Ever wondered how my 68k word page Amphibious Aliens got 10 million views?

HINT: It had nothing to do with SEO and everything to do with offline marketing.

How To Get Traffic: The Secret Behind My Super Long Mega Pages


By EelKat Wendy C Allen

Re: Super-long-pages and how they supposedly can generate super-traffic and income too #1394071  by walter from walterorlowski.com 
 09 Mar 2018 19:29Yesterday I've stumbled on a super interesting post entitled: HELP! 700 Page Niche Site That's Not Even Paying For Itself. I found it fascinating for many reasons. One of these reasons was the info from Wendy who became "famous" for crashing the SBI server. What crashed the server was her crazy-long page (50k words + zillions of videos and other stuff - you gotta go there and see it). Wendy says that most of the income from her website comes from that page and only two others also long ones.

I am tempted to test how the length of the page can make it generate substantial results - (have no ambition of crashing the servers whatsoever  ) Just want to see for myself what will happen. It will be easy for me to experiment in this way because I can write without end. My site has currently 270 pages and I haven't been writing actively for a long time now.

I will tell you in secret that I've already started ... Yes ... Have picked up a super keyword and started writing.

Has anyone experienced a significant relationship between the length of the page and the traffic / income that it generates?

If yes / no - please let me know. 

I assume, of course, that this kind of page would follow all of the SBI prescriptions / guidelines for a good page + would have a super in demand and much less in supply keyword.

Walter

walter from walterorlowski.com

Ever wondered how my 68k word page Amphibious Aliens got 10 million views? 

HINT: It had nothing to do with SEO and everything to do with offline marketing. 

How To Get Traffic: The Secret Behind My Super Long Mega Pages


I can explain the traffic to the Amphibious Aliens page (which currently has 68k words and is about the size of a 120 page paperback novel), as it moved to SBI in 2013, but was originally published as a series of much smaller pages on Squidoo, WordPress, Blogger, Hubpages, and FreeWebs, most of them published in 2007.

The original pages, had been online for MANY years, and over that time had gained a lot of links from various other sites, forums, and blogs. When the pages moved to SBI as one mega sized page, I went back and contacted those people to have them change the url in their links to the new url, thus traffic started going to the page almost immediately, several weeks before the page was even indexed by Google. To this day, only 7% of the page's traffic comes from Google search results with the bulk of traffic coming directly from those links. 

Most of the traffic comes from one giant database website that catalogues paranormal places. The page includes directions to the location of the haunted car in question, and is a tourist hotspot, with an average of 30,000 people arriving in my yard each summer to touch the car. Ghost hunters and paranormal investigators, search the paranormal databases, looking for sites to visit and this page comes up on nearly a dozen such databases. These databases in turn send large amounts of traffic both to the page on my site and to my driveway offline.

In 2010, the entire thing was compiled into a book (For Fear of Little Men), that was available for sale as ebook, paperback, and hardcover editions. The book version, included additional pages and totaled 170k words. I did book signing tours, meet with the likes of Whitley Strieber, David Icke, and Buddy Hopkins, then joining the UFO/MUFON curcit and dong many interviews/lectures/conventions around the incident the page is about. As a result of this, I was handing out on average 500 business cards a month to people offline. These business cards in turn linked back to that page, further resulting in more traffic going to it.

In 2013, the book was unpublished and put on my SBI sites as a "free to read online book" instead (the Amphibious Aliens page, and The World's Most Haunted Car page, and the series of pages about Christine, The Thinner, and Stephen King's Thinner Gypsies).

Keeping in mind here that the primary keyword of the entire series of mega sized pages is: "interviews with Stephen King's Thinner Gypsies and the story behind the real car that inspired Cristine"...

THAT... is the key to the traffic right there. Stephen King's name.

