First of all, thank you to those of you who commented on my July Income Report to enter the contest to win 1 of the 3 free lifetime copies of Instant Article Factory, given to me by Jonathan Leger himself. As I write this post, there are a whopping 269 total comments, most illustrating how they would use IAF and how much it would benefit what they do online. I really wish I had enough free copies to give to everyone, because everyone had wonderful things to say about what the software can do.
I’m happy to announce that the three winners are:
- Stacey
- Eric
- J Griffin
I have already contacted each of the winners via email.
Again, thank you all for your entries, and I feel really bad I can’t choose everyone.
If you didn’t win, but you still want a copy, Jonathan was nice enough to also offer a special “Pat Flynn Discount” (a deep 40% off) just for the SPI community. The offer expires at midnight tonight (Friday, August 6th), so you have until 11:59pm PST to grab the discount.
To get the discount, you must go through my affiliate link (yes, I do earn a commission from your purchase), because again it’s a special discount just for the SPI readers.
You can click here to watch the Instant Article Factory video and grab your copy today.
Moving on…
Why Article Marketing?
As I mentioned in my July Report, article marketing has been my number one strategy to get my niche sites to quickly climb the search engine rankings. It works because you’re writing content relevant to your niche, posting it on a higher authority site and earning a backlink as a result. If you make sure to have your target keywords match the anchor text in your links that go back to your site, then it’s even more powerful.
In addition to that, people scour the article directories to grab content to use on their own sites. This may sound bad at first, but know that in order for people to use your written article, they must credit you as the author and provide a link back to your site.
As a result, you get even more backlinks to your niche site, and possibly some direct traffic from the article itself.
Where to Submit Your Articles
No matter how you create your articles, they’ll do no good unless you submit them to article directories.
There are actually hundreds of article directories out there that are currently accepting new authors and articles, but of course, some are better than others.
I definitely recommend you check out Mark Mason’s Article Directory List, which lists nearly 500 directories, ranked in order based on the directory’s Page Rank and Alexa Ranking.
If You Had to Choose Just One
I would recommend (as I’m sure many other experienced articles marketers would recommend), that if you were to only stick with one article directory to submit your articles to, it would be EzineArticles.com.
Currently, EzineArticles.com is a 10 year old domain that has a Page Rank of 6 and an Alexa Ranking of 125. It’s traffic is comparable to Digg.com, which has an Alexa ranking of 116.
Basically, you get the most ROI with EzineArticles. Backlinks from a PR6 site are very potent, and you have many people publishing the articles that you write elsewhere too (with the proper credit and links back to you, of course).
Some other special notes about EzineArticles.com:
- It’s free to sign up and begin.
- When you first sign up, you’ll be allowed to submit articles, but they will go through a fairly lengthy review process (1 to 3 days), to make sure your articles aren’t just spam or shameless self promotion. They care about content which is nice.
- After 10 articles have been approved, you become an “expert author” and your article review process is much faster.
- You can have one account with several pen names and signatures.
What About Submitting to ALL of the Article Directories?
If you were to submit to all of the directories, you’d get the most backlinks and traffic back to your site – but if done manually it would take forever and a day (especially because many of the directories require unique content), and you’d probably die a slow and boring death, making all of that work you did kind of pointless.
So, you have a couple of options here:
1. Only invest your time submitting to a few of the top article directories.
These are the article directories that I have been submitting to lately:
or…
2. Use automatic article submitter software to submit to all of the article directories.
A lot of people use automatic article submitters, but I steered away from it because I hardly ever trust software to do submissions of things that I thought should be done manually – I don’t know, that’s just me.
Well, leave it to Mark Mason again to change my whole view on things. Based on his recommendation and fantastic videos, I picked up a piece of software yesterday, cleverly called Automatic Article Submitter.
It has only been a day so I cannot fully recommend it yet (because I only recommend things that I am truly familiar with and know will help you), but I did manage to work around the fact that it’s a Windows only program and submit an article I wrote with Instant Article Factory to 149 article directories, in less than 30 minutes.
