For a few years now there’s been lotsa talk about the value of great content — particularly in web.

As an SEO (SEO stands for search engine optimization), I can barely go a day without hearing or reading the mantra, “Content is king” — and I agree with it whole-heartedly.

But let’s take a minute to examine it a little more closely..

What happens when you make really, really great content?

If you make really great content, it’s easy to get a ton of web traffic for free.

Just look at a sites like TextsFromLastNight.com or CollegeHumor.

These guys don’t spend money on advertising! And they’re not brilliant SEOs or social media marketers either. They just have AWESOME content (and plenty of it).

When people find it they’ll be compelled to link to it, share it, or otherwise promote it for them. And they now have avalanches of free visitors everyday.

In my business, one of the major things we do is create content for companies. And that’s the way I populate all of the other internet properties I own.

I’m always looking for ways to create great content, but I’ve learned that there’s no faking it.

You have to spend time, effort, and resources to get it done and our clients pay us pretty handsomely to do it for them.

So how much is good content worth?

The reason I’m writing this post is because I spent a significant chunk of my day today creating one content piece. And it wasn’t even for us.

We gave it away to another company to post on their blog so that we could get a link back from them.

I spent 3 hours on it.
And we bill at $150/hour.

So does that make the content piece worth $550? Was writing it a waste of time? How much is that content worth monetarily?

Your content could be worth a million bucks

So was my piece worth $550? I would say it’s worth several times that. Not to the company that I gave it to, but to me!

You see, I gave the piece away strategically. It wasn’t just to some joe-shmoe who I wanted a link from. It was to an executive at a company that I want to partner with.

So I hit him up on Twitter and said, “Hey man, I wrote a blog post for you. Emailing now, check it out and let me know what you think” —

So then he checks his email and finds the message I wrote him which said,

“Hey [NAME],

I don’t believe we’ve ever met in person, but I’m friends w/ [SOMEBODY ELSE THAT WORKS THERE] and I’ve been following you and [YOUR COMPANY] for so long I feel like I know you!

I started writing a blog post about SEO & [THEIR MAIN SERVICE] and mid-way through, I’m like, “This might be better on [YOUR COMPANY’S] blog.”

Have a look at it in the attachment and let me know what you think. You can make any changes or mods you’d like (my writing style is pretty casual — sometimes maybe too casual), add any imagery you want, etc., if you decide to use it.

If you don’t want it, just let me know and we’ll use it.

Let’s meetup in person one time!

-Chris”

Now I’m not sure about this one, but I’ll bet he was pretty blown away by that. He works in digital, too, so he also lives by the “Content is king” model.

And he was probably dually-impressed when he read the piece and saw how much effort went into it.

Notice, I didn’t ask him for anything. I didn’t ask for a link-back, or a tweet, or a referral, or a partnership — nothing. Just no-strings-attached.

And he may take the piece, use it, not give us a link, not refer anybody to us, and never even talk to me again. In which case, the hours would have been wasted.

But on the other hand…

Maybe he was so blown away by it that he’s going to talk to people about it.

Maybe he’ll be talking to somebody tomorrow about SEO and will come up and he won’t be able to HELP but to mention us.

Maybe he’ll go in and recommend to his CEO that they partner with us.

Maybe he’ll link to us in the post and one of their blog readers will click-through to our site and become a client.

Each of those things is very possible.

And if any of those things happen, that one little content piece that took me a few hours to make could translate into well over six figures in revenue.

For just one content piece.

So how much is great content worth? Well I guess it depends on two things — 1) how great it is, and 2) how good you are at leveraging/marketing it

-Chris Mechanic

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