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Article Marketing and Niche Marketing with Tim Gorman - Interview

September 28th, 2007 | 33 comments

This is the longest post I’ve ever partially written :) However, if you do any niche marketing and/or article marketing, I highly recommend you read it!

For the past year or so I’ve been following a guy by the name of Tim Gorman. I first heard of Tim when I came across a few YouTube videos of him speaking at an Adsense Immersion workshop. He was giving great tips on how to effectively put up white-hat niche sites for Adsense income. That’s the exact day I started doing a little niche marketing myself.

About CPT Gorman

Many of you have probably heard of Tim, if not I’ll tell you a little bit about him.

Tim Gorman is a U.S. Army Captain (Soon to be Major), who also runs a very respectable, profitable online business. As a former U.S. Army Sergeant I can assure you that officers don’t have much free time, especially Recruiting Company Commanders as Tim is, so he’s actually running his online business with VERY limited time.

For those of you who know Tim, you know he’s very well-known for niche marketing. In a nutshell he puts up small, quality, white-hat sites and promotes them primarily with articles. This is something many of us do, but very few of us are 6 figure earners doing it, as Tim is.

After watching those videos I went to the Warrior Forum and asked who had heard of him. I have quite possibly the worst memory in the world but I remember exactly what the first response was:

Tim Gorman is the real deal! If you want to make money with niche marketing follow him!

There were several other replies which were very similar, but the first one stuck.

Since then Tim has expanded his business and he is quickly broadening his “brand” from Niche Marketing Guru and Article Marketing Guru to a well rounded Internet Marketing Guru and I’m glad to know him!

Tim has been making money above the radar with his niche marketing, but he’s also been making cash below the radar by Creating and Flipping Websites. He’s even created one of the best courses on the subject that I’ve ever seen at http://www.createandflip.com/ I just purchased a copy earlier today and I’m truly amazed.

The thing that I really like about Tim, other than the fact that he’s “the real deal” ;) is that he’s not just out to get your money. He’s a good guy and you know how I treat people that lack ethics (see my review of John Chow dot com)

I was lucky enough to score a 5 question email interview with Tim and he’s allowed me to share it with you, so enjoy!! If you learn something from the review, consider picking up a copy of his site flipping course at http://www.createandflip.com/

My Interview with CPT Tim Gorman

Josh

Tim, first off, thanks for the interview, I know your time is valuable. One question that comes up all the time when discussing Article Marketing is whether or not “mass submission” using services such as ArticleMarketer.com and iSnare.com is looked at as duplicate content. Whether it is or not, do you see better results “mass submitting” or being more selective with your submissions?

Tim

Josh - No problem. I’m always glad to discuss article marketing concepts with folks that are eager to harness its power. There is probably no subject that causes more heated discussion when it comes to article marketing then the duplicate content penalty and whether mass submission is a valuable tool or not.

Let me start by saying I have had excellent results using article marketing on sites where I used mass submission techniques and on sites where I didn’t use mass submission techniques. Now before I start to dissect whether or not mass submission is good or bad let’s make sure we know why we use article marketing. There are many reasons why article marketing techniques should be used as part of your online business marketing arsenal. These include:

1 - Generating search engine traffic
2 - Generating article directory traffic
3 - Generating one way backlinks
4 - Generating webmaster’s traffic

Now based on those 4 observations I can easily tell you that an article that is mass submitted will generate more article directory traffic (because your article is on more article directories), it will generate more one way backlinks (because your article is on more article directories) and it will generate more webmaster’s traffic. This in turn can have a viral effect for your website because those folks are actively searching (or in some cases scrapping) the article directories for articles to put on their site which will in turn will be seen by visitors to those websites. So if you follow what I’ve just mentioned then you can see that perhaps the only negative aspect of a mass submission would be the effect it has on generating search engine traffic but I can tell you that I have seen the benefit of having an article in the number 1 position on Google even though it was a mass submitted article.

What I will tell you is that I don’t mass submit every article I use for my article marketing efforts. In fact I think I generally use a ratio of 1 mass submission for every 6 articles I submit with the other 5 submissions going to a few of the quality article directories such as EzineArticles.com. Also I don’t advocate the use of iSnare.com or ArticleMarketer.com instead I prefer to rely on a quality article submission software such as Article Post Robot. That’s not to say iSnare.com and ArticleMarketer.com don’t work (I’ve never personally used them) I just think you can get more value for your money with less headaches if you have total control of your mass submissions.

Let me talk about duplicate content real quick - First, I’m not an expert nor do I pretend to be when it comes to duplicate content but I’ve often mentioned that in my experiences duplicate content was not the issue - mirror content was the main problem. What’s the difference?

