Is Your Writing Lifeless?

September 2, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 7 Comments

Writing Tips
Did I ever tell you that I LOVE vampires, way before this whole Twilight & True Blood movement. I just always have since my cousins in South Philadelphia introduced my sheltered 10-year-old self to the movie “Blacula”. I was hooked:)

Well in keeping with the popularity of vampires lately, there’s a great article I found on Copyblogger all about using “vampire words” that suck the life out of your writing.

Vampire words a.k.a. qualifiers are words that we tend to use when we are a little afraid to make a bold statement about something. We use them in everyday language, and we definitely use them in our writing. I have been guilty of this myself too. For instance, you can find several articles of mine using the vampire word: fairly. Ugh!

Want to read the whole vampire word list and how to avoid making this life-sucking mistake in your writing? Read the entire post here: http://www.copyblogger.com/vampire-words/

How Do I Choose The Right Niche?

August 27, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 5 Comments

Q: I want to start an online business, and I know that I will write articles to promote that business – but how do I choose the right niche? I don’t want to spend months or worse thousands of dollars trying to figure it out.

A: You are not alone. Most beginners and some intermediate marketers on the web want to make sure that they have chosen the right a.k.a. profitable niche. No one wants to spend years and dollars on an unprofitable niche. So let me give you a few tips…

1. If you can solve a problem for someone, you have a profitable niche. People will spend money to solve their pain.

2. If there is strong competition in your niche, you probably have a profitable niche because others are making money at it.

3. If there are magazines, newsletters, organizations or associations dedicated to your niche – they you have a profitable one.

4. If your business is based around some sort of specialized expertise that you have, and you have credentials such as a college degree or certification, then you probably have chosen a profitable niche.

5. If there are infomercials on products in your niche, then you have chosen a good one.

6. If you do some major keyword research and find that your keywords have strong pay per click competition, then you probably have chosen a profitable niche.

Finally, think about the niche you are drawn to or the one that you have chosen. Sit down to the computer or simply use a pad of paper and pen and write/type the numbers 1 thru 6.

Next to #1 – write the major problem that people in your niche face. One that you can solve for them, because that is how you will profit in this niche. By solving others pain.

Next to #2 thru #6 – write five article ideas you can come up with to educate your marketplace on how to solve that problem.

If you can easily do this exercise, then you most assuredly have a profitable niche. One that you can begin to build loads of article content around, build traffic, and finally sell to.

How To Add Links To Your Article Resource Box

August 25, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 33 Comments

More often than not, many people’s articles get rejected by article directories because they have improperly added links to their resource boxes. Has this happened to you? Well that’s why this Article Marketing 101 lesson answers the question: “How do I add links to my resource box?”

First
It’s important to read the writer’s guidelines of every article directory you submit your articles to in order to properly write your links into the resource boxes. Some directories require that you use a plain resource box, other’s require that you use html code in order to write “live links”, and then others require that you have a version of both plain text and html.

Second
In an article directory that requires plain text links, once you write the urls and the article is published and becomes live, the links will be live. All you have to do is format the links in regular url format:

“Lisa Angelettie is a professional coach, published author, and article marketing specialist. You can grab her article marketing success kit full of over $300 worth of free tools here: http://articlemarketingsuccesskit.com” <== (Here’s the link)

Third
In article directories that ask you to add your links using html code, you will write your resource box using the code, and the advantage to this is that your links do not have to be written in the typical url format such as our first example. Instead, you can use your keywords as “anchor text” for your links which helps you rank better in the search engines. For example:

“Lisa Angelettie is a professional coach, published author, and article marketing specialist. You can grab her <a href=”http://articlemarketingsuccesskit.com”>article marketing success</a> kit full of over $300 worth of free tools to get started instantly!”

As you see in this example, “article marketing success” is the anchor text back to my toolkit page, and anytime you are creating an html link, you want to always use:

<a href=”URL”> In front of the anchor text
</a> After the anchor text

Even if I wanted to use the full url as my anchor text, instead of keywords, I would use the same format:

<a href=”http://articlemarketingsuccesskit.com”>
http://articlemarketingsuccesskit.com</a>

*Bonus Tip
It’s best to create a file of several versions of your resource boxes in both plain text and html, so that when you go to submit your articles you will have ready-to-go resource boxes that you can just copy and paste.

