If you are writing or using articles to share your skills and knowledge with a wider internet community, it may be time to pause and consider the extent to which this article marketing activity is generating revenue for your online activities.
Even though article marketing depends on many factors that do not allow an exact calculation of the benefits in monetary terms, we cannot escape the fact that when it comes to the profitability of an online business, we have to think in dollars and cents. This is where statistics play a big role when it comes to relating revenue to the articles we write. For example, is it possible to project revenue to the number of articles we write, since there are factors that only apply to the particular author and not to every other person?
At this point, the use of simple maths is helpful to correlate the income with the articles we write. Over a period of, say, 6 months, an author of various articles can create a graph of income from writing articles, with the "y" axis representing income and the "x" axis representing the number of articles written, and keeping the number of article repositories to which the article was submitted constant.
In this particular case, for example, if you market these articles to article repositories like ezinearticles.com or goarticles.com, your earnings on the "y" axis are the payouts from Google Adsense for the month that you exclusively did article marketing, and the "x" axis is the number of articles you submitted. Over a 6 month period you will have enough data on the graph for which you can plot a best fit curve or apply the principles of linear regression to form a straight line running through most of these points on the graph, with the line represented by the equation y=mx+c.
The function of the regressed straight line indicates that the derived turnover is a function of "m", the slope or inclination of the line, and a constant "c". The constant "c" is the value at which the line intersects the "y" axis. This is the particular part that comes from the individual and represents their writing skills, writing style, language mastery and factors unique to the individual.
If you conduct a correlation study between the revenue generated and the number of articles submitted as part of article marketing, holding the other factors as constant as possible, you will be able to assess the quality of the author's writing. It will also be possible to form a rough basis for projecting further revenue to the number of articles planned for submission, ignoring other factors such as keyword selection, onsite and offsite search engine optimisation, which are not considered in the study, and based only on individual writer 'flair' and ability as measured by the constant 'c'.
Whilst this is by no means exact and is only an approximation, keeping statistics and charts like these is useful for spotting sudden changes in trends, especially when performance or turnover suddenly deviates from the norm (or average). He can then analyse what led to this deviation from the mean and why. Visualising these details highlights any change that might otherwise be overlooked.
While it is common for internet marketers to use software scripts to track their revenue from Google Adsense, for example, most scripts are not suitable for this particular graphical analysis, as explained. Only when the graphs are created by hand, no matter how simple, is the internet marketer sensitive enough and attentive enough to notice sudden changes or to consider which factor they should change when creating their articles in order to generate more revenue.
He can go deeper and ask himself this question: "Since sales are directly proportional to the slope of the sales line, what factors change the slope?". If he knows these factors, he can vary them and try out his changes. By correlating revenue with the number of articles written, the internet marketer has a way to forecast profitability, no matter how rough it is. He has a set of statistics that he can use for further research and analyses or, as it is called in marketing, for "tests".
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