Your Content Philosophy

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Maybe this sounds like hocus-pocus, but I believe it is critical to your success or failure as an information marketer.  So please bear with me and read this section carefully.

There’s a lot of confusion and controversy about fair, ethical use of articles and other forms of content on the Internet. They apply particularly to content that you haven’t created yourself.

Broadly, in content marketing (just as in life itself) there are two categories of people:

* those who exploit a situation, and
* those who make the world a better place.

Now, I’m not getting into a debate or discourse on which is better, holier, or more ‘right’.  Which path you opt to tread is entirely your choice, and might depend upon factors I don’t know and cannot imagine.  Just understand that there are two distinct paths.

Those who exploit the prevailing content-marketing scenario are focused on one thing, and that alone.  They want to obtain a high ranking on search engines for competitive keywords (ones that offer multiple quick ways to make money from visitors) and drive floods of traffic to their sites… never mind how they do it.

And there are many ‘black hat’ tactics to achieve this end . They can use scripts and software, ingeniously mixed together, to throw up ‘junk content sites’ that often make very little sense, purposely look ugly or repulsive, and are geared to doing one thing well:   getting visitors to click on money-spinning links that are placed on these websites.

I have little experience with this style of content marketing, but I know it is profitable.  During the heyday of Google Adsense – a contextual advertising program launched by the search engine giant, Google.com – many folks were banking five-figure checks every month, based on this kind of strategy.

Here’s the downside:  these sites may not last for long in search engines.  When Google realized that the black-hat techniques being used by some content publishers were adversely affecting the experience their service was delivering to the search users, they cracked down heavily on the ‘junk content’ sites.  Big checks magically vaporized into thin air.

The owners of this type of content sites will always be scrambling to stay ahead of the game. If you decide to follow them, you shouldn’t mind if you too lose your cash-generating high-traffic magnets overnight.  Just keep building some more.  And then more.  If this sounds like working for money, you’re right.  It is.  Don’t confuse this with a real ‘infopreneur business’.

Sure, you’ll make money – maybe a lot of it.  But you don’t have a sustained process for acquiring clients, making repeat sales to them, building a list, and achieving steady growth across a longer time frame.  That approach, by the way, is at the core of a successful, sustainable infopreneur business.

The other category of people is the ones who want to ‘make the Internet a better place’. They do this by adding valuable content to the Web.

While this is a harder path to tread, in the longer term it is more sustainable and can be scaled up over time.  There’s some hard work involved while things get going, but after a while it can be organized to be ’set-and-forget’ simple.

There are some content sites I built in 1999, and haven’t touched since then except for renewing the domain names.  Even today, these sites get hundreds or even thousands of visitors every month; and they bring in a few hundred dollars in profit each month, hands-free.

That’s the difference.  With this strategy, in the end the result is a high-quality, content-rich website.  This site is a useful online resource many people visit over and over again, because it truly adds value to their lives in some way.  It’s a place people tell other people to go for quality information and support.  It’s a portal that search engines will find and reward, sooner or later.  It’s even a website that could become an authority on the niche topic around which it is built.

This kind of site will easily be able to create a sense of online community among users, nurture a loyal following and have staying power.  And this can become the kernel for a business built around that theme.

Which model do you want to follow?

As I said before, it’s your choice to make.  Both are lucrative models.  Both need some work.  They have some significant operational and strategic differences.  Most important, they are philosophically distinct.

Your choice of one over the other is a reflection of your own attitude and approach towards your online business.  Just make sure you’re clear about which kind you’re going after, since much of what you’ll do in the weeks ahead will be determined by this decision.

Other Ways To Customize Content

Break up the article into several smaller sections of varying length.

I have used this technique in many different ways on my own websites.  It is VERY effective.

Let’s say you have a 5,000-word special report.  You could split it up into 10 pages of 500 words each.  Or 50 pages of 100 words each.  Or any other combination.  Best of all, your site will still retain value, even if you are forcing a reader to click on multiple links to complete reading your content.

