Free Traffic Loophole

8/12/2019 Free Traffic Loophole

1/24


2/24

Copyright 2013 by Idea Incubator, LP

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.

Published by:

Idea Incubator, LP

4330 Gaines Ranch Loop, Suite 120

Austin, TX 78735

Website: http://www.DigitalMarketer.com

E-Mail: Visit us on the web at [email protected]

This is NOT a free e-book!

The list price of this book is $49. You have been given one complimentary copy to keep on your

computer. You may print out one copy only as a bonus for signing up for your free subscription

to DigitalMarketer.com.

Printing out more than one copy - or distributing it electronically - is prohibited by

international and U.S.A. copyright laws and treaties, and would subject the purchaser to

penalties of up to $100,000 PER COPY distributed.
http://www.digitalmarketer.com/mailto:[email protected]://www.digitalmarketer.com/http://www.digitalmarketer.com/mailto:[email protected]://www.digitalmarketer.com/


3/24

The Free Traffic Loophole 3

How To Get Free TrafcBy NOT

BLOGGING!

Hi, my name is Ryan Deissand this report is all about getting youloads of free trac.

Ok, so its not entirely free, because you will need to spend some

money. But if you take my advice and start paying for content (instead

of creating it yourself) youll nd that you can leverage paid content

into free, ultra-targeted tracand become a trusted authority in

the process.

If you hate writing (like I do), then this report will bring a huge smile

to your face.

And even if you absolutely love writing, I think youll still like what I

have to say because this will only enhance what youre already doing.

But for most people, writing great content for their blog is far from

second natureits actually kinda hard to do. In fact, for some market-

ers and business owners, blogging and nding things to blog about is a

rabbit hole that they never make it out of.

The worst part is, its not really doing anything to move the needle for

their authority site. Im just going to come right out and say it: Blog-

ging isnt a smart way to build an authority site.

But What About Guest Blogging?

Now, a lot of experts will tell you the reason your blog doesnt get

more trac is because youre not guest blogging enough for similar

sites in your niche.

In other words, according to the experts the only way to build your

own audience is to leverage someone elses audience by giving them

your content for free.

Well, guess what? We tried that, and the results were less than stellar.

Sure, you can get some trac from guest blogging, but unless you love

the idea of begging and pleading all day in the hopes that some high

and mighty editor will bless you with the privilege of running your


4/24


content on their site (all so that you can get a few dozen clicks back to

your site)guest blogging probably isnt the answer.

Thats when we got a wild idea

Why not ip the model on its head? In other words, instead of offering

a kidney to write for your favorite blog, why not go out there and ask

people to write for us?

It sounded crazy at rst, but like I said back in the Authority Hacks

report (the rst report in this series) if something doesnt work I usu-

ally try the opposite rather than just some minor variation.

And more importantly, this is what all the big authority sites are al-

ready doing. For example

Do you really think Arianna Hungton spends much time each week

blogging on HungtonPost.com?

What about Matt Drudge is he writing every one of those articles

over at DrudgeReport.com?

If Steve Forbes spent his days blogging over at Forbes.com, he

wouldnt have much time left to manage his nancial empire, would

he?

And then theres Pete Cashmore over at Mashable.comhe stillwrites the occasional article, but at the rate theyre cranking out

content you know hes not the only guy.

The truth is these folks dont blog because they know a secret

Managing and aggregating expert content is how you truly build

authority NOT BLOGGING!!! And the person who knows that better

than anything else is a lady named Oprah

The Oprah FactorI hate to break it to all the bloggers out there, but theyre doing it

the hard way. ALL the leading authorities online take advantage of a

similar strategy that I call the Oprah Factor.

Think about it. Oprah didnt get famous for her writing style, her ex-

tensive knowledge of ne wines, or her acting. And even though shes

on the cover of literally EVERY FREAKING ISSUE of her magazine
http://www.authorityhacks.com/http://www.authorityhacks.com/


5/24


do you think shes the one writing all those articles? Of course not!

