Are you sick of the rat race? Do you want to get away from the drudgery of commuting to work every day, being stuck in the rush hour traffic for hours every week or even hours every day, wasting your life away? Then this article is for you – read on to learn how to get a remote job which will free you from the rat race, and allow you to live your life on your terms!
We’ve all been there, sat on a crowded bus or train for an hour or more, twice per day, just getting to work and back, five or six days a week. Or perhaps sat in your own car, driving to and from work, in the rush hour traffic, crawling along and surrounded by the noise of the traffic around you, the cars and trucks and buses filled with people whose stress levels are rising by the minute.
Get Three Extra Years on Your Life
Just think how much time you actually waste during the daily commute – a modest commute of an hour each way, over just five days a week (and many people work six or even seven days), adds up to 10 hours per week, which is 520 hours per year. If you start work at age 20 and retire at 70, that is 26000 hours! That works out as 1083 days, or approximately three years commuting!!
To me that is mind boggling – 3 years of precious life just gone, taken away, with no chance to ever get it back.
Imagine what you could do with 3 extra years of life. You could start and complete an entire university degree in 3 years, or travel around the world several times over, or start a family and spend 3 extra years devoted to raising your children, providing them with the best possible start in life. Perhaps you could build a successful business, or turn a side-business or hobby into a full time business. You could learn a musical instrument to a respectably high level. The possibilities are endless, and limited only by your imagination.
Every day you probably think to yourself, “How can I escape this nightmare?! There has to be a way!”
Luckily there is, and there has never been a better time for it. Find a job which allows you to work form home, or anywhere you happen to be, whether it be in a local cafe or a sun drenched tropical beach. We only get one life, a limited number of days and hours to experience all that there is in life, so become a digital nomad or remote worker to free up some of that precious time and boost your quality of life through the roof!
Where to Find Remote Jobs
In order to get a remote job, you need to find one on offer, a task made much simpler these days due to the ever growing number of job sites catering specifically to remote jobs.
While there are many remote jobs to be found on such sites, it is important to note that not all are available globally. Even though technically a remote job could be done from anywhere in the world, more mundane issues such as employment regulations, company insurance, health insurance, and taxation issues can restrict remote jobs to people in the same country as the employer. Also, not all remote jobs are all remote, meaning that they could still require some on site work such as once a week in the office or visiting clients, and so staff need to be based in the relevant region.
Here’s a few remote jobs sites you may find useful, ranked in no particular order (although I quite like We Work Remotely):
Besides the above, you can find social network groups (on Facebook and LinkedIn for example) which list remote jobs. Another great way to find remote jobs is by checking the jobs page on company websites – either go direct to the company you would like to work for and check if they have any remote jobs listed, or do a general Google search for your particular trade or profession.
There are big tech companies who are famous for hiring remote workers, such as Automattic (WordPress), and Zapier and they are always on the lookout for more talent, so if you have a suitable skill then check them out!
There are surely more remote job sites out there, particularly in other languages (I only looked at English sites) so Google is your friend for finding those.
If you know of any other good sites or social network groups to find remote work then let me know in the comments below!
Convert Your Existing Job to Remote
Finding a new job is not easy and there’s usually lots of competition for each position available, even more so for remote jobs. You may also like the job you have (but hate the commute) and want to keep it. So what can you do in such cases?
Well, thanks to Covid, there are nowadays a huge number of employers who have switched to remote work to some extent, and even those who have not made the switch are aware of the trend these days and are often willing to be flexible on the matter to keep their employees happy.
If you want to switch to remote but don’t want to leave your current job, just go and talk to your employer and see if they’d be willing to let you work remotely some or all of the time. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
Create Your Own Remote Job
If you can’t find a remote job in your profession, or your type of job is just not suited to remote work (of course many jobs simply cannot be done remotely), then there are still some options available to you. One option is to switch careers – find something you can do and which is suited to remote work, and start applying. Another option is to start your own business, offer online services as a freelancer or start an e-commerce business.
If you’re not confident in your ability to do such a job or business at the moment, then start preparing. Do some courses (online courses naturally!) on places such as udemy. Also check out what your local government or employment service is offering in the way of retraining. Many places are now offering free training to help those affected by Covid restrictions switch to a new career, so take advantage of that while it’s still available!
Plan Ahead
Even when you do get a remote job, don’t just rest on your laurels – plan ahead! Save up as much money as possible to have a safety net in case the remote job ends. Invest some (not all!!) of your money in various ways such as in pension funds, the stock market, or cryptocurrency (carefully!). Start building up some passive income streams to supplement your current income and perhaps in future you’ll be able to ditch the salaried job and live the good life on your investments.
