2nd Journey: Road to Authority Site

[Holzr]

Hey everyone.

Some of you may know me back from last year when I started my Amazon Affiliate outsource journey. A lot has happened in a year and I have learnt soooooo much.

Some of the key points I've learnt are:

• Don't spread yourself to thin
• Keep focused
• Persevere
• Failure is key to success

I genuinely believe these 4 points are the difference between those who make it in life and those who fail.

So what's this journey about?

A few months ago now I picked up a part time job with an on Demand Economy business (I won't be saying what in order to keep my niche a secret) which is popular among students and those who need flexible hours.

A few weeks a go someone approached me and started asking me about the job and advice etc. I sent him a text message with my referal code in.

The commission I receive is anywhere between £100-250 after they complete a milestone (easily done in 1/2 days) and the person you refer receives £50.

This got my brain thinking....

If I could sign up 1/2 people a week then I could make just as much as I do now working part time....

My Internet Marketing brain started thinking away....

One of the skills I've learnt heavily over the last year is keyword research so I decided to put this to good use and dive into keyword research surrounding my niche such as x referral code etc. Since I'm in the UK and I'm not sure if the referral code is valid in other countries (I need to ask support) I limited search volume to UK.

Let's just say I was very surprised and smiling all over (which led to a very late night whilst I continued to research). Why was I happy? 2 reasons:

1. Decent search volume for sign up / wanting job / job information type keywords
2. Low competition

When I say low competition I mean pretty much 0. I have 1 main competitor (more on that in just a minute) and the other sites ranking are a load of job review sites etc. where people are posting there codes.

Now back to my competitor....

WHOIS data says the domain was registered back in September. Here is a Semrush screenshot of traffic...


Traffic is growing every day. I decided to take a look at the backlink profile....

I nearly had a heart attack. The owner is building links like it's 2000. I mean pure spam, not related probably auto generated etc. The links are disgusting. I mean wow are they spammy as heck/high OBL you name it. Yet rankings are climbing and so is traffic.

So I decided to check the website next to look at his design/structure and on-page. WOW! On-page SEO is terrible (he's got internal links and that's about the most positive thing I can comment on) no silo structure or categories etc. Content is months old now and barley any content with no new content. Content length is also short.

It's game on!

That short analysis was enough to convince me to go for it. I know several people in the US who have referral type sites for on demand economy jobs and are earning 5 figures a month.

Monetisation Strategy

• Referral Sign Up (probably be the bulk of my income)
• Affiliate Commission (Amazon and other partners). I'll likely be writing product reviews, product recommendations (top 5 things every x x should own etc.) and the standard best/top post like best x etc.

Content Strategy

To start with I'll be focusing on building content around the job. Everything from applying to doing the job, getting paid and advice etc. From my keyword research I know this will keep me busy for the next few months for sure.

After that is covered I'll then progress to informative, link generating (infographics, visual, list etc.) content and affiliate content.

SEO/Link-Building Strategy

I'm on a relatively tight budget so to begin with I won't be focusing on link building all that much, content is my number 1 priority the first couple of months. Once I have finished all the job related content I'll move onto link building. I plan on going white/grey hat to begin with and possibly use PBN's if need be for the juicy keywords. Other than that I'll focus on social shares, Quora, Reddit, guest posts/outreach to build links.

PPC/Landing Page Strategy for referrals

I aim to get a lot of traffic for my referral side of the site through Facebook PPC ads. Currently the company operates in over 100 cities I believe so massive potential audience out there. My target audiences will likely be the 18-22 year old university students who need extra cash etc. I'll do a lot of split testing etc and likely run ads in all the cities I can when I scale up. The idea is to funnel this traffic to some sort of ebook (?) which would be something like how to apply for x job and get a £50 sign up bonus. The referral link would be in the ebook (I have set up a redirect on the domain name I bought which is just domainname.com/(x) to make it easier to share offline etc and without the need of a complex referral code. This is the strategy I believe will receive the biggest income generating method. I intend to allocated perhaps £100 or so after the job content is complete to PPC to test out different ad styles etc. and see how everything converts. I hope I can keep costs of each acquired referral low enough to make a nice ROI.

What I've done so far

• Purchased domain
• Installed Wordpress (I'm using Generate Press)
• Installed Plugins
• Set Up category pages
• Basic site customisation

Expenses so far

Theme and hosting costs I'm not including as I already had them

• Plugin (£15)
• Domain (~£7)

P&L

Revenue: £0
Expenses: £22

Total Return: £-22

End of 2018 Goals

• £400-1000 a month in referral revenue (this is based on 1 sign up a week and varying commission)
• £100 a month through affiliate income (I've set this low because it's not my main priority to begin with and likely won't start affiliate marketing for a few months and budget will be low for SEO/Links)

Ideally I'd like to be earning £1000 per month by the end of the year is my goal. £600 a month would be my minimum goal (this is about my costs of expenses as a student).