So at the end of the day, Oprah isnt famous for hercontent shes

famous for aggregating content from celebrities, experts, and world

leaders that HER MARKET will nd interesting (and dont miss the

HER MARKET part advocating for a specic market is a HUGE part

of becoming an authority).

Well, if its good enough for Oprah, Arianna, Matt and Steve we g-

ured it was good enough for us.

And so we stopped guest blogging, and started inviting others to blog

on our site.

Some folks were kind enough to give us their original content for free

(probably because theyve bought into the guest blogging myth hook,

line, and sinker), but most had the same objection youre probably

thinking right now

Why Would I Write For a SiteThats Brand New And Doesnt Get

a Lot of Trafc?

Its a dang good question

After all, the only reason most people are willing to guest blog is


6/24


because they believe that theyll get a lot of trac. And lets face it,

youre no Oprah and neither were we. So how did we do it?

How did we get well-known experts to sit down down with us and

write for our blog?

Its simple: We paid them. :)

The Free Trafc Formula

Before I get into the tactical information about how you can nd and

contact writers for your blog, let me walk you through an example of

how I was able to Oprahfyone of our authority sites and how this

stupid little experiment lead to the Free Trac Loophole.

This discovery began after I told the editor of AbsoluteRights.com (one

of our authority sites in the politically Conservative/Libertarian space)

to STOP BLOGGING (NOTE: I wrote about this declaration and how

blogging became a reable offense in Authority Hacksthe rst

report in this series).

All of a sudden, something magical started happening

With the extra time that he had freed up by notblogging, he was able

to start targeting other experts in the conservative political media

world. And when we began to publish their content regularly, our traf-

c increased rapidly.

At rst we didnt realize what was causing it, but there was no doubt

that every time we published one of the experts our trac would

spike
http://www.authorityhacks.com/http://www.authorityhacks.com/


7/24


So we dove a little deeper and nally gured out the source of the

extra trac.

(This is BIG so pay attention)

Even though our site wasnt the biggest in this industry, the experts we

were publishing were still proud to see their names on the site. And

since they were paid for their work (and it wasnt much as youll soon

see), they were happy with the overall experience and paid us back by

sharing their blog post to their social media followers.

And some of these folks had A LOT of followers.

In other words, we paid for the content, but then they sent us loads

of free trac in the form of tweets and Facebook shares

some were even kind enough to email their subscriber lists!

And best of all, we didnt ask for it. They just did it!

But when you think about it, this makes sense. If you secured a guest

posting spot on your favorite blog, youd probably tweet about it or do

some bragging on Facebook, wouldnt you? Sure you would!

Thats when we discovered the free trac loophole formula

OPC + R = T

To put it in plain English

Other Peoples Content + Reach = Trac

You know what I mean by Other Peoples Content AKA blog posts


8/24


and Trac, but you may be a little confused by Reach. When I say

Reach, Im simply referring to the number of social media follow-

ers a particular writer has. The more Twitter followers and Facebook

friends and fans the bigger the Reach.

There are third party tools that make it quick and easy to determine

almost anyones social media reach that well cover a little bit later in

this report, but for now just know that recruiting writers (even if you

have to pay them a little money) to write for your blog is the secret to

free trac.

When we discovered this formula we decided to test it to the ex-

treme.

As youre about to see, we normally only pay writers $5 or $10 per

article. It may not sound like much, but its a lot more than most sites

pay (which is $0) so we get a lot of content. And this content actually

delivers a fair number of clicks

Now at rst glance 135 or 256 clicks may not seem like a lot, but at

only $10 per article thats less than $0.04 per click which is WAY less

expensive than other forms of paid trac. And again, we also got con-

tent so its an even better deal.

But if $10 per article is good, what would happen if we offered $100

for a single author? As you can see, the results speak for themselves


9/24


At rst, we werent all that excited about the idea of paying $100 per

post but we needed to prove our theory. And for obvious reasons Im

very glad we did.

In this example, we got 3,328 visits and 400+ Facebook Likes on that

post, all in ONE DAY. Thats around $0.03 a click, but that cost-per-

click number is only going down because this article is still generating

trac month-after-month.

