Recently I’ve had a few of my clients ask me if I have any updates about article marketing. As a matter of fact I do!
Article Marketer has been annoying me for years but has always been the best option available, until now. In the last few months, I have tried three completely different article distribution services and hopefully this post can catch everyone up to speed. Here’s what has been bugging me about Article Marketer.
In the last six months, Article Marketer has started taking a lot longer to approve articles than they used to. They are now taking weeks (sometimes over a month) to approve articles and this is obviously not cutting it. If they were the best option, I would still use them, but they aren’t.
They also seem to be annoyed with the fact that I submit a lot of articles. If I submit a bunch, they don’t approve any of them. If I submit one, they often approve it. Apparently my account isn’t unlimited after all, even though I paid for an unlimited account. Again, I could only live with this (and did) if it was the best option (it no longer is).
Since Article Marketer got so bad, I decided to try out some other services. The first one I went to was iSnare (I’m NOT recommending them). I went there first because I had heard about them and I’ll try almost anything once, but I have to say that they weren’t what I wanted to see. Here’s the first thing I saw after I bought the account:
Delays in approval. We are very sorry for the delays in approvals we are trying to sort out problems including support tickets getting lost. We are trying to prioritize the problem in reviews as not to make it worst than it is already. We are hoping for your kind consideration.
The message is dated in August, hahahahahahahaha. Apparently it was harder to fix then they thought. Turns out they take 2-3 weeks to get an article in. If the service was cheaper I could live with this, but iSnare costs $59.99 per month. This is way too much for a service that has known issues – issues that they conveniently don’t disclose until after you’ve given them $59.
They also want articles that are 500+ words which is pretty large.
I then tried two other companies that I was pretty happy with. Unique Article Wizard won the award as the distribution service that I will keep giving my money to. The basic idea of Unique Article Wizard is that you can rewrite each paragraph of your articles so that each publisher gets a version that’s somewhat unique. I don’t know how much value this actually provides, but in my opinion it would have to provide at least some and this should make your links stronger.
What I really loved about Unique Article Wizard is that almost all of my articles go out within 24 hours. Worst case scenario they are going out in 48 hours. This is what I expect from a service that costs $67 per month.
There were a few other things that I really liked about UAW:
- You can submit as many versions of your resource box as you like (think varied anchor text, promotion of multiple pages, etc.).
- They aren’t silly about what they approve. If it’s a good article, it will get approved.
- They submit to tons of blogs, on top of their submissions to article directories.
Right now UAW gets five gold stars and so far I don’t have any issues at all with them.
Article Marketing Automation is the other service I tried that I liked. I’m going to keep paying for their service for now, but I would recommend going with UAW first.
AMA is a good service that doesn’t submit to article directories. They only submit to regular sites and blogs. I like this fact, except their publisher network isn’t huge right now and this means your articles won’t get published on tons of sites. I would expect them to get bigger as time goes on. The articles I submitted got me about 20 links each (I’m sure this depends on the topical content of the articles).
I’m going to keep paying the $47 per month that it costs to have AMA, but I would recommend going with UAW at $67 if you can only afford one of them right now. UAW will give you more bang for your buck, but AMA is a great supplement if you can afford both.
Summary
Article Marketer is getting worse.
iSnare disappointed me.
Unique Article Wizard is the best option out there and I have really liked it.
Article Marketing Automation is an up and comer that’s a great supplement to Unique Article Wizard.
Tags: article marketer, article marketing, article marketing automation, isnare, unique article wizard
Nice update. I was using article marketer for about three months and thought it was a worthless service.
Thank you so much…. i had written to Mark about it and hadn’t heard anything about this exact topic, and I had posted a comment in one of the previous posts and no reply.
I know you were a HUGE Article Marketer fan, and I saw that Mark said he uses UAW…. so, i think I am going to start using UAW…. I forgot how powerful article marketing really can be. I submitted 1 article to like the top 6 article directories, and already had the article syndicated on another site… free backlinks!
I have been using isnare because I had purchased the pack of distribution credits, but there is definitely a delay in approvals. The last article I submitted got approved a little quicker though, but still not quick enough for me.
UAW is definitely on my wish list for Christmas
Court,
Thanks for the article update. I am planning on getting more serious with article marketing so this really helps.
Thanks for the resource. Article marketing is one of the services I provide as a Virtual Assistant. I’ve also just begun writing article for myself. This update will save me some time, money, and frustration.
Article Marketer slowed down from 1-2 weeks to 3-5 weeks over a 6 month period for me. I don’t mind a week but 5 and in a few cases even 6 weeks? And that was only submitting a few articles a week. Building googlejuice takes long enough as it is I don’t need a service I pay for making it take even longer.
Going forward all of my article submissions will be with UAW.
Interesting, it’s a terrible landing page that they have, not too convincing as to what you get once you sign up, perhaps you could elaborate a little for us beginners?