The reason for making the pages mega pages instead of smaller pages, was because I discovered over the years, that when people searched for the series, they often did so by searching for Stephen King, and would get the few pages that mentioned Stephen King. Then they were email me asking which pages were the rest of the story. As they were scattered about on a blog I'd posted daily on since 1996, it became a mess of searching through 10,000+ blog posts to find the whole story behind why Stephen King based Christine off the car in question, and then how the Gypsy clan that owned the car became cameos in the later movie Thinner.

Thus, it was at the request of Stephen King fans, who wanted me to organize the whole thing in one place, that resulted in the 2013 SBI page's creation, where everything was put in one place.

The individual parts were also moved to SBI, the same as they were, but like they did on Blogger and Wordpress, the smaller 1,000 word pages rarely get traffic, while the larger amphibious aliens pages, continues to get steady daily traffic.

The videos were added to the page January 2017, at which point the traffic to that page increased.

But the short of it is, a lot of people search for Stephen King's name, and that page being a behind the scenes look at the real Gypsy clan who inspired the books/movies Christine and Thinner, is why the page gets so much traffic, and that is combined with at last count 2,317 external links pointing to that page, mostly from paranormal websites, as well as combined with a hell of a lot of offline promotions, results in this page has now recieved 10million+ views. (The fact that the Gypsy clan who appeared in the Thinner movie, is now the subject of an FBI murder investigation, has also resulted in an increase of traffic the past few years.)

Most of the income from this page, comes from the sales of the books I have written about this event - one of which sells for a $75 hardcover price; most of those sales are done at conventions & lectures that I do offline, with the books themselves ONLY available at said conventions and not sold anywhere online at all; and from sales of merch featuring photos of the haunted car, this including framed prints, t-shirts, mugs, shower curtains, postage stamps, greeting cards, etc, sold via Zazzle.

Remember, we are Gypsies and busking is a part of our everyday life. You can find me peddling my merch at flea markets, festivals, carnivals, state fairs, country fairs, block parties... any place that lets me set up a booth and start selling, I'm there, and no one leaves without a business card, that, you guessed it... links to that page once again.

I also do card readings, pendulum readings, crystal scrying readings, and ouija board readings... and once again, no one leaves without a business card, that links to that page. Many people read that page, then show up in my yard, looking to get a "psychic" reading done afterwards, which is then another income resulting from that page. And for those who can't come to Maine in person, I have a 900-number, $1 a minute, $15 minutes minimum, so yet another income resulting from that page.

If you've read the page you also know I'm a Voodoo Priestess rank of Medsen Fey Marija Loa to Damballah Weddo. I do house blessing, house cleansings, hot footing, spell casting, candle lightings, crossings, and curses. I specialize in gris-gris (what Americans call "voodoo dolls"). My hoodoo work costs upwards of $500 per spell cast. Keeping in mind I am the clan's real life "Gypsy witch" whom the Gypsy witch in the Thinner movie was based off of and, the Stephen King movie did increase clients, and the page in question being about said movie, in turn, brings in more clients, once again resulting in yet another way this page brings in money.

Have you noticed, there is not "traditional" online income coming in from this page? There are no affiliate income at all (as Affiliate Marketing is banned in Maine) and the AdSense income takes months to see a payout. The income is coming in from sales of books, merch, and an increase of clients for services not provided online and that can only be bought if you, come here to Maine and saunter on up my driveway to buy them from me direct, in person, face to face.

How many people looking to make money online are willing to invite the world into their home and ONLY sell their products offline to people who knock on their door? You do gotta look at where the income that page brings in comes from, before you start trying to mimic it, because if you try to focus on AdSense or affiliates, you'll get no where using my method.

In other words, there is a LOT more to getting traffic and income from that page, then just writing one long massive page, tossing it up online, then hoping traffic will suddenly appear. There's A LOT going on offline behind the scenes that is driving traffic and income.

