One of the most common questions I see in forums and I get asked is usually something like this:

“Hi, I need to make $5000 before the end of next month will XXX program help me do that”

The genuine answer to that is probably no.

So what should you do if you want to make fast money online?

The answer to that is simple.. provide a service.

Everyone has some part of Internet marketing they hate doing, If they can get that work done at a price that they are comfortable to pay then you can make money by doing those jobs for them.

When I first started out I spent 5 or 6 hours a day building sites for people for $10 each I could make $20 to $30 an hour which was a lot more than i was making from my own sites. I continued this for a few months until the income from my own sites surpassed the income from buildig sites.

My wife needed to make a bit of money a few years back so she started writing content for people. At first it took her 30 -40 minutes to do an article, but she stuck at it and now after writing around thousands of articles she can complete a quality article in 10-15 minutes. She has clients from a number of different SEO companies as well as individuals and it’s now a full time business for her.

There is no limit to the services you could provide, in the WordPress Goldmine Forum we have members who do all sorts of things from Niche research and brokering website sales to getting backlinks and writing articles. I suspect you could actually have a site built and promoted without leaving your sofa if you wanted to.

How To Get Started?

The best way to pick up “service” jobs to start with is to post details in forums or place the details in your signature. You can also use some of the freelance sites but there is a real knack to laning your first few customers, One of my members is an expert at landing writing jobs and makes a full time income from it. He’s recently written a report about how he makes his money.

You can check out the details at Writing For A Living.

To round off this post I want to give you a chance to advertise your services for free, So feel free to add details of your services as a comment below Don’t make it too spammy and i’ll publish it!! If you want to offer a discount or do a special deal then I won’t object

So lets get this straight Article Marketing is alive and kicking and going from strength to strength In fact 2010 is going to be bumper year for article marketers.

So before I look at what’s to come in 2010 and finish with a prediction lets have a look back at what happened in 2009. The most obvious things that had an affect on Article marketing was Ezinearticles and their bit of house cleaning. To listen to some people over react you would have thought the sky was falling. I admit I was very critical of some of the things that EZA announced and that was said by the management but they now seem to be being sensible about things. I suspect there was an initial knee jerk reaction on both sides.

For example When they initially announced the keyword density changes and the more stringent review policies I asked Chris if domain names would be counted as keywords. The answer I got was yes they would. This was obviously poorly thought out as surely an article about blue widgets pointing to a site about blue widgets was preferable to one pointing to a site about pink fluffy bunnies and yet because my sites are well targeted I get punished. However this doesn’t seem to be the case now so perhaps common sense has prevailed.

None of the changes are cause for concern , the only thing you need to do is to adapt your articles. If your keyword is 4 words long then you need to increase your word count to over 400 words. The great thing that the EZA changes did was to make people look elsewhere for links and post articles at other article directories. Personally I’ve slightly reduced my articles that go to EZA and increased the articles that go elsewhere and where I used to only give EZA unique content I now often include content that has been posted elsewhere. After all Article marketing Is a 2 way street.

So what for 2010?

Well the first thing that is already happening is that There is now more than 1 good article directory, ArticlesBase and GoArticles are making headway and challenging EZA. They are not quite there yet but it’s only a matter of time. Goarticles recently had a big SEO audit done and this can only mean that their articles will start to rank higher in future.

Access to stats will also become more prevalent, EZA recently started showing CTR which is an excellent step forward, I want to know my CTR and which links get clicks.

Articlesbase is an excellent directory and already starting to outrank EZA in some cases. I know very little about the management and ownership but I’ve had a very positive discussion with them after they rejected some articles. The great thing is that they are prepared to listen to common sense.

With sites like Go articles you can currently add links in the Body and also link directly to sales pages if you wish. The more visible links in an article the higher the CTR. So if you aren’t using these directories then it’s time to start.

My big prediction for 2010 is for a rise in the number of article directories who don’t have any adverts and allow 3 of 4 links in the body of the article in return for a small monthly fee. I can see this business model becoming prevalent. EZA state that a CTR of between 2 and 12% is normal, I can regularly get 3 or 4 times that so a site with no ads and well placed links and resource boxes should achieve 50-70% CTR I for one would happily pay for that!

Article marketing is as strong as it’s ever been and is going to get stronger, more competition is a good thing and can only help us article marketers.

Good luck with your article marketing in 2010

When I did the article marketing course /step by step in  Wordpress Goldmine I showed how to quickly and easily increase your click through rate to 20 or 30%. What I didn’t show at the time was a quick and easy way to check those CTR percentages so you can see what articles need to be worked on and which ones are performing well.

The Video below show a really quick method I’ve devised , there is probably an even quicker way but this works for me and I am not too good with excel!

I get so frustrated when I see a good article and a headline that sucks, no matter how good the article is if the headline is weak people are not going to want to read it. Go to Ezinearticles and look at the articles on the front page. How many of those headlines and descriptions make you want to stop and read them?

When you write an article don’t just use the first headline you think of , try to get one that grabs the readers attention then follow up with a first paragraph which grabs them by the throat and won’t let go of them.  If you get the first paragraph right and the headline  then the reader will stay with you until the end.

Think of it like a restuarant. If you walk past a restaurant and the exterior looks inviting you’ll go through the door. Your headline is the exterior. If you then get to the reception area and it looks good and welcoming you’ll stay. Thats it, your there until the end of the meal. The reception area is the first paragraph.

These 2 parts of your article need a lot of attention from you, work at them and practice them write an article then leave it for 24 hours when you re read it does it grab you? If not re write it.

Ok I can here you all shouting “Mark tell us how to write a good headline”

Why not learn from the masters of headline writing and grabbing your attention. Think for a moment where do you see thousands of headlines trying to grab your attention everyday? C’mon work that grey matter baby..think.. yes you’ve got it news stands.

Go to your local news stand and look at the glossy magazines , pay particular attention to the best selling ones like Mens health, Cosmo, Vogue etc. Don’t those headlines just jump out at you? When ever you see a good one write it down or buy the magazine.

Here are just a few I noted down.

Get back In shape – great results in just 8 days

Great skin in 9 days – No $500 Creams

5 questions you must ask before getting engaged

Six pack Abs- See Results in just 9 days

Gain Muscle, Lose Pounds – Tap your Secret Source

The people who write headlines like these are paid a good salary to attract peoples attention, use their methods and techniques. Headlines are all around you as I said in a post last week there is no need to re-invent the wheel.