The software is pretty cool because you can automatically register to the directories and confirm emails, all within the program itself, and it integrates with Instant Article Factory perfectly, using the same notations for article spinning so that every article you submit is unique.
The process did save me a whole lot of time, but we’ll soon see if it was all worth it.
I’ll keep you posted.
Thanks again for your support, and have a safe weekend everyone!
And remember, you only have until midnight tonight (Friday, August 6th) to get Instant Article Factory at the special Pat Flynn price.
Cheers!
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{ 52 comments (Click Here to Leave a Comment Below) }
Hi Pat,
Thanks for all of this amazing content! I’m getting really excited about niche sites!
One question, do the article directories allow you to submit articles that are similar? I know with Instant Article Factory you can turn out tons of articles that are unique but one of the cool things is you can make a unique article just by toggling some synomyms. So is that something the article directories looks at?
Thanks again!!
Karen – that’s a good question, and to be honest I’m not quite sure if they look at that or not. It’s been about a month for me and I have yet to have an article rejected because it was similar to one on another directory.
Are there any expert, more experienced article marketers out there that have a more definite answer? Thanks!
I have been submitting articles for more than a year now. I don’t think article directories have problems with similar articles. Though directories like Ezinearticles have inbuilt systems to check whether the articles is “original enough”. Mostly where I have not spun the articles enough (rule of thumb – more than 30%) usually Ezinearticles doesn’t allow to submit the article. It doesn’t need to go to the editor for rejection at all.
Thanks Sammy! I’ll be sure to spin adequately!!
Great post. What has been your most profitable niche site?
This is really great Pat,
Congrats to all the winners.
Thanks so much for the detailed info about article marketing, I will be giving article marketing a trial ver soon.
Thanks a lot for the great post,
-Onibalusi
Thanks Onibalusi, and remember, I just started going hardcore with it just recently, there is a lot more information out there about how to get even more out of it, I’m sure. I’ll be doing the research, for sure. Thanks again!
Congrates to all the winners.
And thank you for added “food for though” in your comments.
No prob Ron! Cheers!
Pat, thanks so much for the copy of IAF – it’s going to be a tremendous help to me. Talk about a great Friday!
I was actually going to ask you where you submit your articles, and sure enough, you’ve come up with another great post that answers all of my questions and more.
One cool bonus (which I know you know) is that you can submit your articles to sites like HubPages, Info Barrel, and others that can actually earn you money while also helping you build backlinks to your niche sites. How great would that be to improve the rankings of your moneymaking niche sites while also earning some passive/residual income from the articles themselves? Sounds good to me.
Thanks again Pat, much appreciated.
- Eric
Your welcome, Eric. I know you’ll actually use it and put it to good use. I really want you to succeed in your experiments, so keep up the great work!
Good call on submitting to sites other than the main article directories, but revenue sharing sites as well. Cheers!
Eric – Congratulations! I’ve been wondering about the Info Barrel Experiment and how you’re faring. Great to hear that you’re on track and I definitely agreed that this software is going to be a huge boost to your efforts.
Look forward to your next Info Barrel update.
(ps – you inspired me to start a bit of writing for Info Barrel as well – I’ve only got 6 articles so far, but I’m liking it – lots of great passive income & seo potential)
Thanks Dinesh. Glad to have inspired you.
Congrats Eric!
You’re going to do some great things with IAF…I’ve actually read some of your posts on your site and have tried a few things based on your recommendation, so I have no doubt that things will work out for you brotha!
First of all congratulations to
Stacey
Eric
J Griffin
For winning the contest!
Secondly, Pat, the amount of comments on the last post were amazing! I mean I *think* that those were the highest ever for this blog? If I am incorrect, please do correct me.
Thirdly, awesome information on article marketing Pat! You cleared up some basic things which confuse a lot of people new to article marketing, including me.
So thanks a lot for sharing and thanks for your tips on article marketing.
Kindest,
Nabeel
Yes, that was indeed the most comments on any SPI post, by far. Thanks for the support, and I’m glad I cleared some things up for you!
Congrats on the massive amount of comments, Pat. Your next income report may just break 300….
Hah – I don’t know about that. Having the contest obviously helped. Maybe all I need is another contest!
