Niche Site Journey

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PaulSmithAUS

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What am I doing?
I have started some of these journeys before and life has got into the way as this wasn't in my top few income streams and it definitely is not passive when you are learning and trying things before you can scale. My main income comes from my job, which pays well and I love doing, and sportsbetting. Each of these income streams bring in over 6 figures.

Background
I started a niche site a few years ago and it has 49 articles on it which were written exclusively by me. I haven't posted on the site since June 2020. There are 132,362 words on the site. Its getting around 9000-10,000 views a month and is pretty stable. The earnings are around $60 a month which I know is poor ePMV. The income comes from Ezoic display ads ($50 pm) and some Amazon affiliate sales ($10 pm). Here is a snapshot of the niche site google webmaster performance:

1629003247892.png

Here is a snapshot of the number of posts broken down to when they were published. When I stopped publishing it halted any growth in traffic but at least it didn't go down too much.

1629003311434.png1629003346380.png

How often will I update?
Not that often. Maybe once a month or every couple of weeks. I don't think this needs a daily update and I think that is why I dropped off my previous journeys.

What is different this time?
I am going to take a more business like approach to it and not a hobby approach. This means investing some money. I will start small and increase as things start to work. I am committing $200 a month. Up till now, I was doing everything. While this was ok to learn and find what works, it is not going to allow any growth over time and when it is just your time wasted there is little motivation to improve. When you are losing money on a business venture you either learn to fix it or you bleed money till you give up.

If I look at this from a logical approach I need to do the following:
[ ] Find ways to increase ePMV for the current articles
[ ] Improve Traffic for the current articles which are not sitting in the top 3 but are in the top 4-10 spots for their keyword.
[ ] Add more content
[ ] Diversify into other sites and niches

I am not setting a goal for the amount of money to make as I am focused on learning how to do this as a business and create a portfolio of websites that bring in a regular income stream each month. I am aiming to take what I learnt already, learn to improve it, learn to create a specific process that can be outsourced and then scale it across multiple niche sites.

So what are my next steps ?

These are my immediate next steps before the end of this month.
[ ] Find a content writing service to use.
[ ] Outline at least 5 articles to get written this month (August)
[ ] Review the Performance of each page to create lists on what should be left alone, reworked, or lessons learnt on a losing keyword.

What you can help with me?
Does anyone have recommendations on services they have used for content? My keywords are usually very question/answer focused (such as "how do you put out a campfire safely?") so I believe I don't need an expensive service as the content is simple enough to write, but I do want it to read well and be unique.

Wish me luck.
 
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porati2815 said:
Good luck, can you tell me how you find low competition keyword??
Click to expand...
I don't know if I do a good job of it but I generally just look up topics on google search that I think people might be searching for. if its in the auto-complete it means someone must be searching for it (or a variation of it) so I just target those phrases.

For example if I use the campfire example:

I would put into google :
how * campfire *

1629006438863.png
and then I play around with it looking at different topics and different words till I find some questions/answers/topics which I think people actually might be searching for in my particular niche.
 
I have completed the following task and this gives me real data to work with.

[ x ] Review the Performance of each page to create lists on what should be left alone, reworked, or lessons learnt on a losing keyword.

So lets have a look at some of the statistics for the posts over the last 6 months:
  • The best post brought in $78.37
  • The worst post brought in $0.46
  • Average earnings per post was $9.02
  • Average earnings per post without top 10% earers and bottom 10% earners was $7.39
  • Average earnings per post without top 20% earers and bottom 20% earners was $6.94
The average word length of my articles was high. It was 2540 words. This is becasue I was writing it myself and I could just write as much as I wanted as it didn't cost anything but time.

Note all of the earnings above are just display ads. I do make a small amount on Amazon Affiliates but it was only an extra $43.14 over the 6 months and that has not been used in any of the calculations.

