In the blogging sphere, there’s an annoying little myth which discourages actual progress.
This myth is that great content is enough.
Take this blog as an example. Over the last 216 days, I have pumped out some seriously RAD blog posts. Many of these publications use images, are well over 3,000+ words, and are well received among the measly few that have seen them.
Am I bitter?
Certainly not.
I’m new to this blogging business, and I have many other income streams that are considerably more lucrative. The main two being list building funnels and my YouTube Channel.
The Fantasy Unravels
There’s this notion that:
If you build it, they will come.
This appeals to us because it seems like a fair deal.
You provide value and you’re rewarded with TRAFFIC.
Not true!
The reality is that it’s not what you write that matters…
It’s how you MARKET what you write.
You could have the best written content in the world. It does not matter.
Who’s going to see it?
How to Market Your Crap?
This is a BIG topic.
I mean big in more ways than one.
Firstly, it’s big in terms of importance.
Traffic is the oxygen of your business.
Without it – your site will die.
Secondly, it’s discussed a lot.
Which leads to information overload. And a myriad of frustrated marketers.
There are many strategies for getting traffic to your blog.
The most popular two are breadcrumbs and the skyscraper technique.
In this post, we’ll be looking at my results from the latter.
What is the Skyscraper Technique?
The concept is simple.
- Find a blog post with TONS of social shares. Let’s call this Post X.
- Create something better than Post X. Make it longer, more visual, more exceptional.
- Contact the people that shared Post X, and show them YOUR stuff.
Easy enough, right?
This leads us to a couple crucial questions.
- Where do we find these posts?
- Where do we find these sharers?
There’s ONE tool that does both of these for you.
BuzzSumo (no affiliation) is a search engine that scrapes the amount of social sharers for any topic of your choice.
Here’s a look for the BuzzSumo search: How to Make Money on YouTube
When you type in any search, BuzzSumo reveals what content has the most shares.
But wait…
It gets even better than that.
Clicking on “View Sharers,” actually shows WHO shared it.
As seen here:
After clicking on “View Sharers”
…BuzzSumo will provide you with a list of the people that shared that piece of content.
Pretty cool, right?
But what the heck can I do with that?
Welcome to the Skyscraper Method
Now we can take our list of sharers, and contact them directly.
There are a number of ways to do this.
We can:
- tag them in a Tweet
- email them from their website
- call them on the phone
The most common way is option #2
It also happens to be quite easy to do.
We go to their website, and then we find their “contact us” page.
Not all websites have these – but the good one’s will.
Then we send send them a message.
Here’s where it gets a little dicey…
When you contact potential sharers of your blog, you have a couple ways to go.
You could bluntly ask them to share your stuff. This will have a reasonably high success rate.
BUT it will also piss off a bunch of future contacts.
I do NOT recommend this!
The better option is to just let them know about your content.
Some marketers would consider this quite passive. And in general, it’s the kind of behaviour that’s frowned upon in Make Money Online.
It stands out, though. In a good way.
Instead of being pushy, you’re kindly sharing a good post with them.
We already know these contacts are willing to share stuff. That’s how we found them.
With just a little nudge, we can get them to share OUR stuff.
Here’s the email template that I use:
[sociallocker id=”1572″]
OutReach Template <== Click here for Template
[/sociallocker]
You do not have to copy my template. You can create your own.
The whole idea here is that you are finding the right people.
And showing them something you know they’ll be interested in.
Now, let’s look at an example…
I created a long 4,000+ post on How to Grow a YouTube Channel.
This post was exceptional.
It covered the whole process of how to get YouTube subscribers, and even shared a couple lesser known tricks to steal some easy traffic. Highly recommended post.
So I wanted to test the Skyscraper Technique on this post to see what kind of results I could get with it.
So I went into my copy of BuzzSumo, and search for YouTube Marketing.
My search found some really good stuff.
Take a look:
So I completed the Skyscraper Technique as discussed.
I clicked on “View Sharers”
And I started contacting these sharers one by one.
It was tedious.
I hated it.
But I started getting some results.
If you know anything about me, though, you’ll know that I HATE WORK!
Seriously.
This whole blog and YouTube channel started because I didn’t want a day job.
Boring tasks are the bane of my existence.
And they should be for you, too.
So I found a guy on FaceBook willing to complete these tasks for $5/hour.
Can you imagine that?
ONLY FIVE BUCKS
… FOR A FULL HOUR!!
Turns out when you find someone that lives in a county like, Thailand or the Phillipines, they are very likely to work for cheap. Because they need a lot less money to pay their bills.
Sidenote: I’m off to Thailand on February 2nd.
One of the BEST advantages of the laptop lifestyle!
Anyways, so I purchased 5 hours from this dude in total.
Here’s our first messages back-and-forth:
I gave him $25, and he contacted these sharers for 5 hours.
Later in this post, I’m going to reveal the results.
I also created a video, detailing the task.
This is not mandatory, but it made it easier for me to explain.
If this video would help you get someone to do this task, feel free to direct them to the below video:
Warning: I’m really sick in this video, and it’s far from a good production.
But, it outlines what’s expected for this task, if you plan to outsource like I did.
In my opinion, it’s worthwhile to outsource any task that’s boring.
Especially when people will do it of for only $5.
Moving On:
Immediately after starting this task. I started receiving email replies from a handful of sharers.
Pretty exciting stuff.
Some of the messages were from people that were downright PISSED.
Here’s one:
My preference is to ALWAYS include someone’s name. Instead of a term like: “buddy”
Unfortunately, Stephanie’s website didn’t provide her name. Or, BuzzSumo was unable to properly scraper name information.
This stuff happens.
Don’t let it ruin your day.
There was, of course, also a bunch of positive responses to my message.
Here’s one of them:
This lead to a very pleasant conversation. Where both of us were able to help each other out in very constructive ways.
Booyah!
At the end of the day – how were the results?
The results were decent.
This turned out to be a worthwhile investment of $25.
But it was not a silver bullet.
There’s two things that we care about the most here:
- How many shares did I get?
- How much money did I make?
How many shares?
I was actually hoping for more…
I ended up with these results:
- 44 Twitter shares
- 42 FaceBook shares
- 10 Google Plus Shares
For a total of 96 shares.
Not bad.
How much money did I make?
From this post launching, I can attribute TWO affiliate sales for $42 a pop.
That works out to be $84 in gross revenue from this method.
Minus $25 for outsourcing costs.
We’re looking at a profit of $59
Not massive. But that’s free money.
I paid someone else to do the work.
And I collected the affiliate commissions.
Would I recommend this strategy?
100% I would.
As mentioned before, this is not a silver bullet.
It will not get you rich.
However, it’s a good way to make some easy money while building some nice social shares at the same time.
Of course, your content needs to be very good to get these results.
My post on Growing a YouTube Channel was top notch.
Don’t expect to throw up a junky 500 word article, and get similar results.
The people you are contacting are willing to share. But ONLY if it’s good stuff.
What do you think?
Was my experiment with the Skyscraper Technique a failure.
Or are these results decent? Especially for a relatively new blog.
Please leave me a comment below, and let’s talk about it!