There’s no doubt that Ezine Articles is essentially the established gold standard known by Internet Marketers worldwide. One thing I have said, and have heard others say as well, is that, with a Premium Adsense Account hosting ads all over the place on their articles, they really wish that EZA would share at least some of that revenue with writers.
(A Premium Adsense not only allows them to display more ads, but, it also also them to negotiate directly with Google for a higher revenue share). Farbeit from me to tell them how exactly to run their business (that has clearly worked for years), however, I do think that, with time, the generous Web 2.0 revenue share sites will begin to gradually chip away at their traffic: gaining greater interest because people will be able to achieve similar authority AND gain revenue share.
Granted, the direct calls to actions can be effective in done in the right way, and some revenue sharing sites don’t allow direct calls to actions….
Hey Howie – I’m sure a lot of people wish that, but that’s not the primary purpose of their site, and I’m sort of glad they’re not doing it, because then it would grab a whole different kind of crowd, and the quality of articles may diminish as a result, if not from the articles themselves, then from spending more time to review all of the articles that are just made to share revenue.
That being said, a lot of the articles on there now are made just for affiliate marketing and backlinking, so maybe you’re right.
Ahh, the what ifs..
I know EZA comes up alot over on Warrior Forum, with entire lengthy threads dedicated to essentially debating so many aspects of their business model. Similar to Squidoo and eHow, I do believe they are taking measures to effectively control for the quality of their database and content. It’s not too late, of course, but, if their databae is suffering from quality (one Warrior Forum member went so far as saying 99% of the content there is garbage…which, I think, is a bit of an exaggeration…), then a more stringent quality control process may be needed.
(Of course, what exactly is “Quality” nowadays?, and how do marketers effectively gain visibility while navigating it?)
….on another note, I do think that some marketers are pretty passionate about not liking Ezine Articles because they are worried/tired of, loosing traffic to the plethora of Adsense ads that are hosted. Had they implemented a revenue share arrangement on the Adsense ads, they may see even greater usage that would, over time, make up for the lost profits (from implementing a revenue share arrangement). Greater contentment of writers, would cause word of the site to spread even more, and thus, usage…which would equal greater traffic, authority, and monetization of their existing ads.
Congratulations to all the winners!
And thanks Pat for your generous contest!
No problem Keisha! I’m glad I asked Jon to help out the SPI community!
Yes, congratulations to the winners! Great contest, Pat and I’m sure that many people appreciate the deep discount for the Instant Article Factory software. It’s not something that I’m currently intersted in, but will keep your review in mind for future plans.
I second the quality referral links and writing for EzineArticles as it’s allowed my site to really jump up in the rankings. It’s nice to see some of my articles on the front page due to EZA. Plus, with the WP Plugin that they have, they’ve made it super-easy to publish to my site and to EZA at the same time. Works like a charm!
Hope you have a great weekend
Karen
Karen – how does that plugin work? I mean, what does it do for you and how would it benefit us who do article marketing? Does it like spin articles that you write on your blog and post them on ezine? That would be crazy cool.
Hi Pat,
Ezinearticles has a great write-up about their WP plugin:
http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2010/03/articles-directly-from-wordpress.html
It incorporates directly into your WP dashboard and you write your article as normal. You publish directly to Ezinearticles directory without saving it and then you can go back and make changes to the article for publication. That way you can add links and stuff that Ezinearticles doesn’t allow. Very handy too, and I would suggest you try it out.
Pat,
great tips… thanks. Another great resource that is worth its weight is Unique Article Wizard (http://www.uniquearticlewizard.com/). I have used it for a couple years and have yet to find anything quite like it, but the instant article factory and automatic article submitter seem like valid resources too. It is always good to have several resources such as this.
Thanks again,
Brandon
Congrats to the winners! Well, since I didn’t win the software, I used your affiliate link and purchased my own copy! Within 5 minutes I had my first article written. I would have never written an article in 5 minutes without this awesome tool. Thanks for your recommendation…also for the Marketing Samurai tool, I absolutely love it. And thanks for only recommending tools that you actually use and like. Cheers!
