I talk a lot about creating authority sites as an online business idea in order to build a long term online business. After all, this is what I’ve been doing the longest online and have had the most success with in my endeavors.

Recently, I added a new blog post to one of big content sites. I centered it around a three word keyword phrase that seemed to get decent traffic.

I did nothing else but make the blog post. No social bookmarking, no linking or promoting of any kind.

But because I had built this site up to somewhat of an authority site, that post was listed in all three search engines within a day or to.

I made the post on June 21st. From June 25th to July 13th it was #5 as far as keyword traffic to my site.

It was ranked #9 in Google, #14 on Bing (MSN) and #18 on Yahoo.

Oh, and another three word keyword phrase that I included in the post was #15. In that time period I received search engine traffic from 1,677 different keywords.

That is powerful stuff, making authority site building a powerful online business idea.

Sure, creating an authority site takes more time than other strategies. But it also lasts and it builds equity, if you ever decide to sell.

If you build content sites the right way, you don’t need to worry about it at all. The long run thing is the key. Don’t build them for immediate income (sure, you can get it but it’s not a stable thing to count on).

Just continue to build them out as you do your other stuff. Spend a little time on them each day.

My first ever content site continues to get 1,000 plus unique visitors every day, day in and day out and I’ve been doing literally nothing for it the past year as other projects have taken priority.

My point being, once you establish a content site the right way, the traffic doesn’t really get affected by any search engine algorithm shifts.

Obviously, that takes time, but like I said, do them as you do other things and you’ll see your income grow over time.

The things that affect content sites with ranking shifts are usually a young site, not a lot of content, and maybe some shady or unreliable ways of getting links.

Another site consistently gets over 300 unique visitors a day and I have a few other content sites that do the same (each over a year old).

Done right, content sites are an online business idea for a long term business model. I have numerous sites that get at least 1,000 unique visitors a month that I haven’t touched (added content OR done any link building or promotion) for a year or so.

I am going back to them now because of great potential and I don’t want Google to feel they are abandoned but luckily, once a site is established you don’t have to add content very often and at that point you could add a page every couple of months and even have someone else write it for $5.

Don’t just think about short term cash. Build a long term business as well. And creating content sites is an online business idea that works for the long term.

With these content sites you can:

• Promote affiliate offers
• Make money with per click programs like Adsense or Kontera
• Build your own email list
• Create and sell your own products
• Charge people for advertising on your site in the form of text links or banners
• Sell the site years later for a boatload of cash

When you create a quality content site in a niche, you can pretty much do whatever you want. You control a valuable piece of virtual real estate.

Next time I’ll go into some more detail on this powerful online business idea and getting started building your own virtual real estate empire the right way.

Article marketing, while it still works for driving free traffic to your site, is not nearly as easy as it used to be. If you want to maximize the results you’re getting, try including the following article marketing tips into your game plan.

1) Determine Your Article Marketing Strategies

What are you trying to accomplish with a particular article or set of articles?

In other words, what type of action do you want your readers to take?

Interaction – do you want the readers to give you feedback? Go to your blog and leave comments?

Subscribers – do you want your readers to click through to a squeeze page and sign up to your list for more free information on the topic in the form of a pdf report, mp3 audio or video?

Site Traffic – do you want to get your readers to click through to your affiliate site where you review or recommend products or in some other way monetize your site so that you generate revenue from these visitors?

Become An Expert – do you want to become known in a specific niche as the go to guy or girl?

Links – do you want other sites to pick up your articles, generating links, traffic, and higher search engine rankings for your site?

2) Write the Right Stuff

What do I mean by that? When deciding on article marketing topics, you need to be sure to write about topics that your readers want and not necessarily topics you want to write about or that you think people want to read.

You need to do your research. And I don’t mean just keyword research. Visit some forums, message boards, social networking sites to determine what it is your potential customer or client needs from you.

Another great way to find out what topics readers want is to go to EzineArticles.com and check out the most popular articles in your niche.

3) Pull Your Readers In Right Away!