Duplicate content is an article that you submit to an article directory and is used by others to populate their website.

Mirror content is where you write an article for your own website on Arizona Car Insurance and then use the same article 50 more times but replacing Arizona with the name of another state. So now you have the exact same article but covering California Car Insurance, Missouri Car Insurance, Idaho Car Insurance…..etc

I’ve personally lost a website that was disowned by Google for using the procedure I use to describe mirror content (pity because it was making $3000 a month just from adsense).

Additionally, I routinely use unchanged PLR on many of my websites and they do well in terms of making income for me. I’ve seen my submitted articles on the websites of other webmasters (they downloaded them from the article directories) occupying the number 1 position in Google. I’ve seen my submitted article on a directory occupying the number 1 position on Google.

I don’t worry much about duplicate content (although I do make sure and use a different article on my site and never an article that I have submitted to a directory).

Josh

I’ve heard you mention in the past that you like shooting for more competitive “niches” because they are the ones that pay. I do the same, but I target “long-tail” keywords or “sub-niches” inside these high competition niches. Is this more or less what you do as well?

Tim

Lol - Yea, that’s correct. I absolutely love the high paying competitive niches (insurance, loans, debt relief, credit repair, acne…etc). You actually mention the key to becoming profitable in these niches in your question and that’s targeting the long tailed keywords (sometimes referred to as the low hanging fruit). Here’s a real quick example using the insurance niche:

Keyword 1 - Insurance - Pays well but extremely difficult to rank for and very broad.
Keyword 2 - Home Insurance - Again pays well but still to broad and difficult to rank well for in the search engines.
Keyword 3 - California Home Insurance - Getting better (easier to rank for and still pays well).
Keyword 4 - Riverside California Home Insurance - Clearly a long tailed keyword phrase that can be dominated
Keyword 5 - Riverside California Home Insurance Policy - Make a page now because its waiting to be dominated!!!

That’s an example with the keywords but in order to truly see the power of the long tail try putting each of the above phrases in Google search (with quotes) and see what the results are for each.

I would rather rank number 1 for 100 long tail keyword phrases that each get 1 search a day then rank number 20 for the most competitive phrases that receive thousands of searches a day.

Josh

I know you are a little picky when selecting niche site templates. Can you provide a few tips that any niche marketer could use in order to optimize their niche sites for the best conversion?

Tim

I want to be honest with you I use a very simple site template for almost all of my sites because it works for me at achieving an unbelievable CTR and continues to make me money no matter the niche topic. It would be rather time consuming to explain the layout so with your permission I’d rather just show a website that uses my layout - Free Online Instant Credit Reports

What you’ll notice on that site is I have a very small menu on the left, a nicely done graphical header at the top , a large heading followed by my adsense ad above the fold. Next I have my article then a Google search box followed by some additional content. Also you’ll notice I have an affiliate ad on the left side. As you can see a very simple template yet extremely effective for monetization purposes. One final note - Notice I only have 1 adsense ad on the site. I feel that’s very important for earning purposes but that’s for another interview.

Josh

With my own niche sites I feel that I have a good layout and presentation of my adverts. Most get an adsense CTR of around 30%. But, I’ve never been able to get my affiliate links/banners to convert well at all. Is there any advice you could give my readers and I on selecting affiliate adverts that convert?

Tim

The only real way I’ve been able to get higher then a 3% CTR on my banner/affiliate ads was by removing adsense completely which is something I don’t really recommend doing unless you have a well paying CPA offer that only requires your site visitor to enter something simple like a zip code or an email address. I have found that a good affiliate ad placed on the left side under your menu will generate a CTR of 2-3% and can be profitable. I have one site that does between $3-$9 a day on adsense but also does between $1.78 - $10 a day just from 1 small affiliate ad.

I think the key is if the ad/banner addresses the visitor’s problem. For example if your site is on warts and someone comes to your site wanting to know how to remove a wart and they see a nice graphical banner that clearly says “safely remove warts now” I believe they are more apt to click on that ad then an ad that simple says “wart removal cream”. That’s probably a poor example but hopefully you get the idea. Remember be very selective as to which banner you use on your site and if you use a site like Commission Junction to get your affiliate banners they normally tell you which are the best performing banners.

Josh

As a U.S. Army Captain you have very little time to work on your Business, yet you still manage to earn 6 figures. What advice would you give those with limited time, who want to run a profitable online business, to get their business off the ground?

