Content is to a business online, as sales are to profits. Content is the reason most people go online and interesting content that is relevant to solving some problem, concern or challenge is the reason people visit your site. The search engines love content. If, that content is fresh, credible and helps to solve some dilemma that many people online or offline face, then you may benefit from repeat visitors. Here is how to get content for free!
Tip #0
Before you embark on your quest for free content keep this point in mind. People go online for information and that information could be directly related to what your site is about or indirectly or complimentary to what your site is about. For example, if you had a website or blog about living abroad, you may want to have articles or posts about how to support yourself while living overseas or how to make money in a foreign country or articles or posts about making money online. Each one of the aforementioned articles or posts would easily relate to your audience or compliment your site.
You want and need to attract the right visitors to your website or blog, because they are the most likely audience that will be interested in what your content addresses and the most likely to be interested in your products and services. It is nice getting visitors of any kind to your site, but research proves that if you want to turn your visitors into subscribers, buyers and repeat buyers, then your content, complimentary products and services all have to be what your visitors are looking for.
Tip #1
You can take advantage of the number of publishers who will let you use their articles to republish on your website or blog, so long as you leave the resource box intact. The resource box generally has the name of the publisher, their short biographical information and their website or blog address.
This form of republishing is referred to as Article Marketing and is a way to get content quickly for your site and for free.
Here is a list of the Top Ten Places To Get Content For Free
2) Article City
4) Go Articles
6) Article Cube
7) Amazines
10) Easy Articles
Tip #2
There is no shortage of e-books on just about every subject imaginable online. Your task is to find e-books that are of interest to your visitors and are still current to your theme. If, you do decide to use one of the many free e-books that are available, ensure that it grants you master resell rights. Master resell rights generally grants you the right to sell the e-book, but may or may not grant you the rights to change any of the links within the e-book. If, there is any doubt in your mind as to the extent that you can use, reuse, sell or republish an e-book, send the author an e-mail with your questions.
Here are the Top 5 Places to find e-books for free.
1) Free E-Books
3) Many Books
5) Web Source
Tip #3
Just as there is no shortage of e-books on just about every subject you could probably think of, there are no shortages of experts who have written an e-book or two. Why not e-mail one of the leading gurus in your industry or niche and ask for an interview?
You could pick one of the rising stars or an established star within your industry or niche and even if you are too shy to personally meet with them or it is physically impossible to meet with them for whatever reason, you can send an e-mail with perhaps 10 or 20 questions that you have about them or about the industry or niche. They may or may not respond to your e-mail request or they may prefer to have a telephone interview or no interview at all.
You will never know unless you ask. If, you sent out interview requests to five leading members of your industry or niche and none of them responded, then send five more. Most people like some degree of publicity, so you are bound to get more than a few interviews you can write about. Persistence pays as well as the insights that you and your readers will benefit from the interview.
Tip #4
With each article that you source, don’t forget to include something of value, so that your reader takes something away from the article that they can immediately apply to whatever the article addresses. You want your reader to find value not only in the quality of the content, but also in the ease in which the article or post helps them to resolve some problem, challenge or concern that is uncommon or common to the industry or niche in question.
You also want to make it clear to your reader, what it is that you want them to do, such as subscribe to your feed, leave their name and e-mail in order to get a free e-book or e-course. If, you want your reader to click on this link or that link, to get more information, tell them.
When you tell your reader what it is that you want them to do, this is your call-to-action or unique sales proposal. You may not be telling them directly to buy this or that, but you sure want to educate your reader as to why they will benefit if they do buy this or that! Tell your reader what it is you want them to do and then make it easy for them to do it.
Here are the Pros and Cons of Free Content:
Pros of Free Content
You get articles to use as content for free.
If, you have a new website or blog and need to supply immediate content, you can do so for free.
If, you don’t care about your long-term pagerank, which is how the search engines rank your site when someone searches for your keywords, then there are lots of e-books to be had for free.
Cons of Free Content
You may have to overcome the duplicate content penalty imposed by most search engines. If, your article or post that you are using has been published before, when you put something that has already been published online on your site, the search engines will eventually punish your site for the duplicate content and you may lose some or all of your pagerank when the search engines update their directories.
The majority of search engines refrain from indexing articles or posts that are duplicates of already published articles and posts.
You may have to create a great many original, never been published, articles or posts to overcome the search engine penalties for duplicate content.
There is the age-old adage, that there is nothing for free. It will take you a bit of your time to source free content and you may feel that it would be better to just create your own content and media for your site.
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