[PureHustle] 2020 Journey Thread
- Thread starter PureHustle
- Start date
PureHustle
Power Member
- Feb 12, 2015
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Glad I'm inspiring others to take action! I chose affiliate keywords predominately, but have mixed in a few information keywords as well.
Yeah, you have a great outlook. I'm investing pretty much all profits back into the site. I just need to keep ironing out the wrinkles! it was pretty discouraging hitting 2k at the end of 2019 and then dropping down to barely 1k the following months. Im sure ill jump back tho, eventually!
PureHustle
Power Member
- Feb 12, 2015
- 593
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Thanks! Good question - my strategy for a new site is
- blog comments, forum posts that are relevant to the site
-web 2.0s and “foundational links” stuff like about.me, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
- press releases 1-3
beyond that just start pushing out guest posts and niche edits
PureHustle
Power Member
- Feb 12, 2015
- 593
- 500
April 30th Update
Site 1:
Site 2:
Site 1:
- Performance: The site was starting to pick up immensely. It seemed that updating old blog posts was working (doubling content length). That is, until this core update hit, virtually dropped about 50% traffic overnight. This doesn't change my strategy, I'll continue to focus on content.
- Fixing old blog posts: I still need more content to lengthen my old posts. I'll be picking up a few writers for this project.
- Scheduling New Content: I've always been bad at consistency. to fight this, I had my writers create 20 new articles. I have scheduled them to post weekly for the next few months. I plan to get the rest of the year scheduled out this month/next month.
- Amazon Slashing Prices: I'm exploring other ways to monetize.
- Improving Categorization and Interlinking: I need to increase the number of categories on my site, as the amount of content i have at this point is pretty nuts.
Site 2:
- Performance: Really disappointed that this site is not picking up traction. its an expired domain with a ton of potential.. I'll continue to build the site with rich content and start focusing on easier keywords.
- MORE CONTENT: I have a few months of content scheduled out for this site. I specifically targetted easy kw so maybe this will help get some traction.
PureHustle
Power Member
- Feb 12, 2015
- 593
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Im still testing sellers here on BHW. when i find the winning services I'll share
PureHustle
Power Member
- Feb 12, 2015
- 593
- 500
Quick Mini-Update
I got hit with the may 2020 update. i started taking a closer look at my site and found quite a few fundamental errors that i think i need to address. content quality and average length, interlinking between posts, site structure, and referring domains.
May 2020 Update
I got hit hard with the may core update. i was doing about ~800 pageviews per day and now I'm back to about ~350-400. pretty concerning.
As I continue to figure out how to recover, i feel like there are a ton of issues that i really need to focus on
I believe if i can work on these main points i can help my site recover a bit....
I got hit with the may 2020 update. i started taking a closer look at my site and found quite a few fundamental errors that i think i need to address. content quality and average length, interlinking between posts, site structure, and referring domains.
May 2020 Update
I got hit hard with the may core update. i was doing about ~800 pageviews per day and now I'm back to about ~350-400. pretty concerning.
As I continue to figure out how to recover, i feel like there are a ton of issues that i really need to focus on
- Content
- Content length - im continuing my trend of trying to keep average post length to about 2000 words and fixing the old content to get close to this content length.
- Content score - all 3 of my writers are from overseas, and i haven't really done too much proofing/editing their content. Now im going through all the content created (200 articles) and running them through Grammarly premium. Im going to make sure that the content stays above 90% as an overall score.
- I need to expand beyond the "best xxx for xxx" keywords and extend into individual product reviews and information-intent keywords moving forward.
- interlinking posts (internal links between posts)
- I purchased link whisper a few months back and just had it manually automate interlinking posts. I did some vetting this week and the interlinking is ass. so I've manually gone in and removed all interlinking posts. I'll go in and manually do this, seems like the only real way to do this.
- Site Layout
- The site is pretty big and the niche is rather large. I've gone in and added a better site structure, added more categories to the site.
- Site Performance
- GSC seems to think my site (desktop version) is slow, so im working on getting this resolved. I'm working on this and my scores are pretty good now, so it might be time to validate.
- GTMetrix score:
- referring domains to the site
- One of the biggest things I've been ignoring is off-site. I've done a few dabbles in niche edits, guest posting, and other various services. but, i have started testing out @Stan Fox's crowdo service. im going to continue running this to beef up the # of referring domains by a few hundred.