Tim

The best advice I can give is the following:

1 - Dedicate a set amount of time to work on your business each day
2 - Work your tail off during that set amount of time
3 - Master one monetization model at a time. First instance I started with adsense, now I’m on to rehabbing PLR material and creating and flipping websites. Next on the plate is to create my own products and start a membership site.
4 - Don’t be afraid to invest some money into your business provided it can be justified to help speed up your learning curve or help simplfy a task you are currently doing. However, don’t go wasting money chasing every new pot of gold.
5 - Don’t be afraid to spend time in some of the Internet Marketing forums. They can be a wealth of free information.
6 - Choose a mentor and follow everything they do.
7 - Never give up and always have a positive mental attitude.

Josh - This has been alot of fun for me. I want to thank you for this opportunity and I wish nothing but online success and prosperity for you and your readers.

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33 comments

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    29th September, 2007 at 2:24 pm 

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  2. Lord Matt (8 comments.)
    30th September, 2007 at 10:22 pm 

    This is good stuff. Thank you. I’m gonna submit this to stumble because frankly this article rules. I now have new clues on my path to earning piles of cash from my online activities.

  3. Josh Spaulding
    1st October, 2007 at 1:25 am 

    Hey, glad you stopped by. I’m glad you found value in it. This is one of the most valuable posts on this blog. I was really expecting to see many more comments.

    Thanks alot for the stumble. That makes 3. Hopefully it gets several more!

    btw, I’ve been having trouble accessing your blog. It times out most times. I’m not sure if it’s my side or not, but I suspect it’s not since I don’t have any trouble with other blogs.

    I did have someone tell me the same thing a week or two ago about this blog though so who knows.

  4. Brent Crouch (14 comments.)
    1st October, 2007 at 2:23 pm 

    Thanks for the great info Josh. This is a very good read.

  5. Niche Marketing Tactics: Articles as an essential Niche Marketing Tool | Beyond Niche Marketing
    1st October, 2007 at 5:12 pm 

    [...] in making the Major Sale is to develop TRUST, and articles are a great way to demonstrate your expertise and build [...]

  6. Article Post Robot Review
    3rd October, 2007 at 5:09 am 

    [...] and did it all manually. I strongly believe mass submission is still a bad idea, but after my interview with Tim Gorman I’ve changed my technique [...]

  7. Rip
    5th October, 2007 at 4:39 am 

    Tim, or Josh — why do Captain Gorman’s websites have so many different articles, above and beyond the initial 5 main pages of the site?

    For example — http://www.free-online-instant-credit-report.info/articles_1.html

    What is the purpose of putting that many articles on these adsense sites? That looks like a LOT of work. Is it enough to just have the 5 main pages, or are all these extra articles pretty important?

  8. Josh Spaulding
    5th October, 2007 at 5:22 am 

    Hi Rip,

    I won’t speak for Tim, but I’d say I know exactly why. With any Website, the more content the better. The reason why is because the more pages that the SE’s index, the more chances there are of those pages coming up in search results, resulting in more income.

    I believe Tim starts out with a small site, 5 or so pages, then over time he adds to those sites (correct me if I’m wrong Tim) and that’s exactly what I do as well.

    It is alot of work and I don’t think I nor CPT Gorman have said otherwise. However the basic technique really isn’t all that complicated. It’s all about putting up small, quality sites and building on those sites over time.

  9. Tim Gorman (1 comments.)
    5th October, 2007 at 8:45 am 

    I initially build all of my sites with just 5 main pages and then as I see that a site has potential I start to flesh it out by adding more content (in the form of articles). This allows me more entry points because I then link back to these articles from my submitted articles (it’s called deep linking).

    Plus more pages equates to more visitors which at the end of the day equals more generated $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

    Tim

  10. Chris Hunter (14 comments.)
    8th October, 2007 at 4:10 am 

    Great interview, Josh!

    And thanks for being available to do it, Tim.

    I’m a fan of Tim’s work and look forward to learning more from him in the future.

  11. WarriorBlog (8 comments.)
    11th October, 2007 at 12:15 am 

    That was a very helpful interview, I didn’t know you could build a website and sell it. However, with so many make money opt out there, I think it would be wise to stick to one and master it before you learn something else.

    I am also into Article Marketing, but didn’t find this too helpful about duplicate penalty. I wrote unique article for every submission and only submit to only 20 AD.

    Nice post,
    Sean

  12. Bob (1 comments.)
    12th October, 2007 at 2:08 pm 

    Tim also had a report out that goes into more detail. I don’t know if it’s still available.

  13. The Knowledgable Newbie -or- The Broke Guru | Make Money Blog
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  14. Rip
    2nd November, 2007 at 11:10 pm 

    Hi Josh (and Tim if you’re still reading).

