Jan 29, 2019
Today on the show we have Daniel Daines-Hutt. We talk a lot about content promotion and the idea that you shouldn't be spending all of your time creating new content, but actually taking the great content that you already have and promoting it and continuing to grow traffic with that. And if you can just take a few key pieces of content that he explains in this episode, you can have everything you need to run a very successful content marketing campaign. He shares a lot of wisdom and I love his systems and approaches to everything he does in content marketing.
Key Takeaways
[2:19] Daniel’s interesting entrance into entrepreneurship
[5:43] The most important part of content creation
[7:00] How to work with Influencers who can help your content promotion
[9:40] Using forums to promote content
[12:50] Daniel’s three-phase content launch system
[15:35] The many benefits of written content
[18:18] How to create and market content to customers who are in different stages of the funnel
[24:19] Daniel’s proven process to create epic content, easily
[30:04] 100,000 site visitors? No problem!
Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Free Guide to Paid Content Promotion: Facebook Edition
Transcript
Kyle:
Hello, and welcome to The Story Engine Podcast. Today on the show we have Daniel Daines-Hutt. I'm excited to share this episode with you. A lot of you out there are big fans of The Story Engine and big fans of a lot of these ideas. I think you're gonna eat this stuff up. So, enjoy. Let's give the mic over to Daniel.
Kyle:
Daniel, thanks for joining us.
Daniel:
Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it.
Kyle:
So, Daniel, we've already been talking a little bit on the pre-call and there's a lot of stuff around content promotion and even your strategy by creating a brand with content that I really wanna dig into. But I would like to get to know you a little bit better first for our audience. I would love to hear a story from a moment that's defined you and has really led to who you are and what you're doing today. And then, of course, tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
Daniel:
Okay, so, I'm very easy going. Pretty laid back guy. I'm from England originally, but I'm living over in New Zealand as a permanent resident now. Which took a long time to happen. I was too old and they were gonna kick me and my partner out of the country because I couldn't apply for a new visa. So, we were trying to look for loopholes, we had kind of 48 hours to figure something out. And I saw that if you were an entrepreneur you could apply for an entrepreneurship visa. And so, I used to work in retail and I'm pretty good at understanding customers. And I took a Photoshop lesson on YouTube that night. I designed a T-shirt and put it on Facebook.
Daniel:
I woke up the next day and we sold five. And then I had to go out and figure out how to get them printed. And then, from that, we were in five retail stores in five weeks and that enabled us to stay in the country. I quit my job and things like that. That was a few years ago, now. You go through this evolution where people saw that we were good at marketing and business, which got me into marketing instead. We ended up selling the clothing company and then going from there, but I think if that hadn't have happened, I would've been happy working in a surf shop and surfing six hours a day outside of that. And very easy going, you know?
Kyle:
I love that. And it's a very unique entrance into entrepreneurship. Not many people, yeah, use it as a visa loophole. Travel really attracted me at first, too, but to that degree, that's pretty cool.
Daniel:
Well, that's it. And it took us years to finally get that residency. The hardest things we ever did, I say it all the time, people in eCommerce will contact me 'cause they know the history. And T-shirts are a gateway drug. You know? 'Cause it's really easy to sell a T-shirt for like $20 bucks or whatever and then that's it, man. You can't work for anyone else ever again.
Kyle:
After those first five?
Daniel:
Yeah, that's it. You're just like boom. If you're making money and it's scalable and things like that, yeah.
Kyle:
Well, tell us a little bit more about Amp My Content and this latest iteration of your business and skill set.
Daniel:
Okay, so, we were doing marketing for a while. I was doing SEO for people and things like that. And getting traffic to their websites. And that would do really well, but then they couldn't convert. Just because a lot of businesses are missing a lot of things. So, I started doing retargeting for people and I started writing case studies about that. Those case studies suddenly went viral. We got, I think, $3 million in client requests in two weeks. We didn't take all those on, I'm not a crazy person. We got 50 thousand visitors to the website and then these articles that I was writing about paid ads were just going insane. We had the top ten content of all time on inbound.org. Top content of 2017, 2018 on growth hackers. Content shared by Satya Nadella of Microsoft. Ryan Deiss, Neil Patel, Shawn Ellis, all these guys. And I was looking at this and we were getting better results than big content marketing blogs.
