Is Autoblogging dead? Seems like all over the net we are being told that creating set and forget autoblogs are dead. Reasons range from google banning them to not getting them ranked. Personally I don’t think there is any truth in the rumor at all and I’ll give you a specific example a bit later.

When I say autoblogs are not dead it is very dependent on how you set them up, how you provide the content and how you promote them. In addition what you are actually expecting from them is also very important. For instance if you are expecting to make $15-20 a day from them, then you are likely to be disappointed.

I have over 1500 blogs that are autoblogs. I set them up and then forget about them. Obviously I monitor the incomes and traffic and for the most part I actually use adsense for that. Why spend money on a traffic tracker when adsense does a perfectly good job for you and earns you some money to. The majority of the income does not come from adsense though, CPA and other affiliate products make up the majority of the earnings.

I am pretty happy if my blogs make 50c a day. Now I don’t mean 50c every day, I mean averaging 50c a day so $15 a month. Now if you consider that most of the cpa offers and affiliate products I use have a commission of $20 plus then one sale a month does it. How hard do you think that is? If you do it right it is not difficult at all.

But the real bonus for me is not just the income they provide but more importantly the information they produce. The niche I make the most money from in my "Normal" marketing I discovered purely from my autoblogs. I noticed several similar blogs getting decent traffic and earnings and immediately set about building £real" blogs and sites to make money in that niche.

A classic example occured yesterday. I saw a massive traffic spike for a blog in my adsense account and when I had a closer look it was an article from an article directory that was autoposted to my blog about a specific event. I leave all the links in these articles as it is only fair. You are getting free content from these directories so sticking to their publishing requirements is a must.

Anyway following the link in the article took me to a product and I joined the affiliate program, wrote a new post with the same keywords and my affiliate links and chucked some bookmarking links at it. By the end of the day I had already made $500. As of this morning there is another $180 in commissions. How is that for writing one article????

But the really exciting thing is I would never have considered this niche in a million years and although this was based on a specific event there are 3 or 4 similar events every month so the possibilities are huge. And all this came from an autoblog. So please don’t try and tell me autoblogging is dead, far from it!

Just a really quick post to explain what is going on. If you arrived here via a link to a page that no longer exists I do apologise but I decided it was high time I took a more active role in my own site.

Up to now pretty much all the posts have been written by my staff and while the majority were very good I decided I had to take back what was mine!!!

Anyway I have been through the blog and culled a lot of stuff which to be honest was not really good enough, and that included posts I have made and while this probably means my PR will take a hit, its worth it

I plan to add more helpful posts rather than just having a rant and also have some cool videos planned so do bookmark us and come back soon.

Anyway from this post on it will all be me and only me so hope you enjoy and more importantly hope you learn stuff from my blog

Rich

Article Marketing Strategies in the World of Web 2.0

To understand the importance of article marketing strategies in computer language, take a look at a mighty oak tree. Or rather, take a look at the roots of the tree. The older and stronger the tree is, the further spread out the roots will be. To stand firm and not get blown over in the marketing world, you have to employ strategies to spread the roots of your business far and wide.

Putting articles up in directories is always a great idea and helps your business gain exposure and for you to get branded as an expert in your niche. However, you don’t ever want to put all of your articles in one directory basket so to speak.

Because if something happens to that directory, say for whatever reason it shuts down, then all of your hard work would go right down the drain along with it. So what you want to do is to make sure you use sites that aren’t part of a directory.

Some of the sites out there, such as Squidoo, let you post as many articles on a particular topic as you’d like to post. You can employ article marketing strategies by posting to a lot of different lenses talking about your product and best of all, you can create a relationship between yourself and the reader. You can harness the power of social media and watch your conversion rate rise simply because of word of mouth.

Readers love to interact with Squidoo writers in their guestbooks. You can also put affiliate links in the lens as well as have the buttons so that readers can follow you on Facebook or you can set up a button so that they can share your information with others. Visitors who feel like your content was helpful or that they enjoyed it can tweet about it on their Twitter account.

Hub Pages is another place you can put articles on that directly impacts your business. These articles are listed on pages (called Hubs) and the more interesting and relevant the article, the higher the readers will help it get via rankings. Since Hub Pages rank high in Google, just by having your information on the pages, your business will benefit from the added traffic.

Google Knol is another way to effectively employ article marketing strategies. You can write articles – even numerous ones on the same topic – and post them in your account there.

Google Knol is a handy tool to use to get a greater web presence. Knol features the highest rated articles, new articles, the ones that are being talked about the most and they even feature the top authors on the home page. There’s a lot of power available to you for free that can greatly impact your business. All you have to do is harness that power.

Article Marketing Tips

Everything in Internet marketing has a strategy attached to it. Whether you’re talking about graphics or joint ventures or an article marketing strategy, you want to have a plan of attack in place before you embark on a campaign that could cost you time, money or both.

With article marketing, two primary factors are involved – quality and quantity. You can’t neglect either one if you want to have success as an article marketer. If yo churn out a high volume of crappy articles, then they won’t convert and your time will have been wasted.

Likewise, if you take too long working on individual articles, you won’t see the kind of traffic you’d hoped for that will help you generate a nice steady flow of profits. So how do you come up with an article marketing strategy that works for you?

When you’re just starting out, you can take the do it yourself route to keep costs low. But there are so many tasks you have to deal with each day, it may seem hard to get article marketing tasks finished.

Article Marketing Tips

Start out slow. Plan to write 1 article per week that’s 400 words total. At the most, this should take you about an hour. If you find that it takes you three or four hours to write an article, then you may need to shelve your article marketing efforts until you’ve completed a course on writing for an online audience.

Once you have the time, increase your quantity to three articles per week, until you’re finally working on one article each day. That’s 365 articles a year out there working for you to pull in targeted prospects.

Rotate the type of article that you use. For instance, on day 1 write a question and answer article. On day 2, write a story article. On day 3 write a list article, and so on. Each week, check the stats on your articles and see which ones are converting better for you.

Each month rotate the directories that you’re using for your article marketing campaigns. On month 1, try EzineArticles.com. Then in month 2, use Xomba.com, and so on. Your niche may convert better in one directory over another, so again, track the results.

At the end of year one, analyze all of your articles to see which directory and type of article you’re ranking high in Google for – and which resource box is converting into click throughs for you, too.

The best article marketing strategy is one that provides the right balance between writing enough content and writing the right kind of content for your target audience. What works best for you may not be an exact duplicate of what works for another marketer.

Article Marketing Tips

Keyword Research Part 6

Keyword tools are something every marketer needs to utilize but there are problems that come with using just any of them. When you’re a niche marketer, you rely on keyword tools to help you find the perfect words and phrases that will catapult your online campaign ahead of your competitors.

There are three tiers of keyword tools – free, affordable, and expensive. Which ones are worth your investment of both time and money (if applicable)? Well with free keyword tools, you’re going to run into some problems – primarily that they tend to be short-lived.

People will create free keyword tools as part of a viral marketing campaign, release it to the masses who get used to utilizing it, and then quit supporting it, allowing it to become outdated and useless. Now some free keyword tools, like those provided by major search engines such as Google, may have more staying power.

Then there are other keyword tools that are affordable to the niche marketer just getting started online. These usually come in packages where a later upgrade to a more expensive model or tier is available.

Take WordTracker, for example. This particular keyword tool has been around for years and has become a staple for many online marketers. The company permits a free trial, but then you’re given the choice of several tiers for paid access.

For WordTracker, access is marked by a timeline. You can buy a monthly subscription for the keyword database, or pay less by investing in an annual subscription. Other keyword tools simply give better information with a top tier package.

Spyfu is another popular top keyword tool used by Internet marketers. It gives a sneak peek into the system using a free trial subscription, but then with a paid subscription you’re given advanced analytics information.

In addition to just getting more data (free trials get you a top 10 result while paid gets you unlimited results), you also tack on additional perks. For example, with a paid subscription of Spyfu, you could find out the cost per click of a keyword, the number of ads and search results, and more.

Many marketers are jumping ship to get onboard the Keyword Discovery train. They do the traditional free versus paid subscriptions and give you access to basic keyword research, spelling mistake data, seasonal search trends, KEI and density analysis, and more. They have three tiers – free, standard and professional, with each one increasing the number of benefits and results that you get when you sign up.

Keyword Research Part 5

A keyword list can grow to mammoth proportions before you know it and then you’re left staring at a bunch of words, wondering which ones will provide the biggest return for you if and when you use them in an online marketing campaign.

Some marketers use what’s called KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) to figure this out. It was originally created by Sumantra Roy and it’s fairly easy to use for your own online marketing campaigns.

First, you have to brainstorm all of the words and phrases that are relevant to your website’s products or services. KEI generally takes long-tail keywords into effect since the competition for broad keywords is too great.

KEI examines the number of searches for a keyword phrase against the number of search results. The tools that find your KEI for you will spit out a ranking for that keyword phrase and the higher the KEI, the better your chances of ranking higher in the search engines for it.

Some people rely heavily on KEI but you have to use some human common sense, too. This is because KEI doesn’t take into consideration what type of quality those competitor sites have in regards to content. There may be many competitors with low SEO strategies in place, or only a handful of competitors but those who happen to have massive pulling potential in the SERPs.

The common sense comes into play when you start evaluating the keywords and phrases on your list against the motivation of your reader. For instance, a keyword phrase with the word “free” in it might return high KEI statistical data, but you know that because it’s someone searching for a freebie, the likelihood of them whipping out their wallets and paying for your products or services is diminished.

You’ll want to use keywords with qualifiers in them. For example, instead of using the keyword phrase, “Internet marketing guide,” you might get a more targeted buyer if you add certain words in it, such as “buy Internet marketing guide,” or “best Internet marketing guide.”

Typically, long-tail keywords with modifiers added to the mix will help you rank higher and make more money with the content than if you try to dominate early on using broad keywords that don’t tell you much about why your visitor is using the phrase.

You can also take the tedious route and do various campaigns by cloaking your links using different keyword phrases and seeing which ones get the best results in clickthroughs and sales. Just make sure you don’t start randomly using keyword phrases because you want to focus your efforts on those that will help you profit.