You may need to retrain, or be flexible in the type of work you do or how much is remote. You may need to relocate to another part of the country or even another country entirely. You may need to take a risk, and just drop everything and go for it. It may not be easy to get the ideal remote job or start your own remote business, and you may fail several times along the way before landing the dream job. But one thing is sure – if you don’t try, you will not succeed, and in the meantime the clock is ticking.. your life is slipping through your fingers while you are stuck in a traffic jam every day.
One of the few good things that came out of the pandemic is the rise in remote work, so grab the opportunity to get a remote job – you owe it to yourself!
You’ve probably seen the videos on youtube or other platforms showing the adventures being had by seemingly overly lucky people, while travelling the country or world in a van or yacht or motorbike etc., and you’ve dreamed of doing something similar.. just living where you want, how you want, and somehow making money online along the way to keep you going. Well the good news is you don’t need to be overly lucky, or rich, or look like a supermodel.
There are many ways to become a digital nomad, and in many ways it is now easier than ever (and also harder). Read on to find out how you too could live the dream and make bank from home, even when your home is constantly moving…
Corona
Of course these days we’re still in the middle of the Covid pandemic, which has brought certain challenges to those wanting to live the digital nomad lifestyle. Many international borders are closed to tourists, proof of vaccination and/or negative covid tests are required to enter many places. This can limit your nomadic options in terms of where in the world you’d like to travel or live, but the lifestyle can be done in your own country as well, and in fact doing that can be a great way to do a trial run in a safer place until restrictions are lifted.
Additionally, the pandemic has forced many employers to allow their staff to work remote, which is just what a digital nomad needs. Companies that previously were against having remote workers, have now embraced it, and found that it works and in many ways can be better than the old way.
So Covid has been both a curse and a blessing, a challenge and opportunity – reach out and grab that opportunity!
How to travel
There are many kinds of digital nomad, some more mobile than others. Some nomads may stay in one location for months at a time or longer, while others are constantly moving from place to place, often with their own transport which doubles as home and office.
Van Nomad YouTube is full of videos of people living in vans and travelling all over. Often the videos will show the whole process starting from converting an old Transit van into a campervan (or just outright buying a campervan).
These days a van can be made quite comfortable with all the luxuries of home, as well as being a mobile office or workshop. Some people go for a more minimalist van conversion, perhaps just a mattress, portapotty, a few jerrycans for water storage, and maybe a solar charger to stick on the roof when parked.
Either way is fine if it gets you where you want to go and allows you to live the nomad lifestyle. You can and surely will adapt and upgrade along the way, so don’t delay your journey just to get the van “perfect”.
Bike Nomad For the more intrepid nomad, a motorbike can get you to those exotic faraway locations that a Transit van could never reach. It’s also going to be a lot cheaper to buy a bike, maintain it, and fuel it.
Of course there’s a very limited carrying capacity on a bike, you certainly can’t live in a bike, but with a decent set of panniers you can carry quite a lot – including a tent, which you can live in.
For the solo digital nomad adventurer, a bike may be all you need – just get yourself an adventure bike like the Royal Enfield Himalayan, and hit the road.
Boat Nomad For those nomads that dream of the deep blue sea, spending their days sailing the world and exploring exotic islands, a yacht is the way to go, or a boat of some kind, and there are many kinds.
There’s an old age along the lines of “a yacht is a hole in the water you throw your money into”, which can be uncomfortably close to the truth, as boats cost a lot to buy and a lot to maintain and require lots of special equipment that helps keep the crew alive on those epic ocean crossings.
However, there’s another adage that says “go small, go now”, which basically means don’t spend your life saving up for that megayacht you think you need, just get something small and affordable now and go forth. Of course it still needs to be safe and suitable for the type of voyages you plan to take, but there are people who have spent years travelling the world on tiny sailboats.
For some inspiration, check out “Sailing Alone Around the World” by Joshua Slocum, or the 8 year voyage in “Shrimpy”, an 18 foot sailboat, by Shane Acton. Another old but good one is The £200 Millionaire.
Plane/Train/Bus Nomad Not every nomad brings their house with them, or has their own transport. Many, perhaps even most, simply travel on public transport in the usual way. Just hop on a plane (COVID restrictions permitting), to whatever part of the world you want to hang out in for a while, then train, bus or taxi to a hotel, hostel, or airbnb and get to work.
Hoof It For some, the best way to travel is on foot (or maybe bicycle) because you get to see more along the way, you’re not in a hurry, and you keep fit! Sure you can’t cross oceans on foot, so may have to take a plane or ship to reach the next continent on your route. You can still make epic journeys though, and build a huge social following along the way, which brings in the money to keep on living the digital nomad lifestyle.
