My Best Article Ever, Is Honey Good For You?
Post by Robert Campbell on Sep 04, 2010
Back when I was living in Kenora, Ontario in the spring of 2007, I was looking for new ways to make money online, and I explored writing articles on spec.
When I changed hats and became a ‘web writer’ that spring, I dumped a lot of old TV proposals and strange pieces of original content into different article directories on the web. The content was already created, it was what was left over from a career as a screenwriter, documentary TV researcher. Because I could see the potential online, I was incentivized by very small returns at first… So I repurposed word files on an old writing computer and dumped them on the net under the user name ‘Roberrific’. If you do a search on that name today, you can see a massive database of content, a legacy of Grandpa’s secrets, Dumpdiggers, and ethanol and foam footware articles. There are over sixty different articles on Helium and Triond, and twenty plus each on EzineArticles.com, Amazines, IdeaMarketers and of course Squidoo.com and Factoidz, and other smaller article replication websites.
This is a very valuable exercise for a writer that’s transitioning into becoming a blogger, on a path to becoming a full fledged web content producer, (and then evolving into a Social Media Marketer, and then perhaps evolving into a Social Relevance Producer). The act of dumping sixty articles at once however is NOT recommended and was a terrible mistake – these pieces should have been fed out over time, for they would have improved with every lesson learned on that steep curve.
After dumping a dozen or more articles on Triond.com, I started to earn a monthly income. At first it was just a few dollars but then it grew… Last month it was $12, and the month before that it was $18 US dollars. And I don’t have to apply for it – the money comes automatically every thirty some days from the Stanza Corp directly into my Paypal. Triond is the best free article publishing system for ease of use and payment that know * This is not to say that they pay the best rates, but rather, the article network is ingeniously well optimized, and yet allows writers to plant ‘do follow’ links. Good rich media articles published here will show up in search engines if properly promoted.
Some articles do better than others, because of a catchy title in a popular category, or a seasonal idea, ***… quite often its because some fascinating hook ** but articles can be connected to Facebook profiles and find relevance through the author and friends. Its when content headlines start showing up in search engines however, that the author’s revenue really begins to grow – Triond is a user generated content platform that harnesses ad networks a shares a small amount of revenue with each writer.
My best article ever, is a piece I wrote and published on Triond one day called Is Honey Good For You? and indeed, I was such a noob that I accidentally published two articles in one slot. The second half of this disjointed piece should be titled Single Variety Honey Crops in Ontario and published as another article but I screwed up, and was resigned to the mistake, as I had so much more to publish that day.
I’m glad I didn’t change anything, because this article has been very successful, with over 60,000 views in three years of life! It gets about 150 readers a day, and its been ‘liked’ 288 times and shared on Facebook over 50 times; the article has 36 comments, all but two are entirely positive.
So when I check the stats on Triond for each individual article, I can see that this piece has made more money than all my other top five articles combined!
While the very best of my other articles will only get between ten and fifteen readers a day, this piece gets over 150 readers! Why?
Because its first in search engines for the often pondered question, is honey good for you?
This article now has its own social relevance; it answers a popular question. And it has a galaxy of admirers that have voted and made it known in their social networks that this is valauble information. And Google has found this piece and promoted it because of its high usability and the points it gets in their own complicated algorithmic assessment of its value to searchers. It ranks high.
This is a good example of positive social capital, and to follow Gary Vaynerchuk example in Crush It, I should probably start shooting more videos about honey production, and selling honey online. Here’s a clip I shot this summer in a beeyard with Campbells Honey.