Fat Stacks Blog - a Podcast About Blogging, SEO and Traffic

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Show Notes:
My Ad Revenue is DOWN

• March ad revenue wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible.
• April 1 came and it was a disaster. Down 40%.
• Probably going down more.

Why?

• April is the start of Q2. Many companies slashed ad budgets for Q2.
• Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

What I’m currently doing to deal with lower rev.

• Cut content investment by 50%
• Writing content myself (again)
• Building out affiliate clusters: Digital products, Software & Lead Gen
• Improving older content
  • Junk content
  • Good content sitting pretty in spots 5 to 30

Need cash now?

• Consider freelancing: writing, graphic design, link building, etc.
• Saved my bacon when Google Penguin hit in 2012.
• Many people jumping in? Likely
• Publishers ordering less content? Probably. I am.
• Easy? No, but possible.
• But, many established freelancers can’t take on as much work - kids at home.
• It’s not instant cash, but faster than building out a blog.

TIP: Offer services that you’re best at. Take time to hone them now.
Your freelancing advantage

• If you’re listening to this presentation, you probably started a blog, have written articles and know a lot more about working online than other people.
• This is your advantage. You know more than you think.
• Again, not an instant cash solution, but it’s better than nothing.

What do I do if ad revenue drops 60%+?

• At that point, I pretty much have no content budget.
• I will keep my VAs on payroll at all costs. I’d rather have no content budget than let VAs go. They’re my team. They are great folks.
• I have a plan in place: Focus 100% on content and website improvement.

Content and Website Improvement Tips

• Design: Normally I preach spending time on design is time wasted until you have massive traffic, but in this case, it MIGHT be worth doing.
• Improve decently ranking content:
• Look for content ranking in spots 5 to 30 and improve them to give them a chance for higher rankings.
• Improve old garbage content you published when you didn’t know any better.

How to improve content... fast and for free

• Charts, graphs and stats
• Images
• FAQ: Answerthepublic.org / Ahrefs questions / Textoptimizer.com
• Quotes from experts
• Add videos
• Add internal links
• KW research

See: 29 Ways to Improve Content

Improve content via KW research
Drill down:

• Run what you’re currently ranking for in your favorite KW research grinder to find more long tails.
• Enter those KWs in Google and check the “Related Terms” at bottom of Google.

Add content sections targeting those new long tails.

• Quick n’ Dirty: Clearscope / Textoptimizer.com

Learn more by getting my free 6-Figure Blogger Course.

This episode steps you through the 21 considerations for producing good niche website and blog content. Based on years of experience and recent Google algo changes.

Learn more by getting my free 6-Figure Blogger Course.

This episode explains why focusing on bigger sites is better in the beginning and my reason for moving one site and potentially more to Mediavine from AdThrive.

Learn more by getting my free 6-Figure Blogger Course.

This episode steps you through exactly how I figure out how many words to order from writers or how long content needs to be to stand a good chance of ranking #1 in Google. It's more art than science but we can take some of the guesswork out of it.
Tools mentioned:
MarketMuse: https://fatstacksblog.com/go/marketmuse/
SurferSEO: https://fatstacksblog.com/go/surferseo/
WriterAccess: https://fatstacksblog.com/go/writer-access/
My free course: https://fatstacksblog.com/

Learn more by getting my free 6-Figure Blogger Course.

See all the charts at the blog here.
This episode presents 3 scenarios compared by analyzing what could happen if you scaled up your website portfolio business by bringing on investors.

Learn more by getting my free 6-Figure Blogger Course.