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Give up on the Gurus: 21 Days (and 21 Ways) to Build a Bigger, Better and More Profitable Business Online
Give UP on the Gurus: 21 Days (& 21 Ways) to Build a Bigger, Better & More Profitable Business Online (Fast, Fun and Mostly Free)
I have been accumulating the questions I’ve received by email over the days, weeks and months………and while initially, my good intentions and cheerful sunny disposition INTENDED on getting back to as many people as I could personally, I decided a little while back, in the interest of time, space and sanity (and trust me, I ain’t go much of it to spare) to create a compendium of content on the site, that addressed, explained and embellished upon the stuff people have been asking, and try to make a helpful (and free) resource that lots of people could utilize to practically, and pragmatically grow their online businesses without having to buy a whole bunch of shit from people who don’t have your best interest at heart.
Now – what’s in it for me?
If history is our guide, most likely, very little.
Some affiliate commisions on products I use and recommend you do, too.
Some ego gratification, as I perk up when people say nice things to me and it seems like whenever I write something new you do.
And lastly, my own coaching & consultation services – which some of you are interested in already.
I’m not going to be cheap – and for most of you, not an appropriate expense – but quite simply, I believe I’m well worth it, and think those of you who can will probably agree.
But please note – contrary to those manipulative, mindless, mental midgets who who espouse to know it all…….I readily admit, I don’t have all of the answers.
Some might say I really don’t even know most of the right questions.
But this is the stuff I find works best for me, and for the partners, and projects I participate in. And I truly believe it will do the same for you, with an out of box efficiency that you’ll find surpsingly easy, pretty predictable and potentially, powerfully profitable to boot.
And know this to be true……because it is:
None of this is "tough stuff". But occasionally, if you’re like me, you’ll find it’s easier, and a bit more inspirational to implement ideas that have already proven themselves to be worthwhile in the wild and woolly real world ….and it’s in that spirit that they’re shared.
But please don’t email me about what some "guru" with a bad haircut and a face for radio said that contradicts this, or advises otherwise.
I’m fully aware and humbly submit that most of them have an intellectual aptitude and enlightened awareness that exceeds my own and hate to be reminded of it.
Plus, I’m not that stable, I’m very sensitive and I’m super short on meds for November.
So just use the stuff that you like – and discard that which you don’t. Sort of similar to my approach to Hanukah. I love the 8 days of presents & the Adam Sandler tunes, but I’m not a big fan of the praying, the candles and hard to read Hebrew letters.
Ready? Great……let’s start with one of the most common article marketing questions there is:
Q: Do you re-write your articles and submit to many directories or just one? What about duplicate content?
A: Here is what I do and I find it works exceptionally well for just about every niche we work in.
Identify where you want to rank BEST and focus your initial energy there.
This SHOULD be your blog in my view, and unless you are working on a more mercenary affiliate marketing campaign (i.e. – using affiliate re-directs or simply just building a list to mail other people’s product pushes) this is definitely where you should start.
You are NOT trying to build authority to your EZA.Com articles.
EZA is a great service, staffed by some super nice, helpful and altruistic people and they do a great job and offer a fantastic way of getting exposure straight out of the gate.
But building THEIR business, is not the focal point of what you should be doing, and it ASTONISHES me how many people get this wrong.
I only point this out because I’ve had 3 or 4 people tell me that they have spent HOURS of time building incoming links to their EZA articles, thinking that promoting their "expertise" and status on EZA was a wise expenditure of their marketing muscle.
It’s not. All article directories are a means to an end, a mutually beneficial relationship for all……and a great platform from which to LAUNCH, and branch out your efforts.
But you need an overarching strategy that TRANSCENDS, but includes high trust article directories and social hub sites. (and that should be to build the authority to your primary site, service or blog)
So write the article.
Post it to your blog FIRST.
Ping the RSS directories. Ping the blog directories.
