Article marketing is the process of creating content to submit to article directories for publishing. You can create these articles yourself or have someone write them for you but they will need to relate to the niche of the website or affiliate program you are trying to promote. As the articles are written or created, you will need to include the keyword phrase you are looking to promote and I will explain the reason behind this shortly.

Once the article is completed, you can visit one of the countless article directories and submit it for publication. A majority of the directories are free to submit to and will have a fairly quick turnaround time for either acceptance or rejection of your submitted article. These directories already have established traffic and Google PR value.

Depending on where you’re submitting your content for article marketing purposes, you’ll be able to include links to your website anchored by keyword phrases within the body of the submission itself. It is best to review their conditions as well as taking a look at some of the other accepted articles within the directory to get an idea of what you can and cannot do. There will also be an author bio spot where you can add a further backlink to your site as well as tell the world a little about yourself or the web property you are promoting.

Once the article is published, you will have a backlink from their directory to your website. In addition to that backlink, you also have an opportunity to achieve more links to your website when other blogs and sites republish your article, leaving your backlinks intact. For anyone familiar with SEO strategies, securing valuable and related backlinks to your website is one of the best ways to improve your search engine results.

The client had decided to use content that he picked up at a popular webmaster forum and was labelled “semi-exclusive”, meaning it would only be offered to a few clients for publishing. When I took the first line from an article and did an exact search at Google, I came up with 8 pages of spidered content that was identical to what he had published on his site.

One of two things may have happened. The first and most like scenario is the possibility that that person he purchased the articles from sold it to more people then he should have. The second possibility could be that one of the purchasers used them as articles for submissions to various article directories for SEO purposes, submitting the same articles over and over again. This can lead to other webmasters and “auto-blog” sites picking them up and publishing them on their own web properties.

When I showed him the evidence, he was quite shocked and commissioned me to create some new, keyword related articles to replace this duplicate content. You are definitely taking chances when you purchase semi-exclusive content and my recommendation would be to use that money to hire a freelance writing service to create fresh and unique content for your website or article submission purposes.

Do you have a negative experience with semi-exclusive or duplicate content? Leave me a comment as I’d love to hear about your experience and how you handled it.

Thanks for reading!

What I didn’t write about was the fact that this brand new life lasted exactly 10 days. I relapsed and ended up heading to my mobile provider to purchase a new unit to replace my personal cell phone. Life was good and I was once again at the mercy of my Crackberry addiction.

This Crackberry addiction lasted until about 6 months ago after a series of events eventually made me decide to move on. My wife cashed in some of her saving to treat me to an all inclusive vacation last January and before we headed down to Cuba for a week of fun and sun, I washed my Blackberry and destroyed it. Despite spending a week in a bag of rice while we were down south, I had to bury the damn thing in the backyard beside my beloved cat. Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit but that’s how much I loved that damn thing.

My mobile provider wouldn’t budge on giving me an early upgrade so I purchased a used unit off of Ebay and once again the proud owner of a Blackberry. This replacement only lasted about 4 months when it started acting up. Still outside of my window for an inexpensive upgrade, I went to an iPhone and have used that every since.

While the iPhone has some benefits, including a killer Netflix and YouTube app that I use religiously, there are certain things I miss. The instant email connection and notification is something that I had become so accustomed to is not something I intend to set-up on my new smartphone. It took me a few weeks to break that particular addiction but I’m finally free of having to respond to emails the instant I receive them. The other thing I miss dramatically is the keyboard. I have become quite proficient using the iPhone’s touch screen keypad but nothing beats holding that little Blackberry in your hand and letting the words fly.

So like an alcoholic, I am here to proudly say I am free of my Crackberry addiction and it’s been 6 months since I last used.

Thanks for reading!

As a regular reader of various freelance tip blogs, I have come across those that preach job posting websites such as oDesk and Scriptlance as one of the best ways to generate new business. Unfortunately, I have found websites of this nature to be rather frustrating to deal with and tend to only help you locate lower paying jobs that may not be worth your time. Here’s a couple of disadvantages that I have found using this kind of service.

One of the biggest issues you’ll face is the fees associated with these job posting and placement services. In some way or another, they extract fees from yourself or the buyer. Some services even extract fees from both sides of the equation. If the buyer is paying money to find you, he’s naturally going to expect to pay less in order to get the work completed. Alternatively, you’ll be earning less if you have to pay project fees, either a flat rate or a commission based on the jobs you accept. This cuts into your earning potential and can be dramatic, especially if you’re only picking up the lower paying jobs.

Another disadvantage to these websites is the fact that they tend to be littered with lower paying jobs, especially based on the fact there is so much oversea talent bidding on the projects. I’ve written about this in the past where I recommended you not compete with oversea talent on pricing as sometimes you’d be in a better position to simply find a job paying minimum wage then pumping out quality content at rock bottom pricing. Make sure you set your pricing according to what you want to earn, not what someone is looking to pay.

