Articles by Vickie Scanlon

Promoting your Affiliate Programs with Articles

     If you are not creating articles for your website and your affiliate programs, you should. Why? Even though it may seem like a lot of work, and it may take you time to build -- articles add a valuable commodity to your site -- content. And my friend, the search engines and people alike are always on the lookout for good content.

If you are creating articles, you are always looking to find ways to get your article out to the masses – and the more exposure your article has the greater the opportunity that people will read your article and want to visit your website. Should you submit your articles manually or should you use an article marketer submission service that will choose for you -- where your article goes? Is an article submission service a good option for you when submitting articles? I hope to show you both the pros and cons of this service and let you be the judge.

Pro to Article Submission Service

Article Submission Service can be a great help when your time is limited, and you want to get your articles to all the article sites and groups. However, when the service is tiered, based on what you pay and don’t pay – you have to be aware of what you are getting..

All services give you a sampling with a free service – and I did find the free service to be on the, well, expected side. After submitting to the free service of an article submission service I received the following:

1. I received several emails that stated my article had been received by a site and would be looked at. This is usual, and a good sign.
2. I received emails from the yahoo groups, which is a good sign, but I didn’t partake because I knew that I would be receiving articles from other authors on a regular basis and did not want to overwhelm my private email address. Thus, be aware, use a yahoo email address and keep your private email address separate.

The article submission to the article sites such as Ezine Articles (Which, by the way, is one of my favorite sites) and Go Articles will require a small outlay of money for each article on a monthly basis. Thus, I would use a submission service if:

1. I had a separate email address to catch the other authors’ articles that I would be receiving from the yahoo groups.

2. I wanted to part with my money to take advantage of the service.

3. Needed more time.

4. I have a desire for a wider exposure of my articles and thus, more traffic to my site.

Cons of Using an Article Admission Service

When looking at anything new, you must determine when it is to your advantage to use a service or to do it yourself. These are some of the issues I would have to overcome:

1. If I do the submission myself, I know that the article or articles have reached it expected destination or destinations – but the exposure my article gets will be limited by the sites that I know.
2. If I’m restricted by General Titles will the article sites kick my article out because of not possibly abiding by the rules.
3. If I do it myself, I can target my article to the specific, intended audience.

For me, I will use the paid submission service when I am low on time, and I have the money in hand. However, I will not waste my time on the free service because the return is very limited and from what I have seen offers little benefit to my site.

To conclude, you need to try different methods of getting your articles out to the masses. And the success of these different methods is dependent on your own satisfaction or lack thereof, of the results rendered by such services. My advice, experiment and determine for yourself what services will help your business, who knows, that one service may be the punch in the arm your business needs to grow.

To your success.


Date Added: Sunday, 04-09-2023 10:02:37 AM

Build A Website and Get Your Feet Wet In Affiliate Marketing

     If you want to have a business online, you need to build a website. A website helps to promote your products, as well as identifies you on the Internet. When I created my website, I went on the premise of "wanting to learn how to do it" as I experience the essence of building my business. I realize now, that even though I learned quite a bit, it did slow my progress down. Read on, Ill tell you want I mean.

A Little History First

After attempting to do typing on the Internet -- youre right -- my first newbie scam. It wasnt a true scam, because I was paid. However, I put in long hours for very, very little pay. Does that read green, naive newbie all over it? Yes, Im afraid it does. Needless to say, I gave that up and began looking for something that would give me a viable income -- affiliate marketing was the answer. Thus, my adventure began.

Getting a Web host and Domain

Well, after much reading, I realized I needed to get a web host and a domain if I was looking for a long-haul attempt at making it in affiliate marketing. I found a pretty good web host, paid for my domain -- And, now I was ready to build my website...

My first advise here is -- If you are inexperienced in web construction and you want a quick presence online, I would go with a web host that has web tools which includes Site Studio. It saves you time, money and gets you up and moving quickly.

Building My Website

I decided to use FrontPage (with a dash of HTML) to create my website -- in my first attempt. Well, my first attempt was beyond words -- no one wanted to hurt my feelings -- the website was beyond bad, and the color was what I call Medicine Yellow. But I was still in the glow, and I must say, working with blinders on. (This was my first mistake; my knowledge was limited -- I should have utilized Site Studio that was available to me.)

Needless to say, my first attempt did not stay up long. I went back to work, restructuring my ugly site -- my second attempt. I changed the color to a dark green with a base of gray. At the time it looked good, I thought. I actually got, "youre improving" from a friend. But somehow, it looked, well --downtrodden.

Third restructuring came when -- after a year, I came upon an article that stated, "if you are using Times Roman -- even though it is easy to read, it reads amateur all over it." My first internal thought was, "Crap, Ive got to do my website over again."

So, once again, I began restructuring my site. This time around, I decided to go with a lighter green for my website (just as well, I was going to have to change everything anyway), revamped by Google Ads (4 times), and changed the lettering to "Arial".

By the way, it has been said that either "Georgia" or "Arial" are the two fonts that will give your website a professional look. And you know -- they were right. After changing from "Times Roman" to "Arial" -- it gave my website a cleaner and more professional look.

Color as well, is important to your website -- it is part of your total presentation of your site to prospective visitors. How important is color -- if they dont like it, they are just a click away from removing your site from their vision.

After all the overhauling and tweaking of my website, I believe it is now presentable, brighter and personable to my visitors. However, I, as well as you, should realize that you are never done with your website. You should always be looking at ways to improve the appearance, products, and service available to your visitors.

Becoming An Affiliate

You cannot be an affiliate marketer without affiliate products. With that being said, you can start your journey as an affiliate marketer by looking at the following sites for items that fit your theme and of which you can make a commission.

Commission Junction
ClickBank
BeFree

Now, dont be disappointed if some of the vendors turn you down in the beginning -- after you have your website up for a while, you will find that some vendors will be dropping you an email and requesting that you sell their product for them. Its flattering, however, be sure that you can blend it nicely into your website theme.

Getting Your Feet Wet

The water may be cold, tepid, or hot -- it depends on your skill level when you begin your journey online (I believe my feet were in the cold phase when I started) -- but you have to get your feet wet. Do your research, get all your ducks in a roll, and begin your journey. If you sit on the fence too long, you will never jump in.

Get what Internet tools you can, read all that you can, and stay positive, even if it means you have to step away from your computer for a day or two to regroup your thoughts.

As you can see from my experience, I jumped in, had some setbacks, some disappoints, but also some individual triumphs. The most important thing to remember is to close your mind to your own negative thoughts, and the negative words of those around you. Why? They can cripple you, and slow or even end your journey toward success.

If you know in your gut, that what you are doing will succeed -- say nothing -- just keep on keeping on. Soon, the naysayers will be saying something positive.


Date Added: Saturday, 04-08-2023 05:26:17 PM

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Vickie Scanlon