If you are a bum marketer, then you are probably aware of the importance of choosing a long tail keyword phrase that has low competition. The lower the competition, the greater than chance of your article ranking well in the search engine results, and the more page views you will get.
And you are probably aware of how we determine competition. We place the specific keyword phrase within quotation marks into the Google search box.
But did you know that Google has another search function that you use to help you further determine your true competition?
Its called the allintitle function.
To use this function, just type in your keyword phrase within quotes preceded by allintitle. So inside the Google search box should look like this: allintitle: "keyword phrase"
What does this give you? All the results for webpages that have that particular keyword phrase as its title. Not the article title, but the title used for the actual webpage itself.
So how can bum marketers use this info?
Let's say that you have two keyword phrases that you are interested in writing a few articles on. Both these keyword phrases have the same number of daily Google searches (100 searches) and the same number of competing webpages (900 webpages).
Seem pretty even, right?
Now here's where the allintitle function can help. You do an allintitle search for both of the keyword phrases, and discover that the first phrase has 300 results and the second phrase has 50 results.
How do I use this information?
I am going to make an assumption here. I am going to assume that a page that uses the keyword phrase in its title is better optimized for that phrase than pages that use a different title.
So in this case, I would say that the first keyword phrase has more competition than the second one because more of the pages are targeted to it.
Therefore I would write about keyword phrase 2 because I would have a better chance of ranking higher in Google.
Now, this isn't an exact science. I am using these numbers to help estimate competition. Just another tool that you can use (if the need arises).
Best wishes,
JoeMack
"Bum Marketing", as defined by JoeMack, is using various free techniques in order to generate income online. It is definitely possible to make money, sometimes significant amounts of money, each month without having to invest a single penny of your funds.
Which Bum Marketer Will Make More?
Top level domain name redirect VS Product Review Landing Page
A product review page can greatly increase the conversion rate, but because you are filtering out more people, it may not be more profitable in the short term.
Let's use an example:
Two Warriors are promoting the same affiliate product (which earns them a commission of $45. Let's say over a weeks time, they both generate 500 visitors from their articles.
Warrior A has been doing a top level domain name redirect, so he is sending his traffic from his articles straight to the affiliate salespage. His sales conversion ratio is 2%.
Warrior B send his traffic to a product review landing page. He gets conversion ratio is 5% at the affiliate salespage because he is "softly" preselling the affiliate product.
So who do you think will make more?
My answer is: Warrior A.
Yes, because of the awesome product review that Warrior B gave, his conversion rate is more than double. But...because he added an additional step, he's filtered out some traffic. So of the readers who got to the product review page, how many clicked on the affiliate sales link (your CTR on the review page)?
I would say that it would range in the 15-45% of people clicking the link and getting to the affiliate salespage. For this example, we'll say that its a strong 30%.
Do you see the problem here?
So both Warriors A and B each get 500 people to click on the links in their resource boxes. How much did they make?
Warrior A sends 500 visitors to the affiliate salespage. His conversion ratio is 2%. He generates 10 sales @ $45 each, giving him a weekly commission of $450.
Warrior B sends 500 visitors to the product review page. His product review convinces 30% of the readers (150 of them). His conversion ratio is a superior 5%. He generates 7.5 sales (just for calculation purposes) @ $45 each, giving him a weekly commission of $337.50.
Warrior A made $112.50 more than Warrior B.
So what's the point of this? I guess that you should really play around with numbers to see what actually is the best solution for your income goals.
If you need money quicker, then you are going to want to direct as much traffic as possible to the affiliate salespage.
If you are looking for long-term, stable income than you'll want to add steps along the way (namely capturing their names and email addresses for further communication and relationship building). A mailing list of tightly targeted individuals is a powerful asset.
Best wishes,
JoeMack
A product review page can greatly increase the conversion rate, but because you are filtering out more people, it may not be more profitable in the short term.
Let's use an example:
Two Warriors are promoting the same affiliate product (which earns them a commission of $45. Let's say over a weeks time, they both generate 500 visitors from their articles.
Warrior A has been doing a top level domain name redirect, so he is sending his traffic from his articles straight to the affiliate salespage. His sales conversion ratio is 2%.
Warrior B send his traffic to a product review landing page. He gets conversion ratio is 5% at the affiliate salespage because he is "softly" preselling the affiliate product.
So who do you think will make more?
My answer is: Warrior A.
Yes, because of the awesome product review that Warrior B gave, his conversion rate is more than double. But...because he added an additional step, he's filtered out some traffic. So of the readers who got to the product review page, how many clicked on the affiliate sales link (your CTR on the review page)?
I would say that it would range in the 15-45% of people clicking the link and getting to the affiliate salespage. For this example, we'll say that its a strong 30%.
Do you see the problem here?
So both Warriors A and B each get 500 people to click on the links in their resource boxes. How much did they make?
Warrior A sends 500 visitors to the affiliate salespage. His conversion ratio is 2%. He generates 10 sales @ $45 each, giving him a weekly commission of $450.