Lessons Learnt:
  • The posts which had custom visuals outperformed other posts. I should add custom visuals to all posts that have a good earning potential.
  • I wrote too many words on a variety of topics. I could have averaged 1600-1800 words instead and then built up the word counts on those topics which showed potential. If I had paid for the articles this would have reduced the cost from a theortical $1250 to $885. That is a saving of almsot 30%. This may have impacted some results but I think I would have still ranked ok for most keywords and could have bumped up the content on those which showed potential.
  • My content needs a lot of revisions for those which are doing ok. Out of the 49 articles I found potential improvements for 32 articles. These will be scheduled over the next couple of months. This should increase the impressions and clicks as I reach further long tail keywords which have potential for those articles.
  • 5 articles were complete misses and not worth the time spent on them. Collectively they had 20670 impressions for 621 clicks and only $7.65 in revenue. Had I had these written they would have cost a total of $110. What can I learn from these ? They were very specific topics which obviously did not come up very often in my niche.
  • The best 5 articles for earnings (top 10%) had 247,700 impressions for 11350 clicks. They brought in $155 and would have theoretically only cost $110. There is nothing about these keywords which stand out compared to the others. It just seems G took a liking to them. I will take a better look over the next few days. 2 of the articles had custom images had the best performance.
I have also completed the following:

[ x ] Outline at least 5 articles to get written this month (August)

I need to do a quick review of the words I need for each of these topics and make sure I haven't requested too many. Then I need to get a content writing service to write the articles.

Still to do:

[ ] Find a content writing service to use.
[ ] Look further into those notebooks which are working to find what makes them similar.
[ ] Look at how I could increase ePMV.
[ ] Improve 32 of the existing articles with updates for titles and keywords.
[ ] Look for a new niche to start.

Questions for others:
  1. Anyone got ideas on what I could break down those pages which worked to see what is common with them?
  2. Anyone got any recommendations for content services?
  3. Anyone got any recommendations on how they determine how many words to write per article when outsourcing?
 
To answer your 3rd question, I take the average word counts of top 5 pages that are ranking for the keyword. And if there is no enough competition on the SERPs, I will make sure that I covered every aspect.
BW, how long/many posts did the start getting organic clicks?
That's a solid stats and I believe that the site will see a significant growth if you keep publishing new content.
Good luck and all the best to you.
 
Rufai said:
To answer your 3rd question, I take the average word counts of top 5 pages that are ranking for the keyword. And if there is no enough competition on the SERPs, I will make sure that I covered every aspect.
BW, how long/many posts did the start getting organic clicks?
That's a solid stats and I believe that the site will see a significant growth if you keep publishing new content.
Good luck and all the best to you.
Click to expand...

yes I was doing something similar but there is always 1-2 posts up around 2000+ words for each topic. I think I got clicks pretty quickly. Within a month or so. it was about 5-10 posts before I started to see any clicks.
 
You already have the ball rolling and you plan seems pretty solid.
Good luck to reaching your goal op!
 
how about backlinks? How much did you spent on it?
 
jalo39 said:
how about backlinks? How much did you spent on it?
Click to expand...
Nothing. Any links have been created by myself through outreach (not many at all - less than 10). Most of the topics I focus on are less competitive so don't need the backlinks to rank.

If you are going after more competitive keywords then you do need backlinks.
 
For this task :

[ ] Find a content writing service to use.

I have sent a test article to a content provider found here which was CreativeContentWriting. I will see how they go. I have chosen tier 3 but provided clear instructions on what I need done so will see how it goes.
 
Had a little slip up on ordering the content (didn't see I had to add a few extra things). I have done that now so just waiting on the first article to be sent back and then if I am happy i have another 4 ready to go.

I am going to start looking at fixing a few of the pages now based on my findings when reviewing the content.
 
Sir, I would consider becoming a millionaire next year.
Now this is only your choice and willingness to become wealthy!

I have started some of these journeys before and life has got into the way as this wasn't in my top few income streams and it definitely is not passive when you are learning and trying things before you can scale. My main income comes from my job, which pays well and I love doing, and sportsbetting. Each of these income streams bring in over 6 figures.
Click to expand...
My respect for dropping this line on our forum.

You show us how much the hard work pays off. It's not about being lucky!
 
crnack said:
Sir, I would consider becoming a millionaire next year.
Now this is only your choice and willingness to become wealthy!

My respect for dropping this line on our forum.

You show us how much the hard work pays off. It's not about being lucky!
Click to expand...

Hard work usually gets paid well. Smart work gets paid better :) Just need to work out what is the right type of things to focus on and improve.
 
Well while improving one of my preivous articles that needed some work I just found a bunch of my amazon links are not working. What do others use to quickly/easily create links to amazon with their affiliate program? Is there a better way to manage these ?
 
