10 Weeks and $10,000. Let's Try Rushing an Authority Site.

[SEOMadHatter]

Week 1: Slow but Solid

Time for the first update.

The first week was a little lackluster. I had a stack of COVID symptoms including the longest headache of my life and a couple of nights without sleep. Not the ideal but that's how it goes.

The Good

I wasn't completely useless at least.

Current stats:
Published on site: 22,000 words.
Published on parasites: 3,000 words.
Spent: $631

I picked up three guests posts and I've two more that I'll need to write the content for in a week or so. The priority here is pumping out the content so you won't see too much talk of link building but I wanted to have at least a couple of links to get things started.

The site has a rough first draft of a funnel place. Normally I would always focus on getting the SEO content published but I just felt like writing some sales copy and I wanted to make an early push on the parasite traffic and get the existing sub-niche traffic converting.

I didn't push the parasites as much as I wanted but I'll make up for that this week. There's a backlog of content ready to go up and having that first visitor come through to the lander already is always a good sign.

The Bad

I have really enjoyed writing for one of the sub-niches on this site. That doesn't sound like a bad thing and the content I've put out will convert well if the site ranks but the majority of the published word count was me and that's not where I should be spending my time right now.

Looking at the keyword plan most of the other niches don't have that much interest for me. There's one I'll need to do a dozen posts for and I'll probably do another two dozen posts in the one I enjoy but I'll need to put some proper time in this week to getting writers handling the rest of it. There are a couple of articles due early next week from writers but I should have focused on scaling that up before writing myself.

Hit a bit of a delay with the JV. Not massively worried about this one. I'm doing them a bit of a favor here and I could produce the product side of things myself for a few hundred bucks and not a revenue share (which is what they're getting). If they don't come through I can replace them before there's traffic to speak of. Not a big deal.

So there's nothing too bad. Just moving a little slower than I would like.

The Changes

Making a couple of (smaller) changes to the original plan.

• Creating a secondary product. I stumbled into another sub-niche with an easy to produce product (probably under $200 or a days work myself) that I think I could sell to that niche through SEO, sell to the rest of the list that site would build (it's related enough) and it would be a prime candidate for cross-promoting on other markets like Amazon. I've been looking for another project to experiment with there. Maybe in the next week or two I'll get that looked at.
• Taking the social media a little slower than planned. For sites like YouTube and Pinterest, I like to have consistency with the publishing schedule and that's easier when you build up a backlog of content. Going to hold off for a couple of weeks and just focus on getting content on the site first.
• I'm going to do fewer posts in each sub-niche but aim for more sub-niches to start with. I can see pros and cons to this approach but I think it'll make outsourcing the content at scale over the first 10 weeks a little more feasible. It might dilute my topical relevance early on but it's going to make getting the content goals more feasible.

I think that's it. Back to the grind on Monday.

Yes you are correct but other sites as well one of their competitors being replying to as many possible sites they have relations to my sites or other friends sometimes.

Ah, so outreach in general?

I've had a HARO/Outreach project at the back of my head for a couple of weeks. Did some scripting a few months back with ahrefs, hunter.io and a crap ton of automated emails. It actually landed one of my sites a couple of free links but I've spent too much of the last year focusing on content instead of links. I'll need to come back to it at some point.

Good luck buddy....

Following this

Following this
Best of luck!

Cheers

Good luck in your journey! Since it's only 10 weeks, I am hoping for weekly traffic and status updates.

I'm guessing you mean updates way down the line after the 10 weeks?

Over the next 10 weeks, the traffic is going to be zero. There might be a little trickle from parasites if we're lucky there but my goal is to front-load a whole bunch of this content and then I'm moving on. My strategy is to leave sites sitting for a few months and scale the easier wins.

 

[polecat]

Week 1: Slow but Solid

Time for the first update.

The first week was a little lackluster. I had a stack of COVID symptoms including the longest headache of my life and a couple of nights without sleep. Not the ideal but that's how it goes.

The Good

I wasn't completely useless at least.

Current stats:
Published on site: 22,000 words.
Published on parasites: 3,000 words.
Spent: $631

I picked up three guests posts and I've two more that I'll need to write the content for in a week or so. The priority here is pumping out the content so you won't see too much talk of link building but I wanted to have at least a couple of links to get things started.