Daniel:
So, I wanted to create a business with my partner Freya, who is also a content writer. She's a fantastic content writer. And I wanted to create something where one, we could work together. And without being morbid, if anything happened to me, she would have that freedom as well where she could earn money from this and it would be there long after I'm gone, you know? So, yeah, we write a lot of case studies. Our main focus on Amp My Content is teaching people how to make more effective content. So, not just traffic, but also higher opt-ins and things like that so they can write less.
Daniel:
But we also teach how to leverage that content. 'Cause a lot of people kind of brush over this, and yet it's one of the most important parts of actual content is actually promoting it. Most articles you'll find on the subject are a list of 21 techniques, and that's it. Whereas we just wrote 30 thousand words on how to run Facebook ads to a piece of content. People might think that's a bit too much and it is a big post, but for every dollar, we spend promoting an article, we make $23 in return. So, we teach people how to effectively leverage that. We teach them the mistakes we made and what works. So, I apologize. I'm three coffees deep.
Kyle:
That's great. I'm digging into this and I'm sure a lot of the listeners are absolutely loving this. I would like to know, and I hope that it maybe takes us down the vein of promotion, but it sounds like the incredible results you were getting, first you were creating very, very high quality, high investment, up front content. But then, once it was created you were working hard on building relationships and getting the attention of big influencers. Can you tell us about how some of those big names were able to pick up on your article and what that meant for you?
Daniel:
Well, if you get a couple of influencers, you normally get a few more because they follow each other and things like that. Especially if the content is good. If you can get number one or a top post in a forum for a week, it normally gets pushed out to a large email list and things like that. Absolutely blew my mind the first time it happened because you're reading all these articles by these guys, nowadays we get a lot of them to come across and join our email list and things like this. So, that just blows my mind when you see that happen or they, we consult for specific people and things like that. But a lot of it is just building relationships and so, I have a direct response background, which is like a paid ads background. It's learning how to empathize with a person who has a problem. You have a solution and you connect the dots between them.
Daniel:
But it's not just that. It's also having a measurable result at hand. So, if you can understand those principles, it comes across in absolutely everything that you do. So, reaching out to influencers and things, you have to realize they're very busy and they're getting a lot of emails, how can you make it about them? How can it be easy to say yes to? How can it be a no brainer to say yes to? How can it actually be more beneficial to them than it is to you sometimes? And things like this, because sometimes just a tweet, I think a tweet from Glen Allsopp got us like 200 subscribers the other day. Things like this. So, that has a snowball effect that you can, Ryan Holiday has a great term for it and I'm trying to think what it is now, but basically, you can build on that again and again and again from there.
If you are able to get a couple of influencers, you will normally get a few more because they follow each other
Kyle:
I like that. So, again, this is just connecting with influencers, but you've also mentioned, just throughout this, forums and several other kinds of content syndication places, is that a key part of what you're doing? Do you get a lot of traction there?
Daniel:
I like to know my audience as well as I can. A lot of people fail with forums because they go in, they write a post and then they spam as many threads as they can to try and push that content out. Getting traffic from a forum is just a benefit. It's like a secondary goal. In reality, you should be learning about your audience as much as possible because then you can start to see trends that are occurring, content that's needed, questions and pain points. But more importantly, you can see what they need and how you can provide it. So if I'm writing an article and things like that. So, then when you share an article in there if you're being helpful and things, it makes a huge difference.
Daniel:
So, I have a content academy product and there's a student in there called Gigi Rogers, Gigi was literally, just going through forums and being super helpful and providing value. Just doing the basic stuff. Not promotional. She got offered jobs by an offshoot of HubSpot, Rainn Wilson, the actor, and his YouTube channel, they pitched her on a job. She got all these job offers that she wasn't even going for, just because of being so valuable in forums and things. So, there's always different channels that you can promote content, but they have different benefits and different things that you need to look out for and different things that you need to be going for.
Daniel:
A lot of this stuff, it's very easy, it's just the subtleties of certain things. So, you know, going in and actually, I call it community manager role, but you are going in and you are actually being more beneficial to that forum than anything else. That way when you do promote content in there, super easy to do and also, it helps you leverage the attraction. So, saying that you had one of the top posts that week when you're reaching out for link building, it's so easy for them to at least check it out. If they'd never heard of you before. Things like this. Trading up the chain. That's what they call it.
