3 Article Marketing Myths That Cost You Money

 

When it rains, it pours. It is true for, among other things, article marketing. Lately I’ve been doing lots and lots of it for a couple of clients. I’ve also started getting more inquiries into my article marketing support services.

Online article marketing has been around since circa 1999. I remember writing my first article as a ghost writer years ago and getting paid very good money for it (that was before $5/article sweat shops and article spinning software became all the rage). Articles were submitted to directories to build backlinks to authors’ websites as well as to get free exposure.

Ten years is a long time for anything Internet-based and article marketing is not an exception. You’d think that by now any myths and misconceptions about how to market with online articles would be dispelled. Yet almost every day I come across a blog post or, even better, an article (and sometimes even an e-book) that professes to be a well of article marketing wisdom, but in fact simply repeats the same old myths and hearsay.

Some of the most harmful and plain wrong pieces of article marketing advice include:

Myth 1 – Article marketing is FREE

Oh, boy, where to begin with this one… Ok, how about I just repeat what I said earlier, “Lately I’ve been doing lots and lots of it for a couple of clients.” And by clients I mean business owners that pay money to have me write, edit, optimize, and distribute their articles to various directories.

But let’s say you want to completely DIY your article marketing efforts. Sounds great, if you have the budget for it. Wait a second, isn’t that the whole point of DIY-ing to not pay a dime for your marketing? Well, free stops being free if you take into account the time it takes you to write and publish even a single article. And to start seeing results from your article marketing efforts, you’ll need a lot more than one or even ten articles.

Myth 2 – Articles are CHEAP

True, you can hire writers for $3-5 per article. Private label rights content is even cheaper. With rates like this, you can afford weekly or even daily articles. Except here we’re running into the good old “you get what you pay for” issue.

One of my best clients for whom I do article marketing and vendor management has a rule – he does not hire any writers who charge less than $10 per article. Why? Because he knows first-hand that cheap articles require extensive re-writes (occasionally, complete overhauls) to make them readable and in compliance with article directories’ editorial guidelines.

When it comes to private label rights articles, many sites expressely forbid use of PLR in submissions. Extensive customization of PLR is possible, but takes time and money. And even then, some of the best directories will reject your articles.

Myth 3 - You can’t publish the same article on different sites without SPINNING it 

This is one of those article marketing myths that is particularly difficult to eradicate. The reasoning goes something like this: publishing the same exact (word-for-word) article to different sites creates duplicate content. Posting duplicate content will get you in trouble with article marketing sites.”

So here we go, the good old “duplicate content” monster that scares you into spending countless hours re-writing each article for each directory and buying article spinning software that turns even well-written articles into garbled pieces of low-quality junk. (Can you tell I think this myth is particularly irritating?)

So let’s put this myth to rest once and for all (bear with me please since this will save you a lot of time, money and heart-ache):

Straight from editorial guidelines of some of the most popular article directories that require manual approval of each article by their editorial staff:

MUST NOT be a submission of the exact same article as one that you already submitted. Some authors have submitted the same article multiple times with only a few words changed in the body — we reject these and ban authors who engage in this practice. (from EzineArticles)

Remove any duplicate content or duplicate articles which are submitted to the site. This includes articles which are submitted to numerous categories with no attempt to change any of the content in order to relate the category intended (from ArticleAlley)

All articles must be original articles. Multiple submissions of the same article will not only result in the article being removed, but it can also lead to the author being suspended should we consider them to be abusing the system. (from ArticleBase)

You see it, don’t you? The dreaded duplicate content refers to submitting an article to the SAME directory more than once. If all those editorial guidelines quotes leave any doubt, here’s something straight from the horse’s mouth:

Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article… (from Google Webmaster Central) 

Article marketing is a great tool to include in your online marketing strategy as long as you understand that it requires hard work, long-term commitment, and understanding of the basics of content creation and SEO.  If you are not sure whether what you’re reading online about article marketing is true, my best advice is to READ EDITORIAL GUIDELINES for each article directory to which you want to publish.

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