KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays (10 page)

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Authors: Joel Comm,Mark Victor Hansen

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List posts require much more work than you may think. In general, the longer the list, the more likely it is to pick up traction and bring in readers. But when you’re listing 52 ways to change a lightbulb, you have to do quite a bit of research and creative thinking to make up the numbers. The post could end up being several thousand words long, taking an entire day or two to write.
 
Figure 3.2
Digg.com
, one of the most powerful social bookmarking sites, loves list posts.
 
It’s unlikely that you’ll want to include too many of these posts in a blog or web site, if only because they’re usually a bit shallow. But toss in one or two a month, and you could find they act as useful traffic bait.
 
6. INTERVIEW POSTS
 
While list posts can be shallow, interview posts are high quality. Because every interview, even if it’s with someone who appears regularly on web sites, is different, your article will be unique. And if the person you’re interviewing is important and influential in your field, you can be sure that your readers will read it—and see that your site is ready to put in the effort to churn up exclusive content that they can’t find anywhere else.
 
There is a secret to publishing interviews, and it’s this: It is ridiculously easy. It looks difficult. It looks as though the publisher has had to go through a whole process of contacting a company’s PR firm, setting up a time for the interview, thinking about the questions, researching the subject, and producing piles of carefully thought-out questions. Sometimes it is like that, and the higher the profile of the person you’re interviewing, the more hoops you’ll have to jump through. Usually though, it’s pretty simple.
 
Call or e-mail the company, explain who you are, and request an interview for your site. Make sure you provide a link so that people can see where they’ll appear, and be prepared to provide a link back to their own site in the article. That’s the fee that they’ll expect you to pay, and it’s also a service that you should be providing for your readers. Timing helps here, too. If the interview subject has a product to promote, you’re almost guaranteed an interview. You might be put in touch with the company’s PR rep (who will handle everything for you), but it’s just as likely that the person you’re contacting will reply to you directly. The worst thing your preferred contact will do is say no, or not reply at all. That’s not a big price to pay. If it is someone in your field, though, and especially if your site has already built a name for itself, there’s a good chance that you’ll get an agreement.
 
At that point, you can usually conduct the interview in one of two ways. The first is to set up a time to call. The advantage is that you’re in control of the timing. As soon as the interview ends, you have the material you need, and it’s just a matter of putting it together and publishing it. The interview will also be flexible. While you’ll want to prepare a dozen or so questions in advance, in a telephone interview you can let the conversation wander. That can turn up all sorts of interesting things. Writers often find that they go into a phone interview with one idea for a story they want to write and come out with something completely different—and much better. You’ll be able to ask follow-up questions and really dig around.
 
The downside to a telephone interview is the extra effort. If the person you’re calling is in a different time zone, you can find yourself working in the middle of the night. You’ll also have to take notes while you’re talking, type up a recorded transcript of the conversation (there are tools available that automatically record Skype calls), or possibly both. On the other hand, you’ll have built a much closer connection with someone who could prove to be a valuable contact in the future.
 
The alternative is to do an e-mail interview. That can sound a bit like cheating, especially to journalists used to picking up the phone whenever they need a quote. But when you’re building a web site, e-mail interviews can make your life very, very easy. When you prepare for an interview, you’re going to be making a list of 10 to 12 questions anyway (more than that and you’ll receive short answers in an e-mail), so the work will already be done. People you’re interviewing will be able to research their answers and frame them in a way that they believe will make them look good, and they’ll be able to do it all in a time frame that suits them. Many of the people you contact will specifically ask for an e-mail interview. Best of all, the interview will be already typed up and almost ready to publish. If you want to run the article in a question-and-answer format, you won’t have to do more than a little light editing and ask the subject of the interview for a picture.
 
The preceding tips apply if you’re interviewing someone you don’t know. But there’s no reason you can’t interview someone you do know. An interview with a colleague, a friend, a supplier, or a partner can all provide useful, exclusive content, and it’s the kind of fun that will make you feel as though you’re not working at all.
 
Interview posts do take a little time to organize, but they really do add a lot of weight to a blog.
 
7. MULTIMEDIA CONTENT
 
Most content on the Web is still text-based, but it’s become very easy now to post other forms of content. YouTube lets publishers embed its videos onto Web pages, and you can create your own clips and upload them to your site. Photos can also help attract viewers. If you don’t want to use your own images, you can pay a buck or so for the high-quality stock images in sites like
iStockphoto.com
and
Fotolia.com
or search for Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr. Just make sure that you tick the box at the bottom of the search page so that you’re not breaching copyright. You’ll need to credit the photographer and link back to the Flickr page, but in return you’ll get a free visual illustration for your article.
 