Kyle:
How much time a week do you invest in trading up the chain? How much time are you in forums where you're not being self-promotional and maybe how many forums could that be? How much are you investing in building up these relationships and making sure that you are positioned well for when you do promote your content?
Daniel:
Right now, not a lot at all. Because I don't need to be. I've been in these forums for a while, so, I've built up a lot of good will and things like this. If I was new to a forum and I was trying to promote a post, I would get in there maybe a month in advance. Usually because if I'm writing a post, I'm in there to learn how best to write that post, what they need.
Daniel:
So, it makes no sense for me to write this thing and then put it in front of people if I don't actually know what they need. And by going there and interacting and helping out however I can, in advance, like 30 days later when I promote the thing, it's so much easier to do. 'Cause I'm like hey Mike, we were talking about this paid ads and how to design an ad, I put together this whole thing of how to do it with some swipe files and things like that, I thought it might help you. Mike's gonna be super pumped and then that thread is gonna go viral because everyone else is gonna keep coming back to it and things like that.
Daniel:
And people don't realize these forums have quite a high backlink profile, so, even though it might not be an SEO value, chances are high they're gonna rank higher than you anyway for certain terms. So, when someone Googles it and they find that thread and that forum, then, indirectly, they come back to you. But right now I'm probably in a forum maybe an hour a week, if that. And it's just me reading threads and things and see what other people are producing.
Kyle:
Okay. You mentioned that's kind of a small part of a larger promotion strategy. What are the core pillars or what are the core places where you really emphasize a lot of time and effort when you are promoting content that you know is great?
Daniel:
So, I usually go through a kind of three-phase process. We call it pre-launch, launch, and post-launch. So, a lot of stuff beforehand, I might be working in forums and things. I'm also building relationships with influencers. Because what I want to happen is I want as much impact on day one as possible when something goes live. Its kind of like a quiet restaurant will always seat their staff in the window because no one wants to go into a restaurant that's quiet, but if they see people in the window eating food then they'll go in. It's weird, it's like you don't want to go in and be the person that everyone stares at and whatever. It's likewise for content. You kinda wanna get as much momentum early on, so that it gives everyone else permission to also interact and share and feedback and things like that. It's very weird how our brains work and how societies and tribe structures work and things.
Daniel:
So, during the pre-phase, I'm trying to build as much goodwill in advance so that when we launch we've got a big impact straight away. And that's how we're gonna get to the number one post on a forum. It's how we're gonna get influencers sharing it and linking to it on day one. Then, during that launch phase, I'm doing a big push. I'm telling as many people as I can. I'm telling my email list. All these different things. And post-launch, I will start looking at paid promotion so that I can run ads and traffic to it at a profit. I don't want to just promote it with paid ads just for the sake of it. I want it to be profitable. And we'll also do link building and things like that. Because that takes time and yes, I'm totally about SEO, it makes total sense, but even if I got a hundred websites to link to me today, it takes a while for Google to recognize that and it takes them a while to change the rankings. It might be like three months down the line before I ever see a benefit from it. But I could be still promoting. I could be coming on podcasts and talking about it. I could be running paid ads and stuff like that. So, I'm extending the life cycle of the content.
Daniel:
'Cause a big thing that people don't realize is you only have to have certain conversations in your business to make a sale. You don't have to have these thousands and thousands of conversations, always different content. You know, you might only have five, six, seven conversations from someone who's very cold to make a sale. So, I don't need to keep entertaining people I've already got, who are already customers. I need to go out and find more people who are already like those people, and just have that same conversation again. So, it makes more sense for you to go out and keep promoting that post, then it is to just actually keep writing. And there are multiple benefits, from an SEO point of view, but also it stops you from going crazy having to write all the time. And it also gives you permission to actually put more time and effort into the content. So, you're writing better content and things like that.
Kyle:
And the great thing about written content, too, is that you can always be updating and improving it. It's very flexible compared to audio or video, which I think is a really powerful quality that not many people recognize.
