I have had plenty of success these last few months after I decided to develop my revenue streams. Basically I run a company that manages other people’s social media accounts. After doing this for some time I have learnt plenty of growth and monetization techniques and decided to apply this for my own personal gain.
It is far more rewarding developing and delivering something for yourself rather than for others. The only thing is it took a little bit longer to get the first paychecks in through the door! And although I prefer Instagram techniques, this is one of the strategies I have been using recently.
You are going to need a:
- Wordpress Blog
- Google Adsense Account
- Wordpress Plugin to create Gallery Posts
- Wordpress Plugin to implement Google Adsense Adverts
- Wordpress Plugin for SEO - Yoast SEO
- Facebook Account
- Some capital to invest ~$300.00
First of all you will need to find yourself some good, engaging content. This is really the lynch-pin to all of these strategies but by using websites such as Buzzfeed, Diply, 9Gag, Reddit and so on you can soon build up a plethora of opportunities.
Fill out your blog with some ‘anchor articles’. These are 1000-2000 word articles that aren’t spun in anyway. These make your site look legitimate in the eyes of the supplier (more on that in a minute) as well as Google (if you haven’t already got an activated Adsense account). You’ll need maybe 4-5 anchor articles and another 10 500 words articles (can be of poorer quality). Stagger their release on your blog over a month or 2 (or just change the posted date to reflect this).
Now you’ll want to create a gallery post. These are posts where the user has to click a button to go to the next post. You may know them as “10 things you didn’t know about Macaulay Culkin” or “5 things only 90’s kids will remember”. The garbage click-bait titles you all know and love! That’s why Diply is a popular site - it has great posts you can learn from.
Place your Adsense advert before the gallery posts, post another advert between the description and gallery image and finally post one right at the end of the content. This means you are placing your ads prominently so that you know your viewers are exposed to them (EDIT: I am not advocating misleading or having your users misclick the adverts in anyway shape or form. That will lead to your Adwords account being banned due to a breach of TOS). That being said, I’ve had the best success with this type of placement.
Now to get your traffic. Don’t worry; you’re not going to SEO your blog to rank highly on SERP. No, you’re going to use Facebook and a ‘supplier’. I’ve tried this with actors, actresses, fitness idols, vloggers but the best success I have had is with social influencers and models.
Reach out to the Facebook pages with 1M, 2M, 3M+ followers and ask them how much it’d cost for them to cross-post your link at their peak-times in the week (they’ll know the data). I’ve had this as cheap as $100 before but one person quoted me $1000 for one post that’d be up for 4 hours… Use your common sense and see what works well for you and your budget. You’ll then get given an address to pay via Paypal and probably an invoice (considering these pages are usually run by businesses like mine!).
So what will happen now is that your link will be posted (go and check that it was) at the time specified. Their followers (1M+) will now see your image and click on it (due to the clickbait) and then they’ll scroll through the gallery posts (that’s 10x the exposure to adverts) and maybe click on it. The Yoast SEO plugin allows you to change what thumbnail is shown on Facebook when it’s shared. Use the one that is going to get the most engagement (famous actresses, semi-naked women (due to FB policies), amazing photos, luxury, money and so on - depending on the gallery).
Voila! You’ve built a (maybe free) blog - built content - developed traffic - converted through advertising - got paid.
Ok, so to get you guys started you can use Pinterest to find ‘Celebrities - then and now’. This’ll help you build your first gallery and is super easy to do.
All the best MPSocial! I’ll have more of these tid-bits coming soon so you can learn how to make money on Instagram and other platforms.
EDIT: Please read the comments below - some users think the idea has merit and others think this is a one way ticket to getting your Adsense account blocked! If you’re going to replicate this method then please ask in here first before you attempt it! Weigh in on the debate - that’s what this forum is all about after all!