The Cheap Bastid » Writing Articles

A reader needs some help…

admin — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:52:53 +0000

A reader here who has posted up some articles on InfoBarrel has asked for some tips on increasing his adsense earnings.

His profile over there is… mswengel

I’ve gone ahead and took a good look at his articles and a few things jump out at me, but before I get into that I just want to say that his articles are really top notch, really great work indeed!

First off, most of his articles are just a week old so they haven’t ‘matured’ yet. I really wouldn’t get worried about article income until the articles hit at least a month old and then I’d start to analyze them.

Secondly, and I really hate to say this but I think that possibly the subject matter just doesn’t demand clicks, and more importantly the articles themselves have links in them to what the article is referring to so there’s no reason for a user to click an ad.

Thirdly in some of the articles the ads aren’t targeted at all. The Ubuntu font article for example has really no ads that a person interested in Ubuntu fonts would want to click on.

So, with that being said here’s my advice.

Target your ‘money’ keywords better, and, if the ads aren’t targeted try increasing the number of times you use that money keyword in the article.
Remove all links from within the articles, rely on ads to provide your links
Go back and look at your articles to see if your ads are appropriate to the content, if not add keywords.
Add photos with a caption, and make sure the caption has either your traffic or money keyword in it.

So that’s my advice, target keywords and remove links.

Now, with that being said I have to say this.

Some keywords just don’t get many clicks, sure, they get lots of traffic but hardly anyone ever clicks an ad for them. There’s a tool I’ve talked about in the past that you should try out. It’s called the commercial intent tool by Microsoft. Basically it’ll give you an idea of how likely a person is to click an ad from that keyword. I use it all the time, you’ll be amazed on the results you get when you use it.

Here I’ve plugged in ‘free ubuntu fonts’ as you can see, there a very high probability of no click

I did a little playing around and found this keyword.. ubuntu font package

Much better!

As you can see, we go from a .86 NON commercial intent to a .66 commercial intent. You’ll get way more clicks with this keyword in your title.

The trick is working this into your article, I’d try something like “Get a 465 ubuntu font package for free”

The user was searching for ‘ubuntu font package’ expecting to buy something, see’s your ‘free’ article, then the ad on the bottom for the free font package. Everybody wins!!

Anyone else have any advice??

Possibly Related Posts:

Alexa Rank or Keyword Selection – What matters the most?

admin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:24:27 +0000

When I first looked at publishing articles on InfoBarrel I was a bit concerned about the Alexa rank.

Well, I’m glad I looked past that and started publishing my articles there. Truth be told, some of my articles on IB are getting more hits than the ‘mother’ article is on eHow.

Check this out, this is my very first article I published on eHow..

My very first eHow article!

As you can see, 1772 hits in 5 months, or about 350 a month. Earnings are about .50 cents a month…

Now here’s the ‘child’ article that I published on InfoBarrel..

My InfoBarrel version is doing quite nicely indeed!

Almost 400 hits in 3 weeks!!

The amazing thing is, this article technically hasn’t even matured yet, so the best is yet to come!

Now, I can’t violate the Google Adsense TOS by showing my earnings page, but I will say that this one is doing better than the eHow article.

You would think that eHow, with it’s Alexa rank under 400 would vastly outperform anything done on InfoBarrel with it’s rank of about 44000. Apparently this isn’t the case. In fact, I’m experiencing amazing results with nearly all my articles on IB.

The point I’m trying to make here is simply this..

If you haven’t started publishing on InfoBarrel yet you’re missing out on profit. Look past the site rank and just publish as you normally would. Obviously I’m choosing keywords that aren’t as high up the traffic list but I seem to be getting a much larger chunk of it.

Now, word of warning here, don’t just cut and paste your content over to IB. You need to rewrite it to make it original and useful to it’s readers, the last thing we want is another article purge next year over at IB!

Now what are you waiting for, get over to IB and start making some money. Remember, money isn’t going to run up to you and jump in your pocket

Possibly Related Posts:

Article Writing Tips | Avoidable InfoBarrel Blunders – Part 1

admin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:24:44 +0000

Argh.. Now I made him mad!

Wow, I’m a fool…

There was a great SEO tool available to me and I didn’t even use it. It was staring me in the face and I missed it.

