When I first heard about this great contest I knew I was going to take part in it. Writing reviews is something I do quite often on my blog, and I focus on writing a different kind of review than those you usually see in the internet marketing niche.
First of all, not all the products I review I actually end up recommending and more importantly, I try to be as honest as possible in my reviews. I add some live case studies to go along with the actual review so that my readers will be able to see if and how that product or service actually works for me, and understand why I decided to recommend it.
With that said, I decided to share with you a blog network that I have been using as a member for quite some time now and also promoting as an affiliate with great success, Unique Article Wizard (UAW).
How Did I Discover Unique Article Wizard
When I started my online endeavors back in the summer of 2010 my main focus was search engine optimization (SEO). I was playing around with it doing stuff manually at first but than I started looking for services that could help me get more done in less time.
Unique Article Wizard was one of the first blog networks I signed up for mainly because it has been around since 2006 and that alone is a great testament to how successful it is.
I can’t really recall exactly how I found out about it, whether it was on Google, on some blog or on the WarriorForum, but I did hear about it and decided to give it a try.
Why Did I Decide To Promote Unique Article Wizard
The short answer is the results I got. I think that it is the most important aspect of a service such as Unique Article Wizard. It exists in order to help your SEO efforts and assist in getting higher search engine rankings and it did just that. So, I figured I should share my experiences with the world on my blog and let them know about how great Unique Article Wizard is and why they should consider using it.
I am not going to lie to you and say that I only wrote the review in order to provide value for people. I also wanted to make money in the process and with the search volume and popularity of this service (as can be seen in the image below), it seemed that I could do quite well if I was able to rank high enough and offer some added value for those that will signup using my affiliate link.
I wrote my Unique Article Wizard Review and really made it the best I could providing as much information as possible. I included a video showing how the interface looks and how the article submission process goes, and also created a case study in which I only promoted that specific review using only Unique Article Wizard submissions and that got me to the bottom of the first page of Google.
Whenever I sit down to write a review I do some research first. I check out all of the other reviews for that product and I try to find what is missing in them so that I can have something different in my reviews. To be honest, this is quite easy as very few really put the effort into writing their reviews. Most only focus on writing how great the product or service is (without even testing it first) and that you must get it.
Most affiliates only focus their efforts on getting their reviews to the top of Google. They fail to understand that it might bring in some sales but not as many as they could get if they just put in some effort into the review itself, and make sure they provide some added value not just being a middle man between their visitors and the product they are promoting.
These affiliates are the main reason product reviews have a “bad name” and most people don’t believe anyone that is reviewing a product and recommending it.
The Questions
After figuring out that I am going to write about Unique Article Wizard I started to construct my post in my head as I always do. I try to find some key points to focus on and use as sub headlines inside my posts and reviews.
I found that it makes it much easier for me to write and also makes it easy for most to read.
So while I did this research process I tried to focus on what you, the reader, will want to know most out of my promotion of Unique Article Wizard and I figured that most of you will have 2 questions that you will want to get answers to.
1. How Did You Do?
This question is the less important one so I decided to answer it first. For those of you that don’t yet have a second question in mind I assume that my answer to this first one will get something going inside your head 🙂
I am very happy to say that currently my review of Unique Article Wizard is probably the page that is making me the most money on my blog. With some additional link building methods (that I will explain later) I am now siting on the 2nd position for the main keyword (below the official site) which was my initial goal and I was thrilled once I got there a few months after publishing my review.
I am also ranking number one for the secondary keywords I targeted (unique article wizard review and unique article wizard discount).
The bottom line is that with the review I wrote, the discount and bonus I am offering and my Google rankings I am making a very nice income that keeps increasing every month and recently has grown to 4 figures.
And now for the more important question.
2. How Did You Do It?
As you probably figured it out by now, my promotion plan was SEO. Getting my Unique Article Wizard Review to the top of Google and hopefully making some sales. As you can learn from my answer to the first question, it worked and it is working now better than ever.
Getting to the first page of Google wasn’t too hard and didn’t take a lot of time as I managed to land there after 3-4 months. That might sound like a lot but considering the level of competition and that my blog authority wasn’t as high as it is today I think 3-4 months was OK especially since I only focused on one type of link at the beginning.