The site has a rough first draft of a funnel place. Normally I would always focus on getting the SEO content published but I just felt like writing some sales copy and I wanted to make an early push on the parasite traffic and get the existing sub-niche traffic converting.

I didn't push the parasites as much as I wanted but I'll make up for that this week. There's a backlog of content ready to go up and having that first visitor come through to the lander already is always a good sign.

The Bad

I have really enjoyed writing for one of the sub-niches on this site. That doesn't sound like a bad thing and the content I've put out will convert well if the site ranks but the majority of the published word count was me and that's not where I should be spending my time right now.

Looking at the keyword plan most of the other niches don't have that much interest for me. There's one I'll need to do a dozen posts for and I'll probably do another two dozen posts in the one I enjoy but I'll need to put some proper time in this week to getting writers handling the rest of it. There are a couple of articles due early next week from writers but I should have focused on scaling that up before writing myself.

Hit a bit of a delay with the JV. Not massively worried about this one. I'm doing them a bit of a favor here and I could produce the product side of things myself for a few hundred bucks and not a revenue share (which is what they're getting). If they don't come through I can replace them before there's traffic to speak of. Not a big deal.

So there's nothing too bad. Just moving a little slower than I would like.

The Changes

Making a couple of (smaller) changes to the original plan.

• Creating a secondary product. I stumbled into another sub-niche with an easy to produce product (probably under $200 or a days work myself) that I think I could sell to that niche through SEO, sell to the rest of the list that site would build (it's related enough) and it would be a prime candidate for cross-promoting on other markets like Amazon. I've been looking for another project to experiment with there. Maybe in the next week or two I'll get that looked at.
• Taking the social media a little slower than planned. For sites like YouTube and Pinterest, I like to have consistency with the publishing schedule and that's easier when you build up a backlog of content. Going to hold off for a couple of weeks and just focus on getting content on the site first.
• I'm going to do fewer posts in each sub-niche but aim for more sub-niches to start with. I can see pros and cons to this approach but I think it'll make outsourcing the content at scale over the first 10 weeks a little more feasible. It might dilute my topical relevance early on but it's going to make getting the content goals more feasible.

I think that's it. Back to the grind on Monday.


Ah, so outreach in general?

I've had a HARO/Outreach project at the back of my head for a couple of weeks. Did some scripting a few months back with ahrefs, hunter.io and a crap ton of automated emails. It actually landed one of my sites a couple of free links but I've spent too much of the last year focusing on content instead of links. I'll need to come back to it at some point.



Cheers

I'm guessing you mean updates way down the line after the 10 weeks?

Over the next 10 weeks, the traffic is going to be zero. There might be a little trickle from parasites if we're lucky there but my goal is to front-load a whole bunch of this content and then I'm moving on. My strategy is to leave sites sitting for a few months and scale the easier wins.

Yes basically outreach except to news reporters instead of standard people or website owners or so.

I can understand it's fairly easy for me but you have to be if you like bit unique each time, for example, say I am trying to get of Dr try and make myself sound more professional but in other places be more friendly or fun themed .

Sounds good you sound smart or like you are doing big things.

 

[Aleksandar916]

Over the next 10 weeks, the traffic is going to be zero. There might be a little trickle from parasites if we're lucky there but my goal is to front-load a whole bunch of this content and then I'm moving on. My strategy is to leave sites sitting for a few months and scale the easier wins.

Ah! I see. I thought the idea was to achieve the goal in 10 weeks. Still looking forward to updates.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

The start of the week has been messed around with some real-life stuff getting in the way but I'm starting to get caught up. I can't have @Blackhat Lifter catching me up on word count.

Went for coffee this morning and thought I'd write a quick 500-word piece for the sub-niche I enjoy. 2,500 words later I published my "short post". I like writing for this one but I need to make some more time to get the other sub-niches started and work passed to the writers. Aiming to start at least one (hopefully two) of the sub-niches this week and make a big push on getting site and parasite content passed out to writers.

Sounds good you sound smart or like you are doing big things.

I'm an idiot. Just happen to be an idiot with a bankroll and no better ideas at the moment.

Ah! I see. I thought the idea was to achieve the goal in 10 weeks. Still looking forward to updates.

