Unless you haven't got a TV or access to any press then you can't have helped to notice that it was the final of the X-Factor on Saturday. This event is undoubtedly the biggest TV show of the year and a massive 8 million people voted for their favourite on Saturday night. The winner of the show is pretty much guaranteed the Christmas number 1 spot, due to the massive exposure and press they receive as the result of winning the show.
This year Alexandra Burke deservedly won and at the end of the show it was announced that her version of "Hallelujah" would be available to download at midnight with the physical CD single available in the shops from this Wednesday.
Hmm, I was sitting there watching the final and thought, "I bet there are a lot of people going to be online now searching for this track". So I quickly put up a short post on UKOffer.com saying that you could either download or order the CD online. To be honest I did it as a kind of test to see what (if any) traffic I could attract as a result of the massive demand for this single. In other words I was jumping on the X-Factor bandwagon.
Here is the short and sweet blog post I stuck up, with a couple of affiliate links to Play.com.
One thing you will notice is the lengthy and somewhat awkward title of the post.
"Download Hallelujah MP3 song by Alexandra Burke - X Factor winner"
I did this so that I would rank for as many combinations of searches as possible. It would have been much neater if I did a post that said "Download Hallelujah by Alexandra Burke here" but I would have then missed out on keyphrases with terms in like "MP3", "song", "X Factor" etc.
My strategy paid off, take a look at just some of the many key phrases that I was ranking for within 5 minutes, 5 minutes!!!
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Couple of notes about the above search terms:
These terms published represent about 1% of all Alexandra Burke related searches. The volume and the diversity of all the keywords used was absolutely massive. It really pays to put as many keywords as you can in the title of your blog post as well as within the content.
As you can see from a couple of the search terms above I even received "JLS" (the other X Factor finalists) related traffic. I deliberately mentioned them in the blog post for exactly this reason.
You will see that inevitably I'm getting a lot of searches for "free" downloads- I say inevitably as when it comes to MP3 downloads lots of people don't like to pay for them. For this reason I didn't put a price on my blog post, instead the link just says "Click here to download the Alexandra Burke MP3 single - Hallelujah." The purpose of this is to get the visitor to visit Play.com and of course drop my affiliate cookie. When they get there there is a chance they will see it is only 65p and they may pay for it. Or they may even have a browse around and purchase other stuff.
So what about the traffic?
Well, because UKOffer.com is a nicely aged site, has lots of fresh unique hand written content and some ethical links pointing to it, Google seems to like it. They come and index my site a lot and as I mentioned above my Alexandra Burke blog post was indexed and ranking well within 5 minutes on Google.
The downside of all this (if you can call it a downside) is that the traffic blew up my server. To give you an idea of traffic I received about 4 days of (peak holiday season) traffic in 30 minutes. Not surprisingly my server couldn't handle it and the site went down. However as I use Rackspace and as they have 24/7 telephone support I rang them and they fixed the problem in about 10 minutes.
Timing is critical
I can't stress how much a part timing played in this. Because I got my blog post up pretty much straight after the TV show it meant that my site was up there in the rankings and capturing the traffic right at it's peak. As the days have passed since Saturday I've seen a lot more news/blogs sites posting about this and therefore more competition in the serps. My site has since moved down for some search terms. However I was there a the peak on Saturday night so am not complaining.
I didn't do this to make money
As the download is only 65p at Play.com they only pay out 1p commission per sale. So as you can imagine I won't buy my next car with the proceeds. However I put the post up for a few other reasons:
1. Free traffic - I knew search volume would be huge so by claiming a slice of that huge gigantic pie I knew I could get a lot of traffic to UKOffer.com for free. Some of those visitors may just decide to hang around on my site, browse other offers while they are there and even bookmark it to visit later.
2. Cookie dropping - Pretty much all of my visitors clicked on the Play.com affiliate link and therefore my cookie was dropped on their PC. If they make a purchase at Play.com within the next 30 days then chances are I will get the commission.
3. Experimentation - As I have mentioned before I don't think affiliates make enough of one-off events, or other offline opportunities. By tapping into the X-Factor final I saw first hand what the opportunities and traffic levels are out there.
So there you are, I hope this blog post will inspire people to think a little outside the box. It's amazing what opportunities exist out there and shows that there is plenty of other stuff to go at, outside of voucher code and cashback sites.
P.S. You have probably noticed that UKOffer.com is looking a bit tired at the moment. My designer is working on a refresh as we speak, expect a new version live within a week or so.
What I'm listening to right now: Deborah Cox – "All Over Me"
Alexandra Burke crashed my server. How to capitalise on topical and one-off events
26 Responses to Alexandra Burke crashed my server. How to capitalise on topical and one-off events
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about me
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I am the founder of ShareMyPlaylists.com, ContentNow.co.uk and some other stuff. I have no idea why I'm blue on this photo though but I like it!
