What if I told you that there are freelance writing niches that are more profitable than others, would you believe me? Perhaps, you would… But the truth is that there are more profitable freelance writing niches than you can imagine–meaning that there are many better paying writing gigs in the freelance marketplace.

A couple of years ago I put together a survey to figure out how marketers were using visual content as part of their strategies. There was some really interesting data we collected, so we decided to update that survey to see what changed over the past couple of years in how marketers are using visuals, and what types of results they are getting. Not only did we learn how marketers were using visual content, but we were able to see which types of visual formats were generating the best results, and how those results impacted where they were allotting their marketing budgets. Check out the results in this infographic/study, and leave a comment to tell us how you are using visual content and what types of results you’ve seen.

In August 2015, Nat was hired to lead marketing and content for Sumo. At the time, their blog was getting ~5,000 visitors a month, mostly from a couple posts being sent to the email list. Over the next 8 months, he grew it to over 170,000 monthly visitors. Since then, he's refined the core of the strategy used there, and through Growth Machine, we've been helping other companies implement similar systems. Some have even beaten that growth rate, growing by tens of thousands of monthly visitors in just a few months. This article is a deep look under the hood of our content machine. It explains the process and system we use to help these sites see triple-digit growth in months so that you can implement it on your own site. We walk you through the core principles of an effective content marketing strategy and help you identify and avoid the largest pitfalls that waste your time and resources. It's meant to be highly actionable, so here's how we recommend you use the guide: 1. Read through it once to get a general idea of the strategy. 2. Re-read the “Why You’ll Fail” section, and try to identify which errors you’re making. 3. Go back through the guide and implement each piece one at a time. It's a lot of information, but it's not complicated. Take it step-by-step, implement it well, and watch those traffic numbers grow each month.