- Aug 26, 2018
- 298
- 169
I joined this forum last year after lurking off and on for a couple of years. I had a steady 80 hour per week job & was hating it pretty bad. So I was looking for a way out and tried many things over the course of 5 years and lost my proverbial ass in all of them. So about $50k invested and nothing to show for it. Then I decided to really get honest about it all and learn to do this "IM thing" and learn all the nuts and bolts myself to know what to expect in others and what quality really is in this industry. Not that I am top-notch yet at all with any of it, (or know all the parts yet either) but now I know at least enough to tell when bullshit is bullshit.
So I have been learning a lot from threads on BHW which I will elaborate on in further replies in this thread.
For now, I just want to get this thread started as I have been busy working on the website and dealing with a family tragedy as well, I haven't had a lot of time to get this started and there is so much to share.
So for this journey, I am starting an Amazon Affiliate Site from the ground up. Brand spanking new domain, brand new website, brand new (my own) content. Goal $250 a week from this site.
I took a 30-day course on how to make an Amazon site the proper way. (I had no idea how to set it up, do basic SEO, write content, etc.)
I did basic research for this niche. Average Item $150.
Basic keyword research.
Purchased keyword domain.
Installed WP and theme. from: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/m...premium-wp-themes-and-plugins-storage.995802/
Installed some basic plugins all free versions - directly through the WP front end.
Set a plan for writing original reviews.
Started writing reviews with help from this thread:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/g...r-amazon-buying-guides-the-right-way.1098662/
Started writing content every day until I had 20 product reviews to post. March 13th, 2019
I posted the reviews as I created them which I think in retrospect was a big mistake.
I think the next project, I will create all the initial content first BEFORE I publish anything.
Then wrote 3 pieces of content like a buyers guide and 2 small FAQ type guides.
This took about 3 weeks, I am slow and being new had to research, research, research everything.
NOTE TO THOSE FOLLOWING THIS JOURNEY AND THINKING OF DOING IT TOO:
PICK A NICHE YOU LOVE - or it will wind up being a bunch of work you don't want to do and you will burn out. I picked this niche because I liked the idea of it but didn't know anything about it. So, I did a bit of burnout BEFORE I decided that I AM going to make this work. As a result, I may wind up selling this site down the road because although I am proud of the progress I'm making - I DON'T LOVE the niche.
I got it all posted with images and such the next week. Submitted to Google, BING, and Yahoo (combined). So now it's April 20th or so.
I was burnt out, so I let the site sit for the next 2 months and get some views, etc. Watch it on Google console, Google Analytics, Bing Webmaster Tools and Statcounter to see how it would perform if at all.
It initially indexed first on BING and showed that it was picking up for about 20 keywords.
Google indexing was painfully slow - about 2 weeks before I registered any numbers in console although it was indexed in search engines fairly quickly. Google only picked up on keywords in my console about 3 weeks after submission and very few and in the 60 - 135 range.
AMAZON:
I got about 3 product sales in March although they were not the products on my site.
Earnings: $3
April was better. 7 sales and 2 were reviewed products.
Earnings: $24
May. 8 sales one of which was a reviewed product.
Earnings: $16
June. 6 sales 3 of which were reviewed products.
Earnings: $16
Amazon changed their affiliate rates in June as well, cutting commission in half - so that sucks too. Now I'm going to have to make a lot more sales to reach my goal of $250.00 a week from this site.
So at that point I realized I had a decision to make - whether to just grow the site up to about 30 reviews and possibly some more other articles (say 7 to make an even 10) and try to double the income to about $30 a month and dump it on FLIPPA or to go full tilt with it and turn it into an authority site. Either way, I started finding other affiliate programs to promote as well.
I ordered some content in June, as I felt my content was not strong enough on its own - now to be clear I know the thread is for a rewrite service however he does create brand new original reviews and other content if you ask - that's what I did. Great service too from: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/1...view-copy-today.1018469/page-29#post-12281881
I decided to turn this MOFO out and go for authority site.
Performed site checks on-site to see where it sits in regards to speed and SEO.
Using tools: https://gtmetrix.com/
http://webpagetest.org
Found my site loaded in nearly 12 seconds on both sites. Had tons of caching issues and image issues.
Spent 1 week figuring out how to fix those, install the right plugins, changed my hosting account to a new host with LiteSpeed servers and Cloudflare. It's a bit of a process for a newbie.
Got my image sizes down and compressed.
NOTE: Even if you have a plugin like SMUSH or something similar - DON'T be lulled into thinking your images are optimized for speed because likely they are not.
