Categories
Article Marketing Free Tools Paid Tools Tools

Article Marketing Automation: After a Week

Well my last post I raved about my initial experience with Article Marketing Automation so this is the update on my first week’s experience.

Just to recap what AMA will do for you: the free version of AMA will allow you to add your blogs to the network. Add your blog, select the categories and/ or keywords you want and articles from the network want posted on your blog and voila: if you allow it relevant articles will appear automatically (or wait patiently for you to approve them). This is great to build some new sites: but for me the real power AMA is the paid version.

With the paid subscription you can create articles: add them to the system; spinning it to minimize duplicate content if you want and the article is available to add to the network. You can add up to 3 keyword anchored links – anywhere in the text not stuck at the bottom in a resource box. And the keyword link can be spun too: from their own statistics says it all:

“Your articles are promoting 9 links via 55 anchor text options.”

The articles I added a week ago have been presented between 20 and 22 times and only rejected once.

The quality of the articles in the network is generally excellent I have only rejected a couple for quality reasons; some more for being in the wrong category.

So after a week the sites I added to the network at the start of the week have between 20 or 30 posts on them: and I haven’t everything offered.

Each article I add gains me around 12 anchored links A DAY. For as long as I remain a subscriber those articles keep on being distributed, though I can withdraw them if I want to. Even if cancel my membership the links I already have remain.

And the down side is: I haven’t really found one to be honest.
Click register for the free version of AMA

Click here to register for the paid version of AMA

UPDATE 30 September
One of my first articles submitted 10 days ago and now been published 30 times and I am now seeing the first few new links appearing in Yahoo

Categories
Article Marketing Free Tools Paid Tools Tools

A New Article Distribution Tool: Very Cool!

I have been planning on discussing on this blog which tools I use and why, but have been holding off until I was making a bit more money – so I had more credibility – at least in my mind!

There’s a new player in the game though and I am so excited that I am throwing caution to the wind and reviewing Article Marketing Automation my latest investment, and yes this one really is worth the price, although there is a free version too, read on.

Many of you will have heard of Article Marketing where you write a short article which includes a link back to your site. People use article marketing to develop backlinks for their site and sometimes for traffic too. Now you can choose to submit your article to a few directories: of which EzineArticles is one of the best, or you can submit your article to literally thousands of other directories. Many people want to submit to many directories, again to develop the backlinks, rather than the traffic. I have been wanting to do this for some time: but I haven’t moved further on with this for one main reason: I couldn’t find the right software/service for me.

I have my choice narrowed down to two products: one of which uses software to at least semi-automate the submission process: the other is a service which has your articles submitted manually. Both options I had serious problems with:

  • the software solution doesn’t work well for me because my niches don’t fit neatly into the categories found in most directories ;
  • the service solution had some issues with customer service; and I want someone to communicate with me if I am paying 100’s of dollars for a service!

So I sat on my hands and did nothing! Well what happened last week was exciting : I started seeing blogs I trusted talking about a new service called Article Automation Software: its different so bare with me you need to work through this to understand what’s different.

With AMA you submit articles, there is a spinner as well, to allow article variations, but you don’t have to use it. Articles must be at least 300 words. You can include your links anywhere in the article (in fact you can spin your keyword anchors in your links- to mix them up a bit) – this is important because your links are in the context of your article rather than stuck at the bottom in your “bio” or “resource box”.

Also you can add youtube videos l – and anchor link them: video is the future I’m told but I haven’t tried this option yet!

Now it gets interesting – the articles aren’t submitted to article directories: they are submitted to other blogs of people who have signed up for the network. Blogs which are hopefully focussed on the topic of your article: there is no guarantee but many people will have blogs which are niche or foccussed. The blog owner may add their own links, may alter your text, may add ads and images, can in fact do anything like with your post – but they have to leave your links: contextual links here we come!

Will Google like it? Well they probably won’t know. There is no obvious footprint: the blogs aren’t owned by AMA: they are owned by you and me. They support WordPress (self-hosted only), blogger and tumblr blogs to date. Probably others as well if they have the right API – that bit was a bit technical for me!

Are the articles edited? Are they rubbish? Well to date I have been impressed by the articles: I’ve seen worse on EzineArticles and Hubpages! There is no formal acceptance, editing process for articles but for every blog you add you can choose to either allow articles to post automatically or for the articles to remain unpublished until you approve: I do the later. I also check the links in articles to make sure I am happy linking to the site, that they are not bad neighbourhoods: they haven’t been so far. I’ve seen people say that the blogs they set for this service are now gaining comments from real people – so the quality is more than fine IMHO.

Do I know where my article is published? No, not directly – you will have to wait for the backlinks to show: or include a “signature” piece of text in each article which you can search on once the blog’s post is indexed.

What sort of blogs do you add to the network? This is important! Don’t add personal, flagship blogs. I wouldn’t add this blog! This is my flagship blog and its my voice! But I also wouldn’t include directly blogs which I make money from. I could – but I’m not at the moment because I really don’t want the other internet marketers to know which sites those are! Instead I have set up some new blogs just for this experiment.

The site itself: the interface is slick, quick and works well. Its easy to follow but they have some cool videos as well if you are the type who likes to read the manual.

