Forget Digg: Don’t Underestimate the Money Power of Traditional Media
For many, the goal of getting on a social media site like Digg, Reddit or Stumbleupon is the ultimate for their blog or website. I know that it’s an exhilarating feeling when a site that has been getting a few hundred hits a day all of a sudden is swarmed with tens of thousands of people. I’ve been there and it is one of the best feelings in the world the first time one of your articles makes it there.
While getting on social network sites has some alternative benefits (increasing rss readers, getting backlinks, etc), making a lot of money off the traffic isn’t one of them. The people who frequent the social media sites are Internet savvy and rarely click on advertisements. Of the times that my sites have made it onto Digg, I would estimate that the traffic increased my earnings anywhere from $10 to $50 in adsense earnings depending on how much further the post traveled from Digg onto regular blogs. If you aren’t making much money, that can be a significant amount of money for a day, but if you really want to make money, you should be looking at other areas to bring in traffic.
One of these areas is traditional media. A lot of bloggers completely ignore offline media, but getting a mention in a traditional media outlet can be extremely profitable for your site. In fact, a single mention in the traditional media can be worth several thousand dollars.
This happened to my Timeshare niche site last month. It’s a site that I haven’t touched for months, but it is one of the better performing niche sites I have created bringing in a couple of hundred dollars a month from search traffic. In June it brought in $258, in July $223 and in August $272, so it had been fairly consistent over an extended period of time.
Then in early September, an article in the AARP magazine began arriving in homes that included a reference to this website. Traffic increased going from about 200 hits a day to 4000 on the busiest day and stayed above 1000 hits a day for over 2 weeks. This may seem like small peanuts compared to the tens of thousands of hits an article that hits the front page of Digg brings in, but the main difference was that these visitors actually clicked on advertisements. The results were that Timeshare Trap earned $3125 in September - and increase of almost $3000 from a single mention in an article.
Whether you have a blog or niche websites, taking the time to get mentions in traditional media should be part of your plan to get word out about your site and increase your income. Here are a few things that you can do to help in this respect:
Make Contacts: It is well worthwhile to make contact with people that write in traditional media outlets. One advantages of blogging is that you often are the first to see trends that are emerging or see stories that attract a lot of attention. Establishing a friendly relationship with traditional media writers and passing them story ideas that you haven’t seen addressed in the traditional media much will establish you as a person that they will contact when they need a quote or opinion for an article in your subject area.
Offer Free Articles: Just like guest writing on larger blogs is a great way to get word out about your blog or site, the same is true writing for traditional media. While it may be more difficult to get your work into larger media outlets, smaller local papers are always looking for quality content to add to their papers.
Set Up A Media Link: Set up a media contact somewhere on your blog or site so that if anyone from the media does come across it, they can easily contact you. While this information is often available under contact information, having a “media” area shows that you are willing to talk to the media and help them (something that not all bloggers are willing to do) and increases your chances of being contacted.
Reply Quickly: If you are ever contacted by the media, get back to them as soon as you can. Most writers are on deadlines and don’t have a lot of time to get the information they need. They have likely contacted others besides yourself and the person that provides them the information they need the quickest is the one that is going to be quoted in the article most of the time. Responding quickly also establishes you as a good contact for future articles.
Sell Yourself: Just like you need to sell your blog online for people to discover you, the process is similar in traditional media. Being mentioned in a few articles will help establish you as a good contact and other writers researching will come across your name. This can lead to even more contacts and media mentions. Take the time to sell yourself to the traditional media as well as online.
if you are like most bloggers I have talked with, you probably haven’t spent much, if any, considering strategies to get mentions in traditional media. if you haven’t, you most definitely should begin thinking about it right now.
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Image courtesy of sweetpea515
Posted: March 23rd, 2008 under Blogging, Making Money, Websites.
Comments: 17
Comments
Comment from Marko Novak
Time: October 24, 2007, 10:56 pm
Wow, that’s a lot of money coming from only one site. I don’t understand how can you get $3000 from 4000 hits.
I had 18,000 hits at my best and I earned around $40.
