Tag Archives: roi on web content

Small Business Tip: Invest in Good Web Content for Your Site ASAP

Making an investment in good web content is a key to long-term business success when marketing your company’s products and services online.

I have been writing professionally for well over 10 years now. When I first started out, I worked for a variety of clients who paid me for the full rights to each article that I wrote.

When I think back on the many hundreds (possible thousands) of high quality articles and blog posts that I wrote for these clients over the years, I have to wonder how much money these articles and posts have made them by now. Probably a fortune compared to what I was paid for full rights.

A Hypothetical Example
It’s probably impossible to come up with an accurate figure for the ROI on a good piece of content because there are so many different variables, so I’ll just theorize with a hypothetical example.

Say you sell a useful gadget on your website that costs $40.

You hire someone to write a quality blog post or article to post on your website that is related to your business, industry or product. This evergreen (relevant indefinitely) content that you post is compelling enough to draw a 2 percent conversion rate from your traffic (I think that’s modest).

Here is a conservative, hypothetical model of the traffic that the article draws over the next 5 years:

1st year: 5 clicks per week in first 6 months it’s published; 15 clicks per week in the second 6 months = 390 clicks per year

2nd year: 25 clicks per week = 1300 per year

3rd year: 35 clicks per week = 1820 per year

4th year: 45 clicks per week = 2340 per year

5th year: 50 clicks per week = 2600 per year

Total traffic from this one piece of content over 5 years = 8,450

So with a conversion rate of 2% that one article sold 16 gadgets for a total of $640.

Say you paid $100 to a content writer for full rights to produce that custom blog post (500-1000 words). The return on investment (ROI) is

(Return – Investment)/Investment

640-100/100 = 5.4 or 540%

This is a conservative estimate of how the content would perform, but clearly this would be a smart investment for your business. Not to mention the sales continue indefinitely into the future.

In Conclusion
So when you’re managing a small business website, whether it’s to sell a product or service, you have to look at each initial expenditure as a long term investment. An investment in quality content is one of the best decisions you’ll look back on 3, 5 or 10 years into the future.

 

Louise Gaillard is a writer, marketing consultant and the author of Easy Twitter Marketing Tips for Business Success.



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