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Joey Daoud is a filmmaker and freelance photographer.

Put $50 towards some ads in an AdSense campaign and maybe you’ll get a few hundred click-throughs. What if that same $50 could get you over 12,000 pageviews, plus a mention in the British newspaper the Guardian. Here’s how I did it.

Photo by vinduhl

50 to 12,000

Some back-story: I’m making a documentary on life hacking (finding shortcuts in everyday life to get the boring stuff done quicker), and with that I have an accompanying blog and podcast.

A few months back I was reading a profile on the author Will Self. He made a comment about how he still enjoys using a typewriter because it forces you to write differently and not edit yourself.

I’m always trying different ways of writing, and being in Gen-Y I’ve always had a word processor to punch out essays and articles, so I’ve never had the experience of writing on a typewriter.

I figured there must be a program out there that mimics the behavior of a typewriter, something basic like WriteRoom that wouldn’t let you delete or insert words.

I did a search and came up with nothing. However, the idea of a very minimal text editor that was so archaic it wouldn’t let you delete stuck with me. I figured it was in the spirit of the film, so it would be something cool to share on the site and see what people make of it. And like the blog posts and podcasts, hopefully it would be something people would spread around and help promote the film.

I have no programing experience, so I turned to Elance, the great freelance site where you can hire anyone from virtual assistants to graphic designers to programmers.

I posted the job for a programmer to make this minimal text editor, waited around for a bid that was in my price range, and finally got the minimum $50 bid. After hiring we went back and forth with tests and notes, and about a week later I had the creatively named program Typewriter.

I posted it to the site. A few days went by and not much activity; a few mentions here and there, but nothing big. Then the hit I was hoping for came.

It was posted on Lifehacker. In one day I got 5000 pageviews, plus mentions on dozens of other blogs (it was sad to see how many would just copy the entire Lifehacker post verbatim).

This traffic boost led to more subscribers and sales, plus a greater awareness of the film and blog. And I’m still only $50 out of pocket.

Blog to Newspaper

That Saturday night I got another surprise. One of my Google alerts showed my name mentioned in an article in the Observer, a weekly paper that’s part of the Guardian. It was about the author’s first experiences with word processors, a story prompted by Typewriter the program, which was mentioned at the end (my name popped up when Will Self’s quote was misattributed to me).

At first I thought this was just some online blog on the Observer’s site, but I soon discovered that this was in the actual printed edition, distributed around the world.

It’s been a little over 2 weeks since the post went live, and the post alone has gotten over 12,000 pageviews, not to mention traffic to the rest of the site. All for just $50.

Ideas for your Ideas

Here are some ways you can use what I did to help your own blog and projects:

Ideas are cheap to make into a reality. I think the beauty in all of this is that it’s so cheap and easy to implement an idea and see if it sticks. If you have an idea that you have the slightest belief that there might be something there, just do it. Throw it out into the interweb and see what happens.
Think beyond your traditional content. As I said I have no programming experience. Plus my blog is about a movie, yet a piece of software became a hit. With Elance and other freelance networks, if you can imagine it someone can implement it (and for not that much). Make an iPhone app. Design an eBook or cool poster as a unique interpretation of your content. Read lots of stuff, related and unrelated to your blog, and keep an open mind and eye.
Offer it for free. If I didn’t offer Typewriter for free I don’t think it would have been nearly as popular. Sure, maybe I could have made a couple bucks, but I’m a filmmaker, not a software developer, and goal number one of the program was to promote the film and blog.

I hope you found something useful in this post, and hopefully it gave you some ideas of your own. Now go make them a reality.

Joey Daoud is a filmmaker and freelance photographer finishing You 2.0, a documentary on life hacking. He also writes about film and photography on his blog Coffee and Celluloid.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How I got 12,000 Pageviews for $50

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A few weeks back, we announced that all publishers can now integrate their AdSense accounts with Google Analytics. If you’re not very familiar with Analytics yet, you might be interested in reading a recent post on the Analytics blog that addresses ten common myths about the product. For example, did you know that you can use Analytics to segment visitor data in real time, or that you can use the new Analytics API to tie your website data to your financials? Check out the post to learn more about these features and other ways you can use Analytics to better understand your site stats.If you haven’t yet linked your AdSense account with Analytics, follow these steps:Sign in to AdSense.Click the link that says “Integrate your AdSense account with Google Analytics” on your Reports Overview page.Follow the onscreen instructions, and watch our video for additional guidance.Even if you use AdSense in a language that’s not supported by Analytics, you can still link your accounts and view your Analytics reports in a different language.Posted by Sebastian Tonkin - Analytics Product Marketing

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If you aren’t on Twitter yet then you are one of the few people who aren’t, and if you have never heard of Twitter then you must have been living in a jungle cave for the past year or two. Every internet marketer I know is on Twitter and it seems like that’s all any of them can talk about these days. But does anyone actually make money from Twitter? Have you?

I have been on Twitter for a while now and I have yet to see how you can really make money from it even though everyone keeps talking about how great it is for business. Don’t go thinking I am some newbie that doesn’t know anything either because I definitely am not. I have been an internet marketer successfully making money online for over 6 years.

Sure, I’ve heard a few stories here and there of people who have used certain methods to make money on Twitter, but they are few and far between. And even those “success stories” are usually only small sums of money. Plus, when you consider the excessive amounts of time most people spend on Twitter to make that little bit of money, you could utilize several other marketing techniques to achieve better results in the same amount of time.

Then there’s the argument you will hear from the Twitter faithful about how great it is for traffic. Is it really? Not if you really think about it…

Say you have 1000 followers and you “tweet” your newest blog post in hopes that your followers will go check it out. Chances are most of them won’t be on Twitter at the time you tweet it so hardly any of them will see your tweet anyway. However, let’s be really conservative and say half of them are on, so 500 might see it.

Now, most of the remaining 500 are probably following hundreds, if not thousands, of other people, so your tweet will most likely be pushed down almost instantly and very few of them will see it. But let’s be really conservative again and say half of them do see your tweet. We are down to 250 now.

This could go on and on but let’s estimate highly again and say that 10% of the remaining 250 actually do click the link to go to your blog post. You just go a whopping 25 visitors! And probably none of them will actually be targeted visitors that will do anything to actually make you money once they are at your blog.

However, I am feeling generous so let’s say you have Adsense displayed on your blog and normally get a 5% click through rate. Well, 5% of 25 is 1.25 – so you would get just one click. If you’re lucky, you might make 10 cents or so. In reality you probably wouldn’t make anything though because “social traffic” rarely clicks on ads, and traffic from Twitter is considered social traffic.

So, can you make money from Twitter? I doubt it! And even if you do there’s a strong chance you could have made a lot more by using other internet marketing techniques instead.

If you don’t want to take my word for it then give it a try and see how it works for you. If you do figure out how to make money on Twitter then I would love to hear how. Just don’t waste too much of your time trying!

Let me end by stating that I am not saying you shouldn’t use Twitter. I get on there almost every day so that would be very hypocritical of me. It does have some advantages and there are several tools you can use to automate it so you don’t waste all your time there.

The point I am trying to get across is that you shouldn’t be spending too much time on Twitter because it’s really not very productive for your business. There are many other ways to make money that are much better than Twitter and several marketing methods that will bring you a lot more traffic.

By the way, since we’re on the subject of Twitter… You can follow me @trentab to get real tips on how to make money online.

Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg
Owner of the work at home blog and a 6 year internet marketing veteran.

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