Journey/Case: Is Content the King?

[juees]

Greetings everyone.

Short introduction

I'm a relatively young, financially rather successful individual from Europe. I've been lurking around BHW and other moneymaking forums and decided to make a case study here, because I simply find the atmosphere awesome. What comes to my experience in IM I've been taking action since the beginning of the year and I'm pretty satisfied with what I've learned. I mostly focused on one blog, which I've now ditched as I've gotten more accustomed to copyrights (lol) - I did get so much valuable experience that I don't consider it as a mistake but as a great lesson which will definitely be helpful in the future.

Case: Is content the king?

I'm going to keep a journal of my journey which can also be considered as a case study: I've picked a highly competitive niche, which is "make money". Bad idea, most of you will most likely say, but I'm planning on making a very comprehensive entirety with my own twist. The twist is related to my experience from financial markets (investing) as a bonus to internet marketing which, if correctly combined could raise ones wealth to incredible heights. I will also write a lot about the mental side and motivation of making money.

Here's the case study part, to which the title is related: I want to see how long it takes and how I'm going to get traffic by focusing solely on content. What I'm interested in seeing, whether people will find my content through long tail keywords, follow me on social media and whether they'll share my articles etc. I've done only a couple of backlinks with commenting (+1 contextual backlink) to get the site indexed, but from now on I'm going to focus on content.

I've also created twitter and facebook accounts and I will promote every article published: As I've never before created a following, it will be interesting to see if I'll be able to get 'organic' followers. Small sidenote: I've followed some people on twitter and I can't help but to notice that some marketers are terrible spammers - didn't follow them for long.

My pace has been two or three 500-1500word articles a day and I'm releasing one a day. Currently I have 11 articles scheduled for the next 11 days. All content is written by me and aims to provide useful information/value to people. At some point I'll probably consider making (possibly a free) ebook or something like that.

I'll worry about monetization when and if I get traffic.

There are couple of reasons why I'm creating this journal:

-To hopefully provide some useful information to the community
-To keep track of progress and results
-To keep myself motivated: hopefully I'll feel obliged to make and report progress along with this journal.
-To learn - I've realized that one of the best ways to learn yourself is to teach: by making well researched articles I'm pretty much forced to educate myself.

Progress so far:

8 Articles Published, 11 Scheduled.

I've made one short article today, planning to make another later.

Naturally no followers on facebook, around 40 followers on twitter due to following seemingly interesting people around the niche.

As for traffic I'm not sure are the couple of hits on analytics crawlers or real organic traffic - in any case there's no noteworthy traffic as of yet.

Comments and opinions are greatly appreciated

 

[gullsinn]

Keep your activity going on and share your results with us. I don't have any suggestion for you right now. Just good luck for you!

 

[SavyCon]

I highly recommend reading Kimi's SEO blueprint:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/black-hat-seo/478506-search-engine-optimization-blueprint-2012-complete-guide-ranking-website-google.html

 

[juees]

I highly recommend reading Kimi's SEO blueprint:

Thanks a lot, that was an instant bookmark. I recently read the more recent SEO article by Kimi and absolutely loved it.

It's weird though how I've missed that one.

I will right now focus on content, but perhaps at point where I've got lots of articles scheduled I'll take some time to do some serious SEO.

I Have to re-evaluate the writing of another article today because of some tough flu and in addition I have some of my regular job to do (yes IM is currently a more of a hobby). Pain meds will hopefully carry me through the day.

 

[SEOExplored]

I'll be following this case study and I'll be sure to comment and add any value when I can.

It's great when people actually get on the front foot and act instead of just consistently pouring over different theories.

All the best and I hope you get to your goals ASAP; it'll be an interesting and education ride, I'm sure!

 

[kingofcapua]

I'll be following your case study, i just hope you don't freak out after few weeks/months because the chosen niche is pretty much filled but goodluck anyways.

 

[erickishere]

Following this case study. I always wanted to see what happens when you only have pure content with no SEO done.

 

[juees]

Thanks a lot guys. I feel a great amount of motivation coming from the support.

I have to say that even though I've been working on this site for over a week I can't feel my motivation going down just yet. Actually I've done good amounts of visualization lately about the subject and I have to say that it's one of the most greatest methods of creating motivation for myself.

