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How I Get Over 100,000 Visitors a Month With Top List Articles

By:     Topics: Get Web Traffic     More posts about: ,

Getting website traffic is for me, one the simplest things on the planet.  All you have to do is provide people with a solution to their problem and they will come, read it and they will share it with their friends! Doing this with top list articles is especially beneficial.

I have created over 100 ‘top list’ type posts which have been viewed by millions. They are so popular and well received that they have been featured on Reddit Homepage, New York Times, Yahoo News & one even became a Trending Topic on Twitter! The best part… I can get these types of posts created for just $25. Let me show you how.

Top List Articles

Why Creating Lists Will Drastically Increase Your Traffic

When you Google, think what you are typing in, let’s say you are looking for a cure for a health problem. Just for example, you are going to type in Cure Acid Reflux. That’s a big search term. Firstly you would be surprised how many people don’t name the article what people are searching for in Google. This blows my mind. Why are you calling your article something fancy and using words people don’t ever use, just to make yourself look smart. No one is typing that in Google, so you shouldn’t be naming your posts that.

I’m no SEO expert, there I said it. But I do get around 200,000 visitors a month from Google alone so it’s kind of a big deal for me.

Here’s what I believe: Google ranks sites which are naturally awesome. Forget everything about buying links and social love. Just imagine that your posts are so cool, people spend ages on your site and people love to share your stuff. That’s what GOOGLE wants! Great content because they are in the content industry. There job is to provide users with the right content and the best possible option, if yours is not that, then you don’t rank so well.

Back to my health post, I will call it :

10 Ways To Cure Acid Reflux

Somewhere I heard that odd numbers work better for open rates and marketing so I often will change the 10 for 7, 11, 13, 17 basically any odd number that looks good. I will decide how many I want before I even create the post. Ofcourse, it sometimes changes as I’m writing the post.

What you don’t want to do is call your article something like:

Surefire Ways To Eradicate Acid Reflux

I’m sure someone will type in Eradicate Acid Reflux every month or two but Surefire Ways? No Way!

You think this is an extreme example? Heck no, this is a nice example.

Tip 1. Name Your Posts Something People Search For!

Here’s where top lists dominate:

  • Firstly, they are quite long so people tend to spend a while reading them.
  • Each part is in section, for example, our Cure Acid Reflux post, its 7 cures, so we have 7 headlines with each option. Because of this, people can quickly decide YES, there’s something here I am willing to do, so I will read it all. I think a lot of articles don’t do well because people are not prepared to commit time to read a page if they don’t think it’s going to help them.
  • The title says exactly what you get, so you know what you are getting into.
  • When shared on social media, again, people know what they are about to get. Often people will retweet and share blog posts just because of the title, not even knowing if the article is good or not.

Step 1. To Dominating Any Industry

Post a large amount of amazing articles. That’s what I do, I show up in dozens of industry’s and just do the same old top list posts but for different industry’s. Here’s some examples:

Blogging/Make Money Industry

  • Top 30 Most Influential People In Blogger
  • 10 Reasons Why It Rocks To Be a Internet Entrepreneur
  • 10 Christmas Gifts For Entrepreneurs
  • 17 Tips To Cure Bloggers Block
  • 20 Bloggers To Follow on Facebook

Blogging For The Photography Niche

  • Top 30 Most Influential People In Photography
  • 10 Reasons Why It Rocks To be a Photographer
  • 10 Christmas Gifts For Photographers
  • 17 Tips To Fix Bad Photos
  • 20 Photographers To Follow on Facebook

Blogging For The Health Industry

  • Top 30 Most Influential People in Natural Health
  • 10 Reasons Why It Rocks To Be Healthy
  • 10 Christmas Gifts for Super Healthy People
  • 17 Tips To Cure Acid Reflux
  • 20 Health Experts To Follow on Facebook

Young Entrepreneur Industry

  • Top 30 Most Influential Young Entrepreneurs
  • 10 Reasons Why It Rocks To Be a Young Entrepreneur
  • 10 Christmas Gifts For Young Entrepreneurs
  • 17 Tips To Stop People Treating You Different Because Of Your Age
  • 20 Young Entrepreneurs To Follow On Facebook

See how easy it is?

And it doesn’t stop there. Each post can be done in so many other ways. For example:

10 Reasons Why It Rocks To Be a Photographer… you could flip this on it’s head and do 10 Reasons Why It Sucks…

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Tip 2. Turn One Top List Into a Series of Top Lists

Remember our post suggestion: 20 Bloggers To Follow on Facebook

How about doing that with every social network:

  • 20 Bloggers To Follow on Twitter
  • 20 Bloggers To Follow on Youtube
  • 20 Bloggers To Follow on Pinterest
  • 20 Bloggers To Follow on Google+

Instead of doing a post such as “20 Ways To Improve Your Website” – you could split it into a series and niche each one down, so for example:

Step 2. Getting Articles Created (20 at a time)

So in order to achieve a lot of success with our blogs, we need a lot of content… by doing basically no actual work. This is important because as a business owner we can’t be doing everything ourselves, so we need to outsource what other people can do for us.

The great thing about top list articles, is they are more or less just research. Almost anyone can write them. The first article I ever outsourced was way back in 2009 and since then, has recieved over 1,000,000 visitors. All I had to do is hire someone and pay them $50. Still to do this day, I get thousands of visitors to my website every month because of that blog post. So don’t just think about how much traffic you will get today from a post but how much traffic you can get in the future.

Right now, one of the easiest places to hire a writer is Fiverr. They have a huge selection of writers and you can get your post written in under 24 hours. So if you want to test this strategy out, click here to hire someone to write your articles for you!

Tip 3. Be Specific With What You Want

If you want great articles, you have to give great guidelines. When you hire someone, I always include instructions so they know what I expect from them. This is what I send them:

Guidelines For Writing Awesome Articles For My Website

The majority of people who write articles for us, will go on to write many more. Please follow my article outline and guidelines to ensure your article is well received and accepted. Failure to do so will result in your article being declined.

All posts should be well researched.

If the article is numbered, please number it 1. 2. 3. etc (not #1 #2 #3 or 1 – 2 – 3 -)

If the title is broad, for example, 50 Places to Visit in 50 States of America, then please give a broad selection of choice. So for example, don’t make all 50 places landmarks, split it up so their is variety, for example, Landmarks, Famous Restaurants, Bars, Theme Parks, Extreme Things To Do and so on.

Be consistent with how you lay your article out, for example, I sometimes see people write post titles with the attraction first, followed by location. Then there will be 1 or 2 titles without a location. Each title needs to be in the same format.

Below is an example of how I like articles to be laid out:
—————————————–

Headline

Introduction to post. (This needs to be informative and make them want to carry on reading.)

Subheadline, in h2 tags. <h2>Your Subheadline</h2>

<h3>Item 1</h3>

[IMAGE]

Information why you should do what this title suggestions.

<h3>Item 2</h3>

[IMAGE]

And continue.

[There should be one line between each element.]

—————————————–

Examples of successful posts written:

  • http://incomediary.com/21-life-lessons-from-steve-jobs
  • http://incomediary.com/top-earning-websites
  • http://incomediary.com/top-earning-blogs

Conclusion

As you can see in the final part of this post, I guide writers through exactly what I want. Even giving them examples of writers who have already followed our guidelines. This is key to having success with outsourcing article writing.

So just to recap what you need to do:

  1. Download our 110 top list headline templates, it’s FREE!
  2. Go through our headlines and decide on the 10 that you think will be most successful on your blog.
  3. Go to Fiverr and hire a writer or several writers to create this content for you.
  4. Publish content on your website and enjoy the benefits of top list articles.
  5. Repeat the first 4 steps over and over again.

That’s all there is to our top list strategy. It works for us and it’s worked for thousands of other IncomeDiary readers as well, so why not give it a try?

Like this article? Please consider sharing on Facebook, & Twitter

Recommended Read:

=> Ten little-known techniques for figuring out how much traffic someone else’s website gets.

=> How To Become A Great Content Writer

Comments

  1. Daniel Adetunji says

    Wow!

    This sis amazing bro! A Hundred thousand visitors is a huge amount. I’ll be creating this type of posts on my blog.

    Thanks for sharing

    Danny

  2. Darnell Jackson says

    This is excellent Michael AND it makes perfect sense,

    It’s funny how we tend to make things that we don’t understand more difficult than they really are.

    This is the best explanation that I’ve seen on getting organic traffic and I follow hundreds of blogs.

    For the rest of 2013 you can call me list post Larry I’m using this advice, I’ll let you know how it goes.

  3. Greg Nunan says

    Awesome post Michael. Absolutely love this strategy. I have pretty much being doing this, but what you outline in just two of 10 points is absolute gold! Looking forward to taking my sites to the next level with this strategy.

  4. Kulwant says

    This article is EPIC.

    I know every IMer either he is big or small is struggling for traffic and you just said, “it’s damn easy for me.” I loved the opening paragraph so I digged more into article.

    This is simply incredible way to write list article and by doing this you can attract attention of more people from your niche.

    After getting inspiration from you I wrote one article 1-2 months back and it was a big hit on my blog. The article was titled “Top 15 Internet Marketing Gurus Changing People’s Lives” and people just loved it.

    Thanks for being always there to teach us in best possible ways.

    • spence cater says

      Hi Kulwant,
      I have a suggestion for your next blog title :

      7 signs that you will NEVER make any money Online!

      You can thank me later 😉

      Spence

  5. Dr. Babs Yusuf @Edubabs says

    I got the gist, Micheal. Thanks for this educative blog post. I just learnt an important stuff. More grease…

  6. Olatunji Femi says

    Hello Michael,
    Lovely and insightful post. i think you’ve just revealed a goldmine secret that could be worth $1000. 🙂

    Although i have always know that list posts do well a whole lot. This just goes to confirm the point beyond reasonable doubt.

  7. Anthony Santiago says

    Awesome article Michael love your strategy in how you get 100.000 visitors a month

  8. Thank you very much for your nice post. You explained it in details and I will try your strategy to generate more traffics.

  9. Ryan Rollan says

    I want also the same, get around 200,000 visitors a month from Google. I tried as much as possible to make my site looks natural but i didn’t get what you had achieve. i think Google likes you, just saying. anyway thank you for sharing us this great post.

  10. It’s been a while since a post has really resonated with me, and this post did just that.

    Thank you Michael !

  11. Sai Krishna says

    Wow, that’s really fantastic,

    Your tips are just awesome bro, very precise and to the point talks.

    It impressed me, you have revealed a truth and I’m glad to find the post, I have gained much knowledge, and look forward to learn more form you.

  12. One thing that I am not really very clear off. If you pay for some of the articles, what is your contribution to those articles?

    I think that you can get very good articles at that price, but how do you contribute to them when posting them on the website, because after all, I and many of us perceive Income Diary as the signature of Michael Dunlop

  13. Nice one Michael. I think I have to go back and review some of the article titles on my site

    ifeanyi

  14. Brittany Jones says

    This was very helpful. I’ve been trying to come up with some great post ideas for a long time. My subject is a time clock software. Sometimes it can be difficult coming up with creative, fun ideas for a time clock software that people are wanting to read! I think a list could be a great way to get them to want to read more. Any suggestions on lists I can create? What would you want to know about a time clock software?

  15. Brilliant article Michael.. Thanks you very much for sharing with us… I am definitely going to try this! Thanks again for sharing!

  16. Tha Football Guru says

    Great information, thanks this has helped me a lot.

    My site is all about NFL Football.

    As for suggesting a top list I like to make list like this

    – 10 Mistake Every (Pick Industry) Makes That Successful (Industry) Avoid.

  17. Aqib Shahzad says

    Awesome post Michael. Absolutely love this strategy. I have pretty much being doing this, but what you outline in just two of 10 points is absolute gold! Looking forward to taking my sites to the next level with this strategy.

  18. great infos, THXs a lot, I’ m soaking up everything 🙂

  19. Alexandra Petean-Nicola says

    great way of showing that list articles work for any industry. The topics are there you just need to learn to create quality content fast.

  20. Keith Griffiths says

    Great post, to say it’s easy to generate traffic is an understatement or your not doing yourself justice if you can create so much traffic.

  21. Maegan Anderson says

    Its true that if you want to have many visitors in your site, be specific on what title you will choose for your article because people are more specific in terms of what they are searching. Now I know that odd number is better to open rates and marketing strategy than even numbers. 🙂 Thank you for this, I learned a lot from your blog.

  22. bsmbahamas says

    Wow, where do I sign up, this is the best post/article I’ve read for 2014. I’ll be sure to impliment. Thanks for sharing, this is killer.

  23. This is an awesome post, just what I needed to help me get my posts noticed by google. Thanks for the awesome content.

  24. Kapital Learning says

    good job…i will try top lists for my website

  25. Denis Smith says

    Appreciate this post. Just to make sure, I checked your site’s traffic and it is exponentially growing – now at 166,307. I believe you will soon reach a million if you keep on doing what you are doing now. Great lesson thx.

  26. Hi Michael Dunlop,

    It’s great article and I am following the same for my website, seeing your screenshot you are outsourcing the articles on textbroker.com. I need help from you, “how you write the content request form” let say the title “20 Health Experts To Follow on Facebook” Do you provide the 20 health expert facebook profile names to the writer, or they will do research and write their own?

    Can you please send me a sample request content form?
    Do you request 20 articles at the same time with same author or different author?

    Thanks,
    Subbu

  27. Emmanuel.c omachoko says

    This is a wonderful blog post Micheal. i have been following you on how to generate good traffic to my blog and hope to get massive traffic soon. keep it up. Charles Emmanuel

  28. Robert Connor says

    That kinda of traffic would be awesome!

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