WF Winter Case Study 2000: The Resurrection
- Thread starter andrew wee
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Just finished reading both the (entire) original thread, and now this one - don't know why I skipped over it when it was started - it's definately the sort of thing I would have taken part of. Anyway, I guess I'm probably too late to be included in the original case study if it ever gets going, but I'm still going to give it a try - never had much luck with blogs in the past, but I definately want to learn. I already have a few ideas for a niche - will do some research on them and get started.
If you're read this before, take it as a revision.
There're 2 types of traffic: sustained traffic and spike/surge traffic.
If you're building sustained traffic (evergreen topics like "affiliate marketing" or "weight loss"), you should be able to hit 1,000 uniques a month just through blogging.
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If you're building spike/surge type traffic, you can focus on something really hot and topical like Hurricane Katrina, Britney getting out of rehab, Heather Mills' debut pictures, Keanu Reeves running over a paparazzi, you can get heck of a lot of short term traffic.
If you do it right, you could get 1,000 uniques in a single day.
Depending on the lifespan of the news/topic, it could run for a couple of days or a couple of weeks.
If you boost it with nickle PPC clicks, you can do some interesting stuff with that.
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SEO generally takes about 2-3months, but if you're using BH tactics, or more social forms like Digg, I can get posts indexed within a couple of hours.
Alternatively, you can go to social community sites or forums, and pull a couple of hundred uniques over easily.
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The main thing is to have a gameplan, figure out where your traffic sources are and target them with laser accuracy.
The name of the game is not traffic though, you should be shooting for monetization above all else.
There're 2 types of traffic: sustained traffic and spike/surge traffic.
If you're building sustained traffic (evergreen topics like "affiliate marketing" or "weight loss"), you should be able to hit 1,000 uniques a month just through blogging.
---
If you're building spike/surge type traffic, you can focus on something really hot and topical like Hurricane Katrina, Britney getting out of rehab, Heather Mills' debut pictures, Keanu Reeves running over a paparazzi, you can get heck of a lot of short term traffic.
If you do it right, you could get 1,000 uniques in a single day.
Depending on the lifespan of the news/topic, it could run for a couple of days or a couple of weeks.
If you boost it with nickle PPC clicks, you can do some interesting stuff with that.
-------------------------
SEO generally takes about 2-3months, but if you're using BH tactics, or more social forms like Digg, I can get posts indexed within a couple of hours.
Alternatively, you can go to social community sites or forums, and pull a couple of hundred uniques over easily.
---
The main thing is to have a gameplan, figure out where your traffic sources are and target them with laser accuracy.
The name of the game is not traffic though, you should be shooting for monetization above all else.
I'll be in the NYC/Astoria area tentatively about Apr 8-11, Atlanta GA Apr 13-15 for Matt Basak's Internet Marketing seminar.
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Just so this doesn't turn into a thread hijack off the blogging theme.
If you need photos, go to sxc.hu or the free image directories to get them.
For image editing, I use GIMP.
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If you want to do podcast, I'd suggest audacity.sourceforge.net.
I think clips of 3mins to about 10mins would be good, unless you feel you have a colorful enough personality to go the hour, or have good interviewees.
You could also interview fellow WFers, like Matt Coddington AKA Feroz to generate some content.
podcasts can be viral if you include URLs in them.
A number of the RSS directories have podcast content, and the quality is pretty crap, so you can stand out easily.
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If you want lots of viral traffic, you can go the youtube route too.
If you're not technically inclined towards using Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas Video (or lazy like me) to create your own video clips, use iMovie if you're a Mac user or Microsoft MovieMaker to create a clip.
I spent about 20mins making a 5 min clip.
Be sure to include your URLs in the clip.
If nothing else, head to pvreymond(dot)com (the internet marketing borat) for inspiration.
see, anyone can do video...
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erm...so using WH techniques should garner you a decent level of traffic...
PS: do make sure to list yourself with MyBlogLog.com too.
It's given me a lot of traffic in the past 3 months.
PPS: IMHO it doesn't matter whether the winter case study is still "ongoing" or "dead" or whatever, you should have some strategies from these 3 threads to get your blog going.
At the end of the day, whether it's successful or otherwise, depends on:
1) how much profit you've made.
2) how much profit you've made.
3) how much profit you've made.
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Just so this doesn't turn into a thread hijack off the blogging theme.
If you need photos, go to sxc.hu or the free image directories to get them.
For image editing, I use GIMP.
--
If you want to do podcast, I'd suggest audacity.sourceforge.net.
I think clips of 3mins to about 10mins would be good, unless you feel you have a colorful enough personality to go the hour, or have good interviewees.
You could also interview fellow WFers, like Matt Coddington AKA Feroz to generate some content.
podcasts can be viral if you include URLs in them.
A number of the RSS directories have podcast content, and the quality is pretty crap, so you can stand out easily.
--
If you want lots of viral traffic, you can go the youtube route too.
If you're not technically inclined towards using Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas Video (or lazy like me) to create your own video clips, use iMovie if you're a Mac user or Microsoft MovieMaker to create a clip.
