One of the yucky parts of creating your own websites is the process of getting backlinks.  An easy way to do this is article marketing.  Create articles about your website subject, include links back to your website and submit them to article directories.

Although I do write for a living, sometimes it’s easier to outsource these types of articles so that I can focus my time on tasks that no one can do but me. Usually, I buy articles from Cyberhub. I have written about them in the past and have generally been pleased with the articles that I receive from them.  They are very low cost and can mostly be posted without correction.

I do, however, highly suggest that you read the articles over before you post them anywhere. I have come to notice that even though their FAQ states that most of their writesrs are from the U.S., Canada and U.K., some of them are not.  And some of those are decidedly confused and befuddled by women.

A couple of months ago, I ordered some articles about ladies laptop bags to promote this laptog bag site.  After reading the articles they sent, I spent several minutes cleaning of my laptop screen where I had spit my coffee all over it.

Wow, I thought. Someone has mommy issues. Surely these articles are a joke.

Lest you think I am being a silly girl, here are a couple of quotes:

Good thing that laptop bag makers have considered the growing percentage of female users of laptops. Yes they known to operate one since hello? The way to open it is plug that rectangle thing to the socket then push that round thing until the screen lights up and there you go!

Fashion laptop bags are considered to be women’s extension of their cosmetic kit. Did you know that some actually buy the whole package of these sleeves that they can turn into their little pretty bags for their make-ups, pens, phones and what other electronic pink gizmos they have brought over the previous months.

And then there’s this one that a friend on The Niche Blogger forum received:

“Even women have the right to find the most suitable insurance for themselves.”

But they weren’t joking.  They were not good enough to rewrite myself, so I decided to give the Cyberhub guarantee a try.  I used the contact form on the site and informed them that in no way could I ever use these articles because they are so sexist. I asked that they be re-written.  I didn’t get a response to my query, however I did get brand new articles in my email box a couple of days later at no charge.

Honestly, I would have rather seen the writer fired than to have gotten new articles.

But that’s just me.

Aside from the sexism, I have been very pleased with Cyberhub. For the most part, they deliver decent articles at very low cost.

So that’s your warning for today:

Always, always read over articles that you have purchased before posting them elsewhere.

Has anyone else experienced this with Cyberhub? What are your thoughts?

If you’ve been reading along, you’ll know that I had my first attempt at flipping a blog. First of all, let me say that Flippa made the process really simple.

Did it sell?

No.

Continue Reading ->

I was checking my email today and I saw that I had a couple of new comments at RedGage.  So, I clicked on over to the site and got a nice little suprise!

For those of you who don’t know, RedGage is a website that allows you to post links to your blogs and articles and make a little money from the page views that they generate.  Every day they give out a few bonuses for articles, photos, videos, etc. that they select to appear on their front page.

Today, one of my article was selected! So, I got a bonus of $5.50 into my account.

Hey, don’t laugh…it adds up!

If you do decide to join, I need to go ahead and warn you, they are doing some site maintenance this month, so the site is loading pretty slowly.  Other than that though, it’s a win/win situation.

Also, today I got an October Performance Report from ezinearticles. The report listed my most viewed articles for all time and for the month of October. It also listed how many clickthroughs I got from each article.  You can get most of that information by browsing your account at ezinearticles, but what impressed me was that in addition to that info, I also got a list of keywords that people used to find my most viewed articles.

This is like gold.

I can now create other articles based on those keywords and link them back to my site as well!

By the way, my 55 articles there have been viewed almost 9,000 times since the beginning of the year, resulting in 1,349 click thoughs to my websites.

I’m no good at statistics, but I think that’s a pretty damn good ratio.

In other news, the auction ends on Saturday for my first website flip.  I’m am nervously awaiting the outcome and trying not to compusively check my stats.  So far, the auction has had over 70 views but only one person is “watching” it.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

You might notice that I have created a facebook fan page for this blog.  There is a widget in the right sidebar that allows you to follow me…please do!

Since I’ve been blogging for a year now, I decided that it’s time that I learn a little about flipping a website.  My mindset is this: if it sells, great – if not, it’s a learning process and I will learn what I can do better next time.

I have decided to use flippa.com to sell my site. It costs $19 to list your site and their step by step process is actually quite easy.  I also had the advantage of a tutorial on blog flipping from The Niche Blogger.  This was extremely helpful in me getting the blog ready to flip.

