Unique Article Wizard Review

Hi everyone,

A few weeks ago I took the plunge and signed up for Unique Article Wizard, a service from a company called Allegretto Publishing, owned by Dr. Noel Swanson.

I signed up on the advice of John Jonas, from ReplaceMyself.com after having a short email dialog with him about exactly why I should use it.

Why Unique Article Wizard
Basically, I emailed John to say "Is it really as great as you make it sound". He wrote back to me essentially telling me that Unique Article Wizard (UAW) is really the way that article marketing was meant to be done. He said it's article marketing done RIGHT.

That was enough to get me to sign up. Heck, it's not like I can't cancel if I'm unhappy and you'll never get anywhere if you are not willing to test stuff out, especially stuff that has been recommended to you by successful people.

So I signed up. I learned how to use "the wizard". All I can say is that I'm absolutely amazed with the quality of this product. They seem to have thought of everything. It's incredibly easy to learn, there are a TON of helpful videos, and they send you regular training material via autoresponder (which I simply forward to my Filipino employees).

Here's what I love best about Unique Article Wizard

• I know that a unique version of the article will go out to each directory
• I can get a unique version of my article at the click of a button and submit it to EZA, and other directories manually (ones that it doesn't submit to)
• I can have a wide variety of anchor text used in the resource box, which is really important to helping your rankings
• The wizard submits articles every day at a frequency you specify (the default is 50 submissions per day, which means it is usually finished in one week). This gives your link building some natural feel and flow. This is good.
• It works! We're doing some initial testing right now and I've already noticed some long tail keyword rankings have improved quite a lot. If you write a few short articles and use specific long tail keywords in your resource box you will very likely see an improvement in traffic to your website (from those keywords) quickly.

What's NOT to like about Unique Article Wizard
Simply put - it takes more work. But this extra work has upside. Let me explain. I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement when I joined the service (as does everyone - done via the browser), so I can't tell you exactly how it works ... but here's something to think about.

Say I told you that you had to dig one hole every day and that you'd get paid a certain amount of money. It would take you an hour to dig the hole.

Now say I told you that if you dug 3 holes per day, you'd be able to earn 10x the income (or maybe more). The second and third hole you dug would take less time than the first. So your total time investment might be 2x compared to digging just one hole.

Would you do it? Of course you would ... or at least you'd pay someone else to do it for you! That, in simple terms, is the power of Unique Article Wizard.

Seriously ... it's worth using this service.

As far as outsourcing goes, I have two employees who are writing articles and submitting them directly into the Wizard on my behalf. I get them to send me their work, but I don't read everything (I simply don't have time). We're now submitting multiple articles into the wizard every day and I think it's an incredible benefit to my business.

Here's where you can go find out more

The "Magic Device" LiveScribe Pen

Hey everyone,

As an Internet Marketer I am really interested in learning as much as I can to get better at outsourcing parts of my business. Lately, John Reese started his pre-launch videos for Outsource Force, which I expect will be a training program at $2k, when all is said and done.

Anyway, if I wasn't already a happy member of John Jonas' awesome program, I'd probably seriously consider John's thing.

So - I watched Video #2 last night and it was pretty awesome. John showed off a "magic device" that he uses to help him communicate ideas. I thought for sure he'd be talking about Jing software. But he wasn't.

Instead he was talking about the Livescribe 4 GB Pulse Smartpen. This thing is incredible! I ordered one online immediately (because of something else I already knew).


Here's the scoop: The pen actually writes on regular paper with regular ink. But you can record (as a video) everything that you write in digital format, and it also records audio and synchronizes the audio to what you are writing.

Imagine that you are trying to explain to your article writer how you want him to create links in resource boxes that point to your website, and to your EZA articles, using your focus keywords. You could simply make a little diagram on paper, talk as you write, and send the "PenCast" to your outsourcer.

Why I was convinced: I have a good friend who has one of these pens and he talks about how much he loves it. I had NO IDEA it would do video, I thought it was just for making PDFs of whatever you write, which seemed less interesting. But the video / audio sync stuff really sold me on it, so I bought one.

I can't wait for it to arrive! The article marketing example I mentioned above will be my very first application for the device.

You can get the Livescribe 4 GB Pulse Smartpen at Amazon.

Boosting Conversion with Google Website Optimizer

For the last few months I've known with conviction that I needed to start doing more formal split testing. I've been hacking it by running a test, manually counting up my results, changing a variable, running it again, and comparing the results. Doing this takes WAY too much time and requires more organization than I have available :)

So today I finally figured out how to use Google Website Optimizer. Eventually I am sure I'll be doing multi-variate testing. But for now I'm just doing simple A/B testing.