    I am following Tim’s plan from A to Z. I hope you don’t mind if I document my results on your blog. If there’s a problem, just let me know.

    I don’t know how many things I’m doing wrong or right, but I am using a template that is nearly identical (in my eyes) to Tim’s free-online-instant-credit-report.info site. I am not using the free credit report niche as my first site, but one that I thought would pay well and that I think Tim also is involved with.

    I also kind of skipped one of Tim’s steps — instead of making 3 sites and writing 3 articles for each site to determine the most profitable one, I just chose this particular niche and went to work.

    So far, 10 articles have been accepted at ezinearticles with more on the way. I’ve had 12 clickthroughs to my niche site, and 3 clicks for a total of $0.74 in earnings. Those figures are discouraging, but I am chalking it up to “I’m just getting started” status. So, full steam ahead!

    20 more articles for this site, and then I am going to move to another niche and repeat the process. I’d love it if anyone could give me any pointers or highlight any flaws you might see in this plan. Thanks!

  15. Josh Spaulding
    3rd November, 2007 at 2:09 am 

    Hi Rip,

    You have the right mind-set and that’s very important. Not all sites will do well. I have a few that generate very little money, while others do very well.

    Here are a couple tips for you:

    When doing your keyword research, before you even get into the actual sub-niche research, use a tool like http://www.spyfu.com/ to get an idea of what main niches pay well. The key here is finding niches that pay very well ($0.80 - $1.00+ per click) Once you have a main niche that pays well, then dig into sub niches of that high paying niche that have little competition but still have monthly searches. Most likely you’re not going to get loads of visitors no matter what niche you target, that’s why it’s very important to only target high paying niches.

    One site that gets 10 clicks a day is $10/day or more if you choose the right niches.

    Keep at it and you’ll get there. I’m still nowhere close to Tim, but I’ll get up to his level soon ;)

  16. Rip
    3rd November, 2007 at 2:48 am 

    Thanks Josh.

    On the SpyFu site, I’m in a niche that says the Cost/Click is $1.08 with 19 advertisers. Is that a high-paying niche or am I doing something wrong?

    Yesterday was my first click and it paid $0.54. Today was 2 clicks for $0.20.

    Is Google simply displaying the bottom of the advertiser barrel on my site? How can I ensure that I get the highest paying advertisers displayed on my site, if that’s even possible?

    Also, I’m confused about when and how to keep adding content to these niche sites after the initial 30 article submissions that Tim recommends. Should I just start writing new articles for my site only (not submitting them) that target low-competition keywords for search engine traffic (after submitting 30 articles to ezinearticles, etc.)?

    Hope I’m not asking for too much of your time! Thanks again.

  17. Josh Spaulding
    7th November, 2007 at 5:09 am 

    No problem Rip. SpyFu isn’t 100% reliable, but normally if cost per click is higher than $1 it should be profitable.

    .54 and .20 aren’t amazing, but they are better than .10 as some of my sites generate. It may be worth it.

    You can use competitive ad filtering in your adsense account to restrict certain sites, but I don’t imagine they are serving ads at the bottom of the barrel.

    It’s not an exact science. Just add content to each site as often as possible. I won’t speak for Tim, but I’d imagine he doesn’t have an exact set time to add to each site.

    Personally, I just add a a page or two when I think about it. Fresh content is always good, but don’t think that you’ll be deindexed or dropped just because a site doesn’t get fresh content after a few weeks, or even months.

    I have a site http://www.everythingaboutgermany.com/ that I haven’t touched for months and it still ranks on the front page for “germany tourism.”

    I’m a strong believe that the main factor in getting top rankings is the off-site factors ie. link building and using keyword rich anchor text in those links.

  18. Alex Liu (4 comments.)
    19th November, 2007 at 5:41 am 

    I simply love this post. Thanks for your effort on interviewing him. I was struggling with article marketing and you gave me a good and clear picture to me with this interview.

    Thanks again!

  19. Austin
    5th December, 2007 at 5:43 am 

    Congratulations on a really great post! Wonderful, very helpful read. Thanks for sharing! This is a very helpful post for anyone and every one who’s interested to find and establish that niche and eventually succeed in online marketing.

    BTW, great review on John Chow’s blog =D

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  21. James
    31st December, 2007 at 7:28 pm 

    I have heard elsewhere that TimG recommended a certain Dr Andy Williams for outsourcing the keyword research.Ironically, Dr Andy Williams in his blog says that article marketing is no longer effective since search engines dont count their links as valuable. Now, I am confused. I have noticed that the above blog post was done in September. Has article marketing become ineffective since then? Please let me know.

