I’ve noticed more and more traffic coming in from Bing.com, I haven’t heard much about this search engine but I’m actually quite impressed with the search results I get when I use it.

One thing I really like about it is that they don’t seem to be penalizing some of my sites (high quality, non-spam sites) the way that Google does. I have some sites that Google has penalized for things that were done years ago (I believe because of a link exchange program I took part in over 2 years ago) and they are still penalized today despite having taken off the link exchange 2 years ago and even though the sites are filled with unique original content (high quality content I produced myself.)

The problem with these kind of penalizations is that they often harm good sites with a lot of good content. Meanwhile they (Google) let through all kinds of garbage into their top rankings. In particular I’ve noticed people getting around Google’s filters by creating keyword targeted profiles on message boards and other social websites. These are obviously very low quality landing pages but they fill the Google results for some keywords.

Anyway, my message is: Use Bing - it’s like Google without all of the stupid filtering that leads to lesser results. And my message to Google is: Get your act together. Stop it with the power tripping and just give us the best results for our search terms. That’s your job and when you stop doing it well, people will look elsewhere.

A new update on the incoming links from my second article marketing test:

Article Marketer - 19.

This is an increase of 5 from the 1st of the month (my last update) so the incoming links aren’t growing at a huge rate but the overall total of 19 is still pretty good, especially considering it’s quite an inexpensive option.

ISnare - 46

Extremely impressive. As of right now I’d have to consider ISnare to actually be the winner of this test because not only has it brought in the most incoming links but I notice that the articles themselves seem to rank highly in the search engines (ie: My ISnare articles end up on sites that Google actually likes.) This seems like a particularly good choice for those who don’t want to do a huge amount of articles (because you can pay per article instead of for a more costly monthly membership.)

Unique Article Wizard - 42

Right behind ISnare in terms of total incoming links but two negatives are that it’s much more difficult to write these articles due to the amount of spinning necessary and it’s also far more costly ($67 per  month.) That being said, it is possible that because of the spinning that these links will last longer over the long term. We’ll see.

Article Marketing Automation - 9

It is showing some signs of life (7 new incoming links since the 1st of the month when it was at only 2) but still the results are pretty disappointing considering how well it did in my first test.

ISnare + UAW + AMA - 73

Of course it’s no surprise that when I combine the powers of three article marketing submission services I get more incoming links. I think this shows that for those who really want to get serious with article marketing it’s a good idea to be a member of all of these services. Sure it’s a bit more costly but it will allow you to build more links from more varied sources which will make your link profile look more natural to the search engines.

It’s now been one month since my second article marketing test got going. This is an update on my incoming links thus far. I use Yahoo Site Explorer to check my back links and I always discount internal links as to only count the links from my article submissions.

I don’t link to my landing pages in any other way in order to keep my test as “pure” as possible. I don’t social bookmark them either.

Here are the numbers:

Article Marketer - 14.
ISnare - 22.
Unique Article Wizard - 26.
Article Marketing Automation - 2.
Combo (IS, UAW, & AMA) - 40.

I’m quite disturbed by the low number from AMA especially considering the great results it got in my original test (81 back links at my most recent check.) I don’t really have any clue as to why it’s performing so much worse this time.

Actually, this may be a good reason to do another test (a test #3) — there are a lot of variables involved and the more testing I do the more information I have about which article submission services work well and which ones don’t.

On the other hand I am pretty pleased with Article Marketer and very pleased with ISnare. They have the advantage of being much faster to use (because of no spinning) and of having more potential for direct traffic from the articles (as the articles tend to go on more real sites that rank in the search engines.) They are also much better deals than UAW & AMA.

Of course Article Marketer doesn’t allow links to EZA (no links to urls with a “?” in them) so that’s a negative. Another negative with Article Marketer and ISnare is that I can’t spin my backlinks in the same way. I can get links back to a lot more different sites (theoretically) with UAW & AMA with just one article.

In May, the Vimax penis enlargement pills affiliate program was my biggest money maker as it has been for every month this year. I’ve been doing well with them since early 2005! Four years running of great conversion rates and no problems ever being paid (they pay weekly.)