This is my full time job, I put in 80 hours a week into the website, the books, the merch, the videos, the conventions, the lectures, the book signing tours, and, drop by Old Orchard Beach, Maine in the summer, when 2 million tourists are gathered in our town and a 20 foot billboard with the URL of my website goes up in my driveway for all 2 million of those foot traffic people walking down my street to get from their motels to the beach, and have to walk by my driveway, my car with 2.5million marbles glued to it, my glow-in-the-dark neon pink motorhome painted with black light paint, and that big billboard sign. My traffic skyrockets to 70,000 visits a month in the summer and none of it Google searches, all of it people sitting on the beach direct typing my url into their phones, seeing how they just walked by said url, with it's 2 foot tall letters.  

SEO is good, but if you really want traffic, word of mouth offline is king.

So in the end, there is a method to my madness... you see, by putting the entire book on one single, solitary page, I can now promote, one single, solitary url on my car's front and back bumpers, on my business cars, on the flyers, on social media, on the billboard... massive amounts of offline marketing to one single, solitary page, results in massive amounts of traffic to that one page. Remember: of those 10million views since 2007, only 7% of them came from search engines. The rest came from people following the link, either a link they found offline on a sign, car, business card, flyer, or book cover, or a link on one of the many websites pointing back to that page.

Think of how difficult it would be to achieve this had I divided that one 68k page into 68 pages of 1,000 words each? Trying to promote 68 separate pages would have been utter madness. It would have been futile to try to promote each one individually.

It's the same principle as using a "lead page" where you create one page to generate traffic, then use that page to link to your other pages. I simply took a page on a topic (Stephen King) that I knew I could drive large numbers of traffic to.

While my old site (WordPress) has 10,917 pages and the "new" site (SBI) has just crossed 2,000 pages, you see me promoting ONLY the Amphibious Aliens page alone, and none of the rest. By focusing all my marketing on the one page only, and making sure that that one page is big enough to support linking to 100+ other pages on the site within the body of the text, I'm able to filter traffic from that one page, to all of my other pages, without promoting any of the rest.

Creating a big page, putting lots of photos and videos on it, also keeps the reader on the page a long time, draws their interest in, and by the time they reach the links, they've become so interested that they want to know more and now instead of leaving, they move on to the other pages.

The trick however, is getting people TO that one page in the first place and if you look around my site, you'll soon see that it has MANY massive pages of 20K+ words, each like Amphibious Aliens, has links, photos, and videos, BUT, here's the kicker... they DO NOT get the insane amounts of traffic this one page gets. Why? Because I do no promotion of them at all. That's the most important part of all of this. Writing a big page and putting it up, it'll get traffic, sure, but NOT lots of traffic. No. It'll get 10 clicks today, 5 clicks tomorrow, not 100 clicks this morning and 500 in the evening. why? The difference is the offline promotion. The business cards, the flyers, the book signing tours, the being a guest speaker at conventions, driving 50 to 100 miles a day in a car with 2.5million marbles glued to it and the url painted on the bumper, driving a neon pink motorhome with the url painted in 2 foot tall letters on the sides, living on the beach in a tourist town on the road that gets foot traffic to the beach and having a billboard in my yard with the url on it... THAT is how I get traffic to that page.

People often look at my traffic and try to mimic what I do, thinking they can repeat my success with SEO alone, and overlook the massive amounts of offline marketing that goes into what I do. SEO alone ain't gonna cut it. You can try, but without the offline marketing, you won't be able to follow in my footsteps. Also... being in a Stephen King movie helps and not many people have that little tidbit to help boost them along.

But anyways, hope that helps to shed some light on how my mega page gets the traffic is does and where it's income source comes from.

Oh...  forgot to mention the other 2 pages.

I'm an author of a long running series of Fantasy novels about an Elf Wizard and his Unicorn. Each novel is 100k to 300k words long (some volumes are 600+ pages)

One page is about the Elf Wizard. It's a page answering 50+ reader questions about him, and turned into a 30K word biography of the character. The series spans 130 novels and 2,000 short stories published since the series started in 1978 (this year is it's 40th anniversary). This page links to the novels in question, as well as merch featuring the book cover art and art of the characters. 

