Anyone Tried This $$$ Method Before?

[Zeus66]

Ever wish you had the time to test every money making idea that pops into your head? Man, I LIVE there! Anyway, I figure some enterprising Warrior has tried this before and can maybe share their results...

I have both an article (at EZA) and a video I made of that article (YouTube) ranked on Page 1 at Google for a fairly popular keyword. It's a keyword that I discovered during some research that had an unbelievably low amount of competition, yet gets searched about 8,000 times/month. Sweet, huh? OK, so I'll confess that my conversion rate from all that traffic is really crappy. Way under 1%. Frankly, I don't have the time to dig in and fix the copy and I don't have the funds to invest in a top copywriter. But I really want to capitalize on the steady stream of visitors from the article and the video article.

Quick aside: I make simple but effective videos from written articles, which can be posted on YouTube, Metacafe, etc. It's a great way to build another traffic/income stream from the same article content. PM me if you're interested.

So, I'm wondering if anyone has ever sold their ranking position to a competitor. Crazy, I know, but because it's an article and a video and not a page on my own site, it's a possibility I can't overlook. All it would take is a quick link change at the end of the article and an edit of the raw video file. I don't think that would in any way monkey with the rankings.

I also know I can repeat this for any niche. I can get an article and a video ranked on Page 1 and occupy 2 of the 10 spots. It's really all about careful keyword selection and knowing your way around SEO and backlinking. It's just TIME CONSUMING and that's the commodity I have the least of right now. Anyway, has anyone tried this tactic and how did it go, if so?

Disclaimer: I understand there are things I could do on my end to jack up my own conversions and keep it all in-house. Please don't start listing all those things, ok? I'm curious to test this model for another income stream and frankly I need the influx of quick cash right now (my wife is on the verge of being a casualty of this horrible economy so we're in 'almost panic' mode).

Thanks,
John

[Curt7]

Why don't you try renting your traffic? You could have a monthly income stream without losing your asset.

[michaelmac]

Hi John,

Interesting post man with startling similarities to what i'm doing!

I submit my articles to EZA and several other high PR article directories and once the EZA articles are published i convert the articles to video and distribute them to a dozen or so video directories. I also add the video to my relevant lenses and hubs. The traffic i receive is okay to good, but like yourself i rank high for a lot of the kw's i employ but only receive a small percentage of the traffic these kw's generate...go figure?

Do you think it is just down to our sites or is there more to it John? Surely there must be! I find it real frustrating!

Michael

[Ron Killian]

Why not just send it off to an affiliate program? Would be quick and easy.

Then again, if you approached a competitor, they might be up for it. Interesting idea Most might just tell you to join their program.

[ExRat]

Hi John,

How can you sell it? If it was there due to your secret backlinking system or something like that, not so bad - but because it's there due to low competition, if you give a buyer a hint of a clue about what it is, they can reverse engineer and outrank it.

I might be missing something, but with the exception of a non-compete agreement or something like that which is probably complicated and price prohibitive, how could you do it?

[Zeus66]

Originally Posted by michaelmac

Hi John,

Interesting post man with startling similarities to what i'm doing!

I submit my articles to EZA and several other high PR article directories and once the EZA articles are published i convert the articles to video and distribute them to a dozen or so video directories. I also add the video to my relevant lenses and hubs. The traffic i receive is okay to good, but like yourself i rank high for a lot of the kw's i employ but only receive a small percentage of the traffic these kw's generate...go figure?

Do you think it is just down to our sites or is there more to it John? Surely there must be! I find it real frustrating!

Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your reply! I do think it's down to how well the site converts. Mine is pitiful, and I know it. But it's tedious and can take quite awhile to fix, test, fix, test, etc. etc. to get things to a decent conversion rate. Frankly, my family doesn't have that kind of time. We have to figure out how to quickly replace my wife's soon-to-be-lost income, that's the bottom line. I do know, even with the crappy conversion rate, I can track at least one sale on the site directly to traffic coming from the video page at YouTube. So video traffic works. Hopefully I'll be back to a situation where I can invest time into testing this more in the near future.

Thanks,
John

[Zeus66]

Originally Posted by Ron Killian

Why not just send it off to an affiliate program? Would be quick and easy.

Then again, if you approached a competitor, they might be up for it. Interesting idea Most might just tell you to join their program.

Hey Ron,

Thanks for taking the time to weigh in on this. Unfortunately, while your idea about the affiliate revenue is a good one in most cases, in this niche it simply doesn't work well. At least not with any of the programs I've tested in the past. I've been involved in this particular niche since about 2004.

I should have been building a list all along, but I was lazy and now it's biting my rump. Lesson learned, but in the meantime I'm scrambling for a quicker solution.

Thanks,
John

[Zeus66]

Originally Posted by ExRat

Hi John,

How can you sell it? If it was there due to your secret backlinking system or something like that, not so bad - but because it's there due to low competition, if you give a buyer a hint of a clue about what it is, they can reverse engineer and outrank it.

I might be missing something, but with the exception of a non-compete agreement or something like that which is probably complicated and price prohibitive, how could you do it?

ExRat,

Yeah, you're right about that, except in this niche there aren't many savvy sitemasters. Doesn't mean they don't employ firms for SEO that would pick it up in a nanosecond, though. Point well taken. I'm still pondering, as you can tell. Thanks for weighing in with some more to chew on.

Thanks,
John

[birdfood]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

So, I'm wondering if anyone has ever sold their ranking position to a competitor. Crazy, I know, but because it's an article and a video and not a page on my own site, it's a possibility I can't overlook. All it would take is a quick link change at the end of the article and an edit of the raw video file. I don't think that would in any way monkey with the rankings.
John

Wouldn't editing the raw video require you to repost the video on the video site which in turn would mean starting from scratch so you have no ranking to actually rent out or sell?

[Zeus66]

Originally Posted by birdfood

Wouldn't editing the raw video require you to repost the video on the video site which in turn would mean starting from scratch so you have no ranking to actually rent out or sell?

Well, yes, but by picking the keyword I did (with so little competition), I could quickly regain the video's ranking. And of course, the written article would not be affected by a simple URL link change in the author's box at the end. You bring up a valid point, though, about the video change. Thanks for pointing it out... it would make doing this with a more competitive keyword difficult for sure.

Thanks,
John