Of course these are just the earnings directly coming from Squidoo from simply having the lenses created. It does not include my own affiliate sales like Amazon, Clickbank, etc. Those are extra and usually much higher. It does include Amazon affiliates that were made through the Squidoo modules, simply because I haven’t bothered to change those links to my own affiliates, so for those I only get around 4.25% commission.

All you need is some good keywords to start the lenses with and then a bit of backlinks, and you’re in business. And why not, a bit of extra money never hurt anyone before…

While this money is still peanuts compared to other earnings, it pays for my batch of domains that I need to renew now at the beginning of the year.

Remember these are the payouts from Squidoo directly, not the affiliate sales I was making during this time.

So let’s recap.

April earnings: $7.75 (paid in June)

May earnings: $15.55 (paid in July)

June earnings: $28.43 (paid in August)

July earnings: $29.21 (forgot to upload screenshot of this) (paid in September)

August earnings: $23.99 (paid in October)

September earnings: $43.47 (paid in November)

October earnings: $68.54 (paid in December)

Before September I haven’t practically added new pages (maybe 1-2 per month). In September I started to add Squidoo lenses more often, and from October onwards I’ve added on average one lens per day. This is reflected in the September earnings which almost doubled the August ones, and the Octobers earnings being the highest ever so far.

Of course, if you’re making good money online, this is petty cash and definitely not worth looking into. But as a starter, who doesn’t have a website, doesn’t know how to work with a website (we’ve all been there, done that before), Squidoo is a great way to see the first money coming in.

Now of course I also have Clickbank earnings from some of my lenses, and Amazon earnings from my own affiliate links (you can add your own Amazon affiliate links at Squidoo, or you can use Squidoo’s own affiliate id, especially if you’re in a state that is right now not in Amazon’s good graces, so you can still earn some money).

I already know that November earnings, to be paid next month will be highest, and from what I see that I’ve earned so far in December (especially for the Christmas sales), I’m really a happy camper - sales are great.

So whichever way you want to take it - be it by reviewing Clickbank products, Amazon products, Shareasale or even just for making some high PR backlinks to your own sites, Squidoo is definitely worth pursuing for making your first money online. Money that you can then reinvest in your own domain and hosting. And as long as Squidoo is alive and well, and your lenses are up there, they keep earning you every month, like clockwork.

Beats making no money at all every time.

So why would Wizzley be important anyway? Well, for several reasons, especially if you’re looking to earn your first money and want to get your feet wet before jumping in with websites of your own.

With Wizzley you can earn money from Adsense and Amazon (you need to have your own accounts with them) and with several other ones as well. But for us these two are the most important ones anyway.

If you’ve used Squidoo or Hubpages, Wizzley is pretty similar (personally I find it much more user friendly to create the articles there).

You add modules (it’s like parts of an article with a subhead), you can add videos, images, the whole media shebang. And of course, you can also add your own links back to your site. It’s allowed. The only caveat is that your external links are initially nofollow - but only until you have 5 articles under your belt. And that’s nothing really, you can do those 5 within a day flat.

Just yesterday I created two articles, one going back to my website and to a Squidoo lens that also has links back to my site, and a second Wizzley article simply for the enjoyment of writing and of course I have on it plenty of ads (3 Adsense and a few Amazon modules too).

Another thing with Wizzley that should put spammers off is that they are quite strict with quality, so you can’t just spin your article and post it there. No matter how well it’s done, I’ve never seen a spun article written better than what a crappy article directory would accept.

But it would have to be REALLY crappy to be rejected here, and if you can’t write better than a machine, then you shouldn’t be in this business anyway.

Here the articles are rejected if there is any duplicate content or if the gods to be read your article and is crappy (like the old Xfactor types of sites if you happen to remember those).

But don’t let this deter you from joining because you can earn your first money there if you’re just starting out. It’s a great free platform which to build upon. One thing I’ve noticed is that from an article posted at Wizzley and one posted at Squidoo at about the same time - well the Wizzley article got indexed one day faster. That was weird! It means Google really likes this little new site.

