Toral
Newbie
- Mar 16, 2017
- 37
- 13
I've been lurking here for a while so it's probably high time I created a journey thread.
A little background
I started my affiliate site back on 1st January this year. I spent about a month getting everything set up and getting the site together and a first batch of content. By February I had a couple of list articles up and an interesting interview with an industry leader in my niche.
This made for a pretty decent start and earned a fair few links back to the interview. However at this stage I didn't really have much of a clue what I was doing. I knew of a couple of other sites in the same niche who were ranking in the top positions with almost no backlinks at all so as a start I decided to target these keywords.
So I wrote a few articles and began trying to build backlinks. At first I started entirely White Hat. I had a decent amount of success with this. Within a month I was ranking between positions 20-50 for some of my articles with search volumes up to 4000-ish a month.
I ended up hitting a wall with White Hat and started to dabble in some greyer areas. All that I've done so far is purchase some Web 2.0 packages, social signals and a very small number of reddit upvotes.
But this seems to have really done the trick and as of a few days ago my rankings are starting to look a lot betterr so I'm hoping this will stick.
As of right now I have around 30k words on my site. But since I started I have done an awful lot of reading on BHW, Reddit, Backlinkio etc. and I now have a much better understanding of Keyword Research and have a much better idea of the things I should be looking for. As such I have a content plan that takes me pretty much to the end of the year. I'll write more about how I plan to achieve this in the plan section below.
Stats
Disclaimer: The massive spikes in Amazon clicks in the last few days are due to a couple of reddit posts on a subreddit related to my niche that really took off. The clicks were from people interested but did not intend to buy which is why I have not had many sales (though I'm still getting a decent number of daily clicks a few days later). It did at least prove my CTA buttons are working well. However the reddit posts did give some of my keywords the kick they needed to get onto the front page of Google so hopefully sales will start to go up.
The Plan
Going forward I have content planned out pretty much till the end of the year. Not all of it is money content and much of it is reviews that I can link to from my list posts.
I've been working full time for the past 3 years and I end up travelling a lot for work which doesn't leave me much time to write unfortunately. However all my friends went to university and have a completely free summer. They are struggling to find jobs, have a strong interest in the site niche and are happy to work if I pay them.
As they know nothing about affiliate marketing or SEO I'll still have to check everything through but they've all agreed to work for £5 / 1000 words, which for native English speakers who I know are excellent writers is a pretty good deal.
In terms of SEO I want to start writing some slightly shorter posts (the articles for my site are 3000-5000 words) to be used for guest posting. I've complied a list of sites in my niche and loosely related that accept guest posts. However this will be a long term goal.
I will also continue with normal link building and for some of my tougher Keywords I've been looking at PBN Services by @Finn and @Leith but I'll see how things go.
The Aim
I'm doing this more out of interest than out of necessity or to make piles and piles of money. I'm not going to say no to an additional income source but I'm happy at my day job as a software engineer and I am doing this more out of sheer curiosity.
But as a personal goal I'd like to get a site up to a level where it is earning a consistent amount each month from mostly organic traffic
Next Time
In my next update I want to touch a little bit on some of the successes I have had getting backlinks and traffic using Kickstarter. I might also touch on the social accounts associated with my site or save that for a future update.
Summary
I appreciate this was quite long but it will help me keep track of my progress as well as help others follow along. I don't have as much time to dedicate to my site as some other people here but I'm still committed to working on my site to see what comes of it.
I'd be happy to answer any questions or take feedback.
Hope you all enjoyed reading and have a pleasant day.
A little background
I started my affiliate site back on 1st January this year. I spent about a month getting everything set up and getting the site together and a first batch of content. By February I had a couple of list articles up and an interesting interview with an industry leader in my niche.
This made for a pretty decent start and earned a fair few links back to the interview. However at this stage I didn't really have much of a clue what I was doing. I knew of a couple of other sites in the same niche who were ranking in the top positions with almost no backlinks at all so as a start I decided to target these keywords.
So I wrote a few articles and began trying to build backlinks. At first I started entirely White Hat. I had a decent amount of success with this. Within a month I was ranking between positions 20-50 for some of my articles with search volumes up to 4000-ish a month.
I ended up hitting a wall with White Hat and started to dabble in some greyer areas. All that I've done so far is purchase some Web 2.0 packages, social signals and a very small number of reddit upvotes.
But this seems to have really done the trick and as of a few days ago my rankings are starting to look a lot betterr so I'm hoping this will stick.
As of right now I have around 30k words on my site. But since I started I have done an awful lot of reading on BHW, Reddit, Backlinkio etc. and I now have a much better understanding of Keyword Research and have a much better idea of the things I should be looking for. As such I have a content plan that takes me pretty much to the end of the year. I'll write more about how I plan to achieve this in the plan section below.
Stats
Disclaimer: The massive spikes in Amazon clicks in the last few days are due to a couple of reddit posts on a subreddit related to my niche that really took off. The clicks were from people interested but did not intend to buy which is why I have not had many sales (though I'm still getting a decent number of daily clicks a few days later). It did at least prove my CTA buttons are working well. However the reddit posts did give some of my keywords the kick they needed to get onto the front page of Google so hopefully sales will start to go up.
The Plan
Going forward I have content planned out pretty much till the end of the year. Not all of it is money content and much of it is reviews that I can link to from my list posts.
I've been working full time for the past 3 years and I end up travelling a lot for work which doesn't leave me much time to write unfortunately. However all my friends went to university and have a completely free summer. They are struggling to find jobs, have a strong interest in the site niche and are happy to work if I pay them.
As they know nothing about affiliate marketing or SEO I'll still have to check everything through but they've all agreed to work for £5 / 1000 words, which for native English speakers who I know are excellent writers is a pretty good deal.
In terms of SEO I want to start writing some slightly shorter posts (the articles for my site are 3000-5000 words) to be used for guest posting. I've complied a list of sites in my niche and loosely related that accept guest posts. However this will be a long term goal.
I will also continue with normal link building and for some of my tougher Keywords I've been looking at PBN Services by @Finn and @Leith but I'll see how things go.
The Aim
I'm doing this more out of interest than out of necessity or to make piles and piles of money. I'm not going to say no to an additional income source but I'm happy at my day job as a software engineer and I am doing this more out of sheer curiosity.
But as a personal goal I'd like to get a site up to a level where it is earning a consistent amount each month from mostly organic traffic
Next Time
In my next update I want to touch a little bit on some of the successes I have had getting backlinks and traffic using Kickstarter. I might also touch on the social accounts associated with my site or save that for a future update.
Summary
I appreciate this was quite long but it will help me keep track of my progress as well as help others follow along. I don't have as much time to dedicate to my site as some other people here but I'm still committed to working on my site to see what comes of it.
I'd be happy to answer any questions or take feedback.
Hope you all enjoyed reading and have a pleasant day.