Daniel:
Exactly. And it's an asset that you've created that continues to work for you for years and years. It's the equivalent of planting seeds in a field and then you are just watering and watering and watering and it's gonna continue to bear fruit for years and years. And kind of a contradictory thing I have is that traffic, Google traffic, things like that, that's a secondary benefit. If Google died tomorrow, you're not gonna get Google traffic. But you have assets there that have the same conversations that you normally have that will move someone to become a customer. And a competitor, like Bing or whatever, will take over and eventually they'll send you traffic. But if you have those assets and a lead comes into your kind of sphere, chances are much higher of them becoming a customer by you having those assets and it means you can talk to more people than you ever could in person, you know?
The content you create is an asset that will continue to work for you for years to come
Kyle:
Yeah. Tell me about these kinds of core assets. You've mentioned a couple of times there are only a few conversations you need to have, there are only a few pieces of content you need to create, what are some of the foundational pieces of content you work on for people that are worth sticking around for a while and worth the long game promotion that you've been describing?
Daniel:
So, if we look at almost all content ever created is based on seven archetypes. Hero's journey and things like this. All stories, all films, all books. So, it's not a new thing. We can see that all content follows these kinds of templates and stories. Not only that, if we look at the systems that are available to us, Facebook or paid channels or Google channels and things like that, they all work in certain ways. So, certain content does well at certain things. If we want to sell to someone, in person or online, we need to connect with the problem they have, with our solution, and help them connect the dots for that to happen. They also need to trust that it will actually do the thing that we say it will. We need some kind of proof, if possible. we need some kind of social proof and connection. So, all these different things tie in.
Daniel:
So, different archetypes, like this 30 thousand word post that we just wrote, it's gonna build a heap of trust and authority with our readers. It builds a lot of reciprocity, so they wanna pay it forward. That's why it's got an 83% opt-in rate right now, that article. So, like 83 out of 100 people will become a subscriber. Which is unheard of. Standard industry opt-in rates are 2%. Not only that, if we think of how we get SEO benefits, it's people have to link to us from the website. It's a vote of trust. Some content, influencers are not gonna want to link to, because it's not relevant to them. So, some content we need to create for the influencer in mind so that it'll build links too. Some content we need to make with the customer in mind.
Daniel:
I see a lot of people who have traffic and no sales or they have sales and no traffic because they don't see that disconnect between the two. You need to be doing those things for these guys and you need to be doing those things for these guys. So, how to posts, case studies are ridiculously well at providing proof, authority, trust, value, they become actionable. If you do them in a certain way you can get influencers to link to them and share them as well and things like that. But they're gonna make more sales for you than anything else.
Daniel:
Like, if we were teaching someone how to surf, to buy their first surfboard, we would talk about how surfboards work and we would talk about figuring how waves work and what conditions are relevant to you and how often you're gonna do it and things. So, we're educating them to the point where they're able to make a decision to buy, but it's all content and conversations you've had a thousand times with a customer in person. It makes sense. And if you present in a way and you add data and things, then if you reached out to influencers and stuff, they would link to it and share it.
Daniel:
So, those are kind of the archetypes, really, that I recommend people have. You need how to guides because you reach the top of the funnel and they bring them all in. Sometimes you'll have a pain point kind of manifest or something like that so that they can connect with. 'Cause some people have a problem, they just don't understand what it is and they don't know how to vocalize the exact problem. They know the paint that they're feeling, but they don't understand why they're feeling that pain.
Kyle:
Can you give me some examples of what those are? Or maybe some that people might know?
Daniel:
So, I'm gonna give away my sale sequence, right now. So, I have a program, originally it was internal training for staff and interns. It was all our standard operating procedures and stuff of how to write content and how to promote content. Now, the ideal customer for that needs to believe and understand certain things. They need to be creating content for a start, they need to understand that it's more effective to actually focus on promotion than it is to just focus on creation, and they need to have specific systems in place. Chucking it on Twitter twice in a month and then calling it quits and writing something new is not gonna work. So, we have a sequence of content.
Daniel:
So, at the very front end, we have a manifesto post where we call out the main problems and objections that people have. So, you're writing content, you're anxious, you're not getting the results that you want to do, you were told all these things are true, but in reality, they're actually causing the problems, stuff like that. So, at that point, we've got them on board that they don't need to be writing all the time and so, they are interested in content and they're interested in changing the way they do it.