And just look at the articles below (just click through and read any of them - they’re not mine, they’re just a random listing on what’s on the site rigt now).

They are nothing major, anyone can do them, just make sure you don’t have any dupe content, write a bit more engaging than a Wikipedia article (that’s as dry as sawdust) and knock yourself out with your links and sales modules.

Who said that backinking to your main site AND making money in the process can’t be done?

]]> http://www.jewelsofcyprus.com/blog-tips/wizzley-new-kid-on-the-web2-block.html/feed http://www.jewelsofcyprus.com/making-money/earning-money-with-squidoo-when-starting-out.html http://www.jewelsofcyprus.com/making-money/earning-money-with-squidoo-when-starting-out.html#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:51:12 +0000 Marika http://www.jewelsofcyprus.com/?p=853 I’ve recently come across some threads at the WF about using free platforms such as Squidoo and Hubpages to start your journey online. Many people are of the opinion that you should not use Squidoo for making extra cash because they’re not your sites and you can’t really make money there, so I’ve decided to start a small experiment.

I have an old Squidoo account that I almost forgot about. It was making me the occasional $5 a month on the few lenses I had there setup from 2008 and I got the occasional Clickbank affiliate commission from people who happened to click through. During Panda, Hubpages took a hit, however Squidoo is just as strong as ever.

In all honesty I never really liked Hubpages, so I decided to stick with Squidoo and see if I could increase my earnings simply by writing a few more lenses.

And no, I’m not talking about getting rich from Squidoo, I’m talking about starting out with making your first coins when you’re new to internet marketing. This can help you pay for your first domain or hosting or whatever else online fees you’re paying.

I’ve started adding more Squidoo lenses to my account - about 5-6 per month (quite easy to do), all good quality articles, well researched with a lot of interesting modules (of course also included Amazon affiliate links and modules where appropriate).

After 2 months, here are my earning stats - note - I’m not talking here about direct commissions (Clickbank or Amazon, or Zazzle, etc) that you get from click-throughs, I’m talking about actual Squidoo payouts to my Paypal account, money that comes through every month simply by having a few lenses up.

When it comes to earnings and payouts, they are usually 2 months behind. So my May payouts came through in July, and my June payouts were in August.

Now in September I’m waiting for my July payout.

While it looks a very small amount, nothing to brag about really, imagine having lots of lenses and how the income will increase. And again, I stress out, this is only the Squidoo royalties, it is not my total income from Squidoo.

That makes me a nice few hundred dollars every month with a few well chosen Clickbank products and some Amazon affiliate products. Not bad considering that I haven’t really done much with Squidoo since I’ve started it back in 2008.

Of course, to really make money on Squidoo  you will promote affiliate products. This is where the real money comes in. But just to start out, to get your feet wet in the possiblities of earning online, this is a great motivator, don’t t you think?

Btw, some of these Squidoo lenses have a nice PR 4 and have gained authority over time, so now they’re perfect for some juicy, quality backlinks to some of my own sites.

All you need is make sure that you don’t write on topics that Squidoo doesn’t like and that you do write quality stuff, something that you wouldn’t want to click away from ashamed of the bad content you’re reading.

Also when it comes to Clickbank, Squidoo can be quite squirmish, so choose the products you promote well, nothing spammy.

Earning with Squidoo is quite possible when you’re starting out and you want an easy way to get some money that will be invested in your more permanent business.

And think about it, as your lenses age, you can use them for backlinking to your new sites.

A high PR Squidoo lens as backlink to your own site is nothing to cry about - and if you happen to earn in the process some passive income, hey, who’s to complain?

First the background. This is the first site that I’ve started as an ‘authority’. Everything else I’ve done so far was in microniches, or blogs that were created for flipping at Flippa.

It is in a niche that is dear to me (related to spirituality), however the CPC payout is measly at best. It really doesn’t pay. But for once, I went against everything I did before and create a site based on a hobby of mine instead of high payout keywords.