As I mentioned earlier, I got to the first page by making sure my on page SEO factors are optimized and with links I got by submitting articles to Unique Article Wizard only.
After I started making a few sales I contacted Unique Article Wizard support and asked them for some kind of discount that I could offer my readers and I was willing to give up my commissions in order to make that happen. They agreed and I started offering a $20 discount (that comes out of my end) for the first month of service which of course improved conversations.
If you take something from this post, then take this part. Always ask for discount offers or bonuses that you will be able to offer your readers when you are promoting a product or service as an affiliate. The worst case scenario no one will reply to your request but the best case scenario could make a huge difference for you and end up making you a lot of money. It is as simple as sending an email so there is no real excuse not to do it other than laziness.
Offering a valuable bonus and/or a discount is simply providing more value to your readers and that should be your main focus when you really want to kill it as an affiliate writing product reviews.
Another promotion method I used was with my WSO (warrior special offer) which I launched back in July 2011 on the WarriorForum. It is called the Product Launch Domination Blueprint and in it I showed how me and my partner, Jack Partain, dominated product launches in the internet marketing niche. Part of the product was our advanced link building blueprint which included the products and services we used in our SEO promotion and of course, Unique Article Wizard was a big part of it.
Getting my review post to where it sits today in Google took some additional link building work and included the use of various methods and tools. To be honest, I really can’t recall the exact methods I used but blog networks had a crucial part in my link building efforts as did SENuke.
If you would ask me today how to move a fairly competitive keyword from the bottom of page one to the top, I would say use BuildMyRank. It is considered to be one of the best link building services and for good reason as you can learn from my BuildMyRank review and case studies.
A Side Note
Using Unique Article Wizard also led me to the creation of my WordPress plugin, Pingback Power, and I will explain how that happened.
After I started using UAW I was getting hundreds of pingbacks to my blog and I never really took the time to learn and understand what they mean. I thought that each pingback is a live link and I was thrilled to see so many of them being created every day.
Only after I took the time to test things I learned that only 20% are actually indexed and live. That led to my decision to start building links to these pingbacks in order to get more of them indexed.
The problem was that I needed the URLs of the pingbacks and going one by one copy and pasting them wasn’t a real option as I had several thousands pingbacks at that time.
That led to the creation of my Pingback Power WordPress plugin which I really created for my own personal use. It allowed me to harvest all of the pingback URLs from any blog I owned and than use those URLs to build links to them and get as many of them indexed.
I never planned on sharing the plugin with the world but I soon realized that it is the only plugin that does what it does and I figured others might find it useful so I released it to the world for free.
Am I cool or what? 😉
The reason I am sharing this little plugin story is to show you that by using and/or promoting a service as an affiliate can lead to much more than commissions. In my case it lead to the creation of a little WordPress plugin that helped me build an email list, get more traffic and get noticed by other webmasters in my niche.
I guess what I am trying to say is that you should always look and think long term rather than focus on the immediate return you will get for your efforts.
The Bottom Line
Whenever you are going to write a review I would recommend you only write about products and/or services you used yourself and that you have personal experience with.
Having that personal experience makes your review more honest, real and will allow you to write a much better review as it will include your own story and if you don’t know it yet, stories sell, or as Seth Godin said it in his great book;
“All Marketers Are Liars Tell Stories”
If you already have a product review in place and you want to get better conversions than take the time to create a unique and valuable bonus that would work great with the product you are promoting. You should also contact the product vendor and see if they can arrange some kind of special discount just for you. All it takes is one email.
Understand that every piece of content you write and especially reviews might be worth a lot of money down the line. I really had no idea how much money some of the posts on my blog were going to bring when I wrote them and now that I know, I am definitely doing things differently and I put in a lot more work into the research and writing process.
Take the time to write something that will be more than just good. Put in the effort and write something GREAT that will add value to those who choose to read it.
If you achieve that, it will also bring you money and that is a win win situation. Put in the extra effort in every review you write and I guarantee that it will make a huge difference down the line.
Thanks For Reading!
If you have any questions, remarks, feedback and/or criticism I would love to read about it so feel free to comment below and let me know!
Also, don’t forget to tweet and like this post so all your friends will get a chance to read it. You never know who might find this information useful and I would greatly appreciate it (and it would help me win this contest ;)).
Thanks again.
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