The Pain You’ll Experience If You Don’t Build Your Websites
Why do we have to build our own websites? Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just put an affiliate link in the article and direct the visitors straight to the merchant’s website?
My simplest guide to earning your first dollar with affiliate marketing teaches you how to do direct linking through articles (direct article marketing). But there’s one important reminder that I mentioned inside the guide. This kind of approach is NOT the IM business model that you want to pursue. But in my opinion, it’s the easiest way for a beginner to understand how affiliate marketing works. It’s also the strategy that I’ve used to earn my first sale.
I still remember that first time I was trying to learn the IM ropes. I was using Squidoo for my landing pages but I was having a difficult time getting indexed and ranked. I decided to promote a Clickbank product and bought a domain name so I could redirect the readers straight to the merchant’s site. The goal that I’ve set for that campaign was to write 4 articles a day with each having only 250-300 words. Ezinearticles.com wasn’t that strict so I could easily get my articles published even though the articles were very short. It was that time that I was also trying to get approved for a Platinum status so I have to get 25 articles approved. I ended up with over 20 articles but I was really burnt out. I lost the energy to write something that I didn’t really enjoy. But after a few weeks I checked my Clickbank account and was excited because I’ve seen my first sale from my efforts and it was a few days after a couple of months inside the Wealthy Affiliate University.
But we’re here to discuss the reasons why direct article marketing is not a long term IM business model. So let’s start…
Endless Writing
When you’re using articles to drive traffic to the merchant’s site, you have to generate articles in a consistent basis. You can make money using this strategy but the moment you stop writing, your income will also decrease and eventually dry up. The not so good news today is that articles from Ezineaticles or any other good article directory (GoArticles, ArticlesBase) is not that powerful anymore in terms of search engine rankings. When was the last time you’ve seen an article from a directory that’s ranking for a keyword?
I just checked one of my articles that was previously ranking in first page for a travel related keyword. I wrote this around August 2009 and it stayed in first page for many months and up to a year and it brought a lot of sales but now it’s ranking in page 6. If you want to rank your articles today, you have to target a long tail keyword and one that has little to no competition.
My strategy right now doesn’t involve submitting to Ezinearticles anymore since my whole focus is into ranking Amazon sites. If I do submit it’s because I just want a quality backlink for my search engine rankings.
Not Building Your Assets
When you write articles that will redirect straight to the merchant, your articles become the asset of the merchant. I know that we are affiliate marketers and we are promoting products of other people but we can still build assets. And one of the best assets that you can build is your own websites. Personally I never really liked building backlinks to my Ezinearticles simply because I don’t have any control over it.
Lower Conversion Rates
I believe this factor will heavily depend on the niche that you’re promoting and the angle that you’re going for. You can make money just by doing straight redirects but you’re leaving a lot of money on the table if you’re just funneling visitors straight to the merchant. The average conversion rate is 1% and this means that for every 100 visits to the merchant, 1 will actually buy. So if you’re going to use direct article marketing, you really have to do a lot of writing and generate at least 100 clicks. Don’t complain that you’re not getting sales when you’ve just managed to write 5, 10 or 20 articles. That won’t simply cut it.
Higher conversion rates will also depend on the keyword that you’re targeting. If you’re targeting buyer keywords and have managed to get top rankings then that’s probably good news for you. But for broader information type keywords, it’s going to be more difficult to warm up a visitor. And that’s why you need to build a website because that’s the place where you’ll give more information on what they’re searching for but only enough info for them to be interested in the product that you’re promoting.
There’s a ton of things that you can do when you have your own sites… build a list, gather comments, rank on top of search engines, monetize through advertisements, build more pages, etc. Most important of all, when the pages of your site is already on top of search engine rankings, you’ll then experience passive income.
These are just some of my thoughts and I’ve learned all of this from the community over at the Wealthy Affiliate University. I just turned 2 years last month (July 2011) and everyday my heart is just filled with tremendous gratitude that I’ve found them at the early stages of my Internet marketing journey.
Hi, Raymond!
First of all Thank you for this blog. The second. I would like to ask about wordpress site. Is that kind of website ok for making money online or this is still not the best?