I'm not new to creating content and I've recently actually found out how much I enjoy writing great articles. Time flies by and I'm often enough in the flow-mode, of which some, if not most of you may know of. Earlier today I even got a thought in my head that I don't even think about the money that I'm possibly going to make: The first thing that I want is to create this particular website into an amazing entirety.

I'm well aware that it's a long journey and I shouldn't expect anything for at least first couple of months. However I see this as a win-win-win situation. I get a lot of more experience, I learn while I research my subject even further, my possible visitors hopefully find my site valuable and perhaps some of you following this journey somewhat informative/valuable.

I also see this as a great way to put myself out here for possible joint ventures and maybe some networking: IM can be pretty lonely, especially at the beginning so I'll be definitely considering Joint Ventures in the future.

Btw, either the pain meds are kicking a** or the flu is subsiding - in any case I almost managed to complete a 1500+ word article. I'll have to finish it tomorrow with some pictures etc. Feels great.

 

[juees]

Today was an unexpectedly long work day, which obviously affected my chances to create content as much as I could have normally.

Still, I started making an article / guide, which has already taken me over four hours, I've got one picture done and almost 500 words. Most of the time has gone to research, but it has definitely been worth it. I guess that I've completed about 1/3 of it and it's possible that I'm not going to finish it today. Thank god I've got lots of articles scheduled so I don't have to stress about "missing" a day or two.

Today I also got couple of those 'doubt' thoughts, but I just pushed through them. This project is a long term one and I'm building this castle one rock at a time, sometimes dropping down and polishing the ones put down earlier.

Some motivating thoughts however got to me today: It's a highly competitive niche, I'm going to succeed in it and when I do, I know for sure that I can succeed in any niche I choose to compete in. High competition requires lots of hard work and that's what I'm up for. I believe it's very important to realize that people who succeed in any high competitive never do anything extraordinary, but work really hard around the subject. Mystifying and believing otherwise is the worst thing that you can do. Not once have I seen anywhere so perfect business that there wouldn't be anything left to improve and this is exactly the case in every other website that focuses on the same niche.

Edit: Remember folks, hard work is a habit and is thus attainable "skill" rather than something people are born with.

I've been wondering how often should I update this journal, as there won't be nothing else but content creation for the next few weeks. In other words, nothing interesting and not much to report. I guess I'll stop by to report about the mental side of the project and I'll hopefully manage to provide some awesome motivating thoughts.

 

[juees]

Good news: I'm still motivated with my quest.

I've been focusing on creating content for the past few days as much as earlier, however I haven't been able to produce more than one article a day. This is because I've increased the quality of my articles tremendously. Earlier I've been putting up about 500-1000 word articles with some valuable information, but when I went back to read them, I couldn't help but to notice that they lacked some quality.

This is a great sign since it clearly shows that I've already learned something. You know when you start something and you look back at your earlier works - they may seem absolute sh*t. This has already happened to me and I'm now focusing on improving my earlier articles. One article I had to spin into two separate ones because I had so much material on them.

I installed a plugin called Squirrly SEO couple of days ago and I have to say that it's an incredible plugin for on-page seo. Definitely recommended - no need for article checklist when a plugin does it for you.

I'm eager to see whether my work will pay off.

 

[juees]

This weekend managed to create 3 well researched articles, so I'm pretty satisfied with my work. It also seems that I got my first piece of organic traffic too for keywords to which I rank on page 9 or 10, lol. Better than nothing and it's actually a bit sooner than I expected.

I'll be expecting at least some traffic when I've managed to release 50-60 articles, which would be sometime around early september. I'll be interested in seeing how my articles will rank with only on-page seo and social media promoting upon publishing the articles.

One thing I've been recognizing in myself. I find it extremely hard at times to do the simple act of starting. I'm completely aware that when I start, I actually feel pretty good working, researching, writing, but the initial action is my weakest point.

Thankfully I've managed to do several hours of writing in any case.

Just a small update this time.

 

[momotico]

how is your keyword density?

 

[Profz]

Nice little journey you're embarking on. I'm subscribed and will try to keep up.

For the record I have a couple of sites that have pretty much followed the same principles of ranking without any crazy SEO background work other than a few legitimate blog comments here and there to help with indexing.

