Content Creation Madness - Day 6 COWpetition
In the previous COWpetition post called “Keyword Research Diamonds in the Rough” we walked through the initial stages of uncovering a profitable niche. There are now two directions we can go…
- 1. Dig for long tail terms first and then start on content
- 2. Start the content going and then come back for long tail terms
Now for the most part, we would usually start with option 1 and then once that was initiated we would move into the second task, but once again this particular time we are time restricted and need to get content started ASAP.
The first step was to identify the topics we would be covering. We have the initial words we know we need to focus on but the challenge now is to get good quality content as fast as possible. There are two options we have…
- 1. Outsource: Get others to write for us
- 2. Write it ourselves
As mentioned before, one of the criteria for selecting this niche was to have a market we know and because of that we are able to write a lot of the content and it is content we are passionate about and so it is easy to write. If we would have selected a niche that we had no interest in, then the process would have been painful. We would have needed to research and then figure out how to rewrite into our own words and YUCK… no thanks… not when in a rush!
So we listed all the topics and highlighted the ones we could write about. Then we grouped together the remaining content to be outsourced.
The options for outsourcing are many, there are sites like scriptlance.com, rentacoder.com, elance.com, mechanicaturk.com (an Amazon service) and more but personally we do not recommend starting with them. We go into detail on using them later but not now. The reason why is a lot of the writers here are trained on mass keyword writing and the content is usually very poor quality. This strategy is very effective for creating sites that are just AdSense focused or if you personally have time to edit and rewrite every article they send. With our time constraint this was NOT the best option for us.
Our Preferred Content Source –> Forums
Forums are in our opinion one of the absolute best research tools available online. You get instant access to real life conversations from those that are in the market. You can find what the problems are, what the current solutions are (if there are any) and who are the experts of choice. What is wonderful about forums is they are often occupied by people who are passionate about that topic and just love to talk about it.
Step 1 –> Create a job description and put it on your blog. On this page explain what the content would be for and how it must be created and also put the payment options and a email address.
This is very important because when you are getting back to potential writers you can direct them to this page instead of always retyping the information. An example of a job posting would be…
Start of Example –>
Need detailed reviews written for the following popular games for the specific gaming system…
PS3:
> Keyword Phrase 1 Here
> Keyword Phrase 2 Here
Wii:
> Keyword Phrase 1 Here
> Keyword Phrase 2 Here
PC:
> Keyword Phrase 1 Here
> Keyword Phrase 2 Here
Xbox 360:
> Keyword Phrase 1 Here
> Keyword Phrase 2 Here
Reviews must be…
- In English
- Not focused on making sure the keyword is repeated, instead just write about the topic
- Have correct spelling and grammar
- Be 400+ words in length minimum
- Contain non copyright protected screen shots from the game
- Reference good resources for getting cool cheats for the game
- Mention news worthy info about the game as well (if there are any)… like updates that are coming, new versions release dates and so on.
- Must be 100% unique and written by you and the copyright of the work will transfer to us
- Written from an experienced player of the game.
If you only have experience with certain games that are not on the above list and you want to write only about those individual games, contact us and we can work that out.
We are only interested in top quality content and authors are paid after content is reviewed.
Once paid the author transfers 100% ownership of the content to the owners of GamerzReviewz.com
If content is good there will be regular content from you needed.
This line is where you would put how much you would pay or other options that are available
If interested please contact us at email@yourdomain.com
<– End of Example
Step 2 –>Now you want to find and list the top forums in your market. To do this simply go to google.com and yahoo.com and search using…
“keyword phrase in quotes” forum
Step 3 –> Visit each these forums and bookmark the ones that have a lot of recent activity and topics that directly relate to your market. Make sure there are not only a lot of initial threads started but a lot of replies in the threads as well.
Step 4 –> With your list of forums, go back and find out who the top posters are and send them a private message. It is very important that you take your time here and craft up a very professional message to send them and initially do not mention anything about finances, just ask if they would be interested in writing for your blog.
