As promised, I have prepared a new article marketing experiment. If you missed my last one you can read about it by following these links:
This time around, I’m going to be using a site that isn’t very established in fact as of right now the site has never made me a dime. It gets trace amounts of traffic, nothing to be super proud of:
The all-time highest day of traffic on this site was 17 unique visitors – most of which came through direct traffic. The record for search traffic on this site was a whopping 4 visitors on January 15th.
Here are a few more details about this site:
- Originally registered in June, 2008
- PageRank 0
- Covers a VERY competitive industry but I think I have some niche keywords whose competition isn’t too extreme.
The whole point here is to see how well we can increase traffic on a site that isn’t established. This experiment is going to be a little trickier because the site doesn’t have many links right now. When I did the first experiment the site I was working with had a LOT more links. This site barely has any.
What I’m going to do to compensate is trickle the articles out very slowly. When you submit through Unique Article Wizard you can tell it how many submissions you want it to do each day. For this experiment, I’m going to add an article every day for 30 days straight, but I’m only going to let the service do 10 submissions per day, per article. By the end of the experiment UAW will be doing 300 submissions per day because each day one more article will be added. UAW has about 1200 sites to submit to in the categories I’ll be working with so it’s going to take about 4 months for all of the articles to go out.
In the spirit of honesty I should tell you that I’m not really sure what’s going to happen with this experiment. Frankly this is a lot of links to add to a site that doesn’t have much link structure. I’ve never been afraid to try new things and I’m certainly not afraid to lose as long as I learn something. The risk in submitting this many articles is that the site gets sandboxed. I don’t think that’s going to happen, but it could. Even if that happens it will be back a few months later so I’m not super worried. Sometimes you have to wait to get the results you’re working for and this isn’t going to hurt the long term potential of the site, even if it does get boxed now.
If You’re Not Willing To Risk, You Don’t Deserve To Win
If past experience tells me anything, there will be some comments that tell me that this isn’t a good idea. They will say that the quality of the article links is low and/or that this is for sure too many links, too fast. The truth is that I could never have gotten to where I’m at without trying this kind of thing. I honestly don’t believe anything I read until I’ve tried it out.
I know that many of you are sitting on sites just like this one. Your site has been around for a few months, gets small or no traffic, and you’re not sure what to do with it. Sometimes I have a hard time understanding why people are so afraid to act. Think about it; if this blows up what have I lost? Not a dang thing – this site doesn’t make money anyway. I guess it will cost me some time but I would much rather spend time doing something like this than reading MMO blogs all day.
If this experiment implodes, I’ll learn something that doesn’t work and will have about a 90% chance that the site comes back in a few months. If it works, I’ll have a nice traffic increase now and will be able to make some money.
Tags: article marketing, Link Building, offsite SEO, SEO, unique article wizard
I am following you in this experiment. I started this site last month and started adding articles every day since feb. 1st to UAW. I get no traffic on this site so together we’ll be sandboxed LOL
Nice Matt, I guess we’ll see how it goes.
I’m guessing it’s going to go well.
Court,
Great post and thanks for the new experiment. I am just starting with UAW and was wondering how many articles to send it out per day. Is there a general guideling of experience you have had that would be best to not raise flags? The sites that I am targeting with UAW have been around for awhile, so not sure if they would go back into the sandbox or not. Any ideas or suggestions?
Elliott I’ve never tested more than one article per site, per day. With a site that has been around for a while that should be just fine. Your site could get sandboxed again but it doesn’t seem super likely. When you first start out I would do at most 1 article per day and I would slow down the submission number to like 10 or 20. After a month you could turn it up to 50.
I can’t wait to see the results. I will be following this very closely. If it goes good then I will buy UAW and start doing it myself. I have several sites that could use a nice link and traffic boost.
I think it should go well Trent but you never know when you’re dealing with a site that doesn’t have many links.