Nobody is starting a fresh authority site and getting (meaningful) SEO traffic within 10 weeks. If they are, they're not wasting their time on a forum.

The goal is to front-load the setup of the site within 10 weeks. Get the site up, a shit ton of content published and at least a first draft of the CRO in place plus a few extras like YouTube, Pinterest and some parasite traffic. It's going to cost me $10k - not make it.

This is SEO and I have plenty of other projects going on. I wouldn't normally expect a new site to break even on that kind of money for maybe a year. This one is likely going to be sooner than that given it'll have some buyer traffic for one of the sub-niches but the project is going to be in the red for a while.

 

[polecat]

The start of the week has been messed around with some real-life stuff getting in the way but I'm starting to get caught up. I can't have @Blackhat Lifter catching me up on word count.

Went for coffee this morning and thought I'd write a quick 500-word piece for the sub-niche I enjoy. 2,500 words later I published my "short post". I like writing for this one but I need to make some more time to get the other sub-niches started and work passed to the writers. Aiming to start at least one (hopefully two) of the sub-niches this week and make a big push on getting site and parasite content passed out to writers.


I'm an idiot. Just happen to be an idiot with a bankroll and no better ideas at the moment.

Nobody is starting a fresh authority site and getting (meaningful) SEO traffic within 10 weeks. If they are, they're not wasting their time on a forum.

The goal is to front-load the setup of the site within 10 weeks. Get the site up, a shit ton of content published and at least a first draft of the CRO in place plus a few extras like YouTube, Pinterest and some parasite traffic. It's going to cost me $10k - not make it.

This is SEO and I have plenty of other projects going on. I wouldn't normally expect a new site to break even on that kind of money for maybe a year. This one is likely going to be sooner than that given it'll have some buyer traffic for one of the sub-niches but the project is going to be in the red for a while.

Sounds good overall keep it at what you doing and being an idiot with money can do big things as well.

For me I just got my ferrets to get on a new Indian curry this week so far week gone amazing so far.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Week 2: The Content Sprint

Updating a day early because global warming. Scotland isn't supposed to have weather like this and I'm melting. Might wing the day off tomorrow and get climbing.

Current stats:
Published on site: 49,000 words (up from 22k last week).
Published on parasites: 15,000 words (up from 3k).
Spent: $970 (up from $631).

We had a couple of hits from non-English Google and a couple of hits from the parasites. A couple of longtails showing signs of entering the first 100 pages. Nothing to speak of yet of course.

Picked up a couple of links this week.

• A great guest post on a semi-related site. Content is heavily niche-focused.
• An alright niche edge. The page has some organic traffic and is relevant.
• A useless guest post. Looked into the domain it might as well be a PBN.

I have a couple more guest posts coming in the next couple of weeks and that'll probably be it for the links just now. Going to chase some of my competitor's links in a couple of weeks, looks like they accept guest posts pretty easily.

The content sprint is not going as quickly as I'd like. There's a backlog of about 20,000 words for the parasites but I need to sort some more outsourcing for the site content. I'd like to get to 200,000 words and I have 8 weeks left.

New Niche

I was looking for a new site for the portfolio this week and during the search stumbled into another niche that would work well for this project. Almost blew the budget on it.

Investing in content for an established site needs to cover the big overhead of buying the site but almost always means a faster return. For example, I spent $50 on some content for another project last week and it's already on the first page of Google and generating a return.

While impatience for traffic was almost enough the domain just had a few too many problems and the backlink portfolio was far too weak.

For a fraction of the cost, I can have a writer target these keywords on a sub-niche and get a couple of links to the category.

So that's starting next week. The content should be pretty easy to produce and I'll do a couple of dozen posts to see how it goes. If it goes well it's big enough to scale.

Authority Sites Are Weird

I don't really have any sites like this. It is kind of fun to be able to just start a new niche like that on a domain and (if this works) there's a bunch of smaller niches I could just add on to this domain further down the line.

What I don't know is how the topical relevance is going to look. The niches are all sort of related. As in, with the right copy, I can promote my main product to all of them.

But the domain won't have the same topical relevance most of my sites get. I'm keeping the interlinking separate and siloed for each category and the overall site is broad enough Google has no reason to rank me for anything really.