Usually, multimedia content forms part of a web site—it’s extra content that puts across information in a way that complements the text—but it’s also possible to use multimedia as a replacement for text. My site
ask.joelcomm.com
contains nothing but clips of me answering questions posed by my users and talking directly to the camera (
Figure 3.3
). They’re incredibly fun to do, and you can make the process as simple or as complicated as you want. If you like messing around with editing software, then you can play at being Spielberg and have a blast. Or you can just sit in front of a video camera on a tripod—or even your webcam—shoot, and upload. It’s extra, original content in the space of about five minutes.
 
Those are just seven types of content that you can create for a web site. There are lots of others, but those seven should give you plenty to work with. If you’re ever stuck wondering what to post next—and that will happen!—coming back to one of these standard article types should help to break the block.
 
Figure 3.3
Video content rules at
ask.joelcomm.com
. Do you see how I turned a how-to post into multimedia content? Serve your content in different formats and you’ll reach different types of users.
 
It’s Not Just What You Say, It’s How You Say It
 
So you can put information on your site in lots of different ways. That information will always be the most important aspect of your site, the reason that it will bring in users and succeed—or be ignored and fail. But style plays a role, too.
 
I’m not going to make too big a thing about this, because the easiest way to destroy any business is to be someone you’re not. Whether someone sees me on stage at a conference, tweets me on Twitter, reads my blog, or meets me face-to-face, they’re getting me. This is the way I am. Not everyone likes it. Some people think I’m too forthright in my views. That’s their opinion. I have mine, and I’m not going to try to be something I’m not just to please everyone. That’s the surest way to please no one.
 
When you’re creating content for your web site, give it your voice. Don’t try to write as though you’re creating an article for Fox News or hoping to sell it to
Cosmopolitan.
Picture your best friend in the room with you, and write as though you’re explaining what you want to say to him or her. Informality might look strange in the
New York Times
, but it works great on the Web.
 
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan what you’re going to say. You should still do that. But you should write the way you speak. It’s the easiest way to make sure that your site carries your voice and personality and that the content is clear.
 
Once you’ve written the article, put it to one side, then go over it before you post. Look for typos, run it through a spell-check, and delete any repetitions. They can make an important difference to the flow. There’s a reason reporters will write “Steve Jobs” in one sentence and “the CEO of Apple” in the next. When they repeat the same phrase again and again, the article becomes difficult to read. You want to make the passage as smooth as possible, from beginning to ad click to KaChing.
 
Ghost and Guest Writers
 
When you build your first web site, it’s likely that you’ll be doing most things by yourself. You’ll be playing with the designs, bringing in users, and writing the content. That’s probably the best way to begin. It might take you a little longer to get rolling, but nothing beats hands-on experience. As you grow, you’ll start to look for help, and part of that help can come in the form of writers.
 
You might find that this happens by itself. When your site becomes well known, other people in your field will ask whether they can put articles on your site. You won’t usually have to pay them. They’ll get value from the exposure. While that can be good, free content, do make sure that the content is high enough quality. If you lose readers by posting something that’s little more than an ad, you’ll pay dearly for that post.
 
You can also hire writers. This is harder than it sounds. The Web is filled with people who think they can write but who actually struggle to complete sentences. You want people you can rely on to produce the content you want, on the topics you want, at the times you want, and at the level of quality you need.
Elance.com
is one place to look, although it can be pretty hit-and-miss. The feedback ratings should help to reduce the odds of picking a clunker, but don’t be afraid to test-drive a few writers and choose the ones you like the best. Alternatively,
Scribat.com
is a new service that works as both a syndication service and writing agency. You can buy off-the-shelf articles for a set rate, or you can ask the company to commission content for you, in which case
Scribat.com
will go through the headache of looking for the right people and overseeing the work. You’ll just get the content.
 
Whether you’re looking to bring in help from guest writers or hoping to find a reliable ghostwriter to ease your workload, both are legitimate solutions. As long as the content is good—and it will need to be good enough to generate sufficient income to outweigh the cost—bringing in extra writers will help you to grow your online business and allow you take a backseat as it manages itself.
 
Creating content will always be the main work in an online business. It’s what produces the value in your site, and it’s what brings in the readers. But content alone doesn’t go KaChing. Advertising income does that.

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