Court,
I would love to see frequent updates on this experiment – rather than just at the end of the 30 days. Even if it is just a quick observation that traffic levels are the same. That way we get an idea of what is happening on an ongoing basis.
Hey Neena!! I’ll see if I can update once per week.
One update a week sounds good. I was thinking of doing the same with my new blog with very little links as well. But I’m just afraid. Thanks for taking chances for those of us who are afraid.
Court,
Interested to see what happens. Like you said, best case you make money, move up the rankings, and worst case, either no traffic or you end up in the sandbox which will eventually go away.
I do have an article marketing question. I see quite a few people writing articles to places like buzzles, article city, and such. Do you think their traffic volume is high enough to make it worth the effort since they are no-follow links?
Medic honestly I don’t think so. Even if you get a person over to your site through Buzzle it will be hard to get a conversion.
Court,
What would you recommend for someone who can’t afford $69/month on UAW? Maybe Article Marketer?
Just something to get their feet wet in niche site building.
Ben I actually made a lot of money because of Article Marketer and could still do so. If you absolutely can’t free up $69 per month on UAW you could use AM. If it were me I’d make the transition pretty quickly.
These are interesting experiments but in the end how much evidence does everyone need?
I mean, with this new site, one of two things will happen. You will get better search rankings soon and a lot more traffic. Or you will get sandboxed, then recover in 6 months and then get more rankings and traffic.
Either way, you’ll make money.
And if you scale this, the numbers are on your side.
Apparently Rob everyone needs a lot of evidence.
You’re right – this is going to workout, it’s just a matter of when.
You said, “I don’t think it’ll get sandboxed.” What is the reason you don’t think it will? Not enough links? Not a competitive sub-niche of the niche?
How many pages are you building links to? 10 different subpages again?
Monetization? Adsense again?
Thanks for doing these…. Do you outsource your articles? Writing just one UAW article is a pain!
I think it will avoid the sandbox because I don’t THINK I’m adding enough links to trigger it on a site that’s 8 months old.
Right now I only have two good post pages on that site but I’ll be adding some during the month. Since the experiment will be a lot safer if I create more post pages to promote, I’ll probably be adding 5-10 additional pages on top of the two current ones.
Right now I’m not worried about the monetization but I’m guessing that at the end of the month I’ll be able to make some decent Adsense money.
I outsource most of my articles.
Court,
Is there a certain amount of time I should wait before I try this same experiment with one of my niche sites? I set it up a week ago, would you wait a month, two months…
Mark in my opinion, there isn’t any downside on a new site. Right now it doesn’t make anything and you can only go up from there. If I were you I’d try it out now to see what happens. Even if you trickle the articles out at 5 submissions per day you will eventually gain some traction.
Ya, Thanks. I am going to stick with article marketer for now until I can afford UAW.
What do you think triggers the sandbox? How fast is too fast?
I want to launch some niche sites next week.
Court,
What Wordpress Theme are you using for the placeyourkeywordhere? So you have a recommendation of what free themes to use for these simple sites?
Court,
I have a blog that is exactly 4 months old and has
nearly 400 articles and
I add 4-5 articles everyday.
I get about 300 visitors per day,
of which 90% are natural SE visitors.
Do you think if I use UAW, I qualify to distribute 5 articles a week with 50 per day submission? If not what’s your recommendation?
Thanks
Dave
Dave I would do it a little slower than that if it was my site. I would do maybe 5 articles per week with a 10 per day submission. Turn it up after a few months. Right now your site is still very new. A site that old could handle more if it had enough good links but since I don’t know anything about your link profile, that’s what I would recommend.
Thanks Court. I am not pushing you, but if you can answer would be great. The blog already has over 500 links according to Google Webmasters and many of them are quality links, mainly in-links from different blogs that have PR3, PR4, PR5 etc on their homepage. I don’t have sitewides as I don’t believe in sitewides.
Do let me know your thoughts.
