I thought I would talk about content today. There a bit of discussion about content in the MMO world and various points of view are being bandied about. I thought I would weigh in my own little opinion here as a response to what’s being said.
There are basically two sides to the idea of writing content for niche marketing: Content is King and Content is Crap.
On one side of the fence, the “Content is King” school feels that information is supreme and that you should always write good content. By good content, I mean the writing should be good and the information in the article provides exactly what the person is looking for.
The Content is Crap school feels that content is only a means for getting ranked in the SERP’s and convincing people to click. The information, if you follow this school, is written to be bland and often unhelpful. In extreme cases, some people suggest that the worse the writing the better, as it encourages people to leave the site – usually through an ad click.
Now, if you read enough of the big shot real MMO players, you’ll see there are several “camps.” We have Vic on one side who feels that content is utter crap. Just look at his site and you’ll see what I mean. Terrible writing, grammatical mistakes and spelling mistakes. I haven’t seen any of his niches sites, but I’m willing to bet a fair dollar that the articles are probably similar in style. But the man is making money, lots of fucking money. Grizzly, at least from what’ I’ve seen, fall into the content is crap school. His blog is a actually pretty well written, but if you’ve done some digging and take a look at his niches sites, the content is pretty crappy in terms of offering people the information they are looking for (I can’t verify this for his flagship money blogs though). But, good old Grizz is making over 40k a month.
If you are starting out in the MMO world, you are going to have to face which category you fall into pretty quickly. I think this choice is kind of like what student you were in high school. Are you that kid who diligently studied each morning, who’s always prepared for a test? Or are you one of those leave-it-to-the-last-minute, devil be dammed types?
You see, in the MMO world you can take it nice and slow, play it safe and slowly work your way up. Or you can do it fast with some risk and still make it — minus the extra 2 or 3 years. At the end of the day, both “methods” will get you to the same position. But you are still going to have to work like a dog. But it comes down to the following question: do you want work more with less reward or do you want to work less with more reward? Either way, you are still going to work, but it comes down to the degree of work.
This is a very important choice because it will define your entire “way” of making money. And, this will determine whether you are going to only wear the white hat, or whether you’ll occasionally put on the grey hat or even the black hat.
I feel it needs to be pointed out so you know where you stand. Both “school’s” have there merits and both have some disadvantages, and some rather big ones.
Content is King
Pros
- Your content is good and your sites won’t be ever be considered a Made for Adsense Site by a Google engineer. In other words, you can be confident that you won’t get bitch slapped by Google.
- Your articles may get some natural links over time, giving your site better rankings and ultimately more money.
Cons
- You make less money, sometimes significantly less. CTR will be much lower than it could be.
- You will spend at least twice as long to write the article.
Content is Crap
Pros
- You make more money. CTR can be through the roof
- Speed: you can mass churn articles out.
- Better effort to profit ratio
Cons
- If you don’t do it right, Google may consider your site a MFAS(made for Adsense site) and ban/deindex your site
- Less chance of natural links
Which way you choose guys is up to you. I don’t think either way is wrong. They are two sides of the same coin; one’s heads and the other’s tails, but it’s still the same coin.
You can go the super good content way, but you aren’t going to make as much money and you are going to spend many more nights writing about niches you don’t give a fuck damn about. But, if you are one of those blogger types and you want to play it absolutely safe, then this might be the path you want to take.
On the other hand, if you want to make more money and are a bit lazy, Content is Crap may be the path you want to take. In the time it takes someone to write a fantastic, informative article, you can churn out 3-5 other crap articles. Each article will have a much higher chance of getting a click. You can make a LOT more money like this.
Now, I want to be clear here. When I say write crap content, I don’t mean write an article so shitty that Google will spot it as MFAS. The article should discuss the topic on hand and should provide some information. IF you are taking about the “best acne cures” you don’t want to go off on an unrelated tangent. As long as your article sticks to the topic at hand and you provide some information, you cover your ass. But there are no guarantees in life — if you want to play it safe, but slower, then make all your articles works of art.