If you don’t mind marketing in this niche (and it can be difficult to do sometimes for various reasons) then I must recommend this program: CLICK HERE to sign up!

I’ve tried all of the other programs in this niche and while some of them are quite good as far as their promotional materials and the way they help out their affiliates, I’ve never had the same consistently high conversion rates that I’ve had with Vimax. I’mn ot really sure why that is - I just know that it’s been the case for me.

My final stats for May:

716 unique visitors sent
16 sales (2.2% conversion)
$1481 commissions (over $2 per unique)

I bet you’re surprised by how few unique visitors I send, right? Well that’s the hard part of this niche. I won’t deny it. The competition is fierce and Google (and to a lesser extent the other search engines) seem to put up extra barriers to ranking well for terms related to this niche. For example if you search Google for “Vimax” right now you’ll find a whole lot of just absolute nonsense sites. It seems like in their attempt to filter spam, all they are left with is really low quality spam (like message board “profiles.”)

Anyway, if you can figure out how to send more traffic then of course you can make even more money. Heck it would probably only take 150 targeted unique visitors a day to get up to $100,000/year! CLICK HERE to sign up with this affiliate program.

Article Marketing In “Adult” Niches

If you do want to promote in this niche then I suggest signing up with Article Marketing Automation because they are the only article distribution service I know of that doesn’t have any sort of rules as far as the content of your articles. Most other services won’t let you submit articles about this niche.

This is an update on my second article marketing test.

Backlinks in Yahoo! Site Explorer (not counting internal links so as to only count the incoming links from my articles.)

Article Marketer - 16
ISnare - 24
Unique Article Wizard - 27
Article Marketing Automation - 4
ISnare, UAW, AMA (1 article from each) - 32

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I’m really surprised by two things:

#1 How low AMA’s total is. It won the first test like this. I’m not sure why it’s been so unsuccessful this time around (so far.) Just 4 back links?! WTF? I’m definitely concerned about this. Hopefully it’s just some kind of weird fluke.

#2 How high ISnare’s total is. I’m really starting to think that’s a great deal, because not only do I get a lot of backlinks with ISnare but my ISnare articles tend to end up on websites that actually get real search engine rankings so I can actually get some traffic from them too. Plus it ends up being significantly cheaper than the alternatives unless you are submitting a huge amount of articles (because you can pay per article submitted.)

Click Here to sign up with ISnare.

One of the things I really like about Article Marketing Automation is that I can include a YouTube video with each article I submit. I’ve found this is a very effective way to get YouTube videos to rank high in the search engines.

The problem is I just don’t have that many different YouTube videos made and I feel a bit too busy to make a lot more.

So that’s why I came up with this idea. If you promote my Clickbank Diet Product on YouTube and you leave a comment here letting me know what the URL is then I’ll include it in at least one of my Article Marketing Automation articles (which means you’ll likely get 50+ back links just from me.)

What’s the catch? Well it doesn’t really make sense for me to do this with people who are simply going after my brand name because that won’t increase my “reach” very much. So the catch is that you can’t include my brand name in your YouTube title, instead you should go after a keyword phrase like “lose belly fat fast.” I really think you will have more success going this route anyway.

Of course you can also sign up with Article Marketing Automation yourself and use it anyway you want. It’s $47/month.  CLICK HERE to check it out.

I’ve now started a second article marketing test but that doesn’t mean I won’t continue to update the original test as well. I think seeing what the long term results are should be very interesting.

It’s now been three months and these are the back link results (not counting internal links!) and remember I’ve never linked to my destination pages with anything but these services (to keep the results pure.)

Article Marketing Automation: 81
Unique Article Wizard: 29
Submit Your Article: 5
EZineArticles: 1

The numbers have not much changed from about a month ago (April 21) when I last updated, both UAW & AMA are showing a few less links which is a bit disturbing but I wouldn’t say it’s a huge issue just yet. I still think it’s clear that they are both effective ways of building links.

In the new test I’ve dropped SYA & EZA and am testing Article Marketer & ISnare in their place. I’m also using EZA articles as my landing pages instead of Squidoo because I find it’s far more difficult to get Squidoo pages to rank in the search engines.

It’s too early to say whether Article Marketer or ISnare can be recommended like AMA & UAW.