As Mr. T would say.. “I Pity the Fool!”

One of my recurring article writing tips is to use every tool the particular website allows you to use, no matter what. If it can help your article get better ranking, and thus better income then you better use it.

While doing my ‘How to post pictures on InfoBarrel articles‘ post there was a field that I didn’t even notice. To be honest it’s so unusual to see it my mind just didn’t register this jewel of an option.

I am of course talking about the Alt tag that you can apply to the pictures in your article.

And by the way, this is just one more reason that I love InfoBarrel. The multitude of options that you, as the writer, are given to make your articles shine, and earn.

Check out this screenshot..

Add an ALT tag for maximum results!

See that alternate text spot there under the image URL. Make sure you put a keyword in there that is descriptive (no need to get a keyword stuffing penalty) If it’s a motorcycle helmet, then put motorcycle helmet or some other descriptive keyword.

Now some people may say that the alt tag on pictures doesn’t really do anything, and that may well be true. But, since we’re going to this screen anyway to modify the image properties I say if it doesn’t hurt, then do it.

Take advantage of everything that InfoBarrel offers you to make money, don’t be a fool like me!!

Possibly Related Posts:

Article Writing Tips | Adding Photos to your InfoBarrel Articles

admin — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:34:40 +0000

I absolutely love InfoBarrel. I like the way you have complete freedom in the way you can write and format your articles, and I love the way, through Google Adsense you can track every nuance of your articles performance.

One thing that I’ve found a bit confusing about writing articles there though is the way photos are inserted into articles. There is a guide on the site, but it’s a bit difficult to find.

As you know, one of the things I adamantly recommend is making your articles pretty, making it look like you made an effort to provide quality, meaningful information to the user. It’s an easy way to build trust, and possibly get a few more clicks.

Anyway, I’m going to show you how to insert photos into your articles, and once again, the system they use is much better than anyone else’s out there.

First off, the screen I use to create content on InfoBarrel is the open ended, or blank one. I recommend you use this one too as it provides the most freedom.

So, I wrote an article now I’m ready to add some photos…

While editing or writing your article, click on the ‘Browse’ button on top
Find the photos you want and add them, make sure you put a photo title (Hint, use your keyword)
After you add all your photos you can now add them into your article.
Drag and drop each photo to where in the article you want it to be.
Then, right click on the photo and choose ‘Modify image properties’
Choose the alignment, left, right or whatever
Then, here’s the nice part. On the left side choose the size. you only need to choose the width, InfoBarrel will scale the image

Here’s some screenshots that’ll clear up any confusion you may have.

And that’s it, pretty simply huh?

Here’s the finished article for your viewing pleasure..

Muscle building program

Make your articles look pretty with some good photo formatting, and, make some more cash too!

Possibly Related Posts:

Use Adsense Channels to Track your Articles

admin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:42:08 +0000

One of the best things about publishing articles on sites like InfoBarrel and Xomba is that you can track each articles performance (and earnings) by setting up custom Adsense channels.

Here’s how to do it…

First log into your Adsense account, then click on the Adsense Setup tab.

Click the Adsense Setup tab

Next, click on the Channels link..

Click on channels now..

Under Adsense for Content you have ‘Custom Channels’ and ‘URL Channels’ Click on the URL channels..

Click on URL channels

And now, click on ‘Add new URL channels’..

Now click on 'Add new URL channels'

After you click on ‘Add new URL channel’ you’ll see a box, just go to your article page, copy the URL and then paste it into the box and then click add channels..

Paste the URL(s) into the box and click 'Add Channels'

And that’s it, you’re done. Make sure you go back to all your articles and get the channels setup. Google limits you to 200 custom channels so keep that in mind.

Tomorrow I’ll show you how to setup custom reports to really track your articles!

Possibly Related Posts:

Effective Article Writing Resources

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 02:17:12 +0000

Hey everyone, I thought it would be interesting if everyone would list their favorite article writing or marketing resources.

I think the newcomers out there would appreciate a nice list of great resources they can use to get started. Some people are in fact willing to spend a few dollars to get started so it’s ok to recommend something that costs money, as long as it’s relevant.

I’m not going to list any of my own resources as I’ve pretty much linked to everything I use already.

