Ten
Powerful Ways to Use Articles like Magic to Increase Your
Bottom Line
Roger Zimmerman
http://pickaguru.com
There is no substitute for writing articles to get your Web
business the attention it deserves, and to increase your profits.
I’ve seen article-writing listed as a bullet point
in several lists of ways to get traffic, but rarely do I see
information specifically on how to use them to do that. At
first glance you may think of one or two of them and assume
that’s all there is to it.
But
wait (as the famous infomercial used to say), there’s
more. There are more ways articles can increase your profits
than you probably ever imagined. This article will give you
ten ways articles can almost magically increase your profits.
Bear in mind, though, that most of them rely on writing several
articles, not just one or two. So let’s get started.
1. Establish your name and authority.
Since you usually offer articles free of charge you can expect
that a lot of eyeballs will see them. Some portion of that
audience will remember your name when they see it again later.
You are building a brand. It’s a brand of your name.
You’re also billing yourself as an authority.
For
this reason it is vitally important that your articles (how
can I put this nicely) don’t suck. Ok, that wasn't the
nicest way to put it, but at least I hope it is memorable.
In other words I’m telling you that your articles will
live on forever on the Web and you need to take great care
to make them quality works you will be proud of in years to
come.
I’m
writing a sister article to this one giving hints on Eight
Ways to Make your Articles Great. I hope you’ll read
it when you finish this one.
2. Provide Links Back to your Site
Every time your article is reprinted on the Web you get a
double benefit. First, the link it provides to your site (which
you’ll include in the header or footer of the article),
will directly bring visitors to your Website.
Secondly,
that link back to your site is important to search engines
in deciding how high to rank your site in searches. Most search
engines, including Google, decide the position of your site
partly on how many links link back to your site. You will
3. Lead-Ins to Premium Products
One very powerful use of your articles is to lead in to a
premium product you are selling.
Simply put, the article gives valuable information but also
acts as a teaser for more.
When you sell a product you must give a list of benefits.
Why not turn that list of benefits into an article such as
‘Things to look for when considering a . . . .”?
Each point in your article leads up to the kicker, namely
the reference to a product that fulfills the criteria you
just outlined.
While you’re leading up to a sale, you’re also
giving your reader valuable information he or she can use
when comparing products along the line of the article topic.
But
I beg you to truly keep the reader’s interest in mind.
You must not leave the taste in her mouth that she has been
scammed into a sales job. Be sure the information is valuable
and the products or products you recommend are valuable, quality
products.
4. Articles Bring Affiliate Sales
If you are in the business of selling affiliate products
rather than your own products, articles provide a perfect
medium.
I’ve seen many very useful articles that compare various
related products. For example, an article may compare a dozen
different software packages, most or all of which are affiliate
products of the author. The author may both upsides and downsides
to the various packages reviewed, but no matter, he will benefit
no matter which package the reader buys, if any.
Again, this is a valuable service to the reader. I’ve
read many such articles and been very grateful to the author
for giving me the knowledge to choose the best product from
among many. I’m happy to give her my business in the
form of her commission in return for taking the time to help
me find exactly what I want.
Here
again is my warning. Be honest and give valuable information.
Please, please do not recommend a substandard product just
for a sale. Nothing will ruin your reputation faster than
leaving a bad taste in the mouth of your reader. You count
on his repeat business and on building your good name.
5. Articles are Premium Search Engine
Food
Earlier I told you that links back to your Website from your
articles help your search engine standing. That is true if
your article is published on other Websites.
However, if your article is on your own Website it helps
your search engine standing in another way. It provides additional
keywords search engines can use to index your site.
For this reason I recommend a healthy mix of articles published
both on other sites, such as article repositories, for example,
and on your own site.
In general I don’t recommend publishing a single article
on both at the same time. Search engines generally don’t
like duplicate material and some may penalize you for it.
