Let me explain by using an example. Over at College Crunch, we have built a wide-net resource around the phrase “starting salary” – but we are not really interested in that specific phrase. Rather, we are interested in phrases like “starting salary for engineers” or “average starting salary for biochemists”

The phrase “starting salary” is just the singular phrase that all of the many search phrases we are targeting have in common. By creating a very large resource article that discusses the starting salaries of many careers, we are accomplishing multiple tasks at once:

1. We are building a unique resource that is link worthy from many different types of sites
2. We are creating a single, strong, authoritative page (rather than diluting the strength over hundreds of smaller pages)
3. We are reinforcing our common keyphrase (starting salary)
4. We are creating an expandable resource that can be made more valuable by adding new informational units (adding careers)
5. We are creating a platform from which to quickly gain search traffic for related phrases by doing Post-Hoc keyword researc

In general, I encourage every serious website to build out a few Wide-Net resources each year. Once you see the benefits of building big, structured content like this, you’ll want to do lots more.

1) The first pitfall is only relying on free content.

I see many new webmasters giving away all their content for free. They don’t have anything to sell other than ad space. Also, many of these webmasters are depending on AdSense for much of their revenue.

There’s nothing wrong with using free content. However, if you only have free content, you’re probably leaving a lot of money on the table.

Sure, you can rely on ads but you can keep the ads and earn more income by selling some of your content. You can sell an ebook, podcasts, videos, a paid membership section, or even a paid newsletter.

Also, by selling your content, you raise its perceived value. People value things more highly if they paid for it.

2) The second pitfall is not having enough free content.

Some online business start with the idea of just setting up a site and selling stuff. Many ecommerce sites are like this. However, the “build it and they will come” model doesn’t usually work online. There are too many competing sites. The internet is overcrowded and attention is scarce. You will need to spend much time and effort to get noticed and capture the attention of your intended audience.

One of the best ways to get traffic is through free content. Free content attract people to your site. It often takes a couple visits to a site before someone buys a product. A constant stream of free content can encourage visitors to keep coming back to your site. Eventually many of these visitors will pull their credit card from their wallet and buy something from your site.

Free content helps you site become a resource rather than a site that just sells products.

For example, a site that sells audiobooks can have articles about the best budget CD and mp3 players and interviews with the authors and narrators. The site can also have tutorials on how to use iTunes to organize your audiobook library.

The free content model especially works if you’re selling a service. For example, if you’re a wedding planner, you can have free articles and videos about principles for planning a great but low-stress wedding. This builds your credibility and helps prospective customers know you and trust you. This credibility and trust will lead to increased sales.

Sites That Use The Freemium Model

Let’s look at 3 examples of sites using the freemium model.

Performancing sells blog statistics software and marketing and blog management services. It attracts bloggers through its free blog posts that help bloggers succeed.

SEO Book sells an SEO ebook. Like Performancing, it attracts prospective customers through its blog.

ESPN sells subscription paid content called Insider. It has a ton of free content to draw readers. Also, non-paying visitors can see the first couple of paragraphs of the Insider articles. (Here’s an example.) These paragraphs entice people to subscribe.

Feedback

What kind of business model do you use for your site?

This post was inspired by this post, Freemium Publishing & Sustainable Business Models.

Here is a practical way to stand out from the crowd and capture the attention of your niche: Add audio and video to your sites.

This may be surprising to you, but a big percentage of the population doesn’t read. I found these quotes from the short ebook, Teaching Sells.

• 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
• 42% of college graduates never read another book.
• 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
• 57% of new books are not read to completion.
• Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.

In light of these stats, it’s surprising to find that many sites don’t offer video and audio content. And if a site does have video and audio content, oftentimes that content is not prominent on the site. Webmasters are readers, so we expect our audience to be readers too. However, the stats are clear. Many people don’t read much.

You can see the popularity of non-text content. YouTube, a video hosting site, is one of the most visited sites on the whole internet. The audiobook industry is growing and it’s worth over $400 million.

It’s doesn’t have to be a difficult thing to produce audio and video. You can take your existing text content and use them as a basis for your audio and video products.

Also, as you may have seen on YouTube, your non-text content doesn’t have to be super high quality. Your video content doesn’t have to look like it was created by a Hollywood studio. Your audio content doesn’t have to sound like it was made by a professional radio advertising firm. If you have a small budget, you can still produce quality non-text content. One of the most popular videos on YouTube was a online show produced by a webcam that cost less than $200.

By creating non-text content, you can get on relevant sites like podcast directories and video hosting sites. If you want your video and audio content to be found in the search engines, add text to your content. I like to publish transcriptions of my audio and video content.

Finally, you’re probably one of the few sites in your niche that’s using audio and video, so your site’s reputation and branding should go improve.

Further Reading

• Using Video and Audio to Build Your Brand
• Sketchcasts (another non-text way to produce content)

Some of the posts I write about the macroeconomic trends of online publishing and the search economy take 5 hours to write, get few or no comments, get few or no citations, and probably scare off potential customers. Those posts do not cater to people looking to buy SEO information. The short SEO videos I recently made are easier to create and easy to consume. Daily sales are near my all time high.

Oftentimes we build new sites in niches we’re experts in. This is a good thing. Expert knowledge is valuable. Expert content gets links and shows our readers we know what we’re talking about. However, because we’re experts, we often forget most of our readers are not experts and so we write too many “high level” articles. What’s the most useful content for our readers? I think it’s basic, fundamental content. The stuff for beginners.

Much of the content on Aaron Wall’s short SEO videos are basic SEO principles. Yet he’s making much more sales. The simple videos make him more money because they target people that are more likely to buy his SEO ebook. The SEO experts that follow his blog probably won’t buy his ebook because they’re experts already.

As a blogger, sometimes I feel like I should not post content geared towards beginners because I want to show off my expertise. Showing off your expertise is not a bad thing but make sure to intersperse beginner content with expert content. The simple, basic content reaches more readers. And even experts need to brush up on the basics.

Also, learn how to write the basic fundamentals of your niche in different ways so you don’t sound like a broken recorder Use different examples and illustrations. Use different mediums like video, audio, charts, graphs, pictures, and even sketchcasts.

People learn in different ways, so by varying your mediums and illustrations, you’ll be able to reach more people with the same content. Your content can be reformatted multiple times. This adds value to your site without you having to come up with new content. Also, this leads to better branding and market positioning.

So, ask yourself? Who are you targeting with your content? Is it mostly experts like yourself? Or is it also people who know less than you and are more likely to buy your product?