A Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle Plan For Your Article

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One of the “tricks” I like to use is to recycle existing web content. 

Do this and you can reach a wider audience with a minimal amount of work. 

A great way to do this is to use the system Peggy talks about in this guest post…

Steve admits to being a little lazy. That is, he’s lazy about writing more and more articles when he can leverage the first one in so many ways. He makes a good case for working smarter, not harder.

So I thought I’d show you the path an article can take, in its different forms, and how many eyeballs could potentially see it. And since I want you to “see” what I’m talking about, I’m going to put up an Easy Article Starter (the beginnings of an article, more like an outline) here as an example to work from. Ready?

What Do I Use For Backend Products?

Intro – Whatever you put on the backend, it’s got to be related to the initial product. It either needs to complement it, or show how to do it easier, faster, or better.

Body – Examples:

  • do-it-for-you (they pay you to do the thing for them)
  • tools and software
  • audios of product
  • transcript if product is audio
  • physical CDs of product
  • bootcamp
  • group coaching
  • one-on-one mentoring
  • membership
  • paid forum
  • paid webinar
  • in-person conference
  • in-person deep mentoring session

Conclusion – Pick your backend products with care; they’ve got to be a good fit.

1. The first thing is to complete the article by doing up a proper introduction and conclusion, explaining each bullet point with one or two sentences each, and adding in a few of your affiliate links. That’s an easy 400+ word article. Post this to your blog.

It will depend on your blog traffic, but I’m going to go with a wild guess that 100-500 eyeballs will see it.

Note: When I say eyeballs, I’m counting 1 eyeball per person.

2. Now take your favorite parts – the bullet points where you have affiliate links – and turn it into an email to your list. Don’t “blast” this out but put it in your autoresponder followup message series so it goes out after xx number of days to each person when they’ve joined your list. This can create ongoing affiliate commissions for you.

TIP: Can’t you see the potential here for How To reports you can sell on the backend of this? How To Set Up Your Own Coaching Program, How To Set Up a Membership Site, etc. They can be your own creations or affiliate products.

Let’s say you have a list of 1000 and roughly a third of them open and read the email. If I did the math right, that’s 333 looks.

3. Let’s set this thing up as an ecourse and use it to capture email addresses. It’s always a good idea to have more than one list enticer aka. lead magnet in case one doesn’t appeal to the viewer but another one does. I like to set up a new list for this so I’m not crossing the streams with the same info I put in the AR follow up message in #2 above.

Your ecourse can be 7 parts with each one covering a bullet point from the article starter above in some detail. By detail I mean explain it – What, Why, When, and maybe add an example. I leave out the How because that’s what my affiliate link is for. 🙂

Brand new baby-blues could be 50 – 500+.

4. Don’t you think this article could be transformed into a guest post? You can totally rewrite it and submit it to an appropriate internet marketing blog. Give it a new intro and conclusion and turn your favorite bullets into 4-5 line paragraphs.

TIP: Try to always guest post “up” the ladder on a site that gets more traffic than yours does.

One of these could get you 200- 1000 eyeballs.

5. Time to go a little viral. You’re going to turn this into a report and put it on Scribd. I love that Scribd is connected to Facebook so your internet marketing Facebook friends can immediately know it’s there, read it, Like it, and help it make the rounds.

A guess as to EBs might be 100 – 500.

6. You can also make this a PDF and give it to other marketers to give away to their lists, no optin required. You might not be directly building your list, but you are building your brand recognition and you still have your website link, and affiliate links or product links in it. One of my friends loves these and likes to offer them to her blog readers and her list every Friday as “freebies”.

It’s hard to say here, but if 10 people give your PDF to their lists of 1000 and a third of them read it, I believe that comes to 3333 you-know-whats.

7. Don’t forget EzineArticles since you’re on a roll. You know what to do: new intro, new conclusion, 3 or 4 bullets from the original article starter turned into paragraphs.

TIP: If it’s starting to feel a bit stale, take the main idea – offering backend products – and turn it around into 5 mistakes people make with their sales funnels.

New views look to be about 100-600.