Where to travel
The world is your oyster (subject to the latest pandemic waves), so go wherever your heart desires. Perhaps an exotic island in Thailand, or a misty mountain in India, or maybe jungle is your thing, or the desert, or a big metropolis like London, Tokyo, Paris, Sydney, Delhi, Seoul…
These days it’s relatively easy to apply for visas from anywhere, as many countries allow you to do that online, and all the info you need regarding travel to and in a country, and where to live while there, can be found online.
Where to live
Wherever you decide to go on your nomad journey, you will need a place to stay while there. If you brought your home with you, such as a van nomad or boat nomad, then most of the time you won’t be looking to rent a room anywhere, you just need a place to park your van or an anchorage or marina for your boat, or even a campsite (organised or wild) for your tent.
For everyone else, you will be looking for a room, apartment or house to rent for a while.
Backpacker Hostels If you’re travelling on a shoestring or just like the backpacker vibe, there’s always a cheap, character filled, hostel to be found. You may just need a bed in a shared room, and that’s one of the cheapest options. However I’d recommend getting your own room if you plan to work while there, which is likely as a digital nomad, rather than just someone on a long holiday. Most hostels do have private rooms as well, so just make sure they have decent wifi and go for that option.
Hotels If your digital nomad business is doing well, you could go for a proper hotel room with room service and all the luxuries. For longer stays, you can often negotiate a significant discount, making it far more affordable. A decent hotel typically provides benefits such as improved security, professional management, reliable wifi connectivity, peaceful nights, and sometimes even business networking opportunities.
Airbnb Of course airbnb is ubiquitous these days, and you can find some great deals in cool locations. Longer stays usually provide big discounts, and you can “live like a local” to some extent. In the big cities, they can be very expensive though, but probably you can find something suitable even if it means being a little further from the city center. Perhaps even get a house or villa and share the cost with other nomads.
Couch Surfing Who doesn’t like free? Couch surfing can be a great solution when you need a place to stay while on your journey. However, this is more suited to short stays of perhaps one or two nights. Most people won’t really want digital nomads moving in for weeks or months (unless they are paying).
How to make money
A true digital nomad makes a living while wandering the world. Otherwise you’re just on an extended holiday and living off your savings. It’s now easier than ever to work remotely. That is partly due to COVID forcing employers to allow staff to work from home, and partly due to advances in technology, particularly communications and social networks.
There is a somewhat skewed impression that digital nomads all make money with video channels and live streams, since those that do are the only ones actually seen, but there are in fact many more who make a living is other less public ways.
There are of course many ways to finance the digital nomad lifestyle, but here are a few…
Video By its nature, one of the more visible ways to make money as a digital nomad is with videos and streams on YouTube, Twitch and other such platforms. People love to follow along with adventures, dreaming of doing the same, and so you can earn money just by recording your travels. But of course there are other ways, often far more lucrative, to make money with videos. Do videos talking about or teaching what you know, or even what you eat (mukbang is a mystery to me but hugely popular), or gaming, or tech, or crypto or tech and crypto (TechLead allegedly makes around $50k/month from his channel!).
Blogging If writing is your thing, rather than video streaming, you can easily create a blog using a service such as WordPress. Publish articles regularly and build up a following there, tied in to your social networks as well. Stick some ads on (Google Ads, WordPress ads, Adroll for retargeting, Amazon affiliate links, etc), and also start your own mailing list using a service such as MailChimp to give you greater reach beyond your web site.
Freelancing If you have a skill that can be offered online, such as graphic design, web development, marketing, translation, audio production, teaching, writing, etc etc, you can easily do that from anywhere in the world. Freelance marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr provide all the tools and resources you need, as well as a built-in pool of potential clients.
Merchandise Many digital nomads sell their own branded merchandise as a sideline income source. This is of course harder when you are just starting out and nobody knows you. When you have built a sizeable following though, you can sell these things to your fans. Services such as CafePress and Zazzle make it easy to do – you can create and sell your own branded facemasks!
Temporary Jobs Of course online money making is not the only way. There are often places you can pick up casual work or temporary jobs to earn some money to keep you going until the next stop of your journey. Jobs in agriculture, or Amazon warehouses, or perhaps offering some service of your own – maybe you are a sailmaker, mechanic, carpenter, or teacher of some kind. Once you find a place you want to stay for a while, put the word out and see if you can pick up some odd jobs.
Busking Are you musically inclined? If you’re staying in a busy place, and have a guitar or some other instrument, or even just your voice, you could earn a nice income just performing on the street (where allowed).
Cryptocurrency & NFTs Disclaimer: not financial advice – crypto trading is very high risk. Never spend more than you can afford to lose!
