How A New Blog Brought In $2,000 in Revenue—and Attracted 800 Readers—In A Single Day (case study)
Last Updated February 6th, 2012

The brutal truth of blogging is this:

It’s hard to get readers.

And it’s even harder when you follow some of the fluff marketing advice you see these “experts” put out.

But the fact remains that you need readers—more readers equals more business.

That’s why I want to show you how one entrepreneur used my drafting technique to flood her business with hundreds of new readers in just one day.

But First, What’s the Drafting?

I filmed a video about it last month, and you can see that here: how to land major press with no connections.

It’s a short video. So, go watch it right now, and I’ll wait :-).

Now that you’ve watched that, let’s talk about this one blogger who used this method to go from 20 hits a day… to more than 800 hits in a day.

And then, how those 800 hits helped her generate $2,000 in revenue.

Here’s How Katrina Padron Used The Drafting Technique To Score Blog Traffic

Let me break this down:

Drafting is about hopping into your competitor’s slipstream. If they get featured somewhere, you try to get featured there too.

Well, Katrina Padron saw that one of her competitors was featured on a blog, a large blog, that was capable of sending a whole lot of traffic.

Most people would have wondered “aww, I wish I could get featured there too…”

And then they would have left the site never to return.

Fail. People who are serious about increasing their blog traffic would NEVER do that.

So what did Katrina do?

She used what I call the Drafting technique, took her success into her own hands, and BAM!

She got featured, and her new blog went from getting 20 hits in a day… to over 800 hits. Here’s the proof:

Not bad 🙂

But what’s amazing is this:

That burst in traffic attracted 171 subscribers, and $2,000 in revenue from two new client acquisitions.

And thats’ not all!

It Gets Better…

…Instead of resting on her laurels, she then leveraged her success to land a major interview on a HUGE blog.

How?

She saw one of her competitors get featured for explaining how they saw a massive traffic increase with a unique strategy.

Well, since she did just that… saw a massive traffic spike from my technique… she decided to leverage that success to land an interview.

And she got it! She pitched herself as a potential interviewee, and bam! Now she’s got that too.

Now How Can You Land Media Coverage Too?

By now you know why I share this advice with you.

When I release my premium training course, you won’t wonder “does it work?” Instead, you’ll think “is this right for me?”

(If you run a blog, then it is right for you :-D).

But that aside, this technique has worked for years, and I’ve personally used to build my email list and my business.

(And I still use it today!)

But if you’re stuck…

…Even after watching the video, then here are step-by-step directions on how to use the drafting technique to land major press coverage.

One note: I can’t guarantee that you’ll see the same results. That would be irresponsible of me. So, just remember, your results are entirely dependent on how you execute this simple 3-step formula.

Step 1: Discover the Perfect People and Businesses to Draft

Before you begin drafting, you’ve got to take inventory on who you’d like to draft. There are two types of people (or businesses) that I’d target:

1. Direct competitors – Find people who offer competing products, services, or yes, even content.

These people are perfect to draft because you offer almost the same thing. If they’re getting coverage, you can too.

2. Indirect competitors – These are companies or people who are in the same vertical as you, but offer something slightly different. For example, they might offer invoicing software for designers whereas you offer invoicing software for freelancer writers.

These people are GREAT to draft because you’ve got a unique angle to approach reporters with, right off the bat.

To be safe, I’d build a list of 10-20 people.

Once you have that, keep an eye on where they’re getting featured. With Google’s new tools for searching by date (within 1 week), it should be easy to check up on each of them.

Then, when you see an opportunity, here’s what you do next:

Step 2: What Incentive Can You Provide Reporters With to Cover Your Company?

When you’re looking to get featured on a website, you’ve got to realize one thing:

It’s not about you or your company. It’s about providing the reporter with an incentive to cover your company.

Because remember, reporters are people, and as Levitt and Dubner wrote in Super Freakonomics, “People are people, and they respond to incentives. They can nearly always be manipulated—for good or ill—if only you find the right lever.”

Now I’m not telling you to bribe people. That doesn’t work. But there are other incentives that fire a reporter up. Let’s go through that.

First, what does a reporter do?

They write stories, and their stories cover unique ideas, controversy, and/or new developments to an existing story.

Now if you can make their job easier… and provide them with a story… you’re golden. You made the reporter’s work life easier, and who doesn’t want that? 🙂

Yes, I may have over simplified it, but you get the idea.

Keeping that in mind, when you want to draft behind one of your competitors (both direct and indirect), you’ve got to position your company in a way that creates a story for the reporter.

To do that, analyze the story about your competitor. Was there any holes? Concerns? Or was there room for additional commentary?

If so, you’ll want to pitch the story idea, and position your article, product, or service as the focal point of that story. Or you can focus on crafting contagious content.

Now what happens when you have your story idea? Proceed…

Step 3: How to Pitch Your Story to Reporters and Bloggers

This is the final step, but as a fair warning, if you skimped on the prep work and story creation in Step 2, this step is pointless.

That aside, let’s do this.

Most people pitch reporters and bloggers ALL WRONG.

I know you know what I’m talking about too…

If you run a blog, chances are you’ve seen a PR rep send you an email that talks about some new press release and asks you to link them because “they think you’ll be interested.”

Are you ever interested?

Nope :-).

So what’s the right way to pitch a reporter or blogger?

The trick is to NEVER send a long email with a long pitch. People are busy, and they ignore long emails from people they don’t know.

Instead, you want to write an email that people can’t resist. YOu want to write an email that BECKONS a response.

What’s an email like that look like?

Here:

Hey Name,

I saw you wrote about [insert topic]. Well, I’ve got some [insert unique story angle] that answers the concerns you raised in your original article. Here’s the article:

[insert link to article here].

You’re busy but you’ll find this as the perfect answer to [insert the concern they raised].

– Derek

And that’s it.

That template works great for a three reasons:

1. You’re drafting behind one of their topics, as shown with the first sentence.
2. It also works because you’re promisnig a unique angle, which all reporters and bloggers want.
3. This email works because it opens an information gap.

Note: I don’t recommend you copy this email word for word. Also note how I don’t ask for a link. That’s key. Asking for a link alerts the BS meters :-D.

Getting Press Coverage Is That Easy, But…

…You have to take action on this advice.

When I first shared this tactic a month ago, you had the opportunity to implement it.

Did you?

Katrina did, and she reaped the rewards.

(My content contains no fluff. Just concrete marketing advice)

But how about you?

What’s holding you back?

Remember this:

In the end, building a blog that generates business is possible… even in an overcrowded marketplace.

But you’ve got to take action.

Now leave a comment and tell me how you plan on leveraging the drafting technique 🙂