Should You Be Using Free Web Content
In the past and especially over the last two years (2007 – 2008) many affiliates and online businesses to make money and attract the right traffic to their websites have used free web content.
Free web content or what is actually known online as PLR Content was very popular and was adopted by those who were just starting out as an affiliate so that they could use this free web content to promote their different niche businesses.
The reason this become popular was simply because of their funding was limited as in any new business, after all when you are new you will take the easy option to start out and that was PLR Articles as they were being promoted and even given away for free by everyone online.
And having a desire to built small niche websites fast for your visitors so that you could start to make an income this free web content seemed to be the best solution to begin making revenue.
Why Free Web Content Was So Attractive
As was the case for many that were first experiencing the internet business of affiliate marketing this was sometimes the only option for those who are working on a non-existent budget. Initially it was plugged by the guru’s as being the only way to go and millions of dollars were made by them in selling this to all the newbie’s online, however since then and more experienced now many have realized it is not a way that will effectively create your website’s credibility or generate allot of revenue for you.
For many reasons, free article content can genuinely be counter productive to establishing a solid online business and will definitely not give you an authoritative site to leverage off when promoting affiliate products.
There Was a Problem With Free Web Content
The very first problem that was encountered was that the search engines especially Google are not very fond of identical web content, not that there really is a “duplicate filter” what it really is and many aren’t aware of this is a “competitive filter” this can affect your website rankings and make it tougher for you to get indexed with a good solid ranking.
When more than one website uses the same article content it can cause both or one of these websites to receive a lower ranking, and if hundreds of websites are using the same content you can see what is going to happen. You have probably heard it time and time again and that is Content Is King, but what needs to be said is “Unique Content Is King”.
For you to have a profitable business online as an affiliate or even a merchant then good search engine rankings are necessary so that you have visitors coming to your website so that you have a chance to get them to click on your affiliate links or buy your merchant products.
It will be very difficult for you to generate any income online if you cannot get visitors to your website, unless you are going to be using pay per click marketing then it does matter about your content as long as it is relevant and looks professional to your visitor. However I have had much more success by working within the search engine optimization TOS rules I have found it much better for my rankings and also for my websites credibility.
Using Free Web Content Can Effect Your Credibility
The next problem you are going to encounter is your own credibility in the niche market you are promoting and it is really going to require you to work extra hard for you to improve your search engine rankings to get more traffic to your website and you need to understand that this only going to be part of the issue, you also have to get your visitors to click on your affiliate links.
When people arrive at your web page and read the content that they have seen on other websites they are not as inclined to use your affiliate links because they will not trust you as an expert in your field (Unless You Are The Author of Those Articles). This is because the majority of individuals want to buy things that are recommended by the actual person that they believe are a professional on the subject or creator of the product.
Unfortunately when you purchase PLR Content that other webmasters are posting onto their websites your visitors are not going to view you as someone that knows what they are talking about. This will reduce the amount of web site visitors you are going to receive which means your click rates will be reduced resulting in less income and even a total waste of your time in some cases. This is one of the biggest affiliate mistakes that you can make and many merchants who just don’t know better also fall into this category.
Another big problem with actually using free web content from different authors is you have to keep the author’s signature resource box intake, if you do not you can end up with a few problems. The majority of writers include links in their signature files. Readers tend to go with who wrote the information they needed, so they will click on the link that the author has embedded in the resource box.
That is the reason why so many authors and even webmasters offer free web content as it helps them get their name out on the internet and become very much an authority in their niche which drives more traffic to their web site from the many one way back links that they can potentially receive.
If you are still using free article content today it is only a matter of time for most, that you will start losing potential customers when people click the writers link over your affiliate link or can not find your site at all, due to the “competitive filter” being imposed on your duplicate site content.
Once you put these issues together, you are looking at a slow but eventual decline in your online revenue merely because you used free article content from the various article directories online . Though for a number of start-up online marketers free web content may be the only alternative, if you have the money it is wise to invest what you have into unique content .
If you genuinely don’t have the monetary resources, you may want to think about trying your own hand at re-writing any free article content and then as you business starts to grow hire a freelance writer once you establish a profit from your own efforts.
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