- Ahref's Site Health Score
- I dont know if this will make a big impact or not, but i think its important to keep my site's health score above 90%. so i will work on getting this score to 90%+
I believe if i can work on these main points i can help my site recover a bit....
Last edited:
larcha
Senior Member
- Aug 31, 2012
- 1,091
- 713
How did you fix this issue? I just added the Yoast SEO plugin and received the LCP issue for mobile.
Great journey and I will continue to follow along!
PureHustle
Power Member
- Feb 12, 2015
- 593
- 500
I haven't fixed this issue yet, but im working on it still. compressing images, lazyloading images, using caching plugins and tweaking a few css rules to try and get that score down.
PureHustle
Power Member
- Feb 12, 2015
- 593
- 500
Update:
Overview:
This update is going to be a long one, boys. I'll try to be as thorough as possible, but not a positive update. I'll only be speaking to site #1, which is the main money-maker at this point. I'll be giving you a bit more details than I'm normally used to, helping it can provide additional context.
Site #1:
This site is still massively hurting from the may 2020 update. I've lost about 60% of traffic, and the amazon affiliate rates dropping was a second punch to the gut.
Reflecting back, the strategy was pretty simple; purchase an expired domain and then leverage that to rank for a ton of long-tail keywords. the strategy seemed to work really well until this core update.
Google Analytics:
Amazon:
Ahrefs:
The Domain Itself:
This is a strong, expired domain with over 500 referring domains, with some really powerful links. DA is over 35.
Im happy to say that my average content length is around ~1600 words now, effectively doubling what it was previously. thought process being i'd be able to rank for other random longtails and the added length of content could help with ranking for target keywords.
Creating New Content & getting it scheduled
One of the things I've lacked was staying consistent to a schedule of posting content. so I've ordered a ton of content for this site and its all schedules for the new few months:
Adding backlinks & Further Optimization
Over the past 2 months I've spent a considerable amount of money ( > $1500) diversifying the backlink profile, getting some niche edits, guest posts, and forum posts. Its interesting, I'm not really seeing much ROI on this front, so i figured i could improve the site's on-site SEO... but the site seems to have a good health score (image below). So the areas i suppose i can work on now are internal linking strategy, building more content (to support my target keywords) , and building more backlinks.
Concluding thoughts this month:
Its weird, I've invested quite some time on this site (years), and its been steadily growing until this update. in conjunction with the slashing of affiliate prices from azon, cant help but feel like this is a sinking ship. I had a somewhat working strategy over the years, but now im left scratching my head as to what i can do to recover and continue growing. this is a tough one as i dont want to keep throwing money at content or backlinks if I'm not seeing a direct ROI a few months down the line. I'm considering just putting this site on the backburner (content is scheduled, i have a budget of allocated expenses for SEO if i choose to continue paying for backlinks), or even exploring the idea of selling the site.
TL;DR
hit pretty hard with this may update & azon affiliate payout rates slash. Not sure what my next step is. Certainly not getting the ROE (Return On Effort as @BassTrackerBoats puts it ) on this site anymore.i need to take a step back and regroup on the strategy.
Overview:
This update is going to be a long one, boys. I'll try to be as thorough as possible, but not a positive update. I'll only be speaking to site #1, which is the main money-maker at this point. I'll be giving you a bit more details than I'm normally used to, helping it can provide additional context.
Site #1:
This site is still massively hurting from the may 2020 update. I've lost about 60% of traffic, and the amazon affiliate rates dropping was a second punch to the gut.
Reflecting back, the strategy was pretty simple; purchase an expired domain and then leverage that to rank for a ton of long-tail keywords. the strategy seemed to work really well until this core update.
Google Analytics:
Amazon:
Ahrefs:
The Domain Itself:
This is a strong, expired domain with over 500 referring domains, with some really powerful links. DA is over 35.
I've invested pretty heavily over the past 2 months on 3 Things (which ill elaborate on below):
Increasing Length of existing content- Increase the length of content on existing posts
- Create new content & scheduling it out
- build some quality backlinks
Im happy to say that my average content length is around ~1600 words now, effectively doubling what it was previously. thought process being i'd be able to rank for other random longtails and the added length of content could help with ranking for target keywords.