Article Marketing Business

August 21, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 1 Comment

Did you know that you can quickly learn how to carve out a living on the web when you build your own article marketing business? There are several reasons why…

First – people love to read new and useful information. You have an audience of hungry readers.

Second – When you write articles, you can begin to build a “following” of folks who will read your content over and over. These are the people who you will market to and you will eventually buy.

Third – articles have a high perceived value. Better then banners, classified ads, and spammy emails. When you give people real information they can use, you begin to build credibility and your content builds value.

So while those are some very strong reasons why you should start your own article marketing business, the bigger questions many people new to article marketing ask is “how do can I make money exactly?”

Here are my Top 5 ways to make money from the article marketing business…

1. Write articles that teach the reader something of value, but also refer a product or service within the article. Make sure you sign up for the affiliate program of the product or service you are recommending or mentioning so that you get your cut if an affiliate sale is made.

2. Use articles to promote a free offer such as an ebook, ecourse, or video series that will funnel the reader into a paid offer (either your own or someone else’s as an affiliate).

3. Get paid to write. There are a lot of paid writer sites such as ehow.com which pays you to write how-to articles, and the examiner.com which pays you to write articles on a specific topic.

4. Repackage a series of articles into a small report and sell it.

5. Repackage a series of articles into a mini e-course. Make sure that you refer an affiliate or pitch something of your own in each lesson or every other lesson.

**To learn other ways to make money from your articles, read more about the Articology article marketing course.

Internet Marketing Glossary

August 20, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie Leave a Comment

My friend and coach Marlon Sanders created this cool internet marketing glossary of terms for his “newbie” members, and so I thought I’d share it with you…

Continuity: The means something that people are charged
for regularly, typically monthly or quarterly. In the biz,
we call this “continuity income” or recurring billing.
Newsletters are usually paid for monthly as are membership
sites. The reason you see a lot of emphasis on continuity
offers is it provides steady income and gives you a way to
pay your bills. The classic example is the book club of
the month programs.

Forced Continuity: Forced means you don’t have a choice.
The way this works is when you buy one product, you’re
given a free trial of a newsletter, membership site or CD
of the month club. The trial is usually 14 to 30 days.
Sometimes as long as two months. At the end of that time
period, if you don’t cancel, you’re charged monthly for
whatever it is.

Some marketers get people in continuity billing then NEVER
send emails or communications hoping people will FORGET
about the purchase and let the billing continue forever. I
find this to be legally risky. If you do forced
continuity, make sure people know they’re being charged
and can cancel without jumping through hoops.

Back End: The back end of the business is everything AFTER
the initial sale. In other words, it’s the follow up
business. In the ideal world, you break even or make a
small profit on the initial sale (or what we call the
“front end.” And you make your profits on the upsells,
downsells and subsequent sales.

Upsells: Additional products or services offered at the
point of the sale. As crazy as it sounds, the EASIEST time
to make another sale to the customer is when they already
have their credit card out! Any additional product offered
is an upsell.

Downsell: If the upsell is declined, another offer for a
lower price than the upsell is made. This is called a
downsell.

Target market: A market is a group of people who are in
the MARKET for a product or service. A target market is
the market you’re targeting. For example, males online
between the ages of 35 and 65 who want to start a
home-based business would be a target market. Stated
differently, it’s the people who are the potential buyers
of what you sell.

Sales letters: In this business, we often use very long
sales letters similar to the direct mail letters you
receive in the mail. We call these sales letters because
they’re me-to-you letters that SELL something. These are
different from a brochure, which is an impersonal
communication. Sales letters are written as though you’re
talking to the person directly. They’re more personal and
persuasive.

Membership site: These are password protected sites that
have content delivered regularly and often have a forum or
other way to interact with members.

Forum: These are places you go to talk to others who share
a common interest.

Opt ins: When someone joins your email list, they “opt in”
to receive emails from you.

Double opt in: When someone joins your email list, they
receive an email asking them to click a confirmation link
to PROVE they subscribed to the email list. This is an
anti-spam feature and is now standard practice.