Was it worth the money? You betcha!!

Now dont get me wrong. Im not suggesting you go out and start

paying $100 per article, because if you do it wrong youll lose money

hand over st. That said, if you nd someone who has a large enough

Reach, its an investment that can pay off handsomely.

So now that you understand the basic concept of the Free Trac

Loophole, lets cover the step-by-steps of how you do it

From Blogger To Editor In 7 Steps

First, I want to start out by saying that nding guest contributors for

your blog will be MUCH easier that you think.

The rst reason is that most experts are ambitious and motivated to

build their personal brand through guest blogging. The second reason

-- and the most important one -- is that Im going to tell you exactly

how we do it.

STEP ONE: Research

The rst step toward building an enviable list of guest contributors is

research. For this step, youre going to need to use this amazing tool

called Google (perhaps youve heard of it :)) to create a list of at least

20 potential guest bloggers for your site.

Its pretty simple to do. Just Google your sites most relevant keywords

(the ones youd absolutely LOVE to rank for) and look at the blogs and

other content sites that already rank for those phrases.

Then, pick out a few competing sites that are currently sitting where

youd like to be and see whos writing for them.


10/24


And in case youre wondering, yes, Im recommending that you poach

writers from other sites.

Remember that post we paid $100 for in our experiment? Guess how

we located that expert contributor Yep, she is a regular contributor

on a similar site in our niche

Some of these writers will be working under exclusive contracts, but

the vast majority of them are freelancers who are ready, willing, and

able to write for anyone wholl pay them. So dont worry. You arent

breaking any rules and you wont incur the wrath of your favorite

blog. Worst-case scenario, youll wind up showing some much-needed

respect to an underappreciated writer.


11/24


Once youve identied 20 or so writers, nding their contact informa-

tion is fairly easy.

Most authority sites highlight their writers on some type of Our

Contributors page, and sometimes these proles even include email

addresses and/or phone numbers

but if they dont, a quick Google search will typically track down

their Twitter or Facebook prole, and more times than not we have

better luck locating writers via social media than email anyway.

But dont contact any of these writers just yetwell get to that in a

later step. First, we need to determine if the writer is worth contacting

at all, and to do that we need to know their social media Reach

STEP TWO: Determine Reach

Once you have a list of 20 potential contributors, its time to vet the

candidates. Like I mentioned earlier, you need to be picky for this

strategy to work -- especially if you are going to pay for content.


12/24


Take a thorough look at the writers personal blog, their companys

website, their Facebook page, Twitter page, etc. You want to learn

what theyre all about. Turn it into a mini-job interview if you want.

Pretend theyre running for elected oce...

The main criteria you are judging:

Can they write coherent sentences?

Do they appear to have a good overall knowledge and understanding

of your topic?

Do they have enough clout on social media to boost your site?

Ironically enough, theres an app for #3 its called Klout.

Klout is the quick and dirty way to size up potential writers and deter-mine the size of their audience. In short, Klout aggregates a persons

popularity across a bunch of social platforms and gives them a Klout

score. The nice thing about Klout is that it isnt fooled by people who

buy 20,000 Twitter followers on Fiverr or come up with some other

spammy way to game their social media numbers.

When it comes to Klout, 40 is an average score for most people with a

social media prole -- 20 is lowest score possible. Im picking on one

of our editors here in the image below (trust me, he wont mind); 66 is

actually pretty good

and just to give you a little more perspective, Kim Kardashian has a

Klout score of 88 right now. Go Tim!! :)


13/24


Once you know that a particular writer has at least some Reach (we

like to see a score of 55 or higher), its time to reach out and touchsomeone

STEP THREE: Making Contact

Finally, its time to actually contact the prospects that have made it all

the way through your vetting process.

Email is probably going to be your most common form of outreach,

but we have also had good luck contacting guest contributors through

Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Google+.

Here are a few examples of blogger outreach emails that have worked

in the past


14/24


You can also feel free to copy and paste this template

Hi ____

Im the Managing Editor at ____.com, and I would love to feature you

as a guest contributor on the site. We focus on _____ and ____, but we

always appreciate big picture ____ topics as well.

