Comment by superasn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by superasn | Hacker News Reader

Your blog is one of the best sources to get new traffic for your app. Search content marketing if you're not doing it already. I knew a client who go at least 20 signups per day using a blog post that ranked #1 on Google.

Of course your content has to be amazing and needs a few backlinks from industry leaders or authority sites. Also the most important part of your blog post is the bottom section where you have your call to action to convert the reader into a subscriber, so don't ever use a generic click here type CTA.

E.g. If your blog post is about 10 ways to lose weight, then add a resource box below which says "It's time to get started, download this FREE time-line pdf I prepared for you which helped me and 1000 members of this website lose over 10 lbs in 22 days" and bam.. there you have a new signup!

P.S. Goes without saying but you must give good advice. You have to win their trust, the article, the pdf must give them what they're searching for (give them 80% and remaining 20% after payment).

It doesn't have to be a blog, but agree that SEO is a huge benefit of done correctly.

Blogs that look stale or infrequently updated have a negative buying effect for me.

But create a couple SEO pages like a How To guide, FAQs, etc. and it's a short term investment with long term benefits.

Yeah but how much did your client pay to get that ranking, now many years of blogging, etc. You have to take into account all the people who also tried but failed. One successful example does not prove it's worthwhile.

It can really depend on the niche. For some niches, it's basically as simple as "write an article, and you'll be #1". For others, it's a case of "more money than you'll earn in your lifetime is spent each year fighting for this spot"

Obviously, though, the rewards in the former are far lower. But, it certainly means it's worth trying one article to see how big the rewards are. Basically just search like a user would, and see if the results are satisfying. If none are, then it should be straightforward to rank #1 or near the top.

No, but one example proves it can be done. As the other answer to your post, it depends what niche as to how hard it's going to be. But aren't they both like setting up your business in the first place? Loads of businesses fail. Doesn't mean it can't be done. But the barriers to success are much greater to send a rocket to Mars than they are to develop WordPress websites.

Blogging is basically just content marketing, which has been proven to work when done well. It is also one of the cheapest ways to market if you have a little time each week to invest into it. I know of at least 10 companies and/or individuals who have used this strategy to build an audience and start selling one product or another with great success and a very limited initial budget.

You are right that one (or ten) success example(s) doesn't prove that this strategy works, but similarly neither does one (or many) failure(s). It depends on the quality of the articles, the audience, and many of other factors, just like paid advertising depends on various factors like where the ad is, what audience you target, cost, etc.

What I can say with certainty is that there are definitely markets where you can get to the front page of Google within a year by just writing a few quality articles every month. You don't have to pay money, use spammy backlink tactics, or anything like that. Whether OP's audience is one of those is unclear, but it seems that he knows his audience reasonably well if he is making $$ from them, so chances are he could get a positive ROI on a blog if he gave it the proper attention.

The best perspective for an inbound marketing blog I got is to simply help people and solve their problems. It doesn't even have to use your app tbh, because you'll start generating the goodwill, trust, and traffic this way.

Exactly this, and it works even if you know what the company's intention is by hosting a blog. I'm pretty hostile towards email marketing companies but came away with a positive impression of one such company after reading their blog. They legitimately helped me optimize some of my marketing strats for free.

Thanks. You’ve inspired me to stick with it.

As someone who has gotten some decent traffic out of articles: you may find that a "blog" isn't necessarily worthwhile, but that producing 10-20 high quality articles is. Especially since articles can often double as a high quality FAQ, lowering your customer support requirements.

Good blogs basically serve the same role, they generate a lot of posts which could be effective standalone articles.

Glad I could help. But I would like to caution you that it does require quite a lot of commitment and time.

You can't treat your blog posts any less and try to be done with it in one evening and then forget about it (it won't show in Google or generate traffic or signups yet most people think of blogging that way only).

Sometimes you may have to spend days researching / writing an article, graphics and PDF while spending $500 on your graphics, editing, proof-reading, etc. It requires the same type of effort you would put in creating a product.

Then the outreach is the worst part where you have to convince other people in your niche to add your articles as a resource (Brian Dean has some great advice on this btw).

You can pay someone to write blog posts. And $500 for 1000-2000 word posts is a fair price.

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