when it comes to generating quality traffic to a website. A long time ago (sometime back in 2007) I submitted an article using a pen name that talked about business system basics, kaizen and how they can be applied to any business but especially an Internet based business.

The article I am talking about, Creating Business Procedures for Small Business, was picked up by one particular site where each and every month I get visitors clicking through the link at the bottom of the article in the bio-box. EVERY MONTH!

Now I’m not sure exactly how people are finding that article and clicking through, if it is coming up in the search engine rankings or what but the fact is that one article took me less than an hour to write now delivers traffic to this site every month and has done so since sometime back in 2007. Hindsight being 20/20 I should have the resource boxes to pointing at a product sales page instead of this blog.

A lot of people preach using the major article directories, in fact in response to my article marketing video one person sent me a message asking what directories I use to submit articles to… My response? To date I have never used any of the major article directories! Not one.

At this point in time any articles you may find on any major article sites pointing to any one of my sites was a result of using iSnare that was done to help build my list of ezine editors and get some initial links going.

Article marketing is very easy to do and the results can be enormous. Lets break down the process into bite sized steps:

1. Write Article - I usually keep mine around the 300 word mark. I don’t really count the words but my writing style for these kinds of articles is usually around 300 words. Plus I have had feedback from ezine editors who prefer the shorter articles over longer ones. I do not use PLR or any other garbage.

2. Submit Article - I use Artemis Pro to submit to my list of ezine and newsletter editor email addresses. Then I use my own free article tool to submit to a handfull of topical sites that don’t accept email submissions.

3. Rinse and Repeat - Simple enough… just keep writing and submitting more and more articles.

This formula is incredibly simple. Write good articles with a resource box linking back to your site, submit them to as many publishers as possible and you WILL get good quality traffic! If you have any doubts about that scroll up this article and watch the article marketing video I did.

One of the most important elements is that you need to keep building your list of editors! The larger your list the more sites your article is going to be published and resulting in more people seeing it. If you can afford it get on over to Libertad Pura and buy some of the CDs containing external publisher lists you can plug right into Artemis Pro. To date they have release 10 disks containing 1000 publisher email addresses each, thats ten thousand publishers you could be submitting to!

Of course the libertad pura disks are probably related to the Internet Marketing market. If you are in a market outside of that or want to use your own human resources to build a list go and pick up the external publisher list business procedure product and drop it into your business system or assign it to outside contractors.

To get a jump start with your article marketing pick up my article marketing course.

I look forward to hearing your comments.

-Jim

I like article marketing… I have written about it here quite a bit on the blog and just how effective article marketing, when done correctly, can bring in highly qualified traffic. Traffic that converts into sales! In fact at the end of last year with less than ten articles submitted to ezines and other topical sites alone brought in a dozen sales for one product on auto pilot. I documented that here on the blog as well, just go back through the archives.

Those articles I submitted stick around for a long long time bringing in traffic and with the added bonus of generating links to my websites that both people and search engines follow.

I noticed a special on a list of ezine publishers for submitting articles, so get your copy of at the Internet business blog by James Brausch.

If you have no list for submitting your articles this is a cost effective way to start building one with a pre-compiled list of one thousands publishers and topical sites for only $30… and remember the larger your list of publishers the better and more effective your article submission campaigns are going to be so always continue to build your publishers list!

If you want to discover the same techniques I use for article marketing to bring in high quality traffic that leads to sales checkout this article marketing course.

***Update***
If you haven’t signed up for the blog announcement list at www.diegonorte.com you have missed out on several more specials for CDs containing publisher mailing lists totalling some 9000 email addresses prime for submitting your articles to. So quit messing around and get on that list!

-Jim

How do you get a good search engine ranking? Looks like this guy might know a thing or two about it. Checkout what Richard is up to now:

http://richardlee.com/?p=213

-Jim

Something I found interesting when checking out the stats from one of my sales pages running MuVar… Having a product picture is losing out against not having a picture.

This nice thing is MuVar is handling this all automatically for me behind the scenes, I simply set the variable versions and let it test them for me.

Variable: Picture

Version: 1 - edit
Visitor Count: 44
Sale Count: 0
Sale Dollar: 0
Conversion Ratio: 0%
Visitor Value: $0

Version: 2 - null edit
Visitor Count: 454
Sale Count: 14
Sale Dollar: 81500
Conversion Ratio: 3.08%
Visitor Value: $1.8

-Jim

Richard recently posted a nice thread and some followup videos talking about systematizing your business… You can check those out here:

http://richardlee.com/?p=209

Do you realize you will never be free from your business without systems in place… And most of the time spent in your business is doing remedial tasks anyway. Why would you want to do them!?

If you recall back to your working days in the office what where most people doing? Clerical jobs in the office or labor jobs out on the shop floor… usually doing the same repetitive tasks day after day. Filing papers, banging numbers into a spreadsheet, watching a machine spit out papers or parts, filling out TPS reports.

Sure there are a few positions that have some buzz surrounding them but even then 80% of the time spent in these positions is the same old stuff.

Without some sort of systems in place you are going to be the one doing the remedial tasks in your business or at the very least having to constantly answer questions from those you assigned the tasks to. That is a doom loop all in itself, you only have so many hours in the day and its going to be stuck doing employee tasks.

Get out there and start documenting those tasks, that is the only path for creating business systems. If you are reading this you have all the tools available to get started.

-Jim

I have been going back through the archives on this blog and I like what some of what this guy has been writing… especially when he talks about meeting Gary Halbert:

http://onlinebusinessfreedom.com/