Right now the site has about 80 pages, and it just came back from a 2 months sandbox. Ouch.

Let me explain.

Basically I’ve started heavily backlinking from a social article site (not exactly a directory), and I guess due to a glitch or whatever they had on the site, soon, within 2 months actually I got over 4000 backlinks from that site (the same happened to a friend of mine, we both started an authority each at about the same time, I think the difference was only 2 weeks or so). Both saw a crazy growth in backlinks coming from that site.

Both got sandboxed about 3 months from starting the site, and I mean all keywords went completely dead, gone.

I’ve never experienced anything like that before.

In June, however, I’ve started noticing a bit of Adsense movement on that site. Not much, definitely nothing to brag about, but it was there. By the end of June, I got a total of 18 Euros (around $25) in Adsense from that site. Hm…interesting.

In the meantime, I haven’t touched that site at all, I was waiting to see which way it will move.

Now it’s end of July, and just checking my Adsense for the month for this site, I have around 52 Euros (that’s about $74), and I still have a few days to go. So the upwards trend is definitely there.

And let me reiterate, this site is one with an extremely low CPC for Adsense, I mean some clicks are like 5 cents or even less.

I’ve ran a stats checker from within SBI (similar to Market Samurai, but internal to SBI) and I’m on first page for many long tail keywords and a few mid-range ones as well. It’s definitely looking better and better.

So now that I’m actually out of the dreaded sandbox, I’ll continue with the site adding new pages to it and backlinking to it - not too heavily, just enough to get the new pages noticed. I will mostly use these: BMR, article marketing, especially using AMR, Magic Submitter for web 2, social bookmarking and blog commenting - along with the eventual exchange of links with a niche relevant SBI site.

Oh and I forgot to mention, for the last PR update, I went from 0 to 3 (and on many internal pages from PR NA to PR 2). Yeah I know, this is not the most important aspect to look at, but it’s certainly not one to ignore.

I haven’t talked about it here, and I guess I’ve neglected my blog recently, but I have a good reason: I’m learning copywriting. This is something entirely new to me and I really need to focus. It is new but also exciting. I didn’t think I would, but I love it! (and I’m also scared of it, especially since my native language is NOT English).

But I digress. I started following a particular copywriter’s blog who is an advocate of ‘working for yourself instead of wasting your life at the corporate HQs’ that simply IS hilarious (and also educational), and at some point I came across this post (one of Ash’s older posts).

As I was reading it, I got flashbacks of very uncomfortable images that are part of my past. With every line I was reading, I was nodding heavier and heavier ‘yes’ on the universal truths that she was pointing out about the corporate ‘drone’ world, so that at the end I could do nothing else but ‘take action’ (this is the ultimate goal of copywriters, to make the ‘prospect’ take action). I had to share her post with you, especially if you’re still slugging away at a 9-5 (poor you).

Beware, she IS rather liberal in her choice of words and profanities - but that makes her so much more adorable.

Let’s just take one of the newest courses on the market right now, called Extreme Niche Empires. I’m going against the tidal wave right now because if you check out the reviews at the WF on this course, it’s 5 stars and everyone loves it. But if you also check indepth who bought and talked about this course, well, it’s mostly the newbies. But what on earth I’m talking about and why don’t I like this latest Sean Donahoe’s course? Afterall I did buy a few ones before, including his Backlinks Booster which served me well for about a year, until it finally stopped working and I moved on to another way to index my backlinks.

So I get the course (videos and some plugins) and start watching the videos. Sean Donahoe is an expert on video marketing and he’s quite a good salesman too, he really knows to persuade his prospects.

Basically this course is about creating your own niche empire, which is what he calls it a ‘an authority autoblogging’ system. While initially I didn’t want to buy it due to the fact that it is about autoblogs, the many rave reviews on the WF convinced me against my better judgement.

One (actually two) of the better videos of this course is the one on keyword research and also market research. It’s good, and if I were a newbie at it all, I’d definitely learn a few things about it. There was nothing new for me in there, obviously going to Quantcast.com to learn about your prospect demographics is one of the first thing we all need to do in our keyword research, but for a newcomer, this video is really good. So where did all go wrong in my book?

