As you learned in a previous article,
“evergreen” content is information without an expiration date (or a
shelf life so long it’s practically timeless). Thus, it’s never truly
out of date.Compare that to “expirable” content which is information that matters now (like a local sporting event), but will fall out of interest within a few weeks.
At Blogword 2010, I attended the Evergreen seminar with Jeffrey Powers and Mignon Fogarty (aka GrammarGirl).
Now that we know the difference, here are some ways you can make money, reuse content, and get better businesses opportunities with evergreen content for your membership site.
Outsource Your Content
Other people besides website linkers are interested in your content.
You can license your information for use in books, magazine articles, newspapers, radio, television, and presentations. Put a message on your site letting people know you’re willing to license content and field the offers as they come in.
Of course, if you do want to sell to other sites (as opposed to just having links) that’s a real option as well.
Sponsorships
For a set amount of money (or goods/services), you agree to mention the company’s name as a sponsor.
Usually this takes the form of a banner, a few seconds of audio, or a video still. Advertisements can easily be added to podcasts and video manually.
Try to set up your insert so that if the partnership ever changes, the previous company name can be removed easily and the new one inserted with little effort.
Hence you’re better off with an audible mention before the program as opposed to text over the video.
Even easier, many videos use HTML5 for ad insertions so any new sponsorships or cancellations can be edited in or out as needed with nothing more than a simple code. Thus saving you some editing time.
Repackaged Content
Create enough evergreen content for your membership site and eventually you will have enough for a book, CD set, or a set of downloadable courses.
For those membership sites with modular courses, could you repackage that content and make each one a chapter? I think you can!
Set Yourself Up as An Authority
Evergreen content on its own may not make you a ton of money for your membership site.
Sure it brings in some cash through memberships but what’s even more valuable is setting yourself up as an authority on a subject.
Visitors assume someone creating useful content obviously knows what they’re talking about. Hence, people feel comfortable buying products and signing up with people who are recognized authorities.
Being viewed as one of these authorities on any given subject increases your opt-in and buy rates which is how you really make your money.
Unusual Promotions
Evergreen gives you promotions you never would have considered.
GrammarGirl, as you can guess, teaches the proper way to write and speak. That being said, you wouldn’t initially consider a forum for a game that includes fighting mythical creatures to be a viable opportunity for her.
Yet she has experienced noticeable spikes in her traffic when her site is referenced on the World of Warcraft forums. Her evergreen content has such a wide and timeless appeal that anyone from authors to video game players can discover value within her content.
Make the content genuinely useful and it’ll find unusual places to plant around the web.
By using evergreen content, you create content with a longer shelf life, which is easy to schedule, saves you time, is easily updated, makes you money, is easily repackaged, and sets you up as an authority. Now wonder so many sites now go ever(green).
If you would like to learn more tips that’ll help your membership site, visit Jeffrey Powers and Mignon Fogarty aka GrammarGirl.
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