Monetize Your Site

I have been working, and I do mean working, on a new blog. I am not writing the content, I am using article directory articles. I am adding relevant pictures to these posts and integrating some advertising with the articles.

This approach is a bit time consuming. Time will tell if it produces the desired results.

The blog has a theme and I am hand picking articles to support the theme. I do have the Deep Link Engine hooked up to the publish button so there are a few links back to the site building up on the web (while checking the traffic logs I have seen a few).

The new blog is the About Music blog. Take a look and tell me what you think!

I have a few articles published on various article directory sites. When I am viewing my analytics I see a few referrals from these sites. I think that the most consistent traffic (subjective not objective) comes from the site Buzzle.com. This may be due to the content of the article there (I have only posted one article there). This is a library site, not a reprint site.

Ezine articles gives a very complete article analytics page to each author. This page tracks views, reprints, and comments among other things. The pattern that I see emerging for most of the articles that I have posted there is that one is likely to see several views by passers by while the article is on the first page of results for the category, but few will click through. Then, later in the article’s life, the targeted audience will come upon the article, probably through an article search. These viewers are much more likely to click through to the offer site.

This makes doing your keyword research even more important. You want your article to show up for your target audience when they do a search on the article site. Keywords need to be incorporated into the article title in a sensible manner. They also need to be worked into the article a few times. This will help to get your article in front of your target viewer.

My primary sources of clicks have been Buzzle and eZine. I have a few articles up on Go Articles with little direct result. I do see a trend toward more traffic to all the sites that I have supported with articles. My conclusion is that there is still value to article marketing. The best approach would  be through volume and consistency. I think that sticking with the higher quality sites is probably the best plan for direct visitors, but shear number of backlinks may improve the organic traffic more.

I have submitted a few (very few, unfortunately) articles to some article sites. For the most part they do work. I see visitors from those articles on a regular basis. I do believe that if I had 100 times the articles in the directories that I would see approximately 100 times the visitors from these sources.

Of the articles that I have posted only one has not performed. This article is posted with EZine Articles. It is not for lack of views of the article that it has not performed. EZine has good analytics in place and I can see that the article is being viewed.

I suspect that the primary problem with the article is the call to action in the resource box. An other article that has had a similar number of views has a 16% click through rate while the article in question has had no click throughs. Perhaps it is the content or the category under which it is listed, but I think that the problem is that the resource box is not compelling.

The articles that have performed best for me have been on EZine Articles and Buzzle, the sites that have the highest standards. Because of their high standards the backlinks from these sites may carry more weight. That may help to improve your SERP, and along with good key words may get you to the front page of the search results.

Article marketing can be a good source of  ‘free’ traffic. Present good information with a good headline and the material will be read. Pay particular attention to the call to action in the resource box and you will see some traffic to your site. It does take some time, but it can be a great benefit to your and your site.