The other page is the index of all the 100+ free to read online sample chapters from the novels, and it so huge because it includes an "about the novel" section for each of all 130 novels in the series. 

The primary source of income for both these pages is sales of the novels (both paperbacks & ebooks) and sales of the fan merch (via Zazzle).

As with the page mentioned in my previous post, these 2 pages get the bulk of their traffic, not from Google/Bing, but rather from links (mostly from screaming fangirls' personal blogs and Tumblrs) and these 2 pages see MASSIVE increase during CosPlay season, when you see me CosPlaying the maine character at comic book/video game/geek conventions, where I do book signings, meet & greets with fans, workshops, lectures, and spends hours on end posing for photos with my fans. As before, I'm doing a lot of one on one, offline, face to face interaction with people. Hugging stranger, or rather being stranglehold hugged by screaming fangirls screaming "OMG! OMG! OMG!" while they shake my hand off. They leave with a photo of us together, a business card telling them where to find my website, my signature on a books or whatever else they tossed at me...and here's the secret to my ONLINE marketing...

I do no online marketing. I don't have to. Photos of my car, taken by my fans, do it for me.

My site's url is painted on the front bumper of my car. The Dazzling Razzberry is at every event I attend, and, my fans and random strangers alike, are giddy with excitement to get their picture taken with the fictional car from the novels, that was brought to life in a 4 year long art project...of all the art cars in the books, The Dazzling Razzberry has long been the fan favorite, and when I built it and unveiled it to the world in 2012... it sent droves of my fans into a frenzy t be wherever it was so they could get their picture taken with it and all it's 2.5million marbles...

...they post those photos of them with that car on social media... my car graces Tumblr, Twitter, FaceBook, Pinterest, and who knows where else... and in every photo, there's the url on the front bumper doing free advertising for my website.

The #1 thing that drives traffic to my website are these 2 cars:

And me CosPlaying the main characters from my novels at conventions while handing out business cards.


There's no "SEO secret" behind either my traffic or my income. Just a lot of hard work, offline. And money. The marbles on that car alone cost $8,000. And each $4 tube of glue covers and area only about 5 inches square. It's $75 every time I reorder business cards. Nearly $30k went into building the motorhome into a mobile card-reading-room/book-signing-booth/tour-bus. Most conventions its $200 or more per day to rent a booth. My Elf Wizard CosPlay consists of nearly 200 dresses & kimono, the beads are real gemstones, and a handmade Rapunzel wig cost several hundred dollars... each version of it and I have several versions of his wig. The conventions themselves require travel to and from them, most are a week long. I'm on the road most of the year.  Offline marketing is not cheap or easy, but it is far more effective then online marketing and/or SEO.

Keep in mind, I've meet 10s of 1,000s of my books' fans in person, and my novels have an email sub fan base of 300k screaming fangirls, who are also my "notification squad". Meaning, I do not focus on keywords or SEO when building new pages on my site, rather I focus on what my fans want, and just ping them with every new page I build. Most of my site's traffic, arrives to each new page within the first 4 hours of that pages' publication, via my telling my notification squad I put up a new page.

The BULK of my site traffic, comes from fangirls looking to write Yaoi (gay Erotica) and looking to the how to write Yaoi articles of my site for help. My site primarily focuses on daily posting articles on how to write Elves and Wizards and gay sex scenes, and how to turn those things into novels and how to publish and market said novels. (My site's nich topic is "novel writing tips" and "how to write dark fantasy" and "how to write yaoi"). And most of these fangirls I've also met in person and THAT is a BIG this... they are constantly: "oh, that author I met at PortCon, she was so nice to me, I'll never forget..."

Online you are just a faceless page. Offline you become that person who went the extra mile to make them feel special, make them feel important, and they NEVEr forget the person who made them feel they were accepted and belonged somewhere.

