By Kenneth Koh

Who am I to teach you about blogger mistakes? I’m not a big-time blogger. Neither has my blog won any award.

But I do know one thing, that is, how to use my blog as a tool to achieve my goal.

I’m telling you this because this is exactly the TOP mistake that many new bloggers make.

Many new bloggers tend to treat their blog as some kind of online holy grail, thinking that as long as they have a blog, traffic will come and they will make money.

What they should do instead is to think of blog as just another a tool. It should be part of the business, not the business.

I know this is a bit theoretical and ‘dry’, but this is an important fundamental that you must understand, if you want to follow my advice.

As you know, I get most of my writing inspiration from our members’ questions. Today’s topic on blogger mistakes is no different.

Here’s the question I received from a member:

“I respect you as a master marketer with great knowledge and insight. Could you have a quick look at my blog, and suggest ways to get it really going… and also to start making REAL money??” – Izzy Joseph

I’m not sure how Izzy’s blog is performing now. But if I were to be critical, here are some advice I can think of:

1) Build A Business, Not A Blog

As I said, I don’t consider myself as a blogger. My approach to blogging is from the perspective of a marketer.

To me, blog is one of my marketing tools for my business. In other words, blogging is not my business, and it should not be your business too.

Frankly, I can’t see a business in your blog. What I can see instead is you are trying to write some articles and get people to buy the Clickbank product you’re affiliated to. That’s not a business.

Your domain name is membership-millions.com. If I were you, I will turn the blog into a resource centre that teaches people how to make money from membership. You may write articles that teach people how to start a membership site, how to promote membership sites, etc. You can engage a freelancer to create a membership script to give away.

If you choose to go the membership way, everything you do should be related to membership. Your opt-in freebie should be an ebook about membership. Your articles should be about membership.

If you are afraid that you may not have enough material to write about membership, your worry is unnecessary. Everything about internet marketing can be twisted to link to membership. For example, your little twitter ebook can be renamed to “how to promote your membership with twitter”… Read Story Here

Technorati Tags: Blogger Mistakes, Online Marketing

You have finished writing your article, the title is catchy, the word count is between four and six hundred words and you are happy with the story. You have run a spell check, done some editing and reread the article several times. It is a good idea, at this stage to run the piece through copyscape.com which, is an online service that will pull up any copies or part copies of the submitted page. Once everything is in order you will publish the article and ping your chosen list of contacts.

Then what?

In order to give your article wider exposure and ultimately, drive more traffic to your web site, it is prudent to submit your article to several established article directories. By Googling “article directory”, you will be presented with a large selection of directories. EzineArticles seems to shine above the others.

You will be required to sign-up to the directories that you choose, the more professional ones don’t hassle you with a follow up e-mail campaign. Then, just select a category that fits your article, paste it in together with a resource box that contains your pen name, as well as a link to your home page.

Article directories regularly submit their works to the search engines where, your story can be picked up by publishers who are looking for keyword related articles. Therefore, your story may be republished many times by a variety of authors who are members of certain article directories. The popularity of the article’s subject, the keywords chosen and the compulsive intrigue of the title will, collectively, determine your article’s viral value.

There is some conjecture here over how Google applies their duplicate content rule, even though the original document is unique, and is the work of the author. The general train of thought is that should your article be picked up first by Google in say, Smith’s Monthly Ezine, and a link is followed from the article to your site where, Google finds the same article, then your site is deemed to have duplicate content.

This may or may not be the case, but to be on the safe side, it might be wise to slightly alter the content of the article before submitting it to the directories. By doing this the story remains the same, however it is not identical to any article published on your web site.

Writing good quality, unique articles to publish on your web site will establish your site as a content rich source of information that will attract a stream of visitors. By blogging and pinging you will have your articles spidered and your site quickly indexed. Maybe it’s best to wait before submitting your marketing article to your chosen directories.

Niche Hunter

Technorati Tag: Niche Articles

When publishing an article on the Internet, authors must consider the fact that they have less than five seconds to capture the readers attention. Therefore, special attention must be given to the title of an article, for the story to have any chance of being selected and read.

An article title must immediately attract viewers attention, the title should be concise and compelling to pique readers interest as well as, encouraging them to read on. Ideally, the title will consist almost entirely of keywords, arranged in such a fashion, so as to portray the many benefits that may be in store for the persons who choose to read the entire story.

Publishers, who are looking for content for their web sites, are searching for keyword related articles and upon discovering such an article, they must be enticed, by the article’s title, to click on it. Should the leading paragraph hold their attention and the complete story delivers the expectations indicated by the title, then the story has a good chance of being republished.

Admittedly, if the title of an article is not grabbing the viewers attention, it can be changed at anytime, but it is far better to spend a little extra time and get the title right in the first place. The title is in fact, the essence of an article and with the success or failure of a story depending on it, then it must be perfected before the story is released. When an article is first published it is new, fresh and unique. When an article is edited and republished it does not command the same respect and has lost some of it’s splendor.

Reading an Ebook or online article is totally different to relaxing in a lounge chair and reading a paperback. Online reading requires a greater degree of concentration and the reader is subconsciously urged to quickly soak up as much information as possible. Consequently, digesting a lengthy, in depth article soon becomes boring. Online viewing induces a shorter attention span for readers, who demand concise, easy to digest and informative articles.

Most popular, republished articles adhere to the above criteria and consist of an average of five hundred words. Articles that run to eight hundred words or more, are generally abandoned before being completely read and therefore, are unpopular. A piece that is less than three hundred words does not have the capacity to contain enough material to completely inform the reader on the chosen subject.

When an article has a compelling title, an interesting first paragraph that grabs readers attention, a concise article body that contains pertinent information, then there is every chance that the story will be republished many times and become viral. Of course, this aspect will largely depend on the topic’s popularity at the time of publication.

Article marketing is a challenging endeavor that at times, appears to be unrewarding. Many articles have to be written in order to produce those few that take off and become popular. The expectation of producing that one magical article that will explode into a viral monster, is always lurking in the mind of an ardent author.

An article’s viral performance, will depend on what’s in the title.

Niche Hunter

Technorati Tag: Article Marketing