Creating New Content & getting it scheduled
One of the things I've lacked was staying consistent to a schedule of posting content. so I've ordered a ton of content for this site and its all schedules for the new few months:
Adding backlinks & Further Optimization
Over the past 2 months I've spent a considerable amount of money ( > $1500) diversifying the backlink profile, getting some niche edits, guest posts, and forum posts. Its interesting, I'm not really seeing much ROI on this front, so i figured i could improve the site's on-site SEO... but the site seems to have a good health score (image below). So the areas i suppose i can work on now are internal linking strategy, building more content (to support my target keywords) , and building more backlinks.
Concluding thoughts this month:
Its weird, I've invested quite some time on this site (years), and its been steadily growing until this update. in conjunction with the slashing of affiliate prices from azon, cant help but feel like this is a sinking ship. I had a somewhat working strategy over the years, but now im left scratching my head as to what i can do to recover and continue growing. this is a tough one as i dont want to keep throwing money at content or backlinks if I'm not seeing a direct ROI a few months down the line. I'm considering just putting this site on the backburner (content is scheduled, i have a budget of allocated expenses for SEO if i choose to continue paying for backlinks), or even exploring the idea of selling the site.
TL;DR
hit pretty hard with this may update & azon affiliate payout rates slash. Not sure what my next step is. Certainly not getting the ROE (Return On Effort as @BassTrackerBoats puts it ) on this site anymore.i need to take a step back and regroup on the strategy.
Yogesh1998
Supreme Member
- May 24, 2014
- 1,361
- 567
Hey, great journey!
I would recommend waiting for a month or so and keep pushing out content and keep building some links. Things may start to get back to normal. I saw a drop of close to 50% in traffic. What I did was, I started optimizing my older articles, added new content just the way I was adding it before the update and I started to recover a little. It's still volatile as it goes to 75-80% of the original traffic and then suddenly drops to 45-50% of the original and traffic. But I am pretty sure that it will recover.
Just keep doing what you were doing before and make sure all your posts are updated and properly on-page optimized.
Good luck and following!
I would recommend waiting for a month or so and keep pushing out content and keep building some links. Things may start to get back to normal. I saw a drop of close to 50% in traffic. What I did was, I started optimizing my older articles, added new content just the way I was adding it before the update and I started to recover a little. It's still volatile as it goes to 75-80% of the original traffic and then suddenly drops to 45-50% of the original and traffic. But I am pretty sure that it will recover.
Just keep doing what you were doing before and make sure all your posts are updated and properly on-page optimized.
Good luck and following!
PureHustle
Power Member
- Feb 12, 2015
- 593
- 500
Update:
Overview:
Things are pretty much on auto-pilot at this point. I have content scheduled throughout the rest of this year for both sites. im re-investing to get backlinks and build out RD. I've let my writers go as their quality of work really wasn't that good. I started doing some proofreading and i was pretty unhappy with the content as i really heightened my expectations over the past 2 months. moving forward im just going to do the writing myself.
Site 1 Specific Update:
The site is recovering slowly from the core update a few months ago. this is good to see. its clearly not recovering back to 100%, but I'll take what i can get.
Since i have content scheduled out (1 post per week), I've just been focusing on building out links.
Site 2 Specific Update:
The site really gets like no traffic even though its get 130k words on the site. In retrospect, i did a very poor job on keyword research. I got lazy leveraging moz/ahref/SEMrush keyword scores and not doing manual analysis. I'm confident that's the reason this domain isn't doing so hot. I'm adjusting my gameplan here. much more manual keyword research and targeting easier keywords.
Thinking About The Exit Strategy:
I am planning on selling both these sites. I met with EmpireFlippers, they threw out a valuation that i felt was a little low (mid $XX,XXX) so going to invest in these 2 sites until the end of Q3 and plan for an exit then. I'll continue to work on SEO of the sites and getting more traffic, but im also exploring other options to increase the net income from these sites. This could potentially mean accepting guest posts, building email lists and adding adsense to the sites. if anyone has done this before and wants to give advice, im all ears.
Doubling Down:
Im likely going to buy 2 really nice expired domains and building out these sites. I feel like I've made quite a few major errors with this 2020 project, so i could reach much better success if i start again with these 2 new sites. more to come on this later.
Overview:
Things are pretty much on auto-pilot at this point. I have content scheduled throughout the rest of this year for both sites. im re-investing to get backlinks and build out RD. I've let my writers go as their quality of work really wasn't that good. I started doing some proofreading and i was pretty unhappy with the content as i really heightened my expectations over the past 2 months. moving forward im just going to do the writing myself.
