e-BusinessMom

By Tiffany Dow

Today we have a guest post from Ghostwriting Guru and Content Marketing extraordinaire Tiffany Dow. She provides a concrete example of how you can write more content for your sites and for your article marketing faster and easier.

Many affiliates start out on a shoestring budget. You want to keep costs down using free traffic tactics, but in order to get a decent traffic stream going, you need a massive amount of articles at your disposal.

That’s where most affiliates cringe. Writing doesn’t come naturally for some people, so they not only struggle with a lack of talent, but they look at the clock and realize it took them an hour to write 50 words.

With this snail’s pace, you’ll never get anywhere, so you consider giving up.

Not so fast! I have a simple formula that can help you create 5 paragraphs – about 1 full page worth of content, so give it a try and see if it makes your article marketing efforts a bit easier.

There are three main concepts your affiliate article should convey to the reader for the best conversions: personalization, authority or expertise, and honesty in your recommendation.

You’re going to break it up into those 3 paragraphs – and lengthen this basic formula with an introduction and a conclusion for a total of 5 paragraphs, which should work out to about 400+ words – perfect for an Ezine Articles submission.

So let’s break it down so I can show you what goes into each paragraph and I’m going to show you an example, too. I’ve been doing a case study in the Bearded Dragon pet niche for a few weeks and I don’t own one, so that’ll be perfect to explain this from the viewpoint of an affiliate who wants to promote something he or she isn’t familiar with:

Introduction: 2-5 sentences (depending on length) introducing the topic. Remember the five Ws – Who, What, When, Where, Why (and/or How). Answer those questions. Here’s an example:

Parents of children (WHO) who have been begging for a pet lizard and are considering a Bearded Dragon will want to waste no time (WHEN) investing in a guide to proper Bearded Dragon care (WHAT) so that they don’t waste money on a pet that will die prematurely and cause lots of heartache for their child (WHY). You can download an affordable guide straight to your computer from a reputable resource online (WHERE)but you need to know who you can trust for the right kind of pet care information.

Paragraph for Personalization: 2-5 sentences letting them know your story. With free traffic sources, it’s often a web 2.0 socialization situation. That means peer to peer trust has to be built. Moms recommending products to other moms, for example. So let’s see an example – remember I don’t have a Bearded Dragon myself, but I don’t like lying in my affiliate reviews, either, so I’m going to be honest and establish a connection to my readers:

I’m the mother of a 10-year-old boy who has always wanted to pet. We already have cats, but as you know their mindset is pretty independent. A dog requires so much work – and I knew that would land on my shoulders if we got one. So we’ve been contemplating whether or not a pet lizard would be perfect for my son – and we’ve narrowed it down to Bearded Dragons and Geckos. I didn’t know anything about Bearded Dragons, so I went online to gather information and see how easy they are to care for.

Paragraph for Authority or Expertise – this doesn’t have to be your own expertise. You can talk about the product creator’s authority, too – like this:

After reading many websites, I discovered there are many things that go wrong for an inexperienced Bearded Dragon owner. I found a site by Bearded Dragon expert Chris Johnson, which explained some of the things that could result in a fatality of our new family pet. Chris wrote a guide called the Bearded Dragon Secret Manual, which covers issues like feeding, bathing, habitat set up and more. I was happy to find out that this expert guide is written for people like me – who have never owned a Beardie and don’t want to have a misstep. I love the fact that it’s a downloadable PDF file because then I can access it on my computer anytime we have a question – and there’s no fear of misplacing a physical book (which often happens in our hectic household).

