Race to make my first dollar from a Wordpress Authority Site

[Ammar Johar]

Hey Guys,
This is pretty embarrassing for me to come here again and start a journey thread because the last one I started didnt really pan out quite well.
Why? Because I procrastinated, and pussied out as I had no friggin clue as to how to plan shit out. PBNs and Guest Posts and all that stuff that I had absolutely no idea about back then (TBH I still dont exactly know what I am doing right now as well) but I want to jump right into it now.

I have a small offline distribution business and the plan is to create a strong authority website for the same.
Unfortunately I guess I am pretty late into the game because on checking out AHREFS, my competitors have somewhere around 7,000 - 15,000 backlinks.

Well this changes today.
The main goal for now is to attract international customers to my website and make my first dollar.
Lets go go go!

 

[Jurr]

Good luck! Hope you make it this time. Just don't give up!

 

[Panther28]

checking out AHREFS, my competitors have somewhere around 7,000 - 15,000 backlinks.

What about their referring domains? Thats a better measure, as its coming from an individual IP each.

 

[Ammar Johar]

Day 1.
Since morning I have:
I renewed a domain I purchased a long while back with the intention to start a website
and also bought a ridiculously cheap shared hosting plan for 1$ a month.
On reading a BHW post, I understood there is something called cloudflare and installed a free SSL and some other stuff.

Now came across my first roadblock: WOOHOO!!
There is some caching issue with my browser I guess because of which my site keeps showing this error:
This site can’t be reached
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN
I googled it, followed a guide step by step ( i had on idea what I was doing) and now will restart my system. I hope it works! Fingers crossed

 

[PatientlyBecoming]

Following your journey. Best of luck and can't wait to see your updates.


I've never had to buy an SSL, usually it seems most hosting companies will provide it for free. I've only ever used two companies though so not sure if this is standard or not. Cloudflare will help you stay safe from DDOS attacks, and could make your pages load quicker. I say should as I notice some of the sites I visit that use it make me jump through a lot of hoops as it checks my browser and makes me do the whole pick all pictures of this item thing. Sometimes that part can backfire, as there have been times I just closed that tab instead of jumping through the hoops.

I'm still confused on the whole PBN thing too. It seems the safest route from all I've read is to make your own. You don't really know what footprints other PBN sites are leaving, nor do you know how many other sites are being charged to use them. Seems with all the negatives I've read it would be very possible to buy PBN links from the wrong person and get your site penalized at some point. Not to mention once they have your money, they could take the links back down in a few months hoping by that time you have so many you might not notice.

Having said that, I've read many folks on here building their own and spending lots of time and money to have an insane amount of sites in their PBN. It made me wonder if that effort would have been better spent just building more authority sites. I still have so much to learn though, so hoping your thread here will be very helpful to me.

I tried a shared hosting plan many years ago and quickly upgraded. It took so long for the site to load no one would have the patience. I see so many bloggers pushing Bluehost shared hosting and wonder how many newbs sign up (giving the blogger a fat affiliate commission) and fail because almost everyone is bouncing. I figure as hard as it is to get traffic (quality traffic) one should spend the little extra if they can at first to provide as great an experience as possible. Keep the visitor happy and more likely to not only stay a little while but hopefully return.

Best of luck and looking forward to your updates.

 

[Deleted member 752298]

Good luck with your journey man!

 

[RedditBaronette]

Thanks for sharing and good luck!

 

[Ammar Johar]

Day 2
so today I began installing and customizing a theme and bam! the moment I was done and tried loading it on my phone, it took forever to open!
This is when I realised why BHW has entire sub forums for Hosting lol.
I immediately went through discussions and found a great little site called HostKoala.com.
For just 5$ per year, they provide shared NVME SSD Storage. Which after googling, I found out to be a big deal. So I guess I shall be shifting to that maybe this weekend.

I was also reading @goodseoman 's article on SEO101
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/seo-keyword-research-101-a-lengthyyyyyy-guide.1300214/What an article! DAMNNN BOI SEO is serious business. Although I dont think I will ever be able to do the meticulous research mapped out in that article, It did give me an idea of what details to search for of my competitors on AHREFS.

I still feel that I am vastly under-prepared and unequipped for this. People are using 1000$ software here and I am looking for the most Value for money hosting provider.
Still I can currently afford to give time to this project of mine. So I guess thats an advantage I have.

Today was very research heavy.

Things I learnt:
There are multiple types of SSDs in hosting.
RankerX is shit expensive.
SEO is everything
AHREFS is so cool for backlink research!!! It blew my mind!

Following your journey. Best of luck and can't wait to see your updates.


I've never had to buy an SSL, usually it seems most hosting companies will provide it for free. I've only ever used two companies though so not sure if this is standard or not. Cloudflare will help you stay safe from DDOS attacks, and could make your pages load quicker. I say should as I notice some of the sites I visit that use it make me jump through a lot of hoops as it checks my browser and makes me do the whole pick all pictures of this item thing. Sometimes that part can backfire, as there have been times I just closed that tab instead of jumping through the hoops.

I'm still confused on the whole PBN thing too. It seems the safest route from all I've read is to make your own. You don't really know what footprints other PBN sites are leaving, nor do you know how many other sites are being charged to use them. Seems with all the negatives I've read it would be very possible to buy PBN links from the wrong person and get your site penalized at some point. Not to mention once they have your money, they could take the links back down in a few months hoping by that time you have so many you might not notice.

Having said that, I've read many folks on here building their own and spending lots of time and money to have an insane amount of sites in their PBN. It made me wonder if that effort would have been better spent just building more authority sites. I still have so much to learn though, so hoping your thread here will be very helpful to me.

