The secret….

….Pave over the path most traveled.

There is a story about Walt Disney just after Disneyland park was constructed in the mid 1950s. People were taking a shortcut through the grass at a particular point in the park. Disney’s staff was upset that people weren’t following the signs and staying on the concrete. When they confronted him with the news Disney surveyed the area and immediately ordered the makeshift pathway through the grass be paved. His staff was appalled. How could he ruin such a beautiful grassy area with concrete? Disney reminded his staff that he would rather see his guests happy. It seemed that this pathway made them happy. He was essentially watching where people already walked and placed a sidewalk in that location.

Find What People Are Already Reading On Your Blog.
The same idea applies when making money from your old blog posts. The goal is to find which posts people are already finding through organic search traffic. The best way to do this is to use a service like Google Analytics. It’s free and easy to install on your blog. Once installed, you’ll need to let it run for a few weeks to collect enough data.

Optimize Your Post.
Once you have several weeks of data – look through and identify the top landing posts. You will be able to tell what keywords people are searching  that drive them to your posts. Pick the top five posts and begin the process of optimizing these.

I recommend making sure the post looks good visually. Clean up any language that may not deliver based on the keywords searched. For example, if your post is titled “hooking an audience on your content” but you seem to attract “fish hooks” in keyword searches, you may want to craft your language differently. “Hook” might not be an accurate keyword to use.

Order Up Some Ads.
Find a place in the post to place some Google Adsense code. This is simply a code that will generate ads based on the keywords in your writing. These are typically contextualized ads that perform well with click throughs. Each time a reader clicks on one of the ads you get paid. While I’m not a fan of littering a site with Google ads in every post – if tastefully done a well trafficked post is a good home for a few ads.

Digg Your Delicious Post.
So now that we’ve tweaked the post for keywords and have added in the Google code it’s time to leverage an already popular post. Be sure to Digg the post. Also add it to Delicious and StumbleUpon. The idea here is to also Digg, Stumble, and tag other people’s content also. One, because you’ll look like a jerk otherwise. Two, it will help the search engines see your bookmarking as legit.

At the bottom of your post invite readers to tag, bookmark, and Digg the post. You may also want to ask friends to Digg, tag, and bookmark the post as well. Ask them if you can return the favor with one of their posts.

Be sure to send a Twitter update out about the post. Try to make the tweet interesting. It would be good to peak curiosity and drive traffic to your post. Rinse and repeat this process as you discover new posts that become popular with search engine traffic.

These are some quick tips to help you make some extra money with your old blog posts. The comment section is open below for questions or comments.

This post is part of an emerging series on this blog titled Folk Money. It is a project by Joel Mark Witt to discover and share the tools, techniques, and strategies behind making money online. Swing by Joel-Mark-Witt.com for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them.

To see how to begin making money online as a beginner – check out the guys over at Internet Business Mastery.

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This site, Joel-Mark-Witt.com, is where I ask the questions while standing at the intersection of social media, podcasting, online video, marketing, PR, storytelling, life and leadership…. and what the heck this all means for my business and yours. If you like what you see – please subscribe to it for free. To join the discussion or to comment in real time follow me on Twitter.

Joel Mark Witt

* Photo by karenwithak

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