Here is a guest post by one of the Internet's finest writers. There are many reasons to write fine articles than just to attract search engines to your website. Great articles will gain visitors on their own power.
Newsletter Publishers: The Redheaded Step Children Of Internet MarketingCopyright (c) 2009 Bill Platt
the Phantom Writers
http://thePhantomWriters.comPeople who publish online newsletters, often referred to as
"ezines", have always played an important role in the growth of
the Internet economy. In fact, if you listen to any of the
Internet gurus, they are going to tell you time and again that
the most important thing you can do towards the success of your
online business is to build a list.
I think Titus Hoskins said it best when he said, "It is a well
known fact that the key to successful online marketing comes from
building a well targeted and responsive opt-in email list. This
is mainly because your online marketing success comes from
building relationships with a large subscriber base." Titus is
the owner of
http://www.bizwaremagic.com/Successful newsletter publishers have built profitable niche
businesses that represent the very specific needs of very
specific consumers in the marketplace. While it is true that some
newsletter publishers have subscribers that number in the
hundreds, those who have been building their newsletter for years
have a subscriber base ranging in the 10's to 100's of
thousands of subscribers.
Joel Christopher (
http://www.masterlistbuilder.com) says, "It's
not just about building a list of names and emails, it's about
building relationships and connections." He also says that
newsletters are "not about huge numbers, it's about
conversions. Converting names and emails into prospects, then
into customers/clients, and finally into people who will promote
you."
For the newsletter publisher, it is about giving readers what
they want and to win the loyalty of their readers for the years
to come.
Alexandria K. Brown, The Ezine Queen (
http://www.ezinequeen.com/)
advises her clients, "By showcasing your knowledge and skills,
you will attract more and better clients and customers. You
don't have to go say you're an expert. Instead, your audience
will assume it." She also recommends, "What many folks don't
know is that THE easiest and most effective way to do all this is
to publish an e-mail newsletter or ezine."
As an advertiser, it makes a lot of sense to have your ads appear
in the newsletters that best serve your target market -
preferably in those newsletters that have a large subscriber base
of responsive readers.
Ironically, it was newsletter marketing that turned me on to the
potential of article marketing to promote my online endeavors.
Ten years ago, I had a newsletter of my own. In order to grow my
opt-in mailing list, I began doing advertising swaps with other
newsletter publishers - a process by which I ran an ad for the
other newsletter, and in turn they ran my ad in their newsletter.
As the result of those advertising swaps, I found that some
newsletters had a really responsive group of readers. I was so
impressed with the interest generated for my business in some
newsletters that I began to pay for advertising in those mailing
lists.
Angela Booth (
http://www.hotwebcopy.com/newsletters.html) says,
"Once someone is on your ezine's subscriber list, you can
connect with them each week or each month. Since you need to have
several interactions (some authorities say up to seven times)
with a customer before they buy, an ezine gives you the ideal way
to build the customer relationship." Booth also pointed out that
"An ezine can be 'the lifeblood' of your business."
Yes, the money is in the list. And there is money not only for
the person, who owns the mailing list, but also the advertiser
who supports the publisher of the newsletter, and the persons who
are involved in contributing content to the newsletter.
I never fully appreciated that concept until March 6, 2000. That
is the day that my first "reprint article" was published in a
newsletter called Internet Day. It was a fairly substantial
publication, formerly operated by
http://www.Internet.com. In
2000, Internet Day had over 150,000 subscribers. The response to
that article was huge. I signed on a boatload of new subscribers
to my newsletter, and I began to field questions from other
Internet marketers about their businesses.
Suddenly, I was considered an expert, and my advice was in
demand.
Between you and I, although the article was decent, it was not
exceptional, and I was not the guru that so many of Internet
Day's readers wanted to believe that I was.
But, Internet Day did teach me a very important lesson about the
value of writing reprint articles. When an article gets published
in a newsletter, it can drive a boatload of traffic to the
authors' website on the day of publication, and over the next
three days after publication.
In a recent article of his own, Willie Crawford
(
http://timic.org/) explained, "I also understand that part of
my job as an ezine publisher is to serve as a filter. My
subscribers learn to expect quality from me, and will pay more
attention to future offers from me than they will from the
marketers who filled their hard drives with a bunch of useless
'fluff'."
When I sit down to write an article, I write that article with
the express intention of making sure it is good enough to be
considered by a publisher for his or her newsletter.
In my thinking, publication in a newsletter can be more important
than publication on a website, because it can literally put
thousands of readers on my website in a single day. Over my years
of writing articles, I have found that publication in a major
newsletter can very realistically send a wave of thousands of
targeted visitors to my website in just a few days - visitors who
are interested in buying what I sell.
It is true that like everyone else, I also want my articles to be
published on websites, so that I can get that all-important link
popularity from Google and to improve my websites' rankings in
Google's search results. But above links on websites, I want my
articles exposed to large newsletter audiences. I find that I
still get my articles published on websites, whether I write the
article with the intent of finding publication in newsletters or
not.
Did you realize that most newsletters are archived on the
Internet? So when published in a newsletter, not only do I get a
ton of traffic from the newsletter itself, but I also get links
from the newsletter's online archives, and I also get my
articles published on websites, whose webmasters tend to reprint
articles found in their favorite newsletters.
One example of someone who reprints articles found in her
favorite newsletters is Debbie Johnson
(
http://friendfeed.com/debbiejohnson). Whenever she sees one of
my articles in a newsletter that she reads, she adds the article
to the forum at
http://www.DreamTeamMoney.com. This results in my
article being read by hundreds, perhaps thousands of additional
people - people who may have not had the chance to see my
articles elsewhere.
Another example of someone who republishes articles they like,
after reading that article in a newsletter, is Flavio Bernardotti
from Alessandria, Italy. After reading one of my articles in a
popular newsletter, Flavio republished the article on his
Italian-speaking website
(
http://www.bernardotti.it/portal/showthread.php?t=128997).
If you think for a minute that my article would have been
published on Debbie's or Flavio's forums if the article had not
been published in several large newsletters, then you are bound
to keep overlooking the real potential of publication in
newsletters.
This article has actually been inspired by a number of people,
with whom I have spoke with on the phone. Each wanted to know a
bit more about my business. And when I told them that our article
distribution service targets publication in newsletters and
websites, I was told that they did not care about publication in
newsletters. I was told by each person that his or her only
concern was links on websites to propel their websites rankings
in Google.
Every time I hear this from a potential client, my initial
thought is, "Oh, my mistake... I have mistakenly believed you
were in business to make money..."
To tell you the truth, I am floored when I hear people tell me
that newsletters don't matter... I have personally earned
hundreds of thousands of dollars in free advertising, as a result
of my articles appearing in newsletters over the years. And more
to the point of everyone reading this article, I have earned
hundreds of thousands of dollars in new sales, as a result of
being published in newsletters.
Yes, I do get links in websites also, and my websites generally
rank well in Google and other search engines for competitive
keywords. But my Google rankings are only part of the story...
Less than 10% of the 2.5 million page views on my website were
delivered by Google in 2008, and still, I received more than
200,000 visits to my website in 2008, as a result of the
thousands of top 10 and top 20 listings my websites possess in
Google.
The truth is that you can target newsletters with your articles,
and still achieve your search engine goals. But then again, if
you never write articles that newsletter publishers want to
publish, you will never know the power of newsletters for driving
traffic, sales and search engine rankings.
While newsletter publishers may be the redheaded stepchildren of
most Internet marketers, they are and will always be "my
favorite stepchildren".
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Bill Platt has operated
http://www.thePhantomWriters.com article
distribution service since 2001. Rather than to rely on article
directories, The Phantom Writers has been designed to send
articles to the newsletter publishers and webmasters who are most
likely to want to publish an article. A current customer recently
said, "I've used other article distribution sites, but your
distribution seems to yield a higher quality of publisher and a
higher volume." Learn more at:
http://www.thephantomwriters.comGreg Cryns
The Mighty Mo Website Design and Promotion20 Ways To Make $100 A Day Online.