When people search for information on the internet, they do a lot of scanning. If you don’t grab their attention right away, you’ll lose them and they’ll move on to another article or web site.

The title of your article is crucial to any successful article marketing strategy. Without a good title you’ll lose out on tons of targeted traffic to your articles.

I could make this part complicated and get into a lot of copywriting techniques, tips and ideas but I’m going to make it very simple for you to get started and take action.

Go back to EzineArticles.com and check out the top articles in your niche and other niches. You’ll see a lot of similarities to titles (and topics) within a niche.

This will give you a great place to start as far as the type of titles you should use for your articles.

4) Stay Focused

The difficult part happens after you suck the reader in with an amazing article title. You have to keep their interest by providing them with quality information they can use. You can do this both in your words and in the layout of the article.

You need to stay focused and on topic. When writing a 300 to 500 word article you can’t veer off into topics that have nothing to do with the promise of your title. Your readers will quickly hit the back button.

Keep the article short and provide quality information. That’s the “secret” to writing effective articles.

Another great article marketing strategy is using an effective layout for your article.

Two great ways to do this are numbers (like the four article marketing tips you’re seeing here) and also bullet points where you quickly list the points of your article.

• Keep your article short
• Hold the readers attention
• Provide quality information
• Know what you want to accomplish with your article

Keep these article marketing tips in mind with each article you write and you’ll increase the effectiveness of your article marketing efforts.

From upsells, downsells, and cross-sells, to the specifics of the environment such as lighting, Vegas is designed with one thing in mind – to get you to part with your money.

Do you really think it’s a coincidence that casinos don’t have clocks?

Plus, I love the ATM’s. Whereas our “normal” ATM’s give you fast cash options of $20, $40, or $60 (if you want more, you have to manually type in the amount), most in Vegas have options that START at $200 and go up and if you want less than $200 you have to manually type it in.

I was recently in Vegas for the PPC Classroom Live seminar and to meet up with my mastermind group.

Even department stores get in on the act, big time. Check out this cool two minute video.

Super Secret Double Probation Underground Las Vegas Special Selling Secrets Revealed

Now, while thousands of you are emailing me for them, I will NOT be releasing the secret videos of Steve, Steven, Becki and Sheldon. Those are safely locked in the vault for when I need a really big favor.

You’ve seen this results in a lot of article directories, as well as a lot more junk articles being produced and submitted to these directories, making it more challenging for people to succeed with article marketing.

But does it still work?

The short answer is yes. It may not be as easy as it used to be but it definitely still works.

You can no longer just write a bunch of crap articles, get great rankings and flood your site with traffic that buys.

But you can still use article marketing to generate almost instant traffic, get backlinks, boost your search engine rankings and build your credibility (if you’re trying to become an expert in your niche).

But what about long term?

Can your articles still produce traffic on an ongoing basis or will you only get an initial push from being on the first page of EzineArticles.com when it first goes live?

Great question! So I took a look at an article that I shared results about in a previous post – Does Article Marketing Have Staying Power?

In that article I published the following graphic from my stats in my EzineArticles.com account.

So what about now? With the surge in low quality article marketing, as well as many changes over at EzineArticles.com, is this article still producing views like this?

Here you go. The following was taken on May 12th, 2009.

Not only is it still producing a serious number of views on EA, the numbers have gone up since I last wrote about it. And this article was first published on EA over three years ago.

So if you’ve stayed away from article marketing, you may want to consider giving it a try.

Many of you know of the amazing results Jaime Mintun and I achieved in only 60 days from our Success Blueprint.

I’ll be discussing this in more detail in the near future.

In the meantime, I want to prepare YOUR path to success by getting you to take the first step…

THINK about the following.

• How much time to you spend each day performing activities related to your most important goal?
• Do you even know what your most important goal is?
• How do you master such problems as limited time, multiple commitments, simultaneous tasks, and conflicting priorities?
• What techniques do you use to conserve time, energy and money?
• How do you maintain focus, motivation and good humor in the face of frustrating obstacles and adversity?
• Does your most important goal relate to your natural abilities?

