Stop Making Content! WTF?

8 thoughts on “Stop Making Content! WTF?”

1. Hi Gary,
   I find this post very interesting and I have wanted to get into list building for quite some time now but instead I have ended up, creating content to so called “authority site”. There are now over 100 posts and pages on my site and it receives very little traffic and very few sales.
   I am looking for another way of doing this. Creating content has become a drag and it does not get me anywhere.

   Maybe setting up squeeze pages (aimed at a very specific group of people) could be another way of doing affliate marketing? Where should I start?

   All the best and thanks beforehand

   Jojo

   P.s I see you are a member of Wealthy Affiliate, so am I.

   Reply

   1. Hi Joakim. I’ve built sites like you where they get very little traffic. It can be soul-destroying looking at the work you put in and the little reward you get in return.

      But what you have is a traffic problem rather than a content problem.

      No matter what you promote online – whether that’s your blog or some affiliate offer – you need traffic in order to make any money.

      So learning how to drive, not just traffic, but the right kind of traffic, is one of the fundamental skills every marketer should learn.

      It’s not sexy, it’s often drudge work, but it is essential.

      Many marketers shortcut learning how to drive organic (free) traffic and go straight to paying for traffic instead.

      This is not something I’d recommend for the newbie.

      Unless or until you understand the fundamentals of traffic and how to drive it, you should steer clear of paid advertising.

      It’s a very fast way to lose money and Google, Facebook and whoever, will be very happy to part you from your cash.

      You also need to learn about conversions and how to track them.

      One way to lose money is to throw it at a paid advertising campaign that you don’t know for sure is working.

      Suppose you are promoting an offer on an advertising network. But you’re also promoting the offer on your blog and to your email list (if you have one).

      You are getting sales, but because you’re not tracking conversions, you don’t know where the sales are coming from.

      Maybe you saw an increase in sales just after you posted your paid ad. And assumed it was the ad that was generating the sales.

      But, maybe in the background, Google shuffled its page ranks and your site started ranking higher, and pulling in more traffic.

      An that, in fact, led to you making more sales than your ad was generating.

      Without tracking your conversions, you just don’t know where the sales are coming from. And you don’t know if you should throw more money at the ad or kill it.

      As to squeeze pages, I do believe that using these is a better way to earn online.

      Squeeze pages have these advantages:

      • The traffic that visits your squeeze pages is generally pre-qualified. They have some idea of where they’ve been sent and what they can expect to see on the page. This means they’re more likely to hand over their email address.
      • You can use free reports, ebooks, videos, courses, etc. to entice the undecideds into sign up to your mailing list.
      • Once they’re on your list, you can promote multiple offers to them over time. They’re a captive audience. But you need to treat them with respect.
      • It’s common to offer a low-priced (like $7) item on your Thank You page, though not every marketer does this. Sales here can actually cover paid advertising costs if you go that route.

      Squeeze Pages are single pages. They can be short or (very) long. Some copywriting skill may be needed for the really long pages, and are designed to convince visitors to hand over their email addresses.

      Squeeze pages have these disadvantages:

      • Since they’re focused on one thing only – getting your visitors to subscribe – they don’t have broad appeal. You need to get the right people to see the pages. That’s where your blogs come in. Articles on them should pre-frame visitors into a mindset that’s open to your offer (this is known as warm traffic). Then you link out from your blog posts to your squeeze pages.
      • If you send cold traffic to squeeze pages, your conversion rates will likely be low. You can improve this by only sending traffic you think might be interested in your offer. If you’re buying traffic, then you really need to understand who your audience is so you’re not spending money needlessly on ineffective ads.
      • It’s probably fair to say that most marketers who use squeeze pages buy traffic. Even if it’s only to get people to sign up to their newsletter. It’s the fastest way to build a list. Building a list organically through a squeeze page can be painfully slow or extremely time consuming. So factoring in an advertising budget is a good idea.

      Ok, so where do you start?

      Wealthy Affiliate (I reviewed it here), which you’re a member of, has some good training on list building. They are, however, focused on doing affiliate marketing through blogging.

      But, to be honest, I went elsewhere to learn about affiliate marketing with sales funnels (a sales funnel starts with your blog posts and warming up your traffic to offers. The next stage is getting people to sign up on your squeeze page. The rest of the sales funnel is sending people valuable information and offers and keeping them engaged with your emails).

      I wanted to learn from someone who uses this affiliate marketing model themselves. And that’s how I found Zach Crawford.

      I signed up for his course and have been going through it.

      A number of marketers recommend using YouTube to drive cheap traffic – people like Zach, Sarah Staar, Rachel S. Lee and Spencer Mecham.

      That can be through making and publishing videos regularly (the slow way) or by advertising on YouTube (the fast way).

      Both Zach and Spencer have free webclasses. Check them out to see the marketing models they follow and whether they’d suit you or not:

      • Zach’s free webclass
      • Spencer’s free webclass

      Both also offer affiliate marketing training courses, $897 for Spencer’s and $997 for Zach’s, so they’re not cheap.

      You can try to figure all this stuff out yourself and find free training on YouTube but what you won’t get is the surprisingly important mindset training and how the whole business model is structured and where and when to apply particular strategies.

      Be aware that there’s no quick path to getting rich online.

