Case Study: Turning $100 into 10,000 visitors and 100+ Links
Glen Allsopp / 
42 Comments / 
September 22nd, 2008 / 
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I’ve been testing out blogging in different niches lately, doing some posts for a personal site and also coming up with post ideas for clients. My experience is that there is a lot to gain from writing in a new niche, from learning how to network with zero status and using popular content ideas in an industry where they don’t exist.
This post is going to look at a simple tactic that brought over 10,000 visitors and hundreds of links that you can replicate today.
Using Ideas
As many of you may know, I’ve been in this industry for over 3 years now and I’ve seen many bloggers come and go. With that, there have been so many post ideas I wish I had thought of, but once it’s out there it’s not really my thing to take the idea and just re-hash the writing.
However, if something does well in one niche, you can actually take that to a different niche and put it on a site there. This is exactly what I did, I copied an idea that has done very well in this niche, had it made and then put it in a completely new niche where it can work just as well. The result?
- Over 10,000 visitors to the page
- Hundreds of backlinks and rising
- Over 80 extra feed subscribers
And best of all, you don’t even need a blog.
The Idea
I’m sure most of you have came across this before, and you’ve probably even thought about doing something similar. However, the difference between doing and thinking is a big one. Personally, I don’t sit around, I would rather spend some money and see if something sticks. The idea in question is this list of the ‘Top 100 Make Money Online Blogs‘ by Mark and 45n5.
I paid a programmer from India $100 to create me the same script and put it to use in the personal development industry. Basically you enter a site via the admin panel and it ranks them via Google PR, Technorati Score & Alexa rank. Because you are giving bloggers exposure, they are more than happy to help you promote the page, all I did was contact each blogger to let them know that they were listed.
The results…
Over 400 links to the page according to Yahoo (in less than one month):
Over 10,000 pageviews on the page itself:
All this after spending $100 and about 30 minutes of my time to contact all the bloggers on the list who were all happy to link to, tweet, and stumble the page. This page is only around 2 weeks old so the traffic is only going to continue to increase as well as the links.
So, the next time you see a good idea in one niche, how about you give it a shot on one of your websites, instead of just wondering ‘what if?’.
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This is a great idea. But, I am slightly confused. How does the rankings figure out? Whats the formula that decides the rankings? I see PageRank Techronati and Alexa, but how does that figure into rankings?
Hey Joe, thanks.
Basically I had to do some smart maths on this one. There is a bit of dilemma as the higher the Google PR the better, but the lower the Alexa and Technorati the better. Therefore I told the programmer to give each PR a certain score.
PR 10 = 0
Pr 9 = 1,000
…
Pr 1 = 9,000
PR 0 = 10,000
So, now if you have a PR 9 (which is great) only 1,000 points are added to the final score. Then overall you just rank the sites by the lowest total score (all 3 added together).
This isn’t perfect and probably not exactly fair but it means if two sites have the same T & A, although unlikely, the one with the higher pagerank will rank 1st.
I’d be interested to see how you would turn the 10,000 hits into revenue, though. How would you monetise the project in order for that $100 to be truly worthwhile?
With a project like this you aren’t really looking for money, you are looking for links (which needs traffic for poeople to know about it), feed subscribers, branding etc.
The links were the main benefit, what kind of revenue are you looking for? I want people to stick around, subscribe to the feed and help spread the word.
If you wanted to monetize I guess you could use adsense or even charge people to be on the list, I’m not sure how well that would work.
hahahahaha
really adam?
Hey, thanks for the advice. Yea, I’m doing that right now with two niches. They are TOTALLY untapped.
Good luck with the niche blog.
Awesome, and thanks!
Would you like to sell a copy of the script so I don’t have to have one made?
Will be using it in the Apparel Industry.
That’s a great idea and there are 1000’s upon 1000’s of niches where that can be done.
Quick question: What are you using for you sponsored ads on the right-hand side? Is that a plugin or php program of some sort?
- Ryan
It’s a plugin for wordpress called OIO publisher, thanks for the comment.
If you know how to do it it’s 0$ to 10000 visitors. 10kz for sharing!
I guess you could put it like that, as long as you forget to factor in the time it took you to learn PHP
Already did it and a few websites added. It’s for the blogging community in Romania: http://www.psd2markup.com/roblogstats/index.php
Awesome man, some people don’t take action but it’s nice to see those who do!
Be sure to let me know how it goes
I’d be interested in buying the script too.
I’d be interested in buying the php script too!
Contact me on ym: bughy_kissable
You are not tracking the time you spent on the project:
- time to find the programmer, time to contact the bloggers etc.
Time has a value too.
And then, if you learn to program, you can even do it almost for free.
What is the quality of traffic that these posts receive?
Also what is the effect of putting the post up? Does it improve your site rank?
The quality of traffic is very high because it is targetted to your niche
Glen, you wasted your time and money get the script built, there is one already available for $20 - http://www.5starred.com/
And lets be honest, it hasn’t got 100s of link, most links are from the same sites.
I only wasted my money if i knew about something else in the first place. I can live with spending an extra $80 and having my results rather than wishing I had known about another script.
Why do you think I only said 100+ links in the title.
Anyways, there will always be some people who want to pick out the negative, thanks.
Great idea, thanks for sharing. I’m going to add a top 100 to my site.
I just got done coming from that top 100 blogs site because I was looking for some good dofollow blogs! I found a lot of good ones on there, but you could tell some of them were just for promotion, as they did not have a lot of comments on it, but a decent page rank. I think i’m going to do this.
Bughy - I don’t have AM (quite intentionally).
That idea is amazing! I actually found this site through the top 100 list so am sure that a top 100 in other niche’s would work a dream.
[...] are plenty out there are they’re short on money especially those from India. Sometimes even 100$ are enough. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share [...]
ok — nice try!
you’ve said 400 links in Yahoo, but what about Google?
Awesome, awesome idea. $100 for the script? Not bad!
I think that this same idea can be scaled for different niches. For example, the niche I deal in probably wouldn’t have close to 100 good blogs that I could rank, maybe 25 or so, and this would be a great way to do that. I’m sure it would still be effective…guess we’ll have to find out!
I still dun understand that how can you pagerank go up really high, but you didn’t provide the content often. Is it just to post to the top 100 list or other rank site?
very creative. thanks for the post.
[...] are plenty out there are they’re short on money especially those from India. Sometimes even 100$ are [...]
Awesome post.
I think you should sell the post.
Also where did you outsource this project work
I love the top 100 lists. That is actually how I found you!
What you have done is fantastic-not rested on a great idea but acted on it.
Have you always been like this, or was this learned behavior, or inspired by someone or something?
If if learned or inspired…is there a story there?
hey, thanks for the advice, great one. Is it ok if ask where did you find the Indian programmer?
Hello,
Great idea! I think I will try it out.
Thanks
Somebody told me that you need to have an Amazon access key to retrieve data from Alexa and for this they (Amazon) charge some money. Can you please tell me is it really so and if yes can you please tell how much money do they charge?
I don’t pay anything for Alexa data
Very nice idea. People really love rankings and I can see how it could be very profitable after contacting all of the bloggers. I wish I had an idea like that, haha.
Good idea though. We can give it a try but how are we assured that the same percentage of success (is it true) would be achieved by anyone? Don’t think I am pessimistic, but has it paid off to all who attempted it?
I’ve tried it in two niches and had decent success in both. i certainly can’t guarantee you would have the same results though
[...] are plenty out there are they’re short on money especially those from India. Sometimes even 100$ are [...]