How to Scale Content Part 1

This post was written assuming that you already have a damn good VA.  If you don’t, plan the next week or two to find one using the tips in this article, and then continue reading here.

I’ve gotten a lot of emails and questions about scaling content needs.  Post Panda, this is one of the hardest elements of micro niche site building to scale.  Spun content using synonyms no longer works – there are variations that I have found to work on a small scale, but to be 100% safe you have to write unique content.

Not only does the content have to be unique, but it has to actually provide value too. Publishing sub-par 3rd world writing with tons of filler content on a site ranking in the #1 spot will definitely get your competitors filing spam complaints.  I have found you will not pass a spam complaint with a site with under 5 pieces of good content (and if you get de-indexed, filing a reconsideration request with 5+ pieces of good content WILL pass, you just may have to file more than once).

MNS building is a numbers game.  If you expect your site to earn $30/mo and to last for 6 months at minimum, you’re looking at the site earning about $150 (discounting the month or so without Adsense).  Now a site may last longer than 6 months – with some luck it will lasts you years – but this is a safe number to expect.  Because as you know, this is a high risk, high reward game.

So let’s say you have a VA managing your portfolio, but not doing the writing.  She/he (I suggest she and will use that  pronoun to save time writing), does your keyword research, specs out let’s say 3 articles according to my 2nd keyword research video, launches your sites and does the link building.  She should be able to handle 5 sites/day like this once she’s got some practice (and you should make that a requirement).   You pay her pretty well to ensure she’s loyal, works nights, and doesn’t work 4 jobs on you, let’s say $500/mo.  That works out to $5 per site, with domain costs we’re up to $15/site.

Now comes the content.  You want 3-4 articles on the money site, and also 1-2 articles that will be used for link building on your expired domains.  So that works out to 5 articles per site, and since you’re building sites in topical categories of at least 15 sites, you’re looking at needing at least 75 articles per month.

So aside from writing 75 articles a month yourself, which I encourage you to do if you’re just starting out, here are your outsourcing options:

Go to a writing service.  This is my last alternative, but I’ll start with it because it’s easiest to setup.  Don’t go to a cheap, crappy writing service like Iwriter.  You will likely just have to re-write the content once it has ranked.  I do like text broker’s 3 star service, and I have heard articlez.com is good as well though I have never used it.  A 400 word article will cost you $6.40 on text broker, and then your VA has to find images, and post the actual article in WP.  This means rather than launching 5 sites a day, you’ve fallen down to 3-4 sites a day.  Your cost has also now gone to $25-30 for content, leaving you at $40-45 total (plus a few extra bucks now that your VA is posting).  And you’ll always wonder if the content is good enough.

Hire a part-time writer.   This is my first choice.  I ask my staff to refer writers over.  If they don’t know anyone, I ask them to send out feelers to all their friends.  I offer referral bonuses to find them, and pay the bonus in 2 parts once the person has completed their test task (500PHP bonus), and once they have completed 60 articles (2500 PHP bonus).   I pay 100PHP per 400 word article, this includes:

• Writing of the article
• Finding Images for the article (I have a technique for this that I may show privately, but cannot  show publicly)
• Posting of the article on the minisite
• Posting Links (if this is an article for my expired domain private blog network)

Organization

Organization is easy with this system, as a single VA is simply in charge of her batch of domains.  I have a google doc I call “Domain Workflow”, that has columns for  every aspect of the sites from start to finish.  The VA just fills this out and checks things off as they are completed.  This includes: Date bought, Date launched, IP, Template, Unique  Banner Date, Current # of articles, Stickied post, Keyword Targeting Date, Unique Meta Desc date,  Unique Title Desc, Sitemaps activated, Piwik activated, Review Pass Date, Date begun link building, # of linking sites, date end link building, Review Ranks, Adsense Account & Channel, Adsense date added, Final Review Date.

You can also have your CMS organize content, which is what I am integrating now.   This automates all the above, and automation also allows you to prioritize things that a VA simply wouldn’t be able to do.  For example if a certain domain in your portfolio has higher profit potential then another, then you should develop content there first.  Or if a site has just hit top 3 or 5 or #1 in the SERPs you want to develop content there before you develop content on new sites.  My CMS also writes meta descriptions and titles automatically based on the target keywords, and alerts me when the sites are ranking so my VAs can write unique ones (and add new content).

If you’re ready to start scaling up your content, I hope this post as motivated you to go out and get at it.  If you’re looking to scale a little more creatively using automation technique, stay tund.  I will follow up on this post with a nifty little content tool I made as a proof of concept.  I proved it’s concept and am now developing it further, but this should get your creative juices flowing!

Cheers,

Hayden

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