As far as what happens when the blog sells, we’ll see.  The tutorial shows me how to transfer it myself, but if I can sell it at the BIN price, I want to outsource someone to move it for me.

Click here to see the site listing on flippa!

Women blog for a lot of different reasons – to make money, to fill the time, to teach others, to have a creative outlet or even for the perks.

Wait. What’s this about perks?

Are you a lady blogger who likes freebies?  Do I have news for you!

There was a great article over at Problogger a couple of days ago by a lady named Krizia.  The article was about how hard it is now to get samples from companies whose products she wants to review on her beauty blog.  Since the recession, apparently companies are wanting more and more blog reviews and are being much pickier about who they will send samples to.

Fortunatly, I don’t have this problem. Why? Because I belong to the One to One network.

The One to One Network is a network of women bloggers who get the word out on new music, books, etc, in exchange for a review copy of the product.

From the website:

One2One Network is made up of a wide array of women from 21 to 70+ years young in various life stages, from first-time mommies to seasoned moms and from career newbies to budding entrepreneurs. The common bond between us all is that we love to discover new products and we love to communicate!

It doesn’t matter if it’s online, on the phone or good ‘ol face-to-face, One2One Network Members interact with many different people in our daily lives.

As women, we appreciate the ability to share our opinions about the products and services we believe in, whether it’s with our friends, co-workers or with companies directly.

When it comes to marketing to women as a consumer group, we hold the opinions of people who share our lifestyles and interests in very high regard.

Recommendations shared via word of mouth are some of the most powerful and effective forms of marketing.

Plus, we’re the tastemakers and ‘real-life’ product testers who are usually the ‘go-to’ people in our peer groups for all things new, improved and let’s face it, probably on sale.

I’ve been with One to One for a while now and I have really enjoyed my experience.  Not too long ago, I received a book in the mail to read and write a review on.  In exchange for the book, I had agreed to post reviews at 3 different online retailers.  I was also put into a drawing for some amazon gift cards.  It’s a win/win situation.

Do all the reviews have to be positive? No.  They are looking for honest reviews from women who can say what they really think.  The book that I read was good, but not great.  And that’s how I wrote my review.

If this seems like something you would be interested in or you are already a part of the women blog network, leave me a comment and let me know.  You can get to the One to One website by clicking here.

writing

If you are looking for freelance writing work online, you may have come across sites such as Helium, Suite101, Bukisa, eHow and Associated Content.  These are all sites that pay you each month for either the amount of times your articles have been viewed or the amount of advertiser money that your articles have generated.

When you write for these sites, you do not get up front payments, however, if you know a few things about SEO and online writing, you will likely make more money per article than you would writing for up front pay for a site such as Demand Studios.

The big question is, how do you maximize your earnings on these articles and make sure that each and every article you write will be making you passive income for years to come?  There are a few things you need to do to insure the success of every article that you put online.

1. Write Evergreen -  Articles that are related to news items are fine, as long as there will be as much intrest in them next year as there is today. Make sure that every article you write will be relevent several years down the road.

2. Careful Keyword Selection -  If you know anything about SEO (search engine optimization), you already know that you need to search for the right keywords to include in your article and title.  You can get a general idea of the topic you want to write about and then search for it in the google adwords tool to find keywords that have high search volumes.  If no one is searching for the keywords in your article, then no one will find it and you won’t make any money.

If you do this correctly and you are writing for sites such as eHow and Suite 101, who have excellent page ranks, your article can easily rank on the first page of google for your keyword!

3. Use Social Bookmarking – Each and every time you write an article, you should be submitting it to digg, reddit, stumbleupon, redgage and any other social site that you can think of. This gives you backlinks to your articles and exposure.  You can also publish a link to them on your facebook page!

4. Streamline the Process – Madonna was right – get into the groove.  Once you find your pace and can streamline that process of keyword selection and SEO, you can write more articles that will make more money in less time.  One way that I do this is to use the Micro Niche Finder tool.

A lot of people use this for finding blog keywords, but it works just as well for finding keywords for articles.  You just enter in your general topic and a list of keywords is generated along with the ad cost per click for each keyword,  and the number of searches it has per month.  You can also get a SOC (strength of competition) number – the lower the better. If the SOC is is green, you know that you have an keyword term that you can rank highly for.  When I find a keyword that I like, I usually search it in google and check out the page rank of the first 5 results.  If they are all page rank 3 or lower, I know that my article can rank on the first page.

Check out the video below to see how Micro Niche Finder works and start making your freelance writing work for you!