  22. Josh Spaulding
    31st December, 2007 at 8:10 pm 

    Hi James,

    I have indeed heard Tim recommend Dr. Andy Williams for keyword research. The thing to point out here is what the recommendation is for, which is (as you and I both mentioned) keyword research and not article marketing. Keyword research is simply a small part of article marketing, so I believe I’ll take Tim’s word over Dr. Williams’ on that.

    It’s also not all about the links. I’m still getting alot of traffic from my articles and if you look at Tim’s ezinearticles profile, you’ll see that he’s still submitting articles. If it wasn’t working I wouldn’t bother and I can almost guarantee Tim wouldn’t either.

    You’ll always have “nay-sayers” with any technique. The trick is to find what works and stick with it, no matter what these people say.

  23. James
    31st December, 2007 at 8:34 pm 

    Thanks for the fast reply. Just 1 more question, i hope i am not bothering you too much.
    Most of the article directories require authors to submit articles written by themselves or have EXCLUSIVE rights. That means its not possible to use plr articles, even if it is rewritten with lets say upto 50% uniqueness, because the rights that we buy is not exclusive. How then can we use plr articles apart from using it as content in my own website?Is it advisable to rewrite plr artilces?Or is it better to write articles from scratch.That would limit the number of articles that can be written in a day. Also, writing and submitteng 30 articles to the ezinearticles (like Tim mentioned) will become very tiresome if you have more than 1 website.What is your suggestion about how to manage article marketing of many websites using Tim’s methods.
    Thanks again for your time.

  24. Josh Spaulding
    31st December, 2007 at 8:44 pm 

    No problem, James. You’re not bothering me.

    I personally never use PLR. I’m pretty sure Tim has a good majority of his articles written for him, as I do. PLR can work, but I just don’t deal with it so I won’t comment on that.

    I have most of my articles written as well. The trick is to get your profits up to the point to where you can afford to outsource your writing. Then you only have to worry about finding good, quality writers that produce quality.

    It’s not easy, but it’s worth it in the long run.

    Happy New Year!

  25. James
    3rd January, 2008 at 7:33 pm 

    Hi Josh, James here again, one more question.
    What does Tim (or you) use to build his site?He mentioned in his ebook that he uses a software called “SEO smArticle Composer”.Does he still use that, or is there some software better that this?By the way, this software is no longer being sold and the website seems to be down.

  26. Josh Spaulding
    3rd January, 2008 at 8:41 pm 

    Hi James,

    I can’t speak for Tim, as I’m not really sure what he’s using these days, but I don’t use anything.

    I have a few pre-made templates that I like really well and I just have a header image created for each and change the colors around. Several small tweaks make each site unique.

    But, I don’t create nearly as many sites as Tim does. I create one a month on a good month anymore.

  27. Juhani Tontti
    17th January, 2008 at 10:58 am 

    HI…

    Just interesting interview, super!

    Just one question ( if you have time): how you see the difference between the long tail keywords and LSI keywords?

    And: should we optimize ( article for instance) only for Google or for all engines.
    Is it a weak compromise to try optimization for all engines, because algorithms vary?

    Juhani Tontti
    Home Business Start Blog (please read comment policy)

  28. Josh Spaulding
    17th January, 2008 at 2:08 pm 

    Hi Juhani,

    There’s a video “LSI Explained” explaining LSI I posted a while back. I think the only effective way to write web content these days is naturally. We should still be targeting long-tail keywords in our title tags etc. but as far as writing, whatever comes out comes out.

    The more search traffic we can get the better. But I have to admit, I only optimize for Google. If you can optimize for all that’s obviously a good thing though.

  29. Thomas
    28th January, 2008 at 7:45 am 

    Hi,nice interview.
    What do you think about article marketing in 2008? Is it still effective?
    I read Tim’s ebook that he is distributing for free,I want to know if his methods are still good for 2008?
    Thanks for your time.

  30. Josh Spaulding
    28th January, 2008 at 2:51 pm 

    Hi Thomas,

    Absolutely! Article marketing is still effective if done correctly. As long as content is king article marketing will be effective.

  31. Should you Target Long-Tail Niches or Competitive Niches
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  33. Ross Kenny (1 comments.)
    20th April, 2008 at 10:54 am 

    Great interview Josh…!!

    A really admire how effective TimG can be with the amount of limited time he has.

    He’s a credit to us all and we can all learn something from him.

    I would highly recommend investigating him more if you don’t know him..

    Ross Kenny

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