Today my Clickbank product’s gravity is over 10 for the first time. But not only that, it’s actually over 11 too. It’s now at 11.07 as I had two new affiliates make their first sales with the product yesterday.

Yesterday there were three sales with only a total of 105 unique visitors to the website. Pretty darn good conversion ratio. I just need more people promoting this product. Hopefully getting to this new level of gravity will catch more affiliates attention.

And I’m still offering my deal: If you build keyword focused landing pages (ie: not brand name targeted but instead something like this “Lose Belly Fat“) then I will send you some links myself using my link building tools (namely Article Marketing Automation, Unique Article Wizard, and Article Marketer.) Although I definitely recommend signing up with these services yourself so you can build a lot more back links.

CLICK HERE for my affiliate tips & tools.

My second article marketing test is now underway. I set up four EZineArticles “landing pages” (that’s basically how I treat EZA… as a sort of pre-landing page for my own sites) and I’ve written one article linking back to one of those specific EZA landing pages using four different article marketing submission services. I am not building any links to these pages with any other methods (this is to keep my backlink results “pure.”) This time I’m testing the following four article submission services:

(1) Article Marketing Automation. AMA is way ahead in my original test. I’m very curious to see if it comes out on top again this time. Another thing I did with this test was time how long it took me to do each article submission (that includes the writing of the article and all of the spinning.) Since “time is money” that seems like an important thing to mention. Now I’ve been using AMA for awhile so I’ve learned how to get things done with it faster than you may as a new user - but it took me 30 minutes to do this article (that’s from scratch.) BTW, they have a 300 word minimum on their articles.

One thing you may be pleased to know: AMA has pretty much no rules as far as the content of your articles and where you can link to. They are the only article submission service that I’ve been able to successfully promote OAInternet products with.

(2) Unique Article Wizard. UAW did well in my original test and it’s done well in some of my other testing of it. I’m quite confident that it’s a good tool for anyone in the SEO game to have in their tool belt. I do find the spinning process with this to be somewhat more taxing than it is with AMA and I really hate the way you have to do the resource boxes. It took me 37 minutes to do this submission. There’s also a setting with this on how quickly your article “leaks out” (this is a nice feature they have to make your link building appear more natural.) I decided to go with the recommended figure of 50 (which means no more than 50 versions of my article are sent out for publication per day.) They also have a 300 word minimum on their articles.

(3) Article Marketer. This is the first time I’m testing Article Marketer so I’m quite interested to see what the results are. They require a minimum of 400 words. They do not have spinning. Because of the lack of spinning the submission process is much faster (despite the slightly longer article.) It took me 14 minutes from start to finish. Of course no spinning is also a downside. Especially because I can only get links back to a few pages rather than spinning a whole bunch of different back links like I can with AMA & UAW.

(4) ISnare. I’ve been an ISnare member for a long time but I stopped using it for awhile due to a lot of tecnical difficulties they were having. I think they are actually the least expensive service unless you are planning on doing a *lot* of articles every month and that’s because with ISnare you can pay per article so I think I end up paying a lot less per article with ISnare than I do with the others. They do have a minimum of 500 words but their submission process is very simple so it was actually the quickest of the four: 13 minutes. Like with Article Marketer, ISnare includes no article spinning. They allow for 3 links in their html resource box.

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So I got my submissions all done today (I wanted to get them all done on the same day so no submission service would have an advantage over the others.) Now the interesting part will be seeing how many back links each of the services build for me and how they effect the search rankings of my EZA articles.

I’ve just signed up with Article Marketer to use along with Article Marketing Automation & Unique Article Wizard. I think it’s a good idea to be signed up with more than one of these services because then my link profile (where my incoming links are coming from) will be more varied and more “natural” looking.

I plan on doing another article marketing test, this time between these three (and maybe ISnare too) linking to an EZineArticles.com article (they will each have their own designated article so I can compare backlinks and search rankings.) They will each be going for the same basic keyword combination (although they will each have their own unique long tail target.)

I’ll do an update when I get this new test off the ground. Meanwhile CLICK HERE to sign up with Article Marketer. It’s reasonably priced so I think it’s worth checking out at least.