Daniel:
In the second article, we walk through the elements that actually make killer content, the criteria. Content has to be actionable, valuable, build trust, things like this. And we show them how to do that. We actually take an old post and we edit it to meet that criteria and they can see in comparison, side by side, of those two different posts. So, at this point they believe the right things, they see that they don't need to be creating a lot of content and also, we try and make it actionable. So, if they go and improve an old article and it's getting the same traffic, but now it's actually getting more traffic just because of how it's been improved. Then straight away they're gonna believe in this and they're gonna say okay, I don't need to cram a lot of content, I just need to be doing better.
Daniel:
Then the next post is we teach people how to get higher opt-ins, because if you are writing less content and now it's more improved and also, now, even if it's got the same traffic it's converting even higher, you're like okay, well, I'm ready to promote that stuff. And so, now they're ready to buy. We have created a situation where that person is ideal to become a customer. One, it helps me because I'm not just trying to convert the 2% of people who are at that point, I'm actually creating those people. But two, it also makes sense I'm not pitching people who don't even know what they're problem is yet. You know? So, actually getting them to that point. When you do this with content as well, you can do it in such a way that people will link to your sale sequence, people will share it, people will opt into it. Customers will share it and things like that. I hope that makes sense. As I said, I am three coffees deep, so I can get a bit nerdy on this stuff.
Kyle:
Oh, I think, but this is really important. And, again, I see a lot of people on these kinds of content treadmills and if you can really grasp a lot of the key concepts you're saying, there is a lot of power in here. But again, it's focusing on what I like about what you've been saying this whole time is that the post, your strategy for creating the content, starts very long before you even arrive at the blank page. I think some people, the typical process would be brainstorm a bunch of ideas and then grind them out. And see what sticks. Where you are finding an audience, a very specific place, you're looking in, you're curious, you're seeing what they're talking about, what they're doing right now and then creating around that. And building relationships to actually have people prepared.
Kyle:
So, you know, this is almost something, I am attempted to call it pre-motion, instead of promotion, 'cause it's just a lot of the stuff you're doing beforehand that leads to it. So, I think that's essential. But I would like to know, once it finally comes time to start writing or start creating, what is your process for building these pieces of content? Especially the epic ones that I think many of the listeners might be intimidated by the idea of even a 3000-word post, much less 30 thousand. So, what's your process for creating this epic content like that?
Daniel:
So, I talk about it in one of those articles I was just referring to, how to improve that old content. And you're spot on that people, they finally get five minutes, the kids are asleep and they sit down and they try and write a post or something like that. A lot of writing is you don't know what you don't know. It's the same for everything. And you have to make a lot of mistakes to figure out what works. So, I follow a very specific writing process and editing process. People try and get a perfect article on day one, on their first go, and that doesn't happen. You need something that you can polish and tweak and edit. So, I will do, on average, about 17 edits. Only because I like to do them in sweeps.
Daniel:
So, I'm focusing on one thing, so I keep ticking these boxes off. The easiest that I will find to write is, obviously, I do a lot of research before. And I will, I'm not sure if the video will go out, I'll show you what I've got here. So, these are my notes on this podcast call. But they're also very similar to what I will do when I'm writing an article. So, I have a notepad. I don't even sit at a computer for like the first couple of steps. I have a specific goal, so if I say okay, I want someone to understand or believe this, which archetype is best to do this? So, maybe a how-to guide. And then I will map out, on a piece of paper, the template. So, I wanna have a headline, introduction, social proof, pain points, steps.
Daniel:
So, it's all there already mapped out on a piece of paper. And then I will fill in those things based off of that. So, I know the steps already because I already know what I'm trying to explain. I've done research to make sure that I'm not missing anything as well. Which, the best posts might have had, but mine didn't, I didn't think of. So, all the steps and stuff are there. And if I'm speaking to my audience, I know where they are before, I know where they wanna be after, and I know from conversations the bridge to get them there. So, I will write all this down, just notes on a piece of paper.