Site 1 Specific Update:
The site is recovering slowly from the core update a few months ago. this is good to see. its clearly not recovering back to 100%, but I'll take what i can get.
Since i have content scheduled out (1 post per week), I've just been focusing on building out links.
Site 2 Specific Update:
The site really gets like no traffic even though its get 130k words on the site. In retrospect, i did a very poor job on keyword research. I got lazy leveraging moz/ahref/SEMrush keyword scores and not doing manual analysis. I'm confident that's the reason this domain isn't doing so hot. I'm adjusting my gameplan here. much more manual keyword research and targeting easier keywords.
Thinking About The Exit Strategy:
I am planning on selling both these sites. I met with EmpireFlippers, they threw out a valuation that i felt was a little low (mid $XX,XXX) so going to invest in these 2 sites until the end of Q3 and plan for an exit then. I'll continue to work on SEO of the sites and getting more traffic, but im also exploring other options to increase the net income from these sites. This could potentially mean accepting guest posts, building email lists and adding adsense to the sites. if anyone has done this before and wants to give advice, im all ears.
Doubling Down:
Im likely going to buy 2 really nice expired domains and building out these sites. I feel like I've made quite a few major errors with this 2020 project, so i could reach much better success if i start again with these 2 new sites. more to come on this later.
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PureHustle
Power Member
- Feb 12, 2015
- 593
- 500
Update:
I'm in the process of preparing for an exit - selling 2 of my sites. I've spoken with a few brokers and the valuations weren't high enough to let go. my goal here is to pump up the valuations by the end of the year.
My sites are slowly losing traffic, income. The sites are broad in nature and after doing a ton of market research, I'm pretty confident that broad, non-specific sites like mine are all pretty much all feeling the same thing. Google seems to be favoring niche sites for many of my keywords and I think it makes sense. Ahrefs shows this pretty clearly as well.
My hypothesis is that one of the updates earlier this year took these broad sites (Generalized review sites, top 10 sites, etc) and hit them with a small penalty that persists (on pieces of content that dont have much supporting content, favoring niche sites, then authority sites).
So, for the next quarter, I'll be doubling down my supporting content for my top 10 revenue-generating pages (hoping to get them top spot 1 for all my keywords or at least in the top 3). I'm essentially creating many content clusters, and I'm aiming for about ~10 articles of supporting content. the supporting content will be long-tail keywords that are niche-specific, and I'll be inner-linking articles in this cluster. So - I'm spending a decent amount of money on content over the next 3 months to build out my content/authority within each of the 10 content clusters.
I'm in the process of preparing for an exit - selling 2 of my sites. I've spoken with a few brokers and the valuations weren't high enough to let go. my goal here is to pump up the valuations by the end of the year.
My sites are slowly losing traffic, income. The sites are broad in nature and after doing a ton of market research, I'm pretty confident that broad, non-specific sites like mine are all pretty much all feeling the same thing. Google seems to be favoring niche sites for many of my keywords and I think it makes sense. Ahrefs shows this pretty clearly as well.
My hypothesis is that one of the updates earlier this year took these broad sites (Generalized review sites, top 10 sites, etc) and hit them with a small penalty that persists (on pieces of content that dont have much supporting content, favoring niche sites, then authority sites).
So, for the next quarter, I'll be doubling down my supporting content for my top 10 revenue-generating pages (hoping to get them top spot 1 for all my keywords or at least in the top 3). I'm essentially creating many content clusters, and I'm aiming for about ~10 articles of supporting content. the supporting content will be long-tail keywords that are niche-specific, and I'll be inner-linking articles in this cluster. So - I'm spending a decent amount of money on content over the next 3 months to build out my content/authority within each of the 10 content clusters.
PureHustle
Power Member
- Feb 12, 2015
- 593
- 500
Update:
YTD Overview:
Just wanted to recap the status of site #1 - this slow, downard trend needs to end, especially if i want to get the site to my perceived valuation before letting it go -
Amazon Associates:
GA:
Total Content On Site:
Average content length: ~1700 words
What I'm doing throughout the end of the year
Other things I'm thinking about
YTD Overview:
Just wanted to recap the status of site #1 - this slow, downard trend needs to end, especially if i want to get the site to my perceived valuation before letting it go -
Amazon Associates:
GA:
Total Content On Site:
Average content length: ~1700 words
What I'm doing throughout the end of the year
- Doubling down on supporting content for some of my best-selling products (informational type of content, alternative product reviews, related products, x vs y comparison pages). pretty much just add more depth to these "sub niches" - I'm going after long-tail, extremely easy keywords. explicitly working on internal linking structure between all the pages, try to be a little aggressive with the # of internal links in each page.