I'll likely update the thread every 2 weeks with an end of the month summary and I'll be here to comment etc in between then. Any advice would be much appreciated

 

[LuckyCharm007]

Nice little passive income if you can rank this baby. Good luck @Holzr

 

[KHR]

Best of Luck @Holzr

I am following, I am also starting a new authority site.

Hope your success.

Cheers

 

[Deleted member 969102]

Sounds like it will be incredibly easy to rank, nice work!

What sort of budget do you have? This seems like it could be done with a low $xxx/mo spend, but it would be interesting to see what higher search (& undoubtedly competition) kws you could go after.

 

[Holzr]

Sounds like it will be incredibly easy to rank, nice work!

What sort of budget do you have? This seems like it could be done with a low $xxx/mo spend, but it would be interesting to see what higher search (& undoubtedly competition) kws you could go after.

At the moment my budget is on the low side but I plan on increasing it in the future. I'm stuck between link building and PPC. PPC will likely give me faster results and also I have a good 100+ cities to target so that means a lot of advertising I can run. I'm going to try and figure out a simple funnel to test out the PPC and landing pages etc. It's a student target audience so I need to make it as simple as possible and get them pumped/excited and ready to make easy money.

The difficult thing is dedicating keywords to blog post etc so I make sure I know what I want to rank for and what type of article I should write. I don't want to get crazy with link building straight away. I think I'll likely finish the job content first before link building and as such I think I'll funnel my first few months budget towards PPC and getting that refined. To be honest I'd be happy making less per acquisition through PPC to start with at the beginning as I just want to prove that the idea works promoting with PPC. Even making £50 minimum a sign up I'd be happy as I'd know I can refine the ad and audience/demographic. If I can make £100-200 from sign ups a month to start with then great because that means I can allocate that revenue for towards link building and a higher PPC budget. The thing is that some cities pay £100 and others pay £200 so the £200 a sign up cities will be the ones I focus on. The only thing is is that PPC and referral marketing is relatively new to me so I'm not sure what good conversion rates and cpc etc are so I can get a benchmark to go by.

 

[DJ.Bud]

Good luck, i read your last journey. It was great...

This one would be better i suppose

Following.

 

[ihmel]

Following

 

[Deleted member 969102]

The only thing is is that PPC and referral marketing is relatively new to me so I'm not sure what good conversion rates and cpc etc are so I can get a benchmark to go by.

You have ~£100 to spend to aquire a sign-up. Anything under that is a win, especially if you are just getting started. That’s a fairly big budget and I’m sure you’ll be successful. The biggest site I manage is in a verrrrrry corporate niche and we get £20-40 conversions, so with something relatively uncompetitive you should be under that.

The only thing is that I think students are quite smart and will subconsciously avoid ads, so I think content will be a better way to go, although make sure to write it accordingly!

Once again, best of luck.

 

[Sephrata]

I would double check the terms of the referral program. If it's the one I'm thinking of, they have a limit on the number of referrals.

Also, I would have a look at promoting it via Gumtree. It would be easy to set up some funnels to get referrals.

 

[Holzr]

You have ~£100 to spend to aquire a sign-up. Anything under that is a win, especially if you are just getting started. That’s a fairly big budget and I’m sure you’ll be successful. The biggest site I manage is in a verrrrrry corporate niche and we get £20-40 conversions, so with something relatively uncompetitive you should be under that.

The only thing is that I think students are quite smart and will subconsciously avoid ads, so I think content will be a better way to go, although make sure to write it accordingly!

Once again, best of luck.

Exactly this was exactly my thinking. As long as in the first batch of advertising I can keep cost of acquisition lower than ad costs then it's a win win. Especially if I target my campaign in a £200 a sign up city. Even if I acquire 1 member that's still a 100% ROI.

The other thing I have to bear in mind is that the bonus is subject to a milestone being reached (usually takes 1/2 days) and some sign up members might not possibly complete that.

Yeah targeting the student market does add a little trouble to the mix. I'm going to brainstorm some ideas and talk to some of my friends at university to get some feedback. I think a sign up guide (ebook) with no email opt in would be a decent idea and use that ebook landing page as the target URL. Make it as easy for students as possible (since they are lazy af and can smell a get rich quick scam a mile off). One of my targeting ideas was possibly at those between 18-22 who go to X university, do the activity / like pages related to the job and it's fan pages.

