How To Leverage Your “Money Posts”

21 | Posted In Blogging, Make Money by David

Every blog has some posts which are much more popular than others. They have good search rankings and they sit there as constant traffic sources for your blog.

These are your “money posts”.

To determine your “money posts”, you just need to look at your site analytics and see what your most popular pages are. For example, on PCMech, I have a tutorial on building a PC as well as a laptop review. Both of these posts each bring in more daily traffic than the homepage of PCMech. I have several other “money posts” on the site, however they don’t do as much traffic as the homepage.

Now, when you have a situation like this, you need to leverage that resource. These posts are bringing in lots of traffic.

With WordPress, you can have special templates on a per-post basis. To do this, you will need to use the Custom Post Template plug-in. Install that plug-in, then create specialized post templates. Instructions are available with the plug-in on how to create the post template. It essentially works exactly like creating a page template. Yes, you will need to be proficient enough with PHP and HTML to work with your theme.

What I did was take my single.php file in my theme and create a copy of it. At the top, I put in the necessary PHP comment to mark the template as such. I named the template single-971.php because “971″ is the ID # in the database of one of my money posts. I then made those changes to that template that I wanted to do for the post.

One of the money posts I targeted was an old review of some registry booster software from Uniblue. The review we did is very popular and brings in quite a bit of traffic. It is also very well ranked in Google when anybody searches for this product. So, using the customized post template, I now have ads for this software ON the review of the software. This simple change brings in over $1,000/month in affiliate commissions – simply by leveraging one of the money posts.

So, in short, this is what you should do:

  1. Review your analytics and identify your money posts. Which posts far out-perform the others in terms of incoming traffic?
  2. Install the Custom Post Template plug-in.
  3. Create your custom post template for one of your money posts. Focus on your blog goals and getting people into your sales funnel. If you have an affiliate product which is tightly related, perhaps change that particular post so that it is overtly promoted. Or you can make your opt-in form much more obvious on those money posts in order to put more people onto your list.

It is all about leverage.

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  • http://twitter.com/vitalmaque vitalmaque

    Good thinking. That should do the tirck.

  • http://www.twitter.com/henrijunttila Henri J

    Interesting post, but it confuses me a bit. Why do you have to make a whole new template? Why not just make the changes in the money post itself?

  • msfreeman

    I'm going to have to take your word for it cause this is all 'Greek' to me. Huh? I look at your Uniblue post (Great way to draw traffic to yoru Google Search form by the way! ;) ) but I don't see what it is you are talking about.

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    You can, but then you're limited only to what you can do in the post section of the page. Using a custom theme for that post, you can do things like control the ads which go AROUND the post. Make it all “jive”.

  • http://www.twitter.com/henrijunttila Henri J

    Aaah, that makes a lot more sense. My brain isn't working. Now I see the awesomeness in the whole concept ;)

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    The Uniblue post (the one on Registry Booster) has a customized ad both above and below the review, plus the ad on the sidebar is static placement for an ad for the same. Turns the post more into a landing page. And with its high search rankings, it turns the post into a huge commission magnet.

  • msfreeman

    Okay update: I get it now I actually looked at the plugin and understand the full benefit of its features. I see that on your ‘money posts’ you have a different format or look then that of other posts.

  • msfreeman

    So in essence you can use it to create a Squeeze page as well? Am I correct David?

  • gregellison

    The registry booster post looks really great. I never knew about this plugin. Thanks for sharing about this plugin. Greg Ellison

  • http://say-web.com/ Say-Web

    First of all, great post. This post gave DR.com subscription a deserved promotion to my toolbar. A question. On high traffic posts, all I do is add affiliate links to the post, and that does the job. I am still missing why do you need the custom post.

  • http://say-web.com/ Say-Web

    First of all, great post. This post gave DR.com subscription a deserved promotion to my toolbar. A question. On high traffic posts, all I do is add affiliate links to the post, and that does the job. I am still missing why do you need the custom post.

  • http://www.beginnerblogger.com/ Sarge

    Very clever David! Thanks for sharing how to make a custom page for a particular post. A much better idea to have targeted ads for a post that have a ton of visits per day than the regular stuff that floats around your blog posts. I assume that is what this plug in does.

    I have one semi-money post where I talk about getting 1000 twitter followers in 30 days, it gets a ton of traffic.

    Thanks for sharing :)

    A question though – if it’s making another page how do you eliminate the problem of duplicate content or replacing the current page with your new template easily so everything slots in nicely and you don’t lose traffic?

    Sarge | beginnerblogger.com

  • http://www.beginnerblogger.com/ Sarge

    Very clever David! Thanks for sharing how to make a custom page for a particular post. A much better idea to have targeted ads for a post that have a ton of visits per day than the regular stuff that floats around your blog posts. I assume that is what this plug in does.

    I have one semi-money post where I talk about getting 1000 twitter followers in 30 days, it gets a ton of traffic.

    Thanks for sharing :)

    A question though – if it’s making another page how do you eliminate the problem of duplicate content or replacing the current page with your new template easily so everything slots in nicely and you don’t lose traffic?

    Sarge | beginnerblogger.com

  • http://DietCleanse.org/ Steve

    Seems like you could ad some affiliate links and banners to the original post without the extra work. Wouldn't this work?

  • mikecrimmins

    This is something that I've been doing more and more often. I've seen some pretty good results, no $1,000 a month affiliate commissions, but the results have been good. In fact you just reminded me I have one how to article that is getting a lot of SE traffic, wouldn't be bad to link that article to a guide on that kind of coffee maker.

  • http://nathanhangen.com/blog Nathan Hangen

    It's funny, but the most popular post on my blog really has nothing to do with my current content. However, I can't put out anything that beats it! Thanks for the tip, I might install a few banners or some products there.

  • http://www.nextlevelblogger.com/about Christian Russell

    The little details like this really make a difference. Small details all add up to big overall increases in business. If you want to make an extra $20k or so, just find 20 little tweaks to your business or site that each bring in another grand. I love that this one change brings you another $12k this year. that rocks man :)

  • http://www.nextlevelblogger.com/about Christian Russell

    The little details like this really make a difference. Small details all add up to big overall increases in business. If you want to make an extra $20k or so, just find 20 little tweaks to your business or site that each bring in another grand. I love that this one change brings you another $12k this year. that rocks man :)

  • http://www.air-jordan-9.com air jordan 9

    You look like a million dollars.

  • Pingback: How To “Top Kill” The Big Leaks In Your Blog (Better Than BP Could) | David Risley dot com

  • http://www.priyaflorence.com Priya Florence Shah

    Great tip, David! I had no idea that it was possible to customize the template for a post. I have a few high-traffic posts and plan to convert those into money posts using the plugin you recommended. Thanks again.