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2 Free, Very Effective Marketing Tips for Online Writers
An In-depth Look at Blog Commenting and Article Marketing & Why They Work
by Yuwanda Black
[Want to start a successful career as a freelance writer? Click here.]

Following is an in-depth look at two time-tested, free marketing tips for new freelance writers - blog commenting and article marketing.

I think it helps to know why a marketing method is effective. That way, you’re much more likely to stick with it instead of just doing it because everybody else is.

Although there are many ways to promote yourself as a freelance writer, your budget will dictate how you market. Getting familiar with free and low-cost marketing tactics means you will always be able to market your services – no matter what your financial situation.

1. Blog Commenting: While many don’t think of this as a marketing tool – it is. And, it’s a very powerful one at that. Many think of blogging as a happy-go-lucky past time. So, they waste time doing it. If you're going to make money as a freelance writer, use blog commenting more strategically.

Commenting on the blog of others rates high on the list of free marketing tips for new freelance writers because it’s something most online writers already do. But, if you do it in a structured way, it can lead to much more traffic. So, what does blog commenting “in a structured way” mean? The following:

How to Use Blog Commenting as an Effective Marketing Tool

i) Choose Relevant Blogs: Choose a list of blogs in your niche to comment on. I’d recommend getting a list of 25 or so together that you can “hang out at.” Relevant blogs are important because they will drive qualified traffic to your website/blog. So, if you’re a tech writer, you’ll target tech blogs.

Example of how this can lead to sales: I was reading CopyBlogger.com one day -- a highly noted blog in freelance writing by the way. I was getting ready to respond to a comment when I saw a question from one commentor asking the site owner (Brian Clark) to write tag lines for some landing pages he was developing.

Brian wrote back saying he didn’t have time to take on the project, but – right there in the comment section on his blog – he said, “Get in touch with James over at MenwithPens.com.”

You can’t begin to imagine the value this kind of reference makes. A highly noted site owner in freelance writing recommends you – right there on his blog – for thousands of other readers to see. That’s the power of blog commenting. 

Note: James is a prolific commentator on any number of blogs in the freelance writing niche. He also regularly writes guests posts for blogs in this niche. It’s how I first became aware of him and a year or so later, hired his firm to design my new site. Again, that’s the power of blog commenting.

ii) Choose Well-Ranked Blogs: What you’re looking for is traffic. Who has traffic? Well-ranked blogs and websites. How do you find out which ones are well ranked? Via any number of tech tools.

Four I like to use are Alexa.com, Statbrain.com, Technorati.com and Page Rank. These will give you a feel for the kind of traffic a site gets. While you may never get a guest post or article published on a well-ranked site like CopyBlogger.com or Problogger.net, the wonderful thing about blog commenting is that you can participate in the conversation and get noticed via this route.

iii) Leave Meaningful Comments: One of my favorite posts ever on the subject of blog commenting was written by Jennifer over at CatalystBlogger.blogspot.com. The title of that post is hilarious (at least to me), Don't Be a Comment Whore: Attract Traffic, Not Annoyance.

The gist of the post is, don’t leave inane, nonsensical, irrelevant and/or “great post” types of comments. Really add something to the conversation. When you add thought-provoking commentary, it makes people want to check out more of what you have to say, ie, click through to your website/blog.

While this is a longer build, it is so worth it. Anything in life that’s worth having takes time. Online marketing is no different.

Tools That Help You Determine a Website/Blog’s Traffic

I mentioned four tools above: Alexa.com, Statbrain.com, Technorati.com and Page Rank. There are many, many more that are undoubtedly better (please pass them along if you know of them). But I use these because they’re free and give you a good idea about a site’s traffic. Following is a little about each:

About Alexa: For the uninitiated “Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is best known for operating a website that provides information on web traffic to other websites.” [Source: Wikipedia.com]. A site’s Alexa rank is based on the site’s traffic only. Alexa Rankings vary from 1 to a billion. If your site is ranked 100,000 or less, it is considered a highly ranked site. Out of a billion sites, that's none to shabby, eh?

Every web site in the world is included in the Alexa Rank, so the scale on your Alexa ranking is constantly changing in relation to other websites on the Internet. Read more on Alexa rank here.

Statbrain.com: This is a site that tells you how many visitors a site receives in a day. I first found out about this site via a post on Paula Mooney’s blog (okay, okay, I’m busted -- I don’t always read blogs in my niche!). Paula’s a techie, so when she drops a tip like this, I take heed.

Basically, all you do is plug in www.site-you-want-to-check-name.com and it will give you a number. Paula’s post explains why it’s pretty accurate. So, read it to understand why I started using it.

Note: It’s been giving some strange numbers lately, but I’m hoping it’s just a glitch. When I first used it, I was amazed to find out that some of the sites I thought got massive traffic didn’t. And conversely, some that looked cheesy got really good traffic. Go figure!

In the interest of full divulgence, my blog gets most of my traffic. The website virtually gets none – which is why that sucker’s being redesigned and will start to be updated and promoted much more over the next year. 

Technorati.com: Want to know how popular a blog is? Rely on Technorati, which is defined this way on Wikipedia: “Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo and IceRocket. As of December 2007, Technorati indexes over 112 million weblogs.”

How does Technorati rate a blog’s popularity? It collects information from the RSS feeds of blogs in real time. It then sorts them into categories using what’s known as Technorati tags. After the sorting is done, the site then allows users to further sort posts by newness, authority and topic.

Technorati Terms Associated with Your Blog that You Need to Know

To learn more about the benefits of article marketing, read the case study I conducted a while ago, How article marketing is significantly increasing my income, at the following links: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V. Questions sent in from readers about the article marketing case study.

Conclusions about Blog Commenting and Article Marketing

I wanted to leave you with some final thoughts on the two techniques discussed above.

A) While both are effective, they do take time to start working. That is, unless you race out of the gate – eg, post 20 comments a day on 20 different blogs and write/publish 10 new articles a day to article directories. But, that’s probably not going to happen. Just get in the habit of doing a little each day – and you’ll be surprised at the results in 2-3 months.

B) Blog commenting is an indirect form of client marketing. What I mean by this is, you’re not talking to clients – you’re talking to other bloggers in your niche. This can lead to clients because you get your blog noticed in the blogosphere. You also keep your hand on the pulse of what’s going on in your industry (eg, rates, new software, new client services you can offer, etc.).

Perhaps the biggest benefit of blog commenting is that it kind of forces you to keep your blog updated. 

C) Article marketing is a direct form of client advertising. You build up your industry expertise this way. The articles that you write can serve as writing samples to clients as well. And, it keeps your writing skills honed.

If you do nothing but these two forms of advertising, your name will constantly be abuzz on the web.

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