Rearrange content in your article.

This is a tricky way to make your article unique, but it works!

All you do is juggle paragraphs around.  For instance, take paragraph #1 and put it in the middle of the article; take another from the end and bump it up to the top; and if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, repeat the process with other content!

However, once again, make sure the article is readable from the start to the end.  There are more than enough scripts that take web content, slice and dice it up any way you like, and vomit out the result into a page of scrambled text that looks as if a monkey sat at your keyboard and banged on it!

If that kind of stuff makes you go “Wow! Cool!”, then you’re probably on a different wavelength.  It all boils down to your ‘content philosophy’, which we’ll be discussing next.

Modify or rewrite a section of the article in your own words.

Now we’re getting into a more advanced form of content modification, one where you practically co-author the piece.  You add value to the outline you’re starting out with, throwing in your opinions, comments, improvements, reviews or more.  You could go to any extent with this, even practically rewriting the article in your own words, thus making it entirely unique.

All of these techniques are quick and easy to follow.  Any of them will set your version of the article collection apart from any other on the web.  To save yourself time and trouble, you could even hire someone to help you with it.

Make Your Content Unique

The simplest way to make your content unique is to create it yourself!

If not that, have it created exclusively for you.

And then, protect it by copyrighting and do not give anyone else permission to use it, on pain of legal action.

Like all powerfully effective solutions, this one will take time, effort and money to put into action.

A quicker, easier way is to get your hands on content that already exists, and modify it to suit your needs.

Here’s a question I’ve often heard asked about using ‘reprint rights’ or ‘private label’ articles:

“Will Google and other search engines view it as ‘duplicate
content’ and penalize me for it? “

Well, yes… and no.

If you simply buy a pack of articles or pull them from a directory and slap them up on your website or submit them to article directories, your articles will be duplicates of others.

And that’s the best reason NOT to use such articles in that way (apart from the ethical issues of copying other people’s content, or feeding off someone else’s work).  Instead, spare a few moments and put in a little effort to make your articles unique.  Here are a few easy ways you can do it:

Insert the articles into a unique website template.

Design (or have someone create) a unique website template for you.  It acts as a container, and you’ll slot your articles into a section of it where the rest of the template’s content frames your article or content.

This template doesn’t have to be anything fancy (though it could be, if you’re a good web designer).  The very act of putting your content inside a template, framing it with other unique, related content, will distinguish it from all other content resources using the same article.

Of course, you’ll have to make sure the ‘frame’ you’re building around the ‘borrowed’ content is substantial enough to make a difference.  For instance, if you put a 1,000-word article below an introductory paragraph that says:

“Here’s a great article I just read about XXXX…”

… well, it probably won’t make a big difference in the content duplication score, since most of your content page will still be seen as identical to others.

Add an introductory paragraph to the article.

This is simple, elegant and often effective.

This has the dual benefit of both making my article unique, and also involving the reader in the consumption of the article, building up its value, enticing them to pay attention and read what follows.

You could write a unique introduction to each article you use on a content site.  Or you could use a generic introduction like the one above.  If you plan to go the second route, make sure you change a small part of it every now and then, or else that segment of text will become a ‘fingerprint’ by which SE’s (and other people ’spying’ on you) can quickly and easily locate all your published work.

This is especially important if you’re playing in multiple niches, and don’t want your competition to know exactly which ones they are!

Here are a few more ways you can make unique any generic content that you re-purpose for your use.

Delete at random around 30% of the article, or rewrite that 30%.

This is quick, easy, and relatively effective.  If you have access to articles (private label or from other ‘free to reprint’ sources), you could simply delete a few sentences or paragraphs randomly, and get an end result that’s unique to your site.

But make sure you read the article to see if it still makes sense and offers value to a human visitor to your website.  Otherwise, what you’re creating is little more than random sentences thrown together.  If that’s the extent of your goal, you will never become a true infopreneur.

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