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Content-based marketing is back – with a bang!

In 1996, when I started working online, content was KING.

As a guide on the popular web service About.com, I experienced the awesome power of content wrapped in revenue generating systems. When it went public before the dot com bust, a share in About.com was priced at over $100 – and the company was worth several hundred million dollars.

In 2000, the bubble burst. Content sites took a backseat as the bottom fell out of the banner ad market and ad rates plummetted. Portals became old fashioned. Other exciting web profit models thrived.

We’ve come a full circle.

Starting in 2004, content is back with a bang. Google Adsense caught the wave on the upswing, and all of a sudden it became fashionable – and very profitable – to build content rich websites and host ads on them.

There is still a lot of confusion in a beginner’s mind about the best, most effective, easiest way to build content-rich websites that tap into the variety of profit models that abound online. Newbies – and even some experienced marketers – want to know how to do it.

Here is your answer.

I’m going to share with you some experiences, and reviews of various elements of article marketing. You will learn about

- the critical ingredients in using articles to build content rich websites
- the exact steps you’ll need to take to make this effort profitable quickly
- the software tools and services to make your task easy and effortless

The Steps In Building A Content Rich Website or Portal Using Articles

To launch your own content based online empire, here are the steps you’ll take:

1. Identify your niche
2. Research the top keywords in your niche
3. Get articles on your topic
4. Customize the articles to be unique
5. Create a content website
6. Develop a system to keep it fresh
7. Insert revenue streams
8. Promote to drive a flood of traffic

Let’s take a close look at each step.

Identify Your Niche

Niche finding has become a semi-specialty in itself. There are far too many ’systems’ to discover rich, untapped niche markets. Exploring them in detail is far beyond the scope of this special report.

There are several tools to help you, and many sites and services that even offer ready-to-go research reports. I will list some of them in the special members area, you can get access by becoming a Gold Member.

For the time being, I’ll assume you already have a niche in which you’re interested, or know how to find one that has great potential.

Research Your Top Keywords

Depending upon your purpose, you’ll look for specific kinds of keywords related to your niche topic, to create or source your articles.

For instance, if you’re looking to maximize your profit from Google Adsense (or other contextual advertising programs), you want the highest paying keywords in your niche. Or if you’re looking to attract large volumes of traffic to build a list or sell a product, you want keywords that are searched many times on search engines.

Again, there are many tools to help you with this process. Some I’ve used often are:

Nichebot – http://www.Nichebot.com
Good Keywords – http://www.GoodKeywords.com
Wordtracker – http://www.WordTracker.com

An excellent report offering a detailed evaluation of 21 major keyword research tools is available at Allan Gardyne’s website.

Get Articles on Your Topic

Once you know what topic you’re going to work on, and have a list of your top keywords, the hard work begins.

You’ll need to create, find or buy content to build your website.

In the past, there weren’t many options. You either had to write articles yourself, or hire someone to write them for you. Today, there are many more choices.

You can

- write your own articles
- hire a ghostwriter to write them for you
- buy ready-to-go articles packages (with private label rights)
- syndicate articles from other services
- use reprint rights articles from article directories
- get software with built-in article databases
- search online resources for articles using software
- create software-assisted articles
- generate articles entirely using software

If you have time, write well (or enjoy writing), and don’t mind growing your site slowly and steadily, you could do it all yourself. But if you’re eyeing quick growth without spending hours and hours of your time, you’ll either have to hire someone or buy/borrow content others have created.

Just a year back, the process of finding and using relevant keyword-rich articles was a manual process – and no fun at all. Now, there are some excellent programs available that automate this cumbersome, boring task – and do it exceptionally well.

Take a look at what these programs can do…

- search across various article directories for relevant articles
- find articles containing specific keywords (in the title or content)
- sort the articles by relevancy and keyword density
- present the articles as text or HTML files
- automatically insert the articles into templates you design
- generate a sitemap for your selected articles (even XML maps Google likes)

In addition, the more powerful ones include extra features.

- You can create an RSS feed for easy syndication of your content
- You can add your own articles to the database the program uses
- You can have your articles rotated periodically or published on a schedule
- You can generate ’snippets’ of each article (I’ll show you how this helps)

Of course, you can do all of this yourself if you’re short of cash. Or you can invest in one of the programs (they range in price from $37 to $297 or more) to handle a few or all of the tasks. Your choice.

A note on copyright – Beware of the terms governing fair use of articles created by others. A few lawsuits have been filed for using website content against the ‘Terms of Service’ – make sure you read it carefully.

And when you hire a ghostwriter, remember it is your responsibility to make sure you’re not using copyright protected content. A service like Copyscape – http://www.copyscape.com – could be useful.

Customize Your Articles

A question often posted on various discussion forums about using ‘reprint rights’ articles (including ‘Private Label’ articles or even article packs you might purchase) is this:

“Won’t it be viewed by Google and other search engines as ‘duplicate
content’? Will I be punished by low ranking or removal from the search
engine listings?”

Well, yes… and no.

If you simply buy a pack of articles or pull them from a directory and slap them up on your website or submit them to article directories, your articles will be a duplicate of others.