I could go on, but Steve might shoot me because of the length of this post. The grand total of eyeballs from these 7 actions = 4216 – 6766 … working from the one article!

How much time will all this take you? With one article and a plan, it won’t take you nearly as long (or as much sweat and tears) than if you started from scratch each time. That’s leverage, baby. 🙂

~~~~~

Peggy Baron has been busy helping other marketers with their online content needs since 2008.  She writes high quality PLR as well as unique  Easy Article Starters. She calls peggybaron.com her home turf.

Take Action. Get Results.



32 thoughts on “A Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle Plan For Your Article”

  1. Hey Peggy,

    Well said.

    But, often times it is easier to say than do the work. Now that I think about it, it is actually smarter to rewrite the articles and get more out of less.

    You have a great plan here and it is going to help a lot of people. This plan would have been helpful to me – but unfortunately, I really can’t rewrite my articles (I could indeed present the same information from a different perspectives) – I find it really hard to rewrite my articles; Not much interest/motivation to rewrite it. I guess that’s because I don’t really blog for a living – I just blog for the satisfaction and joy of it.

    Anyways, thanks for the read 🙂

    Jeevan Jacob John

    • Agreed, it’s ALWAYS easier to say than to do. 🙂 And you’re right, it’s smarter to get more out of less rather than start from nothing and have to create something new each and every time.

      Thanks,
      Peggy

      • Yes, of course. What is your experience, Peggy? Did you think you put a lot more effort into recycling content than if you were to write new ones?

  2. Hi Peggy and Steve,

    Serious leveraging here!

    I love it. No need to create like a fiend when you can re-create, repackage, and leverage. The goal is to get eyeballs on your work. You can do this by working intelligently, and Peggy’s strategy is all about smart, effective acts.

    Thanks for sharing guys!

    Ryan

  3. Of course, it’s possible to reuse or rewrite previous materials, but I think that it should be done very carefully. Because there is always an opportunity that your readers can be disappointed in it and will think that you are very lazy

    • Hi Amanda,
      You’re right in that you should be careful with your repurposing, but also keep in mind that many times you are reaching a totally different audience with the repurposed piece.

      Thanks,
      Peggy

      • Hi Peggy,

        I think that these were some great tips.

        I think that it pretty much goes without saying that we should put some time and consideration into how we write and how we go about repurposing our content for different uses.

        The knee-jerk reaction I see people throwing up is that people will feel it’s “lazy” or disappointing, but I think that couldn’t be further from the truth if we’re taking the time to do things in a professional way.

        The true things in life tend to remain true. These truths may be applied in many ways. It’s all in how we use what we know that determines our success levels that may come from that point of understanding and application.

        It’s up to us how we use what we have. All things may be tools. Each tool has a place. A hammer doesn’t do a screwdriver’s job, now does it? No…but if we have other nails to pin down, the same hammer we used yesterday should still work today.

        I think that in order for us to truly succeed, sometimes we need to get out of our own heads enough to be able to recognize that personal criticisms such as “lazy” and “disappointing” may be how we perceive ourselves. If that’s our “starting point” to whatever the task is at hand then we may surely receive those criticisms from others…but that’s not to say that they would feel that way simply because we repurposed a truth for them in a new piece of content.

        I think we must each look to ourselves and learn to be impartial as possible so we may excel in anything; this is no different.

        You said this nicely here “Many times you are reaching a totally different audience with the repurposed piece.”

        I also feel that sometimes, we are reaching people with the same truth in a different way. I have heard often that it may take people multiple exposures to the same facts, repeated, before they grasp a new concept. I feel that repurposed content offers us an opportunity to help our readers more effectively understand that which they intend to learn about from us.

        🙂

        Well done!

        Cat Alexandra

  4. Hi Ryan and thanks!

    I try not to take life too seriously, but I am serious about leveraging. Steve’s got it right when he talks about working smarter, not harder. Plus, isn’t it kind of fun to tap into your marketing skills and figure out all the ways you can use one article to your advantage? Or… is that just me who thinks it’s fun?