Autoresponder: This is a software program that lets you
send email broadcasts to everyone on your list. It will
also send a sequence of emails any number of days apart
that you specify.m

Shopping cart: The ordering mechanism you use to get
people’s name, address and credit card or check info and
process their order.

Affiliate program: A program where you promote a vendor’s
product or service and receive a commission when there’s a
sale. The classic example is Amazon.com. You can link to
books on Amazon. And if a visitor to your web site buys
one of them, you get a small commission.

Associate program: Same as affiliate program

Banner ads: Those square or horizontal ads on web sites.

Ebook: Basically the same as a printed book but delivered
online, quite often as a PDF.

PDF: Portable Delivery Format. This is a uniform format
for delivering digital information. A standard of method
of delivering documents on the web.

White paper: A research paper or report delivered as a
PDF.

Name Squeeze: A term trademarked by Jonathan Mizel. See
Squeeze page.

Squeeze page: A page with only one purpose to obtain or
“squeeze” a name and email address, or email address
alone, from the web visitor.

Lead capture page: Same as a squeeze page.

Power Squeeze page: See squeeze page

Hits: Some stats programs measure web site traffic by
hits. This is not a particularly accurate way to measure
visitors.

Unique visitors: Stat programs attempt to identify actual
visitors and eliminate duplicate visitors in a 24-hour
period.

Cookies: The way things get tracked on the Internet. These
are little text files put on your computer. They contain
tidbits of information that allow stuff to be tracked. In
the case of affiliate programs, the way we track sales and
credit the correct reseller with the commissions is
through the use of cookies. The cookie simply contains
that affiliate’s ID number.

PPC: Pay-per-click advertising. Google made PPC a dominant
advertising method. As a ppc advertiser, you run ads on
Google and ONLY pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Monetize: When you find a way to make money with
something, you monetize it. So you’ll hear people talk
about monetizing their traffic. All their talking about is
finding a way to make money off of their web site
visitors.

Traffic: Visitors to your web site or web page are
traffic.

Product launch: When a number of affiliates promote one
product o one day or one week. Typically last for one or
two weeks and often involve heavy promotions by affiliates
who are trying to win cash and prizes.

Aweber: One of the main autoresponder services.

One Shopping Cart: Another autoresponder service that also
contains a shopping cart, ad tracker, affiliate software
and other bells and whistles.

Ad tracker: A program that lets you create links that
track when people click on them and then also count
actions or sales that follow the click.

Affiliate software: Software that allows you to run your
own affiliate program and pay affiliates commissions when
they sell your product or service.

Clickbank: A marketplace for ebooks sold by affiliates.

This list was by Marlon Sanders. Visit Marlon’s blog at: http://www.marlonsnews.com

Write Your First Article Today

August 18, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 2 Comments

I know what you’re thinking. You have this great business. You have a wonderful product or a fabulous service, but you don’t know how to express just how great it is in words.

You want to try article marketing. You’ve heard the success stories. Zero cost. Steady traffic. High visibility. You’ve also heard the horror stories. How on earth will you find the time? How do you know people will want to read what you’ve written. Article submission is long and tedious.

But think about this when you go to write your first article today…

How did you find the last product you bought on the web? The last marketing list you signed up on, how did you find that expert? I bet you that it was either directly or indirectly from an article.

Articles establish authority, visibility, traffic, and sales. That’s a fact.

Best of all they do it at zero cost to the writer. So of course every REAL earner on the web uses article marketing.

Top internet marketers aren’t telling you that because of course they are selling you a “different” or “newer” internet marketing strategy. But the truth is – they are using articles on their sites and blogs, over at directories, as affiliate tools, in their newsletters — they are everywhere.

So when you go to your “to do” list of marketing activities, I strongly urge you to add:

To Do: Write Your First Article Today

It’s as simple as these three steps:

1. Pick a topic that is a source of pain for prospects in your niche

2. Write a 400-500 word article on the solution to that pain

3. Publish the article on your site, in your ezine, and/or a high-traffic article directory

Need more help with this? I will hold you by the hand and help you write articles by the dozen when you enroll in my weekly article marketing course.

Learn Article Marketing: Quit Marketing Tactics That Are Making You Broke!

August 17, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie Leave a Comment

Have you heard somewhere on the web that article marketing was dead? HA! That is the funniest thing I’ve heard in a while, basically because the people that are saying that are trying to sell you the next “bright shiny object” on internet marketing for $97, $147, or more. Don’t fall for it!

If you are an affiliate marketer, an online entrepreneur, a coach, author, speaker — then the most effective cost-free strategy on the planet for you to learn and do again and again is article marketing. Once you learn article marketing, you will be fast on your way to more traffic and a bigger more qualified opt-in or subscriber list. This is how…

1. Once you start sending your list articles on a regular basis you will begin to build a circle of trust.

2. Subscribers who read and love your content will become your “fans” and not just people on your list.

3. They will forward your articles to friends and family.

4. Those with an online business will republish them in their own ezines and newsletters.

5. Write and publish articles regularly, and you will start to notice that your articles will come up in natural search engine results.

6. People will see those results, click on the links, and follow the “article trail” back to your website.

That’s how the viral magic begins!!!

Are you ready to get serious, learn article marketing and finally see real income in your online business, or are you satisfied buying a the next new internet marketing product that’s going to make you a million dollars overnight…and then buying another one and another one and another one!

It’s not a joke. I have seen friends and people I have met along the way go broke investing in information products and coaching programs that they could not afford and whose principles were difficult to execute. Charging their credit cards and praying for the right “fix” to solve all their marketing problems.

I was on that path too, until I finally stopped myself dead in my tracks and said, “Hey Lisa, why not really pour all your energies into the one thing that you have seen really work in your business?” For me that was article marketing.

Now that’s not to say that I don’t invest in information and coaching that will benefit my business. I absolutely do. But not in marketing strategies to replace what I know already works. No, I rather invest my energy and my money in ways to take what I know works (writing articles) and putting it on steroids!

Now all the successful marketers on the web have a technique which works best for them, it may be adwords, teleseminars, or article marketing — but the easiest of all these strategies to learn and implement quickly is article marketing.

Are you ready to learn article marketing?

If so, I invite you to download my free report about my revolutionary article marketing training program, Articology. It may finally be the answer to your “bright shiny object” syndrome!

Hate Writing Articles?

August 2, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 5 Comments

I want to know if this is you…
Do you hate writing articles? Does writing make you break out in a cold sweat? Do you rarely know how to get your thoughts organized enough so that they are written and understandable? Do you cringe at the very idea of keywords and titles?

Do you hate writing articles so much that you just don’t do it, therefore missing out on goo gobs of traffic?! Yikes!

If this is you, then you are virtually leaving money on the table when there is such an easy “fix” for this.

For example, I don’t like cooking very much, but I do it because I have 3 small children and a husband. Our family would not run as efficiently and happily if they were not given “fuel” on a regular basis in our home:-) And not just any fuel like fast food, but high quality fuel such as home cooked meals.

The same goes for writing articles of your own. If you run an online business, you may not enjoy or rather you hate writing articles, but trust me when I say that when you do it – you truly start to see the benefits: more traffic, better list building, more visibility, more sales.

Now who wouldn’t want all of that at ZERO cost? I think anyone would jump at that chance.

I believe that part of the reason why you may hate writing articles, is that you always found it a bit difficult to get started and then keep up a consistent writing schedule. Perhaps some of you have no idea what to write about, or question whether what you are writing is even worth reading?

Don’t Give Up!

All major marketers on the web who are making money at it have used article marketing and I would bet $100 bucks are still using it. This I know for a fact. Think about it – how did you find the last information product you bought? You probably made an organic search for something in the search engines and stumbled upon information regarding that search. Information probably written by the author of that last infoproduct.

So now that we’ve established that you hate writing articles, but know that it’s an absolutely essential part of any internet entrepreneur’s marketing plan, this will help you get started…

Read These:
1. The Real Reason Why You Aren’t Writing Articles
2. How To Write More Articles
3. What Is The Biggest Article Marketing Mistake?
4. Learn more about the #1 52-Week Article Marketing Course on the web – Articology!

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