Most people have heard of Bitcoin these days, and if you’d heard of it 10 years ago when it was in its early days, and had actually bought some and held on to it, you could be extremely wealthy now.
These days there are many more crypto coins and tokens available to “invest” in. Ethereum is another popular one, and you can see thousands more at CoinMarketCap.
It’s getting easier than ever to get into the crypto space, but still not exactly simple and there are many dangers, many scams..
You’ll need a wallet such as Metamask, and a way to buy whatever crypto you are interested in – centralized exchanges such as Binance, Crypto.com, Coinbase are popular choices – note that they will require identity verification due to “KYC” laws (know your customer), which can be off-putting to some.
You can even earn interest on crypto by “staking” it – this is offered by many exchanges (such as those mentioned above), and some wallets. The interest is typically paid in the same cryptocurrency though and the value of that can go either way. But it’s potentially a nice source of passive income.
There are various strategies to potentially make money with crypto – day trading, scalping, or just holding (“HODL“) for the long term in the hope that value increases (as it did with bitcoin).
NFTs are another facet of the crypto world which is very hot right now – you can buy and sell NFTs (non-fungible tokens) which are typically digital art works of various kinds such as pixelized avatars, photographs, or even just bits of text. They can be traded on platforms such as OpenSea, and can even be used in games. You can easily learn how to create NFTs and make money with them, even if you are as artistically challenged as me!
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket – multiple income streams help ensure you can keep on your journey. You never know when once source will dry up so don’t pin everything to that.. diversify.
Gadgets
There’s so much fancy tech around now, making it relatively easy to get online anywhere in the world, keep in touch and make a living, and stay healthy wherever you may be.
Pretty much every smartphone nowadays can function as a mobile hotspot, allowing you to connect your laptop or tablet to the net using WiFi. But you can also get dedicated mobile hotspot gadgets that allow you to keep your phone free for other uses (and not drain its battery), and work with simcards all over the world.
If you’re going to be off-grid, in a sunny part of the world, a portable solar charger can be a life saver. They can be small and foldable, and quickly deployed to charge up your phones or other devices.
Staying healthy is critical and clean water is not always easy to find. A portable water filter can save the day – these can be very small, such as a “life straw”.
If you’re camping, or even living in a van, a portable shower may be needed. There’s loads on amazon, but basically they consist of a hose pipe, a pump (often manual), and a curtain/tent.
If you plan to busk along the way to make some money, or just like to play guitar, a travel guitar is invaluable.
You will of course need a laptop of some kind. Whether you’re an Apple fan or Windows, or even Linux, I recommend something with at least 16GB of memory and the longest battery life you can find. One of the new Macbooks with the M1 processor for example.
If you do get into cryptocurrency, you should probably get a hardware wallet for safety. Popular choices include Ledger and Trezor.
If photography is your thing, you may want to invest in a decent SLR camera, rather than rely on your phone camera, perhaps also a GoPro for those action shots, and perhaps a camera stabilizer.
Health
When your health fails, your journey ends. Make sure to take care of it! Keep fit, eat a healthy diet, don’t smoke or drink too much alcohol, wear sun screen… the usual things. Take care of your mental health as well. It is also very important to have suitable health insurance if you are travelling abroad. If you need emergency medical treatment, or even just routine in some parts of the world, you can quickly end up out of money or worse…
Hit the Road
What are you waiting for? Make a plan for earning on the journey, get some starter funds saved, and go for it… escape the rat race, quit the 9 to 5 (not financial advice), and live your life the way you want, while you still can.
If you are a digital nomad, or planning to be, let me know in the comments!
This being a blog about making money from home, it would be remiss to not cover cryptocurrency (often just called “crypto”) as well. It is after all one of the easiest ways to potentially make money from home (not financial advice) , sometimes a lot of money, as well as of course an easy way to lose a lot of money.
What is exactly is cryptocurrency though? Very basically, it’s a form of (often) decentralised digital currency backed by cryptography, using a blockchain to store transaction data – a cryptographically linked chain of records.
It sounds complicated, and in many ways it is, and there are many variations and forms of crypto… but you don’t need to know them all, just learn a few basics (“do your own research”), and start dabbling.
Bitcoin (BTC)
Probably the most famous crypto coin is of course Bitcoin. The one that everyone wishes they’d bought when it was new and worthless, or held on to if they did buy it back then (many did) since it is now worth a massive amount.. tens of thousands of dollars… maybe in the coming years even hundreds of thousands per coin! Bitcoin has made millionaires and billionaires and those that sold early are now filled with regrets.