OK Where Do I SignUp
There are two options: paid and unpaid.

The free version of Article Automation Software allows you to add blogs but NOT to submit articles. So if you have a whole lot of domains lying around doing nothing: throw WordPress onto them and get some free content and indexing! Also if you are curious about the quality of articles in the network this would be an easy way to check it out yourself.

UPDATE: You get five free article submissions with the free sign up – an excellent marketing ploy to let you try it out and well worth taking up!

The paid version of Article Automation Software is this link which will take you to their sales page :and its not as obnoxious as most either! The bottom line is that the cost is $47 /month – its a subscription. No its not cheap: but its good value for me. You can cancel at any time and if you cancel in the first month you get your money back.

I am an affiliate and I will get paid if you use my link – I think that’s reasonable if you found them via my link – if not hack the link to take my code out!

Categories
Online Business Rants Search Engines

Google Censors the Internet


I wasn’t intending to write this post: this is not a political blog, but I am MAD, very mad. Google has had bad press recently in Australia particularly, and in fact our competition watch dog is currently taking Google to court over anti-competitive practice. That’s kinda a given given the size of the US-based Google. That I can live with – its business.

This however makes me mad! I posted recently about Courtney Tuttle’s keyword sniping approach which is all about creating focussed websites. Its NOT about spamming but apparently someone has reported to Court to Google and now he doesn’t even rate for his name for his main site Courtney Tuttle

So what is so dangerous about Court’s site that he shouldn’t be shown if someone searches for his name? Well Court obviously thinks its because he suggested that content wasn’t King, and that getting legitimate backlinks via articles and other means would get your content ranked.

So now Court has to backpeddle, take down his most useful posts on keyword sniping and post in effect a retraction saying he was wrong! Reminds me of the Spanish Inquisition to be honest – remember how you could get burnt at the stake for believing in the wrong form of God, well this is the internet equivalent. No his life isn’t threatened, but his livelihood certainly is, as his main business is an internet marketing consultancy with his brand built around his name.

So because of some un-named, unknown, for reasons which he doesn’t know about, suddenly his business is affected. He’s now guilty and has to prove himself innocent – all because someone is jealous or worse a business competitor can’t think of any other way competing with him!
Photo Credit: saswat

Categories
Blogging Freelance Writing HubPages Online Business

Tips from the First Year On Line


Happy Anniversary!
Originally uploaded by bruno1378

Since my last post on Freelance Writing we have had a quick trip back to New Zealand for the New Zealand Dancesport Championships. This is my anniversary post. Sept 2007 was when we arrived in Perth, Western Australia and decided to stay awhile. We decided that I would try to make an online income to replace my IT salary (US$1000/week round figures) – I gave myself until December to do it – LOL

I know I wrote how my online business was going up until May – yes ignore the date time travel is alive and well on blogs.

March I found a new approach to making money on-line. Wish I could remember how I found it but I found Vic’s Make Money online site around then. He’s responsible for the name of this site because the initial idea was to buy 100 info domains.

Well I set up some sites and waited for Google to index them, and waited, and in fact I’m still waiting. Almost simultaneously info BANS sites fell out of favour with Google. I was a little pissed to say the least – in fact I cried in frustration quite literally. Everything seems to have worked for people last month or last week – but as soon as I touched it poof – gone. I was in no doubt that Vic was explaining how he made money to me – but the search engine’s rules appeared to change every time I tried what was being recommended!

I was pretty very close to giving up then – I was also participating in Vic’s trends blogging contest: where you blog about current news – which did at least make me realize that the trick to getting traffic was to write about something that people were actively searching on – duh! Vic said in one of video posts something that stuck with – “proof of life” – (according to the movie of the same name this is the first thing that hostage negotiators ask for) . So I did my own little experiment. I had already bought a info domain which was the same keyword phrase of my best performing hub page. I knew how many people searched for the phrase – because my hubpage was normally ranked #1 or #2 in Google, I knew it wouldn’t make me a fortune but I just wanted to know I could get my own site on the first page. I put a niche blog on the domain using Court’s Keyword Sniping.

Well it worked. For the last couple of months my site is regularly on page 1 or 2 of the Google results for a number of its keywords. For weeks it alternated from being not indexed to being in the top 10 pages. It seems to have settled down now. It the CPC is rubbish – it will never make me more that $1/day – and its made me nothing to date because I haven’t yet dared put Adsense on it –I want it to be more consistently on page #1 before I do that. I’ve done it I have proven to myself I can get a site indexed and ranked even on an info domain.

I was concentrated on my freelance writing when the other day I got an email saying that eBay had paid me – $10. I went an checked my eBay earnings for the first time in a couple of months and oddly some of those un-indexed BANS sites were getting clicks and a couple had made me a little bit of money. I did further investigation: Google still hated me but Yahoo loves me! And it wasn’t even that sites which I had developed properly – think of the potential if I actually put some more pages on the sites 🙂

So now after a year I can happily report that my actual website online income is about the same as it has been for month. BUT – and its a big but, I definitely feel I am at the end of the beginning at the start of the real beginning … To Be Continued the fun has just started!