Just to give you a quick background on ______, weve built a veryloyal community of ______, small business owners, and ______ man-

agers who are always looking for a way to expand their businesses.

Now, were focusing on building the ____ brand to a whole new level!

To do that, we need some expert contributors like you. Of course,

wed love to promote you, your blog, your book, etc. on the blog.

Let me know if youre interested. Id love to chat! XXX-XXX-XXXX

Best,

--

Our top 3 contact options are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, be-

cause most users have these accounts linked to their smart phones

and that ensures many of these social media conversations quickly

evolve into phone conversations.


15/24


By the time youve got the opportunity to talk to potential guest blog-

gers on the phone, your chances of getting them to write for you blog

are pretty high

but even if this leads to an email conversation, like this one did,

youre still headed in the right direction.

HINT: A good sneaky little trick if you are getting started is to

not require the content to be unique. You dont actually care if

the content has been published elsewhere, because this is not

an SEO play (its a direct trac play from them bragging about

how their article got republished). Allowing them to give you

pre-published content lowers the barrier to entry and opens the

door to the relationship.

Once you have made contact and started the relationship, the next

step is to agree on price and deliverables

STEP FOUR: DO THE DEAL

Heres where youll agree on a fee (if necessary) and make an agree-

ment with your contributor about deliverables, bios, backlinks, pro-

motions and posting frequency.

When it comes to paying for content, youll want to do some research

to nd out what others in your niche are paying.


16/24


You can do this by browsing the job boards on sites like ProBlogger

(jobs.problogger.net) or your local Craigslists writing section.

And remember, it doesnt have to cost you a fortune.

For example, right now LifeHack.org is paying just $5 per article


17/24


and theyre getting over 1.5 MILLION unique visitors a month so

they must be doing something right.

Once youve ironed out the details with your guest contributor, its

really helpful to have a page on your site that sets a few guidelines for

guest contributors. This way, after your conversation, you can direct

your guest contributors to this page to reinforce your content guide-

lines.

Here are a couple of examples so you can see how other sites do it

Cracked.com does a good job attracting writers


18/24


and has a good sales page to convince them to write for them:

LifeHack.org also does a good job

And in case youre wondering, were always looking for content for

DigitalMarketer.com, so we have a page up on our site as well


19/24


Once you have agreed on deliverables and have posted a page on your

site that encourages writers to contact you, the next step is to go into

editor mode and make sure the content youre posting is of the high-

est quality possible

STEP FIVE: Be CriticalBe Very Critical

As your contributors send in their content, youll need to check it with

a critical editors eye.

So, what are you looking for?

Every once in a while, youll come across a contributor that does

almost nothing but promote themselves in their posts. This is bad for

your blog, because it really provides no good information for your

readers.

Also, these self-promotional posts include tons of obnoxious bragging

and links AWAY from your site

These are the types of posts that youll want to send back to the writer

along with a nicely-worded message asking them to makes a few rea-

sonable changes.

Heres a list of the items youll want to make sure each guest post

includesand excludes:

No more than 2 outgoing links (and preferably none)

1 or 2 links in the authors bio, no more

Posts should all be edited for spelling and grammar

Each post should ask for comments

Also, before you click the post button on the article, be sure to nd

a few related keywords in the article that you can link back to other

related posts on your site.

For example, lets say you run a camping site that is publishing an ar-

ticle about starting a re with wet wood. Im not a huge fan of rough-

ing it, but this sounds like something a camping enthusiast would

want to know. :)

If one of the steps in the article was to sharpen your knife so you could

cut up small bits of wood into kindling (again, no idea if this works or


20/24


notjust roll with it), then you would want to link the phrase sharpen

your knife or get a sharp knife to another post about knife sharpen-

ers or even a review of knives.

Get the idea?

This process is known as interlinking, and when done properly it

can not only give your search rankings a boost, it can also increase

your overall pageviews and the amount of time your readers spend on

your site because they follow different rabbit trails from one post to

another.