I urge you to take a few minutes and really think about these questions.

Most people don’t. And most people give up long before they are successful.

And that’s a tragedy. A tragedy that is easily prevented.

Gregg

PS – Here’s another really cool free video on living in abundance and how to think and grow rich. Check it out.

Think Rich

PPS – If you haven’t done so yet, I urge you to grab a copy of Secret List
Building Tactics and start building your own successful business online.

Secret List Building Tactics

Well, X is back with something new Affiliate Blackbook. It launched over a week ago. I haven’t mentioned it because I wanted to purchase it and then devour it.

Is it any good? Yes and no. The no is, if you’re easily offended or don’t like when people “name names”, this probably isn’t for you.

In fact, go to Affiliate Blackbook and you’ll see two links – one for the pg version of the sales page and one for the x rated version of the sales page.

Seriously – Affiliate Blackbook

If you like the idea of just clicking a button and getting rich, this probably isn’t for you. There’s actual work involved, horror of horrors!

On top of that, some of the stuff is borderline in that it could definitely be abused big time by less than ethical marketers. But used properly, has some very effective marketing tactics that you shouldn’t lose sleep over.

Recently, in the Earn1KaDay forum I wrote a long article about why I liked the fact that Google made people jump through hoops to use Adwords.

By doing so, they’ve created a barrier to entry, eliminating a lot of our competition because people don’t want to work that hard. They want to throw up a direct linking campaign with a gazillion keywords and retire.

The Affiliate Blackbook

A REAL business, not a cash generator that could disappear into the quicksand like so many online businesses.

X focuses a lot on building lists (although in ways a lot of us have never thought of) as opposed to just being a traffic generator and building the merchant's business. Build your own! As many of you know, that's exactly what I "preach" so you can see why I might be into this product.

The ebook is 151 pages and I've already devoured the entire thing, taking notes all the way.

There is also a free membership area that compliments the book and there is one subtle upsell into another membership level at $47 a month. However, it is NOT forced continuity.

It's well done, streamlined and not annoying. Yes, I picked the upgrade.

Affiliate marketing and PPC (which he also talks about a lot and I've already learned some really cool techniques I didn't know anything about) are a big part of my business nowadays.

If you're at all interested in affiliate marketing, do yourself a favor and at least take a look at the sales page. It might be just what you're looking for to boost your business. Check it out ==>> Affiliate Blackbook

But I get asked a lot if it works as a long term traffic strategy.

In other words, does the traffic dry up once you stop submitting new articles to the article directories?

Well, it depends. There are a number of factors involved that help determine how effective your article marketing efforts are over the long haul.

Things like:

• Keyword Selection – selecting the right keywords goes a long way toward determining whether your article will get found by searchers.
• On Page SEO – where you place your keyword phrase in your article, as well as how often it appears, will also affect your possible rankings in the search engines.
• Article Quality – the higher quality the article, the better chance another site will pick it up and use it on their site, or possibly in their newsletter.
• Article Topic – this will also play a huge role in whether other web sites pick up your article. If your article topic is timely or controversial there is a much better chance of it getting passed around the internet
• Links – Things such as the quality and topic of the article will also play into whether or not you get a lot of links from your article.

The more web sites that pick it up, the more links you get, which means a much better chance at receiving long term traffic from your article.

If some real authority sites in your niche pick up one of your articles, your main site could get a serious boost for its search engine rankings.

One article I submitted a while back, continues to get more direct page views on Ezine Articles each month than most of my articles do ever.

Here’s a screen shot of monthly views:

Now, I have plenty of articles that don’t have 3,000 views on Ezine Articles in total, let alone for one month.

And no, I haven’t figured out what sets that article apart from the others.

What I can say is if you do do as many things right as possible with each article, and continue your article marketing efforts, you’ll create articles that have traffic generation staying power, too.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out my previous post ==>> No Way, Not the Death of Article Marketing, Too!

As I’ve said before, the internet is made up of information.

