How 1 Video Made Us $1,000,000
I want to show you ONE piece of content that’s worth at least $25,000.
Ready? Here it is:
This case study got me to spend $25,000
This single case study by Conversion Rate Experts convinced me to pay over $25,000 for their consulting services.
Their case study was 10x more sophisticated than anything out there in the market. All my friends were telling me, “Ramit, you have to read this.” The moment I did, I knew I had to work with these guys (I did, and they were great).
How do you create great content that’s SO good, people rave about it, share it, and even spend thousands of dollars with you because of it? (Click to Tweet)
I’m not talking about the Top 10 listicles that “trend” on Facebook. Sure, it gets shared 5,000 times… but brings in low-quality traffic (like this).
I’m talking about people who’ll devour your content… and then take action.
Most of us have only been taught one way of creating content for our business. I call this the “Volume Game”:
- We come up with 100 content ideas, like blog posts, podcasts, or videos.
- We pick one, create it, and publish it.
- We promote it by emailing our list and sharing it on social media.
- A week passes, we move on, and create another piece of content.
The Volume Game is a grind. It’s thankless. You write blog post after blog post, and you never quite know if it’s working.
But compare this to when you have a HIT. You know a hit — think about a hit song or a hit movie. Everyone just knows it’s amazing.
Those amazing hits can totally transform your business.
In fact, it only takes one piece of amazing material to transform your business. Just one!
This is what happened in our business:
IWT traffic ranking
This means that our top-ranked post in 2016 (the “#1” post) had over a million page views.
Our #2 ranked post? Less than 300,000!
This means that your top piece of content — your “hit” — will get more disproportionate traffic than any other piece. In fact, our top-ranked post got more traffic than the next 5 most popular pieces — combined! This is called Zipf’s Law.
And that means it’s worth spending the time to create a hit. Because when you do, your business can take off overnight.
This is a striking idea. It completely changes the way you think about growing your business. It means that it’s worth “unicorn hunting,” or specifically engineering hits so you can grow your business fast.
To start, I want to show you a few examples of high-quality content that helped launch businesses to the next level. I’m showing you these so you get a sense of what “great” can be.
Then I’ll show you how to do it in your business.
Tim Ferriss: From Geek to Freak
Nerd Fitness: Meet Staci: Your New Powerlifting Super Hero
Casey Neistat: Bike Lanes
As you see, great hits can be case studies, long articles, or even fun videos. The key is they are read, shared, and engaged with, and ultimately they grow a business fast.
OK, so here’s what we’re going to do. I want to reverse-engineer one of our most famous pieces of content, and then I want to show you what we did to make it reach even more people.
Everyone is capable of writing incredible content. Yes, even if you’re not a good writer! I’ll walk you through examples and even show you WHY these pieces get read, liked, and shared.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a professional designer or video editor or copywriter. You can do this yourself. Remember that people like Tim Ferriss, Steve Kamb, and Casey Neistat all started out with the same number of followers: Zero.
OK, now…onto creating your next massive hit.
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Step 1: Create One Piece of Irresistible Content
Here’s a piece of irresistible content we created years ago called “The Briefcase Technique”:
“That’s it, Ramit? That’s your most talked about piece of content, a 2-minute video of you talking to the camera?”
Yes! That’s it — and that quickly became one of our most talked-about pieces, ever. On the surface, it’s not sexy. We don’t promise fast results or thousands of dollars. In fact, we tell you, “to do this right, you need to do hours of research!”
But there are 3 important details that make this piece of content irresistible:
1. We created intrigue through the name. Master copywriters know it’s not enough to convey the benefits of a technique — they need to also pique curiosity.
That’s precisely what we did with our name: The Briefcase Technique. Most readers won’t know what that means, but it sounds interesting, and most people are willing to click to find out more.
What would happen if we changed the name from The Briefcase Technique to something more direct, like The Pitch Closing Technique for Freelancers?
You can pretty much feel the intrigue evaporate from the room. Unless you’re specifically 1.) a freelancer and 2.) having problems closing pitches, you’ll think, “Nah, that’s not for me” and never click.
2. Mass-market appeal. We developed The Briefcase Technique specifically for freelancers. But we highlighted that it could be used in ANY negotiation, whether they’re interviewing for a full-time job, negotiating for a higher salary, or pitching a startup.
In other words, we made it applicable to the mass market — and made sure to tell them.
