Perspektiva 0002: On Second Thoughts, Shelling 100 Articles At 5k$ Budget & Genuine Outreach

Hey all,

Sending you your weekly dose of important perspectives to help you grow in life and business.

Owner’s thoughts:

• I’ve never shared these perspectives with anyone else besides me and a handful of currently succesfull individuals.
• They cover aspects of communication, strategy, self improvement, processes, and idea making (among other things). They’ve helped me:
  • Reach $60,000 Annual Revenue with my newest company and growing I started as a VA two years ago earning $12k per year
  • Rank several finance niche articles rank 3rd and 4th in Google for specific long tail keywords, surpassing fool.com and businessinsider.com and their multimilion dollar budgets.
  • Shell out 100 pages of blog articles in 2 months for less than 5$k budget and increase traffic by 30%, ranking several focus pages first for their respective focus keywords.
  • Work with companies like Porsche, Phillip Morris, Ebox Solutions, Flat-Icons, Just Start Investing, and more.
• When sharing these perspectives on social media, use this short link https://bit.ly/3wcLJVe or my social media handles to mention me. Here they are:
  • https://www.linkedin.com/in/viktor-ilijev/
  • https://twitter.com/viktor_ilijev

What you’ll read today:

Content Production Case Study: 100 Pages In 2.5 Months With A 5K$ Budget

Before: In early Jan 2021, our client saw an opportunity within his niche, to build content around 100 Low Hanging Fruit keywords which would help his focus pages rank higher in the SERPS. 

After: He needed a simple, yet fast and powerful system that will shell out 100 well-researched and optimized articles within 2,5 months.  

2,5 months later (April 2021), 100 articles live (each covering one LHF) thanks to a simple 6 step content production system we built specifically for him, in google sheets.

Results (First Month After Publishing the Articles): 

• 100 articles published. Used:
  • Ahrefs for Keyword research
  • Surfer SEO, Blogely, and Authority Hackers, for outline creation
  • A simple Google sheet to track the progress, Gantt style
• Average article size: 2500 words
• Both sites saw a 30% increase in organic traffic
• 20% increase in organic keywords 
• Pillar post jumped to the first position in SERPs
• Total Cost: Less Than 5k$

Advice for entrepreneurs starting out

1. Avoid using expensive content production systems. A simple sheet will do.
2. Monitor AppSummo for deals on content optimizing tools and get them while they are hot.
3. Monitor for KW opportunities. Be on the lookout for LHF’s that have a KD <20 and traffic 500>. Act fast and create content fast.
4. Never save on quality assurance. Implement QA checks along each step of the process.
5. Create detailed outlines that your writers can understand and follow. 
6. Create a simple process that works and repeat it for each and every article you have.
7. Create the best content you can possibly imagine – see how the competitors do it and make it better than theirs.
8. Promote your content into channels where your audience lives and breathes.

Case study link with a step-by-step guide through the content production process.

The Relation Between Google And Content Distribution

Imagine that Google is a radar and your content distribution is a plane. 

You will stay on his radar, only if you keep on flying high enough for him to notice you. 

You fly high enough by having a plane that can reach that height, by having enough fuel, and by using that fuel efficiently. 

It’s not enough just to have the plane built and have it stay on the runway. 

You also need to know your plane inside out, how it works and why. What might not work, where you can’t go and where you should go. How high you can go. 

If you regularly post and repost, distribute and redistribute, the more Google will notice you. Because Google is a machine, and it needs machine-like signals to figure out what is what and who is who. The act of posting, reposting, distributing, and redistributing – are those signals.

And then, if everything goes well, you get to land where you want with google’s help. Then after a while and landing so many times, you could upgrade your plane. Or get a second one. 

The strips are your desired SERPS.

via GIFER

Few Thoughts On Thoughts And What To Do About Them

Thoughts are like waves in the ocean. They come and go, whenever they please. They’re out of our control. You have to accept that and when doing so know that you can’t do anything about them. 

Except to let them go or act upon them. That is the most powerful decision you can make. 

A decision that will help you traverse your day without stress, worry, anger, sadness, anxiety. Or the other way around.

If you don’t let them go, then what you do is attach yourself to them and start thinking. Thinking about possible scenarios, what could have, what if, why not, etc… at the same time you’ve already attached emotions to those thoughts.

Those emotions paired up with the never-ending line of thought that just makes no sense and keeps on evolving into ridiculous worlds of nonsense, drive you down. 