I'm curious to see how it goes. My guess will be it doesn't rank as well for any of the sub-niches but maybe the ability to pick up traffic in multiple smaller niches will be worthwhile.

The Delay

I'd like to say the goal for the next week is to push the outsourcing some more and try and hit at least 100k words but I don't really know what is going to happen.

My girlfriend just lost her dad and I might need to take some time away from the desk if she needs it. Not really sure yet I'll let her call the shots.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Week 3: The Outsourced Headache

Again, this week has been a little slower than I'd like. I bought a new site for the portfolio last week and another one this week. Neither was intended, just saw opportunities I couldn't pass up. I don't have a lot of time for either site yet but I needed to do the migration and try and get a little content going.

As for this site, I think I maybe wrote one article myself but most of the week was spent trying to scale the content outsourcing. I've got a couple of writers working on it at the moment but most require some consistent editing or are only going to be suited to smaller sub-niches.

Outsourcing Written Content

I'm trying to find someone good enough that I'll be able to step back from this site once I've hit the initial setup goal and they can keep the site updating.

For most of my portfolio, my goal is to get at least 100 articles published and then a couple of fresh ones each month to show Google that the site is active. This seems to work fairly well but the only way that stays scalable is if I have writers I can trust to handle the niche.

I've gone through a couple of trial writers this week after about 200+ applications. Most produce the same kind of stuff everyone else is publishing that you can get from a generic writer at an agency or they require just a bit too much editing.

Ideally, I want someone who knows the niche and since this site is pretty broad and fairly easy to write for it should be possible. Normally I'm far more niched down than this so I thought it'd be easier than it's turning out to be.

YouTube and Pinterest

Still holding off on Pinterest and YouTube until I've enough written content banked. I want to be able to deep-link to the content posts but I also don't want to double my workload. It's easier to create a video from an article than having to write it from scratch.

I think I'll probably start this somewhere around week 8.

Other Parasites

Fairly sure I've found the parasite I like for this niche so I've made a real push on that this week. Published a big chunk of content and there's still more to go up next week.

Also experimenting with something entirely new which is a little more black-hat but is looking pretty positive so far. It might do well in this niche and I'm hoping to have some time next week to push it even further.

Links and Rankings

Two more guest posts this week. One or two more to go over the next fortnight or so and then I'll probably be taking my foot off the gas there for a while.

A couple of page 2 results for longtails for both the site and the parasites. Good start.

Stats

Total Published on site: 67,000 words (up from 49k last week).
Total Published on parasites: 43,000 words (up from 15k).
Total Spent: $1,800 (up from $970).

Next Week

I want to keep looking for a writer or two that can handle the niche. As much as I enjoyed a brief stint at writing content for this one, I really have to stop. I have sites in the portfolio that could really use some CRO and it's just not the best way to spend my time.

I'd also like to take some time to push the parasite side of things some more. I think it might work well for this niche and scratch that black-hat itch I've had.

My family is doing 2020's Christmas next weekend. COVID kept us apart last December and I really can't wait for that but I'm expecting to be able to get to at least 85 if not 90,000 words this week.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Week 4:Building the Team

I fell just short of the goal this week. I knew I'd be taking some time off but I ended up taking some extra time away from the desk and I've been putting more time into dialing in the outsourcing and the product rather than writing as much content myself. I think only one of these articles was my own but I'll try and make up for that.

I've been churning through writers this week looking for at least one or two that actually know what they're talking about. It takes longer than just writing the content myself but hopefully, it means finding at least one person that can keep the site going in the long term. Got a few potential ones I'm working with at the moment and their content should go up this week.

Put some time into developing the product for this site. I think there's a decent market for this and I might have found a good affiliate network for one of the sub-niches as well. I really should have done this by now considering that traffic has now been going to waste for another month so I need to try and focus on this.

I've picked out one or two more sub-niches to try and get started on in the near future. I was reading some advice from someone who does this on a bigger scale than I do and his goal is to do about 30-40 posts per category and move on until that category has been proven to be worthwhile. In the same way I would normally put together a bunch of sites and scale the winners, he adds categories to sites and scales those.

Stats

Total Published on site: 81,000 words (up from 67k last week).
Total Published on parasites: 52,000 words (up from 43k).
Total Spent: $2,450 (up from $1,800).

