Publishing 1,000,000+ Words a Month: The Process Behind Jon Gillham’s Content Writing Service
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is king.
Talk to anyone in the online business world making a living with content websites they will tell you to be successful it's all about creating .
Jon Gillham is not just anyone, though. If is King, Jon may be the king of kings.
Each month Jon's company Refined produces anywhere from 1,000,000-3,000,000 words.
To put it in perspective, Niche Pursuits produced about 20,000 words of last month, Own the Yard had about 300,000 words in 6 months. It's hard to imagine 1,000,000 words in a single month.
So how does Refined create this much and still provide quality results?
It's all about systems. From keyword selection to their pod-based , their strategies allow them to scale successfully.
The results speak for themselves. Refined has been around for about 4 years now and has grown primarily through word of mouth .
This week Jon has even agreed to do the content marketing for one lucky Niche Pursuits reader for the entire year. A full content strategy for a year and 24,000 words!
You can also get 15% off a bulk content order through Content Refined right here.
A complete end-to-end content marketing solution. Get Your Entire Content Marketing Strategy, Content Creation and Publishing Done at the Best Price of the Year (20% OFF)! BLITZ DEAL: 20% Off All Bulk Content
On the podcast, we talk a little more about Jon's background and how he started refined.Â
Contents
- Watch the Entire Interview
- What makes the Content Refined blog writing service special?
- What does it take to write great content?
- How to use Split Testing in Content Writing
- Types of Content Services
- Creating a Content Writing Process
- Hiring a Content Service Team
- What else does a content writing company do?
- Summary
Watch the Entire Interview
What makes the Refined special?
Refined is an end to end service. Meaning from keyword research, editing, and publishing the final piece of work to your site is all taken care of by the Refined team.
If you want to get your year off to a great start Content Refined is giving away a package that will get your content off to an incredible start! Winning a package like that could mean building a $2k per month authority site.
Using Content Refined to go from $0-$2k per month
Anyone can write a few articles, but creating (multiple) success stories is difficult. I asked Jon to give us a recent example of a Content Refined customer.Â
The first success story Jon highlighted was a new site owner that came to their team for . The owner went with a brand new domain and needed .
The Content Refined team created a around a six-month plan the new owner approved. There would be one pillar plus a cluster of articles around a high-value CPC keyword.
If you are curious, the keyword was in a competitive high priced vegetable niche. Yep, vegetables!
Each piece of started with a brief, an author would write, and an editor would optimize using tools like MarketMuse.
After six months, the site was generating $2k per month!
Was this a fluke or a repeatable process?
Jon has personally had a few six-figure website exits. The focus on using data to write tells me this wasn't just luck.
In a second example, Content Refined completed a project for a site providing advice on a $30k purchase. In eight months the site went from 0 visitors to over 72k monthly visits with content marketing!
The team at Refined has made some significant steps to refine the process as their name suggests!
What does it take to write ?
Hiring a great author to write is one thing. But if you're the with the intent of earning a profit, is only a small piece of the puzzle.
Keyword research is where it all begins. We've talked with a few at Niche Pursuits, but Refined is the first to tell us they have a statistician.
Yes, that's right, an expert in numbers at a .
While is an art, the keyword research and planning that goes into creating the is 100% a mathematical numbers game.
Let's take a look at all the numbers that go into planning
Add in the never-ending A/B test, and it's easy to see why is a numbers game.
How to use Split Testing in
Jon gave us a great example they recently completed. Using a split-testing strategy with a website on a trustworthy domain, with lots of traffic, but very little monetization.
Split tests were used to determine product lines and would choose areas to focus on building .
His test chose five categories. A category was something like Sunglasses, Hats, etc.
Three articles for each topic category were written, totaling 15 articles in the test.
Each of the three articles in his categories was assigned a keyword based on keyword difficulty. The goal was to provide a high, medium, and low keyword difficulty keyword for each category.
Did this move the needle in terms of monetization or significant traffic?
No, not much at all, but it allowed the team to create a fantastic that made ranking keywords and monetization much more manageable.
Instead of throwing darts and hope for results, or guessing blindly where to go next, now they knew they were creating in the best places.
