How To Build A Product Based But Highly Informative Article - For Newbies

Pre - Introduction

Profiling Two Types Of Internet Shoppers

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You Have To Build Your Article For Two Types Of Shopper

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The Ready To Buy Just Need To Know

Where, Visitor:

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Of course the information would dominate the article but for the ready to buy visitor just needing a link to the product, the product images (and clickable images to the product site) laced down your page is what they are after.

They may ignore the information and just buy, but chances are they will bookmark the page to read more deeply after the ordering frenzy is over.

Once they calm down from the excitement of buying something they wanted, likely spontaneously or for retail therapy, they will want to know more about it.

This is where the informative value in your article is needed (they may just pass the link on to another shopper friend to buy too!). If your lucky they will return to your article after buying to thank you for the information!

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Second Type Of Shopper

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The "Informed" Shopper Who Wants Enough Information

To Make A Good Buying Decision

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The Shopper Who Wants To Make An Informed, Researched, Decision:

The other shopper wants to research something to death then make an informed buying decision.

You will need to build an article of about 1000 words (or less) that is the holy grail of research for anyone looking for that product. It should contain all the juicy and secret information you can find. It should use several techniques I'll describe below. 

In this article I'll cover some basic product based article principals as I've learned and prospered from them. This is just my formula you'll likely tweak it to your own once you understand the basics. This is by no means a comprehensive guide to building product based articles, but it will give you what you need to know right away- something to build from. Experience cannot be cloned unfortunately, it has to be earned.

Introduction

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Building An Earning -AND- Informative Page Is Key

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It's a known fact that some articles are earners, others aren't. The consensus is that the articles that are product based are the earners. The rest are potential earners but not likely to bring in consistent sales. They still have a place, however, in the SEO of your entire account (and the site also benefits based on this theology).

The psychology and "How to" articles bring a lot of traffic but not generally a lot of clicks; not directly. Visitors of these types of research pages are there to learn quickly and apply what they learn or figure something out.

They aren't likely to purchase something in that state. They may, however bookmark your page, publicly bookmark it (stumbleupon, reddit etc...) which would gain attention from stumblers using these sites to randomly visit the web (surf), or even publish it in a comment with a back-link as your page being the authority on ____.

From there someone may add your site url/link to a high traffic site and it may drive a ton of traffic to your page. Of those people visiting your psychology page many may also want to see what else you've written and may be in the market for a welder (and changes gears to check out your welder articles) - thus seeing your welder article may yield a "paying visitor". So the other pages that don't earn directly, still can bring a lot of traffic to those product based pages that do. Both could also get bookmarked by the visitor and syndicated if they are impressed enough.

I'm of the school of thought that there is a balance between the two article types and by pulling the best of both sides (marketing power/formatting and informative power/formatting) you can generate a Frankenstein article that can both inform and sell products at the same time.

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Both types/all types of articles can potentially make money but some don't exactly inspire the "shopping" mood or mentalities on their own, even if what you’re writing about is relevant to a product.

The more informative articles are generally visited quickly and left just as quickly when the reader finds what they need. If the visitor is a buy it now-er they will not want to read the page to see if the product is there, so they move on. 

If your article is both highly potent, concise, and is designed with information as a base and marketing as a second adjoining layer- it can appeal to both.

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So How Do You Make A Hybrid Marketing/Informative Article?

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You have to shorten the informative article and cut it down to just the power points (written into informative articles in second and third person informative styles (personal and informative authority feel). You then have to lace in the marketing/monetization slickly so it doesn't stick out or look like a bunch of ads on a great article to those just reading for information value.

You want the ads to blend in as part of the "great article staff" so they get the same respect. You do this by using cleaver Amazon Gallery product images in the article in place of images (and AllPoster ads also have powerful images and a potential "poster" sale can result from them clicking on it).

Realistically the article should become both- one to the reader/informative to glance over at to crystallize more what you wrote, and to those just after a buy, will see the big image and also see that it's an ad and their salvation to purchasing (and your income or wizzley's). It's an artform to balance the two just so, and it's a dynamic experience as the market fluctuates a lot so your article may need to to keep up- depending on what you write about/products your offering

Another issue is the shoppers get frustrated because your page doesn't cater to their needs. You have to envision the big picture and that is that everything is somehow connected. Your product and psychology pages both help one another drive traffic, make sales, and generate backlinks.

