On the 28th of February, I finally launched my latest venture!
Website and blog owners will all confirm the same thing. These days, if you want to grow the amount of incoming traffic, there are a great deal of tricks you are able to use. Search Engine Optimization, Link building, Advertising, Give-Aways and Contests, Promotion via Social Media, … However, the best way to increase the constant flow of incoming traffic still remains the same. Frequently publish unique, niche-based articles. They drive organic traffic to your website over a very long period of time. (Ever heard of the long-tail principle?)
Of course, it’s a very time-consuming challenge to publish fresh content on a weekly or even daily basis.
The articles need to be somewhat relevant to your company, products or services. Companies who launch a new website or weblog usually start writing vigorously, only to quit a few months down the road. The ones who do manage to hang on, notice that they often don’t know what to write about any more, that they need to publish more often, and that they need some help.
Currently, website owners who already have a decent amount of frequent visitors try to solve this by hiring extra writers. Perfect, problem solved. However, … After a short period of time, they notice that it’s a great deal of work, maintaining such a team of writers. Communication, paperwork, missed deadlines and other annoyances. The focus tends to shift from managing the website – which is one of them most important things to do – to managing the team of writers.
Writers, in their turn, get frustrated by the fact that they lack the freedom to write about topics they enjoy and may only write about the subjects provided by their clients, even though the writer is most likely passionate about entirely different matters.
Meet GhostBloggers.net!
I had this problem too! With the idea of elevating RunAddicts.net into traffic heaven, I started hiring extra writers and stumbled upon the same problems as I mentioned above.
When trying to discover a way to deal with these issues, I couldn’t find a great alternative, so I began developing it on my own. A solution to make it easier to publish unique content without having to deal with hiring issues and the like.
GhostBloggers.net, my latest venture, is an online marketplace where publishers can search for and buy unique blog posts in a matter of minutes.
Writers are able to sell their own unique content without having to put any time into client acquisition and allowing them to focus on writing about topics they love. They will be able to write more articles in a shorter period of time. And they are also able to write from anywhere in the world where they have an internet connection. Say hello to the life of the digital nomad!
Google, My man!
In contrast to the GhostBloggers platform which allows you to buy unique content, you may find websites on the internet that are well-known under the term of “Content farms”. These websites gather tons of articles about all possible subjects, and publish them at a high rate, while mis-using every possible SEO technique. Even though it seems like a good idea, these content farms feature content that’s not unique, not really helpful either and which contain an alarming rate of dubious and spammy content. Garbage.
Up ’till now, these websites were receiving huge amounts of traffic via search engines, even though the articles aren’t very useful at all.
Last month, only a few days before the launch of GhostBloggers, Google launched the so-called “farmer update” which tries to decrease the ranking of these content farms that publish low-quality content, only to drive organic traffic. Google has done its job and the search results are now cleaner.
What does this mean for my business?
Well, it’s really great! The value of unique content has suddenly gone up while the value of garbage content and copied articles went down significantly. Business owners will start to realize that they truly need to feed their readers with good, unique copy that will last them a lifetime and that will deliver a constant flow of very targeted traffic.
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Peter
Hey David, the best of luck with your new site!
Currently, I don’t have a use for it, but I’ll sure remember it when that time comes.
Yuval
Fantastic! Best of luck. Also a beautiful design.
Wolf
This is the kind of thing that ruins internet journalism and writing. Promoting your site by spending $ to get mediocre articles written only to gain a spot in Google?
This is no different than a content farm. Is this your way of making the world of better place?
Davy Kestens
Hi Johan! Thanks again for the interesting conversation we had on the phone a few minutes ago.
I agree on what you said: “spending $ to get mediocre articles written only to gain a spot in Google” is wrong. However, the plan I have with GhostBloggers is to provide a platform which allows writers who are really interested in writing about topics they love to actually go and do so. Most writers who want to earn a living writing online, are hired by media agencies who also pay them to write. Only they have to write about what the media agency tells them to write about.
By providing this platform, manual quality checks and only allowing 1-off sales (no reselling of stock content), I stay away from the content-farm idea as much as possible.
Ofcourse, people will always be shelling out cash for advertising and marketing and this won’t change. Both great products and bad businesses will be promoted. It’s the human interaction, customer support and fanbase that will eventually turn out to make a difference.
May I ask you: What if you have a great product but you can’t communicate your message? Is it a bad thing to buy unique content to do the talking for you? Everyone knows there are some ethical problems with advertising and marketing, but I also believe that marketing provides great businesses a chance to shine even more.
Again, thank you for your insights. I hope we can talk more about this in the future!
Igor
Hi Wolf.
A service like this really can be used for both good and evil :) – but so can many other services.
In my humble opinion, in essence this is not a bad model.. It will serve the smaller businesses, the businesses that can’t (or shouldn’t) have an in-house copywriter.
Workout challenger
To all sceptics
Give this guy a break. He’s not saying you HAVE to buy articles from his website. He’s just pointing out that IF you have a website AND IF you have to write frequently AND IF you are having difficulties to keep writing worthwile content, then you can always go get an interesting article on your topic instead of just copying it somewhere else, just to add some new post on your site.
Dave, leuk en interessant initiatief. En het is best grappig dat ik via amerikaanse websites tot bij jou kom. Hopelijk slaag je erin om je project volop te doen draaien!
Simon Sayz
I think you are right about that one, unique content is the way to go. It may take more time but on the long run, it pay off. I just stumble upon ghostbloggers and I think its a great idea. Good Luck and Congratulations on the launch.