Next Week

I'm hoping to take a little more time off again. My brother is on leave from the Navy and I've been eyeing up a camping trip for some climbing. Hopefully, the writers will be able to make up for my slacking and we'll push on towards 100,000 words while I try and get the product done in the time I do have.

I am taking my foot off the pedal with the parasites for the moment. There's enough there to see how it does and I'll come back to scale it further in a few months if it works. At the moment, I'd rather focus on the site content.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Week 5: Publishing Traction

Halfway through and not where I wanted to be at this stage, but that's how it goes.

I did mention a few weeks back my girlfriend lost someone and that's taken some time. Can't fault me on that one. The fact I've bought... I want to say three new sites in the last five weeks (on top of this project) that one is my fault and I've no great excuse. They were just deals I didn't want to pass up on but they've taken time away from this project.

So that's the bad news.

The good news is it looks like I have 2-3 writers who can keep this site going as a reasonably passive project for me. They know the niche so there's not a whole lot of editing I'll have to do, just hitting publish a couple of times a week and the content is good.

So the publishing rate has been slower the last 2 weeks but with these writers on board, it can at least stay consistent. Still hoping to reach 150,000 words by the end of the 10 weeks but I'll be able to keep it plodding along after that without a whole lot of effort.

Stats

Total Published on site: 88,000 words (up from 81k last week).
Total Published on parasites: 52,000 words (no change)
Total Spent: $2,520 (up from $2,450).

Next Week

The obvious one is to keep the writers with work and (probably) try and get at least a few posts done by myself.

I'm trying to figure out how much work I need to give a couple of these newer sites in my portfolio. I might have to spend some time this week trying to find a writer or two for those niches and I'm still very much behind on getting the product for this site done so I'm hoping to get at least a day set aside for that.

This is going to need some coffee.

 

[alexono1]

Sounda like an interesting and big project!
How will you do linkbuidling? Pbns/paid links?

 

[Purush]

your income stream only by selling product or any other idea you have.

 

[Almostbr0ke]

Are you getting sone traffic already?

 

[kaudo]

What parasites do you use, seomadhatter? If it´s not secret...

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Just about managed to convince myself not to buy a new site today. It'd be a fun niche to work in but I want to get caught up on my current portfolio and finish this project before getting another.

Sounda like an interesting and big project!
How will you do linkbuidling? Pbns/paid links?

Already answered.

your income stream only by selling product or any other idea you have.

Selling products is my preference. I know the niche well enough to know it'll get a good RPM and there's plenty of affiliate products I can throw at the email list as well.

I might add display ads at some point as well.

Are you getting sone traffic already?

Tiny amounts. Once I have the new product done I've got some buyer traffic ready for it but it'll be 2022 before this site ever has any meaningful organic traffic.

What parasites do you use, seomadhatter? If it´s not secret...

Depends on the niche. I look at the SERPs to see what Google likes.

For example, for a new niche I'm getting into I found a bunch of Tumblr posts on the SERPs and managed to pick up some expired ones with links within that niche.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Week 6: 100,000 Words Milestone

We've crossed the milestone of 100,000 words, a handful of backlinks and we've now got 2-3 writers producing content steadily. If this was any other project I'd probably step back from this project and see what the site looks like in 6-8 months or so. Especially as this is a new domain and I have some existing ones in need of attention (and they'll get a faster rate of return).

The JV I had lined up for this project just didn't have nearly the availability and that's certainly shifted the goalposts for this site a bit. I'm still pretty happy with the project so far as the content is good quality, the handful of links are pretty solid, the parasites will (hopefully) keep growing in the SERPs and I think it'll turn a profit further down the line once we get some rankings.

But the original goal for the first 10 weeks has to be dialed back. Without the JV, this would be too much to do and I've bought a couple of other sites that have good potential and need a little bit of time to get started.

For the content, I'm feeling pretty confident about just letting the writers take over for the next couple of months. Found a couple of good ones and I'll probably keep publishing 5-10k a week until we reach at least 150,000 or so. I'll probably slow down from there and start dripping content through just to show Google some activity. I've probably slowed down the traffic growth by tackling multiple sub-niches at once but in the long-term, it meant specific writers got to focus on the same topic so the content quality is better.