Suddenly you realize you’re anything but calm, cool, and collected. 

You’ve lost control.

It’s like a friendship with a dragon. How do you maintain one?

First, you have to realize that it’s a being that you have control over. You’re the master. You’re the one who decides where it will go and IF it will go somewhere. 

If you don’t, the dragon will decide for you and it’s not gonna be good. Dragons want what any dragon wants, freedom to roam wild, plunder and care for no one. 

Same thing with your thoughts.

Here’s a drill for you: the next thought that comes to mind, label it as such “it’s just a thought and I will decide what to do with it”. This way, you take control. Now, you have to decide what to do with it. Either act upon it or let it go. 

When acting upon it, remember:

• Does that thought really make sense?
• Is it helping me now? or adding to my happiness now?
• Is it helping me reach my goals now?
• Do I have control over it?

Example:

I want to eat that big mac.

I don’t want to exercise.

I don’t want to work right now.

My pet is pissing me off.

I can’t stand my spouse and her nagging.

I want to check social media.

I have a hard time letting go of my last relationship.

{add yours in the comments}

These are variations of thoughts you’ll encounter every day. Whether you react or not, it’s up to you. 

Sometimes you do have to react. And when you do, remember, it’s your reaction that matters. If you react negatively, bursting, making no sense, it’s you who did that. Someone made you react that way and it’s not the person in front of you. It’s your mind and how you perceived that situation.

The last thing, don’t feel guilty if you can’t choose to react to EVERY thought you have.

You’re not a sage bro.

But, with constant practice, if you, hypothetically speaking, have 100 thoughts per day, and you manage to control your reaction to 10 of them, with practice, you’ll get to a point where you can control 50, 60, 70, and more. 

Few more thoughts on second thoughts as drivers for destruction or evolution 

Why do second thoughts happen? Because:

• You don’t act on your first thought.
• You don’t trust your first thought enough 
• You wait.
• You don’t place enough value on your first thought 

For some people, second thoughts are a vortex that leads them to overthink, then anxiety and immense stress.

How do you make sure that second thoughts don’t initiate this destructive behavior?

There’s no kill switch button. But, what you can try is:

You cut them at their core by doing what is necessary at that moment. Most times, thoughts are directly connected to the action we are about to take.

For example, a thought comes to mind that you’re afraid that if you ask for a specific price that you feel is right for the service you offer, you will lose the potential client. 

If you keep on thinking about it, you will probably lower the price and lower the value of your service. 

What you need to do: When that thought comes to mind, you just go ahead and give the price you felt was right.  

It’s ok for them not to accept it. You don’t need people who can’t afford you and your time. 

So, you act rather than think.

Getting stuck in the chasm between thinking and doing is worse than death.

Influence by Robert Cialdini – Sum Up Thoughts On The Concepts Of Commitment & Consistency 

The drive to be and look consistent often causes us to act in ways that are clearly contrary to our own best beliefs.

The level of sureness in your decisions before and after you make one, is huge. Latter you are more sure of the decision you made because you want to feel consistent and fool yourself in order to keep your thoughts and beliefs consistent with what you have done and decided. And you feel better about it although sometimes that decision is not a good one.

• Automatic consistency – blindly doing and responding to events just because its easier and you dont have to think – you basically avoid thinking and just respond in order to be ok in life and avoid the reality of actually having to think before you act.
• People hide behind the walls of consistency to protect themselves from the troublesome consequences of thought.
• Its easier for people to avoid REALLY thinking if that particular thing they buy or sign up for REALLY helps or not, than actually stop and think about it.
• Because if you’re on a journey, its easier to accept anything along the way if it feels it will help you go further in that journey. Even if that thing really makes no sense at all. 
  • Example with toy producers
    • They undersupply key toys at christmass so that you can buy them later in february because their sales fall short usually then.
• Be carefull of trivial requests because they can be dangerous – once you agree to a request, your attitude may change, and in your own eyes you might become the person that does these things, who agrees to requests made by strangers.
• Small requests added one on top the other have devastating effects on human compliance and making people turn into a cause they never believed in, to blindly follow it. These small requests make larger ones down the road easy to comply and makes us more willing to go with them. Small commitments are used to manipulate the persons self image. You can use them to turn citizens into public servants, prospects into paying customers.
• Once you got a mans self image where you want, he will comply with requests since they are consistent with his point of view (the one you installed). 

The “I” and “You”

Being self-centered is good sometimes. It allows you to maintain your direction in life when shit hits the fan. When everything and everyone says that that road leads nowhere.

