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Make Money from Free Content

You might have seen on my blog I give away a free ebook. A few people have asked me lately why I continue to give away free information when I could be selling it.

The fact is without free information nobody would know me to buy paid information.

We have to separate out the ideas of free content versus paid content and instead think of our free content as sampling for the paid stuff. Give people a taste to get them juiced up for the full thing. Also remember that your free blog articles allow you to cast out a wide search engine net to trawl back juicy new visitors.

When you give something of value away you do run the risk of being taken advantage of, of devaluing yourself, etc, but they key thing to know is you are taking the risk out of the exchange in the hope the prospect will be impressed and delighted enough to take the next step.

The secret is to not give everything away, hold something back. Give away the concepts but retain the step by step process. Give the sizzle but keep back the sausage 🙂

Linkbaiting Outside Your Niche

Yesterday I unveiled my most successful linkbait ever. In less than 24 hours, across two days, the linkbait resulted in over 1.4 million pageviews. I learned something important in the process:

The best linkbait targets multiple niches and expands your audience.

Did you catch that? It’s critical. The best linkbait will target a large audience that stands outside your normal audience.

So how do you create cross-niched linkbait? It’s actually not that difficult. Start by writing a list of the most popular topics on the web:

  • Humor
  • Women’s products
  • Sports
  • Celebrity
  • Politics
  • Music
  • Television
  • Religion
  • Gadgets and Tech
  • Dating
  • Pets
  • Cars

The list could go on and on, but you get the point. Now brainstorm how your specific topic might relate to each of these topics in a unique way. Let’s say that you have a blog about dogs:

  • 25 Funny Dog Quotes / 25 Hilarious Dog Videos
  • 25 Ways To Dress Up You Dog / 25 Ways To Pamper Your Dog
  • 25 Athletes and their dogs / 25 Famous Sports Dogs
  • 25 Celebrities and their dogs / 25 Celebrities and the dog breeds they look like
  • 25 Politicians and their dogs / 25 Ways That Politicians are like dogs
  • 25 HipHop Artists and their dogs / 25 Dogs That Have Appeared In HipHop Videos
  • 25 Famous TV Dogs / 25 Great Dog Commercials
  • What 25 Religions Say About Dogs / 25 Things We Can Learn About Religion By Looking at Dogs
  • 25 Funky Gadgets For Dogs / 25 Technological Advances That Have Made Dog Owning Easier
  • 25 Ways Dogs Are Better Than Cats / 25 Pets and How Dogs will Relate to Them
  • 25 Cars That Are Perfect For Your Dog / 25 Tips For Taking Your Dog On The Road

The great thing about cross-niched linkbait is that it not only targets a new audience, but it also gives you a great way to brainstorm new angles on your own niche. And if there’s only one rule in social media it’s this: create something uniquely interesting or funny and chances are you’ll reap dividends.

Yahoo Pipes By Example: Basic Functionality

Now that you know why bloggers should use Yahoo Pipes to produce custom content, lets go over some of the basic functionality offered by Pipes modules. I’m not covering everything here yet. In fact, I’m not even going to name the modules, just discuss functionality.

  1. Import RSS feed. Provide an RSS feed URL for input, or specify a web service – such as Flickr – from which to retrieve an RSS data stream.
  2. Get user input. To build robust Pipes, you need a way of letting end users supply information: search terms, URLs, dates, quantities, etc.
  3. Generate URLs. If you want to marry Pipes with outside services, you will sometimes need ways to generate web service URLs on the fly, using user-supplied information.
  4. Aggregate multiple feeds. Combine multiple RSS feeds. How multiple feeds are combined is dependent on which other modules are used (sorting, filtering, etc.)
  5. Sort by value. Given a stream of RSS data/ content items (whether from a single source or mashed together), sort the stream by some field value. This could be by item date (usually the same as publishing date), title, category, etc. What you use depends on both what actual RSS/XML data you are importing as well as your specific functional need.
  6. Pass filtering. Pass filtering just means that given your RSS stream, you want to specify which data items should be allowed to pass through to the next step. For example, if you are mashing together several blog feeds, you might “pass” items based on date, author, or a search string (e.g., posts about “Corvette” cars). Or you can filter out items by eliminating duplicate titles or URLs.
  7. Transforming data fields. Sometimes you want to take the text content of an RSS stream and alter it using a set of rules. You might add or eliminate data fields, replace occurrences of a word or phrase, count items satisfying a criteria, geocode the data to produce a map, etc. There is no one single Pipes module that you use to transform data; there are many transform/ operator modules, each with a specific functionality.
  8. Mathematical operattions. Yahoo Pipes offers some very basic math functionality that can be combined with either numeric user input or suitable modules that produce a numeric value.
  9. Plug-n-play of custom web services. The Yahoo Pipes interface is integrated with several external web services. However, a few months back, they introduced a module by which you can plug in your own custom web service.
  10. Looping. Looping lets you repeatedly apply a block of Pipes modules over each item in an RSS stream. In fact, you can build a block of modules into a Pipe, name it, then access it from a loop in yet another Pipe.
  11. Output results. The output of a Yahoo Pipe is a new RSS feed by default, though you can produce geocoded Yahoo Maps as well.

