I can't say I didn't see this day eventually coming... EzineArticles is improving quality standards that will likely have an effect on many ClickBank affiliates. See their latest blog here:

http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2009/10/something-unexpected.html#more-2894

I had more thoughts on this development, but due to time, I'll just say that while the niches Ezine is going to target for reduction are HUGE converters I'd encourage everybody to use this as a catalyst to find other ClickBank niches to promote.

- Matt 

I wanted to let CBengine members know that Mass Article Control is going to do a substantial price increase in the next few days. Now you can get the product for $77, which is a steal. If you're an article marketer, it's a good idea to jump on this offer now. I've personally talked to the product creator and he said they'll be continuously doing product upgrades and feature enhancements, which is nice. So many software products never upgrade or work to improve their systems. If you have the budget, I would secure your copy now at the lowest price it's ever going to be. I think there are only a couple days left and the cost of the software will double.

Mass Article Control

Writing articles for EzineArticles.com or GoArticles.com is how many people start in this business. There are two approaches. Hammer out hundreds of articles and try to write an article for every keyphrase in your niche. Lots of people do this successfully, but it takes a lot of work and requires almost daily output. It can also be draining and lead to burn out because many shotgun article writers simply repurpose their articles and write the same thing in different ways over and over and over... and over.

But what about writing one KILLER article and spending more time promoting it?  I'm talking about doing research, finding quality information and truly providing an article that is valuable to people. Not just a well-disguised sales letter as most articles are. It doesn't necessarily need to be long, but it should be loaded with useful substance. It should be a great article.

Heck, maybe even consider running the article through a copyediting service or a trusted friend to make sure it's error free and reads smoothly.

Then spend time promoting it on forums, directories, blogs, social bookmarking networks, Myspace, Twitter. Get backlinks to it. Try to to push it to the point where it becomes somewhat viral. Takes on a life of it's own. Ranks high in the search engines. The more popular an article becomes the more popular an article becomes. I know folks that have single articles that earn them 5-10k a year.

I've become a huge fan of this link service. They'll let you buy a hundred backlinks to an article. I bought 100 links the other day to a Myspace profile. I've seen increased results in the search engines. These links are just one facet of a multi-faceted backlink stategy.

http://www.cbengine.com/cbe/web.cfm?hop=pooketss

If you go the killer article route, I'd pick a medium to hot keyphrase and go for it. Ezine articles still tend to rank high, but the ones that do the best have link promotion behind them and provide truly useful information. It's important to make sure all your links don't just come from Web 2.0 social media sites as Google is now devaluing sites with only social media backlinks. You need a diversity of inbound links.

Try the killer article approach and let me know how it goes in the comments.  

Like websites, Ezine articles need some basic promotion to rank higher in the search engines.

Read more...