Use whatever book marking or social strategies you typically use. (i.e. – this is a good time to change your titles a wee bit as well, as we’ll cover a little bit more below, so your content is a bit more "unique" on the social directories that point to your blog post)
Wait until your blog post is indexed. (if you follow the above approach, this is usually about as long as it takes for Brad Lidge to blow a 9th inning World Series Save)
Then -
Submit the article to EZA, Articlesbase and 1 or 2 secondary directories. (Idea marketers has been doing very well for us in some niches….even ranking above EZA in many)
To deal with the dubious duplicate content confusion issues which seem to cast a shadow of pure panic on this topic whenever I see grown men and women try to discuss the wisdom of content re-purposing (trust me – wise it is) here is what we do, and this works really, really well.
Change the title. Just use synonyms. Break out that thesaurus…and experiment with the wonderful and wide world of words.
- 7 Wonderful {Weight Loss Tips} for Women Who MUST Lose Weight Before Christmas
- Seven Hellatious {Fat Burning Techniques} Proven to Obliterate Calories in Time for The Holidays
- 7 {Delicious Diets} Proven to Pillage, Plunder and Permanently Pillory Belly Fat (Be Skinny for Ramadan!)
Just change the titles and you’ll be good to go.
Taking it one quick step further for even BETTER "uniqueness"….what I do is this:
Create interchangeable opening sentences.
- Who else wants to learn some wonderful weight loss tips in time for the holidays?
- In this article we are going to discuss fat burning techniques proven to help women lose weight fast.
- Let’s take a few minutes and talk about my favorite delicious diets for Ramadan. Now, I’m not even sure what Ramadan is, but I needed a 3rd holiday to mention in this article, and Quanza was busy. Ramadan I believe is not really a holiday. It’s more of a fast. I’m not 100% sure, but I had a friend who converted to Islam a few years ago and after 10 years straight of sharing Dunkin Donuts and a morning Croissant, he inexplicably blew me off for breakfast for 40 days in a row. When I asked him what the hell happened, he simply said "Ramadan".
New title – new opening sentence or two - and you can have the very same article on multiple directories, republished, re purposed and resourcefully sending you traffic from a compendium of creative sources that rank super high straight out of the gate. (don’t steal my Ramadan paragraph, I’m goign to use that tommorow)
Articlesbase, for those of you who are NOT using it, also has a pretty popular plugin that many people use to re-purpose content on their own blogs and properties...giving you even more occasions of your very same content, showing up in many different and disparate spots, "feeding" your primary site (or even an affiliate re-redirect) with free traffic for days, weeks and months to come.
If that sentence made as little sense to you as it did to me, the point is, submit your articles to articesbase – they not only rank really well, but they are republished and can go a bit "viral" pretty easily to boot.
One last tip for maximum re-purposing power:
Rotate the anchor text links in your resource box for each directory. Use 3 words that are important to you (or your niche) from a ranking standpoint. (it’s not uncommon for Google just to pick up the anchor text in the resource box and rank THAT very highly…..even for an article that’s optimized for a different set of searches.
EZA will now only accept 3 words by and large these days, in the resource box – but that’s actually a good thing I’ve found for CTR.
It’s NOT uncommon, using this strategy, to have 5-7 of the top listings, for a given article, with the directories and your own blog all being the beneficiaries of tons of traffic, using the very same content…and when you factor in all of the places that are republishing YOUR content (i.e. – wordpress plugins that are "white hat", twitterfeed scrapers, social book marking sites, etc) it’s not uncommon to have almost the ENTIRE first page be your stuff, or at least POINTING to your stuff, especially in a smaller niche, or a longer tail term.
But, the beauty of this approach is it also works wonderfully well in big markets where there is tons of volume and you only need one piece of content to "stick" on one of the outside directories (or best case scenario your own blog) which can truly lead to a tremendous torrent of traffic that can change your business in a hurry.
