Alright - I am ready to give up, help!

For the past 6 years I have owned an Internet Marketing & Content Creation business. We have done a LOT of article marketing as well as other building strategies. And I have used everything from ArticleMarketer (CEO is a douche) to AMR (AMR does not work for me anymore). Everything has always worked really really well. One of the quickest ways I have told customers to check their article propagation is by taking the article title and putting it in quotes " ". I used to submit to a larger number of sites but it took SO long, I have gone down to 200-500 sites. With using AMR - I am seeing almost no results on G, Y, A or B search engines. The most results I am seeing is 35 results on 35 sites - but this is going to surely disappear within the week - as have all the others that reached 30+ results.

I am about to give up. I don't know what else to do. I am a BIG believer in article marketing so if you are going to say it does not work and never did - well don't bother. But, now I am using a VA for AMR because mine went kaput. And now I am doing the title in quotes that the VA sent out and I still am not seeing anything worth being happy about even though they did a submission for 100-200 sites.

Is anyone else having problems like this? Not seeing real time results that are good on G, Y, A or B search engines? Or am I the only one lol. I just wish I could understand the problem. Is it the articles themselves? They are and always have been written by US writers. Is it Panda? Is it the AMR program itself?

There are so many people and websites out there that offer article submission services so I have to assume that this problem is not happening to everyone OR that these people and websites that offer the services just tell their customers that 3-35 results is good (it's not!).

FYI - I did not EVER use Proxies for AMR. I did use Captcha though. I am assuming the VA I am using is using both.

Sorry to hear about the state of your business. As Big G pushes forward with further updates that appear to have killed many sites today (of course I am speculating here) Many old techniques may be a thing of a past.

However, I agree articles can be a source of which one could diversify backlinks. I own and operate my own SEO business and sure occasionally I may use a BH technique to see how they work. For the most part, I write most of my content (99.999%), I manually do backlinks (blogs, forums,etc), and I engage in social media as best I can... so none of my clients sites have yet to be affected by any of the post Panda era.

I hope things get for you and many others.

Diversify your backlinks. Don't just use one tactic.

If you have real and quality article, start approaching site and blog owners manually. The quality of link you get from there worths at least a hundred links from low quality article directories.

To AudioGuy

For most of my customers we do: Article marketing + Blog content + social bookmarking. So, we are definitely trying to diversiy it. I just honestly have no idea what to say to customer A when he says "I'm not seeing a lot of results on the search engine, do you know why?" I mean in the past if ArticleMarketer.com fucked up lol I could just wing it and make something up until AM fixed whatever was going on. But, for this? I have no idea what to say. I mean, is this going to be the end of me? Even if I just offer written content without submission, what would they do WITH the content besides put it on their websites?

As you said, contact blog sites and such (manually). While I know what you mean I have heard about some blog networks which seems like ti would make my time easier - but I have also heard that a lot of these sites are getting banned by G and sandboxed. A new one I heard of is Astro Cirta Blog Network. I am wondering if this A) Works, B) is legit C) has been affected by the big G AND if D) the results would show up on G and other search engines.

The content is very good quality. I know everyone says that, but in this case it's true.

You're giving up because of AMR? From what I see in the forums here, most of the people around here using article marketing as a major % in their seo strategy suffer a drop in rankings in the previous panda updates.

You better put less faith in AMR and put some faith in other backlink methods if not it will surely bring you down. IM is all about the change and adaptability as this industry is a fast-paced industry.

If you're still a firm believer in article directories in your seo plan, look up Sick Submitter and look around the forums. You will find your answer there.

Also, if directories are not going to work anymore, would this work or not:

http://web-marketing.masternewmedia.org/rsstop55-best-blog-directory-and-rss-submission-sites/

I said I am about to give up, not that I did give up. Second off, as mentioned, with Panda and not letting Article Marketing be as effective anymore, I don't think ANY submitter is going to help me. I mean Ill try it. But, from what I have read in the past 4 hours, it seems that Article Marketing is not working.

Going to try this for each "site" and see if it works:

MANUAL article submission to ONLY the top 40-50 Article Directories (not doing it myself)
Social Bookmarking
Niche Directory Submission
Web 2.0 LinkWheels
Wiki Links
SenukeX - I got the 14 day trial. But, I wonder if I should leave this to my VA lol