Dave I already answered this, what I said stands. Start with 10 per day and go from there. 500 links honestly isn’t that many…
UAW is on the buy list before the end of the month–as soon as I have enough sites to promote (I have six; 19 to go!).
Does UAW let you anchor your backlink to your site with specific keywords, or are you stuck using your site title. Can you rotate your anchor text so it doesn’t all say the same thing? Has there been any problem with article directories not picking up the resource box? I tried Article Marketer but it won’t let me put my backlink in the article text, and I’ve heard a lot of the directories just drop the resource box.
Thanks–if this is too long, just add it to your list of questions for the webinar!
You can create the resource box however you want to in UAW (maximum of 2 links). You put the resource boxes in HTML format, so you decide what page the site goes to, and the exact anchor text you want.
In my experiences, I have only seen 1 site that made the anchor text from the resource box a nofollow link…. EVERY single other one, and many many sites, is a nice dofollow link, exactly as I sent it out.
You can’t put the link in the text, but UAW sends it to many different blogs, not just article directories, and they don’t drop the resource box.
Hi Court,
I’ve been using Article Marketer but I’m going to switch to UAW. Is it OK to submit all the articles I’ve already submitted to Article Marketer to UAW, or should I rewrite them first?
Thanks.
You actually could submit them Jim! Once you get into UAW you’ll find that it’s going to take some extra work to get them submitted. I’m not supposed to tell you what that extra work is but I’ll tell you that it’s going to take about 20 or 30 minutes per article to do it. It’ll be worth it.
A bit off topic but I was reading Griz and he was talking about using free sites like blogger and wordpress to create websites. You were talking about choosing your own domain. Is one better than the other?
There isn’t a huge difference between the two. I personally prefer WordPress and you can’t use Adsense on WordPress.com. In the end Matt it’s all about who can attract the most links – not about what platform you’re on. I prefer my own domains because that way I can sell the sites if I chose to.
Can you answer my question Court?
Just out of curiosity, is it difficult to beat the very same ezine directory articles if they come up No1 for your keyword?
What is wathc car insurance in ct .cheapest cost for car insurance the need for top auto insurance companie car insurance online quote youngstown ,should axa car insurance in uk
must be or someone north las vegas car insurance online quote The or someone haggerty car insurance .Well long beach compare cheap car insurance online no la auto insurance law .
Any update on the experiment?
Hi Court:
I guess you’re coming up to the end of the 30 days, and I’m looking forward to hearing your results. Either way, I plan on signing up for UAW (is this a union?) through you.
Thanks Again…
Florida Phil
Hi…looking forward to reading how this experiment went. Take care.
How did it go?
I’m not seeing any negative effects when using UAW on new domains. The usual bouncing around for a keyword, but after two weeks it’s pretty steady.
A few of my URLS sandboxed after using UAW, including one that was ranking second on Google since 2 months.
Hi Norman,
Did you stagger the submissions? Like 50 at a time?
I’ve had keywords fall out of the ranking before, but they were back within 2-3 weeks and steady after that.
No, I was doing 10-15 a day. I hope what you say is right.
Court,
Any update/results with this experiment?
I’m really excited to know how it went or how’s it going.
Whether the results are positive or negative, it doesn’t really matter (it’s just an experiment in the first place). What would matter the most are the lessons to be learned from it.
Did something go wrong with the experiment? Please update us as we all want to know the result. Is UAW still safe or did something screw up.
I’m also extremely interested in the outcome! I have two baby sites (literally just created this weekend) that I’m anxious to get indexed, along with many others that I’m itchin’ to start working on. Knowing how UAW works with a very young site is a big curiousity of mine. I hope the experiment was a success!
Looking forward to the outcome of this experiment. Article marketing is not something I have tried before as I have not been convinced by this method of promotion, maybe this result will sway my decision.
I saw this new cash flow oppertunity and I wanted to share it with everyone
http://www.ehow.com/how_4859939_earn-extra-money-early-today.html
i guess this experiment died and didn’t work