Sexy Walrus: How to Earn 1,000,000+ Page Views with Your Title
Contrary to popular belief, the secret to a lot of page views on Associated Content isn’t in how interesting your article is, how much you know about the subject, or how hard you work at writing your articles. In fact, the number of page views you generate boils down to one thing: how “catchy” you can make your opening title.
1. Use Evocative Words: Words like “sex”, “money”, “girls”, “dating” and “death” are used in the titles for so many articles on the internet because they evoke a strong emotional response in readers, making it much more likely for people to click on, read, and remember the content of those articles. Take a lesson from this and be sure to use at least one evocative word in the title of every article that you write for Associated Content and other article sites.
2. Search Engine Optimize: If you want your titles to be found by Google, Yahoo, and Bing, make sure to make them as easy as possible to find. My rule is to use one word with a huge search volume (“sexy”), 2-4 words with high search volumes that are more related to your article (“page views”, “earn”, “title”) and at least one word completely unrelated to your article, just to make your title unique (“walrus”).
3. Confuse your reader: As strange as it sounds, titles that are at least a little confusing are more likely to generate lots of hits. In this case, pairing the terms “sexy” and “walrus” together make the readers of this article want to click, if only to see what on earth those two things have in common. It doesn’t even matter if you never mention the terms again in the article – you get paid for page views, not satisfied readers.
4. Make a fantastic claim: Can you really generate 1,000,000+ page views for your article? As Dr. Nick of The Simpsons once said if asked whether people can really lose weight eating whatever they want, “Sure, it’s a free country.” In other words, it could happen, but I have no idea whether it will happen. However, the fantastic claim I made was probably at least part of the reason you clicked on this article. Take the lesson and use similar tactics in your own articles.
5. Be Controversial: I didn’t follow this rule for my particular title for the article here, but, in general, this is great advice. A controversial title can generate mega page views, if nothing else from people who disagree with your article clicking to see how big of a moron you are! Remember, you don’t get paid if people think that you’re smart; you get paid if they click onto your article.