    😉 Peggy

  5. Ah, leverage…
    One of my favorite words. Thanks for providing so many ways to repurpose an article, Peggy. It seems I have been missing a few of these, so it is time to get to work!

  6. Hi Daphne,

    “Leverage” is a good word, isn’t it? It’s something we’ve been doing in our real lives without even thinking about it. Cooking a fine meal and turning the leftovers into a casserole or maybe a soup is an example that comes to mind, but that’s probably because I’m hungry right now.

    Thanks and good luck with it! 🙂
    Peggy

  9. Wow Peggy, what great advice there. You had my head spinning girl!

    I guess I never really thought about taking the initial article and then branching it out so to speak. I mean I’ve shared it on sites like Scribd and other Web 2.0 properties but I see where by just tweaking it a little here and there you can turn it into so much more.

    I guess I thought that if I were writing a guest post it had to be fresh new unique content. Not something I’ve written about already and perhaps am just tweaking. I’m definitely not a big guest poster so what do I know right!

    Great ideas though so thanks for not only sharing this with us but for this awesome guest post here on Steve’s site. Great job Peggy!

    Happy Valentine’s Day to you both. And Steve, I LOVE the new look. I’m a Thesis lover too!

    ~Adrienne

  10. Hi Adrienne,

    You never fail to put a smile on my face => 🙂 See?

    As far as tweaking an article for a guest post I would definitely bring my “A” game. Go deeper into each point, explain it further and share an example or a story.

    Happy Valentine’s day to you, too!

    Thanks,
    Peggy

  11. Ok Peggy. You now have been totally psyched to do my next series of guest posts using…wait for it…your Easy Article Starters. I have all of them so I’d better put them to work.

    Thanks for the great tips!

    Sharyn

  13. Absolutely great, it gives me lots of ideas on how to recycle all those old contents and make them new in the sense of making some new pattern in writing it. I already renew the face of my site from “Gaming” to “Tutorials”. Thanks for sharing this article is been said that it’s better to reuse than to throw it.

  14. Awesome tip here! Thanks for the info. I’ll be able to put the information I learned here to good use soon. 🙂 I just love the idea and I can’t wait to get started!

  16. Great, thanks. I’ll definitely use it for getting more exposure. Who could think that I can use the content I already created! Thanks for the awesome article. It’s really inspiring and it makes me think that I’ll be able to focus more on creating new stuff, because I’ll have more time. Gracias!

  17. Hi Peggy, how clever!

    I did something similar to create my eBook giveaway (although I used a series of articles) – however its given me some great ideas to take the 10 part series and distribute it.

    Which could be potentially 60,000 eyeballs based on your maths!

    Thanks again

    • Hi Mk,

      Yes, forums are a good place to use your material. If someone has a question about something and you just happen to have the answer in an article you wrote, well, take a few paragraphs from your article and give them their answer. Quick and easy. 🙂

      Thanks,
      Peggy

  19. Nothing wrong with reusing old content provided it’s targeting a new audience who have never seen it before AND the author is upfront about it. Reusing old content and pretending its brand new on the other hand…

    • Hi Joe,

      While yes, this post is all about targeting new audiences, it isn’t about using old content and pretending it’s brand new. I mentioned rewriting, also taking some other bullet points from the Easy Article Starter and creating different content, or coming up with a more detailed piece from focusing on just one bullet point . It’s also about offering the content in different formats.

      Hope that helps.
      Peggy

  20. The true things in life tend to remain true. These truths may be applied in many ways. It’s all in how we use what we know that determines our success levels that may come from that point of understanding and application.
    It’s up to us how we use what we have. All things may be tools. Each tool has a place. A hammer doesn’t do a screwdriver’s job, now does it? No…but if we have other nails to pin down, the same hammer we used yesterday should still work today.
    It’s really inspiring and it makes me think that I’ll be able to focus more on creating new stuff, because I’ll have more time.

    • Wow, that’s deep. I like the way you think!
      Having more time to create new stuff is inspiring – plus the stuff you’ve already created goes a lot farther than initially thought.

      Peggy

  21. What a great post. This infomration is so powerful and vital to keeping blogs going, without being repetitive, and without being boring. Thanks for the post Steve and Peggy.

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