Ethereum (ETH)
The next most well known and widely used crypto is Ethereum which was co-founded by a programmer called Vitalik and designed to allow for decentralized applications and even other (“ERC-20”) cryptos to be built on top of it, with executable “smart contracts”. Examples of cryptocurrencies running on Ethereum include Shiba Inu token, but there are many others.
Dogecoin (DOGE)
Originally created as a bit of a joke, this coin has recently become extremely popular and considerably more valuable than it was for many years, thanks in no small part to Elon Musk talking and tweeting about it. Market cap now is around $40 Billion, which is quite impressive for a joke! It has also since spawned countless “dog coin” copies which have so far not come anywhere near the success for Dogecoin itself, although Shiba Inu has made decent progress.
A multitude of crypto
Besides the big ones such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, there are now countless coins and tokens, often referred to as Altcoins. You may have noticed that I said “coins and tokens” and the reason is that they are not quite the same, although often used interchangeably, so what’s the difference? Basically a coin has its own blockchain (such as Bitcoin and Ethereum), while tokens are built on top of an existing blockchain (such as ERC-20 tokens). Many cryptos these days are ERC-20 tokens running on Ethereum, but others have their own blockchain or run on BSC. A good place to seem them all (or many of them) is coinmarketcap, which currently has over 11k cryptocurrencies listed, and shows the current and previous prices as well as important info about each one including the contract.
Cryptocurrency Exchanges
Where can you buy crypto though? The easiest place is an exchange such as Binance and Coinbase. You just need to signup, complete there KYC process (“Know Your Customer”), and then you can buy crypto with your credit card or other methods they may support, and trade it for other currencies.
Wallets
When you buy crypto, you will need somewhere to keep it. If you buy on an exchange such as Binance, you can keep it there, but generally it is recommended to move it off the exchange and into a wallet that only you control. A wallet can be an app installed on your phone, or a browser plugin, or a safer option is a hardware wallet. Popular wallets include Metamask, Trust Wallet, and Ledger.
Trust No One
There are a lot of scammers out there in the crypto world, partly because it is still so unregulated and anonymity is common.
Your wallet will have a passphrase, typically of 12 or more words – NEVER GIVE THIS TO ANYONE EVER.. NEVER EVER!!! Also – DON’T LOSE IT OR YOU CAN LOSE ACCESS TO YOUR CRYPTO AND WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO RECOVER IT!!
Scammers will try to get your passphrase in various ways, such as pretending to be from customer support. Don’t fall for it.
When adding a token to your wallet or sending/receiving crypto, always check that it is legit, and that you have the right contract and right wallet address.. double and triple check everything!
Better Late Than Never
You may be thinking it’s too late to get into crypto, that the ship has sailed and you’ll never be able to make any money if you get into crypto now, but remember the vast majority of the world population is still not in crypto. There is massive room for growth, and lots of innovation creating new opportunities in crypto (NFTs and blockchain gaming for example). Just keep your ear to the ground, do your research, and go for it!
But remember the first rule of crypto – don’t ever invest what you are not 100% prepared to lose! There’s no shortage of misguided people who threw their life savings into some hot new crypto and then lost it all… don’t be that person.
Chances are you will lose money sometimes or even many times, not everything works out, cryptos can go up today and down tomorrow. They can go down just after you buy them, or if you’re lucky they could go up just after you buy them. Don’t be greedy though, if you see an opportunity to sell for a fat profit, take it.. if you wait longer thinking it might go up more, you could lose all those juicy gains.
Often it is said the best strategy can be just to hold (“HODL”) for the long term. Remember it took years for Bitcoin to take off and reach the massive value it has now. If you bought it cheap and sold early then you missed out, but those who just held for years are now very rich. If you buy a new(ish) coin or token today, don’t be surprised if it goes nowhere for a long time, months or even years. But if you chose wisely (or luckily), a few years from now that crypto could have gone up 10x or even 100x.. or it could have died completely. Such is life in crypto.. it’s a rollercoaster! Have fun along the way, but don’t be stupid with your money – diversify, spread the risk, research everything, trust no one.
I’ll go into more detail on some of the topics mentioned above, as well as others, in future crypto related articles so stay tuned!
Disclaimer: nothing in this article or blog should be taken as financial advice. I am not a financial adviser. Do your own research. Never invest what you are not prepared to lose.
Everyone knows that Wikipedia is a goldmine for quality traffic if you can get it but one significant problem is that many niches or long-tail topics on Wikipedia get, due to their nature, very little traffic. The traffic they do get may well be very high quality and the niche may be extremely profitable when you do get traffic but if the topic on Wikipedia just doesn’t get much attention then you’re out of luck. However there is a very simple solution to this problem which I am going to call Wiki Funnels (you heard it here first! (hopefully)). It should be noted that this trick applies to any wiki, not just Wikipedia itself.