Well, after the Panda update, Google is all about quality content. And to be honest since the course was done in April if I’m not mistaken, I was pretty sure he actually tackled that. Based on his keyword research video, I was almost sure I’ll find a video on how to write content CATERING to that prospect and making a really great article worthy of Google out of all this. And that video did get me quite curious on how he’s gonna use that information about the prospect to target them…afterall what’s the point of making an indepth research if you’re not gonna use it afterwards?

Instead..when it came to the content video, he clearly admits that he doesn’t like to write articles and he suggests going to Textbroker for $5 articles. This was my first signal that something was wrong. I mean I’ve been using Textbroker before for my small Xfactor sites, but c’mon, this is one of the last sites you should use now that quality has been redefined in Google’s eyes.

And then I got to see two of the articles that he posted on his autoblog. They were typical fluff articles going something like this: (paraphrase to not give away the niche he’s talking about)

If you have this x problem, you need to find a good treatment that will help you overcome this problem. Without the treatment, your problem will be there and you will suffer from it. Thus make sure that you research for a good treatment for X problem. You can find many treatments for X problem if you only search for them’ (or something to that extent).

Both of the articles shown in the video have the same ‘high quality’ information, organized through Textbroker for $5. And that, in post-Panda times. Seriously.

And here is where I’m really confused. What’s the point of the market research to know your prospect, male or female, x age, married (or not), with kids (or not), with x type of income, all written nicely down on paper, if you then go ahead and order articles from Textbroker for $5 a piece? HOW are you using this particular information in the cheap articles that you then put on your website to target that particular type of people, coz I haven’t found it anywhere. The articles are basically made from keywords that are searched from the Google Keywords tool and then given to Textbroker to write around them.

Funnily enough, that video on market and keyword research was one of the best of the entire course.

And sadly, this is just one such course that promises big things (especially now with the whole Panda thing looming above us) and fails to deliver. It definitely didn’t help me create a better website that the visitors are proud to go to and Google is proud to show on its first page.

And no, no affiliate links for this course from me.

Now with the new SenukeX, of course I had to give it a try. Afterall it’s a better version with more functions included and a superior quality that does everything while you’re sitting on the beach for days. Or so they say.

I’ve been using Magic Submitter ever since it first came out and while initially it was quite buggy (crashing a lot and I had troubles learning some of the more advanced functionalities), eventually I learned to really love it. Alex Krulik ironed out most of the bugs, even introduced proxy support and basically released regularly new updates with fixed sites and added new one. You now even have Pligg in the mix, press release sites and quite a lot of other things that the earlier version didn’t have.

But what about the new SenukeX? Well I was quite excited to get it, to be honest, because the wizard and the graphs/templates were quite interesting. I just had to have them. I downloaded the software (crashed 3 times on me, but luckily it restarted on its own after that) and started it. I already knew the manual way of doing things (they did change the interface a bit around though) so I was curious about the  Wizard, just like everyone else. I bet everyone started with the new Wizard, lol.

I’ve started in the Wizard mode, it was quite intuitive to go through the next steps, filled in all the information and finally arrived to the template part where you put visually all the elements in the diagram. I opened one of the existing diagrams that comes with SenukeX and started using it.

Basically the idea behind it is that it creates web 2 sites around your money page and it creates automatically rss fees, social bookmarking and even forum profiles (sadly they never worked, maybe they were already used to death) to feed the web2 pages. Each diagram has a different structure, from the very simple one to some really sophisticated ones.

I already had my articles spun from the day before in TBS (The Best Spinner) so I entered it and started the process. I used some decapcher api and went on do to lunch. Eventually the work was done after a couple of hours and I went to see the results of my auto-work. Well, from all the web2 created, it only did 16 and sadly out of them 4 were removed right away due to ’spam’. I remained with 12 domains. Forum profiles as I found out didn’t register (I think I managed to register 5?) and the rest I guess was ok.