Feel free to post up the best of the best that you’ve encountered as well as a review and the cost of the item. I’m especially looking for a review that explains exactly how this item can help out a new article writer.

If there’s a referral link make sure you post that up too.

Next weekend I’ll make a new page here and post up all the links (including your referral links)

I think this is a good way for everyone to get some sales as well as help the newcomers to this wonderful thing we call passive residual income.

If I get multiple listings I’ll list them in order with the first reply listed first. If I don’t get a review, then no listing. I think that’s fair.

Oh, to make this interesting..

The best review I receive will get it’s own page here, complete with there own referral link(s) intact.

So, with that being said on Friday the 3rd I’ll choose the best and make the page over the weekend of the 4th.

Don’t worry, even if you don’t win your recommended item (and link) will appear on my new ‘Best Resources’ page.

Please DO NOT recommend Bukisa/Xomba/InfoBarrel. I’ve covered all three of those here. I’m sorry about that but I do need to support this site somehow

I also will NOT post up anything to do with those click to be payed sites, I’ve tried it and personally I can not recommend them.

Oh, and finally..

There’s one person who has been a great help to me over the last few months, Dusty over at ChasingTheBull. He’ll be out of the country for a few weeks so, out of respect and consideration I will be leaving two slots open for his recommendations. I think this is only fair.

Possibly Related Posts:

Article Writing Tips | A startling Xomba discovery!

admin — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:12:31 +0000

As most of you know I’ve been singing the praises of Xomba for about two months now, and, without a doubt have seen significant traffic increases because of it.

My Squidoo lenses have much greater rank because of my Xomblurbs, and, as you Squidoo users out there know, it’s easily traceable right on the Squidoo dashboard.

Now one thing I love doing is analyzing things, seeing what works best and making adjustments whenever I can to maximize the effect of whatever I do. I hate doing extra work. And, as my drill Sergeant said to me long ago…. “If you don’t plan on doing it right, plan on doing it again”

Those words ring true here, as I was analyzing the structure of the much loved Xomblurb I noticed something…

To me, they just aren’t worth doing, SEO wise. The Xombyte is much more effective.

Look at the photo below of the SEO optimization tool analysis of one of my Xomblurbs.

Argh, no description or keyword field...

As you can see the title is dead on. But there is no description tag and not keyword tag. This is terrible. So once again it’s not really worth it to kill yourself over inserting keywords into the keyword field. The keywords are probably for internal searches and have no effect on the SEO placement of the ‘blurb.

What you can’t see here is the keyword density, I was truly shocked at this. I used my target keyword 4 times in 7 lines of text. My 3 word keyword was #3 in the keyword list which is horrible.

Why is this, well that’s simple. Every Xomba page has tons of other text on it, including a listing of the most recent Xomblurbs and Xombytes, all of which have keywords in their titles as well.

Now, I’m not saying for one second the Xomblurb is useless, quite the opposite. It has it’s place as a quick and easy traffic driver. Xomba has ‘no-follow- links so you won’t get any SEO goodness from the Xomblurb, but possibly some traffic.

In my opinion the Xombyte is a better choice for me moving forward. It suffers from the lack of description and keyword field as well, but with it’s greater length you can pack way more content (and keywords) into it so in my opinion it’ll be more effective long term.

Possibly Related Posts:

The Writers Round Table | Round 2

admin — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 03:48:31 +0000

Anyone have any articles they’d like to suggest for us to look at. I think it would be kind’ve selfish of me to just post my articles up.

Don’t be shy, just link up an article and give us the views and earnings as well as the publish date that way we can give you some article writing tips and possibly help you make some money online.

Anyone?

Possibly Related Posts:

Focus – The Key to Making it Happen!

admin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 23:42:42 +0000

A few months ago, when eHow was the only passive earning site I used, life was easy. I got home from work, did some research, and published one or two articles. On the weekend I’d publish 2 or 3 a day.

Life was simpler back then.

These days however, I have so much going through my mind that I find myself sitting in front of my computer thinking and contemplating and not typing.

This has got to stop!

I am wasting so much time thinking about what to do next that I end up getting very little done.

Now, I understand that generating passive income isn’t a race, but It isn’t a vacation either, you have to work to earn. This is just as true at your job as it is in front of your computer.