What is a Wiki Funnel?
So what is a wiki funnel and how do you go about making one for your own topics? Well most people spend their time trying to get links FROM Wikipedia to their sites because it is such a powerful link to have and because it can drive great traffic, however when the subject page on Wikipedia just doesn’t get much traffic you have to find a way to build traffic to that page on Wikipedia. You could go about creating loads of external backlinks to the page in question, hoping that it will result in more traffic but that’s rather wasteful. A much better way is to build relevant links from other pages within Wikipedia to the page on Wikipedia which you are interested in.
A great thing about this is that you can do it without breaking any rules – you are actually contributing value to Wikipedia by improving navigation there, making it easier for visitors to find the information they are looking for.
How do you build a Wiki Funnel?
All you need to do is find other relevant wiki pages which don’t already link to your wiki page and which have traffic and then add a link. The key here is to make sure the pages you link from actually have traffic, otherwise you are just wasting your time. Fortunately it is easy to see how much traffic a wiki page has – just click the View history link at the top right of every page and there you will see another link for Page view statistics which will reveal all you need to know.
When you find pages with good traffic you can add the link in a couple of ways – one way is to edit the article text to add a sentence or paragraph in which you can include your page name (by “your page” I mean the wiki page you want to boost). Of course it must be relevant, you can’t just go adding paragraphs which don’t belong there at all! Another way which is even easier is to simply add the link in the See also section which is typically found towards the bottom of the page and consists of just a list of related wiki pages, so there’s nothing you need to write besides the name of the page.
So for example say your chosen subject was URL normalization, if you check the stats you will see it has about 4k views/month which is not too bad but it could better! So you go looking for relevant pages on Wikipedia which you could link to it, Canonical form looks good and it has over 9k views! So simply edit that page and add an internal link to the URL normalization page and that’s it – now some of that juicy traffic is going to find its way over to the page you are aiming to boost. Repeat this process several times so you build up a nice collection of traffic generating links. Imagine if you created a link on a high traffic page such as Search engine optimization which has nearly half a million views each month!
Finding Link Sources
Now you may be wondering how you go about finding relevant wiki pages where you can add the internal link, the answer is that you can either just google for them or use the wiki search feature. However there is an even easier way now and that is to use Keyword Predator which is what I did for the example above. Just enter the name of your page and it will return a list of relevant pages along with a Recent Interest indication which is based on those page view statistics. So if you find one which says interest is High or Very High then you just have to get a link in there! Even Medium is still a significant amount of traffic. If you can only find pages with Low interest (or Very Low but best not to bother with those) then you will just have to create more links from more pages like that.
Tiers of Joy
Which brings me to the funnel aspect – this method doesn’t have to be limited to a single tier of wiki links – every related page you link from can also be treated the same way. This means you can find pages relevant to that one and link to it from those, effectively creating a multi-tiered funnel of wiki links which all drive traffic back to your wiki page! This is particularly helpful when all the related pages you find for your page only have very low traffic – create multiple tiers so they all end up with more traffic to send to your page.
Now like many internet marketing tactics, this one could be abused but I don’t recommend trying that. For one thing you will spoil Wikipedia (or whatever wiki you work on) and for another, Wikipedia mods are usually on the ball and will ban you very soon, undoing all that hard work you put in. Do it properly and entirely within the rules, and your ultra long tail niche could quickly end up with a secret mine of traffic which can be tapped in various ways.
Of course how you get traffic from Wikipedia to your own site is another matter, it is not easy but it is possible and there are other ways to benefit from this even without a direct link to your site – just think outside the box!
There’s a lot talked about viral content marketing on the web these days but you probably think from the title of this article that the trick I am going to tell you about is some kind of strategy which involves catchy viralnova style titles, right? Well that certainly does have its part to play but there’s more to it than that, much much more and the real meat of the trick is a dark and dirty secret of content marketing, something that really makes it work and separates the men from the boys or women from the girls if you like or to be extra PC the responsible adults from the reckless kids.
In short the secret is what is known as paid amplification and I’ll explain much more in this article about what that means and how you can use it, so read on to get the details and learn how shockingly powerful it actually is.. you will be amazed and you may even cry! 😉
The Old Way
So a fairly typical plan followed by many, possibly including you, when writing and promoting a new article goes something like this..
1. Keyword research to find a topic worth writing about (ie. gets plenty of google traffic) and not too hard to rank for.
2. Write a 500 word (or whatever length you decide on) article around the chosen keyword (or phrase) and include it in the title, meta tags, image tags, the body of the article and maybe a few other places too (while being careful not to fall victim to keyword stuffing).
3. Publish your article on your site, ping it and then post a link to it on Twitter and Facebook in the hope that it will go viral.
4. Possibly do some “blogger outreach” – not just sending it to your mum!
5. Try to get some backlinks through various means.
6. Check Google every hour to see if it has been indexed yet and watch for it to rise in the serps.
7. Sit back and watch those traffic stats as the visitors flood in!
A week, two weeks, a month later and still no viral love and just a trickle of traffic.. you just assume that’s the way it goes and so you will just try again with a new article and another new one and another and surely eventually your time will come and one of your articles will finally go viral!
Only it doesn’t.
Sure your traffic may well be slowly creeping up, you’ve been posting quality content regularly, you’ve made fancy infographics, informative videos and great articles.. you’ve followed all the guidelines, you’ve been tweeting madly, you’ve been posting comments on relevant blogs and forums and you’ve been trying to get known by the influencers in your industry.
The Long Game
All these things (and more) certainly do work but that’s the long game.. for many people that may be fine, your blog is your passion, your hobby, you don’t care about going viral, you do it for the love of the game and over the years you will build up an enthusiastic audience if you keep producing the good stuff and engage them. Eventually you will have enough traffic to make some money from it, possibly even a lot of money. If you are really focused and work really hard on your content marketing and all your ducks are in a row, you may be able to reduce this to a matter of a few months before you see a decent amount of success. If you are an SEO wizard or wear a hat of a darker shade, you may even be able to do it much sooner, however not everyone can do it that way or even wants to. There is of course more than one way to do it, as Tim Toadysays.
But what if you really need to make it now? You’re trying to start a business and that means it has to make money as soon as possible, even more so if you’re financed by OPM (Other Peoples Money) or the Bank of Mum & Dad and they demand results sooner rather than later, or if you need to pay the rent next month or put food on the table.
Is there a shortcut? In a word.. YES!
The content marketing secret that every online marketing agency knows and which every marketing professional in successful companies knows.. you have to pay to play. It really is that simple. Of course it is not just a matter of paying for some advertising to send traffic to your site in the hope that it will convert, that is a different kettle of fish and not what this article is about.
The Secret to Success
The real secret to viral content marketing is what is known as paid amplification. In other words you pay to amplify your content, to extend its reach on the web, on social networks, wherever the people are who can spread the word for you. Unless you are incredibly lucky or well connected, the only sure(ish) way to make your content go viral is to make sure that enough people see it to start the ball rolling.. you have to overcome the inertia somehow, to reach that tipping point where it is being shared by enough people to take on a life of its own.
Of course just throwing money at the problem is not going to fix all the worlds problems, or even just yours, if your content sucks then nobody will share it and so it will only be seen by those you’ve paid to reach.. that may be enough for some people but you’re just putting lipstick on a pig which is a wasted effort (unless you have a thing for pigs). Quite simply if you’re going to spend money on paid amplification you better make sure the content you are amplifying is top notch unless you have money to burn. There is no point doing this for a basic 500 word article you just whipped up (or outsourced) and threw out there. Take the time to plan and create something really good, something actually shareable both from a quality and technical point of view. By technical I mean you include things which make it easy and likely for people to share.. social sharing buttons, appropriate calls to action and psychological triggers etc.
Make your content awesome and people will want to share it – if they know about it. Again this is why you need to pay to amplify – too few will know about it otherwise and so your chances of going viral are massively reduced. You need to seed your content widely and appropriately.
So how exactly do you amplify your wicked content?
Well as above, Tim Toady applies here too but I will outline a few methods and places you can go to for paid amplification. It is really quite simple and not even that expensive – you do need to have funds available for this method but we’re not talking millions here, you can start with a small amount like $50 or even less if you just want to test the waters before jumping in but for as little as $200 you can have massive reach which can quickly springboard you to success.
Everyone online should know about Reddit by now and it is a great source of free traffic if you approach it right but there are strict rules in place about self-promotion there so you walk a fine line when using it for traffic generation. However they also provide an advertising platform which works very nicely for getting the word out. It takes the form of a paid post which means not only do you get your link on Reddit but people there can actually comment on it so you can directly engage with them which makes it much more likely they will take notice an even share your link with others on Reddit and of course elsewhere.
You’ve surely seen Outbrain links even if you didn’t know what they were – at the bottom of bazillions of news articles there will be a list of possibly related content on other sites. Those are put there by Outbrain (amongst others) which is a paid discovery service and which you can use to put your links on loads of high traffic sites such as CNN. Yes you can actually have your article linked on major sites like CNN!