Keep your self-published articles each on a single tight
topic and loaded with one to three keywords.
Also keep each article on a separate Web page with a menu
of links to other pages on your site.
Content
is king. That phrase is bantered around over and over again
by search engine optimization experts, and for good reason.
A Web page with 500 pages of articles is far more likely to
be seen by searchers than one with five pages, simply because
of the difference in search engine citings.
6. Context-Sensitive Ad Attractors
If you rely on context-sensitive advertising, such as Google
Adsense, for example, an article tightly centered around one
or two keywords is an excellent attractor for responsive ad
readers.
If the reader is interested in your article she certainly
may be interested in ads related to it.
You
can multiply the number of pages of ads viewed on your Website
with lots of good focused articles.
7. Articles as Freebie Offerings
Whether you use forums, traffic exchanges, auctions, social
networks, or any other way of communicating on the Net, your
articles give you a wonderful response booster as a free download
you can offer.
Most people love freebies. Many will never become customers
but a few will. At the least, it will certainly increase traffic
to your site as your article readers follow the links in your
articles to your site.
Every
click on your link is another opportunity to win the trust
of another repeat visitor and fan of your site.
8. Use Articles to Write a Book.
You may have never thought of this use of articles. If you
have always wanted to write a book or eBook but have been
overwhelmed by the huge task of planning and putting together
a huge manuscript, articles are a perfect way to write volumes
in small chunks.
It’s easy to write a small article but writing a book
is intimidating. If you write several articles centered around
a larger topic, you can later fit them together into a larger
work. As you lay them all out in front of you and try to put
them together into logical order you will automatically be
composing an outline. You will see what’s missing and
what you have already have.
You may have to do some re-writing and tweaking to make them
sound like chapters of a single book, but that part is easy
since the bulk of the writing is already there for you.
Even
if you find your articles don’t fit together into a
perfect flow for a book, you can still publish them as a book
of independent articles. I’ve seen many very successful
books put together as independent articles. They are very
popular because the reader can read each chapter independently
from the others – like short stories. They’re
as easy to read as they are to write.
9. Members-only Website Material.
Offering a membership-only Web site is a powerful way to
both build loyalty (returning readers) and to build your email
list.
A healthy offering of exclusive articles make a nice addition
to your members-only pages.
I
offer all of my ezine subscribers access of a members-only
area and change up the password every month or so. This accomplishes
various things. The free membership offer gives readers an
additional reason to sign up for the list – a powerful
attractor. Changing up the password also gives them a reason
to read the ezine regularly. Finally it answers the question
‘What exclusive content can I put on my membership site?”
10 Bonus Material for Premium Products.
Whether you have your own premium products to sell or you
sell affiliate products, offering bonuses is a powerful enticement
for people to buy.
In fact this is especially powerful with affiliate products.
Who in their right mind would buy from seller A when seller
B offers extra bonuses with the same product?
You can even marry this idea with the members-only idea in
point nine. Rather than offering your readers bonus materials
directly you can simply offer them permanent free access to
your membership site.
For those who access your private site through ezine subscription
they are given changing passwords. For those who access if
via a purchase they get a permanent password. In the ad you
can list the bonuses they will receive when they access the
private site, plus the fact that as your private site grows
they are getting bonuses that keep on giving. All of that
because they are paying customers rather than just free subscribers.
Most
private site password systems allow for multiple passwords.
If your hosting company uses Cpanel it is very easy to set
it up with multiple passwords. Most others can as well.
Along
with this article I’m publishing a sister article on
hints to writing killer articles and attracting hungry readers.
It’s called “Eight Ways To Make Your
Article Great.”
Before you set out to use articles in the ten ways I’ve
given you here, I hope you will go on to read the sister article
first. I want you to be sure you are writing strong quality
articles that will keep your readers mesmerized and coming
back again and again. A poorly written article is worse than
not writing any at all. It will turn your readers off. Please
study up before you start.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
