Hi all,

This is my first post, so hello to all. I’m actually in week 3 now and should have said hi a while back! Been too busy reading other posts and scouring the learning resources and share zone.

Made my first sale the other day (only just checked my Clickbank account) so thought I’d post to let other new members know what I’ve been up to and what I feel contributed to that first sale.

It’s a story of two halves, as I had a quick go with PPC before focussing on article marketing - the sale was through the PPC campaign but this gives me great confidence in the article campaign I’ve been putting together, as it really confirms the effectiveness of a relevant campaign!

Here’s how it happened:

I used various techniques found in the learning resources, share zone and these forums to list several possible niche markets. It’s all in the resources but basically I used … [EDITED OUT] … to find initial ideas, then searched for forums on each of these topics. If a forum had plenty of activity, I kept it on my list and noted the biggest questions that were being asked - I gauged interest in a question by the number of views that a post had, figuring that most of those views are people who also want to know the answer.

I then went over to Clickbank to find products which addressed the questions I’d found (relevancy!). If I thought that I could see a good way to explain to people how the product would solve their problem, I left it on my list.

After all this, I picked a digital photography ebook to promote and went about hunting for keywords using Google’s KW tool. However tempting it was to use keywords with high search volumes, I rigorously stuck with only the keywords that were most relevant to my initial questions. Next, I set up a couple of ad groups using the common keyword technique (see learning center), paused them, and started setting up a landing page for each ad group.

Each landing page used … [EDITED OUT] … and addressed that very narrow subject in it’s copy. It then recommended the ebook and very briefly explained why this specific ebook would fix the visitors specific problem (the one the common keywords and … [EDITED OUT] … are based on).

[Quick edit: The 2 paragraphs above give away too much, I'm hoping no-one from the forum sees this!]

Set the campaign off in Adwords, waited until I’d spent roughly the amount of commission I’d make on a single sale, then paused the campaign again.

I should explain this last step! The ebook I was promoting used a free report to build a mailing list, and didn’t actually sell anything on their landing page. Because of this I decided to wait and see whether they were managing to convert my clicks into sales over time using their mailing list.

On Sunday, it turns out, they did! a $45 commission for £25 ad spend (I’m in the UK, by the way). At today’s conversion rate, that’s about $37 ad spend, so a profit of $8, and there’s a possibility of them converting more through their list too!

Not much but it’s profit in PPC, which is a risky place to start, going on by the accounts of others (which is why I’ve abandoned it for the time being to focus on article marketing instead).

Here’s what I feel I got right:

[EDITED OUT - Sorry, I really can't just post this up here - the forum I posted it in means too much to me!]

Here’s what I’d do differently:

[EDITED OUT - The unedited version IS up for grabs at the moment, but I don't know how long for, click here to get it now]

Part 2: My article marketing

After pausing the campaign above, I started to read and learn a lot about article marketing and decided that it made a lot more sense to start out this way - a zero risk way to learn how to make really relevant campaigns that convert into sales.

After exhausting the learning center, share zone and these forums, I also signed up for Travis’ free … [EDITED OUT] … and then, after reading her excellent 1000th post in these forums (search for it), I also bought a copy of … [EDITED OUT].

As a beginner, article marketing is actually really confusing, as there are so many different approaches. Do you point your articles directly at your product or at a Squidoo lens? Do you write one article for each long tail keyword you find, or several for each and link them together? How do you link them together? Do I need to write articles and then more articles on the same keywords as an SEO project for the originals?

The problem with most of these questions seems - and please correct me if I’m wrong here - seems to be that there’s no right answer that will work in any situation. Sometimes it’s better to do it one way, sometime another! Unfortunately, I initially found that this made it very difficult to make a plan of action.

So, for all those fellow fledgling internet marketers, here’s what gave me the lightbulb moment after reading all of the great resourced mentioned above:

You have to just start!

Do the market research, as with a PPC campaign, find your product to promote, and find your possible keywords (a little different for article marketing - read the tutorials). I didn’t have a probelem with any of this - I’d already done it with the PPC campaign.

Here’s where I got stuck:

When it came to planning which keywords to write articles for, where to submit them to, which to make into Squidoo lenses and how many to write for each keyword, I was pretty overwhelmed by the options. (I’m sure that many won’t find this much of a problem and will just get on with it, but I tend to be very analytical and forward planning about this stuff - often overly so!).

Here’s how I got unstuck:

I realised that there is no great formula for this, many will work, and the best formula for one niche, won’t necessarily be the best for another. I’m guessing that this stuff comes with experience (I hope so, at least!). However, there are formulas (read … [EDITED OUT] … ’s 1000th post) that will work for some niches, some of the time.

Once you know that one way of setting up a campaign will work for some niches some of the time, you realise that it’s just a numbers game. So pick a formula, and start writing and submitting your articles, because you now know that, once you have a certain number out there, some of them WILL work! Some won’t but that doesn’t matter, I’m guessing that no-one has a 100% success rate!

I now have 2 article campaigns set up and more on the way. I’m not even checking my Clickbank account at this stage (although I am checking click stats etc, to learn what’s working best) as I feel it’s most important to just get these campaigns out there.

I’ve done the research, and I’m happy with the relevance of these campaigns, so I feel confident in continuing to produce more campaigns without worrying too much about the results at this stage and, for me, that has been the motivational key for this whole thing:

Be confident that you’ve researched your market.
Be confident that you’ve researched your keywords.
Be confident that your campaign carries … [EDITED OUT] … all the way through from articles to product.
Don’t stress about results, if the above are there, some campaigns ARE going to work out, and that’s all you need!

Of course, I’m new, have only made one sale, and that was with PPC None of this is proven yet - I just that I’d log my progress and I might as well do it here in the forums (and say hi at the same time!). Whether it works out or not, I’ll post updates (might not be all that regular, as I get focussed on what I’m doing) and hopefully someone further down the line will learn from it.

Wow, long post! If you’ve got this far, you’re probably not working hard enough! But thanks for reading and I promise to update as I go.