Another paid content discovery service is Taboola which also has massive reach on a network which includes some of the biggest and most prestigious sites online such as Time.
Disqus is a popular commenting plugin used on millions of sites, often replacing the commenting section on blogs for example, and as such this provides them with millions of places to place links or ads. They call it promoted discovery but by now you will get the idea so I wont dwell on the details.
But wait, there’s more.. in case you didn’t have enough places for paid content discovery, have a look at Zemanta! Their content and link suggestion system can push your links out to millions of people.
The Social Networks
Besides the above content discovery platforms there are of course the big social networks which also sell advertising. The biggest of which these days is Facebook and fortunately they have a self-service advertising system which you can use to quickly “boost” your articles to a very targeted audience. Rumour has it that it costs less to show your ads to people who are already your “fans” so it can be worth building up your Facebook page first – but it is extremely important to make sure all the Likes you get are from real people who are actually interested in your content – Facebook will actually reduce your exposure on the network if their system detects low engagement and of course buying cheap (ie. untargeted or in particular fake) likes will kill your reach and end up costing you much more!
Twitter is also a great place to amplify your content and their self-service ad system is being gradually made available in other countries besides the US and a few EU countries so go check them out – their promoted tweets are an excellent and affordable way to get the viral buzz started!
Also on Twitter you can buy credits on services such as JustReTweet which will get your tweets retweeted by loads of people – imagine 1000 people retweet your message and they each have 1000 followers on average.. that’s 1 million people on twitter that will see your tweet!
Stumbleupon is a smaller social platform but also a great way to get eyeballs on your content by means of what they call “paid stumbles” which cost about 10 cents each and can easily end up with many more as people push your link out to their networks.
Retargeting is a great way to maximize your ad spend. While not strictly speaking a paid amplification method, what it does do is give you a second (and third and..) shot at converting all the traffic you got as a result of your big amplification campaigns. How it works is simply showing your ads to people who already visited your site – in other words when someone came to read your content then left without buying or registering, you can show your ads to them when they are on other sites. Since they already saw your site they are familiar with it and will more likely notice your ads and be more inclined to come back.
Putting it all Together
Using all the above systems you can extend your reach to literally hundreds of millions of people, limited of course only by your budget. However even with a relatively modest budget you can reach a huge number. For example with Outbrain they recommend paying 15 cents per click – you can of course pay less but you may get less exposure so you have to experiment to find the sweet spot for your content. But lets say you are paying 15/click on average and lets say you get a click through rate of 1%, that means for just $15 your link/snippet is going to be seen by 10,000 people and you will get 100 actual visits (ie. clicks) to your site from those 10k. The actual CTR could be very different, you could get 100,000 views for those same 100 clicks, it really depends. Needless to say you should try to maximize your return on that – it doesn’t have to be just based on clicks – 100k people seeing your article snippet along with domain/site name for example is a nice way to get some branding.
Of course you need to carefully craft your article titles and snippets and/or visual media previews to get the most benefit from all this content amplification activity. You could and indeed should take a leaf from Upworthy and write something like 20 versions of your title, then split test them and only then choose the best one to run with. To test them you can just do small runs of a few thousand views on several platforms and keep tweaking and testing until satisfied with the response rate.
Paying for ads of any kind is a quick way to lose your shirt if you are not careful so you must, I repeat MUST, make sure to carefully target your ads – don’t just go for the quick fix “click to boost” types ads that Facebook and others offer to the unwary. Dig deep into their targeting options and test small scale campaigns while learning the system before expanding your campaigns to extend your reach further.
Get Coupons
Here’s a quick tip – if you are a namecheap customer, they actually have a page of deals which offers all sorts of freebies such as $50 Twitter advertising coupons and even a $150 retargeting coupon which is a fantastic offer. All you need is to be a namecheap customer so if you are not yet then go now and register a domain or get some cheap hosting so you can take advantage of the coupons and discount codes they offer – the more you spend at namecheap the better the deals you get (ie. you get more!) but you don’t have to spend much to get some great deals. They also have other deals besides advertising coupons, such as free content (stock photos) you can use on your sites and more so it is well worth it. Using these coupons allows you to test the waters with paid content promotion without risking your own hard earned cash, so you can now easily and safely learn the ropes before moving to the big leagues.
Hopefully you will find the above tips useful, just make sure to test everything carefully and make a plan of action which you can follow each time you publish great content. Do you have any favourite places or methods to amplify your content? Feel free to share in the comments section below.
This being a blog about making money from home, it would be remiss to not cover cryptocurrency (often just called “crypto”) as well. It is after all one of the easiest ways to potentially make money from home (not financial advice) , sometimes a lot of money, as well as of course an easy way to lose a lot of money.