I realized just a few moments ago that my focus has suffered. I feel that my goals have become clouded by endless thoughts of new things to try.

I resolve to put an end to this here and now!

No longer will I set monthly goals. Instead I will make more realistic attainable weekly or even weekend goals. I, like many working people, just can’t predict how much time I’ll have 3 weeks in advance so I just won’t set goals that far ahead.

Friday is here, my goal for this weekend is 4 new eHow articles, 12 IB articles, 12 Xombytes and 6 blog posts. That’s it, if I have more time then I’ll do some reading.

Oh, btw, those IB and Xomba articles will just be eHow rewrites (re-keyworded and rewritten of course)

Anybody else finding themselves losing productivity due to brain clutter?

Possibly Related Posts:

Article Publishing Site Throwdown!

admin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:45:57 +0000

As most of you know I am absolutely frustrated with Bukisa. Articles that are well key worded and highly promoted are getting few views yet some of my first articles which are poorly key worded and totally unpromoted are getting views. I’m also not happy with their referral program, I feel it encourages people to spend more time looking for referrals and little or no time creating content.

I recently discovered (and signed up on) Info Barrel. At first glance it appears that both sites are owned by the same person as the graphics are remarkably similar between the two sites. There are some critical differences however that, in my opinion, make IB a far superior choice as an article publishing site.

Many of us are getting adsense revenue from our blogs or websites and Xomba, but, with the minimum payout of $100 on adsense are months (or even years) away from getting our first check.

Enter Info Barrel. This site pays through adsense exactly the same way as Xomba does, and, in my opinion is a far better choice as a second or even third article publishing site as it will add to your adsense pool and give you a quicker payout.

Now, let’s get to the nitty gritty..

How do articles perform?

I’m glad you asked.. Let’s look at two articles. They are on the same subject, targeting a similar traffic keyword. For the Bukisa article there are 10 xomblurbs pointing at it and about a dozen other links on social sites. The Info Barrel article has NO promotion whatsoever.

First the Bukisa article performance in the last 5 weeks..

About 10 hits a week, or 1.5 per day..

And now the Info Barrel article published one week ago..

57 hits, almost 8 a day!

There’s something really wrong here. Now, I’m not accusing anyone of anything, I’m just looking at the numbers. Also, Bukisa has an Alexa rank of 28k, and IB has a rank of 54k so the Bukisa article should have far more hits, but it doesn’t, what’s up with that??

So, my conclusion is that articles perform much better, hit wise, on IB than on Bukisa.

IB 1 Bukisa 0

Oh, let me also say that I chose to use the same subject type articles so they wouldn’t be unfairly effected by current trends.

How can this possibly happen?

Actually, the answer is simple. IB has the most robust article publishing page I have ever seen, it blows away every other one in terms of options. eHow, Bukisa, Xomba don’t even come close to it.

Check this out..

Wow, more options than a 2009 Lexus!!

Amazing, not only can you use BOLD (an SEO goody), but you can also designate H2 and H3 tags. Absolutely awesome! You’re also allowed to insert links into the article body as long as they are relevant.

IB 2 Bukisa 0

The Payout

The Bukisa payout is simple, you get whatever the ‘Bukisa Index’ happens to be per 1000 views. Currently it’s set at 3.72, so you get $3.72 for every 1000 views you receive on your articles, this works out to about 1 cent per 3 views.

IB pays you 75% of the adsense income for an ad click on one of your articles. It’s impossible to calculate how much this will be but a well keyworded article will get views and will eventually get a click.

IB 3 Bukisa 0

The Referral Programs

As I’ve already said, the Bukisa referral program, in my opinion, is a bit too generous and encourages more recruiting than writing. Info Barrel on the other hand gives you just 2% of the adsense earning of the people you refer. Not so much to make this a recruitment drive site, but a content producing site.

IB 4 Bukisa 0

My Conclusion

Info Barrel wins this throwdown without much of a fight. IB wins on every level, from article performance, editing options, link creation, payout and referral program.

Personally I’m going to use Info Barrel site to publish content targeting high payout, low traffic keywords. Just one hit should generate more income than a whole month of Bukisa views.

Anyone else using IB? Any luck with it?

Possibly Related Posts: