60 Minutes Work, 25 Years Worth of Commissions
Continuing on from my last blog post about guaranteeing your success I want to use another example to highlight the true POWER of search engine marketing (specifically, SEO)...
A member said to me in the comments of that post that you can't just set a site up & stop adding content...
They said "sites simply disintegrate if you stop adding new stuff"...
But is this true?
I mean admittedly it is best to continue adding new content (because you always want to GROW your site, right?)
But what if you did just create a site, add content & leave it?
Would it really "disintegrate"?
Well the answer is no - it wouldn't - and hopefully this example will highlight to you the HUGE potential of SEO when it comes to making money (which is what you're learning here at WA).
If you search "strawberry pop tart blow torches" in Google you find will find the following result:
It is listed at number 1 of the search results for that phrase...
But do you notice something?
The date...
It says 12th Aug 1994.
Yep - that's right, the webpage has not been updated for a whopping 25 years, yet it is still listed at the top spot in Google. Why? Because it is still relevant.
But is there something special on the page that's making it rank?
Well nope - nothing at all. In fact the article layout is actually extremely basic & it only consists of around 1,000 words. I'm sure most of you here have actually much better articles.
(no offense to the writer of that pop tart article though, LOL).
Now as it stands the site doesn't have any affiliate links... However if it did then the site's owner could have quite easily have been making commissions for all of those years.
So yes, the whole SEO game can admittedly be a bit of a pain at times in that it can take a little while before things begin to rank... But hopefully from this example you can now see that the waiting game is definitely WELL worth it.
Where else could you get such a solid ROI for your time?
Spend about 60 minutes or so writing an article, let it get ranked & then stand to earn commissions for over 25 years... Just for giving up a mere 1 hour of your time & having some patience?
Truly amazing...
Heck, even if the article took all day to write... It's still great!
But obviously whilst it is indeed possible to add content & leave it, it is not advisable because ultimately you want to keep adding as much as you can (whilst maintaining high quality) in order to grow your site & grow you revenue (and to speed up the process as much as possible).
I just wanted this post to highlight the real long-term power of SEO & to serve as another reminder to always keep your site active! 🙂
You never know just when that magic is gonna happen. 🙂
Recent Comments
74
Absolutely spot on!.
One of my my sites - haven't done anything on for almost a year. Yesterday, a rather lovely surprise when I woke up to a sweet $100 commission!.
Just for the record - I have not even logged in to that account in what must be over 6 months.
I had an old blog that I posted on about once a year if that and then left it altogether. Starting here made me go and check it out and I discovered there were still visitors each month and it had earned cash with google adsense in that time too. Amazing.
I did not want to embarrass you but you are forcing me by attaching the screenshot of our conversation.
It is a very basic statistical fact that you cannot use particular cases to prove statistical behavior. Statistics works on large numbers only. So showing a couple of examples are not proof of anything.
With this, I promise you will not hear from me ever again. You will do what you want and believe what you want. I wish you success in whatever you are doing.
You made a valid point which I wanted to expand on as I felt it would encourage members to see the long-term potential of their one time efforts. My intention was to provide anonymity to the comment hence why I removed the profile picture/name.
I'm sorry you feel that way but I thank you for the well wishes & I wish you the same. May success be with you, always
What you say is totally legit and true. I think that when there is less competition in the niche you choose, what you're saying can work well.
But if you choose a competitive niche, if you don't keep active and up-to-date, I think your articles will become outdated and maybe more relevant and newest articles will take over yours. Is my thinking logic?
You're kind of right - competition itself doesn't have a direct impact on ranking, however in more competitive niches you have more people wanting to create better articles than you so that theirs can overtake yours. The key is to create as good an article as possible to make this as difficult as possible for your competition. Hope that makes sense.
Also, it is important that your article remains relevant. This primarily applies to evergreen articles, but if you've written about something that regularly changes then of course you will need to keep on top of updating the article for it to stay relevant :)
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This content thing and continually creating is curious - I know of many sites that hardly post yet get great traction with search engines.
One of the very best blogger there is in a VERY competitive niche (blogging tips) posts about once per month - Jon Morrow.
There are actually countless examples.
Also, some will stop posting and rankings will drop like a stone. It is quite curious and worth finding out why one site maintains rank and another drops.
My own best guest would be the authority and backlinking profile plays a major part as well as the authority (not talking about DA here, but kudos, respect) of a given site in a niche.
Let's face it Brian Dean posted about 70 articles in 5/6 years but when he does post you bet we will all flock to read in and comment maybe even reference and link to it, share it on social media...
EDIT:
What I find more interesting is if you look at the actual search results for that search term you will notice that all of the other sites on Page 1 reference or link to the article that is ranking No 1.
According to a report I read on Moz - directly linking to a site is not always neccessary for you to get link credit for it, merely mentioning is enough.
The point in mute - create quality content and you will rank incredibly well without actual links, as long as folks in your industry (relevance) and mentioning it/you.
I found it pretty awesome all other page 1 ranging sites mentioned that site, the author or his crazy experiment.
Yep you're right about mentions, search engines are very clever these days! It works in a similar way to how Google detects trends & ranks news articles very quickly. Mentions are very important! :)
Very interesting. Search engines are getting much more clever!
Now that you mention it....