If you want to see a great way of incorporating this thinking into a PPC advertising, or simply "positioning" yourself uniquely in a broad and expansive sea of small minded sameness – and learn how to go into big, broad and bodacious markets, check out Glenn Livingston’s PDF on how to own a super segmented slice of a very big pie using paid traffic. (or, maybe even more instructively, how to properly position & pitch yourself in unique, powerful and promiscuous ways that will have your "perfect prospects" lining up to learn more about your offer).
It’s totally free (as in, no strings, NO opt in, no watch your back, don’t bend over, when is the shoe going to drop (or plop) me in the rear end) and you can grab it from Glenn’s Livingston’s blog with my highest recommendation.
(Glenn sells high end coaching and runs a very popular Pay Per Click Marketing membership site – he’s also married to my equally as talented and amazing Aunt- and if you want to learn PPC from someone who I believe is peerless in his approach - I’d recommend talking a look!)
Okay.
1 question down, at least 20 more to go.
I WILL eventually be creating a second list for this sequence as NOT to "blast" those of you who don’t want to be getting these on a daily basis…so keep your eyes peeled for that as well.
Go Phils, God bless and for god’s sake, what does a brother need to do to get some Twitter followers already?
22 Comments to "Give up on the Gurus: 21 Days (and 21 Ways) to Build a Bigger, Better and More Profitable Business Online
Great stuff as usual Ian. Thoughtful and thought-provoking. Oh and funny as hell.
If i had to give a negative, it’s that all the informative info (is that grammatically correct?) you send out isn’t contained in one location or space as in a book. Titled; Marketing according to Ian
Floyd
Thank you Leonard – I am working on something like that, actually – just getting all of this stuff organized into one place. (this 21 day sequence I will definitely turn into a pdf at the very least..:-)
I can not stop to not comment to this. See, you have come to my conclusion expressed in a past comment about Articlebase, that actually they are a very good directory after all. Anyway, I like to have first a re-direct and if the product converts than I build a blog for it. Now my question is, how do you succeed to write so many article and if you outsource how much is your profit( I believe that outsourcing costs quite much and it cuts into my profits). I am still wondering if should I do this step or not as I have less and less time for writing articles these days with the building of links for my blogs, etc.
Hi ro –
Articlesbase has improved a tremendous amount, yes – I agree – you have to remember, while principles don’t change typically, the individual elements (or tactics) often do – a year and half ago when I first wrote the article marketing “blueprint” thingy – alot of stuff was very different – i.e. – length of permissable resource boxes, amount of links you could use, etc. Some directories fall off the map – others dramatically improve as you would expect – and AB – for one – (as illustrated by their Alexa growth) is one that I’ve found surprisingly good over the last 6 months or so.
(often doing far better than EZA)
Your strategy – as I understand it above – is a good one – I DON’T write alot of articles anymore – I outsource the ones that I do in every niche other than this one (IM related stuff) and one more BIG niche that I’m working with partners – and I agreed to do the content creation to begin. Blog building is a MUCH superior strategy, and as I’ve pointed out here in some previous posts , I use tools and software to build blogs, like the post on collaborated on with Ed Chiasson (his Article Aggregation and Blog Building Tools are amazing - and he offered my readers a significant discount)
That’s the stuff I use for blog building and content creation on niche sites (along with some other “wrinkles” and I agree – outsourcing articles can be expensive and of questionable quality and I only use people I know and use for other stuff as well.
Hey Ian – Excellent post. I never hesitate to read any of your stuff – which means quite a bit, seeing as how I get about 30+ Marketing Emails every day from these big named gurus (and I never even open them, or read the subjects), your stuff is just much more practical and realistic, and it’s worked for me.
I have a quick question for you – where can I learn the “basics” to blogging with this kind of stuff – I’ve never done blogs before, instead I used to just do landing pages and stuff – and to be entirely honest, that kind of stuff just tired me out, if not pissed me off by the end of the day. So since you recommended it, I would like to give blogging a shot – see if I can build a business to bring in some more cash every month.
Thanks =)
Hi Chris – the best approach is simply to start a blog – on a topic you enjoy – and “practice” for 30 days. Don’t buy any courses – or join any lists – just take one month and do nothing other than post as often as you can, and comment on as many other blogs related to your niche as you are able.