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There Is A Balance

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Your Portfolio Of Articles Should Cover Both Sides,

Product Based, and The rest

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Take The Best From Both Shopper Types And Combine Them

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On one side the shopper is looking for something and wants to find it. Maybe they saw a commercial on television or a pop up ad that got away and are now Googling it. They land on your page and just want to get to the store to pay and have their items shipped, credit card in hand they are anxious to get ___ and your article shows a beautiful image of it, which happens to also be an amazon ad!

The other wants to read as much as possible about the product, even related products like purchasing cabinets for the kitchen will mean you're going to need hinges and screws, things like that.

What makes product based articles tricky is that you have to cater to "just shopping" and "doing deep research before shopping" - shoppers simultaneously. This being two opposite concepts (long and short article) you have to get creative and make sure the products are visible to the just shopping-shoppers and that the data is highly visible and organized (headings/multiple modules) for the researchers.

The text module headings also help the quick shopper who wants just a little more information to push them over the fence to purchasing the item, they will scan the headlines and that alone may give them excitement to purchase.

You can actually make a page work for both simultaneously with a few tactics. One is Amazon's Gallery feature to replace the few large images you should have in your article of products (so they can see detail). With the products being absolutely obvious in large images the quick shoppers can scan and click to purchase from Amazon. The images overshadow a nice selection of short paragraphs that offer great solid product reviews, history if possible, consensuses (been around for years, etc...) information about the product i.e. for welders it would be "how does this thing work?" "what are the types of welders?" "what type do I need?".

Products are what generate commercials on television (tangible and intangible products i.e. services) but they are also what pays for the webs very presence. Even signing up with an ISP (internet service provider) is a service that is broadcasted in ads on the web. You have the potential of selling literally ANYTHING. I was blown away when I sold a greenhouse- I built the article, placed the ads in there- the whole thing looked seamless and cool- but I didn't expect the next day a sale for one would come in!

We'd all love to sit around and write for pleasure but the reality is most of us are here for a paycheck so why are your articles not designed to inform AND earn? A lot of articles out there have a lot of commercial potential but they tend to look like the image above- all kinds of people show up to read, and some want to buy something- but your "gift shop" is closed!

There is an art form in creating an informative, product based article and this is "my" formula for building one. I will be creating a video tutorial soon as a companion to this article so bookmark it and check back in a few weeks- The video will walk you through me building a real product based wizzle based on the information in this article and I will narrate the steps. You will see it visually (I'm a visual person myself) so it should be easier to grasp the concept. For now you have this article :)

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Let's Get Into Building A Page

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• Choose Product

• Gather reviews, comments, articles on ezinearticles, etc... to gather all the data you need to write the god of reviews. What you need are important tips, unique uses, benefits, etc...

• Consolidate research into an article (rough draft, written outside the site)

• Rewrite article as you cut it up and migrate it to Wizzley. Format as you paste it over make sure you have lots of separate text mods in use

• Once article is built, monetize it

• Polish it up

• Publish

• Promote

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Choosing Your Product

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Finding a product to promote is easy. What is it that YOU are interested enough in that you'd buy it given a good argument for it's value? 

When writing on something you like, products you would buy (not necessarily that you have or ever will), your far more likely to convey the excitement about it and less likely to be all sales pitchy about it. People want a solid review about a product starting with what it is, how it's used, it's benefits (facts only), it's potential cons (and potentially how to fix them with products around the article).

Telling a story about it should be analytically based but with some second person to keep it personal. A good article about a product is very factual, potent with useful facts and things people DON'T know (or don't know about this product).

Pick something you are passionate about and that passion will convey in the writing. 

A product based article should be 1000 words or less if possible but no less than 600 words. It should be concise but potent with information a shopper would need to make a buying decision. Offer suggestions of use, other ideas (meaning other products they could use with it), and so on.

Choosing your product is as easy as going to Amazon.com. Personally I think Amazon will be my biggest earner so I'm centering my efforts around amazon products that are interesting, have lots of good reviews, and that are products I'm actually interested in or own.

I also do a search to make sure there are plenty of choices for the product i.e. it has various types/brands, accessories, things I can sell without selling them on it.

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Research - Finding Product Reviews From MULTIPLE Sources And Customer Feedback

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Tapping into the already researched and written product reviews out there is a great resource for getting the "unique details" about the product. You can garnish a lot of great stuff on ezinearticles, articlez, articlesbase, and many others. You just do a Google search for the the product name and the word "reviews" after it. The fact is all the other (competition) pages out there trying to sell this product through review type pages also did the same thing- they tried to find the best "secrets" about the product from other pages and consolidated them. You will essentially try to find as many as possible and don't repeat the redundant data, write a consolidation if needed but keep it concise and follow it with the unique things.