PaulSmithAUS said:
What am I doing?
I have started some of these journeys before and life has got into the way as this wasn't in my top few income streams and it definitely is not passive when you are learning and trying things before you can scale. My main income comes from my job, which pays well and I love doing, and sportsbetting. Each of these income streams bring in over 6 figures.

Background
I started a niche site a few years ago and it has 49 articles on it which were written exclusively by me. I haven't posted on the site since June 2020. There are 132,362 words on the site. Its getting around 9000-10,000 views a month and is pretty stable. The earnings are around $60 a month which I know is poor ePMV. The income comes from Ezoic display ads ($50 pm) and some Amazon affiliate sales ($10 pm). Here is a snapshot of the niche site google webmaster performance:

View attachment 182350

Here is a snapshot of the number of posts broken down to when they were published. When I stopped publishing it halted any growth in traffic but at least it didn't go down too much.

View attachment 182351View attachment 182352

How often will I update?
Not that often. Maybe once a month or every couple of weeks. I don't think this needs a daily update and I think that is why I dropped off my previous journeys.

What is different this time?
I am going to take a more business like approach to it and not a hobby approach. This means investing some money. I will start small and increase as things start to work. I am committing $200 a month. Up till now, I was doing everything. While this was ok to learn and find what works, it is not going to allow any growth over time and when it is just your time wasted there is little motivation to improve. When you are losing money on a business venture you either learn to fix it or you bleed money till you give up.

If I look at this from a logical approach I need to do the following:
[ ] Find ways to increase ePMV for the current articles
[ ] Improve Traffic for the current articles which are not sitting in the top 3 but are in the top 4-10 spots for their keyword.
[ ] Add more content
[ ] Diversify into other sites and niches

I am not setting a goal for the amount of money to make as I am focused on learning how to do this as a business and create a portfolio of websites that bring in a regular income stream each month. I am aiming to take what I learnt already, learn to improve it, learn to create a specific process that can be outsourced and then scale it across multiple niche sites.

So what are my next steps ?

These are my immediate next steps before the end of this month.
[ ] Find a content writing service to use.
[ ] Outline at least 5 articles to get written this month (August)
[ ] Review the Performance of each page to create lists on what should be left alone, reworked, or lessons learnt on a losing keyword.

What you can help with me?
Does anyone have recommendations on services they have used for content? My keywords are usually very question/answer focused (such as "how do you put out a campfire safely?") so I believe I don't need an expensive service as the content is simple enough to write, but I do want it to read well and be unique.

Wish me luck.
Click to expand...
I reached out to JoJo a few days ago and Content Daddy is still going strong. I was assured that my vetted writers were still there also. You can find them here: https://digitalservices22.wufoo.com/forms/contentdaddy/
 
This post is just summing up the week of progress.

What I identified I needed to do at a high level:

[ ] Find ways to increase ePMV for the current articles
[ ] Improve Traffic for the current articles which are not sitting in the top 3 but are in the top 4-10 spots for their keyword.
[ ] Add more content
[ ] Diversify into other sites and niches

From the above I set myself 3 tasks for the week:

[ x ] Find a content writing service to use.
[ x ] Outline at least 5 articles to get written this month (August)
[ x ] Review the Performance of each page to create lists on what should be left alone, reworked, or lessons learnt on a losing keyword.

All of these were completed. From this I aslo complted these tasks:

[ x ] Find a content writing service to use.
[ x ] Look further into those notebooks which are working to find what makes them similar.
[ x ] Look at how I could increase ePMV.

Further tasks identified:

[ ] Improve 32 of the existing articles with updates for titles and keywords.
[ ] Look for a new niche to start.

I have found a content writing service and I am waiting for the first test article to be returned. I also identified a few things on my best pages such as unique images that seemed to help. I spent some time looking at monetization and found my affiliate links were broken so I am in the process of fixing those (a few pages left to do buyt should be done today). I ended up using ThirstyAffiliate to manage my links.

My tasks for this week are as follows:

[ ] Finish updating affilaite links (3 pages to go).
[ ] Improve 32 of the existing articles with updates for titles and keywords.
[ ] Look for a new niche to start.
[ ] Get the test article back and decide to go with the provider or try someone else.
[ ] Improve montetization on pages by looking for opportunities to add Amazon links or other affiliate links.

While most things I did this week won't improve my traffic or my monetization dramatically they are inputs into a step by step process I am forming up for my next site so its all been beneficial.
 
Another update as we come into the end of the month.

Here was the outstanding tasks:


[ x ] