But in my opinion, they have made some good changes. At least from an Affiliate Marketing standpoint. They’ve upped the minimum word count to 400 words. The old word count was 250 words. I guess they figure Google will like their articles better if they’re 400 words of How to Bake A Cookie rather than 250 words.

But the increase in the minimum word count should turn away some spammers no doubt. Especially those that were getting spun articles past the editors…and there was quite a bit of that!

Another change they’re looking into is to block articles on niches that they feel are over saturated. In a recent blog entry, they asked members how they should handle these over saturated niches.

Some of the niches they consider over saturated right now are penis enlargement, get your ex back, acai berry, reverse cell phone look up, credit card debt relief, male enhancement pill and TV to PC.

Some of the ways they expect to deal with this is a lottery system where only a select number of articles in these niches are approved, a blanket ruling where the prevent any articles covering these niches to be accepted or develop guidelines on trending topics.

I’m not 100% sure that blocking these niches is going to help EzineArticles get back in the good graces of Google, but hey, who am I? Perhaps this was  a suggestion from Google itself?

Other Editor Guideline Changes At EzineArticles

If you’re using EZA and using one Author Profile for several different niches, they’re going to be watching you real close. They’ve done said that they feel one person can not be an expert in many fields. This decision won’t affect me, as I have had Author Profiles for each of my Niches for a long time.

Tip: Since I brought this up, I’ll let you in on a little secret. The Author Profile pages are do follow. They can also achieve PR if they are backlinked properly. And all those articles listed on the Profile pages will receive some link juice from the page if you build backlinks to them. Better hurry though, no telling if EZA will stop allowing do follow links on Profile pages or not in the future!

EZA will not only make sure that the Author’s articles are all relevant, but they’ll also be checking the links in your Resource Box to make sure they are relevant to the article. So if you’re going to write an Article over how to rebuild a 350 Chevy engine and put links in the Resource Box pointing to your Acai Berry site, well friend, they’re going to start rejecting your articles. Don’t laugh, there are many so called “Guru’s” that claim you don’t need relevant links to rank pages….really….

How This May Affect EzineArticles

As I said before, I believe many of the changes at these Content sites are knee jerk at best. They’re scrambling around to try and please Google and end up shooting themselves in the foot.

I’m not sure if the folks at EZA really believe that a 400 word minimum and some relevancy for resource boxes will please G. EZA claims it’s going to give its editors more time to look over articles. They’ve warned us it may take twice as long for articles to be accepted or rejected. My last few articles after the Slap took nearly two weeks to be approved.

Will Internet Marketers stay with EzineArticles? I don’t think so. At least not in the huge numbers they have in the past. I myself stopped writing for EzineArticles for nearly a year because their Editors were getting ridiculous on what they would reject an article for. Then the for about the last year, it seemed they got better and would accept well written articles in a timely fashion.

Are you willing to wait two or more weeks for your articles to be approved or denied?

Also, if they keep adding niches that are “oversaturated” in their opinion, will you still write articles for them?

Right now, they say they’re still getting over a million views per day. That’s pretty darn good. The month previous to the Google Slap, they had approximately 57 million views.

For my money, there are other places where I can write an article and get the benefit of a backlink quicker than at EZA. Hubpages, InfoBarrel, Snipsley and others all offer quicker approvals and they can be ranked just as fast as a EZA article, sometimes faster!

So, is it worth my time to submit an article that may not be accepted for up to two weeks or more? Remember, this is an article with increased requirements. If you’re just starting out, then you may have time for all the hoops. But I can get double or even triple the amount of quality backlinks from other places in the same amount of time that it will take me to write, and hopefully get approved, an article submitted to EZA.

I’m thinking that EZA will see a huge decrease in articles submitted to them. At least article that have a good Adsense CPC.  Of course, since they already have hundreds of thousands indexed articles on high paying CPC niches, I’m sure they’re not that worried about it…yet.

I’m sure that their highest earning Adsense dollars are from pages that have a high number of Internet Marketers trying to rank for those keywords also. So if all the Affiliate Marketers leave and go to alternate sites for their links, can EZA continue to make bank with articles on how to bake cookies or 10 tips for watching your grass grow? Me thinks not. It will be interesting to watch the events unfold!

Personally, if they want to continue to attract quality writers, I think they should develop a profit sharing plan similar to Snipsley or Hubpages. But I realize they’re not going to do that while the hundreds of thousands of article they already have are making them cold hard cash!

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I know many of you use article marketing as a means to brand your blogs and websites and to drive traffic to them. That’s cool, I do for some of my blogs and websites also. Article marketing is a very good way to get the word out about your product or service.

The problem for many blog and website owners is deciding on which article submission site or service to use. There are many article submission sites on the Internet today. For the purpose of this head-to-head review, I’m choosing the most popular article submission sites that I know of. Some are free and several are paid. I have either used these services in the past and/or I currently use them. The article submission websites are Ezinearticles, iSnare, GoArticles, Article Marketer, Article Marketing Automation and Unique Article Wizard.

How The Article Marketing Smackdown Will Be Judged

To judge the Smackdown, I wrote an original article for a specific website of mine. I made it unique for each article submission site (as best as I could, each site has it’s own rules). I then submitted the article to each submission service and I’ve been waiting on the outcome for a few weeks. I believe enough results have come in now to bring this Smackdown to an end.

So, without further delay…I bring you the results of the article submission smackdown!

Unique Article Wizard

I’ve been using Unique Article Wizard (UAW) for about 6 months now.

I’m here to tell you that this has been a very good investment for me. I simply love UAW!

UAW’s is a very unique service. Due to the non-disclosure letter you have to sign when joining, I can’t go into details about how UAW works, just trust me when I say it will bring in a lot of one way links to your sites by distributing unique article to blogs, websites and directories. This service has been the fastest way to build legitimate one way back links that I’ve found, bar none!

But that’s not all. Unique Article Wizard also has another very powerful feature in that it can make each of your resource boxes unique as well. It’s possible to add links to many websites with just one article.

You can also choose how many times your article is distributed each day. You can have it blasted out to all the places at once or choose your own number. I like to “drip” my articles out as I think having a bunch of backlinks show up at once is not good for a site. Especially small sites. So I “drip” my articles out by choosing to have them submitted at a rate of about 20 to 30 per day.

After your article has been distributed, you can check to see the actual number of sites and email subscribers where your article was submitted to. You find this button in your dashboard in the column next to your article title. Neat stuff.

Now, the article I submitted to was distributed to 543 websites and directories and 71 email subscribers. Out of that number, I can track about 107 backlinks (as of this writing, I expect this number to increase over time) I received to the website I had listed in my resource boxes. That’s a pretty high number! (I’ve actually had some articles do better than that!)

The cool thing is, as people find these articles, they’ll use them and I’ll still be getting backlinks long after the submission is over with.

Another benefit that isn’t advertised is this. Hit the page reload button on your browser when you’re viewing your article on UAW and you’ll see a completely new article every time your refresh (again, I can’t tell you how they do this, but it is very powerful). It’s awesome. I then will take one of these unique articles and submit it to the free article submission sites. I’ve also submitted them to Article Marketer to have them submitted. If you have blogs or websites in the same niche, you could use one of these unique articles that UAW makes as content on your site.

Click here to learn more about Unique Article Marketing.

Article Marketing Automation (AMA)

I’ll be honest and tell you that I passed Article Marketing Automation the first time I heard about it. I wasn’t impressed with the advertising or the $47 per month price tag. Besides, I was already using UAW and figured that this service couldn’t be any better. Plus they used the words “spin” and “spun” in their advertising and that sounded cheap to me. I had visions of my sentences looking like “Affiliate marketing rolls down ice cubes after desert” or some other crap like that.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

But about two months ago an Internet Marketer who I trust told me I should be using AMA. He told me it was as powerful as UAW and had some other cool features that UAW didn’t.

So I signed up, figuring “What the hell, I’ll cancel if I don’t like it“.

Do I think that AMA is as good or better than UAW? No. But it’s close, damn close!

What I like about AMA is that its network is only made up of websites and blogs, not directories. Also, my favorite feature is that you can add up to 3 links to the body of the content. There is no resource box! All links go into the body. In my opinion, these anchored links will pass more authority when in the body of the article than a resource box. (some site owners either remove the resource box or nofollow the links in resource boxes when using other article submission services)

Here’s a big tip for you. Whether it’s an article you’re submitting or whether it’s your own site, put the links as near to the top as you can get. Google figures they must be important if you put them near the top and you’ll get more weight passed on to your site or to an interior page if the link happens to be on your site.

What I don’t like about AMA is that their network seems pretty small. They advertise 2000 sites, but I haven’t seen near that many. Of course, I know that my articles don’t go out to all of them, but the best I’ve seen is a few hundred. Word has it that they’re continually building their network, so that is the good news. Since they’re fairly new, it may take a little while longer for them to get to the size that some of the others are.

But, since the links are in the content instead of at the bottom of the page in a resource box, the backlinks I am getting are passing more weight to my sites. It’s probably only a small difference, but I’ll take all the help I can get!

The article I submitted to AMA has been published 77 times (as of this writing) and three quarters of those articles have been indexed by Google so far. Not bad!

If the level of service, both Customer service and the level of article submission, continues to grow, I see great things happening with Article Marketing Automation. Right now, I think it’s well worth the money. You can spend a lot more and get a helluva lot less with some of the other article submission services out there! This one is a keeper in my book! If they’re like any other Internet services, once they start growing, they will continue to raise the price, so you’d better get in quick if you want to lock in at a low price. Click here to learn more about Article Marketing Automation.

Ezinearticles

Ezinearticles has been around a while. In fact, I believe they were one of the first article directories. At least as best as I can remember. If any of you have read my previous post about Ezinearticles, then you know others as well as myself have had some problems with them over the years getting articles accepted. Looking back, I think this started in earnest whenever they started their “Premium” paid service. I don’t know if it was coincidence or not.

They offer both a free submission service and a $97 per month “Premium” service. I looked over the “features” of the premium service and to be honest, I don’t see the benefit. Certainly not $97 per month worth! There are too many other services that offer better service and more features for less than $97 per month IMHO.

But back to the smackdown.

I submitted the article about 3 weeks ago. It took several days for the article to be accepted. I have noticed over about the last month or so that my articles were being accepted faster. I don’t know why, I just know the last few times I’ve used them it has went off without a hitch.

Anyway, the article has been viewed 232 times and published 16 times as of the writing of this post.

Ezinearticle doesn’t tell you where they submitted the articles to or which sites have accepted your article. But judging from my WordPress dashboard, this article has sent me 19 backlinks to a site of mine. Looking through my sites, I found 8 visitors who came to my site through that article and my EZA dashboard said I’ve had 9 URL clicks. Not great, but better than nothing, especially on the backlinks.

GoArticles

GoArticles is a free submission site. Being free, the features are limited as to the stats you’ll get from your articles. The article I submitted has received 56 request since I submitted it. Now that doesn’t tell my everyone who has used my article because any article on GoArticles can be cut and pasted without requesting it.

One thing I really like about GoArticles is that you can put links in the body of the article and they don’t get bent out of shape about it.

As for the backlinks I received from that article, a search of my stats showed that I’ve received 8 backlinks from that article. One of them on an Authority blog.

Not great results, but remember, it’s free and you can add links in the body of the article without them getting all pissy about it. Also, I’ve never had an article rejected by GoArticles. From what I can tell, you’re article is accepted very quick. Hey, it’s free, what do you have to lose!

iSnare

This is a paid to submit an article service. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that they probably don’t make much money from this site because of the poor customer service and submission time I and others have had with them. It took over two weeks for my article to be accepted and distributed. From what I can tell, I haven’t received any traffic or backlinks from that article.

For the price you have to pay iSnare, their customer service and submission time should be a helluva lot better. I personally wouldn’t use them again until they start submitting articles for free or improve their customer service. There’s just too many good article submission sites out there, both free and paid ones, to put up with the B.S. from them.

Article Marketer

Update 2010: Article Marketer ceased operations around October of 2009. I figured this would happen because of the lousy service everyone was getting and the poor performance of the submitted articles. Sure enough, I was right. This service has been replaced by two other companies, which I’m now reviewing and waiting to see what the long term performance will be (or lack of). Look for the updated review here on my site. Thanks!

I’ve been using Article Marketer for over a year now. I’ve never really been happy with their service, but at the time they were one of the best article submission sites around. They advertise that you’re article will be reviewed by the next business day (or the use to advertise that, haven’t checked recently) but that hasn’t been my experience.

Here’s what normally happens. I submit an article and generally there’s something wrong with it in their eyes. Either it doesn’t meet the 400 word requirement, the keyword density is too high or a dozen other reasons I’ve had. They kick it back to me, I fix it and resubmit it. Now I’ve lost another day.

You see, apparently the “by the next day” starts at the time of the LATEST SUBMISSION, not when you originally submitted it. So when they reject your article and you go back and fix it, the submission process starts all over. You move to the back of the line.

The problem is, I think they’re overworked and their editors look for reasons to reject your articles. I’ve had some of my articles rejected for the stupidest reasons imaginable. One of the most common is that the article does not meet their 400 word requirement. Doesn’t matter that I just pulled it off MS Word document that showed the word count at 500 words. Or that I rewrote an article from EZA that said the article had 475 words. Somehow their counting doesn’t add up.

I also like their excuse. “Most directories won’t accept an article with less than 400 words” or something to that affect. Bull! I get 250 and 300 word articles accepted at many article directories all day long.

Like I said, either their editors are snowed under or they are not native English speaking editors. I have a hunch it may be a little of both.

I once wrote an article on a classic consumer product. For the sake of this post, let’s say the article was over the Model T Ford. So in this article I’m giving the history of the Model T Ford and describing how automobiles have evolved over the years.

They rejected the article the first time due to ‘too many keywords’. So I changed it up and resubmitted it. Then it was “we don’t accept articles that are product reviews. You will have to either change the wording of the article or compare the product with two other like products”.

WTF! Who’s smoking crack over there!

So I changed the article up. Sounded really stupid without using the words Model T Ford, since it was an article over the Model T Ford (well, not over the Model T, but over a Classic product that has been in service for more than 50 years). But I hope you get the point.

That’s just a few of the problems I have with them. It’s not uncommon to take a week or more to get my articles accepted by them after jumping through all the hoops they put in your way.

Since this is a paid service, I expect a lot better Customer Service than that and way better service from their submissions. I noticed that they’ve lowered their price to $21 per month now. I wonder if those of us who are already subscribed will get a discount?

I have to be honest with you. Until their submission acceptance service and their Customer Service gets a lot better, I wouldn’t recommend them. Not at $21 per month. If this was a free service, I could handle it. But when I’m paying top dollar, I expect better service from a company.

Now, on to the submitted report. Their site says my article was submitted to 945 directories and websites. It doesn’t tell me how many accepted my article. NOTE: Just because your article is submitted to a directory or website doesn’t mean it will be accepted. The site owner has the final say. This is true with all services that I’m aware of.

Out of that 945 directories and websites, I can track 22 backlinks. The reason is because of Google’s duplicate content penalty. Since this service blast out the same article to a thousand or so directories and blogs, only a few will be indexed by Google.

And the Winner of the 1st Annual Article Marketing Smackdown is…

Well, IMHO it’s a tie between Unique Article Wizard and Article Marketing Automation.

The Pro’s of Unique Artilce Wizard is that my articles were submitted to more directories and websites, bringing me more backlinks.

The Pro’s of using Article Marketing Automation is that each article ends up on a website or blog, not an article directory (that’s not a bad thing either, it’s still a backlink to your site!). Plus, I love how the anchored links are embedded into the content, not at the bottom of the page in a resource box. While I got fewer links with AMA, the links I did get were embedded into content on legitimate blogs and websites. This equals maximum passing of the link juice if the subjects are relevant!

Article Marketer comes in at third simply because of the amount of directories it submits too. The number of backlinks should have been greater, but they weren’t. Which tells me not all of the articles are getting indexed because all 945 articles were same with the same resource box. Other factors could have contributed to this, I don’t know. 

Another negative about Article Marketer is that they use two types of resource boxes. One that you can only type in your url, which does not become a hyperlink on the site it ends up on. The other is the traditional resource box with two links in it. I speculate that many site owners choose to use the 1st resource box that only shows your URL as text. This could also be the reason for low backlinks versus the numbers of sites the article was submitted to.

Down at fourth we have Ezinearticles. Pretty decent backlinks for a free service. If I had to pay for this service, I drop it in a heartbeat due to the lack of submissions and the backlinks it produces.

GoArticles isn’t great, but they’re free and you can put links in the body of the article as well as the resource box. That alone makes it worth my time to add my articles to GoArticles.

iSnare. I wouldn’t waste a dollar or my time on them until they get their act together. When I hear others starting to have good results with them, maybe I’ll try them again, but not any time soon!

So there you have it. The finals of the Article Marketing Smackdown. If you’re on a limited budget, then use GoArticles and Ezinearticles until you can afford either Article Marketing Automation or Unique Article Wizard. You’ll build backlinks with the free sites, but at a much slower pace than you will with UAW or AMA. UAW and AMA will give you the most bang for the buck and help set your linkbuilding on the fast track to higher rankings.

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It never occurred to me before then that I’ve been using a Article Rewriting program that turns PLR articles or other articles into quality written articles in about 15 minutes. I assumed everyone else knew about this program, but apparently not!

I’ve tried a lot of article rewriting software before I ran across WordFlood.

This is the first article rewriting software that I found that can take a ordinary PLR Article and spin it into a well written quality article in no time at all.

Who Needs An Article Rewriter?

Anyone who runs multiple blogs or websites and needs quality content can use a quality article rewriter.

Coming up with quality content for my blogs and websites has always been a problem for me. I can rewrite most PLR articles myself in about 30 minutes. That is, rewrite them so they sound good and not a bunch of garbled jargon. 30 minutes isn’t much, but I need about 20 to 40 articles per week and that time adds up.

I thought about hiring a rewriter, but many charge $5 or more for a 500 word article. If I only needed a few articles that might work, but when I need 20 to 40 a week, that can add up to a lot of commission money!

I could tell you that I like WordFlood because it makes rewriting a PLR article a snap. Or that it has many other useful features like keeping a running tab on the Keyword Density of the article your writing.

It also tells you what percentage your current article has been changed from the original. This is helpful to help prevent you from turning out duplicate content.

I will tell you though, unlike a lot of programs out there, WordFlood will let you try the program for 14 days, Free. I rewrote a lot of PLR articles in my free 14 day trial! Of course, after a few days of turning out quality content for my blogs, I knew I would buy it because it saves me so much time and money.

However, the best way to show you how easy WordFlood is to use, is to show you this Video. The video will explain it a lot better than I can! (Note: there’s no sound with the video, so don’t try and adjust your sound!) If you can’t see the Video, click on the link and it will take you to it.

Rewrite More Than PLR Articles

As you can see, WordFlood is not only easy to use, it has many features article marketers find useful.

You can rewrite more than PLR Articles with WordFlood. Basically, you can cut and paste any article into WordFlood and rewrite it. I’ve used to to rewrite Wikipedia pages as well as articles from article directories. The sky is about the limit on what you can rewrite.

Another nice feature about WordFlood is you can rewrite the article you just rewrote! Let’s say you need 10 articles on getting RSS subscribers. You can take a few PLR articles, splice them together and rewrite the one big article in WordFlood. When you get done, save it, then go back and use the other synonyms to make a totally different article out of the one you just rewrote. Save that one and go back and rewrite the second one you rewrote!

You can get a lot of mileage out of this article rewriting program!

To get your Free 14 day trial of WordFlood and start cranking out high quality content from PLR Articles, Cick Here!.

FREE Bonus For AffiliateWatcher.Com Readers ONLY!

To help you get started rewriting PLR Articles, I’m going to give everyone who buys WordFlood through this website 8000 Free PLR Articles.

Yes, you read right.

8000 (eight thousand) FREE PLR Articles covering 252 subjects.

This should be more than enough to get you started turning PLR articles into quality content for you website or blog!

This offer alone could save you hundreds of dollars per month over joining one of those high priced PLR Membership Sites (which, most start out at $97 per month!)

There’s just about any subject you want and no, I’m not going to list all the subjects here! I don’t have that much time

Needless to say, whether you’re starting out trying to build a blog network or just need some quality content for your Hobby blog, these articles rewrote with WordFlood will get you started.

How To Take Advantage of All These Free PLR Articles

All you have to do to receive the 8000 free PLR Articles is to contact me through this Contact form and send me:  Your name, email and transaction details after you’ve purchased WordFlood.

I’ll then send you a link where you can download the .zip file containing 8000 PLR Articles, all for Free!

Good Luck!

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Over the last few months I’ve noticed a trend that has helped me dominate nearly all of the local niches that I’m in. In some of these niches, which a few aren’t all that small, I’ve been able to get my business name in the top search engine rankings several times. For example, there’s one real estate related niche keyword for my local market where you’ll find information about my company 4 times in the top 10 on page 1 of Google SERPS.

It’s not uncommon for my Clients to say “I found you on the Internet, everywhere we looked, your name kept popping up.”I smile and quietly say “Really? That’s good, thanks for telling me.” All the time thinking to myself “Damn right you see me everywhere on the Internet, that’s the way I planned it!”

You see, when people go searching for something locally and they keep running into your name, it’s like you build a little bit of credibility every time they see your name. Pretty soon, they associate your name with the product or service they’re shopping for. That’s a good thing!

How To Dominate Your Local Niche

As I’ve said earlier, over the last few months, I’ve noticed this trend. I haven’t seen this happening in the last 7 years so I think something has changed with Google’s algo.

What I’m seeing is that the articles I’m submitting to article directories like Ezinearticles and GoArticles are ranking very high in Google for my local niche keywords. Many times in the #1 spot!

I’m also seeing my articles in the Top 10 when using an article submission service like Article Marketer. Article Marketer submits your articles to hundreds (and in many cases over 1000) article directories.

Now I’ve always wrote articles for my websites and my business. However none really ranked that well until lately. I’m not sure why, but I’m loving it. And it’s not only my local niches!

While searching for different products or services in other cities, I’ve noticed articles from article directories outranking many national companies as well as outranking my local niche blogs plus websites of my competitors.

Testing My Theory

To be sure this wasn’t some kind of fluke, I tested my theory by writing articles about several different products and services for other local niches outside my own area. I then submitted these articles to article directories  and waiting. It only took a few days for them to show up in the SERPS and start working their way to the top.

After about a week, 3 out of the 5 articles I wrote were in the top 3 in Google for their keyword or keyword phrase. The other two are in the top 20. Not bad for about an hours worth of work!

To get started testing this in your own local niche, all you need to do is find all the keywords or keyword phrases people are using to find your business. Then sit down and start writing articles targeting these keywords. I normally only target one or two keywords per article. Once you have a few, submit them to article directories like Ezinearticles and GoArticles. As I said earlier, I use Article Marketer to increase my backlinks and exposure. Using article marketer to build backlinks has really rocketed many of my local sites to the top 3 in the Google SERPS.

Another side benefit to this is that every time one of your articles shows up in the top 10, it will push one more of your competitors off the front page!

Now, not only do you have an article that makes you look like a pro, you now also reap the benefits of having backlinks from that article!

How Great is that!

Try it in your own local market. Make your article from 500 to 1000 words each. I like to start with 10 articles on different keywords and keyword phrases. I find the longer article are ranking and sticking much better. Go try it and let me know how it’s worked in your local market!

Article marketing doesn’t just benefit global websites, in my experience, you can use article marketing to dominate your local niche like a pro!

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Update to the Update! Currently I can not recommend the Build A Niche Store program to my readers. Here’s why. Google has been deindexing many BANS sites, mine included. They apparently do not like the fact that this is a script that auto generates web pages with affiliate links on them (the ebay ads). However, Yahoo and Bing seem to still be ranking these sites and I’m still making money with them, but not near as much as I was when they were indexed in the top pages of Google.

If you’re looking for a legitimate way to create an eBay store where you can sell real products, I recommend Pro Stores. Currently they’re giving a free month trial for you to try it out. Use this link for your free trial – One Month Free Trial! ProStores – an eBay Company

Since I wrote the Build A Niche Store Review, I’ve had quite a few emails asking me to give everyone an update on how my Build A Niche Store‘s are doing, what techniques are working, which one’s aren’t, etc. I can say that the Build A Niche Store is still working for me, but a few of my sites have cooled off.

Currently I have 19 Build A Niche Store sites. These sites range from 11 pages up to over 40 pages. It all depends on the niche and how many categories ebay has for them.

Some of the first stores I built have dropped a little in the rankings as I’ve slowed down adding new content to them during December and January.

Last month my best performing Build A Niche Store did over $150 in commissions while the least performing store did just over $15. Sadly, this poor performer was a store I thought would be a great niche, but as it turns out, it’s a very competitive craft niche. This means I’m going to have to work very hard at building quality backlinks to this store to get it boosted in the rankings.

I didn’t follow my own advice when choosing this niche. It just “came to me” one night and I quickly looked up how many searches were being done for this particular niche and thought “Geez, this would make a great Build A Niche Store site.” The problem is, had I researched it a little further I would have found that the Niche has a lot of freebie websites out there giving away many of the same craft products I’m trying to sell on my BANS site plus many of these sites were built back in the late 90′s and early 2000′s by hobby Webmasters. This means they have their age working for them not to mention hundreds of old backlinks pointing toward them. DO YOUR RESEARCH!

On a very happy note, a few nights ago one of my sites turned in a $84 commission on one sale! That’s the best commission I’ve ever received from any of my Build A Niche Store sites.

Ways I’m Promoting My Build A Niche Store Sites

I’m promoting my Build A Niche Store sites just like I have any other website that I’ve owned or worked on. I’m building links slowly so they look natural. I’m using all of the Social Networking sites plus participating in forums that relate to the BANS sites I have.

One of the most effective techniques that I’ve used is buying advertising on other sites. You know the old adage of “It takes money to make money?” Well, I’m here to tell you that it works for BANS sites just as well. I’ve bought banner ads on several forums and other sites relevant to several of my Build A Niche Store sites.

I haven’t done much promoting through PPC. Most of the paid traffic has come through advertising on other sites.

Article Marketing is by far and away my best FREE* advertising to date. If you’re not using a service like Article Marketer to submit your articles to hundreds of places on the Internet, then you’re leaving a lot of traffic on the table.

It’s so damn funny to hear “Guru’s” say article marketing is dead and does not work any longer. Good for them, it means that there’s a tad bit less competition out there! Meanwhile my BANS sites are gaining backlinks and traffic!

*I say “FREE” because you can submit your articles to many directories manually for free. I prefer to pay a few bucks to Article Marketer and automate the process by sending one article to hundreds of places. You gotta work smart!

I’ve also went to DigitalPoint forums and paid someone to manually submit some of my BANS stores to Internet Directories. This has resulted in some nice backlinks as well. Eventually I’ll have all my stores in the free directories then I’ll start focusing on using some paid directories for more authority backlinks.

As I stated above, some of the Social Networking sites are sending good traffic to my sites. You’ll be surprised at how many old ladies use StumbleUpon!

Future Plans For My Build A Niche Store’s

Honestly I believe that I’m building stores faster than I can promote them properly. That’s okay because I can always come back and work on them later. There’s no problem in letting these stores sit and age for a while.

Speaking of aging, I’ve began buying expired domains and just uploading a BANS site to them, changing the colors and adding a header graphic and letting them sit until I can get back to promoting them and SEO’ing the pages. This is working damn good actually! If you have any domains parked somewhere, bring them out of moth balls and add a BANS site to them.

What Hasn’t Worked So Well On My BANS Sites

Unfortunately, Adsense has really sucked on these sites. While some have spikes in CTR, most of the CTR’s are lower than 3%. When your CTR starts averaging less than 3%, it can pull down all your Adsense sites due to Smart Pricing.

I’ve actually started pulling Adsense off of many of my Build A Niche Store sites. Now I do have to tell you that all my Adsense ads are at the lower left sidebar. This is a poor place to put Adsense on any site, so I’m not blaming Adsense entirely.

The reason that they are there is because I also use either affiliate programs and/or Clickbank products on the right side. These have been a big boost to the overall income of my BANS sites. They pay a helluva lot more than Adsense. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that Adsense ads on a BANS site is a poor move.

If you just have to have some type of pay per click advertising, check out these Adsense alternatives.

Build A Niche Store Project Summary

Okay, while most of my sites aren’t doing as well as I hoped (don’t we all have high hopes for our websites?), at the end of the day they’re still making money. They’re paying for their domains and hosting and some are doing much, much better than that. I have a few niche’s that aren’t paying off as I’d hoped. Having said that, I have some small Niches I thought would be ugly ducklings turn out to be beautiful cash generating Princesses!

Some of the first stores I built will be coming out of the Sandbox in the next month or so. So be watching for an update as my older sites start kicking SERP tail.

Also, I’ve had some really nice surprises with the PHPBay wordpress plugin. I’ll give you an update on that in the next day or so.

Don’t Forget The Special Report Bonus

The Special Report “How To Maximize Profits With Ebay Affiliate Programs” is still being offered when buying your BANS program through this site. Read my Build A Niche Store Review for the details. It has many more techniques and tactics for building profitable BANS sites.

If you haven’t looked over the features of the Build A Niche Store program, click here to see them now.

Build A Niche Store – Update

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Here are 9 Low Cost Ways to Drive Traffic To Your Site

1. Pay-Per-Click Programs - You should try Adwords and other Pay-Per-Click programs such as Yahoo Publisher Network and Microsoft AdCenter, only if you have a good understanding of how PPC programs work. Newbies should not dive into PPC unless you have a large budget.  A better way to use Adwords would be to use the site targeted feature of Adwords and choose sites that are relevant to yours. Site targeted Adwords are charged on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis rather than a per-click basis.
2. Banner Advertising – In my blog post title “15 Adsense Alternatives“, I feature 15 programs to replace Adsense. You can use many of these same programs, such as AdBrite, to advertise on. Speaking of AdBrite, I’ve seen them on some very specific sites where Adsense was not used. This could be for a variety of reasons, but it’s worth checking into sites where you’d like to advertise and see which program they are using to monetize their site.
3. Sponsored Reviews- Paying for a few site targeted reviews of your site could bring in a huge flood of new readers to your site. Sites like PayPerPost, ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews can be a low-cost goldmine for site owners.
4. Private Advertising – You don’t have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to get your ad on sites like JohnChow or ShoeMoney to take advantage of private advertising. There are a lot of popular sites on the Internet that have very targeted readers where you can buy an ad for peanuts. You can get a nice banner ad on some of these sites for as little as $25 per month.
5. Text Link Ads- Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what Google says about buying text links. When done right, Google or no one else can spot a paid link. They’re effective when placed on the right site and when done correctly. I Do Not recommend buying site wide text links in sidebars. I think the best links to buy are the ones in related post about relevant services or products you offer. You can find links on sites such as the Marketplace on DigitalPoint Forums, SitePoint, Text-Link-Ads and TextLinkBrokers. Another effective method is just to email the site owner and offer them some money to buy a one way link to your site. Don’t try to be cheap, it’ll turn off the site owner and they may never respond!
6. Blog Networks – I’ve never used Blog Networks, but I know a few site owners who swear by the traffic from Blog Networks like Blog Explosion, Blog Advance, Blog Soldiers and the new Blog Rush. With these networks, you get credits for sending traffic to other Network members sites. In many cases, you can also purchase credits at a reasonable rate. In turn, you use these credits to “buy” impressions back to your site. As good as that sounds, I still bring in more traffic with article marketing and ezinearticles.
7. Stumble Upon Ads- StumbleUpon sends me a lot of traffic naturally on many of my sites. But for those who just don’t have the time or expertise to get that rush of traffic from SU, they do have ads and many can be had for as little as 5 centers per click. This is cheap in anyone’s book!
8. Paid Posters – This is another method I’ve never used, but know some people who swear by it. This works by paying people to post on forums and blog comments and leaving a link back to your site. From the prices I’ve seen, you can get this done for as little as 10 to 20 cents per post. Browse the Marketplaces on DigitalPoint Forums and SitePoint to find paid posters.
9. Automobile Ad Wraps – (bet you didn’t see this one coming!) These can be very effective if you have a product or service that serves a local market. This program works when a broker pays drivers to drive around with magnetic signs or auto-wraps on their vehicles. People pay attention to ads on vehicles and this can drive some very targeted traffic to your site or local business. Places to look are; Ad-Wraps, AutoWrapped.Com and AutoMurals.Com. I know a small businessman in the Northwest that post “Want Ads” on Craigslist, Kijiji and other local classified ad sites looking for driver. He cuts out the Middleman and saves some serious money in the process.

The important thing is to test, test and test more if you want to take full advantage of any of these programs! I think you’ll be amazed at how much traffic you can generate with a little bit of money.

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Today I dug deep in my files and pulled out a free ebook by Allan Gardyne, CEO of Associate Programs. This ebook outlines 77 ways to drive traffic to your site.

This is one of those ebooks I downloaded and read over a couple of times, implemented a few of the techniques outlined and filed it away and forgot about it.

When I found it today, I reread it and was pleasantly surprised at how well it was written and how effective the techniques still are.

Driving traffic to your site can be challenging, you need all the tools you can get. “77 Ways To Get Traffic” will certainly give you both basic and advanced strategies to get the Internet hordes headed your way.

I’ve covered a few of the traffic generating techniques here on this blog before. Traffic techniques such as linking internal pages, submitting to directories, building opt in email list and article submission. But there are a lot more tactics outlined in this free book, many of them are not ever talked about (like techniques #4 and #54) or at best, just talked about in close circles of affiliate marketers. Allan has done an excellent job in showing us many little known techniques of driving traffic to websites and blogs.

I think you’ll find 77 ways to get traffic just as useful as I did when trying to build a new website or blog!

Download your free copy of 77 Ways To Get Traffic by clicking the link. 77 Ways To Get Traffic

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Why Submit Articles to an Article Directory or Ezine?

Where else can you receive hundreds of backlinks and traffic to your site for an hour or less of work that cost you little, if anything? Submitting articles to directories and ezines, that’s where. Article submission can drive targeted traffic to your affiliate landing pages and Adsense sites.

I just checked on an article I wrote for my small business almost 2 years ago. That one article alone has generated 248 backlinks to my site. It’s still being used in ezines and websites to this day. That article was 532 words and took me about 20 minutes to write.

Not all articles you write will be that successful, many articles that I’ve written bring in between 5 and 50 backlinks. I’d say my average number of backlinks from the average article is between 10 and 15.

You never know how successful your articles are until you submit them.

Article Marketing: Getting Started

To get started with submitting articles to ezines and article directories, all one needs is to sign up for an account with an ezine or article directory and begin writing articles. Once you’ve done this for a while, you’ll soon discover article marketing tips that others have yet to discover. Mainly that article marketing is all about volume.

In my experience, the most successful articles are from 350 words to 700 words in length. Some article directories and ezines will not accept articles under 300 words. Readers tend to lose interest in longer articles, no matter how well written they are. Remember, most internet surfers are skim readers. The just skim over your material picking up bits and pieces of information until they see something that makes them stop and take notice.

No special software is needed, I use Notepad to write my affiliate marketing articles that I will be submitting to an article directory or ezine.

Why not MS Word?

You can use MS Word, but it can cause more problems than what it’s worth. The problem with MS Word is that MS Word’s quote marks (“) and apostrophe’s (‘) are special characters and can cause havoc with an article directory submission software. Many will reject the article or your article will not be formatted properly.

Some people first write their article in MS Word, then cut and paste it to Notepad. This doesn’t always work for me, I’m not sure why. Using Notepad from the beginning just saves me a lot of problems down the road. Remember, time is money!

Don’t worry if you’re not good at writng articles. There are services out there where you can hire someone to write your articles for you. Although these are not cheap, normally the quality is very good. A few of these services are RentACoder, eLance and RentAWriter.

Webmaster Forums such as Digital Point and Webmaster-Talk are also good places to find article writers. In many instances you can work out a package deal with a writer and get a volume discount. Expect to pay anywhere from $10 to $20 for a well written, informative article. You can find articles cheaper, but in my experience they’re not the quality that will drive traffic to your site and people will link too.

Article Submission: Now That I Have My Article Written, What Do I Do?

Once you have your article written and ready for submission, there are several ways to distribute it.

You can hand submit your article to each article directory or article submission ezine or you can use an article submission service. Some article submission services are free while others will charge for this service.

It’s very important that you follow each article directory or article submission ezine’s article submission guideline. Article submission guidelines change from one directory or ezine to another. Don’t waste the few minutes it takes setting up an account with a directory our ezine only to have your articles rejected because you didn’t follow the article submission guideline.

Hand Submitting Articles To A Directory or Article Submission Service

Before you can submit your article to the huge list of article directories and article submission ezines, you must first open an account with them. This is quite easy but due to the large number of such places, can take several hours.

Article Submissin Tip: Unless you enjoy receiving mounds and mounds of emails in your personal email inbox, I’d suggest you get a free email account with Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail. Some submission services in Yahoo Groups will want you to verify your email and once you do, watch out. Even if you choose to opt out of receiving emails from the Groups, trust me, you’ll end up getting a lot of unwanted emails! It’s also important that you read some of these digest to insure that your articles are getting posted. It’s a good idea to check up on the places you submit articles.

Once you have an account set up, it’s as simple as filling in the required fields, cutting and pasting your article into the article field, filling out your resource box and hitting ‘Publish’.

To get you started, here is a list that I used in the past.

Ezine Articles.com – http://www.ezinearticles.com
GoArticles – http://www.goarticles.com
Site Reference – http://www.site-reference.com/submit.php
Article Warehouse – http://www.articlewarehouse.com/
Web Pro News – http://www.webpronews.com/submit
Article Dashboard – http://www.articledashboard.com
Ezine Zone – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ezinezone/
Small Biz Articles – http://www.smallbizarticles.com/
Articles Base Directory – http://www.articlesbase.com
SimplySearch4It – http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/articlesub.php
Articles.Web – http://www.articles.web.com
Directory Gold Article Directory – http://articles.directorygold.com/signup.php
Info Wizards Free Articles – http://content.infowizards.com
Article Friendly – http://www.articlefriendly.com
Free Articles for Reprinting – http://www.articles-hub.com
Submit Your New Article – http://www.submityournewarticle.com
Article Rich.com – http://www.articlerich.com
Constant-Content – http://www.constant-content.com/
Article Cafe – http://www.articlecafe.net
The Add Articles Directory – http://www.add-articles.com
Free Reprint Articles – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/free-reprint-articles/
1Article World – http://www.1articleworld.com
ABC Article Directory – http://www.abcarticledirectory.com/
eArticlesOnline.com – http://www.earticlesonline.com
Article Snatch – http://www.articlesnatch.com
Just Articles – http://www.JustArticles.com/
Article-Buzz – http://www.article-buzz.com/
I Need Content – http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/I_Need_Content/

The list above represents only a handful of places you can submit your articles to. I would say there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of places to submit your articles. Submitting just 1 article to the sites above will take you a couple hours. For those of you like me who don’t have a lot of time, article submission software may be what you’re looking for.

Article Submission Software and Services: The Quick and Easy Way To Submit Your Articles To Hundreds of Article Submission Directories and Ezines

Back when I had a of time on my hands and little funds, I would spend several hours a day submitting articles. Fortunately someone came out with software that would automate this process, submitting articles to hundreds of sites in just a few minutes time. Then someone figured it would be a good idea to start a service to submit articles for Webmasters and other people. The rest is history.

There are a number of article submission software and services on the market today.

The Article Submission Service that I use exclusively is Article Marketing Automation. Article Marketing Automation, or AMA as its called, will take your article and submit it to hundreds of article directories and ezines.

Their service has many other benefits including tracking your keywords in Google SERPRS so you know where your keywords ranks.

They do this in about a day or so. All I have to do is just send them the article and the do the rest. In less than a week my article will be sending me traffic and backlinks. Money well spent in my book!

AMA has a lot to offer SEO experts or Marketers who need a lot of legitimate backlinks pointing back to their websites and blogs.

Advanced Article Marketing Tips

Here are a few tips to help you be successful in using AMA to bring traffic and backlinks to your site.

• Write focused articles on one subject. Don’t go off on several paths or go on a rant.
• Keep your articles to less than 1000 words. You want readers to visit your site for more information. Tease them with a short article to get them to click over to your site.
• Read the article submission guidelines. Avoid getting your articles banned or rejected because you didn’t take a minute to read the article submission guidelines.
• Your article should be a pre-sell of what they can expect when they click to your site. If your site is about water skiing, don’t post articles about puppies!
• Remember, brand yourself with your articles. Proper article marketing can make you an expert in your niche. And we all know that experts get all the traffic!
• Proof read, proof read, proof read! I’m bad about not doing this. One tip I can give you is to let the article set for a few hours or a day and come back to it. Also, get others you trust to read and proof the article.
• Tell a story and give examples. Everyone loves an example or a story. Use one in your article. It will make it more personal and credible.
• Use your Active voice! Believe it or not, people want to be told what to do. Use an active voice and direct them to what you want them to do. Click here, go here, do this, change that….don’t tell your reader what the “could do”, tell them what to do!

The Resource Box Will Make You or Break You!

While AMA doesn’t use resource boxed (your links go directly into the content, which is best), many other article marketing submission sites do use resource boxes. Here are some tips for getting the most out of those sites.

I see some of the sorriest excuses for resources boxes. A resource box is where you’ll tell the reader all about yourself and web site and why you’re unique. Don’t cut yourself short!

Here’s what you should include in the resource box of your article.

• Your name.
• Your webiste URL
• Your USP – USP stands for Unique Selling Point. This is a few sentences about yourself or your site and why you’re unique. This is important.
• Your C2A – C2A is Call To Action. This is where you’ll tell the reader what to do. “Click here for more information”, or “Visit my website now for a free offer”

Generally most article submission sites or ezines will let you have at least one link in your resource box, some will let you have as many as three. It’s very important that you use anchor text for the specific keywords you’d like to rank for. Make sure this anchor text is relevant!

What NOT to put in a Resource Box

• Spam – You’ll be banned so fast your head will spin
• Affiliate links – Same as above at the most, at the least your article will be rejected. Most article submission sites do not allow affiliate links in the article or resource box. That’s why it’s important to write an article that will send them to your site.
• Links to every site you own. See “Spam” above
• Beating on your chest. Hey, it’s about the readers. They don’t care about how many awards your or your website have won. They want to know what they will be getting by visiting your site. Don’t bother listing all your accomplishments, nothing personal, but we don’t care.

Okay, there you have it. Everything I can think of that I know about Article Marketing, Article Submission to Directories and Ezines. Article Marketing has worked very well for me with every website I’ve owned. Done correctly, it can do wonders for you also!

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