Comment from financial hack
Time: October 25, 2007, 12:51 am
It wasn’t from 4000 hits - that was just the heaviest day. It stayed above 1000 hits for 2 weeks - over that period I received about 30,000 hits in total and hits were still above average for the rest of the month. It certainly helped that the ads on the site pay above average.
The key was that the people visiting were looking for specific information and the ads were able to convert well above what you would notmally receive - they converted at about 20% during that time which is a huge leap from the 5% - 7% conversion the site usually receives.
Comment from Mike
Time: October 25, 2007, 7:44 pm
Great advice. Another idea is to get your name associated with a particular niche, as though you are an expert in that niche. So when a story breaks in that niche you will be the first one reporters call for a comment.
Comment from Marko Novak
Time: October 26, 2007, 5:25 am
You have very good conversion on your site. My is much lower. I’m doing better with Google AdSense now, I was getting very CPC few months back but now I realized CPC is better if you have one adsense ad on your blog. This one ad makes me more than 3 I had before.
Comment from Kirsty
Time: October 26, 2007, 7:15 am
This is great advice. I’ve long been dubious about traffic that comes from places where the readers are net savvy like Digg etc. and other blogs. I value search traffic a lot more and I hadn’t even really thought about chasing offline mentions but I would think (and you’ve proven it) that it would be great traffic to have. Thanks for the tips, I have a few sites that I might put to the test. Nice site, btw.
Comment from financial hack
Time: October 26, 2007, 8:02 am
Social network traffic is useful, but in other ways than earning money. It’s an excellent way to get backlinks and mentions on other sites that can bring new readers to your blog. There are definitely reasons to try and attract it, but it will do very little to improve the amount of money that you make on the site.
Definitely give traditional media a try. It is a greatly under-utilized place to drive traffic to your sites and well worth the time and effort that you need to invest to start creating it.
Comment from Alex
Time: October 26, 2007, 6:25 pm
I’ve tried squidoo and a couple other social sites, but they just haven’t produced the traffic that say a mention in a traditional magazine might produce. Time to start sending press releases! 
Comment from Free Directory
Time: October 27, 2007, 4:27 am
Nice article thanks ! After the goings on of the last few days
I think we are all going to have to start doing things a little differently 
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Time: October 31, 2007, 4:45 am
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Comment from david
Time: November 25, 2007, 1:41 am
Right on - the several interviews that I have done with “traditional” media (newspaper, radio, and TV news) have generated enough of a bump in traffic to increase my ad click-through rates way above what a web-link normally does. As much as we bloggers sometimes like to believe that everyone is as “tech savvy” as we are - or surfing blogs as often as we do - the reality is that about 90% of the folks out there rely almost exclusively on traditional media for news and tips.
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Time: November 26, 2007, 12:38 pm
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Time: December 15, 2007, 12:02 am
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Comment from josh
Time: December 15, 2007, 2:13 am
According to alexa, timesharetrap.com has a ranking of 1,872,000. It doesn’t make sense to me that my website that is ranked in the 400,000’s only makes about $200/month through adsense and textlink ads combined. How is this site making 272 without the help from the traditional media?! please share.
Comment from financial hack
Time: December 15, 2007, 6:01 am
@ Josh
Alexa is a bad indicator of traffic in many circumstances - the person using the computer has to be using the Alexa bar (or Firefox where it can be added). The type of people that visit this site would likely not have either meaning that the Alexa ranking is a bit misleading in this case.
This is also a very niche site with the ads displaying being very relevant to those that visit the site. It has an extremely high click through rate (compared to most of my other sites)with a competitive keyword that pays well.
Comment from peter guszti
Time: December 27, 2007, 8:26 am
Great Article, and very true as well. i am in australia, but i have to definetly try paper media more., I have even listed this article on my blog, http://www.opentopix.com/topic/tech-news/will-standard-media-die-or-social-network-media-be-future
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Time: May 7, 2008, 2:21 am
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Comment from Tarik
Time: June 17, 2008, 1:18 am
The high paying timeshare niche has a lot to do with earnings. Great write-up w/ proof and reasoning behind earnings.
I recently got contacted by a Tech magazine that plans to future one of my websites. It’s very important to reply to the media quickly. The quicker, the better.
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