Setup mega article blog on the cheap?

Content requirements have gone up. If we really wanted to do something with a site to get traffic we need content similar to thewirecutter. Long, in depth content targeted to converting keywords.

Yes, there is a 7,500 word guide for.. paper shredders.

2012 thewirecutter – “revenue is low, about $50,000 a month, but it’s doubling every quarter”.

So how to go about this? On the cheap, at least to start..

Target Low Competition Products

Identify a product or preferably group of products that sell and does not have extensive reviews written . If you look at thewirecutter their roundups work well, because you get coverage for search on more than just the single product. The “not as good” products receive exposure. This product(s) needs to have enough features to write about extensively. I would find it hard to write about a moulded plastic garden chair but something like a tape gun (as an example) I could write about even though I know very little about them. There is the grip, the wheel the tape goes on, the rolling wheel where the tape lives, the plastic tab at the top, the spring loaded thing that holds the tape against the These products are found using amazon best sellers or similar. If we had an active site you could use trending new products to find new products without lengthy reviews written.

So continuing the tape gun example. Search for tape gun on amazon, pick a relevant product, click through to the product page then click through to the category “Packaging Tape Dispensers”.

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Office-Products-Packaging-Tape-Dispensers/zgbs/office-products/1068984/ref=zg_mw_tab_t_bs

Here we have the best selling tape dispensers. Sweet. Pick 5-10. The top few best sellers are obvious picks here and then we can go for other models that are high up but look/operate slightly differently for variation.

Tape guns are not the best example because we should aim for something a little more expensive…

Mega Article Structure and Content

Introduction – Introduction to tape guns. Who uses tape guns. Why use. What a good tape gun is. Etc. This is split here and the “additional generic product details” section below.
[Product block linking to best + runner up products]
Additional generic product details
Product 1
Product 2
Product 3
Product 4
Product 5
Overall comparisons if applicable
Pros and Cons of each product.
Multiple buying locations where possible + opinion about the best place to buy (the one we want them to buy from obviously)
Closing

The articles are incredibly detailed buying guides. The will list pros and cons, reference other places on the web where needed and in general try to persuade the visitor to buy the product. and use keywords to target customers who are more likely to convert is key here.

http://backlinko.com/commercial-intent

How to get articles written?

The writers on Fiverr range from terrible to ok. I would not have confidence approaching any of them to write a 5000 word article/review* – because the good ones will be on other freelancing sites already. However because there are so many to choose from we could potentially build a team that writes sections of articles independently we then edit into the mega article.

Introduction – Additional generic details : This is basically a description of what the product is, what its purpose is, qualities that are good (and on the flip side qualities you don’t want). This can be quite long, depending on the product type. An outline would need to be written for the writers – this could be split between multiple 500 word jobs across multiple writers. This is intended to pad out the reviews, adding more potential keywords.

Product reviews – This is the meat of the article. The content needs to be written in such a way that it reads like we have actually used the products. The writers will need to use the product reviews on amazon to glean the necessary information. Why it is good, standout features, potential failings, pros and cons etc. An outline is required for this.

Keywords to provide. I have a tool that pulls keyword phrases from amazon reviews, this can assist in quickly narrowing down good/bad product qualities. If “Breaks tape” appears many times this is something to look into. On top of this a tool to pull all the key phrases off the wirecutter will help narrowing down what generic “best of” “your best” etc phrases to use. Finally some quick basic keyword research to round out what we give them.

Initially we should order 10 articles and then sort the terrible writers (and not use them again) and note down the decent ones. If the terrible articles can be edited into something worthwhile we can do so and add to the initial post. We repeat this process till we have 10-15 writers who we know write acceptably, follow our guidelines and use keywords in a decent manner.

In this way we outsource a huge article into many small, manageable pieces of research among a group of writers that do not have the ability to create the whole thing themselves. It will also organically add to the word and language variation as, in my experience, these guys use the same phrases repeatedly – cutting down on manual editing later.

*I would hesitate to put this on the previous copy-writer we had as well even though she was quite good. It is quite a daunting task which is why the idea outlined above of cutting it up into smaller chunks might work well. There is a decent amount of research involved in each section.

More notes

Custom images would assist with lending credibility to the article. Lifestyle images would be preferred over straight up product on white background type deals. They can be used to highlight good/bad points and show differences between each product. If we select a product that is not prohibitively expensive it can be on sold on ebay.

Social and links

Use a social network autoposter to send content to facebook/twitter/pintrest/etc.
Use Fiverr facebook/twitter mentions initially. I used this on the aquabuy hatcher kickstarter campaign with reasonable results. One time payment for one time mention to tens of thousands of fb/twitter users. Key here is to use unique tracking URLs in order to ascertain which are scams and which work. The fact that aquabuy worked quite well for such a niche product leads me to think that a more mainstream product could generate significant traffic. Unfortunately it does not work well for our normal australian sites.
Buy some fb/twitter followers to raise overall status.

Finally

That is basically the plan. It is an attempt to create long, in depth review content on a budget. The type of content that is required now but is expensive (or requires very specific knowledge by one person) to create.