You can write the best content in the world but still get banned by Google on a whim. You NEVER know.
If you are making significant amounts of money with Adsense, I don’t think I should have to tell you that you should have multiple Adsense accounts. Get your wife, children, or your dead grandfather to sign up, but YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET. If you have multiple accounts and divvy up your websites into separate spheres, you should be fairly safe. If you don’t do this, we’ll, your making a pretty stupid business decision.
For myself, I FIRMLY believe that content is crap. My philosophy is that you write for search engines, not people. Why? Because you make more money and if you do it right, you won’t get banned. The people who outright make sites for Adsense are the ones that get banned. If you create a site, put relevant information on it (though you don’t answer the question), and add other features like a profile picture, a bit of fake personal information, and a RSS feed, etc, you won’t be getting banned. The trick is to make an MFAS not appear like a MFAS.
I’ve created enough niche sites and written enough articles to know that content is crap. But, that’s just the way it looks from my side of the fence. You will, ultimately have to make you’re your own mind.
Ben Out
13 Comments
I think you will find that Vic’s content is crap is not for Adsense monetization -the stuff on his blog is all about affiliate sales - and his content is generally just fine - but PLR and not unique. I think the rules for content are different for Adsense than for other forms of monetization - as Court says eventually you are going to get visually inspected if you succeed with Adsense
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I agree that if you want to flog affiliate sales, good content is pretty key. If you have a flagship blog churning out thousands of dollars a month, well, it’s better to invest some time into writing. But, I don’t think smaller niches site blogs need good content — as long as your are careful.
But, for some, it pays to be safe I’m sure.
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For the content perspective i gone through two words PLR and scrapper scripts how these works?
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The content is crap argument is quite amusing. How will a google engineer differentiate between crap and someone who produces content but English is not their mother tongue?. It is possible that their content could look terrible when they believe they are writing great stuff.
I have a question re: multiple adsense accounts - can different people be registered at the same IP address? Doesn’t this make a difference to Google? Getting accounts for my mum and sister would be great but i am the only one with a computer. I would be interested to know how you deal with this.
Many thanks
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Tiptopcat.
Yes, that’s one of my thoughts. This is why I don’t think content is important. If you have a site making a killing, well, go back and tinker with the content so that it’s acceptable. But, i still hold by my argument that you should never ever answer the question in the article you write.
Yes, different people can use the same IP, but woudn’t advise it. It’s easy to track people from the same IP. If google ban’s your adsense, you can bet that they will know if another google adesene account shares the same IP. A little reasearch on their part and they can easily find a link between the two “personas”.
BAN, sites on both adsense accounts go down. A lot of people have a second adsense account, but it makes sense that if you are going to have a second one, you don’t have ANY sort of cross linking between both accounts. You don’t want google or anyone else to follow the rabit hole.
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sundait Reply:
August 4th, 2009 at 11:40 am
What I understand about good content for adsense is, as long as they are readable by human and relevant to the topic that we’re rant about, there should be no reason to be afraid of getting banned. What I consider as crap is completely unreadable content which is usually produced by crappy content generator/spinner software. I couldn’t agree more with you that not answering the damn question is the secret to get high click through for MFA’s articles/sites.
And yeah, registering multiple account is wise decision if we make killing with adsense. But make it through single IP address is bit dangerous since it will trigger suspicious to big G I think. IMHO consider investing some money to get good proxies or installing Tor for cheaper option is worth to try. I would like to know if there any other idea.
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admin Reply:
August 5th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
proxy is the best way I think, or using a dial up internet.
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mystery Reply:
October 8th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
You can have multiple google adsense accounts if you form an LLC. Anyone can really register but it varies on how to do it from state to state. Imaging a big cooperation on the same network, I don’t think it’s a problem in that case. I would have one personal account, and maybe 4 per LLC, and personal account you should use a different computer, different websites, different proxys and not combing the two.
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Hey, Ben.
Have you pass the 15$/day barrier yet? I’m just curios how this experiment is going on for you, I wait for your answer.
