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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

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