March, 2011 | Finch Sells

Why Won’t You Die, Article Marketing?

Mar 14 2011

Article marketing is for my reckoning, the most boring chore on the planet. Every time my to-do list springs up an item that requires me to visit Ezine, I shed tears of sorrow, snap a kitten in half, and beg for it all to go away.

Just who was the smart arse to decide that such monotonous crap should ever be rewarded by Google?

The benefits, or pointlessness, of article marketing can be argued over all day long. I don’t like to ruffle feathers when it comes to SEO. Everybody has a different opinion over what works, what doesn’t, and what classifies as a gigantic waste of time. If I had my way, I would confine the entire art of SEO to the latter.

It’s pointless shit, isn’t it?

It’s like trying to beat your competitor by jumping on the fastest escalator to the top of the pile of riches. Only, you don’t control the escalator. Google can choose to switch you in to reverse at any moment. If Google has a bad day, he can choose to remove the escalator from under your feet.

Nobody can deny that great money is there for the taking by ranking first for [your key phrase here]. But in my opinion, getting search traffic is the just tip of the iceberg. The real challenge isn’t to produce optimized content, but to produce memorable content.

And for that reason, I’ve always believed sites like Ezine to be about as valuable to the end user as a third nipple on my face. So imagine the explosion in my pants then when I read just recently that the so-called Google Farmer update could bring an end to this madness.

The death of article marketing, you reckon? I’d say it’s no more than a shifting of the goalposts at this point. If there’s one thing SEO professionals can be praised for, it’s their ability to try a lot of pointless crap with no true relevance to the people that actually matter. A string of wild experiments just to find something – Christ, anything – that creates an artificial ripple and crowbars their website a place or three up the rankings.

But no matter how influential you gauge these latest Google updates to be, the warning signs are there.

It’s time to stop being such a lobotomized prat in how you market your websites. Blasting hundreds of shitty 400 word articles may be effective now, and even tomorrow, but as long as Google is *trying* to castrate you at the source, you’re always going to be struggling to keep up with the pace.

I think it’s about time people woke up from their Digital Point induced comas and realised the importance of providing genuine content that offers real value to the world. No matter how many search engine changes lay ahead, you can always rest assured that there WILL be a way of marketing genuine content. But only if you actually have it.

So how can you take a step towards that? A little method I’ve been playing around with involves simply re-distributing my budget.

Instead of outsourcing 10 mediocre articles, I’ve been surveying opportunities for how I can outsource just one high quality article and get it used as a guest post on other high profile sites in my niches.

While it’s early days and requires a lot more creative thinking, not to mention a guest post friendly niche – you’re not going to find a blog about the cheapest office chairs – the first signs are definitely promising.

I find this a much more rewarding method of generating traffic to my sites. But also importantly, it gets subscribers and the highly sought after “return visits”. Search traffic is great for generating leads and sales, but you’ll rarely see those users again – unless it’s to complain about the bullshit you just sold them in your fake review.

Guest posting is often seen as an even greater chore than article marketing. At least with article marketing you’re guaranteed a backlink if you put your commas in the right places.

Most SEOs prefer to spend their time completing utterly brainless tasks with the surgical precision that warrants their job titles. Whereas high quality content requires time and thought – qualities you often have trouble outsourcing to Nigeria – and most importantly, the development of a rapport with the end user.

But in the long run, isn’t that exactly the content Google is striving to reward?

It doesn’t really matter. Screw Google. It’s possible to run high traffic websites without a shred or sniff of a first page on the Big G. You just need to be able to market your message in the right places to the right audience. The idea of abandoning search traffic altogether is, I would imagine, too much of a leap for most. So try looking at things in a different way.

Someday, Google will succeed in getting it’s algorithm up to speed with it’s vision. I know a lot of SEOs will argue how they’re smart enough to keep finding loopholes and keep gaming the system. But when that day comes, the smartest and most cost efficient way of gaming the system will be to actually oblige the god damn system.

Produce the great content, regardless of any search traffic, and have those forces like Google striving to be on your side. Not against it.

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Professional Blogger vs. Amateur Dipshit Blogger

Mar 10 2011

Entrepreneurs love new ways of making money. So it’s only natural that many choose to explore the dogfight otherwise known as blogging for a living. And as somebody who makes good money through owning various blogs, it’s a subject I’m going to spend a lot of time dissecting.