@Sephrata I just double checked the terms and there's no limit on number of referrals. Massive thanks. Gumtree was stuck in the back of my mind as another source. Same sort of strategy? Drive the traffic to a landing page with email opt in in exchange for an ebook on signing up and claiming the bonus? Send an email out weekly asking if they have signed up or need help?

 

[Sephrata]

Gumtree was stuck in the back of my mind as another source. Same sort of strategy? Drive the traffic to a landing page with email opt in in exchange for an ebook on signing up and claiming the bonus? Send an email out weekly asking if they have signed up or need help?

Yep, I think you could do something along these lines. Or you could try the approach of appearing to be a local recruiter, looking for people in a specific area etc.

 

[Holzr]

Yep, I think you could do something along these lines. Or you could try the approach of appearing to be a local recruiter, looking for people in a specific area etc.

Probably something I'll split test. I did a quick search for jobs in my city and got an ad for the job I want to promote. They are a "recruitment focused marketing agency" although the ad is a redirect to the sign up page (I googled there name). The actual advertisement on gumtree is quite short and doesn't name the company or a sign up bonus. Simply just says X needed and a few of the benefits. I know nothing about advertising on gumtree. I've got a commute to do tomorrow so I'll do some reading on the train on how their platform works. The recruiter angle does sound like a route I'd like to explore though.

Edit: I'm going to look into other classified advertising sites and job sites/student job sites also.

 

[ScribScribScrib]

Hey everyone.

Some of you may know me back from last year when I started my Amazon Affiliate outsource journey. A lot has happened in a year and I have learnt soooooo much.

Some of the key points I've learnt are:

• Don't spread yourself to thin
• Keep focused
• Persevere
• Failure is key to success

I genuinely believe these 4 points are the difference between those who make it in life and those who fail.

So what's this journey about?

A few months ago now I picked up a part time job with an on Demand Economy business (I won't be saying what in order to keep my niche a secret) which is popular among students and those who need flexible hours.

A few weeks a go someone approached me and started asking me about the job and advice etc. I sent him a text message with my referal code in.

The commission I receive is anywhere between £100-250 after they complete a milestone (easily done in 1/2 days) and the person you refer receives £50.

This got my brain thinking....

If I could sign up 1/2 people a week then I could make just as much as I do now working part time....

My Internet Marketing brain started thinking away....

One of the skills I've learnt heavily over the last year is keyword research so I decided to put this to good use and dive into keyword research surrounding my niche such as x referral code etc. Since I'm in the UK and I'm not sure if the referral code is valid in other countries (I need to ask support) I limited search volume to UK.

Let's just say I was very surprised and smiling all over (which led to a very late night whilst I continued to research). Why was I happy? 2 reasons:

1. Decent search volume for sign up / wanting job / job information type keywords
2. Low competition

When I say low competition I mean pretty much 0. I have 1 main competitor (more on that in just a minute) and the other sites ranking are a load of job review sites etc. where people are posting there codes.

Now back to my competitor....

WHOIS data says the domain was registered back in September. Here is a Semrush screenshot of traffic...

View attachment 100651
Traffic is growing every day. I decided to take a look at the backlink profile....

I nearly had a heart attack. The owner is building links like it's 2000. I mean pure spam, not related probably auto generated etc. The links are disgusting. I mean wow are they spammy as heck/high OBL you name it. Yet rankings are climbing and so is traffic.

So I decided to check the website next to look at his design/structure and on-page. WOW! On-page SEO is terrible (he's got internal links and that's about the most positive thing I can comment on) no silo structure or categories etc. Content is months old now and barley any content with no new content. Content length is also short.

It's game on!

That short analysis was enough to convince me to go for it. I know several people in the US who have referral type sites for on demand economy jobs and are earning 5 figures a month.

Monetisation Strategy

• Referral Sign Up (probably be the bulk of my income)
• Affiliate Commission (Amazon and other partners). I'll likely be writing product reviews, product recommendations (top 5 things every x x should own etc.) and the standard best/top post like best x etc.

Content Strategy

To start with I'll be focusing on building content around the job. Everything from applying to doing the job, getting paid and advice etc. From my keyword research I know this will keep me busy for the next few months for sure.

After that is covered I'll then progress to informative, link generating (infographics, visual, list etc.) content and affiliate content.

SEO/Link-Building Strategy

I'm on a relatively tight budget so to begin with I won't be focusing on link building all that much, content is my number 1 priority the first couple of months. Once I have finished all the job related content I'll move onto link building. I plan on going white/grey hat to begin with and possibly use PBN's if need be for the juicy keywords. Other than that I'll focus on social shares, Quora, Reddit, guest posts/outreach to build links.

