Self Employed or Bust

Courtney Tuttle’s Keyword Sniping technique for blogs

July 16, 2008 – 7:00 am

In Sunday’s post on blogs and websites I made brief mention of a method of monetizing blogs called Keyword Sniping. Everything I learned about this topic I learned from Courtney Tuttle’s blog and I can’t recommend him enough. I run a very real risk of sending you off to Court’s internet marketing blog and never seeing you again but it’s a price I’m willing to pay. Why?

In my post on setting goals I emphasized that I want any success I come by to be honestly earned. Honesty and integrity are of paramount importance to me and will guide my hand in everything I do on my way to achieving my dream of self employment and independence. My hope is that my readers will benefit from that philosophy and that’s why I’m ok losing readers to Court if those readers feel he’s providing good information (and he is) specific to their needs and interests.

Now with my reasoning out of the way, let me give you a quick explanation of what keyword sniping is. If you haven’t left for Court’s site yet, the following will help you decide if his methods interest you or not.

Keyword Sniping is one method of monetizing your internet efforts based around two key points, the first of which is supply and demand. As with any business, the greater the demand, the more one can capitalize on that need by filling it. A limited supply of the desired product or information further serves to bolster earnings potential.

The second element is social engineering. Though Court doesn’t come right out and say it, keyword sniping serves to bring in an audience served as well by the ads on the blog as they are by the blog’s content. In other words, you draw people in, they find some useful information on your blog but the content is not so rich as to give them everything they might need. You aren’t giving away the cow, just the milk. If they want the whole enchalada that’s what the ads are for. The ads on the site are generated based around the blog’s content and are, therefore, very specific to the customer’s needs. That entices more visitors to click on the ads rather than hit the back button.

Worded that way it doesn’t sound all that honest but, truth told, it is no less honest than the commercials interspersed through out TV shows and the ads in magazines. Think about it this way… if you’re reading Vogue, you aren’t going to come away from the experience with the perfect eye liner. But the ads in Vogue will guide you in the right direction to the purchase of a product that will meet your needs.

Or, using our TV example, a major sporting event on TV isn’t going to quench your thirst but the ad for beer might entice you to buy a specific brand of beer which will quench your thirst. Still not convinced? Let me put it this way… all an advertiser cares about at the end of the day is that people buy the product and that you are converting visitors to your blog into paying customers of theirs. The ultimate television example of this is the most vacuous show ever created; Seinfeld, a self proclaimed show about nothing, was an advertiser’s wet dream. It drew viewers who in turn bought products.

The point isn’t to mislead. The point is to identify demand (keywords without much competition but reasonable ad revenues), take advantage of that by supplying information relevant to that need and then ensure that, while helpful, the site mainly draws potential customers to the right advertisers for that particular keyword. In otherwords, you aren’t setting out to scam anybody. In fact, over time, your blogs should grow in valuable content. You are trying to help people with the information you offer, but you are also modeling your site to be advertiser friendly. You want people to get some of what they need from your blog but should they need anything additional, hey look, an ad for exactly what I was looking for.

Court’s methods are definitely sound and definitely have potential. I’ve started several keyword sniping blogs and am gradually following the needed steps to grow traffic and page rank for them. As it stands, 3 of the sniping blogs I’ve setup have already ranked on page one for Google for the keywords I was targeting.

The benefit of Court’s method is that it is easy to implement for a novice (he even goes into great detail on how to setup a blog for rank beginners including a fledgling video series still in development you can view on his site). It’s also completely free to go to his information rich blog and read everything you need to know to work with his system. There’s no bait and switch, just superb content and very approachable instruction.

I can’t really call out a downside for keyword sniping as my own experience with the process is only 3 weeks old. As I follow Court’s methods and gain experience with the process I’ll revisit this topic repeatedly to let you know my results. But I will say the man has integrity and that’s why I’m recommending you visit Courtney Tuttle and learn everything you can from his superb blog. Though keyword sniping is his primary target, he also provides superb information on regular blogging methods.

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