Scan through a bunch of pages and copy/paste any relevant details you want to add into your review.  Once you have a compiled list (I just copy/paste into a text file) of facts (make sure to get pros AND cons- any review worth it's weight has both- but that doesn't mean you want to use highly negative reviews or those written by complainers). Consolidate a bunch of reviews given by actual product owners from sites you can trust like amazon.com, ebay (look through product feedback from eBay sellers selling it).

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Now you should have two lists:

1. List of facts about the product- the more interesting the better

2. List of actual customer reviews (good and bad)

(we won't be using reviews directly) (this also helps grab selling points that sound natural, a customer may use the product in a way nobody thought of and it worked, things of that nature sell products!

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EXAMPLE

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Ready To Write?

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With the product name, these two lists, and some writing creativity, you're ready to start the article.

It shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to find everything above. What you want to do is meditate to both lists and really absorb the information. After some review, you should get an idea in your head about what angle you want to write this in.

You have to put yourself into the customer's mentality by asking yourself questions like:

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• What would YOU look for in an article about this product if you were in a hurry and wanted to skim over just the subtitles and images?

• What information would you need to be there if you wanted deeper research into the product and it's uses?

• You'll need both answers to write this hybrid (product based article).

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Just write it so if you yourself were looking for this product what you would need to know should be in there. Anything that could push you over the fence should be there i.e. a magical benefit that could change everything i.e. an iPad that doesn't need a battery because it can plug into a solar powered device that will run it forever during the day.

Write like your telling a friend but also writing an editorial on it (no chat speak or first person i.e. "I" "me" "us"). Don't write this like you want to sell the product, write it like you use it and found it amazing, but write what's cool, not conversational phrases like "I really like it!" cause they only care about facts, and those facts will determine if THEY like it. Nobody cares that you think it's the greatest thing on earth, not in a review- they only want to know facts.

Write a rough draft one shot deal article using all the facts in your lists. Use the customer reviews to write things like "one customer said (summarize their review/feedback but don't use what they said directly (dupe content)). Lace these throughout where appropriate to push that feature without selling it. DO NOT write these as if the customer posted it on your article, and don't paraphrase the feedback alone, use it as part of the context.

In other words customer feedback/reviews you find are going to be used for educational purposes not to build a Customer feedback portion of your page- but to find the hidden uses, secrets, if a lot of people liked it etc... You can write about these in the focus of "one customer liked how it ____" .

Re-Writing The Article For Wizzley

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Quick Tips

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Once you've consolidated all the facts and have a rough draft written (in word or an editor) where you blab out all the cool things about it consolidated from your list into a few pages of explanations, benefits of the product, some bullets of it's features/benefits, and so on now it's time to rewrite that article into a Wizzle.

The first draft of the article is written first as an unencumbered way to get everything from your two lists (product review and customer feedback) consolidated and into your own words. It's purpose was to create a general structure and concept for your article without the benefit of worrying about how it will all fit into a wizzle, monetization, etc...

The final draft will be written as you paste the article over to Wizzley.

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Make sure your first 200 words are VERY well written. They will determine if anyone stays.

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You will move sections over at a time. Each idea, major benefit, etc... will have it's own text module and "chapter subheading" so to speak. The heading is important as it will help with the table of contents, and it's great SEO to break everything down into several modules. A Table Of Contents will give the "buy now" visitor a list of subheadings one may have the product they want to buy or learn about!

Don't worry about monetization right away, in this stage you just copy over sections of the article, read it over and add information as it comes to you. Fix it up and move to the next, adding the next text capsule and subheading. Keep each one short (about 100-300 words a section).

Keep in mind, however, that to insert the ads you will need places to put it. You should have a new text module every 400 or so words and only monetize every other text module, you want text blocks in there for "ad breaks".

The irony is, if you do it right the amazon modules can become the images for those blocks and also gives the text blocks a break as well. Synergy in motion.

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Don't worry too much about formatting it until it's all broken down and on the wizzley draft page.

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Formatting and monetization can go hand in hand. The formatting can help hide that it's an ad but boost that its an image so keep both in mind while performing the monetization step (next step).

