Just Make Money Online

On Creating and Building Web Content

by Shai Coggins on November 9th, 2007

When I talked about making money online with blogs for the first 6 months, Kaj had a follow-up question about one of my points on creating ‘pillar content’. Kaj asked: “How should a pillar content look like?”

In order to expound on ‘pillar content’, I’d like to share some thoughts on content in general. You see, I group blog or web content in three ways (6, really, but the other 3’s no good): Current, Evergreen and Fillers.

Current content includes everything ‘news-y’. It’s great to be able to write this content, especially if you’re one of the first (or better yet, one of the few) to break the news. One blogger I know wrote about a toy during its pre-launch stage, and when it launched, her blog received masses of traffic. Even a few affiliate sales. In fact, a lot of blogs become popular writing current content. They thrive on breaking news, spotting trends, initiating new ideas… Some blogs that thrive on current content include: Boing Boing and Instapundit.

Evergreen content are articles that will be ’searchable’ for a very long time to come. They’re not dependent on fads, launches, and news. Being the first to write about a topic may be beneficial, but it’s not always necessary. Most pillar content fall under this category. Some examples of Evergreen content include: How Tos, Lists, Tutorials, Reviews, Product Demos and Recipes, among others. These types of content tend to be the ones that attract being bookmarked, shared, printed out, referenced, and linked to. They also tend to take longer to write, and may even require a lot of pre-writing preparations including outlining and research.

To learn some more about pillar content, here are some interesting posts for you to check out:
Write Pillar Articles (Daily Blog Tips)
Why the Pillar Content of A Blog should be Written First (Blogging Fingers)
Four Reasons to Write Extraordinary Articles when You’re Starting a New Blog (Dosh Dosh)

Some sample evergreen content:
10 Ways to Diversify Your Income as a Crafter or Artist
How To Increase Your Blog Readership by 200% or More in One Week
30 Fundamentals of a Wonderful Life
Getting Things Done with Google Notebook

Since it’s practically impossible to write Current and Evergreen content all the time (unless you’re a full time blogger, or don’t update your blog very often, or you don’t have a life outside your work (joke)) - most bloggers end up writing Filler content. This is not the same as Regurgitated, Spam, or Scraped Content. Those other 3 types of content are really not recommended if you want to build a stellar blog. Filler content come in different forms. They tend to be short and snappy, but they still add value to a blog and to a reader’s experience. Some examples include: Adding a new perspective to a popular topic, sharing links to resources that are not easily found, and giving useful food for thought, among others. Blogs like ThriftMac is one great example of a blog that maximises the use of Filler content. 

Now, on to what I consider ‘Pillar content’ - To me, pillar content is any and all content in your blog that would attract people to explore your blog further, subscribe to your feed/newsletter, bookmark you, etc. Most people make these types of decisions within the first few minutes upon arriving on your blog. They usually base their decision on your Top 10 Pillar Content (so, try to make these as visible as possible). And yes, it may be in form of one of these 3 types of content. But, as I mentioned, most pillar content are Evergreen in nature (no pun intended ;-)). 

Technorati Tags: bloggers, blogging, content

Share This

Related Stories

• Advice on Making Money Online
• Building a Good Buzz For Your Online Biz
• Advance Traffic-Generating Tips for Your Website
• The Best of Just Make Money Online Posts in 2007
• Public Domain Profit

POSTED IN: Basics of Making Money Online, Web Content