Before I get in to details, I want to explain why blogging probably doesn’t deserve the rep it has. There’s a theory that goes along the lines of “if you can’t do… teach”. I’ve never subscribed to that line of thought. But I certainly can’t deny there are many bloggers who would lead you to believe it’s actually quite a valid statement.

When I use the term “Professional Blogger”, two images spring to my mind.

The first is of the emo kid scribbling away on his LiveJournal. Desperately publishing another bullshit “day-in-the-life” that only a small circle of his friends would care to read. This guy could call himself a professional blogger, in every negative sense of the term.

Then you have the annoyingly successful web personalities who write about seemingly nothing, but never fail to have a large crowd of naysayers hanging from their balls. These guys seem to have developed worldwide brands from the mere drag of hammering a Publish button twice a week.

Many thousands of people would love to have the latter privilege. One of the things I’m going to be writing about in future posts is how you can aim to replicate this kind of brand. Nothing that hasn’t been done before, right? Well, I’m hoping I can show you a few unique and inventive ways of monetizing your blogs, developing that reputation of authority and hopefully enjoying the ride along the way.

Yes, it’s important to enjoy the ride. If you wouldn’t write without the bait of a monetary reward, you probably shouldn’t become a blogger. The world needs less miserable keyboard trolls, and more bloggers who are enthusiastic with something to offer to their readers.

Running a blog starts as an ego trip, a great struggle to be heard and to believe that what you think actually matters. It usually ends when you’re satisfied that nobody is reading. But sometimes, writers strike a sweet spot where people are actually interested in what they have to say. Before you know it, there’s money on the table and that idle rambling never seemed so lucrative.

These pages are going to be about making that step. I’m a writer myself, obviously. I have many successful blogs littering the web. These are sites that earn me residual income that increases with the passing of every month. And for some of them, I don’t even have to write anything.

Blogging is, in my opinion, the single easiest way to get started making money online. As a guy who works from home, people often ask me for the fastest way to get money in their wallets. Of course, I can never tell them. There’s no secret trick. Any guru who offers you an overnight success formula is simply spreading mish-mashed bullshit with a different coloured background.

But when you take away the hype, blogging is a little different. The financial investment and barrier to entry is so low that truly anybody can try it. When people ask me how they can earn money online, my answer is the same old template:

“Go away, start a blog, write about something you’re passionate about every day. Keep posting for six months and then I’ll tell you how you can make money from it.”

The difference between the bloggers who make fortunes from their writing, and those amateur dipshits who become the subject of jokes among their circle of friends, can be narrowed down to having a point and having a purpose. Don’t expect instant results.

When you start treating blogging like a business, and less of a vanity parade, you’ll notice that what was once a slow march towards obscurity can turn in to a great way of generating income. I’m not suggesting that every blogger is going to make money from his craft. But it’s possible.

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Dear Affiliates Suffering From The Truman Effect

Mar 10 2011

I wouldn’t be a true Londoner if I didn’t spend every hour of the day complaining, bitching, whining or just generally living as the Daily Mail tells me to live. And so a few months ago, I had a decision to make. Commit to another year in the Rat Race, endlessly overspending in a city where my high income would be seen as no more than par for the course. Or move to Thailand and engage in a little lifestyle arbitrage.

If you don’t know what lifestyle arbitrage is, I guess the best way to explain it would be “to get the maximum bang for your buck out of life”.

Or to quote Charlie Sheen; #Winning.

Most affiliates have “fixed income”. I say that with a hint of irony, obviously, but what I mean is that we can go anywhere in the world and still be present in our jobs. We can be making exactly the same money whether we’re chained to the suburbs of the neighbourhoods we grew up in, or traipsing across the globe on the back of an elephant.

It’s easy to get caught up in the obsession of making more money. There’s a common feeling among some marketers that more profit will somehow equal a better standard of living. While it’s true sometimes, the nature of our jobs throws so many more options to the mix. Lifestyle arbitrage has always been close to my mind. I guess that’s what you get for growing up and making ends meet in one of the world’s most expensive cities. Everybody knows a job in London pays significantly more than a job outside London (for those in the UK), and that’s because the cost of living is so much higher.