Once the entire article is written and imported into the Wizzley project draft go over it all checking for grammar, spelling, etc... It's important for credibility that you don't have grammar mistakes, run on sentences, fluff statements or sentences that aren't concise (i.e. no "as well as" when "and" fits nicely, no "in order to" where "to" does the trick etc. Information is only as good as the person it's coming from so make sure it's immaculate as a customer would expect a product they purchased to be.

Don't rehash what others have said, use it for inspiration and find your own unique selling angle or perspective in describing the product- try to be different because many are clones of each other- the unique gets noticed. Think like Apple (the company) does... they don't have the only iPhone type smart phone out there but they still have the best one- why? Because it's unique and always ahead of the curve- new, fresh, exciting- the same things Google and customers want.

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Export To Text Then To MS Word (or grammar/spelling editor)

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Use export to text (below the modules section in the side bar) and move your copy into word for a grammar/spell check. Fix areas as necessary (see video for some tips on how to do this fast between word and your article in draft mode).

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PRE - Monetization Techniques

& Media Tricks

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Now your article is in it's most basic "retail ready" form, it should read perfectly at this point as a good article about the product. It shouldn't feel salesy, like your being talked into anything etc... Just facts and ideas, benefits, reviews, etc...

Now we need some MEDIA to draw their attention to the page, to keep them on longer (video) and as tools to really excite them to purchase- again just by virtue of how cool the product is not that your selling them on anything.

Many YouTube videos are great for enhancing what you say about a product- you can find great customer feedback videos there as well to use to back the points and possibly sell some goods! The best part is these videos are already made and available to embed- no experience necessary- all coolness is in tact!

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Video/YouTube

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Before I add Amazon, Zazzle, eBay, etc to my article I like to find at least one good product review video on YouTube to sell them on it and as an overall page primer. You want to avoid anything where they add their url to the video directly or as a caption (inside but layered over the video).

Anything that would drive them to call THEM to buy or to leave your page for product information is going to cost you a sale. Pick a video that does an excellent job of reviewing the product but has no branding on it.

Sometimes a product gets a press release on the news and someone will record and post it on YouTube, this is a great piece of credibility for the product. News stations don' t just advertise products all the time, they get people to pay them to do that so if they add it to a news report it has to be causing a buzz

Even a tiny YouTube video thrown on the side of the product to showcase it would help make a sale. People are lazy and want to watch not read about things, so video is a great way to help them do that and possibly make a sale. The beauty is someone already made that video for you- you just embed it.

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Images

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Images I only add if I can't find enough great Amazon product images to use. When used in Gallery mode the images of some products double seamlessly as page images- usually designed to be compelling to sell whatever it is, this means you get a compelling image that could also sell a product!

Why put an image header of a section when you can use an Amazon module or all posters module to create the effect and add monetization properties?

The beauty of Amazon/All posters is they don't feel like ads in gallery mode, just strip off all but "view on amazon" and the product/title and it will blend in like Pepsi in a movie with product placement!

The only exception  is the Amazon (or any monetize module) cannot be used as the first image in the article. I fix this by adding a text module to the top then splitting my often too long introduction into two boxes (the introduction box and a text module I added).

The added text module will only contain 2-4 sentences/ a paragraph maybe and the amazon module in large image gallery mode as my first above the fold ad but also my introduction image. Using cleaver formatting you can really make a page look fantastic but still be monetized to the max/gills.

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Broad/Focused Niche Choices

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The beauty of a product review page is you don't just have to sell the product being reviewed, you can sell anything related or similar, even several different manufacturers of the same thing.

An example is my Biofeedback toys article. I started out reviewing the biofeedback toy called MindFlex where you can move a ball remotely with your mind using a Biofeedback headset and the main unit. 

By the time I realized how many innovative devices/toys like this I ended up changing my article from a review about one toy to a review of all biofeedback toys (there's not many yet) and covered a larger spectrum of products all with a common thread... I will later go back and create seperate niche articles for those toys.

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Choose One Or All

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So decide if you want to write a broad niche article (i.e. all biofeedback toys) or a focused niche article (i.e. specifically the mindflex toy). The beauty is you really DON'T have to choose. You can write one broad niche based article to review all of a certain broad niche (or a bunch), then you can write individual articles for each of the products in that niche you wrote about in the main one.

I did this with welders recently. I wrote a broad overview and history of welders overall listing a bunch of types and products (the different types of welder i.e. MIG, TIG, Plasma, etc...). I covered the main welder types and did a short (100 words each) review of each type and one specific review (another 100 words) on a specific welder for sale including specs, hose sizes, and details a buyer needs. I listed everything down to specs, accessories that come with a particular welder, and benefits for each type (so they knew what type is best for what job).

