Article Marketing is a fantastic tool!  Yes, it is a tool and perhaps one of the greatest internet tools we have at our disposal.

For some people, article marketing is their total internet business.  They write articles and publish them to take traffic to an affiliate product.

Today, these people are slowly being forced into expansion of their business by more and more limitation on the use of affiliate links in the author resource box.

Where to expand to?

Squidoo is probably the most popular media for expansion.  You create you squidoo page as a landing page for your affiliate product, include a number of opportunities for people to click through to the affiliate program and presto, your business has expanded.

A second solution is to get your own web hosting and domain name.  Now you can create a landing page that drives your article marketing traffic to your chosen affiliate product.

Article Marketing can drive traffic to any location you want and for any purpose you choose.  You can use articles to drive traffic to a website, landing page, squidoo lens or a blog.

Beyond the elements that make a successful highly read article there is another key element that needed for Article Marketing Success:  Control over the URL your articles direct traffic to.  If you have ever used a direct link to an affiliate product you probably have learned this one the hard way.

If you do not have control of the landing page you can lose your effort.  The affiliate product is no longer viable and all your links for dozens of articles that have been published in dozens of site, are worthless, end of story, start over.

If you have control of the URL, then you can change the product to a viable product and your resource links can continue working for you for years.

Take control of your Article Marketing

Till next time this is the Marketing Hobo saying - Be in control at all times!

affiliate marketing, Article Marketing, author resource box, Bum Marketing, bum marketing on squidoo, forum marketing, Internet Marketing, make money, make money writing articles, online marketing, online publishing, squidoo, squidoo article marketing, targeted traffic

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I am getting ready to head off to the gym for my workout. Yes I really need to get into the gym and start losing some fat. I have not been for some time and sitting at my desk has created a not very pretty picture.

What does going to the gym have to do with “Article Marketing” and failure? Nothing on the surface, but it symptomatic of a major reason for Marketing Failure. Spreading ourselves to thin.

I started this blog with great intention, I also began Squidoo Pages and a couple other blogs, all with great intention. Along with these endeavors I have other aspects of marketing as well as living that come into play. I am spreading myself to thin, all except the waist line that is.

You are never too old to learn and your never too experienced to make a mistake. I have made a few in the past few months and they are causing me to take a second look at a few of my decisions. Focus: is one of the key ingredients for success and I really have lost focus of late.

I need to take a couple of days and look at what I am doing, what I am not doing well enough and where I am spending too much time, time that would be more valuable in other area’s.

One place that glares out and screams, enough, is squidoo. I have gotten so focused on building squidoo pages that I am not spending enough time with this blog and other areas that I really need to focus on. I had this idea of getting the “Giant Squid” that I have now built more than 75 squidoo lenses. Enough already! If it is going to happen, its going to happen, time to focus some place else.

Do you spend enough time focusing on one thing to be successful or are you spread to thin? There is no shame in realizing that something you do is not working. There is no blame in realizing you need to spend more time working on one area instead of another. There is shame in not admitting that you need to make a change, do something different or just throw in the towel and move on. That is part and parcel of trying and then trying again.

Never fall in love with an idea and refuse to let it go. If you do, you work hard and see few if any real rewards for your effort.

Until Next Time This Is The Marketing Hobo Saying - stay flexible.

affiliate marketing, Article Marketing, Bum Marketing, Home Business, Internet Marketing, News, squidoo

I had some great plans for my squidoo efforts this week.  I decided to make some major changes to a couple of my lenses and then see the results.  I wanted to see the affect the changes made to ranking etc, before proceeding on with other lenses.  Then Squidoo decided to move servers.

The server change has created some glitches and this is to be expected.  The team has done a great job of sorting out the problems and you can now tell things are running faster.  The only problem that I have at the current time is:  The dashboard that lists the site rankings, has not changed for 3 days.  The result of this problem for me is, I can not see the affect of my changes.  I do not want to continue until I know so am hoping they will get it sorted out soon.

In the mean time, I will write some articles to publish at EzineArticles and perhaps work up another squidoo lens or two.

Lesson:  Even when things do not go your way, be patient and pass the time with other productive items.  Never stand still waiting.

squidoo, squidoo article marketing, Squidoo Lens, squidoo lensography, squidoo marketing

WHOOPS!

No, you haven’t crossed into the Twilight Zone.

We’re just hard at work preparing Squidoo for its move to new servers.

This is the message that awaits Squidaholics this morning on Squidoo.

There are hundreds of people that are what might be described as squidaholics, people that spend hours each day creating or improving their squidoo lenses.  I am afraid that these people today are facing withdrawals.

Count yours truly among them. Squidoo is moving to new larger servers and this will mean in the future, Faster, better, and steadier lens building and browsing for you in the future.

For now, I will just be content to write new content and put it onto squidoo tomorrow.

squidoo, squidoo article marketing, squidoo lensography, squidoo marketing

As you might know, I made an effort to become a “Giant Squid” on squidoo this past two weeks. A Giant Squid is a person that has 50 quality lenses as determined by some higher Squidoo power.

Well yesterday was the day of acknowledgment and I did not get selected. Am I devastated by this lack of recognition? No - on the contrary, this morning I am thrilled as realization stepped in.

My overall Lens Ranking on Squidoo has improved dramatically as a result of this focus. I had 5 squidoo lenses that were ranked between 49,000 and 70,000, now after a week my bottom 5 lenses are ranked between 29,000 and 36,000, a fantastic improvement in my judgment.

So what is next? I am going to hold with 53 lenses and work to improve the existing lenses. Not to say that I might not add another lens, but this will only happen if I stumble upon a topic I can just not pass on.

Starting today I took my lowest traffic lenses and created a list of 5 to begin working on. I made the observation that in 2 months or more these lenses had no traffic from Google. This told me a number of things that needed more focus.

The first lens for improvement was “fat fighting foods”. Now I ask you - What is wrong with that title? Everything. Beginning with the title I did the following:

1. Changed the title to: “Biggest Loser - Eating For Success”.
2. Re-wrote the Introduction and created new Title
3. Improved on each section sub-title
4. Fixed broken Links
5. Deleted a module that had no content

Tomorrow I will take the second lens “Candle Making Thoughts and News” and give it a make over as well.

This is the Marketing Hobo saying: Work to improve and improvement will happen.

My Full Lensography

article title, article writing, bum marketing on squidoo, squidoo, squidoo article marketing, squidoo giant squid, Squidoo Lens, squidoo lensography