Paragraph for Honesty – your honest feelings, even bad points about the product, are appreciated and come across as more realistic to your reader, so don’t make it always a glowing review. In fact, I’ve often sold more products as an affiliate when I have a slightly negative review than when my review takes a feel-good “Kumbaya” approach. Here’s how I convey the honesty of my review:

To be honest, I wasn’t too crazy about spending $27 on a book about a pet I don’t have yet. But Chris convinced me in his website that it’s important to know these things before you buy a Bearded Dragon, so I chalked it up to preventative medicine for our future family member. And I’m a frugal mom – I don’t like shelling out money on information I feel I could probably find for free online. The problem is, it’s all scattered across the web – and I don’t want to take advice from “just anyone” – I wanted an expert to teach us. Plus, once I found out about the bonus items, I couldn’t say no – it had a handy feeding guide and a guide for the most common health woes and the checklists included were invaluable. I printed them out and stuck them on the fridge so my son could refer to them when he gets his new Beardie, which we’re considering getting for his birthday.

Conclusion – Wrap it up here. Reiterate why it’s important for them to get this guide sooner rather than later. Here’s how I do it:

If you already own a Bearded Dragon, or plan to get one soon, I highly suggest you educate yourself about this pet thoroughly. There are so many seemingly small details that could cause severe problems for your lizard if you don’t know them. If you’re looking for an expert to trust, I can give the Bearded Dragon Secret Manual my seal of approval. It’s made my family feel confident that our new pet will live a long, healthy (and happy) life in our home.

That article example if 565 words and I would hyperlink the guide’s name twice in the article. You can shorten it by quite a bit. The best affiliate reviews are created when you put your personal slant on it.

Give this formula a try on at least 5 different articles and see if it becomes easier for you to write a good affiliate review. For added speed, try a tool like Dragon Naturally Speaking. I use it, and it sped up my article content creation by four times the speed I was previously writing at. You simply put your headset on, speak out loud, and it types it onto the computer for you. It’s an invaluable tool for affiliates relying on heavy content creation.

Tiffany Dow

http://www.tiffanydow.com

Tiffany is the former “Ghostwriter to the Gurus” who morphed into a full time marketer of info products, teaching others to use free web 2.0 traffic portals and showing them how to become info product creators and recruit an army of affiliates who sell for them.

When I sit down in front of my computer to write my articles, sometimes I end up feeling like a cup with a hole in it. My brain seems completely empty…nothing is coming in or going out. I guess this is what they call writer’s block. So here’s what I do. I consult my good friend and savior…the forum.

Using a forum is one of the quickest and easiest ways to find enough content to write your article in 15 minutes or less. Note: You can actually borrow some of the questions and answers people post on the forums and just put them in your own words. That’s it. It takes me 15 minutes sometimes to write my articles because of my friend and trusted pal… the forum.

Let’s just dig a little deeper into what I’m actually talking about here. If you’re writing an article on how to avoid hair loss, just go to google.com and type in the words, “Hair loss forums,” in the search engine. You would be surprised to see how many forums you would find in that niche on google.com.

Go to the forum of your choice and check out some of the topics listed. You will find an abundance of information on that topic, all of the things that people are talking about regarding hair loss. Before you get started, I recommend that you open up your notepad, wordpad, etc on your computer and copy and paste some of the questions and answers from the forum.

Once you do that, take those questions, answers, tips etc, and completely rewrite them by adding your own unique style, and make sure you focus on your reader. I usually write and then I come up with the title afterwards. The title is extremely important as it is the deciding factor as to whether your article would be read or not. This is one of my many tips for finding content for my articles when my “Brain is leaking.”

I also love to visit answers.yahoo.com. It is filled with lots of questions and answers also. So you can actually write “question and answer” articles, which many people tend to like. I don’t actually use forums for all of my articles, like this one, but I highly recommend it for squeezing out an article quickly and easily when you’re sitting at your computer and suffering with writer’s block.

Article writing is one of the many ways of getting free traffic and back links to your website or blog. Although it can be tedious at times, it’s a great way to drive free traffic to your sites. Try using the forums in your niche and you would be amazed at how quickly and easily you can churn out articles and even content for your videos in only 15 minutes.

You might actually end up just like me… claiming the forums as your good old dependable friend.