DON’T DO IT.

Instead, spare a moment and put in a little effort to make your articles unique. Here are a few easy ways you can do it:

- insert the articles into a template you design
- add an introductory paragraph to the article
- delete at random around 30% of the article or rewrite it
- rearrange content in the article (make sure it makes sense, though!)
- modify or rewrite a section of the article in your own words
- break up the article into several smaller sections of varying length

Example of an introductory paragraph I use for some of my Private Label articles:

In this article, you will learn one of the most carefully hidden secrets about _______ . It’s something many of the top experts know – and every
beginner would love to know. And it has the power to skyrocket your
online success – guaranteed. Read it very carefully.

All of these techniques are quick and easy to follow – and will set your version of the article collection apart from any other on the web.

Again, there are scripts and software to simplify and automate this part of the process. You could use them to save time and effort – or do it by hand, or hire someone to help you with it.

Create a Content Website

Once you’ve collected and optimized your articles, you’ll have to start building your content website.

There are 2 ways to do it -

* by hand
* by software

Hand-crafted websites are time consuming to design and update. But by planning out your structure carefully, and by intelligently using technology like CSS (cascading style sheets) and SSI (server side includes) or programming languages like PHP, you can create beautiful sites that are easy to manage and update.

Or you could use any of the collection of automated solutions available that create websites from templates. These programs are powerful enough to let you create sites with 100s or even 1,000s of pages within hours if not minutes.

Just make sure you spend some time modifying the default templates that come with the software – otherwise your site will look exactly like the ones other users of the software create!

I’ll be listing and reviewing a few of the best tools later (and in the members-only area you can get free access to more information about finding and using the very best ones – see end of this report for details)

Keep Your Content Site Fresh

If you thought what you’ve done so far is hard work (and it is, if you try doing it all by yourself – that’s where the automating solutions and tools help so much), then think again!

What’s more important is keeping your site fresh.

Search engines love fresh sites. If you add content, modify your site regularly, write new articles, throw in more value, make changes frequently, you’ll be rewarded by higher search engine rankings.

But… doing it takes time – unless you automate!

Refreshing your website often – and doing it hands free – is possible by using the exciting technology called RSS.

Including RSS feeds in your article website allows you to keep displaying ever-changing, relevant, keyword-rich content – without lifting a finger!

Don’t understand RSS? No problem. The software programs will even handle this for you. Or you could post your articles (or snippets of them) to a blog, and then have the blog content ‘fed’ to your content site via RSS.

Of course, the other way to keep updating your site is to ‘trickle’ new content (more articles) into it on a periodic basis. Your site grows organically, a little bit every day. And this is a very powerful system.

Just think – if you add ONE article daily to your site, at the end of a year, you’ll have 365 new pages in your site – and it will be a MASSIVE resource on your niche topic! What’s more, there’s software that can even do it for you – automatically.

Insert Revenue Streams

Ok, now that you’re done with the structure and content of your website, it’s time to think about making money from it!

There are any number of models you can put to use in a content-rich niche website. All of them work – but you need to find one (or preferably a few) that work for YOU.

I’ll list a selection of options – pick the ones you are most comfortable with, and try them out. Keep the ones that work, and drop the non-performers. Replace them with another, and test again.

- Contextual Advertising: Google Adsense ads are a popular income model for niche websites. Other alternatives are Kontera, Revenue Pilot, Chitika, Context Profits, CB Grabber and others. These services automatically display ads related to the content and keywords on your site – and you get paid each time a visitor to your site clicks on the ads.

- Affiliate Marketing: By displaying ads and endorsements for products and services related to your niche topic, and using your ‘affiliate’ link, you could get paid a referral commission for any sales resulting from visitors to your site.

- Banner Ads: Selling banner ads (directly or through a network) is another way to monetize your site visitors. Various options include being paid per banner viewed, clicked or sales resulting from them.

- List Building: Pop an opt-in box on your site, and you could start building a niche mailing list. The revenue possibilities are vast – you could sell to them directly, broker this list and rent or sell it to other businesses, run endorsements for other products and share profits, or anything else.

- Direct Selling: If you own (or create) a product or service relevant to your niche audience, you could sell it from your site directly.

We’ll discuss some other ‘creative’ ideas in the members area too. But the list above should give you some ideas to get going.

Promote Your Site & Drive Traffic

This section could fill an entire book by itself. And there’s a reason for that – it’s the MOST CRITICAL part of the entire process!

Also, there is no single ‘best’ way to do it. Literally hundreds of tactics exist – and one or ten or fifty of them might work very well for you. The only way to know is to try out various ’systems’ and track your results.

I’ll share 3 of the methods that worked well for me – and in a special report available only when you register, I’ll give you a step by step plan I used to drive targeted visitors to my niche website within one month.

Some of these techniques require specialized technical knowledge – others do not. I don’t know about your individual skills or experience, and so I’ll keep it simple. If you require any assistance with these steps, consult any techie who can help out.

For this report, I’ll share the techniques that are free or require only minimal expense. Other methods may be more effective – but involve some upfront costs.