People will forget what you do, what you write, or what you say... but they will never forget how you made them feel. It's not SEO that brings my traffic, it's the fact that I go out of my way to make my fans feel that they are important. I answer their question, I listen to them when they talk, I let them hug me and take photos and get autographs... you'd be surprised how many authors refuse to do those things.

My offline marketing, drives traffic to those two pages, which in turn drive sales to my novels, which in turn drives fans to the conventions, driving more traffic to my site to start the circle over again. 

THAT is how those two pages, both of which focused on my novels, get their traffic and income.

The previously mentioned page Amphibious Aliens, is not part of my site's primary topic and is part of a "About Me" series, that answers reader questions about my personal life. Most people interested in the Amphibious Aliens page, are only there because they are fans of either Stephen King's Christine or Thinner and have no interest in the rest of my site.

So in all 3 instances, it's never a case of my just putting up a page and hoping SEO/keywords/word count/etc will attract search engine traffic. None of these pages waits for AdSense or affiliate income. All of these pages has super-heavy offline marketing going on. All of the income is coming from my novels, books, fan-merch, and offline services. And the whole thing requires 4 hours of writing a day, 4 hours of editing a day, and lots of sewing costumes and building art cars, lots of travel, lots of being on the road, lots of being in crowded conventions for days on end, and me putting in 80 hours or more of out-right grueling work.

Someone looking to make an income easy, will find they'll make more money faster if they work at WalMart or McDonalds.  While my method works... it works because of persistence, determination, passion, and a lot of years of a lot of hard work. Plus, it took me more than a decade of doing it before seeing an income from it (remember I started building my website in 1996, only moving it to SBI in 2013, and did not start seeing an income from it until 2007 - 11 years after I started it) In 2007 I got the announcement that my site had earned .37c. It took 11 years to see that first .37c  :P  It was a long slow, process, and it took over a decade for my site to start bringing in an income. So, not a quick or easy road to income.

The fact remains, I'm insanely in love with my topic, so I was able to stick with it for over a decade with it making zero money at all all those first early years. I think if someone goes into web creation looking for money, they'll struggle to succeed, because they'll focus on the money, the traffic, the stats, the SEO.... they'll give up before their site turns a profit; yet, the person who is driven by passion for their topic and not making money online, will instead, just keep on going and going and going, like the Energizer bunny, even after years of no money at all, and in the long run, they're the one who will see the profit, because they stuck through those early years, too in love with their topic to ever let it go. 

Slow and steady wins the race. :D

So, basically the secret to my success, is not the word conts or the keywords, but rather having a passion for my topic, sharing that passion with others, and NOT sitting back waiting for traffic to come to me, but getting out there into the offline world of my fandom, and attending events with real people, other fans, in the real world. Becoming very socially active OFFline in my niche. Having a UNIQUE product that people can get ONLY from me. And being willing to meet with people face to face in the real world.

I know everyone thinks or at least hopes there is some sort of magic secret SEO formula or some magic social network/FB/Twitter trick that magical drives traffic and money to a site, some secret affiliate marketing trick or AdSense keyword to success.... but my personal experience has always been that the best way to get traffic is via your offline interactions with people in the real world and the best way to gain income is having a unique to you product you made yourself, in my car my novels and artwork creations.

I think you could reach my same results with short 1,000 word pages, just as easily as a mega long page, if you had a product your created and did the same offline work I do to drive traffic. I don't think it's my word counts or keywords or any sort of SEO anything that causes my success. I believe it's my being out their with the people offline in the real world and having a product that they enjoy (my books and art/cars/costumes) that is what made my website successful for me. I think had I just made the long pages and put them up, then did nothing else, that I'd have neither traffic nor income. Sure, my pages are good and all, but, without the work I put into offline marketing and going to conventions, I wouldn't have the traffic and without the novels about my Elf wizard, I wouldn't have the income. So, no SEO/keyword/word count/affiliate/AdSense secrets here, just a lot of work (writing/painting/sewing/etc) going into something I'm passionate about.

Hope that helps and good luck with your site.    :) 








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