I've gotta say - it does work. But the keywords you're choosing are so vital to getting anywhere on the SERPs. My niche is similarly competitive but there are a few popular long tails that people have neglected and allowed me to squeeze in. 50-60 articles targeting a couple of hundred people landing on Page #1 is gonna be more fruitful than targeting thousands and ending up on Page #4. Of course when you are a proven authority you can go for these anyway.

Don't neglect StumbleUpon for your marketing posts. I would also recommend using something like Scoop.it to further build rapport within your niche.

 

[zvous]

good luck on your journey.

Beside Kimi's SEO post, you may want to read/bookmark Alexa Smith's post that talked about article marketing on WF. You must google it yourself, because i cant post any link, [ "Article Marketing 2013" site:WF]. be sure to copy all the letter inside the bracket including the quotation mark and replace WF into its abbreviation. Her post is on the post #2, and it lead to another quality post about article marketing.

 

[juees]

how is your keyword density?

It's fine for the most parts, but for couple of articles I've got some work to do. Squirrly has been helping me a lot with it and after the trial I've got to find something similar or work with a check list.

Nice little journey you're embarking on. I'm subscribed and will try to keep up.

Thanks a lot, it's great to hear that it works.

I'm planning on building the site authority which basically means that I've got to cover even the most basic aspects first and then move on to the advanced articles.

As for the stumbleupon, I've actually started building a following and I see a lot of people straightforwardly spam their sites - easy to learn from their mistakes. I'll build a following first and then sneakily stumble/share my best articles when the time is right.

good luck on your journey.

Thanks, I'll be sure to check your tip later!

ps. Wow, I had a huge battle with the moderation system. I had to leave some important explanations out because I couldn't understand what's triggering it.

 

[juees]

good luck on your journey.

Beside Kimi's SEO post, you may want to read/bookmark Alexa Smith's post that talked about article marketing on WF. You must google it yourself, because i cant post any link, [ "Article Marketing 2013" site:WF]. be sure to copy all the letter inside the bracket including the quotation mark and replace WF into its abbreviation. Her post is on the post #2, and it lead to another quality post about article marketing.

Wow, this ended up being a huge tip.

For one reason or another I've completely missed the concept of article syndication and how publishers plow through article directories for articles. Feels great to learn something new and valuable. I'm sure that this will help me a lot with my site.

 

[juees]

Today I got my first big feelings of desperation, which were mostly result of my general feeling after the day at work.

I fought through it with long, hot shower and some visualization (not in dirty way).

I spent some time plowing through Googles keyword tool and found keywords that had over 20? approx. cpc and relatively low competition. Needless to say that I'm currently working on creating an article based on those keywords.

No notable organic traffic as of yet, couple of hits here and there. 18 Articles published meaning that I've been at this for almost three weeks. After I've finished this article I've got 10 more articles scheduled to be published, 1 / day. These 10 articles are of more quality than the previous once as I've improved quite much with my writing.

I've been wondering though whether I should "split" my articles into several small ones or just make one big quality article (They tend to get 1500-2500 words long) I'm currently sticking in making big, quality articles. I believe that the articles will shorten as I have to get into more and more minor/advanced stuff in the field.

Tip: Table of contents is a great plugin - makes your articles look a lot more professional.

I'm also a bit bothered by procrastination: the act of "starting" every day feels unimaginably hard. Well, as long as I've got lots of articles scheduled, I shouldn't worry too much. One quality article in one / two days feels pretty good pace for now.

Maybe I should be thankful that I'm at least taking action, even though I feel that I could push so much more out of myself.

 

[erickishere]

Don't give up OP. I'm in the same boat as you and im just adding content with no SEO whatsoever lol. I'm writing 1 article a day total of 33 articles so far. Its a long term project but the investment will be huge! brb ceoin' $250+ like r0meo's thread.

 

[juees]

So today I've been thinking about my strategy a little bit more. I've come to a conclusion that I'm going to switch my focus more and more on keywords that are searched for more infrequently while aiming for good cpc.

In addition, I'm probably going to aim for less "perfect" articles than I've previously aimed, since it takes a huge amount of time when compared to the actual writing. I guess I've yet to find some good balance in this.

Retardly enough, I always plan to go back to my articles and improve them a lot but then again I never feel like it, lol.

The positive thing is that I'm constantly noticing improvement in basically every aspect when it comes to internet marketing.

Gotta keep working. I hope I'll see at least some traffic in one month or so since that would motivate me so much.