But what if you could earn a London executive salary while living somewhere cheaper?

When I was an affiliate working in London – albeit let’s face it, a guy sat at a desk twiddling his balls who just happened to be near the Metropolitan line – I was automatically raising the stakes of how much I’d have to earn by restraining myself to such an expensive city. I could handle it, and I did handle it, but why pay the premium when you have the one trump card that ejects you from the rat race altogether? A fixed income that doesn’t depreciate with the economy around you.

I remember reading a few comments saying it was an embarrasing step backwards when I announced I was moving to Thailand. A baller would never turn his back on the American Dream, would he? Why trade the western way for a bunch of ladyboys and “third world” living?

Well, I’ve spoken to various affiliates earning large figures, and many of them haven’t even visited a country outside their own. This is particularly the case in America. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. But are you sure you’re aware of the sheer opportunities that full-time affiliate marketing has already opened up to you?

You can go anywhere and do anything. It’s a license to live! The sort of privilege you look back on when you have three kids and a bunch of responsibilities, thinking…damn, why did I blow the easiest chance I ever had to go and live the dream?

I remember when I made the decision. I was sitting in a Nero coffee shop with my girlfriend, nursing a property viewing hangover and weighing up my next move. It was only when I’d been forced in to making a decision (my rental contract was expiring) that I actually weighed up my options.

Inevitably, you can decide to pay the premium if a particular lifestyle is all you want to know. There’s nothing wrong with bedding down and saying “this is what I know, this is what I love”. But that attitude is ingrained in adults who’ve been chained to the careers they’re supposed to have. It’s an attitude born out of convenience more than anything. Thanks to the Internet, we are the kind of professionals that lifestyle arbitrage was made for.

My decision was pretty simple really. I could spend $3000/month renting a shoebox apartment in Central London, or I could spend that same money living in a huge apartment with my own pool, gym, games room and temperatures of 35C all year round.

So I decided to move to Thailand instead of Fulham Broadway, convinced in all of about 7 minutes that it was time to make use of the greatest luxury an affiliate can have; the flexibility to go anywhere.

This is lifestyle arbitrage. Changing your life in an instant by simply defining your own economy. It’s about getting more for less, just because you can. A choice that confronts you every day, but one that most choose to ignore. I’m willing to bet there are countless professionals who will read this post, who could choose to get more from their lives if they seized the true potential of the flexibility this industry provides.

I know we all have our puppet strings. For every reason to get up and go, there are several you can find to justify why you need to stay in the rat race and keep on grinding the grind. Loved ones, friends, kids, commitments, responsibilities…yeah, these are all perfectly valid reasons why you might not be able to get up and move to the other side of the world.

But it doesn’t have to be that extreme. Opportunities for lifestyle arbitrage are everywhere when you become your own boss. So many of the stresses and strains we place on ourselves are there because we expect them to be there, and because we feel too absorbed by the status quo to challenge them. Ultimately, I think most of us resign ourselves to the idea that we’re going to be corporate slaves for the rest of our working lives. A bunch of Truman Burbanks forever thinking about flying to Fiji but watching the years go by and getting no closer.

If your affiliate career ends tomorrow, when will you ever get a better chance to see the world without having to report to your boss at the end of the week?

You can stack money until the taps run dry, but it’s not all about money. Are you doing enough with your life to make it all worthwhile? Or are you just accumulating interest in the hope that someday it’ll add value to your life?

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In the last few hours, I’ve launched a brand new site – FinchBlogs.com – which is going to offer something a little different to the already rammo “blogging about blogging” niche. Every month, my readership on this site has grown to the point where I’m collecting readers who don’t even know what affiliate marketing is, but still come to see if they can make some sense of it.
The temptation has always been to branch in to more general entrepreneurial topics where I think I can help an audience larger than just affiliate marketers to make money. The more diversified my business becomes, the more I have to remind myself that most of you guys only give a damn about the tips and posts that make a difference to you.
Of course, I don’t want to to become one of those affiliate bloggers who starts publishing shit that has absolutely zero relevance to real life affiliates. So I’m keeping this blog for strictly affiliate related perspective. But if you want to read more of my thoughts and tips on general online business, subscribe to the new blog and you might find something you like.
If not, don’t worry. There’s plenty of my balls to go around.