The Art of Article Submission
Published by fongrich on Tagged Internet MarketingOne of my main method of traffic and SEO is through article submission. It kills a lot of birds with one shot.
- One way links
- Instant targetted traffic
- free
This is method is not new and has been written about for years. It is a bit tedious at times if you’re doing it all yourself, but I outsource so it’s no big deal to me.
I am going to layout how I do it, but understand that there are a lot of people out there doing it differently. For now, it’s been working so I’ll probably make a few minor improvements, but the process will be about the same.
First, when I have those 14 articles from the 20 batch, I will send it to my article submitter. He’ll submit these articles to the top article directories twice a week. That’s 2 articles a week.
Top Article Directory I submit to:
Ezinearticles.com
Goarticles.com
Articledashboard.com
Articlefeeder.com
Isnare.com
These are by no means the only top directories. There are plenty of other good directories, but for my purpose it’s just way of distribution.
Ezinearticles is by far the most powerful directory. It’ll send you direct traffic and you get a lot of ranking power on a lowly competitive keyword targetted keyword. So if you only submit to one, ezineartcles is hands down the one you go for.
Isnare is a mass distribution service. It cost around $1 to submit to hundreds or thousands of directory which makes it pretty powerful. However, you can’t over do it in the beginning as Google doesn’t like to see a ton of links going to your site the first week or month of launch.
That’s pretty much the basics of what I do for article submission. Submit the 2 articles a week per site to the top directories, and traffic will start to trickle in. Some people make it their only source of traffic, which is ok, but it’s not maximizing it. I try to get into link exchange networks as well. In the future, I will consider blog commenting and other sources of traffic on my more profitable sites.
The only downside to article submission I heard is that you have to keep doing it or your traffic will trickle down. I have only been doing it for 4 months and been pretty continuous, but I can see that happening. That’s why it’s important to have other SEO legs to support your money sites.
Here’s a free ebook that taught me about article submission: http://www.articlestrategies.com
I’d have to say, the free ebook played a major role in my article strategy and getting out of my corporate gig. 
Thanks Tim!
April 2007 Net Income = $2,910.82
Published by fongrich on Tagged Adsense Update, Business JournalEarning Breakdown:
Adsense - $2200.02
Aff - $535.02
Kontera - $175.75
As predicted this month’s earning was stagged from last month. However, a lot of progress this month so I can only see good growth in May. I have set up a system to launch around 30 sites a month with only 5 hours of work / week from me. The rest of work are done by other people. It’s quite the system. However, all this cost quite a bit. Each site costs me about $50-85, and that’s just with 20 articles with 6 on the site and rest for promotion. So my monthly investment is around $2.5-3K. This doesn’t include the $1K in education and software I am investing. So in total, I am spending about $4K+ every month in business and living on $2K for rent and personals. As you can see, I am bleeding money right now. I have been leveraging my credit card which is at about $7K. However, I have enough saved up to cover it and I have quite a bit more in retirement fund. Hopefully, I’ll never have to touch that and my income will meet my expenses within the next couple of months.
I know, this is risky business. Most people would work at their full time job until they can break even or ahead before they quit. But personally, I want rapid growth and I hate working for the man. I have total confidence in my plan, and even if it doesn’t work out. I’ll just have to put my tail between my leg and look for a full time job again. Not the end of the world. However, if it does work, it’ll work much faster and I’ll have much more fun getting there. So far, it’s been awesome!
I have added 26 sites this month. Making my total website portfolio of 47 sites. Most of these sites are from PLR sites which drastically reduce my cost and time of developing them. I do rewrite all the articles, so they are just as unique, but require less time and resources. I wish I implemented this strategy last year, but better now than never.
Since my 30 sites/month growth plan requires 5hr/wk on average now, I am able to focus on other projects. This month, I will be focusing much of my attention to portal feeder sites. These are more sophisticated sites that allow datafeed, drip content, blog and a network of sites built on one market. I recently purchased a software that’ll allow me to do this from portalfeeder.com It’s cost $400 to get started and $300/month licensing fee. I see great potential in this as I’ve been wanting to branch out to affiliates and this software is exactly what I’ve been seeking. Sometimes, I think the universe is watching out for me and giving me what I need when I need it and not a day before.
Working For Myself is Soooo Sweet!!
Published by fongrich on Tagged Internet Business, Business JournalIt’s been 18 days since my ‘retirement’ from the corporate world and I want to give a quick up date. Basically, life is pretty sweet at the moment. I get up around 10AM, read for half hour to an hour, then I roll out of bed and plan for my day while eating breakfast. Then, I start talking to my ’staff.’ It’s usually night in other timezones, so I am just getting an update of what they have done while I was sleeping. I keep close track of my time with a time tracker. I break down my production hours into: project management, web development and R&D. Pretty self explanatory and easy to use. It really keep my somewhat slacker ass on track. Another very useful tool is a “to-do” list manager, which is based on the book “Getting Things Done” - David Allen. It’s a more advance technique and very effect in getting projects done by breaking it down. It’s at nozbe.com
I work at about an hour burst on one thing only and completely focus on it. That means no email, no checking on adsense, no surfing, not even bathroom if I can help it. Then I take a 10 minute break. I can do 2 bursts in a row, then I need to run an errand, excercise or a longer break. Depending on what I am doing mostly, but sometimes it gets too mundane for me to sit in front of a computer. Since I don’t have a boss watching over me, I can just leave, take a nap, or whatever. Did I mention life is sweet?
On a productive day, I get in about 7 production hours. That’s hyper focused, no messing around work. In corporate world, the probably translate into 9-10 “face time.” However, on some days.. usually a Friday.. I sometimes totally slack off and take 2 separate naps lasting an hour each… hahaha I didn’t feel good about myself that day. Overall, I am getting a LOT more done than were I doing this part time. On average (based on 2.5 weeks), I get around 35 hours of productive work in a week. I try to keep things balance. I make sure I get out of the house daily. Most times to exercise, errands or classes. So I get some social interaction and don’t feel like a hermit. (which hurt moral and lowers production)
Result:
Well, revenue has actually gone down a bit since last month. This is expected as March was pretty good. However, by the end of this week I will have launched 18 new sites. So I have been averaging 1 site/day. Of course, they’re launched in bursts, so it’s not like one comes out a day or I am actually involved with launching it. My role is to coordinate and track results. These sites will kick in about $40/month average after 3 months. So for now, I will be bleeding money launching these sites. But in 3-5 months, things will kick in and I will finally be in green.
I have 4 writers, 1 article submitter, 1 webmaster/programmer. I also got a rolodex of graphics designer, web designer, and programmer on call if I need anything. Once this business evolves, I’ll need a project manager to manage all this while I focus on something more interesting. Maybe I don’t.. Haven’t quite decided. There are still many ideas that I need to test. I am still learning so new key knowledge could completely shift my business strategy as it has in the last few months. That’s what I like to call biz evolution.
So far, my key traffic generator is article submission. I don’t do much link exchange except for a few sites in a very sophisticated network which I pay dearly for (StomperNet), but it’s also a very good source of knowledge and expertise. I can just pop into the forum with a very specific question about technical, marketing, business strategy and it’ll be answered by many real experts within 12 hours. It’s completely worth it for me when I am stomped on something. For now, I still need to learn this datafeed and blogs to really scale traffic and work the affiliate angel. That’s my current plan and it will keep me busy for the next couple of months. After that, I’ll probably look at my network and see what niche opportunity I can really focus on to get it wider and deeper focused to really establish a few big cash cows.