P.S. Sorry, my english is not the best=)
I use WordPress in all of my affiliate sites and I love it!
Thanks for answer!
THANK YOU RAYMOND SELDA,
I SO GLAD I FOUND YOU OR YOU FOUND ME. I AM NEW TO THE IM BUSINESS AND YOUR INFORMATION I LOOK FORWARD TO. I DON’T HAVE A WEBSITE YET. I HAVEN’T GOTTEN INTO THE ARTICLES–HAVING A LITTLE TROUBLE SIGNING UP. SQUIDDO–I DON’T UNDERSTAND THE LEN THINGS. I HAVE THE DESIRE AND GOAL TO INTO THIS BUSINES AND EVERYDAY I WORK AT IT IS TRIAL AND ERROR. MY MENTOR SAID THAT T AND E IS PART OR THE KNOWLEDGE THAT WILL LEAD TO UNDERSTANDING AND TRANSFERING. YOU ARE NOW ONE OF MY MENTORS TOO.
I hope you get started with IM Geneva. This is the BEST business anyone could start.
I been quite a while reading your email and this is my first comment.
You’re a great person, you’re not selfish, and you share your knowledge without single cent. I think that’s why you’re blessed. You fuel up newbie IM affiliate. Keep it up.
Thanks for your comment Rico. I try to share valuable information as much as possible but there has to be a balance.
hello this is very interesting subject and it seems to be the way the online business is going moving all the time writing articles like this one gives people like me who are trying to go forward grate hope,
Now i did not make the first dollar yet but i wont give up.
good luck
michael
Great article as usual Raymond!! Thanks! I have made my first dollar online, but am still finding my way through this IM maze! Really enjoy your fresh and pertinent advise. cheers
Awesome job Abigail! Congratulations on your 1st sale! Welcome to the club! If you ever need my help, you know where to find me. You know that I love helping people especially those who take serious action.
Hi Raymond,
As you say the conversions rates you will get from linking direct article to merchants website are low. Is it possible just to create blogs to go with your article/promotions or is a website better or both?
Also I read somewhere you can sell articles/ freelance writing, I’ve not looked into this yet, but from what I read, the rewards are there. One example was a woman that just wrote reviews of the latest mobile phones.
This might suit those who like to just write and get paid for each piece the do.
Best Regards
Innes
Scotland
It’s possible to create blogs but your own website is the best thing that you can do for your IM business.
There’s good opportunity in being a freelance writer but the income model is not passive as you have to write to earn money. But writing articles for others is a good way to supplement your IM income when you’re just getting started so I would advice that route especially if you love writing.
Articles on article sites or just articles on your own blog. I prefer to build content on my own website and pull in customers this way.
This article is just what I needed. Why did I see this only now? Since I had no website of my own yet, I wast thinking what if I just posted affiliate links on articles? This post answered just that. By the way thank you for the emails on tips on how to do affiliate marketing. I’d want to meet you in person if I become successful in this thing. I’m just from the same area as you but would like to meet you instead, when the time comes that I’m earning well from this field.
Thank you very much and keep it up Raymond!
Being successful in anything is a question of WHEN and not IF. We can meet anytime you like as long as it’s a weekday and not early in the mornings. hahaha!
Hi Raymond,
Building websites are absolutely necessary, but it is without a doubt that making money without a website is also possible (though as you’ve said, it means that we’re not building assets).
I created a Squidoo lens on a website (offering DVDs), and never did anything. I was not motivated to promote the product since I used a free Squidoo lens. Therefore, I just moved on and created other websites. However, months later I was surprised since I received notifications telling me that I’d made two sales from the lens!
It was about $30, and I decided to do more with the lens since I knew it’s potential. But again, I was not motivated enough so I just did some backlinking and that’s it. Yet, two months later I was surprised that I got another sale.
So, I do make some money from that abandoned lens, yet I’m not motivated enough to grow it
There were also some campaigns that I started just because the SERP competition wasn’t tough. But I wasn’t that interested with the niche so my motivation wasn’t there. But some of those campaigns still generate some nice income even if I haven’t touch them for a long time now. Good job with your lens Elsa! Gotta love the passive income! Keep it up!