The vast majority (in the region of 95%) of all sites and blogs ever created fail to make any money at all - let alone a profit. Against this backdrop it's quite easy to lose faith in blogging as a viable tool for online marketing.
But all is not lost. There are plenty of businesses out there quietly creating great articles and content to share and promote around their networks. Many of them have had great success in driving new leads, customers, sign-ups, traffic and direct revenue.
We asked a bunch of companies to share one of their top performing blog posts and explain what benefits they have derived from that single post. Hopefully, once you see just how powerful a high value blog post can be, it'll inspire you to keep working harder and smarter to get your own blog out there.
Greg from greasebook, an oil and gas technology company, related the following story about one of their most succesful posts:
One of our most popular blog posts came in the form of a special interest post of oilfield history, entitled 'Ever had a look inside a Superior Gas Engine Pump House?'
No hard sells. No marketing fluff. Just simple entertainment and education for oilfield history lovers. There was some adventure to the post (my dad and I actually got off the highway and did a walk through of this old oil production motor...) en route to Tulsa, and lots of folks chimed in with stories and memories of their own.
As it turns out, that post ended up generating more than 20 comments and drove over one thousand views over the period of a few weeks.
These numbers might seem low, but as Greg points out 'For the average B2C company that's nothing. However, for a niche B2B with a target demographic of males aged 55-70 (who don't ever comment on the internet, much less on a B2B site), that's really saying something! '.
He goes on to say, 'what's funny is that I've slaved over other posts for 10X the
amount of time with not a fraction of the client engagement'.
Scott from robertsoncomm wrote a post on the cross-overs between rock bands and brands, talking about how bands' philosophies tend to revolve around being consistently great - providing a valuable lesson for brands.
The article was shared hundreds of times on LinkedIn and also landed him two new business meetings - bread and butter for a marketing and PR agency.
Jeff Rose from Good Financial Cents wrote an article entitled '11 Ways to Invest $100,000 with Confidence' that generates around 7000 visits per month and has resulted in as many as 50 new leads for the company, each month.
Jeff also points out that the article contains a few affiliate links allowing people to convert directly from that page - helping him to increase the revenue he generates from that page via commissions.
We've had a lot of articles become popular within specific niches, but none have ever performed quite as well as 'Top 10 best home based business ideas to make money online' in organic search.
You can see a Google AdWords graph showing the earnings of this post over a period of 3 months over at how much money can I make blogging?
$260 over 3 months is not bad considering this only takes into account earnings from ad revenue and not downstream earnings that come from new followers, more referrals, and newsletter signups, etc.
I think what I have learned from the above stories, and many of the ones I didn't have time to include in this article, is that the definition of a successful blog post can vary wildly depending on who you are, what industry you're in, and how big the business is.
For a startup, a single blog post that brings in a single new client can mean the world - especially if that client keeps the company going until more new customers can be found.
Conversely, for high traffic, established sites it may be that no less than thousands of dollars in revenue per article is acceptable.
I guess the best way to blog is to:
You can also check up a few of our resources and guides on blogging:
If you've had great a successes via blogging, or any online content and media for that matter, share what you did and the results in the comments below.
Almost all businesses that have researched Internet marketing strategies are aware that high quality, engaging and relevant content is one of the best ways to drive valuable organic Web traffic.
The problem is that many people don't have the time or patience to build up a good base of content via blogging.
So what's the alternative?
Get unlimited blog topic and blog post ideas any time you like. Social media post ideas? No problem.
Learn how to research, plan and create awesome blog content designed to amaze readers and turn them into avid fans, allowing you to make money online.
Genuine bloggers and businesses use high quality articles to build high page rankings in Google and generate plenty of valuable organic search traffic.
The problem is that the better the content, the more likely it is that others will duplicate, copy, or spin those articles and publish them on their own sites (without permission or attribution).
Most of the time this is not an issue because low quality, article spinning sites generally tend not to rank well in Google search results.
Google recently ruined our startup launch with a 'false positive' phishing warning that coincided perfectly with our launch announcement to 4500 existing customers.
The article I wrote about that hugely damaging mistake attracted the attention of John Mueller, who responded sympathetically and said he would 'let the team know' about the problem.
Good to his word, I noted a few hits from Mountain view, California on the affected site and at the article, and a few hours later the erroneous phishing message was removed.
A lot of popular blogging techniques have died out as Google's search algorithms (and the rise of social media) have changed the content landscape of the Internet.
For startups and small businesses utilizing blogging as part of their content marketing strategy, keeping tabs on industry best practices can be a bit like trying to herd cats.
As a result, unfortunately, many people find themselves swimming upstream as their content fails to capture high rankings in search results, generates little to no buzz, and generally offers little to no return on investment (ROI).
Learning how to blog is an important business skill that can increase page rankings in Google and bring plenty of traffic to your website.
Video blogging (adding clips to a blog) can help to drive traffic, lower bounce rate, increase engagement and conversions, and generally improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Internet marketing.
Video blogging also provides plenty of "different" marketing opportunities that written content can't - because it is a rich medium for communication.
Bloggers who rely on written content only may find their rankings in search engines suffering as Google continues to include more and more video results (especially from YouTube) in its organic search results.
Well researched, planned and implemented sales funnels can simultaneously boost traffic and increase conversions and revenue to make more money for blogs and
Learn how to start a blog using WordPress by following this super easy step-by-step guide that covers both hosted and self-hosted blogs.
Blogging works! It doesn't matter if you are a college student thinking about making extra pocket money, or a entrepreneur looking to promote your brand.
It also doesn't matter what topic you decide to write about, provided it is a relevant to your niche and something you are passionate about and interested in.
Starting a blog is exciting, but it is also a medium to long term commitment (if you want to derive any real benefit from it), but if you have the drive to succeed there's no better time to start.
Blogger outreach and PR is difficult - I've read a lot of How to articles and guides that say stuff like "Get bloggers to review your site or product", or, "Get as many backlinks from other bloggers as possible".
So everyone knows what to do, but no-one's talking about how to do it. In fact, gathering backlinks is often time consuming, ineffective and infuriating.
Hands up anyone who has spent several hours emailing other bloggers asking them to take a second to look over your new [blog/site/product/service/article/video] and gotten almost no response. It happens all the time.
Combine publishing management with the world's largest database of SEO data for optimal growth.
Low hanging digital marketing fruit, with potentially huge payoffs.