      It takes focus, commitment and pure doggedness to push through the obstacles (we all hit them and new ones always appear).

      And when you feel like you’re not seeing results, either at all or fast enough – and you will – don’t give up.

      You’ve got to keep going and push through.

      Success is possible but it’s not guaranteed. That depends on the work you put in and many other variables. And if you’re going to let apparent failures stop you in your tracks or not.

      All the best,
      Gary

      Reply

      1. Dear Gary,
         Thank you soo much for your answer. You have given me a lot of information and a lot of things to think about. This is certainly helping me in figuring out how to proceed from here.

         Squeeze pages does seem like a great idea and most people that I have been in touch with are saying the conversion rates are way higher on specific landing/squeeze pages than if you simply send a person to a blog. It is quite understandable that if you target a specific group of people with a specific problem than you will get much more target traffic than if you send them to a blog post.

         I was thinking of doing this before joining (for the 3rd time) Wealthy Affiliate 3,5 years ago but somehow I had soo many doubts and thought clear directions would be a better Idea so I joined WA and then followed their training.

         I am not giving up dogtrainingeasily.com yet but I will slow down the work there a little and try to work out some other strategies. I will take a look at the training programs you suggested. Expensive but if they lead to success then they will be worth it.

         I have also temporarily joined the One Percent Group by Daniel Moran but that is more about how to sell on Amazon then Affiliate Marketing. There is a lot of stuff on creating the “right mindset” so that is really useful.

         Anyway, thanks a lot for taking your time, trying to help me out.

         All the best,

         Jojo

         Reply

         1. Glad I could help, JoJo. I’m not familiar with Daniel Moran or the One Percent Group but Jim Cockrum is the guy I look to for courses about selling on Amazon.

            As I’m in Ireland, sending packages to an Amazon warehouse is expensive (there isn’t one locally) and kinda killed the idea I had of becoming and international Amazon seller. But Jim (and his team’s) courses are top notch.

            I bought his Proven Amazon Course a few years back and almost every month, new courses that are sold separately, are added into my member’s area. It terms of bang for my buck, this is certainly close to the top of my list.

            In case you’re interested, there’s a 90% discount being offered on their Amazon Replens course. It normally sells for $299 but is on sale for $29 for a few days.

            I’d suggest you pick one type of marketing model to follow and commit to it. And don’t bounce between different models like affiliate marketing, selling on Amazon or whatever.

            If you bounce around, you’ll never become expert enough with one to make a real business and success of it.

            You’ve got to go “all-in” on whatever marketing model you decide to run with.

            Cheers,
            Gary.

            Reply

2. Very interesting Gary.
   Right now I am not in position to afford all these monthly amounts so I have no list. That’s ok though as with no real traffic to speak of I’m not missing out at this stage – so for me I think content is what I need.
   Once I have traffic I can refine the sales funnel as you suggest.
   The one thing that bugs me though is when I get so many e-mails … sales pitch after sales pitch , buy, buy , buy!
   Hate them.
   And because I hate them I am very reluctant to bombard others with e-mails.
   Is once a day really the way to go?

   Reply

   1. Hi Lawrence, most marketers do abuse their subscribers by sending them sales pitch after sales pitch.

      Email marketers need to be smarter than that. Send out value emails where you give free training, information or product reviews. You can link out to blog posts, YouTube videos, etc. if you want to keep your emails short.

      Give some stuff away for free from time to time – again, these are value based emails.

      Your subscribers will know that they’re going to get offers from you from time to time, especially if you’re in the internet/affiliate marketing niches. Just treat them like you’d like to be treated on some list you’re subscribed to.

      The marketing niches are very competitive and any marketer worth their salt will be building an email list. If you want your subscribers to recognize who you are, you need to get your name in front of them as often as possible. Otherwise, another marketer will achieve that goal.

      If you only send out emails once a week, or less, and your subscriber misses a couple of emails for any reason, they may have forgotten who you are by the time they actually do read your next email. They may have forgotten they even signed up to your list and think you’re sending them unsolicited emails.

      That could lead to them reporting your emails as spam.

      By emailing them more frequently, they get to know who you are. And include some stories or anecdotes about yourself in your emails so that they start to see you as a real person and not some faceless entity that fires non-descript emails at them all the time.

      You want to build a relationship with your subscribers, not just a one-way channel from you to them.

      So sending daily is the way to go. You can always tell them what you’re up to, things you’re trying, and how they pan out, good or bad. You can then advise them on whether they should try the same thing or not.

      People love to hear about your failures – it makes you seem more human. If all you do is crow about how you made $2K here, $5K there and how everything in your world is sunshine and roses, your subscribers won’t be able to relate to that, especially if they’re just starting out.

      Put yourself into your subscribers’ shoes and write your emails to talk to those people, not at them.

      Hope that helps.

      Reply

3. Hey Gary! I so enjoy your posts because you take people so thoroughly through a process. And it is amazing to me that email marketing is still so effective. I am just now starting another blog and learning more about funnels and effective traffic marketing.
   This was a great article to read and learn.
   In peace and gratitude, ariel

   Reply

   1. Thanks for the feedback, Ariel. it’s always gratifying to hear that people are finding my content useful and informative.

      Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.