Daniel:
This next step is gonna save people so much heartache. I'll use a tool like Snag-It or whatever it is on a Mac to record audio. And I will sit down like I'm talking to you now and I will literally work through it. So, I'm saying do you have this pain point, you know, are you trying to write traffic content all the time, but it's not getting traffic? And everyone's telling you, you need to be creating a lot of content, but it doesn't work. And I will just ad lib through the notes all the way through. As if I'm talking to a friend at a coffee shop. I'm trying to think of all the questions they might have. I'll save that and then I'll listen to it and I'll open up Word Press and I will just transcribe.
Daniel:
From that there I've probably got 1000 words, 1200 words at least. Then I'll go in and I'll do certain edits. So, I will, a big part is making your content actionable. So, I will go in and every time that I've talked about a specific thing, I will also show them how to do that thing if it's relevant to the post. So, if it was talking about how to set up a Facebook ad, I would say you click on this and then you do this and then you change these settings and so on and so on. That adds the bulk of your actual content as well. So, now you've gone from 1000 to 3000 words. So, the word count is actually quite easy when you do that. When you map it out, you do an audio version, and then you transcribe it.
Daniel:
After that, then it's just editing for certain things. I do a lot of appearance of perception because that's the first thing that changes peoples minds on your content. They'll make at immediate first glance. Then I'll do my copywriting edits to make sure that it pulls them through the post because you've only got so many seconds to get them into it. Which isn't as difficult as it sounds. Again, all of this is just ticking boxes. What's the paint that's stopping them right now? Because if you can talk about that, suddenly they say this is relevant to me, and they'll pay attention. Things like this. And it's really easy. You just talk to these people to find these things out. Then I'll do edits for SEO, I'll do edits for lead capture and stuff.
Daniel:
And it's finally ready to go live. So, I'll spend more time editing than anything else. Not because it's difficult, just because there are different things that we'd wanna hit. All those subtleties, all those boxes to tick. But if you follow that process, even if you didn't do all the edits, you'll have a 3000-word post in like an hour and a half. It's really easy to do. My key concern is, that doesn't mean that you should do ten posts each day. You should instead spend that time, now, promoting that content. Because if your article now gets a 10% opt-in, every time you do a guest post and you get 100 visitors, you've got ten more subscribers and a backlink and you've built trust and you know your audience.
Daniel:
So, going out and promoting that again and again and again, although it's a slow curve at first, it's an exponential growth once it hits that tipping point. Once it starts to get organic traffic. Once it starts to build up. You're actually better off, even if you hit number one in Google, you're still better off promoting that post again and again and again than you are writing something new. Sorry, I really nerd out on this.
You’re better off promoting your content, again and again, then continuously writing something new.
Kyle:
This is great. And no need to apologize. I've really been enjoying this and your expertise is shining through in all of these details and I hope everybody listening is enjoying this as much as I am. And since we've explored a lot of your mind and your strategy and what you've got, and you're doing something very interesting, which reminds me of when I worked at WP Curb or I've seen a lot of other software as a service startup doing this. But I looked on your site and you have a goal for creating 100 K monthly visitors. And you've just kind of set out on this. But as you're on this journey, you're telling us about it through monthly reporting, I believe.
Daniel:
I need to get better at that if I'm honest. I don't always hit the monthly reports. Sometimes I'll send them out by emails to subscribers and stuff, but yeah I should get better at that. I'm very strategic at hitting specific goals and things and then reverse engineering from there. So, in reality, 100 thousand visitors isn't that hard. Certain keywords get 10 thousand visitors a month. Rank ten of them, you're gonna hit it. Then it's figuring out how to do that. Okay, well, I need to do X, Y, Z. So, right now my Amp My Content is very young, the site's only about five months old. We've done mid-five figures in sales. Because if you have the right content you don't always need that much traffic.
Daniel:
So, we're doing, I like to be smart and lazy and do a couple of things at once. I'm doing a case study right now for a guest post where I wanna build 100 links to an article, 100 unique website links, so measure the effect, sorry, see how long it takes to do that. So, what we're doing is I'm doing a whole sequence of podcasts, 'cause it's easy to get out there and meet people and actually talk about this. Then I'm doing a lot of reverse engineering and getting onto sites and then we're gonna do X, Y, Z guest posts. In reality, I will probably hit number one with a keyword way, way before then, but it gives me the next article to write when I come to SEO I can say how we got to 100 linking sites and things like this. Sorry, I hope that makes sense.