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Hi jother. Let’s put it this way, yesterday, I made 27 bucks from hubpages
This figure is only going up the more targetted hubs I add. I am now in the process of systemetically adding backlinks. I suppose the contest officially ends today. I’ll wrap it all up tomorrow and post a concluding thread about it on wednesday. This has been a remarkable experiment, and I I’ve gradually watched as I’ve worked my way up for 0 bucks, to a couple dollars with like 75 hubs, to 3 bucks a day, to 5 bucks a day, to 10 bucks a day, to 12-15 bucks a day, and now to 27 bucks a day. We’ll see if I keep getting in the mid 20’s, but I am confident I will be, especially now that after a month I am workign on the backlinks.
I will be creating a comprehensive (FREE) ebook with a tutorial about what I do to make money with hubs. Expect that next week sometime along with a corresponding post.
My next “mini challenge” is going to be 100 Squidoo lenses in 15 days. I want to see if I can make money with squidoo from what I’ve learned with hubpages.
Ben
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Thanks for posting, I’ll definitely be subscribing to your blog.
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Hey Ben,
Thanks for answering. You know, you got me the inspiration because I saw that someone started from 0 got where you got (almost 1000$/months from hubpages), impressive dude.
I’ve realized that throwing shit on the wall works, I can see what’s going to stick and choose that model in order to make money.
Good job dude! You’re a motivation to all of us
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Content IS Crap!
As far as I’m concerned, if you’re trying to make money online there really isn’t much point in trying to write brilliant stuff, especially if the whole point of your site is to get people to click your ads. People seem to like bland, mediocre content anyway - it’s comforting.
And I’ve found that you can get some natural backlinks even if you write retarded articles - Hell, I got two natural PR7 backlinks recently for a totally inane 300-word post about Susan Boyle’s kitty cat. Oh Yeah, Boooiiiiiiiii!
And damn man, you work too much. All these huge posts on a site with no advertising and now a free E-book? At least put some Bidvertiser ads or something on here…
- Adam #2
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Ben,
Thanks for the great write up. This was fairly confusing before but you are correct it comes down al ot to how fast you want to get to your goals.
The other issue I think is why are publishing online. I was talking to a guy the other day and he said he didn’t want a bunch of websites that duped searchers into visiting and then clicking an ad. He wanted one really great site that gave good information. That is one way to look at it but I wonder if he will ever make any money. I am not saying to take advantage of people but you have to decide if you are making money or making art I guess.
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Ben, just wanted to say what an awesome blog you have here and that I’ve learned so much from you in the last few weeks. I just thought I would pop in here and make a comment on this post. I definitely do agree that crap content can result in higher adsense earnings but would you mind maybe writing an example article for us to see?
I mean it’s kind of hard to write 800 word articles without giving SOME type of relevant information. So if you wanted to write an article on say… “how to conceive a boy” or “how to get rid of pimples”, how would you approach that? Would you start off by giving tips that you find at article directories or would you just ramble and give personal anecdotes on the topic?
There’s definitely a fine line that needs to be considered since if you give away TOO much information, they won’t click. So I’m just wondering how you would approach this. Thanks!
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admin Reply:
July 12th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Hi Hann, thanks for dropping in. It depends on what I’m writing for. One trick is to put relevant information near the bottom. Now, to be honest, these days, I’ve just taken to actually giving information that’s useful, BUT I try and link it to getting people to click on an ad. For example, if I am talking about buying cars, I would mention in the second paragraph about how the reader must look online to find the best deal on cars. I also repeat this near the end. That way, the user will be inclined to click on an ad.
If it was how to get rid of pimples, I would talk about how important it is to get rid of pimples and mention that there are treatments. Give some small tidbits but don’t give anything substantial. I normally read article directory information that regurgitate it into my own words. I’ll also put my own thoughts down. After your write 3-5 articles, you can just ramble on automatically.
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Hi Ben.. Just wanted to let you know that I found an example of well-written bad english on hubpage today.
http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Secret-of-Healthy-Diet
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