Affiliate Marketers BootCamp - Our Guide to PAD

We have received a few emails from fellow students with questions relating to PAD. Most were having a very poor response rate with maybe 1 in 100 if that. We have had an excellent response rate so thought we would share our ideas in a little more detail than you may of heard in the Coffee Talk. So here it is:

Things to Consider

A prospective PAD site owner will most likely take a look at your website before agreeing to take an article -after all they will be including a link to your website. So consider the following before starting to send emails:

That's it really. We don't tell them to use keywords in specific places or provide any detail on what we want in each article. We leave it to them. We also add the basic info such as - it should be unique content, must be informative and written naturally etc.

We will usually accept at least two different writers for each project. That way we get two unique articles on the same topic.

The articles will cost anywhere between $8 and $15 each.

Finding PAD Sites

When we first started searching for PAD sites we found it quite difficult and had about a 1 in 30 response rate. Since using the following technique it has increased dramatically. Until just recently we were sending out 20 emails a day but we don't do that anymore because the great response rate meant that we were quite backlogged. Even now I have 7 websites still waiting on articles and I haven't sent any new emails out for over a week now.

So firstly, here is what we don't do:

To find these sites we just type in variations of our keywords with the words 'submit article' or 'articles' in the Google search field.

BUT we don't just use our keywords as this is very limiting. Instead we look at the big picture. For instance, barbeques belong on the patio or in the backyard and they relate to the home. So I would go searching for home related sites like home decor, home improvement or mom type sites like home hints and cooking sites. If we take the gas bbq grills example we might type in the following search phrases in Google to find these types of websites:

Another way to find sites is by typing in the keyword 'newsletters' as a variation. There are thousands of websites that send out newsletters and would love content to add. Ensure that they also place the newsletter on their website otherwise you won't get the value of the links.

Once you have finished with using the keyword 'newsletters' then you can start using the keyword 'blogs' or 'blog'. So you would start searching for 'home renovation blog submit articles' or 'home hints blog articles' and so on.

You can see how many variations of the keywords you can use to find sites willing to accept articles. With time it gets easier and easier and you will find that your response rate gets better and better.

Sending the email

Our email is based on the Bronwyn Bamber email as we think this is a very well written email. Ours is a lot shorter however as we felt that website owners are very busy and the shorter the email, the more likely they are to read right the way through.

Basically we just start off by asking if they are currently accepting articles, then tell them that we are willing to provide them with a couple of unique well written articles. We also add that in return we would like two to three links back to our website within the article.

We send the email regardless of whether the site has an article submission page or not just to ensure that they are still active with their website and also that they don't have a huge backlog of articles.

Once we have a positive response

When we get an email back to say they want an article we immediately respond to them to let them know that we will get to work on the article.

We then go through our bank of articles that have already been written to see if one will be suitable. If none are suitable we will generally write our own but usually we will have something that will work. We take this article and spend about half an hour to an hour just working on it so that it suits the website it is going to. Sometimes we might even have to add some extra content.

We then add our links and send it back to the website. Usually we send two articles to each website but sometimes three if they are a particularly strong website.

And that's it! Hope it helps!

Paula & Wanda