Kyle:
Absolutely, yeah. I just think it's a great strategy and I applaud kind of the ambition for sharing it as you're going and being transparent in what you're doing. And I'm excited to follow along on that journey as well.
Daniel:
I can give you our exact numbers if you want right now, it's all on the wall behind me. But we're getting email opt-ins for 53 cents as we're scaling ads. I'm a very good writer and I'm good at ads. I'm not always great at running a business. So, at one point we had to stop ads because I spent the money by accident and then we had bills come in, things like this happen. It’s never the thing that you think it will be. So, we're scaling up again. This time, accommodating that.
Daniel:
So, we're at about $30 a day, we don't even hit that all the time, but we're still getting like 50 cents emails and stuff like that. So, that'll be worth X, Y, Z. I've got all the numbers there to scale up to $10 thousand a month and how much I need to be spending and certain lead costs and things. In terms of podcasts, we've done 28 out of 30 already. Got a heap more that are coming through, 'cause I've really enjoyed doing them and getting to meet peers like yourself and things like that. That means that we have hit, I think something like 65 unique websites linking to us out of the 100.
Daniel:
So, I have not even got on to stage two and stage three of what I wanna do, but organic traffic is still quite low from an SEO point of view. We're not seeing any of those results quite yet, you know? But it's one of those things where it's important to have transparency about this. Because if, it's very difficult for someone who's an absolute beginner to do this, it's difficult for anyone because it's, have you heard of the marshmallow test? Delayed gratification kind of thing. We know from all the people who've done it before, I'm lucky enough that I've done this for clients and things, so I know that the result will come if we focus on these things.
Daniel:
But by sharing that with people as well, they can see how it works, 'cause I'm like hey, we've got like 12 podcasts between now and Sunday. But only three of them have gone live, at all, out of like 25 podcasts. We don't see any backlink difference, we don't see any SEO difference, I've probably got maybe four new subscribers. If you were a new business owner, that's incredibly demotivating, 'cause you're not seeing the result yet. And so, you have to build habits and systems to keep at it. And trust in the process that it works and things. So, that's why I like to share this transparency, so they can see my strongholds and my failures as well as our successes.
Kyle:
That's beautiful. And I am gonna have to have you back on the show when you're closer to or have hit your goal so we can recap that. Especially since you're so open with your strategies and your techniques. Daniel, it's been amazing having you on the show and exploring a lot of this different content creation from, we covered a large amount of information today. I'd love to invite you to just have any closing thoughts that you'd wanna leave us with and let us know where we can learn more about you and get in touch with you.
Daniel:
The main site is ampmycontent.com. If you wanna read that massive guide, that 30 thousand word guide, it's ampmycontent.com\promoted-content. So, it's all free. You can read it and stuff on there and it's actionable so you can have a profitable ad at the end of it. If you wanna see cat pictures and what music I'm listening to I'm on Twitter @inboundascend, A-S-C-E-N-D. The biggest things, I would say, as a content writer and things like that, especially if you're gonna look to get into paid ads, I cover it all in the guide, but ads lose money at first. You've gotta have faith in the process. It's only by tweaking and testing that you'll get to an ad that is profitable. You don't need to spend a fortune doing it.
Daniel:
It took us about $120 to get to an ad where I spend $1 I get 2 back. We kept tweaking and improving and that's why it's so high converting now. So, have faith in those systems and also have empathy in your audience. If you can try and understand your audience even better and sit down and talk to them, you'll never worry about what content to write. You'll have effective content and you'll be able to produce products that they want as well, instead of just thinking what offers can I make to them? Things like that. So, the better you know them, the better you can serve them, the better you'll be.
Kyle:
I love that. I love the patience element, too. That is truly the game for good content marketers. Patience and persistence. So, an excellent thing to leave us with, Daniel. Thanks again for sharing all of this knowledge with us and yeah, again, hopefully, we'll have you on the show again soon.
Daniel:
Definitely, and thank you for having me. And I hope I provided value.
Kyle:
Thanks for listening to The Story Engine podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes and resources mentioned in this episode and every episode at thestoryengine.co. If you wanna tell better stories and grow your business with content marketing and copywriting, be sure to download the content strategy template at contentstrategytemplate.com. This template is an essential part of any business that wants to boost their traffic, leads, and sales with content marketing. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.