You will find that occasionally you find someone who just loves to write and as long as they can have thier name and a link with the content, they will write for free. Now do not get all excited here… very few do this but a few of you will get lucky here 
After the initial reply, most will ask for a price and this is the time when you give them a link to your job page.
IMPORTANT –> Make sure to SPELL CHECK… nothing spells unprofessional like poorly spelled communications.
Step 5 –> If you do not find writers from the above step or want more then it is now time to post job requests in the forums directly. Some of your requests will get deleted, so do not get worried about that. Some forums are very strict on what and what can not be posted in them. For your job request make sure to put a link to your job posting and if you are not allowed to post you can PM a regular contributor and ask if they would for a few bucks through PayPal (where there is a will, there is always a way :twisted:) .
Step 6 –> Post a job on Craiglist.com. Craigslist is an extremely popular classified ad site that get LOADS of traffic. Every major city in North America is covered and a few international ones as well. Each city has its own dedciated sub categories and a lot of them of 100% free to post jobs on.
WARNING–> They are VERY strict and VERY cautious about spammers, so do NOT be surprised if your first couple get deleted at first. Keep tweaking the ad and resubmitting it and look at what others have put in their ads and try to copy their formats. There are some cities, like New York and LA, that cost money to use but there are many like Toronto that are free and get a lot of traffic. The one thing to note here is that you must be willing to pay for the content when you advertise with cragislist, but you will find good writers that are passionate about the topic.
Test & Track… YES YOU NEED TO!
This is no time to get lazy and do not think that you are one of the lucky ones that do not need to do this. What you want to do is get a lot of different writers, writing for you at first and then filter out the best ones. If for example, you need 50 articles, then get 10 different authors to write a couple each and then filter out who wrote the best for your needs and then get them to write the rest. Out of the initial few you will get a few that are flaky and will be late, not good writers or do not ever finish.
By using this strategy you can get a good amount of content done in a very short time… and it is VERY good content!
Now that we have the initial content creation started our next step is to get the long tail research started (this is easy to do and get set up, but takes 2 weeks to get the results) and once this is done it is time to install the blog, fix up the theme and install the plugins. The next 2 posts will cover these topics.
As always, let us know your feedback on this.
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I thought you weren’t supposed to reveal your blog?
Great post btw. Listened to your CowCast and thought it was really interesting.
EntreBlasts last blog post..Why Are You Still Dropping?
nope, we both revealed our blogs last week
Oh, I guess I missed that. Haha.
EntreBlasts last blog post..Why Are You Still Dropping?
Cowman,
Hey! You alluded to the forum idea in a previous post. I tried it and it worked! I have found several people interested in writing for me and they only want links and a write-up. Cool! As a result of my efforts, I got tapped to be a featured expert on one of the top entrepreneur sites. What a surprise to me!
It amazes me every day how much the media/bloggers are tied together, know each other, etc. especially within a niche. So, lesson learned: treat every one of these writers like the top writer in their field, because if they aren’t, they could easily know that top writer. It’s a small world and depending upon how you treat the people you contact, that can end up being a good (or very bad) thing.
Together, we are stronger.
Vicki Flaugher, the original SmartWoman
Vicki Flaughers last blog post..Get Your Free Internet Marketing Book Sampler: SmartWoman Parties with Joe Vitale!
That is awesome Vicki! We LOVE hearing people implementing what we recommend and succeeding with it.
Thanks, John. Glad to share. I love enjoying success too. LOL!
The advantage of getting other bloggers and forum writers to write for you is that they generally come with an established audience too. They are going to tell their loyal audience about your site when they announce that they are guest writing. A true win-win-win! Yeah, baby!
Vicki
Vicki Flaughers last blog post..Get Your Free Internet Marketing Book Sampler: SmartWoman Parties with Joe Vitale!
Great post. Is the longtail research (that takes two weeks) the part with Affiliate Elite?