This is the basic functionality that you can currently expect from various Yahoo Pipes modules. (I believe I’ve covered everything, funcitonally speaking. I’ll update this post if I’ve forgotten anything.) If you plan to continue reading my upcoming Yahoo Pipes By Example posts, you should make sure you understand the above functionality first. Upcoming posts will provide hard examples using specific Pipes modules. By the way, today is Yahoo Pipes first birthday. Happy b-day, Pipes.

5 More Tips on Increasing Blogging Productivity

Are you finding your blogging productivity waning this month? Depending on where you live, February might be one of those months in which winter really gets you down and affects your work productivity. I can’t promise my tips below will scare away the screaming blue meanies (seasonal depression), but I find they help my general blogging productivity. All the tips are part of a mechanical process, but they do fuel my creative process.

  1. Collect a list of URLs. Use your feed reader or a browser bookmark folder of “daily visit sites” and scan for stories that pique your interest.
  2. Double up sources. Hunt down other related articles about each topic/ sub-topic you plan to write about. Find 2-4 articles for each topic, to gain different perspectives.I also like to use Popurls or clones, Techmeme, Megite and the like to find hot/buzz topics. They’re not social media sites, but some of them do build on social media sites. They are a time-saving way to quickly scan for ideas based on what others are writing about.
  3. Use a power web browser. While I use several different “tabbed” browsers, Firefox is my blogging browser of choice. It’s my base of daily operations. It’ll show a bookmark window pane at left, which lets you quickly drag and save story URLs that interest you. This is an incredible timesaver over other browsers’ bookmarking feature.
  4. Customize bookmark folders. In addition to using the Firefox bookmarks pane, I create a new folder for each day. For example, today’s folder is labelled “Wed Feb 6”. Tomorrow’s is “Thur Feb 7” and it’s placed above today’s folder. Friday’s folder would be above Thursday’s. I usually only keep a week’s worth of folders (Sun-Sat), and delete each folder as soon as possible after visiting each bookmarked URL. So I’m constantly deleting folders from the bottom and adding at the top. You can also create sub-folders if you want to separate articles from different niches.
  5. Summarize and expand. If I’m not feeling creative while I’m browsing bookmarks, I’ll try to simply summarize each article in one or two sentences and return later to expand. As mentioned above, using more than one article about the same topic gives you multiple perspectives. It might lead you to take a parallel or peripheral angle on your article.
  6. Use an in-browser editor. I’ve repeatedly written here and elsewhere how much more productive I am using Scribefire. It suits the way I work. I do not use the “publish” button very often because of the Scribefire link that is auto-inserted into posted content. Rather, I use Scribefire because I can simultaneously view my content in progress and a web page. And since I use multiple tabs at times, I find that this process stimulates ideas and lets me explore the crossroads of topics

This process may not work for everyone, but play around with it, customize it to your liking.

Are you passionate about blogging?

This is a guest post by Alan Johnson, be sure to check out his contest (with prizes worth over $1000) over at TheRatingBlog.com

Most online entrepreneurs out there make the mistake of launching a blog just because they see it as a potential moneymaking machine. Is that your case, do you only blog in order to make money or are you actually passionate about what you’re doing?

Can you make a lot of money as a blogger? Most definitely, and not just from monetizing the blog in itself. You have to understand that, as a blogger, you are also building a brand around yourself and, as a result, every new project you’ll be launching will automatically receive an impressive jumpstart. Being a blogger opens a lot of doors, you will be able to take advantage of a lot of opportunities you didn’t originally have access to. And just think about the possibilities as far as networking is concerned. The fact that you’ve build solid relationships with other bloggers, many of which you will consider close friends, is an important advantage and, just like you will always be glad to help one of your friends out by mentioning a new product he or she has launched, they will be more than willing to return the favor at any point.

But you will not be able to make the most out of everything if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing in the first place. As a blogger, you add value to the Web through your articles, are building a community thanks to the “comments” section and are networking with other bloggers. If you don’t like what you’re doing, others will quickly realize that and, as such, you can’t expect to succeed.

If you are not passionate about blogging, if you just write for the sake of writing, your readers will pick up on that, even if you don’t realize it. As a result, they most likely won’t return, since they are not enjoying their experience (you’re not adding value to the Web) and they won’t even think about commenting (there goes the potential of building a community around your blog). And, also, if you don’t have the right attitude towards your fellow bloggers, you will never be able to make friends and, as such, networking is out of the question.

If you are not passionate about what you’re doing, you will never be able to tap your true potential. This applies to blogging just as it does with everything else. You will never succeed if you just jump on the blogging bandwagon because you want to make money. If you treat everything like a chore, readers as well as other bloggers will realize that and, as a result, establishing a relationship is out of the question.