PPC/Landing Page Strategy for referrals

I aim to get a lot of traffic for my referral side of the site through Facebook PPC ads. Currently the company operates in over 100 cities I believe so massive potential audience out there. My target audiences will likely be the 18-22 year old university students who need extra cash etc. I'll do a lot of split testing etc and likely run ads in all the cities I can when I scale up. The idea is to funnel this traffic to some sort of ebook (?) which would be something like how to apply for x job and get a £50 sign up bonus. The referral link would be in the ebook (I have set up a redirect on the domain name I bought which is just domainname.com/(x) to make it easier to share offline etc and without the need of a complex referral code. This is the strategy I believe will receive the biggest income generating method. I intend to allocated perhaps £100 or so after the job content is complete to PPC to test out different ad styles etc. and see how everything converts. I hope I can keep costs of each acquired referral low enough to make a nice ROI.

What I've done so far

• Purchased domain
• Installed Wordpress (I'm using Generate Press)
• Installed Plugins
• Set Up category pages
• Basic site customisation

Expenses so far

Theme and hosting costs I'm not including as I already had them

• Plugin (£15)
• Domain (~£7)

P&L

Revenue: £0
Expenses: £22

Total Return: £-22

End of 2018 Goals

• £400-1000 a month in referral revenue (this is based on 1 sign up a week and varying commission)
• £100 a month through affiliate income (I've set this low because it's not my main priority to begin with and likely won't start affiliate marketing for a few months and budget will be low for SEO/Links)

Ideally I'd like to be earning £1000 per month by the end of the year is my goal. £600 a month would be my minimum goal (this is about my costs of expenses as a student).

I'll likely update the thread every 2 weeks with an end of the month summary and I'll be here to comment etc in between then. Any advice would be much appreciated

hey man i remember you from the jr.vip lounge, you wished me good luck on my dream, gl to you too man, I would just suggest demoting the goal by at least 50-80% or you'll end up disappointed, just my opinion and experience

P.S beware of those ostentatious paper tiger websites, they're usually powered by things not seen by the eye

 

[Ozzyzig]

Yep, I think you could do something along these lines. Or you could try the approach of appearing to be a local recruiter, looking for people in a specific area etc.

Craigslist in the UK could work really well, also. Depending on the content (such as ebooks) I've heard that hotukdeals can also be a good way to get in sales.

 

[Sephrata]

Edit: I'm going to look into other classified advertising sites and job sites/student job sites also.

I'm pretty sure it would be worth trying this and you'll get quick results and it might help you optimise your authority site.

Craigslist in the UK could work really well, also. Depending on the content (such as ebooks) I've heard that hotukdeals can also be a good way to get in sales.

To be honest, I've not really tried CL in the UK. I know that Hotukdeals can generate a lot of traffic, if you can get around the moderation. I think a BH method would be to run a fake competition, although it might be hard to tie into this specific niche.

 

[Holzr]

I'm pretty sure it would be worth trying this and you'll get quick results and it might help you optimise your authority site.



To be honest, I've not really tried CL in the UK. I know that Hotukdeals can generate a lot of traffic, if you can get around the moderation. I think a BH method would be to run a fake competition, although it might be hard to tie into this specific niche.

The issue I have that's holding me back is the fact that there's people competing by posting as a "recruitment agency" for the same job and I may be competing with the actual company I'm referring also. On Gumtree the cheapest posting is £46.80 (Including VAT) and they run for 60 days. I may see if I can find a city that no one is competing in and go from there. I'd love to know how much this recruitment agency is making and they just send the user straight to the sign up page. I guess considering the referral rate is based dependent on location say I find a £200 city then I just need 1 sign up in 60 days to make a £150 profit. I'm going to brainstorm some ideas as I'd like to test out gumtree. If it works then great because I can then just scale up and have an advertisement in every city (101 in the UK currently). 1 Sign up a month x 60 or so at the £200 rate = £12,000... hmmmm not to bad haha.

Edit: From what I can see my competitor on Gumtree has posted the jobs in the last few days across loads of cities. The thing is is that they are a recruitment agency so they have the budget to run 100+ of these and I don't that's my only concern :/

 

[Holzr]

Update

Apologies all for going silent. Shortly after this journey started I started pursuing my main business idea and have been working on that solidly far the last month or so and has been taking up my time. As such I have neglected this project. It's one I'll likely put on hold until/if I get more time to focus on it.

 

[danko6]

Good luck buddy, follow your journey