While video and audio are becoming more and more popular as people get faster and faster internet connections, the text format still has it’s place in any marketing campaign.

For one, many people prefer reading over audio or video when it comes to absorbing information.

I know I much prefer being able to read something as opposed to listening to an audio on the same topic.

I’ve written previously on using article marketing for traffic generation, as well as link building, and sharing with you some of the results I’ve had, including my article marketing case study that you can get for free at ArticlePublishing.com.

Article marketing will drive traffic to your site. 

How much traffic it drives and how much money you make will depend on other factors, such as your niche market, your keyword research, your resource box for your article and then the structure of the offer on your web site when people do click through and visit.

Here’s a recent look at my main Ezine Articles account (yes, I have other Ezine Article accounts. In the past, they didn’t allow you to have multiple author names in one account so you had to sign up for different accounts for each pen name you used).

One thing I want to point out is the clicks.  This number is probably much higher. 

I had my EA account, and most of my article views, long before EA started tracking that information.

My first site, which is still around and about 1,000 pages or original content right now, was built around  proper keyword research, SEO, and article marketing. 

As you can see in the image below, this site gets a lot of traffic from a lot of different web sites.

That’s because the articles I’ve written get picked up by other web sites and link back to my sites. 

This means the articles you submit to a site like Ezine Articles help you in other ways. 

They get you links on other sites which helps your search engine rankings and they also get you direct traffic from other sites as well.

If you’re beginning internet marketing or you’ve been trying to make money online but have been struggling and are frustrated with your results, or you don’t have much money to try things like ppc, article marketing can do wonders for you.

Haven’t made money online?  Want to make that first bit of cash?

1.  Grab your own domain and hosting and set up a simple 5 page web site OR just set up a free site at Blogger.com

2.  Put Adsense on the site

3.  Write and submit articles to EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com

4.  See money in your Adsense account

Obviously, that’s a very simplified example but it also works. 

I finally started seeing success online when I focused on building a quality web site using Site Build It and writing and submitting articles to EA.

Everything else I’ve done has grown on top of that initial site building and article marketing process.

Now, a crucial point to understand is that you can leverage your article marketing efforts by turning your articles into audios to submit to podcasting directories, and videos to submit to sites like You Tube, Meta Cafe and Revver.

You can do all of this quickly and easily with PushButtonTrafficSystem.com

You don’t have to create completely new content.  You’re just re-purposing your articles into different mediums to generate more links and more traffic to your money sites

It’s a little over 7 minutes long. Check it out – Two powerful research sites

1. Bring Your Thinking into Focus

The first thing you need to do is decide exactly what specific goal you want to achieve. Figure out exactly what you want your life to be. Figure out what type of internet marketing business model you want to pursue.

Then dedicate yourself to reaching that goal with unwavering single mindedness of purpose. Ignite your burning desire.

You MUST stop jumping from one online money making scheme to the next.

2. Create a Plan for Achieving Your Goal and a Deadline for Reaching It

A goal without a deadline is just a dream. A goal without a plan is just wishful thinking. You must track your plan’s progress hour-by-hour, day-by-day, month-by-month so that you stay on track.

3. Develop A Burning Desire for What You Want

Having a burning desire for a goal is the crucial ingredient to spurring every human being into action. Without a burning desire, you won’t achieve your online marketing goals.

A burning desire allows you to overcome obstacles and take consistent action.

You must be honest with yourself. Do you like the idea of reaching your goals or do you have a burning desire to reach them?

If it’s the former, you’ll eventually lose your motivation and quit. If it’s the latter, you WILL succeed.

4. Develop Confidence

Concentrate on your skills and strengths, not your weaknesses or problems. Focus on what you can control and let go of those things you can’t.

5. Develop a Dogged Determination to Follow Through and TAKE ACTION on Your Plan

It’s not true that good things come to those who wait. Opportunities do not come to those who wait. Good things and opportunity are grabbed by those who take action and dare to ATTACK.

If not now, when?

If not now, why?

Massive Action Equals Massive Results