That road will destroy you.

That road will make them miss you, hate you, love you.

But that road is the one you gotta take.

Do it.

Self-centeredness comes from knowing who you are, what you’ve done, what you want to do, and what you don’t want to do. Amongst other things.

I will.

I am.

I can.

I do.

Do it until you can’t and then do some more until you can’t do it at all. That’s life. 

Healthy individualism in other words.

Distinguishing yourself from the pack but still be here for them. 

There’s always going to be the “we” and “us” and “you”. But never ever forget “who I am”.

Because yourself is the one who will build up and bring others to life.

BTW, who are you?

On a cosmic level – nothing. Not even stardust.

On an atomic level – a bunch of atoms that figured, hey we seem to vibe together, let’s vibe for some time and see how it goes. The basics.

Now, atoms don’t know shit about wants, needs, wishes. They just vibe in the way they were meant to and in the way they are supposed to so that they can keep you and your forgiving liver, stressed heart, and overthinking brain alive and moving through the streets of Philadelphia.

They will continue to do what they need to do. 

Atoms need to do what atoms need to do.

The question is why do you stand in their way to help you live?

Over the course of those few decades, you attracted atoms your way. Some of them atoms were forced on you, some were due to your wishes and wants. You get to a point where you get so saturated with all sorts of different, low vibing, high vibing, draining, atoms that you lose your sense of who you are.

You’ll keep some of those atoms to yourself thinking they are good for you, thinking they will help you be happier and vibe better.  

The point is, you need to get back to yourself. Your basic vibe, the one that has brought you here, the one that drives you, the one that will take you where you need to be.

How to get back there?

Vibe with others. Bad, good, wrong, right. Doesn’t matter. What matters is to realize what you don’t need to vibe with so that you will avoid vibing with those again. That’s when you leave space to vibe with better atoms. Ones that oscillate the same way yours do. 

You will be afraid. Hell, why wouldn’t you be? You’re allowing someone to vibe with your most basic, most real, most simple pieces of you. 

Your atoms. 

You have to. It’s not a choice you should make. You will take it no matter whether you like it or not.

Along the way, you’ll shed the atoms that just don’t fit anymore. Fuck off. We don’t vibe no more. 

And you will get to a point where you get back to your basic set. 

Now, this set has some serious vibing experience. I mean, they’ve been through hell because of your choices. The scars along that oscillating line are there and zip through every time you try to vibe again with some of the old, useless vibes.

That’s life.

And then when you completely shed everything besides those bunch of hardcore, experienced, wartorn atoms, that’s when you really start vibing. 

Now you know what fits and what doesn’t.

And that’s when you start meeting the same vibes you have. The same bunch of ragdoll atoms that you’re made of. And you see them.

Genuine Outreach When Generating Leads

• It’s about wanting to know people because they interest you – not because you think you could profit from knowing them.
• It’s about wanting to offer them something because you want to help – not because you hope to get something in return.
• It’s about keeping in touch because you like talking to them – not because you know that you need to keep relationships alive to profit from them.
• It’s about blurring the lines between your personal and business life – because you should have friends in business too.

The three steps to genuine approach:

1. Research
   1. Do a simple Google search: “top [your niche] blogs”
   1. Keep an eye out for links to other blogs in blog posts you read.
2. Outreach
   1. Only share articles that you actually like. 
   2. Secondly, only share articles that you have something to say about.
      1. Don’t just share the article’s headline – share your opinion. Add value and demonstrate that you care about or are interested in what the blogger has written.
      2. Don’t worry about whether or not the blogger will actually see your share – you’re sharing the post because you like it and you think that your followers will enjoy it  – not because you’re hoping to gain something from doing so.
   3. Feel free to get involved in the comments section on your chosen blogs at this point too, but the same rules as above apply: only comment if you actually have something of value to add.
3. Contact – you must recognize that this step comes when it’s good and ready. You must not force it.

5 Useful Links To Help You Grow Your Knowledge

• https://ftf.agency/ux-seo/
• https://htmltidy.net/
• https://www.followupthen.com/
• 40 Balkan Startups To Watch Grow
• Content Production Guide

Perspectives From Other People

If we saw things differently we would act differently, in line with our different idea of what is right and wrong.

Epictetus

As always, if you got 4000$ laying around, let me know and I’ll send you my bank account.

Unlike the prince of Nigeria’s offer, this is NOT a scam.

Cheers,

Vik