Site speed improved to under 3 seconds and got A's in all the important places.
Then, ran my site through Neil Patels App: https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/ They recently added an SEO audit on their site. So you just plug in your domain and after it runs the overview you can go down the page and run an SEO site audit.
My site came back with a score of 83 out of 100 and gave me many things I could do to improve that number.
I spent another week fixing issue after issue to work on that score. It is slowly coming up. I am continuing to work on those issues about once a week for a couple of hours as a family issue has come up that takes precedence at the moment.
So when I decided to get real about this site and making it work for me, this is what happened:
June 20th - 23rd - more content added to the site, plus some errors fixed in the prior weeks as stated above.
June 23 - Google rank moved from 63 up to 57 picked up for about 200 keywords CTR 2% last 3 months
July 7 - From 57 - 55.7 about 220 keywords
July 12 - From 57 - 55.3 about 240 keywords
July 15 - From 55.3 - 54.3 about 280 keywords
July 21 - From 54.3 - 51.7 about 310 keywords CTR 3.2% last 3 months Total Impressions 4.73K last 3 months
July 21 - Average position 41.2 last 7 days with CTR average 4.9% Impressions 862
BACKLINKS - 10 PICKED UP NATURALLY
Traffic has picked up over double what it was a month ago and clicks/sales have increased as well.
Finally getting more traffic from Google Search than BING. Generally about 4-1 in Googles favor.
I did add another 2 reviews that I had written earlier and not posted on the 3rd of July.
Added a picture for site persona and changed all "we content" to "I" content.
I went through all of my tags on all content on July 14th to make sure I was in line with ubbersuggest /Google suggestions.
Double checked all interlinking and adjusted where appropriate.
Tested all affiliate links and found a few dead ones - replaced.
Changed the color scheme and typography of the site about July 15th to make it a better experience for the user.
July sales so far. 86 clicks to Amazon - 4 sales/5 items all reviewed items
Earnings so far for July - $35
So all in all major improvement. Not anywhere near the $250 a week mark but things seem to be moving in a positive direction.
Next things on To-Do list:
Schema markup plugin specifically for reviews - try to find a free one or maybe hit @Festinger up to see if he has one in his storage.
Get more articles posted on previously researched keywords.
Creating more of my own images for the site.
Get a logo created that is more fitting with the site.
Researching affiliate programs with companion products for this niche.
Figure out how to write a compelling about me page & get it posted.
Seriously think about when/if to try a backlinking/ranking package from someone here on BHW.
I'll update again in a week and see where it all stands.
Any questions? I will try to answer as best I can or get you to someone way more knowledgeable than I.
So I have been learning a lot from threads on BHW which I will elaborate on in further replies in this thread.
For now, I just want to get this thread started as I have been busy working on the website and dealing with a family tragedy as well, I haven't had a lot of time to get this started and there is so much to share.
So for this journey, I am starting an Amazon Affiliate Site from the ground up. Brand spanking new domain, brand new website, brand new (my own) content. Goal $250 a week from this site.
I took a 30-day course on how to make an Amazon site the proper way. (I had no idea how to set it up, do basic SEO, write content, etc.)
I did basic research for this niche. Average Item $150.
Basic keyword research.
Purchased keyword domain.
Installed WP and theme. from: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/m...premium-wp-themes-and-plugins-storage.995802/
Installed some basic plugins all free versions - directly through the WP front end.
Set a plan for writing original reviews.
Started writing reviews with help from this thread:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/g...r-amazon-buying-guides-the-right-way.1098662/
Started writing content every day until I had 20 product reviews to post. March 13th, 2019
I posted the reviews as I created them which I think in retrospect was a big mistake.
I think the next project, I will create all the initial content first BEFORE I publish anything.
Then wrote 3 pieces of content like a buyers guide and 2 small FAQ type guides.
This took about 3 weeks, I am slow and being new had to research, research, research everything.
NOTE TO THOSE FOLLOWING THIS JOURNEY AND THINKING OF DOING IT TOO:
PICK A NICHE YOU LOVE - or it will wind up being a bunch of work you don't want to do and you will burn out. I picked this niche because I liked the idea of it but didn't know anything about it. So, I did a bit of burnout BEFORE I decided that I AM going to make this work. As a result, I may wind up selling this site down the road because although I am proud of the progress I'm making - I DON'T LOVE the niche.
I got it all posted with images and such the next week. Submitted to Google, BING, and Yahoo (combined). So now it's April 20th or so.
I was burnt out, so I let the site sit for the next 2 months and get some views, etc. Watch it on Google console, Google Analytics, Bing Webmaster Tools and Statcounter to see how it would perform if at all.