One problem I found with this setup is that since everything is automated, the links that feed the web2s that are no longer working (or were not created in the first place) are wasted since they push something that doesn’t exist.

I had a few crashes along the way but luckily SenukeX always recovered from it on its own. Plus point there.

Now my real big problem came when I wanted to continue working on the same sites the next day with a new article that I had spinned previously in TBS. SenukeX guys say that the whole SEO work is done on full automation while you’re at the beach. Obviously the days of 1 page blogs are long gone, so now to have some real power behind your web2 you need to have multi-post blogs.

So I’ve started the Wizard again, but then I’ve realized that with the wizard you always start a new project, you can’t auto-post on the same things. You have to actually do it manually if you want to repost. Oh and you have to remember to tick ‘repost to domain’ if you don’t want your new article to land on completely new web2 accounts. Woups. So much for full-automation while I sit at the beach reading my novel.

The other deal breaker for me was the fact that SenukeX STILL has no way of adding your own sites to it, except for forum profiles, and at the time of me testing it, this feature was not working as intended. I dearly miss the option to add new web2 sites as they pop up (there are always new web2 sites that we can make use of in internet marketing). Or modify existing ones if they don’t work.

And the fact that it crashes like crazy every 20 minutes or so is NOT FUN!

I’ve been checking out the Senuke forum for days now to get answers to some of my questions and boy there are many people complaining as of now. Basically the main discussion is that they released a beta version and the initial buyers are the actual testers.

Well no thank you. I’ll stick with my Magic Submitter that works beautifully for me. Alex even mentioned in the forum that he is considering adding a few of such diagrams that SenukeX also has, so if this is also added, I truly can’t find a reason for somebody to pay now $147 per month (yep, the price went up after the first week or so) instead of the less than half of it (starting with a measly $1 or so for an entire month to fully test Magic Submitter - now you definitely can’t beat that!).

So final results of my testing as of now?

4 points for SenukeX for new design, the diagrams and the wizard that works easily to start off a new project

8 points for Magic Submitter for being a great software that still needs some improvements (for example to change proxies you need to close the program briefly else the old one is still active - a nuisance but I know it will be fixed). However it’s perfect and more so for all your web2, rss, social bookmarking, article posting, press release posting and so much more.

Oh and i’m having now fun learning more ‘macros’ as I call them with Magic Submitter. If I’m not sure whether my new selected proxy is actually working, I’ve recorded a very simple macro in a few seconds that will go to whatismyip.com and test my ip in there, right within MS. Tiny thing, I know (heck, I’m not a programmer). But basically here anything that you do in a browser, you can record and play back in MS.  Try to do something with this (or anything else out of the ordinary) with SenukeX.

I know there are lots of IMers pushing SenukeX because of the higher commission every month, but I can’t in good conscience push something that I’m not using. No matter what I tried, as soon as I stopped using it, I took off all my affiliate links for it (take LinkDozer for example). And since I’m not using SenukeX, if you want to buy it through my link, you will need to find another overzealous affiliate who might have not even tried it…

But if you feel that this post has helped you decide in trying out Magic Submitter instead, feel free to use my aff.link for it. I will always write honest reviews, even if I might lose money in the process by recommending a cheaper but better product instead. I don’t mind.

Basically I find that even with the slap, Eza and other article directories are still worth it, for at least 3 reasons.

First, they weren’t slapped overall for every keyword. There are plenty of long tails for which Eza, Squidoo, Hubpages and even Suite101 (which was seriously slapped) show up on the first page of Google. They only don’t show up for certain keywords. So if you target keywords in niches that are not ‘dangerous’, you can rank your articles just as before. Just don’t go with adult related themes, acai, download online music and other overcrowded niches.

Second, there are always those immediate clicks that I get from freshly published articles . I remember fondly these first clicks that I used to get to my small niche sites long before the sites ranked anywhere in the SERPS. Every time I post an article, I get at least 1-2 clicks on my site. This tip is basically for those who want clicks ‘now’. It always works.

