The only real reason that online businesses pour so many resources into article marketing is to get more traffic. That’s why the better Internet writing services flourish, and it’s why the top article directories never lack fresh content.
Our syndicated article help us in this way in two potential ways. On the one hand, we can receive visitors directly from those articles when the readers click a link in our resource (or author’s) box, and/or, alternatively, the major search engines can notice our article link and give greater important to that landing page on our site. This latter option leads to more traffic, eventually, by sending us visitors who have found our page in the search engine results.
Trying to maximize our results from those two methods causes a problem. The pages that we want to optimize in the search engines may not be the same pages to which we would ideally send our article readers. Let me explain this problem in a little more detail.
Often we pay the most SEO attention to pages that generate revenue directly. We are optimizing, in those cases, for searchers who are in a buying state of mind–or at worst in the state of mind in which they just need a little shove to make that final decision.
On the other hand, the readers of our syndicated articles are, typically, at a much earlier stage in the decision making process. They are usually at a stage of beginning information gathering. That’s why they came to our article rather than going directly to a store or service provider.
Now, hang onto those two competing states of mind for a moment, while we consider how we construct pages on a business website. A basic marketing principle of good website design for a business is that each page within our site should be constructed in a way that contributes to creating only one action on the part of the prospect. That action might be buying or signing up for our mailing list in order to receive additional information. So, if we absolutely obey the marketing rule, it is logically impossible to both optimize the most prized pages on the site and simultaneously satisfy the human reader–can we?
That is the seemingly unwinnable choice that faces us. Should we focus our article marketing efforts on SEO or on providing a landing page for our readers that will offer them what they truly desire at their current stage of decision making (or procrastination, in some cases)? Should we abide by the simple, common sense marketing rule, or should we magically try to successfully incorporate two disparate objectives within this single site of the page?
We must consider these options carefully in both our article syndication decisions and our copywriting decisions within the website itself.
Oh man, was I ever excited when I heard that there may be a new internet tax so that everyone will have to pay x% tax on their purchases online! I haven't heard better news since I found out my property tax went up again and the value of my house went down again! Woo-hoo! Get excited people!
This is a crucial time in US history; we are on the verge of eliminating the jobs of thousands of people that earn their living by driving sales to large businesses, all in the name of getting more tax money out of the pockets of the average citizen.
What the 'affiliate marketer' does is to get people from all over to buy a digital camera for example from a certain business, and they make a small amount on each sale. It's pretty straight forward; they are a sales person for the large business that gets the sale. It's like a sales person standing in that store, except that it's all on your computer and that sales person is the person writing that blog you're reading so you don't even realize they are selling you something. (Well, to some degree anyway.)
We ourselves have just started to offer buy Canon digital camera online on our site as an Amazon affiliate. Good thing I'm living in MN and not NC!
What do you mean about thousands of people losing their jobs and being out of work? I thought we would just have to start paying State tax on purchases on Amazon, why would they be out of work?
Amazon has taken the preemptive step of canceling ALL affiliate programs in any State that says they will collect this sales tax. You all probably know about North Carolina already; if you sold for Amazon and live in NC, you just lost your job. And it still has yet to become a law!
Somebody get NC on the phone for me please? … Hello? NC? Uhm, yeah, do you see how much revenue Amazon is going to be bringing you with your new tax? Yeah, it looks like it will be about 7% on ZERO DOLLARS so really good work, keep it up!
How many people just took a severe pay cut and will have less money to spend on local businesses everywhere in NC? What if they can no longer pay their mortgage, now we have even more houses on the flooded market that nobody can buy. What if they were a small to mid sized company that specialized in affiliate marketing? Now they will have to lay off employees or move out of state!
One marketer I know saw a 40% drop in income due to losing his affiliate account. 40% of his income gone! So what can you do?
- Create an overseas company? I don't think so; do you want to deal with the problems of sending money overseas and back and then have to face the IRS?
- Uproot your family, sell your home and move out of state? Just not a viable option.
- Create a company out of state and fake it? Yeah… have fun playing with the IRS!
I'm not going to try and suggest solutions to work around the problem if you live in NC. I'm not a lawyer, I'm not familiar with taxation law and I know I would say something very wrong and end up in hot water! Not something I'm interested in doing to be sure.
There should be something you can do, there always is. If you are serious about affiliate marketing in NC and make your income from it, then consult a lawyer. Talk with specialists, somebody who knows tax law forwards and backwards as well as someone who knows about the business end of things and I'm sure you can figure something out together. There are already States that have declared that they will not collect this tax and they will be safe for you to conduct your place of business.
Don't try and cheat the IRS or fool the IRS. Don't take chances with your future and your freedom and trade them both in for a jail cell.
North Carolina… What can I say? It seems as though all you care about it trying to get every penny from the residents there, and you never stopped to wonder what Amazon might do. Did you even bother to ASK THEM what they would do?
I guess you now know what they would do. What are you going to do about it? As for me, I'm going back to my camera repair work, and hopefully this situation will sort itself out soon! Unfortunately when it comes to Sony digital camera repair it's difficult to inform people that affordable repair options are out there!
The web. Business. Net revenue. To truly join all of these words into a fruitful combination you will require one more concept. Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful would always include the importance of generating traffic. This is essential information for any online business.
There is certainly nothing more fundamental to the success of your online business. There may be other things that are as important, of course, such as the quality of your product or the integrity of your service. However, if you have a great product, but nobody comes to buy it, you might as well have no product.
If you already have a site and you think that you’re not getting the traffic that you’re supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider your strategy. If you are trying to compete in this very competitive business climate, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow on a continuous basis.
Here are some ideas for increasing traffic that you can begin to put into place immediately. If you are already using these techniques, then take this as a reminder to figure out ways to increase their effectiveness.
- Begin a search engine advertising campaign
Use search engine advertising programs.. Although this certain way to increase your traffic comes with a price tag attached, it will be money very well spent.
Be sure to carefully monitor your advertising campaigns in order to tweak it continually to improve your results.
- Exchange Links with other sites
With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic each site generates. While the search engine optimization benefits of reciprocal linking appears to have diminished, there is still an opportunity to attract additional traffic with very little effort.
- Use “Viral Marketing”
Viral marketing gets its ironic name because it is designed to spread your marketing message in a way similar to a virus during and epidemic–from one person to another. For example, you might distribute a valuable report pertinent to your niche. You would give everyone who sees the report permission to pass it along to all of their friends and acquaintances, and you hope that those new readers would do the same. Of course the beauty of all of this is that the report (or the video, or online game, or whatever clever ideas you create) all have links to your site. If those links are followed by just a few of the people who receive the “infected” content, think how much traffic you can receive for your efforts.
- Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site
Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject as your site. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your site’s description and services at the end of the article as well as a link. Furthermore, distribute unique articles to article directories for an even more viral effect.
- Join forums and online communities (social media)
Capture the attention of a market, show your expertise and establish credibility. When you create a good foundation for your business in that way, people will trust you and your business. Traffic will certainly increase because your prospects know that you can provide what they need.
- Offer newsletters
Such regular communications with previous visitors to your business allow you to establish relationships with them. Use your newsletters to entice the readers to return to your site on a regular basis.