This one is generally 1000-2000 words and specific niches are generally 1k or less words. Next I wrote a product review on one specific type of welder i.e. MIG Welders. In it I describe that welders history, where it stands in use (commercial/personal), average costs and variables of mig welders. I then list a bunch of MIG welders as examples of what they look like, cost, etc... (and of course a way to buy one).

I can even break that down further (making MIG Welder instead of "all welders" the broad niche topic (yet focused). With this, I wrote an article covering all types of welders, then an article (separate) that covered each type i.e. all about mig welders. I continued down the rabbit hole writing several product level reviews on MIG 1234565B-12 type of models. So basically it would be a review on one specific MIG welder, (you can write one for every MIG welder brand and model out there!)... you can do this with TIG, Plasma, and  other welders as well.

You can write dozens of articles just covering the various brands (individually one per article/page) of MIG welders and specific models by those brands... 

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Polls/Comments/RSS Feeds

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 You also need to add polls and comments to your article to keep it interactive and freshly updated with content (comments are considered by search engine bots to be content in the article too!).

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Monetize That Sucker!

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Now you have your article written, moved into Wizzley and broken into SEVERAL text capsules each with subheadings/titles that are written well and describe the contents coming- nothing ambiguous, Google uses this to check against the content to see if it's relevant! You've added images and/or video, polls, and now want to monetize.

The next step is to add monetization modules and links. Since many Amazon product gallery images can double as images you don't need to add as many images if any at all.

You can do the monetize/find products step in the beginning or at the end. I find it depends on my mindset as to which would be easier. If you do this step in the beginning, opening several products from amazon in different tabs ready to copy that DP number (asin#) you could meditate to these pages for the reviews, product details and an important key to using an ad is if the image they supply is high resolution and capable of showing up big in the article/wizzle.

Sometimes I won't even know what to sell until I finish an article (non product based articles), so I do this step at the end. In a product article you could use products you find around the main one (i.e. accessories or companion products i.e. television and remote) to add content to the article. In a way the accessories are like product LSI's (supporting keywords but rather supporting products to the main product/keyword).

For example when I realize there is a great cross referenced product (i.e. selling a DVD player and DVD's, DVD burner, blank DVDR's) I will incorporate it into the article. You can review a product and it's accessories too! There's no hard fast rules to how you do it but there is an art-form to doing it effectively (bringing in clicks as opposed to a lot of bouncers). I can tell you how to get started but ultimately every person has their unique way of building these pages that evolves as you write them (each gets better, sometimes one can clue you into why another article isn't moving at all).

You don't want to saturate your article with too many ads. Even if they blend in to the point where someone could barely tell if they are there, fact is Google is looking at page content to ad ratio as well as what's above the fold. Lucky for us, Wizzley has a filter that checks ad to word ratios so you can just push it to their limits but again it takes a lot of mulling over the content and building the page to look informative, not like a Sunday paper with 90% ads 10% informative value!

You also want to have a lot of space (meaning words, blocks of text, images etc...) between ads. If you have a row of ads, for example, vertical beside your article text you should make sure there is a block of text (not just images) about 6 lines long between that and the next one. In other words break up any ads by a full block of text plain or with images as needed.

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Ads Should Be Laced Throughout, Not Just Put On The Right Or Left

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Don't put all your ads just to the right with content to the left. This looks tacky and feels like putting the snack bar right into the theater the movie is playing in. Change it up, put some strips (horizontal) ads between two paragraphs, one lined up beside a long block of text, two side by side and none for a while (ads), and especially make use of AllPosters and Amazon Gallery options for incredible images and ads at the same time.

Use everything at your disposal to make that article look like an exciting article, aesthetics do count for something!

Overall building a money generating product based information page is pretty easy, it just takes a few rounds to get your head around it and to develop your skills in building a perfect page. Even if a page is perfect, the product is perfect, and the season is perfect- this doesn't guarantee the page will earn.

Just build it, build it well, possibly promote it (get backlinks from other sites/articles), and let it simmer for a year or so. It may earn and spike here and there but it takes about a year to really season that sucker.

Meantime try to get traffic to it to help boost it faster! I'll cover promotion in another article and link to it here when it's finished.

Good Luck! 

Comments/suggestions/sharing of your techniques is appreciated!