Mining Gold From The Internet

OK, this post is going to be short but oh-so-sweet.

There's still a lot of discussion around the marketing forums about bum marketing, article marketing and generally sending people to another vendor's site.

Now, let's just stop and think about this for a while.

You're going to write a bunch of articles, submit then to lord knows how many sites and then direct all the traffic you get from those articles via your author bio....to a site that you don't own!?

Madness I tell ye!

All joking aside, it is such a waste of manpower to throw all the readers of your articles to a site you're affiliated with. At the very least cloak your link, so it appears to be part of your site.

Here's a couple of ideas as to how we can improve things and really ramp up our article marketing profits.

Squeeze Page Action

Set up a nice, tight squeeze page with an irresistable offer on it. This could be a free report or a set of autoresponder messages. Now set up a sequence of messages to go out after the free report, or use the sequence of messages that you're already offering and insert some affiliate links.

The power of email marketing must never be underestimated!

In short, use the power of your articles to start building your list, give your subscribers some valuable information for free (or for a small fee, say $7, which seems to be all the rage at the moment) and then follow up with related offers for the niche.

The Review Site Model

If that doesn't float your boat (and it really should) why not set up a reviews site. Choose a niche, say "acne", and use each page to review a different acne product. Be careful to give good and bad reviews to products. If you give everything a glowing review, it'll look suspicious to the visitor (remember no one likes to be obviously sold).

Basically, use the author bio in your articles to contain anchor text such as "acne cream review" and send the traffic to your site whilst also improving the rankings for the key phrase "acne cream review" - a la Niche Marketing On Crack.

I hope that's given you some inspiration for this weekend - remember, don't waste your articles on someone else's site ;)