5 Reasons to Build Your Site Content Up First
For everyone who is starting out trying to make money online it is important to work on building a site first. Having a site should come before a Facebook page, LinkedIn, Twitter account or anything else. Your site should serve as the foundation for all of your best content and is the place where you work on building your following. Your site is where you will be sending all of your traffic to. Writing quality content is not easy, but if done right your site will help you make money online from the start.
Take a look at the reasons I recommend you build your site content first before worrying about posting on other sites or using social media.
1. Your articles will be read for months and years down the road. Evergreen content is the key to making passive income. Write something valuable that will stand the test of time, post it on your site, and watch the article attract traffic and links for years and years with little to no extra effort on your part.
2. You are building up an asset. As you build content on your own site over a long period of time you demonstrate yourself as an expert in the field. Plus, each article you write adds value to your site as a whole and you'll see traffic accumulate and grow with every new quality post.
3. You can build a list. You have to host your opt-in box somewhere. By driving traffic to your site you can use squeeze pages, hover boxes, footer ads, and above the fold signup forms to get visitors to sign up to your newsletter. You can also use your site to build your Twitter follower count, RSS feed readership, and get Facebook likes to your page. All are different forms of lists and a smart marketer will use them all. The key is having the site first so you can cross-promote.
4. You have control. I use article directories, guest posting, and social media to drive traffic and links to my site. However, the problem with posting on other sites is that you have no control over the content. Other sites can decrease in value, go out of business, or bury your articles deep within their site. Social media sites can go offline, lose popularity, or ban your account completely.
5. You decide on the layout. If you are posting on other sites you can't really control what surrounds the content. If you have ever written a guest post or submitted to an article directory then you have likely viewed the published article and seen ads for competitors right next to your text. If you post the content on your site you can either choose to promote competitors by using affiliate links or advertise related, but non-competitive offers.