One interesting thing about it I’d like to share as a sort of a teaser before the official release announcement that’s coming soon: while updating the directory list that goes with the book, we decided to check how it compares to the existing lists provided by everyone else keeping them. Well, I am extremely pleased to announce that we only found about 10 (!) directories that have not yet been included into our now almost 5,000-strong list, mentioned elsewhere! Impressive or what?

As for the new services: I’ve launched an article writing service and a manual  article distribution service. This has been a huge effort requiring a lot of my time and kept me really busy lately.

Article writing, like any content writing, has been in high demand  – I have been asked often if I knew any good service providing it. Well now I not only know it but own and operate it. The content quality is great, the service is reliable, the prices are affordable and better yet, bulk discounts are available – so feel free to use it whenever you need any articles.

Article distribution may seem like something of yesterday and not effective any more. The market for it is seemingly over-saturated – so why did I decide to start yet another article submission service?

Well there is a huge difference. Most article submission services offered these days are either automated article submissions done with scripts and standard same old lists of sites not checked for years whether they are even alive still, or lists of cloned PR 0 sites that do not bring much value, or cheap sweatshop type of manual submissions to those same lists that, again, do not cater much to your individual needs and do not bring you much value. What you get when using these services is the long list of sites they meant to submit your article to – but no data on whether those submissions were successful. Moreover, how many links do you get off these submissions? – hardly any. The service I have launched uses a completely different approach – everything from your market niche, through your keywords, through the specifics of your product, to your marketing budget is taken into consideration. The sites are manually selected to be topically related to your site that is being promoted, the submissions are done carefully, attentively  and in accordance to all the requirements of each site where the submission takes place. The results are tracked and the client gets a complete report of what exactly has been successfully done. See the difference?

Surely, article submissions, however high is their quality, are just a part of a healthy SEO strategy. But if you are looking to have a quick start with a tangible effect, then you absolutely should consider this service. This is especially true if you run an affiliate site – the service was designed with affiliates in mind first of all and will help you not only build quality links for your site but also establish your authority in your targeted market.

Guess what I advised her? NOT to  go for it. Why? This was a seemingly easy way of making extra cash… Yet the main point of an affiliate blog is to have your readers as concentrated as possible on your offers, and  placing those links would have added an extra distraction to them. Remember the main rule of landing pages: the less distractions there are and the more straightforward the page is, the better. With an affiliate blog, every page can be regarded as a landing page. I have seen people sometimes come to my affiliate blogs through some really stupid posts and still convert into product buyers. You never know what might work in the long run. Hence, we’re looking at a one-time short term earning versus long term value. Nevermind that you might not have enough traffic to your affiliate blog yet to see the conversions – if you don’t give up and keep working on it there might come a day when you will regret placing those paid links on a page that all of sudden started getting major traffic.

The final choice is yours of course but my opinion is: it’s NOT worth it.