And in the world of Authority Sites, rabbit trails are very, very good

things.

Just dont overdo it

The last thing you should be picky about is how your guest contribu-

tors interact with your users. Be upfront about the fact that you want

your contributors to interact with commenters on your site. In fact,

they should want to do this on their own.

If they refuse to engage with your audience, maybe theyre not a good

t. Its that important


21/24


STEP SIX: Leverage Their Reach

Most of your writers will tweet or share their article almost as soon as

its published (even without you asking), but in case they forget this is

the time to send them a nice little email encouraging them to spread

the word.

9 times out of 10 theyll be happy to do it, but if they dont no big-

gie you just know not to pay them to write for you again.

Just to be clear, you should always be willing to post great content

even if it doesnt come with free trac. At the end of the day, the sites

with the best content will win the day, so if you have a great writer but

theyre a little stingy with their Reach keep publishing them.

If their content is easily replaceable, though, go with someone who

will bring BOTH content and trac to the table.

Ok, so now you have content and you have trac. The last step is to

expand the relationship

STEP SEVEN: Go Back for More

Once youve had time to gather feedback about a guest contributors

content -- i.e. that its informative, thoughtful, edited, it got views/com-

ments, and they tweeted about it -- its time to take this relationship to

the next level

Write your guest blogger a thank you note. Email them and let them

know how much your readers enjoyed their guest content. For exam-

ple, you might say, Your post was our highest trac post this week,

or Your post sparked a lot of discussions and got 23 comments.

Then, ask them if theyd like to become a regular (weekly, monthly, or

even quarterly) contributor. Maybe they got a lot of trac as a result

of their post and they want to start writing a weekly column. It never

hurts to ask


22/24


Why Being An Authority Is So

Much Better Than Being a Blogger

This report is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to leveragingthis trac loophole to boost your sites trac, authority, and prot-

ability.

This is what I have been implementing in my blogs across a wide ar-

ray of niches, and guess what?

Were seeing a ood of highly qualied trac coming to our sites

regularly as a result

For WAY less money than we would have had to spend to get the same

trac through advertising

This is a simplied version of the very same trac formula I teach in

much greater depth in AuthorityROI. If you own a blog or authority

site (or if youd like to start one), you will denitely want to be a part

of this training.

Heres why this model is vastly superior to the way most bloggers

operate:

You dont need a product, sales copy, or even an idea... you

just need to be passionate about a market where great con-

tent and fascinating experts already exist

You can become a respected authority in virtually any mar-

ket even if youre a complete no-name today

Youll be able to generate cash on demand (by using your

trac to build an email list) which is something most ordi-

nary bloggers can only dream about

You dont have to be a writer (just become Oprah) - Its more

protable to be an authority that draws attention to the best

content in YOUR niche

You become an insider. Doors will begin to open for you

and even the best-known experts in your space will start ask-

ing YOU for favors!


23/24


If you just like to write for fun and youre not looking to make money

from your blog, then admittedly AuthorityROI is probably not right for

you.

But if the goal of your site is to make you real money and build author-

ity for your brand, then AuthorityROI is perfect!

Again, you can get more details by going to:

http://www.AuthorityROI.com

I hope you found this report valuable, and more importantly I hope it

encourages you to make some changes to your own blog.

If you do, Id love to hear your results good or bad.

Either way, lets continue the conversation over at:

https://www.AuthorityROI.com/access/free-trafic-loophole

To building authority,

Ryan Deiss
http://www.authorityroi.com/https://www.authorityroi.com/access/free-traffic-loopholehttps://www.authorityroi.com/access/free-traffic-loopholehttp://www.authorityroi.com/


24/24

Copyright 2013 by Idea Incubator, LP

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.

Published by:

Idea Incubator, LP

4330 Gaines Ranch Loop, Suite 120

Austin, TX 78735

Website: http://www.DigitalMarketer.com

E-Mail: Visit us on the web at [email protected]
http://www.digitalmarketer.com/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.digitalmarketer.com/

Documents

Free Traffic Loophole