I spent about 20mins making a 5 min clip.
Be sure to include your URLs in the clip.
If nothing else, head to pvreymond(dot)com (the internet marketing borat) for inspiration.
see, anyone can do video...
--------
erm...so using WH techniques should garner you a decent level of traffic...
PS: do make sure to list yourself with MyBlogLog.com too.
It's given me a lot of traffic in the past 3 months.
PPS: IMHO it doesn't matter whether the winter case study is still "ongoing" or "dead" or whatever, you should have some strategies from these 3 threads to get your blog going.
At the end of the day, whether it's successful or otherwise, depends on:
1) how much profit you've made.
2) how much profit you've made.
3) how much profit you've made.
I know you suggested using keyword for the categories, but I've really been using tags lately. From a person with your experience is there a substantial benefit by sticking to keyword categories instead of using tags? I'm asking because I'm dropping wordpress into another site and this popped up and I've been using both
What I was thinking about doing was tagging like niche, company name, product name along with the category being the main niche
What I was thinking about doing was tagging like niche, company name, product name along with the category being the main niche
First off nice thread, for some odd reason this is the first time I sat down to read it all and this little part caught my eye and I have to contribute to it.
Even if your using strict White Hat SEO you should still be able to get your blog indexed in around one weeks time, depending on how well you do your pre-launch keyword research.
If you find a keyword that your can toss in your title and URL that has little competition (I've found long-tail ones where only 4 people had that keyword in their url) you should be able to get indexed quiet quick.
If your thinking that a longtail keyword with very little competition won't bring in any traffic your wrong, use the various keyword tools once you find a few of these non competitive words to get an idea on the traffic levels, on a few of mine I've been indexed in about a weeks time and easily been averaging 200 to 300 first time visitors per day (Organic), it might not be a lot to some people but its good for a start and its quiet targeted so it should be that much easier to get some return visitors.
Ok I'm done for now, comment away or ask questions about this if anyone has any.
You can either use keywords in the categories, else if you're using a permalink structure containing %postname%, you can do moderate keyword stuffing in your post title, by manually entering your slug name.
Tags vs categories: why not do both?
I think it'd vary by niche.
Obviously more tag-savvy niches like electronics, internet marketing, you might get traffic that way.
I use both.
Tags vs categories: why not do both?
I think it'd vary by niche.
Obviously more tag-savvy niches like electronics, internet marketing, you might get traffic that way.
I use both.
For the Wordpress bloggers out there, be sure to install the WP Database Backup plugin.
WP 2.1.x doesnt come bundled with it, which is pretty stupid.
The latest ver of WP DB Backup comes with a CRON job feature, so i get blog backups emailed to me on a daily basis.
helps you recover quickly in the event of a hack/crash.
For more details, check out:
Prevent Blog Calamities with WP DB Backup at Andrew Wee | Blogging | Affiliate Marketing | Social Traffic Generation | Internet Marketing
WP 2.1.x doesnt come bundled with it, which is pretty stupid.
The latest ver of WP DB Backup comes with a CRON job feature, so i get blog backups emailed to me on a daily basis.
helps you recover quickly in the event of a hack/crash.
For more details, check out:
Prevent Blog Calamities with WP DB Backup at Andrew Wee | Blogging | Affiliate Marketing | Social Traffic Generation | Internet Marketing
Thin blogs for SEO are a SLOW and inefficient road to IM riches unless you can automate the full process. be that outsourcing content for 2 an article..or making 1000's of autogen sites you are just wasting time making 1 post per day and hoping it gets indexed and you squeek by with a few long tail hits a day. The bottom line is you need links, you need pages and you need to not waste your time writing articles about bullshit you dont care about, or installing wordpress or logging into a bunch of wordpress accounts you need to be able to scale it up or you are gonna make 10 bucks a day for a LONG time.
where can you get a decent content $2 an article? I would be all over that, if i found somebody good and cheap
For those still working on their blogs, go look through Jon's sitepoint thread which has been archived at: http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/10355-mook-jons-famous-sitepoint-thread-back-good.html
Many of the points are applicable to blogs:
1) you need to have original content which people want to read
2) you can create a cluster of blogs, if you don't want to just make one, with each blog optimized for a specific keyword.
3) apply his profit principles in your blogging efforts.
4) finance-related CPA progs are high yielding, so if you've low traffic, you'd do better than a true.com offer.
finally, focus, focus, focus. rome wasn't built in a day, so keep at it, then troubleshoot if you hit a plateau.
Many of the points are applicable to blogs:
1) you need to have original content which people want to read
2) you can create a cluster of blogs, if you don't want to just make one, with each blog optimized for a specific keyword.
3) apply his profit principles in your blogging efforts.
4) finance-related CPA progs are high yielding, so if you've low traffic, you'd do better than a true.com offer.
finally, focus, focus, focus. rome wasn't built in a day, so keep at it, then troubleshoot if you hit a plateau.
It depends on the length and type of article. If you give us rewrite rights, we can produce articles for as low as HALF A PENNY ($.005) a word. This works for many types of sites, it doesn't work for others. It totally depends on your needs.
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