3. Hyper specific. We believe if you’re going to give away a technique, REALLY give it away. In this 2-minute video, readers learn everything they need to know to execute The Briefcase Technique at their next negotiation, down to the exact words to say… and HOW to say them.
Yeah, I know, we’re so great for giving this all away for free… But this is just the best way to get read and shared.
Which one are you more likely to share with your friends who need help with a negotiation: The Briefcase Technique? Or a top 10 list where #3 is “dress professionally” and #5 is “practice your handshake”?
Step 2: Share it With the World
Once we created that piece of irresistible content, the rest was easy… All we had to do was email our list, Tweet it a few times, and suddenly high-quality customers with bundles of cash flooded our website, begging to sign up for our list, right?
Guys, creating content is only half the job. If we spent months getting the content just right, that means we need to spend AT LEAST the same amount of time promoting it everywhere. (Click to Tweet)
Of course we emailed our list and shared it on social media. But we didn’t just do it multiple times. We kept this up, for YEARS. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
For us, that meant talking about it in multiple interviews:
Getting it published in multiple, high-traffic publications:
The Briefcase Technique on Lifehacker
We even cut a second, upgraded version of The Briefcase Technique video, so we could re-market the content:
Remember, creating something great is only half the work. You have to tell the world about it. Over and over and over again.
Want to build a business that enables you to live YOUR Rich Life? Get my FREE guide on finding your first profitable idea.
Case Study: Museum Hack
Here’s another example of turning an idea into something amazing the world NEEDS to hear about… even if you don’t have the reach of a company like IWT.
My friend, Nick Gray, is the CEO of Museum Hack. His company leads renegade museum tours around the world. Nick made an off-hand remark that immediately fascinated me (in fact, I shared this on the Tim Ferriss podcast — 1:26:00).
Nick told me about how he goes to a museum himself: “If I go to a museum, I’m spending 90 minutes max. And the first 30 minutes are at the cafe, planning where I go.”
This completely blew up something I believed my whole life. The way I was raised, we’d go to a museum once every 5 years. We’d save up our money, and we’d spend 7 hours going to EVERY level… Because we knew we’d never go back!
What Nick was saying:
- Have the abundance to know you can go back
- Don’t treat the museum as “once and done”
- There’s power in leaving at the peak of an experience
Nick’s advice was so counterintuitive, I immediately told him he needed to do something with it. He’s great on camera, so he created an amazing video around the idea:
Nick Gray: How to visit a museum
What makes this an irresistible piece of content?
An intriguing hook. How could a museum expert only spend 90 minutes at a museum? And why would they spend the first 30 minutes at the cafe? Even if you hate museums, the idea keeps you hooked.
Mass-market appeal. Most people have been to a museum at least once — and many are bored after the first 10 minutes. Even if you only go to a museum once a year, you’d watch to find out how you can make it fun.
Hyper specific. Nick goes into extraordinary detail to show us his process: From the exact food he eats in the cafe, to mapping out his museum route, and even his pace when he speed walks the museum.
After Nick showed me the video, I asked him what he planned on doing with it.
“Put it on Facebook and Youtube,” he said.
No, no, no!
Nick spent 15, maybe 20 hours on that video. Now the real works starts.
Based on what we recommended above, how would you approach it?
Our suggestions:
- Sharing is only the first step. He should continue to push the video on social media over and over… for years!
- Send 10 emails a week. Nick has relationships with museums all over the world. His job is to leverage those relationships, and move heaven and earth to get his video in front of their audience.
- Promote at every interview. This idea needs to be a talking point on every interview Nick gives — and he should always point back to the video.
This promotion is still a work in process. But if Nick spends the time and works with this one piece for a year, it has the potential to bring in more to his business than most of his other content — combined.
Anyone Can Create Amazing Content
You can completely transform your business with one piece of content. (Click to Tweet)
It can double or triple your traffic. Or your email subscribers.
The amount of revenue it can produce can be monumental.
We conservatively estimate the briefcase alone generated over $1,000,000 for I Will Teach — from a 2 minute video!
If you’re interested in creating remarkable content that people love to read, engage with, and share with others, we can show you how. Click here learn more about our program, Call to Action.
You’ll learn the systems and techniques that helped business owners double their profits in one year.
Want to build a business that enables you to live YOUR Rich Life? Get my FREE guide on finding your first profitable idea.