Enjoyed the webinar today, too!
Yup
Solid post!
What do you usually pay per article/word, or what do you see as the ‘going rate?’ I realize different niches may be different.
Even if you were to pay $5 per article (cheap, IMO), 50 articles would be $250. Many people just aren’t willing/able to do this with an unknown ROI. I realize you’ll be getting into monetization later, but I’m interested in your thoughts.
Mikes last blog post..John Cow Competition
Depends on the type of content… for $5 you are not going to get a lot of solid content. Also, we recommend starting with 50 but that is not realistic for everyone. In fact a friend of ours who is very successful in seo swears by starting with 100… which is overboard in my opinion but he swears by it.
If you can start with 10 solid articles and then add a new article every couple of days, you are good. You just get a better out the door start with more content.
Unless I missed it in the post, what is a fair price to pay for a 400 word article?
Thanks,
Annabelle
Annabelles last blog post..FREE keychain and SPF Sample at Clinique Online
For the initial content we pay $20 per article but they had to have screen shots and be over 500 words and then once that initial content was done, the content can be about 400 words with one or two images and it is $10 per.
By paying more upfront we got the great writers and then we work out a longer term deal with them. The great thing is the shorter posts usually end up being longer then 400 anyway and they are still very high quality.
It is important to NOT have them write for keyword stuffing, but to write for a topic. Have them write whatever they want (with some guidelines) and then you make sure the keyword is in the title and a couple times at least in the body if you want.
For those of you that can not afford the initial $20 per article there are a couple options. As Vicki mentioned in a couple comments above, our advice here works
and she has recruited some free writers.. which is cool. Or you can pay like $6 per article and then you go back and fix them up and add screen shots. It comes down to what you currently can invest more of time or money.
You said
* 1. Dig for long tail terms first and then start on content
* 2. Start the content going and then come back for long tail terms
Digging for long tails without knowing the subject matter like the back of your hand is very, very difficult. I’ve had long tail search “hits” to my blogs that I would have never found via up-front research. (And some of them have been quite amusing :)).
I use HitTail coupled with (initially) pretty “generic” content to ferret out the good long-tail keywords. Works like a charm.
These posts have been very enlightening. The forum angle is one I had not yet explored. Kepp it up and thanks.
Walts last blog post..Emergency Heroes (Video Game) newly tagged “car”
For those with a limited budget, the forum idea may take some time. It is interesting to note that Vicki did find some willing to do it for the link and fact that they get published. So for most people it may come later in the scheme of things. I haven’t listented to the CowCast yet, but looking forward to it. Keep it coming. Again, thanks for spending so much time helping us along.
True that the forum query, rather than a straight pay technique, has taken me some time. I figure you either pay in time or money.
Part of the reason for my success at collaboration, I think, is that I am soliciting mostly entrepreneurs and women. As a group, they tend to be more likely to cooperate rather than compete, or at least I have found that to be true. Some niches may not be as easy to do. IMO.
Vicki
Vicki Flaughers last blog post..Get Your Free Internet Marketing Book Sampler: SmartWoman Parties with Joe Vitale!
I’m going to echo this query that appears to be popular among other commenters. What do you pay for content? I, and it appears others, are very interested in what people pay for content. What is the amount that YOU would post in forums where you say “This line is where you would put how much you would pay or other options that are available”?
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Answered in comment above
Hello all,
I’d like some advise about the exact moment to launch this content into the chosen domain. I’ve noticed that if the words in phrase being searched match the domain or subdomain.domain or domain/folder exactly, google tends to push the site very high up initially. I guess some process there might lead the site to go down if the content is not good enough.
That’s where my question is. With Google indexing the first time, caching and not coming back until some weeks later, it worries me to ‘trash’ a good domain name by launching it with content that does not keep its intial good place in the ranking. It appears that there is only one chance to make a good first impression with the seach engine spiders.