Promotion Idea #1 – ARTICLE DIRECTORY SUBMISSION

Submitting your article to the top article directories is a quick way to get inbound links pointing to your website – and have your article displayed on many different websites, driving traffic to you.

Yet, this simple and powerful technique won’t work for most people who try using it – because they don’t do it right.

Here’s how you can avoid most of the common mistakes others will make.

1. Choose ONE article to submit to directories. Don’t worry about getting them all out there.

2. Spend time tweaking it to be unique and attractive. DO NOT EVER submit an unaltered article you got from a membership site or as part of a private label package. Even custom written articles can be modified to make them truly unique, just in case your ghostwriter decides to sell them to others!

How to modify your article?

Some quick tips:

- Replace words with others having the same meaning
- Rewrite some of the sentences in your own words
- Change the sequence of the article
- Alter the tone of the message or the tense or voice (active to passive, first person to third person)
- Throw in keywords you are targeting to make it more SE optimized

Here’s an example (keyword – ‘credit cards’)…

BEFORE:

Are Credit Cards A Bad Idea?

Credit cards are just so convenient, aren’t they? There’s no need to carry
any money with you ever again: you can just take one with you to the shop
and pay the exact amount just by handing it over. If you haven’t been paid
yet, then you don’t need to worry, because the money will still be there.

When you shop on the Internet or over the phone, it’s the only good way to
do it – what else are you going to do, post a cheque? Like anything
convenient, though, credit cards have a flip side – in fact, they have lots.

AFTER:

Credit Cards – NOT A Good Idea!

Some people think credit cards are convenient, because one does not need to
carry cash. Customers can take credit cards out shopping, and buy
anything they like without paying money, even if they don’t have any cash in
the bank!

Also, credit cards are the best way to purchase over the Internet or on the
phone, especially when check payments would take too long to mail and get
cashed.

But everything about credit cards isn’t good. Indeed, there are many
downsides to using credit cards.

Can you see how the meaning is not altered, while the articles have very little similarity in the words used, the tone or language? Plus, the revised article now has more instances of our chosen keyword – ‘credit cards’.

It takes no more than a few minutes to modify an article this way – and remember, you won’t do it for all articles, just the one you plan submitting to directories.

3. Once you’ve modified your article, work on creating a ‘killer’ resource box to list your ‘About the Author’ information. It should always include a link back to your website.

Mention your link TWICE. Use your target keyword phrase as the anchor text of your link in one. In addition, in the second link, mention your URL itself. This helps in case your article is syndicated on other websites, but without the HTML code for your link back!

4. Submit your optimized article to as many article directories as possible. Don’t ignore niche directories relevant to your topic – some of your best prospects are flocking to these niche directories.

5. To save yourself time and effort, you could use automated solutions (software or services) that handle the entire article submission process. You’ll find a list of the best ones at the end of this report.

Promotion Idea #2 – YAHOO! GROUPS

Another quick way to get search engines to spider your content-rich niche website is to host a group with Yahoo!

Set up an account mentioning your niche website, and even offering a periodic ‘newsletter’ if you like. You could use your articles as content for each issue!

Yahoo’s spider will visit your website very soon after you list your group – and also you will get some targeted prospects visiting your site, even opting in to your mailing list.

Promotion Idea #3 – PRESS RELEASE

A simple way to get some buzz going about your niche website is to issue a press release through a popular service like PR Web – http://www.prweb.com

Since PR Web is a highly ranked website, and all press releases are spidered very regularly, chances are that you will get your site into the search engine indexes quickly by issuing a press release.

Brainstorm some ideas to work out a press release. Remember to focus on the story and not on your website. The more exciting, mysterious or intriguing your ‘hook’ or ‘angle’, the more likely it is to be picked up by the media.

And who knows? You might get lucky and be featured on many news outlets, creating big word of mouth publicity for your site.

Note: By paying a small fee, you can get higher visibility for your press release on PR Web. The $80 package guarantees your release will be listed on Yahoo News.

There are many more promotion ideas you can use. One of the most effective ones I used took 14 days to set up – and within this time frame, I was able to create passive Google Adsense income from 6 niche sites.

It took less than half an hour each day to set up, involved almost no promotion other than the simple strategy I used, and was a ’set and forget’ process that runs hands-free ever since!

And finally, for the big question…

Can You Do It Too?

Of course you can! All it takes is following a plan – and a systematic, sustained effort.

The hardest part is getting the articles. But no matter whether you choose to buy articles or write them yourself, get started on your plan… and soon you’ll be profiting from niches too.

THREE PLANS TO SUIT YOUR BUDGET!

As a special bonus to this report, I have created THREE blueprints you can use to generate profits from article marketing.

Plan #1 will suit you even if you’re totally broke – and have nothing but a burning desire to succeed from niche marketing using content sites.

Plan #2 will fit you if you have upto $100 to invest – and are willing to put in some time and effort to save money while your niche marketing kicks in.

Plan #3 will be ideal if you are willing to spend $500 or more on buying the best tools – and devising a ’system’ to churn out one niche site after another, all running on auto-pilot and generating profit… without having to lift a finger after setting it all up.

To see the three plans, you’ll have to be a Gold Member – Join now.