You will be surprised at how much you can learn simply by just focusing on the above..:-) I DO recommend using automation tools (like the ones I mention in the comment above) but I’d wait until you have learned the landscape a bit. (plus I have a good amount of blog tips coming on here over the next few weeks – as that’s 90% of where I focus in my own business)
Hi Ian,
Great post as always. Informative and funny (you should consider coaching and consulting to standup artists as well). A few questions though: What tools/services do you use to ping your blog posts and/or external articles? Is there a difference between PinGoat, PingoMatic etc. or is any service good as the next one? What is the difference between pinging RSS directories and pinging blog directories? Do you outsource to Americans or use Philippinos like most marketers? Are they working for you full time or do you use any of the outsourcing websites? How much do you pay for a 500 words article on average?
Thanks,
Guy
Just looking for the love of my life……/.
Hi Guy – They are really all the same (pingomatic/pingoat) and depending on the blog I do some different things (I don’t think it’s really that important – but i’m much more careful on some, than others in terms of how aggressively, or often)
Just "google"the blog/rss directories and you’ll get some good information/good explanation and recommended directories as well – I don’t outsource articles to strangers – I have people who either do them as part of their "job" – or more often than not – I use blog building tools like Ed’s above, for on site content, and will just use the articles on EZA to "announce" the blogs are up, get indexed, incoming link or two, etc – and do much more "blog building" than article marketing.
(there is a service in the sidebar that will write articles for you – I signed up and deposited money – but never used them……but others I know have and recommended them highly, so the link is there)
Hi Randy – We’re all looking for the loves of our lives – and I’m pretty sure you are a spambot – but considering this post is a little bit light on comments, and you seem like a harmless soul, I’m going to let your comment through. May you find what you’re looking for, in this life, or the next.
Good info, Ian.
I’ll be modifying my gameplan a bit then.
Blog posts first, then repurpose and submit to article directories.
I hadn’t thought of that.
Thanks.
Sincerely,
Mike
Ian,
Once again some solid advice that we can use! I have been doing the article marketing for some time, and do what you advise – change the titles, maybe an initial sentence here or there. I have some articles showing up in multiple directories so it was never a problem. I don’t understand why some “gurus” still insist you will get penalized for this.
Another point, I assume it is more important to get the keywords right, and the resource box as well, rather than get your articles on a thousand directories. Especially when most of them are a PR0-PR1, which wouldn’t be any help. I will be checking the next post for sure.
Thanks again, Doug
Thanks, Doug – you are right – the search engines ain’t dumb…..and they understand that the same article on a million splogs isn’t indicative of “authority” – but an article that is re-written a wee bit and posted on some highly trust and human edited directories, tends to be!
Thanks, Mike – I appreciate the comment!
Great post Ian. I was wondering how to get all my EZA articles to other article directories without risking duplicate content. You answerd all my questions. I am now going to take all my 80+ EZA article and send them over to Articlebase.
Thanks,
Gary
Thanks, Gary!
There is never any harm in that at all – (and usually good benefits ) and the ONLY time you have to worry about “duplicate content” ( In my View) is when you are publishing the very same stuff on your OWN blog, that’s showing up, and indexed elsewhere already.
(and the only “penalty” is that most often, you won’t get any traffic or “love” from the search engines on that particular content – but I don’t really believe there is a “penalty” insofar as that which you hear people worry about so often)
Again – I’m not a SEO expert – (although I really DID stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night..:-) I just know what I see with my own stuff!
Ian, everyone needs a hero and you’re mine. Thanks for all your help.
After wasting plenty of time trying various things on the net, I decided to use article marketing. You have given a lot of good information on it. Anyway, I was going to submit articles to EZA, but they seem to change the rules all the time, so I sent one to ArticlesBase. It was approved the same day and in 5 days it was number 1 in Google with 1.2 million pages. So I submitted 2 more to AB. Within 2 days, they ranked 1 and 2. I was totally shocked. This is a very competitive, but evergreen market. It seems to be working so well, that I’m inclined to keep doing what I’m doing for now and worry about the blogs etc. later. What would you suggest?