It initially indexed first on BING and showed that it was picking up for about 20 keywords.
Google indexing was painfully slow - about 2 weeks before I registered any numbers in console although it was indexed in search engines fairly quickly. Google only picked up on keywords in my console about 3 weeks after submission and very few and in the 60 - 135 range.
AMAZON:
I got about 3 product sales in March although they were not the products on my site.
Earnings: $3
April was better. 7 sales and 2 were reviewed products.
Earnings: $24
May. 8 sales one of which was a reviewed product.
Earnings: $16
June. 6 sales 3 of which were reviewed products.
Earnings: $16
Amazon changed their affiliate rates in June as well, cutting commission in half - so that sucks too. Now I'm going to have to make a lot more sales to reach my goal of $250.00 a week from this site.
So at that point I realized I had a decision to make - whether to just grow the site up to about 30 reviews and possibly some more other articles (say 7 to make an even 10) and try to double the income to about $30 a month and dump it on FLIPPA or to go full tilt with it and turn it into an authority site. Either way, I started finding other affiliate programs to promote as well.
I ordered some content in June, as I felt my content was not strong enough on its own - now to be clear I know the thread is for a rewrite service however he does create brand new original reviews and other content if you ask - that's what I did. Great service too from: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/1...view-copy-today.1018469/page-29#post-12281881
I decided to turn this MOFO out and go for authority site.
Performed site checks on-site to see where it sits in regards to speed and SEO.
Using tools: https://gtmetrix.com/
http://webpagetest.org
Found my site loaded in nearly 12 seconds on both sites. Had tons of caching issues and image issues.
Spent 1 week figuring out how to fix those, install the right plugins, changed my hosting account to a new host with LiteSpeed servers and Cloudflare. It's a bit of a process for a newbie.
Got my image sizes down and compressed.
NOTE: Even if you have a plugin like SMUSH or something similar - DON'T be lulled into thinking your images are optimized for speed because likely they are not.
Site speed improved to under 3 seconds and got A's in all the important places.
Then, ran my site through Neil Patels App: https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/ They recently added an SEO audit on their site. So you just plug in your domain and after it runs the overview you can go down the page and run an SEO site audit.
My site came back with a score of 83 out of 100 and gave me many things I could do to improve that number.
I spent another week fixing issue after issue to work on that score. It is slowly coming up. I am continuing to work on those issues about once a week for a couple of hours as a family issue has come up that takes precedence at the moment.
So when I decided to get real about this site and making it work for me, this is what happened:
June 20th - 23rd - more content added to the site, plus some errors fixed in the prior weeks as stated above.
June 23 - Google rank moved from 63 up to 57 picked up for about 200 keywords CTR 2% last 3 months
July 7 - From 57 - 55.7 about 220 keywords
July 12 - From 57 - 55.3 about 240 keywords
July 15 - From 55.3 - 54.3 about 280 keywords
July 21 - From 54.3 - 51.7 about 310 keywords CTR 3.2% last 3 months Total Impressions 4.73K last 3 months
July 21 - Average position 41.2 last 7 days with CTR average 4.9% Impressions 862
BACKLINKS - 10 PICKED UP NATURALLY
Traffic has picked up over double what it was a month ago and clicks/sales have increased as well.
Finally getting more traffic from Google Search than BING. Generally about 4-1 in Googles favor.
I did add another 2 reviews that I had written earlier and not posted on the 3rd of July.
Added a picture for site persona and changed all "we content" to "I" content.
I went through all of my tags on all content on July 14th to make sure I was in line with ubbersuggest /Google suggestions.
Double checked all interlinking and adjusted where appropriate.
Tested all affiliate links and found a few dead ones - replaced.
Changed the color scheme and typography of the site about July 15th to make it a better experience for the user.
July sales so far. 86 clicks to Amazon - 4 sales/5 items all reviewed items
Earnings so far for July - $35
So all in all major improvement. Not anywhere near the $250 a week mark but things seem to be moving in a positive direction.
Next things on To-Do list:
Schema markup plugin specifically for reviews - try to find a free one or maybe hit @Festinger up to see if he has one in his storage.
Get more articles posted on previously researched keywords.
Creating more of my own images for the site.
Get a logo created that is more fitting with the site.
Researching affiliate programs with companion products for this niche.
Figure out how to write a compelling about me page & get it posted.
Seriously think about when/if to try a backlinking/ranking package from someone here on BHW.
I'll update again in a week and see where it all stands.
Any questions? I will try to answer as best I can or get you to someone way more knowledgeable than I.
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