But waiting to have ‘perfect’ content can be a never ending discussion - especially if there is a partner involved…
TCIs last blog post..
Well first of all it is not that google does not come back, if you are getting new links to your site we guarantee you google is back every day… what happens though is google does not update its index right away.
What you are referring to it not in my opinion somethign to worry about… first of all the content still gets indexed, it is not like the index page is the only page on your site. Also google will reinde you page, as long as new links and new content is happening and the content is mostly unique then they will re index.
If you are worried about it though there is a trick that one of my friends does and he blocks the entire site from all the search engines with his robots.txt file until it is ready. Personally my tests have not proven this to be necessary but his results are awesome so we are not going to argue with him. Wordpress comes with this as an option in the privacy settings and you can just turn the blog back on when it is ready. To block with your robots.txt file just have…
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
The asterick is a wildcard that measn all search engines and by having the slash after the disallow means the entire site. Make sure to have the slash because if you just have Disallow: then it means they are allowed everywhere.
My tests using this showed that 48 hours after the robots block was removed, google had indexed everything.
Thx for sharting this info! I noticed no one has mentioned using free article sites like GoArticles, EZineArticles, ect. for their Niche. This is a great way to get original, fresh content about your topic free and edit it to make it your own. You can also leave the article as is - just remember to mention the authors name at the end of the article or blog post.
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I am not a fan of goarticles.com at all, they have no moderations and most of the articles in there are garbage. I also recommend for a new blog you stick to unique content to get it launched, remember that you want return visitors and just recycling stuff is not something people usually like and the search engines do not like to index the same article more then once.
A good strategy however is like what you said, to use the article as a point of reference and create your own.
If you do use other peoples content, we recommend you write commentaries about the article. Add you own thoughts and interpretations about the article and make it unique.
John,
I agree with this suggestion completely about using articles as a starting point and either reviewing them or emulating them. Great idea.
I have used pre-made articles from places like ezinearticles, etc. You do have to read a bunch to find great ones. To me, because of the duplicate content, they are most useful to build a JV relationship with the person who wrote the article. I only use articles on my site when the author agreed to promote me on their end too. Original content is always better.
I guess, for me, the issue is this–don’t let any lame butt excuse that you don’t have any budget or you can’t write, or you yadayadayada, to get your blog up. Quit the talk and get to work! There are always solutions. The best solution may not be something you can do now but don’t let that stop you. Be clever and you’ll figure something out. I ask people for help–that takes me a long distance. Lots of people will help you if you will just ask. Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox now–LOL!
Together, we are stronger.
Vicki Flaugher, the original SmartWoman
Vicki Flaughers last blog post..Recommended Site: EvanCarmichael.com
What price range would you guess big sites pay for their articles? For example, what would you guess askmen.com pays for each article? $20? $40? $100
I was thinking about offering $20 an article with the possibility of revenue sharing. I’m looking for high quality articles. Would you say $20 is too much? not enough? About right?
Appreciate the post, btw! I’ll give forums a shot.
Jasons last blog post..Quick Update on Trend Spike
$20 is good, the only time i pay more is for press releases and link bait content.
Hi!
I’m not sure if I missed it somewhere along the way, but - what would be a fair price for a quality article (400 words)?
Thanks!
DeeGees last blog post..Short Announcement
answered in comment up above.
I have done this many times with good results. One thing I added that helped me was to place in the ad on Craiglist how much I was paying for a batch of articles: i.e.: $125 to $175 for 25 articles. This keeps away those who want more per article than I am willing to pay.
Aaron at FullTiltBlogging.coms last blog post..How to Get $215.64 for Each Subscriber
Excellent advice Aaron
Hi John
I really enjoyed the cowcast, I hope there is another one coming.
next week
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Great Post.
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Sweet.. thanks a lot Aaron
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Thanks for the great post and continued great information. Looking forward to the next cowcast and continuing to try my hand at this blogging adventure. Thanks again!
Best.