Finally, the selling cycle on these job postings tends to be quite long with the average project taking 20 days from the time it is originally posted to the final selection of a freelancer. This can potentially cause you issues down the road, especially if you bid on several projects at once only to find out you’ve been selected to do more work then you can handle once the project closes.

Be wary of spending too much time and effort on these project based websites unless you’re faced with no other alternative for tracking down work. If you’ve had positive or negative experiences with these boards or have some tips on sourcing quality projects using them, I’d like to hear from you. Leave a comment and I’ll be sure to get back to you.

Thanks for reading!

Non-Payment or Slow Paying Customers
Not getting paid for your work is probably one of the most discouraging things ever, especially when you have that income earmarked for some pressing household bills. This has happened to me on a few occasions where a customer has disappeared once the work is completed or becomes non-responsive for several days.

There are a few ways you can protect yourself from slow paying or non-paying customers. The first is to require a deposit for a portion of the project in advance to ensure the customer is serious about having the work done. Most clients will accept this request and as you build a relationship with them, this could be a requirement you drop as you become more comfortable with them.

For larger projects, set up payment milestones. For example, if you are completing 100 articles for a client, request partial payment each time 20 articles are submitted and sent. Another way to avoid this particular pitfall of freelancing is to ensure the customer is fully aware of your payment terms before you accept the project. Indicate when you will be paid of your work and in what manner.

Unclear Project Specifications
This is a rather troublesome problem that has caused me issues several times. Accepting projects that have vague descriptions generally tend to end rather miserably as you have to make assumptions in order to proceed. And we all now what happens when you assume! If you don’t understand certain areas of the assignment, make sure you clarify it in advance. If the customer says something to the affect of “I’ll leave it in your capable hands”, do quick drafts of titles or designs and send them over to the client to make sure you’re on the right track rather then spending too much time and effort going in the wrong direction.

Ambition and Motivation
This can be one of the hardest things for a freelancer. You need to have a great deal of ambition and motivation in order to keep on track with assignments and recruiting new customers. With so many distractions in the home and online, it’s quite easy to procrastinate on either of these important items and severely limit your productivity and outcome. Make sure you commit to a schedule and attempt to block out all outside distractions during your work time. Reward yourself when you complete certain items like taking a half hour break to catch up on your favourite television program or heading out to have a coffee break with a friend.

While the owner expects to make some additional money on drinks, he mentioned that most of the group site buyers have simply been in for the meals and cheap drinks, such as pop or water. What’s made the promotion even worse for him at this point is the fact that between 30-40% of the customers who have redeemed their coupons to date were regular or semi-regular customers who were already familiar with his establishment. What makes things even worse is the fact that they won’t see the money collected from the group buying site for about 60 days.

So are these website all they’re really cracked up to be? It would seem that there are two people that are benefiting the most from this latest marketing craze; the customers who buy the coupons and the group buying website itself. The customer obviously gets a discount on a product they are interested in and the site profits from the commissions they receive when each deal is sold. While the business owner does receive a boost in customers, it’s not always a profitable situation and there’s no guarantees these new found customers will be back unless another offer is posted at the site.

Google “Groupon Horror Stories” and you’ll find a large collection of articles from people who weren’t happy with the experience. Heck, there’s even a Facebook Group where business owners and customers talk about their poor experience.

Before you jump into a promotion with one of these sites, you may want to do some research. The sales representative will always give you the bright side of the story but seldom share the negative feedback and experiences that can occur if you run a program with them. My next blog post will feature some low cost alternative promotions to running something at Groupon or one of their competitors.

Do you have a horror story you’d like to share about Groupon or other group buying websites? Leave a comment below and I will be in touch!

In reviewing the whole concept of article marketing during a recent project, I have seen that there are still a large number of people using this online marketing tool. In fact I am starting to get a number of customer inquiries as to the service in addition to some newcomers who are asking me to write an ebook about it. So if others are still seeing value to this marketing tool, why not investigate to see if it’s worth pursuing again.

As I start outlining my ebook, I have decided to try a little project starting in a few weeks. I am going to investigate some of the popular directories to see which ones are worth submitting to and then devising an article marketing strategy. My plan is to submit 10 articles per week to the various directories and then monitor a few things such as acceptance rate, incoming traffic from the articles as well as how many articles are getting republished by other sites. Finally, I want to see if I can determine the value of the backlinks and if I end up seeing any improvement in certain keyword terms that I am targeting.

Overall this effort is to assist me in the publication of my upcoming ebook but it will also determine if I should start offering this service to clients once again. Keep visiting the site and I’ll update you on the progress throughout. Also feel free to leave comments below on your experience with article marketing, whether its good, bad or indifferent.