What caused me to hesitate was that I didn't know how to implement it in WordPress, so I just had that learning curve to get over. Turns out it was pretty easy.

First, I took a squeeze page I already had and I copied it into another page in wordpress. I then changed the headline so it only had one difference from my control page.

Then I told Google Website optimizer that these two pages were my "control" and "variation" URLs. Google then gave me some code to paste on each page. Here is where there was some slight problem because the "control" page requires some code in the header of the page. In WordPress, usually the header is the same on all pages, so if I pasted the code into the header for the control page it would be present for ALL pages (including the variation page).

So ... I used the "templates" feature in WordPress. I simply made a copy of my main template, added the code to that page, and assigned that new template to my control page. Problem solved. The rest of the code could go in the body of the page, so it was unique for every page (not shared among pages like the header).

So now I've got an A/B test running and I'm thrilled with how easy this is. Google will tell me the winner in a few days after I have statistically valid levels of traffic on which to base a conclusion. I'm sending all my PPC traffic to these test pages so that I don't mess around with affiliate traffic. When I have a winner, I'll just set that as my new control and run another test.

Outsourcing will also help here ... I just realized I can add a member to my Adwords account, so I'll simply get one of my outsourcers to handle the testing and I'll throw in my test ideas. I already got him to do the Google Website Optimizer tutorials, so we're making progress here.

Here's what I recommend to people in terms of outsourcing.

Article Outsourcing Experience (This made me very happy)

Over the last couple of months I've been having my outsourcing team build some new websites, and we needed to move on to the promotional aspect (getting traffic).

My main content writer is a woman from the Philippines. She's pretty good when she spell checks and proof reads her own work. But I had fallen into the trap of editing a lot of her work and I think that resulted in her seeing me as a "safety net".

Truth is - my goal is to NOT even have to read the stuff that she writes, perhaps other than a cursory skim of the content. After all, this has nothing to do with my primary online business (where I am the ONLY content writer), and I don't even want my own name on these other projects.

So I was spending too much time reading her articles and editing them to my standards and my "style" of writing. That was a clear mistake. I was doing this because the articles were going to get put into my EzineArticles account and I didn't want to risk my account.

The solution was really simple after I stopped to re-evaluate my way of doing things. I simply had her setup a new EzineArticles account for her to submit articles to. Now she is fully aware that I'm not proof reading them for her, but I have full visibility into the account. I'm also not taking any "risk" with my existing account.

Here's the result: We submitted the first 10 articles immediately. As you know, with EZA, you can't submit more than 10 articles at first. Well, I'm happy to say that of the 10 articles she submitted every single one was approved and the account was upgraded to Platinum instantly.

I read what she submitted. The articles were totally fine. Were they works of art? Of course not, but they were useful, grammatically correct, and they do their job of creating backlinks to our new websites.

If you are wondering about the cost per article, it's about $3 each. She's typically producing about 5 articles per day, and there are 22 average work days in a month.

I hired her from OnlineJobs.ph and I used John Jonas' program to learn how to hire people and train them. I also created a lot of my own training for my own specific needs. It's VERY easy to do and totally worth doing. In fact, you can't afford NOT to do this stuff if you want to succeed in online marketing.

Here's a post where you can get a free audio interview discussing outsourcing.

Review of Mass Outsource by Tyrone Shum

Well today I had a chance to checkout another outsourcing program from a competitor to John Jonas. The guy is Tyrone Shum, from Australia. The name of the progam is Mass Outsource Mastermind.

I'm a (happy) customer of John Jonas and a member of ReplaceMyself, so I was curious what Tyrone would bring to the table.

First, let's look at the pricing. He's charging a similar price of just under $100 per month for access to a series of training modules. They get drip-fed to you weekly to keep you interested in staying on board for the program. Where he's a bit different is that after 6 months your payments STOP. You get perpetual access to his mastermind site even though you aren't paying any more.

People might not realize this but John Jonas offers a "Pro Outsourcer" package also that involves a one time fee of $697 and grants you perpetual access to his system. This is presented as a one time offer after you do your initial sign-up. This is what I bought (no recurring fees, ever). So the way I see it, Tryone is essentially matching John here.

Tyrone's videos are pretty good - everything is well explained. But that said, I feel that the content is essentially a duplication of what is inside of Replace Myself. I don't know enough about Tyrone to tell if he's "the real deal" or not. But I feel I know enough about John Jonas to say that he certainly *is* the real deal. So content-wise, I think the scale tips more towards John here.