Warrior B sends 500 visitors to the product review page. His product review convinces 30% of the readers (150 of them). His conversion ratio is a superior 5%. He generates 7.5 sales (just for calculation purposes) @ $45 each, giving him a weekly commission of $337.50.
Warrior A made $112.50 more than Warrior B.
So what's the point of this? I guess that you should really play around with numbers to see what actually is the best solution for your income goals.
If you need money quicker, then you are going to want to direct as much traffic as possible to the affiliate salespage.
If you are looking for long-term, stable income than you'll want to add steps along the way (namely capturing their names and email addresses for further communication and relationship building). A mailing list of tightly targeted individuals is a powerful asset.
Best wishes,
JoeMack
One Way To Revive A "Dead" Article
Have you ever had this happen to you?
You find a long tail keyword phrase that gets 200 searches per day on Google, and has under 1000 competing webpages. A well written article based around that keyword phrase should generate some steady page views.
So you write and submit the article. After an initial flurry of pages views, you haven't received a single page view in weeks.
On paper, it should be getting much more exposure.
Well, yesterday I wanted to try an experiment with one of these articles. I wanted to see if I could "generate" more exposure for the article, at least temporarily.
As it stood, it only had 48 page views and 13 click thrus in almost three weeks of publication at EZA. It also hadn't received a new page view in almost two weeks. I was baffled by it.
So I went to Google and typed in "myniche forum". I registered for just two of them. I started a thread that was like, "I just submitted an article about such and such. I was wondering if you guys could read it and let me know what you think of it."
That was it. My other option, especially if I was going to do this on a more consistent basis, would be to link to the article in my sig file.
I saw the results almost instantly.
Before making the posts, my article had 48 page views and 13 click thrus.
After just three hours (on an article that hadn't received a page view in almost two weeks), my stats for that article were now 117 page views and 37 click thrus.
Not only that, but the CTR for this traffic (34.8%) was higher than the normal CTR value (27.1%).
In total, I spent a total of about 20 minutes on this project. Could I have written more posts? Sure. Could I have found more forums? Yes, there were plenty to choose from. I just chose the first two.
One more thing:
This is just my thoughts, not fact. But by linking back to the article, I am not only getting new readers, I am also increasing the amount of backlinks for my article.
And because they are focused (top forums in this niche), this will raise my article in the search engine results. The higher you go, the more page vieews you will get.
I just touched the surface with this strategy. I hope that it gets some people thinking.
Best wishes,
JoeMack
You find a long tail keyword phrase that gets 200 searches per day on Google, and has under 1000 competing webpages. A well written article based around that keyword phrase should generate some steady page views.
So you write and submit the article. After an initial flurry of pages views, you haven't received a single page view in weeks.
On paper, it should be getting much more exposure.
Well, yesterday I wanted to try an experiment with one of these articles. I wanted to see if I could "generate" more exposure for the article, at least temporarily.
As it stood, it only had 48 page views and 13 click thrus in almost three weeks of publication at EZA. It also hadn't received a new page view in almost two weeks. I was baffled by it.
So I went to Google and typed in "myniche forum". I registered for just two of them. I started a thread that was like, "I just submitted an article about such and such. I was wondering if you guys could read it and let me know what you think of it."
That was it. My other option, especially if I was going to do this on a more consistent basis, would be to link to the article in my sig file.
I saw the results almost instantly.
Before making the posts, my article had 48 page views and 13 click thrus.
After just three hours (on an article that hadn't received a page view in almost two weeks), my stats for that article were now 117 page views and 37 click thrus.
Not only that, but the CTR for this traffic (34.8%) was higher than the normal CTR value (27.1%).
In total, I spent a total of about 20 minutes on this project. Could I have written more posts? Sure. Could I have found more forums? Yes, there were plenty to choose from. I just chose the first two.
One more thing:
This is just my thoughts, not fact. But by linking back to the article, I am not only getting new readers, I am also increasing the amount of backlinks for my article.
And because they are focused (top forums in this niche), this will raise my article in the search engine results. The higher you go, the more page vieews you will get.
I just touched the surface with this strategy. I hope that it gets some people thinking.
Best wishes,
JoeMack
3 Reasons Why Bum Marketers SHOULD Use Pen Names
There are three reasons why bum marketers should use pen names.
Reason #1: Easier to be seen as an "expert." If you don't use a pen name, then you will be the author of articles in a variety of niches. And when a person sees this, they generally assume the "jack-of-all-trades, master of none" assumption about you.
And this assumption will negatively influence their perception of you, causing them to lower the value they place on your article (and thus reduce the chance of them clicking on your resource box link).
But the opposite is also true. By using one pen name per niche, you will more likely be seen as an expert in the niche. This will ultimately increase your click thru rate.
Not to mention that you can create a persona that better suits your reader. Let's say that your name is "Filmore Hagenbugger" and you want to promote a hot new online dating affiliate. You may want to use the pen name "Traci Summers" to better connect with your readers (in their minds anyway). And if you can better connect, all of your numbers will be higher (page views, CTRs, sales conversions, etc).
NOTE: My apologies to all the "Filmore"s out there.
