I’ve been engaged in article marketing (under my name, pen names and for my clients) for quite some time – and frankly, I’ve become a bit disenchanted with it lately.
I am wondering if anyone else is feeling this way, too?
The biggest challenge I find is that the sheer volume of articles you need to submit to article directories to gain any traffic moment is steadily rising. I first wrote about this last September: (see the full blog post here)
Don’t just take my word on this. According to an email update from EzineArticles.com publisher Christopher Knight:
Each year, it takes more high quality articles to attract the same traffic level that fewer articles attracted just a few years ago. Most likely this has to do with an increasing content supply in the marketplace while the growth rate for the number of humans going online is slowing. The only way for any of us to stay ahead of this trend is to constantly increase your article inventory.
Definitely something to think about, isn’t it?
This certainly benefits the owners of the article directories – after all, larger article inventories means more organic search engine traffic – and more potential for ad revenue. I can also see where it isn’t as much of a concern for writers and online publishers who have already amassed a large body of work.
However, this trend definitely hurts small business owners and online publishers who are already struggling to find enough time to keep up with their content creation demands. They have to create more and more content to achieve the same level of results.
Where is the “win” in that?
Fact is, when you submit to article directories – your work is up against hundreds or even thousands of other articles on your topic. Unless your articles are picked up by other publishers (thus building valuable backlinks) – the value you derive from each article is limited to the actual click-thrus from your resource box to your site.
Of course, if you do your keyword research and the article happens to rank well in Google – you may do okay with it. If not? Well, then… better luck next time.
Which amounts to a lot of wasted effort
Another major challenge with article marketing is that not all publishers give proper credit for your work in the form of bylines – and more importantly, backlinks. It’s really frustrating when this happens – and sadly, I’ve personally encountered this too often.
What’s worse is when someone puts your work through an article “spinner” and it comes out looking like JUNK – with your name still attached to it!
Yuck! 
(What makes it even “better” is when they leave my full author’s resource box and it says “I am a professional writer…”) And yes, cleaning this stuff up is your responsibility – so you’ll need to decide if it is worth your time and energy to pursue it.
What I Plan to Do Going Forward
I’m all about getting maximum value from the time I invest in something. Therefore, here is how I plan to promote my content going forward:
- Focus much more heavily on guest blog opportunities than article marketing. I track my site stats very closely and can say with 100% certainty – traffic numbers from individual sites linking directly to my site FAR exceeds what I’ve gotten from the content I’ve submitted only to directories. (In fact, I recently joined a cool community called MyBlogGuest.com which helps bloggers find – and post their own – guest blogging opportunities).
- Use SubmitYourArticle.com to submit my content. The reason is that they submit each article directly to hundreds of individual web site owners and ezine publishers – rather than just to the article directories. There is a monthly fee for this service, but it saves me a ton of time over trying to submit articles by hand and it greatly extends my reach.
I’ll keep you posted on how these efforts go. In the meantime, I would love to hear how article marketing is working for you – so please, leave a comment below!
Til Next Time,
PS I accept guest blog posts here on Web Copy Results – email me directly at trish [at] webcopyresults DOT com if you are interested. (I am also available to post on your site, as well).
