jaymaybe
Newbie
- Apr 21, 2020
- 26
- 9
Hello everyone,
I've decided to journal my progress here on BHW, for a few reasons:
1. To keep me accountable to put the consistent effort in to grow my online business.
2. To show that white hat success is perfectly achievable (I know it's a bit contradictory being on a site called Black Hat World, but my perception of the site is that it's actually more of an internet marketing site than anything else.
3. I really like reading other people's journeys both here and elsewhere, and I find them very inspirational.
Okay, with that out the way here's where I'm at. I won't be revealing URLs or anyhing, so please do not share any of my information or details should you come across them, or hear from me about them.
Main website was started about 6 years ago, hobby niche with some seasonality, with sporadic blogging, podcasting, youtubing, and email marketing.
Over the years I had varying levels of motivation, and many of them I only managed to make podcast episodes and send emails out - no blog content at all for years.
Eventually I got to about 2000 email subscribers early on, and managed to make extremely consistent affiliate income from mainly email marketing but also some written reviews, sponsorships, and videos.
Today the site gets about 15-20k unique visitors per month, and earns about $2000/mo on average, heavily skewed by Black Friday week where, in 2019, I made over $12k from that one week alone.
I have never used any black/greyhat methods, but I still have an extremely strong SEO profile due to a large number of organic backlinks (including some very high domain authority)
My philosophy is similar to the Income School (Project 24) philosophy, as I don't believe most grey/blackhat is worth it.
I recently brought out my first product (course) and made about $7k on the launch. This will be a pivotal part of my monetisation structure going forward.
I've also recently joined a very expensive coaching program, and my goal with that is to get the site up to $10k a month over the next 12 months.
Here's how I plan to do just that:
1. Write/outsource a shit ton of quality content to increase the organic traffic. Historically I've done all the writing myself, but I realise that to grow I need to hand some of this off going forward.
2. Increase subscribers by improving opt-in rates across the website. I've always had about a 1% conversion rate, but I'm sure that can be greatly improved with better lead magnets, and more tactical optin positioning.
And that's basically it!
I think sometimes people overcomplicate what it takes to succeed online. Yes, I've been doing this for 6 years on/off (most years I did very little, before I even considered making it a 'business') but the steps I took were incredibly basic and can definitely be replicated by anyone.
Once I've reached the $10k/mo goal then I'm sure I'll pivot into some other ways of advancing my business. I have a few project ideas that I'd love to get into at some point that are tangential to the main website.
Anyway, this first update is already getting rather long so I'll pause it here for now. I expect to update at least monthly, but I'll strive for weekly updates.
Any questions let me know and I'd be happy to answer - my question to you would be, what metrics are interesting to hear about?
I've decided to journal my progress here on BHW, for a few reasons:
1. To keep me accountable to put the consistent effort in to grow my online business.
2. To show that white hat success is perfectly achievable (I know it's a bit contradictory being on a site called Black Hat World, but my perception of the site is that it's actually more of an internet marketing site than anything else.
3. I really like reading other people's journeys both here and elsewhere, and I find them very inspirational.
Okay, with that out the way here's where I'm at. I won't be revealing URLs or anyhing, so please do not share any of my information or details should you come across them, or hear from me about them.
Main website was started about 6 years ago, hobby niche with some seasonality, with sporadic blogging, podcasting, youtubing, and email marketing.
Over the years I had varying levels of motivation, and many of them I only managed to make podcast episodes and send emails out - no blog content at all for years.
Eventually I got to about 2000 email subscribers early on, and managed to make extremely consistent affiliate income from mainly email marketing but also some written reviews, sponsorships, and videos.
Today the site gets about 15-20k unique visitors per month, and earns about $2000/mo on average, heavily skewed by Black Friday week where, in 2019, I made over $12k from that one week alone.
I have never used any black/greyhat methods, but I still have an extremely strong SEO profile due to a large number of organic backlinks (including some very high domain authority)
My philosophy is similar to the Income School (Project 24) philosophy, as I don't believe most grey/blackhat is worth it.
I recently brought out my first product (course) and made about $7k on the launch. This will be a pivotal part of my monetisation structure going forward.
I've also recently joined a very expensive coaching program, and my goal with that is to get the site up to $10k a month over the next 12 months.
Here's how I plan to do just that:
1. Write/outsource a shit ton of quality content to increase the organic traffic. Historically I've done all the writing myself, but I realise that to grow I need to hand some of this off going forward.
2. Increase subscribers by improving opt-in rates across the website. I've always had about a 1% conversion rate, but I'm sure that can be greatly improved with better lead magnets, and more tactical optin positioning.
And that's basically it!
I think sometimes people overcomplicate what it takes to succeed online. Yes, I've been doing this for 6 years on/off (most years I did very little, before I even considered making it a 'business') but the steps I took were incredibly basic and can definitely be replicated by anyone.
Once I've reached the $10k/mo goal then I'm sure I'll pivot into some other ways of advancing my business. I have a few project ideas that I'd love to get into at some point that are tangential to the main website.
Anyway, this first update is already getting rather long so I'll pause it here for now. I expect to update at least monthly, but I'll strive for weekly updates.
Any questions let me know and I'd be happy to answer - my question to you would be, what metrics are interesting to hear about?