I tried a shared hosting plan many years ago and quickly upgraded. It took so long for the site to load no one would have the patience. I see so many bloggers pushing Bluehost shared hosting and wonder how many newbs sign up (giving the blogger a fat affiliate commission) and fail because almost everyone is bouncing. I figure as hard as it is to get traffic (quality traffic) one should spend the little extra if they can at first to provide as great an experience as possible. Keep the visitor happy and more likely to not only stay a little while but hopefully return.

Best of luck and looking forward to your updates.

Totally understand what you mean mate. I have just installed a theme and I feel like my site is already slow! There is clearly a lot to learn here.

Good luck with your journey man!

Thanks mate!

Thanks for sharing and good luck!

Thank you!

 

[Ammar Johar]

DAY 3

Set up NVME SSD shared hosting on HostKoala,
waited a day for my site to get propagated,
and sat on AHREFS for the remainder of the day to search for really good competitor sites for "inspiration".

Also learnt a new thing: It doesn't matter how many backlinks you have. What matters is the DR and the authority of those websites.

Till now I found 9 websites that look like they can be autopsied on.
I am so nervous on what content to put up on my website! I now realized that I had no site layout plan in mind.
Is that important though?

Also for some reason, My SSL isn't showing on my website. Will need to figure that out as well.

 

[Jurr]

Also for some reason, My SSL isn't showing on my website. Will need to figure that out as well.

Run your site through here https://www.whynopadlock.com/. It can give you a hint.

 

[momotico]

DAY 3

Set up NVME SSD shared hosting on HostKoala,
waited a day for my site to get propagated,
and sat on AHREFS for the remainder of the day to search for really good competitor sites for "inspiration".

Also learnt a new thing: It doesn't matter how many backlinks you have. What matters is the DR and the authority of those websites.

Till now I found 9 websites that look like they can be autopsied on.
I am so nervous on what content to put up on my website! I now realized that I had no site layout plan in mind.
Is that important though?

Also for some reason, My SSL isn't showing on my website. Will need to figure that out as well.

Good luck on your journey.

I spent more than 8 years building websites. My 2 cents:

- If you want fast websites (especially Wordpress), don't use shared hosting. Use kinsta, cloudways, etc. Hosting is an investment, and you won't want to invest into cheap shared hosting. For god's sake, don't trust reviews of hosting on "review websites", use customer feedback from reddit.
- Don't trust the DR, it means next to nothing. On the other hand, individual UR is a good indicator.
- And yes, content planning matters. You won't want to publish 100 articles on different topics (although same niche). My experience is to focus into 1 short-tail keyword. From that short-tail keyword, build up pillar article with satellite articles.
- Extra tip: learn what Google like and produce content accordingly.

 

[leechesBleechin]

And yes, content planning matters. You won't want to publish 100 articles on different topics (although same niche). My experience is to focus into 1 short-tail keyword. From that short-tail keyword, build up pillar article with satellite articles.

This is a great tip!

 

[Ammar Johar]

Day 3
I filled in some information on my website, installed woo commerce and will now add around 800 related products.
Thinking of article ideas at the same time.

Run your site through here https://www.whynopadlock.com/. It can give you a hint.

This is awesome! Just checked everything out. Thanks!

Good luck on your journey.

I spent more than 8 years building websites. My 2 cents:

- If you want fast websites (especially Wordpress), don't use shared hosting. Use kinsta, cloudways, etc. Hosting is an investment, and you won't want to invest into cheap shared hosting. For god's sake, don't trust reviews of hosting on "review websites", use customer feedback from reddit.
- Don't trust the DR, it means next to nothing. On the other hand, individual UR is a good indicator.
- And yes, content planning matters. You won't want to publish 100 articles on different topics (although same niche). My experience is to focus into 1 short-tail keyword. From that short-tail keyword, build up pillar article with satellite articles.
- Extra tip: learn what Google like and produce content accordingly.

I had no idea UR was important. There is so much contrasting information on the net its almost hilarious. I shall now do all research based on those metrics.
What will be fun is that the Site I am working on will be having highly technical products which arent even searched for that often on google so writing articles with very limited long tail keywords will be sort of a fun challenge.

 

[momotico]

I had no idea UR was important. There is so much contrasting information on the net its almost hilarious. I shall now do all research based on those metrics.

You might want to take a look at this article to understand the difference between DR & UR: https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-metrics/#section9
And remember, both UR & DR are indicators made by ahrefs not by Google.

 

[Gboyers]

Good luck!

 

[Ammar Johar]

Gods knows what day update:
Hosting Done
Gmail suite gotten
Amazon AWS SES with Mail Bluster Integration Done

Personal list that I have spent +8,000$ over 5 years to prepare: Check
Warming up Ip since 4 days while freaking out that some moron may mark me as spam just for fun : Check

Creating an eCommerce website for them to browse, something like a digital catalog, and then eventually order when they require the technical products.
The list is only of 10,000 people, but they are highly qualified and the ticket price for my products start from hundreds of dollars.


Next step. Complete warming of ip and complete website.
Will update soon.

 

[Ammar Johar]

Update:
I got my first 2 inquiries through my mails!
Details for now:
Delivery rate- 98%
open rate- 20%
Click rate directly to whatsapp link- 3%

Now only focussing on generating dialog between my list and I.

 

[Deleted member 1455908]

Good luck mate, I love the energy!

 

[Ammar Johar]

You might want to take a look at this article to understand the difference between DR & UR: https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-metrics/#section9
And remember, both UR & DR are indicators made by ahrefs not by Google.

Good luck mate, I love the energy!

Thank you guys!

 

[craftsmanbasil]

This is nice nice, I am always excited to your updated journey post. Good luck buddy!