I purchased IAF yesterday from your recommendation and I was floored by how easy it it to write a good article in less than 5 minutes.
I think article marketing may be the next step for me. Thanks for the really informative post. It’s good to not only be inspired, but to have a list of places to start.
Congrats to the winners and congrats to you Pat for having such a great contest. Comments were up the roof! Nice list of article directories too!
Pat as always an incredibly valuable post. Congrats to the winners!
Hey Pat,
Great post. Very well written.
Thanks for sharing.
Congrats to all the winners
.
~Dev
Congratulations to the winners. Also for those that asked, as long as the article passes copyscape or a similar plagerism (sp?) tool then they can be placed on Ezinearticles. Hope that helps.
Pat, you must have read my mind!! I was actually going to shoot you an e-mail asking this very question. I’ve submitted a few articles to Ezine and was wondering where else I could submit them. Very timely advice!! Thanks a bunch.
Congrats to everyone again!
Pat, thanks as well for being such an honest dude with a huge heart!
From your quality content to execution, your certainly an example to follow! Big ups bro!
Pat, thank you again! I can’t wait to get started with IAF. I’m really excited about the time savings this is going to create so I can spend more time with my son.
Have a great weekend!
Congrats Stacey, I am already so impressed with your site! Hope you tell us where IAF takes you, can’t wait to read the success stories.
Good luck!
Thank you for sharing that awesome 500 directory list. I think I will find some kick ass directories to submit my MMO and my wrestling articles to.
Pat, nice to know your readers are enjoying these discounts and even won 3 lifetime copies. Maybe I need to read the last post again (if I missed it), but it’d be nice to see how Instant Article Factory helped you (obviously time-wise, but how).
Flynn,
I went ahead and wrote 5 articles in Instant Article Factory in about 20min, it was THAT quick. When it came to submitting I went straight to Ezinearticles.com and now I’m waiting for the review.
Can’t wait for some in-depth info on the Automatic Article Submitter. Keep it up!
Cheers
Patrick
Pat, I am so thankful for you sharing all that internet marketing wisdom!!
And if the contest was such a hit, then I hope you will do it again. Meanwhile, I will practice article submission with my very own writing
Keep up the good work!
I can’t wait to follow your foot prints!
Great post, Pat! I am looking into submitting articles from my young blog to start increasing traffic. For now, I am only going to do it manually but may possibly start exploring automated options.
Thanks for all the great articles!
Hey Pat – I can’t wait to hear more about your experience with Instant Article Factory. Article writing is something I probably wouldn’t have considered before, but you’ve definitely built a compelling case for it.
-Jimmy
Great post Pat. Keep us posted on the article submitter will you? I guess I missed the boat on signing up for the Pat Flynn discount
I may have to check it out anyway. Looks like you can get a real good price on the trial first. I have been wanting to get into article marketing to build some backlinks.
Nice list and post thanks. I’m wasting time article in useless article directory.
very nice post pat! i have started a blog recently and I will definitely look into the options you’ve mentioned in your article.
Hey Pat,
Little late here but this is a great post. I actually been hiring writers but after reading this post, I might have to try out Instant Article Factory and save some cash. Also let me know how the Automatic Submitter is going for you. The way I have been doing is only submitting to a hand full of sites (ex. EzineArticles, iSnare).
Did “Automatic Article Submitter” work?
I am new to niche websites. The website on this comment is my very first.
I’ll follow your advice on this post Pat.
~~Juan~~
Hey Pat – When you’re submitting to various article directories, are you changing up your content or are you submitting the exact same article? While I submit to all of the top directories that you’ve mentioned (without changing anything in the article itself and keeping everything the same), I know that Buzzle doesn’t take any content that has been previously submitted elsewhere. Everything has to be purely 100% original content. I don’t spend as much time on it as I would like due to that alone (since it’s time consuming to write another article and article spinners just aren’t my thing), but I will say that Buzzle does carry some powerful ranking attributes.
Thanks for posting the information on Instant Article Factory. Article marketing is a number one resource used by marketers to get website businesses ranked.
Thanks on your great posting! I loved reading it.