And third, especially if your article is good, it gets syndicated to niche blogs. And this is big. In my opinion this is one of the biggest benefits of having your article up there at more popular article directories. Just make sure that the articles are at least 400 words and that they are really good quality. No choppy outsourced $2 articles there as especially Eza is really taking their time now to check for quality.

So even if the Eza article in itself might not rank that high, the niche blogs are always hungry for good content. This is basically the easiest way to get free articles to your site if you are a niche blogger. Sure dupe content is valid and real but if you are a niche blogger and you have a few ‘guest authors’ (articles taken from Eza with the author bio intact), you can mix these nicely in with your own high quality and unique articles. And there are plenty of such blogs out that are craving for good quality web content fodder. And in return you get HIGHLY RELEVANT and most cases QUALITY backlinks from other places than just the poor hit Eza.

However I really have to bring home the point that you can no longer afford to use crappy articles with low quality content outsourced from Philippines or similar (for more read my article on Quality in article and content is important). You really need to have syndicated-worthy articles.

Basically my strategy is to add good articles to directories, then wait for about 2-3 weeks for them to be syndicated to relevant niche blogs and after that add them to AMR for further syndication to article directories (I don’t use AMR for syndicating to high PR directories though, I prefer to do that manually, but that’s just my personal preference). So far I’ve found that it works like gangbusters. But if your initial article is crappy and not worthy to sit on a blogger’s content site, well you can go ahead and use AMR right away to get some links from your work, even if they are added to unrelated article directories. The big punch effect is not there but you do get lots of links in return anyway.

P.S. I’m also using SEO Link Robot for getting backlinks, I wanted to focus here only on article directories and syndication in this post. I really wanted to drive home the idea that article directories are not dead and you should still do article marketing as part of your overall backlinking process as it STILL WORKS if done properly.

However the Farmer Update (or the Panda update if you will) has shown that Google does pay attention to quality content on websites and on article directories. Many high PR sites on aged domains have been hit and pushed down the SERPS because they offer low quality ‘crap’.

This is a phenomenon that I’ve started researching recently and I found that it’s true even when the content is not outsourced. People have forgotten how to write quality content.

Without generalizing, I do have to say that this type of content mostly comes from outsourcers from Philippines, India, Pakistan and similar countries. The reason is very simple: English is not their native language and no matter how well you learn a language in school, you will never be able to speak and write it like somebody who has been practically living it for years. This is not a putdown, it is simply a fact that everyone who has outsourced for cheap to these countries has experienced. We have accepted that and we have been paying low dollars accordingly.

However what is really scary is that natives have started writing ‘bad and fluff English’ as well. Sometimes it is wrong grammar and spelling, but more often than not, it’s about adding words that are plainly put: fluff. We all learn through practice, and the brain (when it comes to learning) can not discern as to what is right or wrong. The more you practice something the faster you will learn it. We have learned to write ‘the easy way’ to fill the number of required words or to fill the page on the site without actually saying anything of substance.

And yes, I’ve been guilty of doing the same as well. It’s amazing how fast I can write an Eza article (5 minutes for a 400+ words). The article is entirely correct in grammar and spelling, but it really doesn’t say anything meaningful. It has all those fluff words that we have learned to use when we don’t know the subject at all. And the main problem with this is that we don’t even realize that we are writing BAD content. But I guess this is the result of writing on tens and probably hundreds of different topics (each topic being content on a different website). Afterall how much do we know about everything out there really?

I’ve used in the past NAA (Need and Article) and Philippinese outsourcers for really low prices, and I’m sure most of you still do that. However since I’ve started my new authority, high quality site, I have become more conscious of what I write and what I get back from the freelancers. After getting  recently 3 low quality articles from NAA one after another one, I’ve closed my account with them, especially after receiving the ‘reworked’ articles still low in quality. I’ve fired my Philippinese writer because I’ve suddenly started to see what her articles really are: fluff and low quality saying-nothing junk.