Make sure you have a clearly defined project outline with as much detail as possible.
If you’re going into a project with just a vague or general idea of what you want created and accomplished, you’re heading for disaster. Simply putting something like “I want to create a site like…” is bound to create communication issues between yourself and whatever freelancer is foolish enough to bid on such a project. Creating a detailed document that includes an overall description of the project, the desired features and design considerations is essential to the success of the project.

Don’t be lured by cheap bids.
When a freelancer or team of coders undercut most of their competitors, you definitely need to be wary of their motivation. Sometimes you will have people willing to work for much cheaper then normal as they’re trying to nail down their first freelance job on a certain project board to help their feedback while others are just attempting to get as many jobs regardless of the cost. Both of these motivations can turn into a very negative experience for all parties involved. Newcomers hoping to increase their feedback profile may end up resenting the project part way through and not put their full efforts forward because they’re making very little money on an hourly basis. Those trying to get as many projects as possible regardless of the cost will often produce sloppy work and submit items late due as they’re trying to juggle too many projects at once.

Ask questions and review portfolios
When you receive bids on the project ask lots of questions such as the team’s programming experience, what projects they have worked on recently, how long have they been doing it, etc. The more questions you ask, the better the feel you will get for their capabilities. Also, thoroughly review their portfolio to make sure they have experience in both the programming language you’ve requested as well as projects similar to yours.

I’m sure you’ll have your own experiences once you get a project or two under your belt just as I had. If you have any of your own rules or recommendations, be sure to leave a comment below.

Good luck!

This is a good thing for small businesses. As I mentioned in my previous post on using Facebook and Groupon to help launch your new business, most people used to turn to newspaper advertisements when they were making a purchasing decision such as buying a vehicle or figuring out what band to check out over the weekend. While there is still value in newspaper advertising, the line rates continue to rise due to their increased costs for printing and distribution while readership and subscriptions decline. To top it all off, key demographics that you’re looking at targeting probably don’t even read the newspaper anymore.

As a result many new or small business are relying on Facebook to deliver information to their potential and current customers. It’s very easy to get things setup and use and the best part about it is that most of the tools are absolutely free to use. Results at no cost? It’s not hard to see why newspaper ads are declining.

I’m going to assume that you already know how to setup your Facebook page and/or are capable of hunting that information down. I may include a post a bit later on tips to setting it up but for now I would really like to give you some useful marketing ideas on how to increase the number of people who “Like” your company’s page.

The first and most effective way is to send a message out to your family and friends asking them to like your Facebook page. When they click that magic “Like” button, its published on their profile page as well as the news feed. You will definitely have people checking it out based on the fact that their friends liked it, making it a viral form of promotion.

From time to time you should also include your Facebook page in your own status messages, with the link automatically parsed. Doing this is quite simple. Begin typing your message and when its time to include your business name, type the “@” symbol with the first few letters of your company name and you’ll be able to include. All of your friends will see this in their news feed and again, the curious will click. Check out the picture below to give you an idea on how it’s done.

Be sure to write a post on your Facebook page wall with information about upcoming events and promotions. Post pictures of your business, the people involved or special events that have taken place in the past. All of these get published to the news feed and if people comment on them or like the posts themselves, it gets published to their profile page.

Lastly, make sure you have your address tagged via GPS so you can encourage your customers to “Check In” when they arrive. You could run a contest each week/month giving away freebies to encourage people to check in when they arrive at your company’s location. The more people that check in, the more mentions you will get in that all mighty news feed.

These are just a few tips and if you’re looking for something specific to your company or place of business leave a comment below with some details and I would be more then happy to assist either on a one on one basis or to be included in a post later on.

Take a bit of time and get to know Facebook and their services before your grand opening and you will be rewarded with followers and potential customers within your area. Creating a page for your business is very easy to do and with the help of your friends and family, you can get people liking your page and inquiring about your new business before you even open your doors to the public. Simply invite your friends to join, create an event for your grand opening and ask all your friends and family to both invite their connections as well as talk about it in their status.

Once you have a following, you can use your Facebook page to let people know about what events or special promotions you’re running at any given time. In the past you would have to fork out money for a regularly running newspaper ad and cross your fingers that potential clients spotted the ad and that the offer appealed to them. Now you can simply communicate this via Facebook to all of your regular customers.

Group buy sites like Groupon also present an amazing opportunity to help plan a successful launch for your business. Simply contact the local sales representative and explain that you’re about ready to open and want to utilize their service. You will want to discuss the offer you’re willing to give group buyers, how many packages you’d like to offer and when your business will want to offer the promotion. In turn the group buying company will give the pitch to their existing customers and help assist you acquire new leads for you new business.

My next post will concentrate on helping you with your Facebook and some ideas on how you can promote your company to your fans as well as their social network.