EzineArticles.com = Traffic, Sales

EzineArticles.com is my new best friend -- or, at least, my new favorite site. I've started using this online article directory to publish articles that link to my niche sites and blogs. While I created my account over two years ago, I only had a couple articles there and didn't realize what I was missing.

One of the articles I wrote last week is already in number-one position in the search results for its keywords and has received 96 views already. It links to my pets niche site, which earns money through Adsense and affiliate commissions for Amazon products and a pet-specific ebook through Clickbank.

As a direct result of my recent articles published on ezinearticles.com, I've seen:

• A WA membership sale ($40)
• Four pets niche ebook sales ($80)
• Slightly increased Adsense earnings
• More traffic to my sites

This is after writing articles on EzineArticles for only two weeks. The real benefits are probably a few months out, and will hopefully grow over time as more people find, link to and republish these articles.

After publishing my initial 10 articles, ezinearticles.com awarded me "Platinum" writer status, which means I can now write an unlimited number of articles and my articles are reviewed within a day, instead of the 7-day wait experienced as a Basic level author. I do have several author names under one account, using various pen names for different niches. So while I have 14 articles live on the site, an individual author profile may only show a handful of these.

Because ezinearticles.com is well loved by Google and has great page ranking, your articles there will receive exposure and provide high-quality backlinks to the site or blog you link to in your author bio. Backlinks are an essential ingredient in your online writing success -- don't overlook this important aspect.

Are you writing articles on ezinearticles.com? What has your experience there been like?

WA Article Club: Inside Scoop

I recently joined a one-month WA Article Marketing Club when it was offered to Wealthy Affiliate members who wanted to learn the ins and outs of article marketing from the ground up. For this club, we each created new blogs using Wordpress Express and are promoting them through free sites such as Ezine Articles, Articlesbase, and other article directories. While these blogs all promote Wealthy Affiliate, the method can be applied to any niche.

Article marketing has never been something I've done in earnest for a particular campaign. With eHow articles, it really wasn't necessary, and I never realized how powerful an article marketing campaign can be for backlinks and traffic. In the WA article club, we write and publish about two articles off-site for every one post or page we publish on our blogs. Each of the two articles is tightly related to the topic of the blog post, and links directly to it as well as to the blog's home page.

This is a whole new method of backlinking for me, as I previously added backlinks rather sporadically and had only ever written a handful of articles for article databases. For instance, I created my Ezine articles account in 2008, but I've added more articles in the past week than I had in the previous two years put together.

In addition to the article marketing, the club has shown me a new way to set up Wordpress blogs, where there is a separate page for the blog posts as well as pages for FAQ, About, and other key pages. I hadn't known you could have your blog posts show up anywhere other than the front page... yes, I was a little behind the times.

After completing the 30-days tasks for my new Legit Work at Home blog, I will repeat the process for my pets niche site and my food niche site, both of which have shown great potential already (the pets one earns over $250 a month with the minimum effort I've put forth). I will update about their progress after completing the article club steps for these sites -- I'm really excited to see how it works out.

What are you working on? Have you done article marketing to promote your website or blog? I'd love to hear your experiences...

Are You Causing Your Earnings Plateau?

Have you been stuck in the same earnings bracket for weeks or months ... or even longer? Is there a monetary ceiling that you just haven't been able to crack? Whether you earn $500 a  month from your articles and blog or $1,000 in residual income every week, if the numbers don't change much from month to month ... you just might be the reason your earnings are stagnate.

In Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, author T. Harv Eker posits that each of us has a "money blueprint" that determines more or less our earnings potential and our spending habits. Some people have relatively high blueprints and thus achieve wealth more readily than others. Others might have a poor financial blueprint, created by a variety of factors throughout their lives, that predisposes them to spend every penny they earn, never getting ahead of the bills. Still others neither earn nor spend very much; it's just how they are wired.

Reading this chapter resonated with me -- I realized that I had set my blueprint for online residual income at about $2,500 a month and there my earnings sat, fluctuating slightly, for over a year. You see, I was subconsciously satisfied with that number. It was far more than I ever thought I would earn online, and just what my family needed to make ends meet every month, with a little extra for getting out of debt and for savings. It was all I needed to earn, all I intended to earn, and so it was all I earned.

Reset Your Money Blueprint

It's incredible how powerful your mindset is in determining everything from your mood to your character. It affects your interpersonal relationships and determines the kind of person you will become. And, it seems, it predicts how much money you make. (Of course, money seems trivial when juxtaposed with things like virtue and character, but it is simply one aspect that is influenced greatly by mindset and more to the point of this blog than the others.)

Steps you can take today to reset your money blueprint and increase your monthly income:

1. Make a higher income goal than the last one you achieved. Don't pick some lofty number you secretly  think you'll never make. Decide how much you want to earn, a number you will actually work toward, and write it down. Commit to this goal.
2. Change your negative thinking processes. You know, the ones that say you can't do it, or that you're getting in over your head. Believe in your abilities to succeed and to help make the world -- or your corner of it -- a better place.
3. Calculate your net financial worth and update it every month. This simple process is highly motivating as you get out of debt and build wealth.

Have you subconsciously been satisfied with your level of earnings and seen a plateau? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic.  

Recommended Reading: Making Goals and Setting Tasks

Recommended Resource:  Wealthy Affiliate University