Thank you very much, Ian.
Don
I think I should stick with AB until I get more written
That’s great news, Don – congratulations!
(the amazing thing is, it really IS that easy – and if you keep it up, you’ll have LOTS of those sorts of results in no time, flat)
I would stick with AB for a little while and just continue to measure how well they do for your goals – and then just double back and start adding in some of the other strategies we covered above – if you start getting traffic, and making some money, it’s amazing how many more windows of opportunity begin to open!
Hey, Ian, I’m glad your back in my email box! I miss you when I don’t hear from you for a while. I always look forward to your great insight and you crack me up. You are a good reminder to stay fun so that people will actually want to read what I’ve written!
When I write an article for a very competitive market, I start backwards and decide which keywords I want to rank for and then write the articles around this. I don’t want to try to rank for “lose weight” with 47 million serps , but I might try to rank for “shed pounds naturally” with 1 million serps. Does this make sense, or is it not necessary?
Thank you, Deane
Thanks, Deane – and yes, that is exactly what you want to do for competitive markets, with your articles, blogs posts, etc. I try to get TWO occurences if possible – one of the BIG ocean phrase – and one of the hyper specific, smaller “sea” long tail phrase – especially when tackling a tougher, really huge market. (which something like weight loss, using this particular example, is the biggest) (no pun intended..:-)
You may want to check out Glenn’s PDF above – he does this with Pay Per Click exceptionally well – I’ve seen him do this very well in exceptionally BIG markets – and in the PDF above he uses weight loss as an illustration of how to do this for PPC for a live project. (and can be extraploated for articles, organic traffic strategies, et al)
Hi Ian,
You’re a bright guy, but even you won’t be able to figure this one out. It’s an actual sentence from an ArticlesBase article. “Breadth absolutely do I appetite my appropriate addition is?” Say what? Written by a lady with well over 100 articles in AB. She’s in my general field. Says a lot for my field, doesn’t it? Her other articles are nonsense too, and a lot of them were written this year. I found it on Google while checking a keyword. She ranked #4 in Google for a keyword phrase in quotes, with over 7,000 competing pages.
So, how could AB approve junk like this and how could Google rank it so high? I’m ranking well with AB, but have just submitted 6 so far. In 4 of those 6, there is way too much space between the article body and the bio box, so a person would have to scroll down just to see the bio box. I would have to be losing clicks because of it and have written to AB about it, but have not heard back yet. If they don’t correct it, would you suggest going someplace else? If so, what might be a good alternative? Thank you.
Don
Hi Don – I understand – it’s frustrating – and all of the directories have a fair amount of junk articles. (because they ARE a really effective vehicle for getting free traffic and hence people *spam* articles that are really unintelligable. (that’s a word I probably should learn to spell right if I’m going to use it in a sentence..:-)
I would say that AB will probably *not* do much to help you here – and you’ll have to decide for yourself, whether or not the return on your time and energy is worth it. (which you can measure if you are using analytics – or tracking links, etc)
Overall – there are other benefits from posting to multiple article directories, even if you never get a single click. It gives you "authority" (not YOU per se, but your site…..something that people tend to mix up often) and usually will offer a nice (and more permenant) bump to the site where the links are pointing. Overall -it’s a longer term strategy for creating authority.
Short term, it’s a great way to make some sales, build a list, etc. If you you aren’t getting the clicks due to page structure, etc (and yes, this is frustating but the price of rice so to speak) you simply have to gage how the time you are investing in this is being spent. (there are other good places to submit – I’ll cover some of those in a post this week)
Thanks again, Ian. You have already been a big help to me. If I keep reading these posts, and follow your advice, I’m going to be able to afford your consulting services. I’d say more, but i need to conserve my original content for my own campaign.