Recently I had the privilege of attending at networking event where Benjamin Hardy was a guest speaker.

Ben is the #1 writer on medium.com (and all around great dude).

Ben talked about how he went from zero to over 300k email subscribers in just a couple years.

I want to share some wisdom nuggets for the other bloggers here to help you grow your business. And increase your voice and presence online. And add some $$$ to your bank account. Cool?

Bypassing the obvious, you need to produce good content. If you’re not adding value to your readers, none of the below matters. What do people want? Make your writing about that.

In The Science of Getting Rich Wallace D. Wattles writes, “Give more in use value than you take in cash value. Then you are adding to the life of the world by every business transaction.”

My biggest “a-ha” moment from Ben’s talk was this.

“There’s never going to be the same audience on the Internet twice.”

Let me explain why this matters. And why it’s so powerful for your growth (and income) as a writer / blogger.

The Power of Republishing

How long have you been blogging? Does your website have an archive full of great posts sitting in a black hole of the Internet never to be read again?

Tip#1a -- Republish them!

“But people have already read it”

So?

Maybe 100, or 1,000 or 10,000 people read it. But that was a month or year ago. Republish it. That same segment of people (your mom, notwithstanding) might not be on the Internet to see it when you repost it.

And, if they are, most likely they aren’t going to remember it anyway. Do you remember the blog posts you read a month ago? Exactly.

Tip#1b -- When you republish, use a new (better) headline.

The most important line of your blog post is the headline.

If your headline sucks, no one is going to read the article. Regardless of how good it might be.

You are doing your audience a disservice when you use a bad headline.

You might have life-changing content inside the article itself. But if the headline doesn’t solicit a read, they miss out. Use a new headline. And split test to see how well it does so you have data for when you republish it again 30-60 days from now with another new (and improved) headline.

Here’s another reason why republishing is so powerful.

We all get writer’s block. Some days we just don’t have it.

And some days we might be sick, on vacation, or simply can’t pull ourselves away from a good ole fashioned Netflix bender.

Republishing old articles is a quick and easy way to keep you relevant. Keep you FOMA. Front of Mind Awareness to your audience. Whether you’re posting daily, once a week or three times a week. This strategy works.

You can literally spend 5 minutes grabbing an old blog post. Copy and paste it into a new blog post with a new headline. Hit publish. Easy day’s worth of work, no?

Now, if you’re anything like me, you might go back and re-read some of your old blog posts and want to rip your eyes out because of how bad it is. In this case, it will be worth your while to spend a little more time editing before you republish with your new headline.

But you still have the guts of a good article that warranted your time and energy to write in the first place. And when you republish it again 30-60-90 days from now, you likely will have improved as a writer so you may want to edit again.

Remember…

“There’s never going to be the same audience on the Internet twice.”

This should go without saying. But you want to continue writing new, relevant content for your audience. And building up your archive of posts to republish again in the future.

Once you have written 30 posts, there’s no reason for you not to have a new article online every single day. As as that post number increases, you’ll just be republishing the same article less frequently. Or just weeding out the ones that don’t perform as well. Get your 30 best and systematically just keep them on a republishing loop. Always improving the headline.

How to track your posts for maximum ROI

Create a sheet in your Google Sheets.

Each time you republish an article, track the data.

How many views did it get?
How many link clicks? (we’ll get there in a minute).
How many shares?
How many email subscribers?

Next time you republish that same article with the new headline, look at the data. Was it better or worse in the metrics you’re tracking? Continue doing this until you find a headline that crushes it. Then you can keep reposting with the same headline because you know it converts.

Okay, but how do I make money?

At the bottom of each of your posts, have a clear CTA (call to action).

Clicking that link would take you here ==> https://go.benjaminhardy.com/optin-16784469

Now, landing pages and sales funnels are outside the scope of this post. If you have questions around that, you can ask me directly. Or perhaps I’ll do that in another post.

But you want to capture the reader's email address. The money is in the email address.

Not only can you keep republishing old articles on different platforms every day, but you can also set up email autoresponders to send those blog posts to your email list.

If someone likes an article you post today and joins your email list, they didn’t know you before today. Or your work. So your autoresponder email sequence can start sending them daily blog posts that you’ve written in the past. Now you’re delivering top notch content - that’s new to them - directly into their inbox daily. Without actually doing any work.

By doing this you’re building the “KLT” factor. You’re getting the email subscriber to know, love and trust you.

When someone knows, loves and trusts you, they are more likely to buy from you in the future.

Okay, but how do I make money?

Ben suggests we turn our best blog posts into products. Perhaps you have an info product. Or an idea for one. You can occasionally pitch this to your email list after you’ve delivered enough value on the front end.

But let’s say you don’t have a product. Or even an idea of what you could create that people would be willing to pull out their credit cards and pay for.

Look at your Google Sheet and see which posts performed best.

You can turn these posts into products. As an example, Ben often writes about the importance of journaling. And having a morning routine and getting into a peak state to do your best work.

He turned all these posts into a Journal Mastery course for $27. Non-affiliate aside, I HIGHLY recommend that course.

Wrapping Up, or the tl;dr version

Add value. Write content that people need. Nothing else matters if you try to shortcut this step.
Republish old posts with new headlines. Always split testing headlines until you find winners.
Know your numbers. Track your posts and the number of views, comments, shares, opt-ins.
Create a product from your best posts that you can pitch to your email list after you’ve built the KLT factor.

And one final note on republishing. Republish everywhere. If you are posting on your blog and don’t have a large following, republish on different platforms. Post on Medium, Quora, FB. Oh, and Steem :)

Now BRB while I go copy / paste this onto another platform.

--Brian

PS All the same advice above goes for videos. Not just writing.