2. Easier tracking. If you are a bum marketer, than chances are you are using Ezinearticles.com. The fact that they allow you to create unlimited pen names, makes it so simple to keep track of your articles.
Each niche is different. Having a CTR of 20% may be horrible for one niche, but very high for another. As long as you stick to one niche per pen name, you will be able to very quickly analyze the success you are having with your article writing efforts for each individual niche.
3. Gives you protection. What would happen if you wrote and submitted 2000 articles under one name, and then some marketers found out. Very easily, they would know exactly which niches you are targetting.
Not only that, but they will also know which niches you are having success with by seeing which niches you kept writing about. They would be able to see which affiliate programs you are promoting, how you write your headlines, resource boxes, etc.
Basically, it leaves your business open for additional competition.
Now, let's say that you generously use pen names. A clever marketer could find out about one of your niches, but you would still have some protection for the rest of your identities.
Using pen names is a must when using bum marketing. Take advantage of this feature at EZA.
Best wishes,
JoeMack
Reason #1: Easier to be seen as an "expert." If you don't use a pen name, then you will be the author of articles in a variety of niches. And when a person sees this, they generally assume the "jack-of-all-trades, master of none" assumption about you.
And this assumption will negatively influence their perception of you, causing them to lower the value they place on your article (and thus reduce the chance of them clicking on your resource box link).
But the opposite is also true. By using one pen name per niche, you will more likely be seen as an expert in the niche. This will ultimately increase your click thru rate.
Not to mention that you can create a persona that better suits your reader. Let's say that your name is "Filmore Hagenbugger" and you want to promote a hot new online dating affiliate. You may want to use the pen name "Traci Summers" to better connect with your readers (in their minds anyway). And if you can better connect, all of your numbers will be higher (page views, CTRs, sales conversions, etc).
NOTE: My apologies to all the "Filmore"s out there.
2. Easier tracking. If you are a bum marketer, than chances are you are using Ezinearticles.com. The fact that they allow you to create unlimited pen names, makes it so simple to keep track of your articles.
Each niche is different. Having a CTR of 20% may be horrible for one niche, but very high for another. As long as you stick to one niche per pen name, you will be able to very quickly analyze the success you are having with your article writing efforts for each individual niche.
3. Gives you protection. What would happen if you wrote and submitted 2000 articles under one name, and then some marketers found out. Very easily, they would know exactly which niches you are targetting.
Not only that, but they will also know which niches you are having success with by seeing which niches you kept writing about. They would be able to see which affiliate programs you are promoting, how you write your headlines, resource boxes, etc.
Basically, it leaves your business open for additional competition.
Now, let's say that you generously use pen names. A clever marketer could find out about one of your niches, but you would still have some protection for the rest of your identities.
Using pen names is a must when using bum marketing. Take advantage of this feature at EZA.
Best wishes,
JoeMack
Do You Know How To Check Your Clickbank Stats?
Generally, most affiliate programs (including Clickbank) have a tracking or analytics system set up. You can view how many times your affiliate link was clicked there.
If you are promoting an affiliate product in the Clickbank Marketplace, just log into your account. Click on the Reporting tab.
Then click on the Analytics tab.
Once here, go to the section titled "Affiliate Reporting." Set the "Report By" setting to Publishers. Set the date range to what you are interested in (the last week, the last 30 days, etc).
This will give you a list of Publishers (ie. the owners of the affiliate programs you are promoting) and a number of useful statistics like Clicks (Hops), Sales, etc.
You can easily see which affiliate programs are getting clicks and more importantly, which ones are getting sales.
And this is really key. You will find that some of the affiliate programs are duds (meaning that the sales conversion ratio is very low). I just had to stop promoting a program because it had 402 hops without a sale.
But that's fine. Now I know, and I can start sending the traffic generated by articles for it to a different affiliate program.
And you will also see your winners, and can start putting more energy into promoting them. I have one affiliate program that results in a sale for every 47 people I send to the salespage. I have just increased my efforts with it because I know that its profitable.
Hope that helps.
JoeMack
If you are promoting an affiliate product in the Clickbank Marketplace, just log into your account. Click on the Reporting tab.
Then click on the Analytics tab.
Once here, go to the section titled "Affiliate Reporting." Set the "Report By" setting to Publishers. Set the date range to what you are interested in (the last week, the last 30 days, etc).
This will give you a list of Publishers (ie. the owners of the affiliate programs you are promoting) and a number of useful statistics like Clicks (Hops), Sales, etc.
You can easily see which affiliate programs are getting clicks and more importantly, which ones are getting sales.
And this is really key. You will find that some of the affiliate programs are duds (meaning that the sales conversion ratio is very low). I just had to stop promoting a program because it had 402 hops without a sale.
But that's fine. Now I know, and I can start sending the traffic generated by articles for it to a different affiliate program.
And you will also see your winners, and can start putting more energy into promoting them. I have one affiliate program that results in a sale for every 47 people I send to the salespage. I have just increased my efforts with it because I know that its profitable.
Hope that helps.
JoeMack
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)