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Hi Kieron
Thank you for an extremely useful post. Looking at your example for the title, it wasn’t simply keyword stuffing, in grammatical terms it also made sense.
I wonder if the call to action in the title was beneficial?
Nice One Kieron
Striking while the iron is hot is a great philosophy. I have done this on some of my betting sites around sporting events and had a lot of traffic from specific event searches.
I am surprised the server went down. It should have handled more traffic than that.
Heh, maybe a follow up post – “why I should remove the same keywords from my blog post talking about my SERPs victories”?
Currently this post is #1 for [alexandra burke download]
Bob – fair point and exactly the reason why I saved publishing this post until Monday. I’ve made hay while the sun shone over the weekend and am now more than happy to share. Hence actually listing some of the keywords in the post, something I rarely do.
An excellent example of how a seasoned affiliates mind works. Great stuff and well done!!
Nice one mate, yet another top tip and strategy to help others!
Nice one mate, as you know I was on that one too, and I can vouch that the traffic levels were amazing. Sorry to jump on this thread a little but big up to Julie Wood at Awin who got me set up on Play.com and sent me links at like midnight on Saturday night!
This is a great post to highlight thinking around the box. A lot of people surf online whilst watching telly, so high profile TV shows you can get huge search volumes relating to shows during and after the shows. Just take a look at digitalspy to see how people chat about tv as they watch.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/15/thexfactor-digitalmedia
Kieron, you run Hitwise, right? If not, surely you’ve looked at it? Views?
What tool do you use to measure the breadth of your keyword coverage?
Bob – yes I did run Hitwise for a year, then I binned it as didn’t see the real value for the money they ask for it. So the answer to your question is that I don’t use any keyword tools apart from the Google AdWords one and my gut instinct.
Kieron, just a ball park, how many visitors are you talking about?
Also would love to see a post in 30+ days when those cookies expire as to how much this (2 minute?) post may have made you
Interesting post Kieron, thanks.
Jumping on the back of these crappy reality shows for traffic at least gives them one function in the world.
How have things gone with this idea so far, is it a tactic you would recommend for following in the future with other events?
Also another question, what do you think about actively creating these events inside niches, it would take investment to do but if you hit it right could potentially get a lot of revenue, granted its never going to be XFactor big but still…
That is on the ball affiliate marketing, capatilising on a new up to date market is a really good idea, I wish I had thought of it. I bet you will do really well from it.
Interesting post Kieron. I’ve an interesting story related to this. Back in Aug I decided to buy domain names of X Factor contestants who I thought would win – with the view of potentially selling them or developing them. However, 4 months later, I am left with about 50 domain names and no sensible offers! These include http://www.rachelhylton.org.uk and the winner, http://www.alexandraburke.org.uk – both of which are now fan sites. Whilst traffic is huge, the record company is clearly wise to this and now buy their own domain names at the usual rate. Would I do it again next year – no.
Simon – tens of thousands and counting! Madness.
Craig – yes I would do it again, it has worked well. Not sure I could ever hope to create my own “event” that would be anywhere near as big as the X-Factor though.
Yeah matching the X Factor would be impossible, it’s great to hear you got so much traffic of this, hope they convert to something, like you said a play cookie can be worth a lot, especially at Christmas!
There is an interesting concept behind this though, you can essentially create “borrowed” link bait that will get traffic and inbound links despite the fact you didn’t create the thing your targeting, hmmm room for other angles such as controversy targeting etc here too…
OK I was thinking the other night about the George Bush thing and was considering putting up a YouTube video however it was late and I was about to suffer a migraine. Sometimes things in life are worth letting pass and just treating as a “learning experience”. Well done Keiron.
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I notice this post is now the one ranking in Google for “alexandra burke download”
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Great post Kieron
i have done something similar after watching Watchdog, didnt really make any money but i was getting traffic within 10 mins of posting the article
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Quick follow-up to this. Word of caution to those jumping on the X Factor bandwagon. It is almost a year since starting the Alexandra Burke site and the first album is due for release in October 2009. Like Kieron said, traffic is definitely generated and I’m sure a few quid has been made with AdSense but no real money.. Here’s to the album being a huge hit as I’m currently No 1 in G for that phrase .. until Kieron steals it from me now,
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I was just wondering why you linked to Play, rather than another merchant that pays more? Play pay a tiny commission, whereas Amazon would pay you a lot more and is one that converts very well.
I suppose part of your reason was to drop a cookie to gain secondary sales in the weeks ahead, and Amazon only pays you for sales that session. So maybe that’s why?