Do you get software or is it a web application? My understanding is that you write an article with backlinks and what not, then submit it and the article is then distributed across a myriad of different mediums?
Chris it’s actually a web application. Your understanding is correct, you write and article and place your links, and then the service submits it to a few thousand article directories, blogs, and static sites. The sites publish your article and you get links to your site.
I’m planning a follow up video that should help everyone to see what can be done with the service and I’ll publish it in a few days!
Couldn’t agree with you more on the terrible sales page. I’ve actually never read it – we signed up to while testing different services we just love the number and quality of links it gets us.
Hi, Court,
Thanks for the information I have done 10 articles on ezine and only one shows up in the serps from a ezinearticle expert page. Do links in articles only count when the article is posted to a blog etc.? Please excuse the basic question but I am trying to learn all I can as I go along. I really appreciate all the great information you are providing and I did link to you from my PR0 blog which may or may not help.
Thanks
No Andy actually the links will count even when they are found in Ezine and other article directories. However, if your article appears on stronger pages, the links will be worth more. When you submit with UAW, you get links from many blogs and article directories. Some will of course be better then others but they will almost all do some good.
I actually tried their Wordpress plugin a while back, meant to supply content to your site. Nothing ever came through it in my niche, but I can appreciate how they’re trying to become a distribution network of their own instead of just submitting to article directories.
Thanks for the post, interesting that you are honest enough to confess that Article Marketer is getting worse… I agree, it seems that posting each post is such a painful process. I like AMA but I think the quality of the network needs to improve.
Cheers.
Thank you for the reply court,
It is really great having someone to ask questions of.
Thank you for the info on the various article marketing services – good stuff! I too had bad experiences with Article Marketer, and have often wondered about iSnare (which now I won’t even bother testing, thanks to you). I’m a free member at AMA and love the service they provide (free content for some of my niche blogs) and have been toying with the idea of upgrading… now I may just do that.
Am I the only person who is slightly pissed at this post?
Quote – “Article Marketer has been annoying me for years but has always been the best option available, until now“
Is Unique Article Wizard brand new then?
Am I the only person who shelled out $600 on Court’s recommendation of a service that’s been “annoying him for years”?
Is that still an affiliate link in the post to Article Marketer?
I know it’s not your fault that AM’s service has gone down the tube, but some of the statements in your post are insensitive at best.
Ray I’ve never once said that I’m 100% happy with Article Marketer, in fact I’ve said over and over again that they were simply the best I knew of. I could buy a new account right now and get a lot more out of it than it would cost.
So according to what you’ve written in your comment, in order for me to recommend something, I have to be able to offer a 100% guarantee that it will remain the best product out there FOREVER?
Two weeks from now I could find something better than UAW and if I do, I will be posting about it here. I hope that you can live with that. Ray I shell out for stuff all the time that ends up being 100% worthless and thanks to me you don’t have to do that. If you want to test them all out yourself you should go ahead and do it.
I don’t know how to say this without being ‘insensitive’ as you call it, but if you haven’t been able to get $600 worth of value out of that service you should only be blaming yourself.
Honestly Ray, I care about the people that read my site and I have gone to great lengths to help people at my own expense. Do you want me to keep recommending one product when I know of a better one? Or should I apologize for recommending a product that I have made tens of thousands of dollars with?
The bottom line here is that I have been able to make a lot of money with Article Marketer and now I prefer something else. The fact that something is annoying doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work.
Have you tried the non-free version of JetSubmitter? I recently read this review:
http://www.profitblogger.com/jetsubmitter-seo-article-marketing/
I’m skeptical because, as I understand it, it only submits to Article Dashboard powered article directories, and many of those are really low quality directories (even relative to what we expect and accept from article submitters).
I’ve also googled to find several bad reviews from angry people, but you know how reliable that can be. :/
But this review looks positive and it looks like it sports a more refined, modern interface than AM and UAW. I know better appearance doesn’t mean better usefulness…
Anyways… any experience with it here?
Hey Sun!! The article dashboard sites are definitely the lowest quality and the best links of this nature don’t come from article sites, they come from the blogs and other sites that belong to these networks.
Couldn’t agree with you more. Article Marketer is fast becoming a complete dog. In fact I put them in the “Litter Box” last month on my blog at 1Cat.biz – http://1cat.biz/article-marketer-is-in-the-litter-box/
The lack of service is just unreal. I mean it’s like they just don’t care. Or, perhaps they’re too busy to care.
I just canceled my subscription Article Marketing Automation. Like you said. It’s a good idea but the network is still very small. Also, in addition to submitting articles I was hoping to get some articles to use on my own blogs. Honestly the quality, with the exception of a few, was quite poor. But, what is really bad about their service, in my opinion, is the length you have to go to in order to get an article submitted. That whole rewrite for unique content thing they’ve got going on over there is a pain in the a#$.