The product still needs to be done. That's really my only job with the project for the foreseeable future and there's some stuff drafted but I really need to sit down and get it done.

The YouTube channel is on hold for the moment but not for lack of time. I've been enjoying working with YouTube and investing in channel creation this year and I think this niche is ideal for a channel but I'm currently running a couple of tests that might change my strategy up a bit plus I've had better results starting a channel in a niche where I have some traffic to jumpstart things.

My next fortnight is looking a bit hectic and I'm going to have to put some time into other projects but I'm going to finish up this product creation and keep the writers churning away.

Stats

Total Published on site: 102,000 words (up from 88k last week).
Total Published on parasites: 52,000 words (no change)
Total Spent: $2,723 (up from $2,450).

/edit: Like most of my SEO projects, I'll step back for a while after the initial setup. If the site flops it'll probably get sold for someone else to take over but if it performs well we'll come back further down the line to build out the YouTube channel and parasites fully.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

I hate leaving a journal unfinished, especially one with such a short timeframe to begin with.

We’ve now got 2-3 writers that can work on this site and with fairly minimum editing required. They’ll be steadily pushing the site towards 200,000 words at around 5,000-10,000 words a week so Google can see activity going on. I picked up another guest post to help things along as well.

I like the idea of having an established authority site like this because you can scale into a sub-niche fairly quickly. The downside is without that tight topical relevance I suspect it’ll be a slow process to get there and I’ve picked up a couple of established sites lately that are just going to turn a profit much faster.

I still need to finish the product and I really am hoping to have that done within a fortnight. I might even make the time this week. Once that’s done, I just need to sit back and wait to see what Google makes of it.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

What was that, three months ago?



The organic traffic hit a new all-time high yesterday but it's nothing to write home about. I kept the writer on to keep the content dripping out but I've not really done much else with the site at the moment. I've found another use for the existing traffic I had so this project is probably just going to be an affiliate site once the search traffic builds up.

I've been toying with the idea of another blackhat project or building up and flipping aged starter sites like this so maybe I'll find another use for it in the next couple of months but I'll see how it goes.

 

[AnotherShot]

What was that, three months ago?

View attachment 194183

The organic traffic hit a new all-time high yesterday but it's nothing to write home about. I kept the writer on to keep the content dripping out but I've not really done much else with the site at the moment. I've found another use for the existing traffic I had so this project is probably just going to be an affiliate site once the search traffic builds up.

I've been toying with the idea of another blackhat project or building up and flipping aged starter sites like this so maybe I'll find another use for it in the next couple of months but I'll see how it goes.

how many articles do you have by now?

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Just a quick update and I think the plans for going forward with this site.



I’ve not done much with this domain at all yet. I kept a post dripping out now and then just to keep some activity showing and the writer I had wasn’t bad.

The DR has improved with the handful of links we added and the traffic on the site is mostly following the same trend as AHREFS. There’s been some consistency in traffic from some early parasites dripping in a few hits here and there but the organic traffic is growing slowly but steadily.

What did surprise me is the niche that seems to be working.

The least interesting sub-niche for the topic was also the easiest to write for. I had a cheap writer just pump out two dozen articles for that topic and that’s the majority of the traffic. The content quality for that was probably the weakest in quality but the competition is also lower.

I enjoyed the other topics more but this is a business, not a hobby. My strategy is generally to find these easy wins and double down. There’s plenty more keywords for this and I can think of a couple of potential affiliate setups for it. The Ad CPM won’t be groundbreaking but that would also be an option.

I was toying with the idea of flipping this as a starter site but I think I’m going to push out a bunch of content in this sub-niche, stick on some ads and it’ll probably be another small income source to leave idle in the portfolio.

how many articles do you have by now?

You got yourself banned but for anyone else wondering - it’s about 100ish. Most of them in the niche I thought would perform well and I was enjoying writing for that myself but when you’re starting multiple sites it’s a good idea not to get attached to individual topics.

The best performing sub-niche has maybe two dozen posts and I’ll be pushing that to 100+ at some point in the near future. Possibly this month.

 

[MonkeyJohn]

Nice update to the journey! What keyword research "method" do you use? Are you targeting low comp/low volume keywords, etc?

Thanks,