The only place I use now is Elance. And even there, I still have to sift through chuff to find the one or two really good writers that I will keep using for my website content. While they are a bit more expensive, I know that they write solid content that is not only there to fill the agreed wordcount.

Here is one writer - native American I might say - who didn’t make the cut. Using sentences such as:

“With a stronger relationship when they are younger they will be more likely to talk to you about the important issues when they are older like sex and drugs.”, - um they will be able to talk to you with a stronger relationship like sex and drugs?

“When they know that they have some power in the situation they are more likely to be engaged with it.” - um…engaged with the situation or with the power?

This is not a writer I want to craft my website content, so I’ve moved on to another freelancer who has a real voice, writes no fluff and engages herself in her writing. The last 10 articles I have received from her needed absolutely no corrections at all.

Also pay attention to filler phrases that say nothing except inflate the number of words you pay for (or you write yourself). They should go from the articles. Some examples:

• make sure to (simply do it)
• the fact is that
• it is a fact that
• the fact that
• the truth is that
• simply
• basically
• the question as to whether (whether)
• used for [x] purposes (used for)
• he is a man who (he)
• this is a subject that (this subject)
• the reason why is that (because)
• in spite of the fact that (although)
• owing to the fact that (since, because)

Or phrases that are totally uneeded because common sense dictates that we already KNOW that. Don’t make people feel like ‘doh I knew that, stupid’.

For example:

“especially during the cold winter months when it’s really cold out there” (Honestly, I had no idea that it’s so cold in the cold winter months)

“when it comes to proper hair care, the brand xyz bla bla bla” ( I bet you still ask yourself ‘what is wrong with this phrase’ right now. Yeah I used to write like this as well.)

“Would you like to send flowers to someone but are worried about the cost, well stop that worrying because you can now get cheap flowers online.” (Ewww)

“Laptop covers are a necessary tool for everyday use as they not only help you carry your laptop but also provide a protective covering as well.” (and I really thought they’re for holding your coffee)

“One of the most important tips I can give you is simply keeping the [item] in a nice dry place.” (Noway, I really thought that goes on the musty and wet floor. Hold on, let me move my item to a dry floor)

“Sign up online for free samples; you will be surprised what you can get.”  (Seriously? I mean really?)

Here is an  entire paragraph taken from an Eza article:

“Your choice of birthday gifts will no doubt depend greatly on the age, gender, and personality of the person celebrating the occasion. The ultimate goal is to make the birthday celebrant feel special, thus it is recommended that you make your birthday gifts highly unique, and if possible, personalized.”   (An entire paragraph to say something that DOESN’T NEED SAYING at all.)

And my favorite (taken from the thousand of Xfactor sites out there:

“You can buy [this product] at your local store or online”.

Good quality articles also imply a real voice, your voice. Even a grammatically correct article can sound drab and boring because it has no voice. Many freelancers are writing in a voiceless, toneless way, which needs a lot of editing before posting on the site.

Especially if you post that article on your website, the articles should touch your readers, it should want them to read it fully and return later for more. It should not make your site be merely one among the many others out there, because this is the surest way to lose your audience. And especially with a large, authority site,  you don’t want to only cater to new readers, don’t you?

Also if you write product reviews, you are mostly outsourcing it. I bet those reviews are mostly taken from Amazon and from the manufacturer site or some other reviews that are more or less rehashes of other review sites. This is something that everyone else is doing and people are getting immune to that (not to mention that Google is hitting hard these kinds of boring sites - think of a well known SBIer writing in the niche of vacuum cleaners who had all his review sites hit back in December). You need to find a real voice in  these reviews, to make the readers actually believe that you indeed have this product at home so you are QUALIFIED to write about it.

One objection I got is that ‘well I can’t buy every product out there that I want to review’. Indeed, especially for expensive stuff, this is true. But there are ways to get great reviews from actual users, all you need is put in a bit more work in finding them and getting them to review it for you. But of course, this means extra work and especially in the Internet Marketing arena, this is something that should be avoided at all costs. Afterall all the $97 ebooks are teaching us how to get rich without lifting a finger.