OK, here's the recap on the tele-class and it was quite informative. So glad you posted this moimoi94. I took notes and wanted to post what I thought were key points from the call.
First of all, Cathy Stucker is the webmaster of idealady.com and cashcontentformula.com. She makes a living online (6 figures) from her writing. The whole purpose of the call was for her to teach about using your content to pay you for years to come.
One of her first tips was that no matter what you're doing your site on you should have a book. Not just an e-book like I generally do but an actual book in the bookstore. She admitted that even though it's a pain to get published, etc. and you may lose a lot of money upfront because you get so little of the profits, it gives you credibility. When you say "I am the author of Book XYZ", it gives you instant credibility on the topic you are focusing on.
She even sells her e-Books on Amazon.com. And to be honest, I didn't even know you could sell e-Books on Amazon. She has one on there that sells for $4.95. She admitted it's not so much for the money but it's just another way to get your name out there.
Another common mistake she talked about is that people take too much time researching instead of just doing it. She said there is always something you can publish right now. Don't wait a year to write your e-book, publish a small report you can offer from your site right now while you are working on the bigger projects.
One important piece advice she gave was to do a little everyday. She talked about how people complain that they have 20 pages of content and aren't making any money. According to Cathy, that's hardly enough. 50 isn't either. 100-500, you're warming up.... but for long-term success you should be in the thousands when it comes to your writing pieces.
And that doesn't mean posting thousands of articles on ezinearticles.com. She's talking about a compilation of blog posts, blog comments on other people's blogs, articles on your website, forum posts, etc. Everyday you should be publishing some kind of topic in your niche.
And here's what I think was the most important lesson she gave...
Don't worry about what you don't know. Focus on what you do know and target the people who know less than you.
Doesn't sound very profound when you read that but I totally understood what she meant. As I said in another thread here, when people are just starting out they often feel intimidated by becoming an expert on a topic. They don't believe they know enough.
The point is not to know everything about a topic. The point is to know enough to build a useful site that can help people who know less than you in regards to the subject.
Here's a prime example. My site 2creatawebsite.com is not for people who want to go knee deep in programming. I know nothing about ColdFusion, Java, etc. so my site wouldn't be for people interested in that. I know there are tons of website creation sites out there better than mine when it comes to those topics.
BUT I'm not targeting those people who want to learn the more advanced topics. I am targeting people who want to learn the basics of website creation without getting into the nitty gritty of programming.
That was Cathy's point. Don't be intimidated by people who know more than you because they aren't your target audience. Focus on what you know and build for those who could benefit from what you can teach.
Now I'm not saying you shouldn't aspire to learn more in your niche and improve your content.
Just understand you can't be everything to everybody. But you can be something to some people. And those "some people" who find your site useful are the ones you should be focused on.
I thought that was an excellent point 'cause I hear so many people saying... "I don't know enough about anything to write a lot of content." They don't feel that what they already know is actually enough to generate a successful site.
Another viral traffic tips she gave was doing a teleconference. This is something that I may do very soon. But the nice thing about a teleconference is you can record it and put it on your site for people to download. AND you can generate even more content by writing articles on the topics that were discussed, blog posts, reports, e-books, you name. One teleconference can create a ton of different content pieces for you.
One tip that I loved was using your keyword stats from your traffic reports to generate ideas for your content. I do this all the time with my site. You know when you look at your traffic reports and you see that someone found you for a keyword phrase you weren't necessarily targeting?
For example on my flat stomach site, I have an ideal weight chart. That was the keyword phrase I was going for but people still find me lower in the search results for other keywords mentioned in that same article. So what I'll do is write an article that targets that secondary word too.
She also gave a plug for
www.goodkeywords.com - another free keyword research tool that she used often.
So that was it in a nutshell. The call was 2 hours long because they took 45 minutes of attendee questions, but I found it very informative. Cathy also has a writing course for $497 and if you buy it by November 30, you'll get a free year of training calls and some other goodies.
Here's her site...
http://www.cashcontentformula.com