John offers members access to MyProjectPlans.com, which is online project management software. Tyrone has come up with another website that does the exact same thing, using the exact same software (so I'm assuming it is available as something that can be licensed, or perhaps it is open source software). So he's matching John here.

Finally, let's consider how you can use Tyrone's system to hire workers. His video describes a good method for using OnlineJobs.ph to hire employees. This is where it gets a bit weird. OnlineJobs.ph is actually John Jonas' site. Unless you are a member of ReplaceMyself.com you are supposed to be paying about $50 per month for access to it. Tyrone is giving his members a way to login to the site using his own account. If I was considering purchasing this program I'd be a bit worried that John Jonas will cut off his account (and therefore cut off all of the members of Mass Outsource). That is, unless he's struck a deal with John to allow this. It's not clear to me what the reality is.

My personal preference would be to go with John's program - but I will say that Tyrone's content is pretty good, he communicates well, and he's probably done a bit better job organizing the content and providing tools such as a user forum (which I would like to see John ad). But I'm nervous about promoting Tyrone's program given OnlineJobs.ph issue I mentioned above.

Anyway - no matter what you think is the better program to use, I do encourage you to use SOME system. I like what John has, but I also will point out to you that Tyrone is giving away a series of 10 videos which provide some good content.

Here's a link to John's system
Here's a link to Tyrone's system.

Getting more qualified job candidates with less effort

This post is about how I'm using video to recruit candidates. I learned how to outsource to the Philippines by using John Jonas' lessons.

I've decided to hire yet another writer, and based on my past experience in using OnlineJobs.ph I found that it was highly useful to actually post a job rather than to simply filter through resumes. I find that the people who reply to the job postings are usually very keen, so it saves time having them come to me.

That said, I get a LOT of replies to my job postings that are one-liners such as, "I'd like to apply for this job, here is my resume at OnlineJobs.ph". I'm not interested in spending the time to look through everyone's resume, decide whether or not I need to contact them to send me a sample of their writing, confirm with them what their availability is, etc. That's a lot of work.

So here's what I started doing just with this last posting: I put a basic job posting up that says, "I need amazing writers to work online for me. Get the full details at this link: http://the-link.com"

The link that I give them is a video presentation that I whipped together with Apple Keynote (could also be Powerpoint). I export Keynote to a flash file, but I could have also used Jing to do a screen capture for free.

In the presentation, I talk about what kind of writer I want, and I tell the candidates exactly what they need to send me in order to apply. I ask for desired salary, number of hours per week, writing samples that have been written and edited by them (and only them), and a few other basics.

If people reply with a one-line email, it gets deleted. No exceptions. They obviously don't know how to follow instructions or don't care to take the time.

About half of the replies I've been getting are from people who DID watch the video, and I already have 3 solid writing candidates who have impressed me with their English skills.

Not too shabby. I like the new method. When I originally joined "Replace Myself" it came with free access to OnlineJobs.ph - and I never thought I'd be coming back to make so much use of this job site. Great resource!

If you have questions post a comment. I'll be happy to do more posts answering them to the best of my ability.

A new hire to do article re-writing

This past weekend I decided to take on a new hire in the Philippines. Basically, I had a job posting up on OnlineJobs.ph a while ago and I never took down the post after hiring my full time candidate. I got an email from a young guy who seemed keen to work, had decent english, and wanted to work part time. He wanted me to "test him out" by giving him a writing task.

I never ask anyone to do "free work", but I do often ask candidates to write me something about themselves, or about a hobby they enjoy, in order to test their writing. It's stuff that is obviously not useful on my websites (so it doesn't come off as me asking for free work). Anyway, since the guy offered, I figured "what the heck". I asked him to write about a hobby he enjoys.

Tip - it may be obvious, but I find that Filipinos are often casual writers when it comes to spelling and grammar, even when applying for jobs. Make sure you tell them that you want them to be meticulous about checking the work before sending it to you.

Anyway, this young man did a good enough job. I wouldn't want him ghost writing for me yet, but he's certainly good enough to do re-writes on my original articles so I can submit them to other high PR article directories like Buzzle.com

I can also easily have him setup a Mini-Net and write articles. The trick is that as long as he can write basic stuff, he can then always LEARN the other stuff such as setting up blogs, doing directory submission, forum posting, keyword research, etc.

ALWAYS focus on hiring people who have decent english. Then the rest is much easier.

My challenge will be to load this guy up with a lot of stuff he can do when I don't give him other specific tasks. Mini-net and article re-writes are a perfect "perpetual" task.

I figure each re-write he does for me is going to cost me about $1. Seriously. That's it. Why not give it a shot?

Here's where I learned how to outsource.