- I'll be spending about $1500 to try and get this site in a better spot by the end of the year. 1/2 probably will go to content and then the other 1/2 will go to some powerful guest posts to push some rankings up that are on page 1 but not top 3 positions.
Other things I'm thinking about
- I'm also going to explore other affiliate programs - see if i can add a "recommended product" section at the top of the pages that points to a non amazon link (ill be checking out CJ). would be nice to test here and see if i RPV increases despite a lower CVR.
- Other option is to see if i can reach out to sellers on amazon and ask them if they're willing to pay $xxx for their product to be listed as "Featured" at the top of the page on my website (show data on how much traffic the pages get).
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PureHustle
Power Member
- Feb 12, 2015
- 593
- 500
Update
Sorry for the delayed update here few high-level updates.
1. Combining Sites:
I was spreading myself too thin, not seeing much progress on site #2, so I absorbed site #2 into site #1 (early Nov 2020). There's an incredible amount of content now on site #1 and we're starting to see some of these articles from site #2 rank on site #1.
Total Site Content on Site #1 Now:
Traffic Trends for 2020 (GA):
Search Performance for 2020 (GSC):
2. Backlinking:
I've been busy buying backlinks - This time, focusing on high-end backlinks. I spent about ~$1,000 on this batch - I picked up quite a few nice ones from a few sellers here. details below. Im keeping a close eye on the pages in question, hope to see a direct increase in rankings from some of the powerful links.
3. Prep For Exit... Continued
I still want to sell the site, but I'm not happy with the low valuations.
The site has over 500k words, has shipped ~$200,000 worth of merchandise through amazon year-to-date (picture below), but yet my earnings are around ~$600 per month. This yields a low valuation. plus the commissions for my site now are like ~3%...
I'm hoping to try a few things to increase the net income. few ideas are:
1. Contact amazon sellers directly - see if they'd be interested in a spot for a featured post - charge ~$50 a month. (has anyone done this? i am finding it hard to find a way to directly contact sellers)
2. Check out other affiliate platforms, such as CJ to see if i can find any reasonable companies to switch to. ( i am doubtful on this as i know conversion rate is going to drop considerably.
3. Grow an email list - this will help with the valuation subtly.
4. accept guest posts on site - this one I'm very cautious about - but could help me get to the $1,000/mo really quickly...
I've got to think through the next steps of prepping for an exit...
Hoping that the next update is me saying i sold the site.
Sorry for the delayed update here few high-level updates.
1. Combining Sites:
I was spreading myself too thin, not seeing much progress on site #2, so I absorbed site #2 into site #1 (early Nov 2020). There's an incredible amount of content now on site #1 and we're starting to see some of these articles from site #2 rank on site #1.
Total Site Content on Site #1 Now:
Traffic Trends for 2020 (GA):
Search Performance for 2020 (GSC):
2. Backlinking:
I've been busy buying backlinks - This time, focusing on high-end backlinks. I spent about ~$1,000 on this batch - I picked up quite a few nice ones from a few sellers here. details below. Im keeping a close eye on the pages in question, hope to see a direct increase in rankings from some of the powerful links.
3. Prep For Exit... Continued
I still want to sell the site, but I'm not happy with the low valuations.
The site has over 500k words, has shipped ~$200,000 worth of merchandise through amazon year-to-date (picture below), but yet my earnings are around ~$600 per month. This yields a low valuation. plus the commissions for my site now are like ~3%...
I'm hoping to try a few things to increase the net income. few ideas are:
1. Contact amazon sellers directly - see if they'd be interested in a spot for a featured post - charge ~$50 a month. (has anyone done this? i am finding it hard to find a way to directly contact sellers)
2. Check out other affiliate platforms, such as CJ to see if i can find any reasonable companies to switch to. ( i am doubtful on this as i know conversion rate is going to drop considerably.
3. Grow an email list - this will help with the valuation subtly.
4. accept guest posts on site - this one I'm very cautious about - but could help me get to the $1,000/mo really quickly...
I've got to think through the next steps of prepping for an exit...
Hoping that the next update is me saying i sold the site.