I’m going to assume you read the title wrong because making money off draft blog posts would just be ridiculous.
When you’re making a post on your Wordpress blog you have three options under the Post Status. You can have your post be Published, which means its live and public, or you can have it as a draft which means you’re still working on it or lastly private meaning only you can view it. Draft posts have their obvious purpose. It allows you to do one of those nasty habits you pick up in college called proof reading. Other than that they really have no significant value. However there is a sneaky way to make some decent reoccurring cash off them. Yes, I’ll be happy to show you how!
First, in an effort to better my posts I’m going to experiment and take a different direction with my explanation of how to do this tactic. I get an abundant supply of people telling me my methods are too hard to follow. Perhaps its my engineering book method of explaining it. I find it easier to learn that way but perhaps it’s not for everyone. I would like them to be; so instead of posting the usual processes and methodologies I’m going to tell you a story.
Once upon a time…
There was a studly Internet marketer named Eli. Eli loved spam blogs. He loved them so much he called them Splogs because he talked about them so much the words kind of meshed into an incomprehensible word that for some reason everyone understood. On this particular gloomy day our lovable hero Eli was making a Splog to test the stickiness of trackback links. Eli knew all about trackback links and how they were useful for notifying other blogs when he posted a link about their individual posts through a link that showed up in their comments. He was also well aware of the fact that most blogs post a special url on each post that you can use to post your trackback links on. With this information in his pocket he was equipped to perform an experiment, an experiment in figuring out a way to increase the percentage of bloggers that would keep his trackback link live in their comments.
This was no ordinary experiment. Danger and wacky misadventures were inevitable. He first tried sending unrelated trackbacks to older posts from abandoned blogs with some success. However he wanted new posts from big time blogs that are updated consistently and he desperately wanted some of their continuous traffic stream. This posed a problem for our young marketer. They would always delete them before they could gain enough link value and throughput traffic sufficient enough for ad profit. A worthy adversary. Thinking on his toes Eli started targeting blog posts that were relevant to his desired ads. He then put up a post saying saying something like:
“I just got this new *product name* today from Circuit City. Its really cool and it got some great reviews. Check out *trackback target 1*, *trackback target 2* ….etc. They post some great insight into the *product name* and what you can do with it.”
He then made sure to include NONE of his own ads. This was very risky but hey he was willing to sacrifice for the sake of knowledge. Luckily success! The big time blogs with continuous traffic saw no reason to remove his trackback links. Eli complimented and linked to their blogs with no ads and motive to do so and they were stoked about it.
Eli was beaming with joy. His Splog was gaining in daily traffic from all the trackback links. the more posts he made about this seemed to draw in more daily traffic from the links. Eli frantically upped his post count hoping to duplicate the success a 100 fold. However much to his dismay the success rate of the trackback links sticking went down. The big bloggers would see all his extremely similar posts and delete his trackback. If he wanted to keep his stickiness success rate he was going to have to delete some posts. This was not a reasonable solution and it made him sad. So instead he took all of his posts over two months old and changed their status to “Draft.” This made them not appear on the actual blog but if you went directly to the urls by following a trackback link they were still there in their entire form. In a stroke of genius he also made a few fake posts that made his Splog look legit and put their post date for the next year and made them so they would always be on the main page of his Splog.
Success! Eli was driving in even more traffic to the individual posts because of the sheer volume he could produce without anyone being the wiser. Once a post became 2 months old he would automatically change it to draft mode. Eli also knew that bloggers only checked their trackback links once or twice for legitimacy before forgetting about them. So after 4 months he started replacing his original posts and their links with affiliate links to the individual products. Eli’s Splog continued to get traffic from the trackbacks and each visitor was greeted with a nice affiliate link VIA a snazzy sales page to where they could buy the product. He made much money and lived happily ever after.
The End
Story time is over kids. Get back to work.
hahaha. that was fucking awesome.
Although I think I like your old method of explaining things better Eli
I like the old way of expalining as well. You did such a great job of telling stories.
Awesome either way, I am glad that you are teaching us to think like you.
Thanks
Thanks.
I swear that will be the last time you guys hear me speak in third person.
I just wanted to have some fun with it. If anyone doesn’t like it blame Andrew Wee
I’m gonna stick my wee in Andrew Wee’s face if I don’t get the old Eli back.
I loved the content, but the delivery made me wonder when Shrek was gonna pop up and scare the bloggers into submission.
Sorry if I missed something, but how do you get traffic to the draft post? Are you posting comments in that same blogs with a link to the trackback?
The idea sounds great, as always.
p.s.- I like your old method of explaining
Good question. I knew someone was going to ask that.
Do a little bit of research on trackback or pingback links.
Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback
Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sping
Here’s a perfect example of a Splog that sent me a trackback.
http://www.bluehatseo.com/i-need-a-vacation/#comment-6245
ps. Mark you have one awesomely wicked scraper site. Kudos
Thanks for the info Eli. I get it now. Is there a way to apply this method to a site like mine, a non-blog?
Or should I just create a one-page blog that is a pseudo-splash page for my main site?
p.s.-Thanks for the compliment. Do you have any techniques for spamming classified sites like craigslist?
Hi Eli,
Can you explain to my sluggish brain what exactly goes into the ‘*product name*’ ‘*trackback target 1*’ and ‘*trackback target 2*’ parts?
These are obviously links, but do you mean they are not links to your posts that has the trackback on it?? Is that what you mean by ‘none of my own ads’?
T
THIS IS GREAT! I gotta say, there is no shortage of great comments on this blog. Every time I view it I am amazed. Keep up the good writing.
F&^%ing awesome as always!
But i like the old style of posts better! But thanks for trying =)
Eli,
Love your blog … but sorry to tell ya you are not a story teller. Maybe if you want us to learn better… give us an order list 1,2,3 etc of what to do.
But on the other note, have been a reader some time now, finally had the courage to say hello. Keep up the good work!
PS I have already started implementing some of your ideas!
ehehehheh, super eli, superbbbbbb!!
Your blog rules the world
You are the Lex Luthor of Internet Marketing. Evil genius stuff, I absolutely love it.
And yeah, Step 1, Step 2 and so on would be much easier to follow.
This is Sweet Thank you so much for this!
I had some idea’s of trackback links but this sealed the deal.
I look for more…
Do you know of a way to automatically make the older posts turn to drafts? I’m sure it would be possible via a plug-in but was wondering if there was an easier way to go about this than writing a plugin from scratch.
Good question. Depending on your wordpress version it is under the wp_posts table. I believe its called status. just change the number. Very easy.
Great work man…. I love the way you explained
Hats off, if we ever meet I owe you a Drink
Good lateral thinking to produce something that is there… but no-one has seen before - keep up the good ideas
Great idea. Thanks for sharing.
About to try it now - will give you some feedback in 2 months
Eli, great idea. Will also definitely try and report back in like 4-5 months=P
I was just wondering, for these types of blogs do you think personal or professional blogs would look better? One big blog or many blogs?
That was a great post! I’m still new to the whole trackback thing, but I think I’m going to look into it now.
I’m going to go into providing services that benefit the internet community, I’m getting tired of SEO. I think my intelligence is better spent on useful things, and I know the money will come later.
Very awesome… never thought of the draft post + affiliate link trick.
Like most of your posts, it’s an awesome technique to implement.
Here’s a thought. Whenever I get a trackback in a different language, I almost always approve it (if the site “looks” legit), but I can’t tell what the page says. Maybe there’s an easy way to flip a language on/off if you have a multi-lingual site, maybe even by referrer.
Great post on making money through posts. Especially i liked the way you told about it by telling like a story. Thanks for such a beautiful story.