Last month I started using Submit Your Article .com So far I love it! I would however be interested to know what you think of them. From what you’ve written it might not fit your article marketing model. They only allow you to post 8 articles a month per account. They also have a feature that will “trickle” your article out over a 30 day period if you choose. The idea being to not grow links too fast. In other words make it look more natural.
Do you think that makes much of a difference?
Thanks, Barry
Hey Barry! I haven’t tried submityourarticle.com but I’ll give it a look. I think it would have to be a good thing that the articles are trickled out. UAW also does that – you can have them do the submissions at whatever pace you want.
Is submityourarticle.com a paid service or is it free?
Hi Barry, I think you should not worry too much on the links being grown too fast. You can find the answer in the FAQ which I think makes sense. I don’t know, I wanna what Court or Mark thinks. Thanks.
Here’s the FAQ page and read the answer to the first question. Hope this helps.
http://www.uniquearticlewizard.com/contact.html
Can you change your pseudonym with UAW?
The major advantage of Isnare is that you can have an unlimited number of pen names.
That protects them and me because if you use the same pen name for several sites, it’s pretty easy for a competitor to find all of your other (or your client’s) sites.
Yep Rob, you can use unlimited pen names.
Hey Court,
I haven’t been using AM for a long time time now. I stopped using them before they sucked, so I didn’t know how bad it is now. But I’m quite interested in UAW. I’d just like to know how has UAW helped your site improve traffic wise? Do you a lot of traffic coming from the articles?
Hey Juzz,
You get some direct traffic from the articles but it isn’t really the kind of traffic that converts well to anything. The biggest advantage to using article marketing in general is the ability to strengthen any page by pointing relevant links at it. The way I use UAW is to strengthen rankings that I already have. If you’re ranked at say #9 for a keyword, it’s fairly easy to move up by using a service like UAW or for that matter Article Marketer.
Thanks for the update, I am going to check out UAW. I have seen this before but never bothered reading it. I thought that it was just someone trying to sell me an E-book. (The landing page told me so…)
Hey Court–
I’ve been using AM for a few months now and have been able to build significant links. I have a question in general about article marketing. How many links would you say is the right amount for a niche “sniper” site? How many articles should I publish for one site? I’m sure it depends on how many backlinks you get, but a general answer would be helpful. If I have 2,000 links from distributed articles, is that too much? Thanks.
Chris let me preface my telling you first that if you go after article links alone you will without question need thousands. If you can first get some nice links from other sites it will speed up your efforts. Try to get some other sites in your niche to exchange links with you. That said, there is no easy way to say how many links you need to get. However, if you’re not ranked #1, you don’t have enough. I’m planning a lesson that will show you how to estimate the amount of links it will take, but this is entirely dependent on your keyword.
Article marketing is a fundamental marketing tool. I especially enjoy the important role it plays in pre-selling visitors and allowing for a presence in more of the buying cycle. Thanks for the great review. I found a free tool to help create your resource box when using UAW. Check it out if you need help/
Hey Court, glad to hear that I’m not the only one PO’d at Article Marketer. I have had several articles that they refused to publish. Nothing wrong with the articles, in fact EZA and others distributed them.
Plus, like you said, it takes forever to get them all sent out.
I love UAW. There are so many things you can do with them. However, I have noticed that there is a big difference between the “estimated” directories and blogs it says your article will be distributed to and the actual number. It’s almost half usually.
Still, it’s a good service and I’ve had great luck with it. Haven’t tried AMA yet, guess I’ll have to get around to that!
Don
I’d like to learn more about article marketing and I’ll be looking for more of your posts about this. Let me explore this site a bit more. Thanks.
UAW is worthless. It spins all the articles nice but if you look at where they send your stuff too, it is junk. A link is a link but this is below subpar…lots of blogspot sites that aren’t indexed or read by people.
I signed up for the service, saw where my work went, checked a number of the sites, especially those in my niche for any sort of credibility, found none and that was all the reason I needed to cancel.
Better off going with jetsubmitter….at least they submit to real directories.
I have been using isnaire for 4 months now. I used UAW but with them it seems like I wasn’t getting enough backlinks. I used them for about 3 months. Isnaire frusrates me because they take like 7 business days to approve the articles and you have to write a 500 word article. Anyways no one said Internet Marketing should be an easy thing to do. I no longer use UAW because I thought they are too expensive and I wasn’t getting enough backlinks.Isnaire takes long back you can get a lot of back links especially if you use two anchor texts to two sides
Hi there,
I manually started submitting my articles to different directories especially with Ezine though not until I found this free tool which is free! I discovered it from one of my friends and I’m really thankful I’ve got that opportunity to start using it until now. It’s called ViralSubmitter where it could also be used as tool for submitting videos, press releases, and to social networks.
That experience is really great.
I hope this helps!