Are you interested in becoming a blogger? That’s great and the experience is excellent, as long as you add value to the Web through your presence. And that, my friend, can never be accomplished if you don’t like what you’re doing in the first place. What about you? Are you passionate about blogging?

Do You Obsess About Your Site Metrics?

Are your site metrics getting you down? I mean really getting you down, depressing you each time you look? Are you measuring your worth by the number of ad clicks you got today? It’s not surprising, if you’re working for yourself online, but it’s a slippery slope into a new type of addiction that can and does cause depression.

Being a web worker is such a new profession, and the external factors preventing success so numerous, that few studies have been done regarding how website performance can cause depression. It’s unlike a traditional business, where you have a relatively greater amount of control over your forecasting your revenues.

More than a few bloggers have expressed the concern that building a stable, revenue-earning blog takes a serious commitment but can be emotionally draining, and that it’s difficult to rely on stable income. You have several factors to be concerned about:

  1. Coming up with fresh content.
  2. SE (Search Engine) “penalties”, or having your blog  be ignored by SE spiders.
  3. Having content stolen by scrapers.
  4. Ranking lower in an SE than a social media site that uses your content simply because the story submitter used the exact same title.
  5. All of the above, simultaneously.


This sometimes fuels the need to constantly check your site metrics all day long. But unless you’re doing something about your site performance on a given day, checking your metrics obsessively is kind of like watching the proverbial kettle boil.

In other words, it doesn’t matter. Heisenberg’s Wave Equation aside, checking your metrics does not change them. All it does is give you temporary highs or lows of emotion. Here are some suggestions:

  1. Focus on trends over time.
  2. Review short/ medium/ long-term trends for your blog/site, which is far more valuable than knowing what you earned at 5 pm today.
  3. More specifically, use data “windows” of 30-60-90-etc days and run moving average windows on various metrics (pageviews, clicks, revenue). [This is something I’ll get into in the near future.]
  4. Trend information can be used to choose future actions for your blog (such as adding more content, adding specific content, changing the direction of your blog, or dumping your blog and working in another niche).

I use a combo of site metrics tools including Performancing’s PMetrics, Google Analytics, Sitemeter, and various WordPress plugins. Each has its own strength, but I really most on PMetrics and sometimes Google Analytics. I know that many people have their eyes glaze over when the subject of statistics comes up, so I’ll do my best to cover trend analysis as simply as possible, with diagrams and sample spreadsheets, in upcoming posts here at Performancing.

What do you use for checking your metrics? Do you obsess about the daily numbers? Does it help, at least emotionally, or does it make you feel worse?

Do You Do Niche Tasting?

I was chatting with Ryan the other day and he told me he had discovered some new high value niches. This has sparked off new ideas that are going to be enthusiastically pursued. Ryan discovered these niches almost by sheer luck. It got me thinking if it was possible to try out a niche intentionally before plunging into it?

Domainers have long had the “domain tasting” technique where they register a domain, throw adsense on it and see if it earns before having to pay the bill. Only those that show promise get picked up. Could we do anything similar on blogs?

Adsense doesn’t care about the theme of your blog, just the theme of your page. While I don’t care for adsense as a monetization method it would serve as a proxy for the profitability of the niche that you find. If you adsense gets decent click prices you have scored.

Of course it is going to take effort, first selecting promising niches, and secondly driving traffic to the test page. I am guessing a linkbait would be in order. You might want to use an adsense tracking system also if you want to do this on a large scale.

What do you think? Idea?

If you really want to be successful online…

… get ready to dig in and be persistent.

That’s the key. To be successful online you need to have the persistence of a rat terrier who’s trying to dig under the neighbor’s fence.

A few months ago, Performancing decided to try an experiment. As experts, we know what works and what doesn’t. So we put together a bunch of professional services that we would want to use.

This was a risk. Most people are looking for quick fixes. Even in corporate America, you’d be surprised by the vast number of paid professionals who are more impressed by a short term digg-bait that sends 30k visitors (with zero conversion) versus a nice, steady growth in search engine referrals (which actually convert).

But we know better. We know that the only real path to success online is to nail the SERPs. And the only way to nail the SERPs is to take a long-term, steady approach to authority building.

That’s why we decided to name our cornerstone service “Authority Builder” – because that’s what it’s all about. Twelve months of growth in quality content and quality links.

If you’re not in it for the long haul, and you’re only impressed by pretty spikes in (irrelevant) traffic, then you’re chasing a pipe-dream. Spikes in traffic are only good if they lead to long-term success. Social Media should be *part of* but not *all of* your plans for online marketing.

At Performancing, we know what it takes to achieve long term success online and we’re now excited to be working with some really great clients who understand the vision.

But do you understand the vision? Whether you work with Performancing or not, we encourage you to buckle down and be persistent, because at the end of the day, that’s the only guaranteed method for making money online.