Once the data is gathered, Jon says that's when the team drops “the big bomb”. The is now zoned in and more likely to succeed.
This strategy is a bit different than other . If you are considering hiring a , you should be aware there are a few different types.
Types of Services
Hiring a staff on their own is difficult. You'll need a full team, someone to be the strategist, editor, or format and images. Then there are services like Jon's Refined, a hybrid model with agency-level strategy but mill prices. They can do this as Jon has made systems a priority. Here is what a typical Content Refined process looks like. By focusing on data, repeatable processes, and taking on clients specifically wanting to grow with , they can provide at great prices.
These are that are incredibly cheap. In most cases, these services work by providing the outsourced team a keyword and the with virtually no other communication.
Agency services are bespoke services that have a wide range of services. This type of service will be your closest option to an end to end and service. Pricing can widely vary and is often more on the pricy side.
Creating a Process
To pull off a complex with success, it takes a crew.
Refined designed a pod-based system. There is a business manager, project manager, editor, and a team of writers assigned to each pod.
The structured process is not by mistake. It's not uncommon for writers to come and go. Writers, for whatever reason, are a transient group. Finding writers for the long term is a challenge.
For large orders, you may even need multiple . Having a consistent project and business manager to keep the project on track is what makes the difference.
If a would leave, you don't have to worry. The project manager trains and communicates your requirements to the new .
Hiring a Service Team
If building a team isn't for you, and you want to go the route of hiring a , be sure to do your due diligence.
Jon gave us a few horror stories on the podcast of other companies he has heard of sneaking in affiliate links or reusing the for their personal uses.
Whether you choose a mill or agency service, there are plenty of options in not only companies but available services.
What else does a company do?
A company offers more than just . You can get services like updating , , keyword research, and leveraging visual into written done for you.
Many companies have different offerings. Choosing a service that works for your brand is what's important. Jon let us know of just a few options Refined and other services have to offer.
Updates
In one of my last podcast interviews, Brock McGoff said that sometimes updating your existing is more powerful than creating new.
A content writing service will do a little more than just update backlinks.
For example, let's say you have an that you wrote a few years ago with the intent of ranking for a long-tail keyword. You may be unintentionally ranking for other powerful competitive keywords with this same article.
Your could quickly be ranked on the first page for these new keywords with a little love and running your through MarketMuse to optimize score and word count.
If you are like me and don't have the time to do all the research and updates, Jon's team at Refined does have a specific package that will tackle this all for you.
Video to
Repurpose your video into . As you can see, this is a strategy I'm using in this very .
Jon joined me on the podcast, but I've also doubled down on creating a YouTube video and this to create high-quality.
My process is pretty informal, but Jon has this down to a science.
You send your video you've created to Refined. An outline with essential elements such as Title, Focus Keyword, Main Points, and a gap analysis from MarketMuse are developed.
Once the project manager approves the outline, the is written. The result is your 10-minute video just turned into a 1000-3000 word (fact checks and research included).
Keyword Research
Another process that you can outsource or develop strategies around is keyword research. Even though keyword research doesn't seem like it has anything to do with writing words on the page, it's one of the most critical processes.
Using tools like Ahrefs and MarketMuse yourself is one quick way to gain a lot of knowledge quickly.
Outsourcing the keyword research to a can have its advantages. Since keyword research is something that the does daily, they are far more knowledgable than most would be.
Jon's team each year looks at all the and the data around that . From keyword difficulty to word count over the thousands of articles they've written, they can see what is performing well and what isn't.
Using Ahrefs data will get you a long way. Using the knowledge and experience from a content service could put you on a whole other level.
Summary
There are so many options when it comes to hiring a . Jon is a great friend and was kind enough to be transparent about their processes.
Whether you leverage these strategies to build your own do-it-yourself or decide to hire a , I highly recommend you check out the Refined offerings.
All their services pricing is highlighted directly on their website so there is no guesswork in what you are going to get.
Refined uses English speaking and are one of the most options on the market. Check them out here.
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A complete end-to-end content marketing solution.
- Only the BEST Native English Writers
- The Most Thorough Quality Control Process Possible
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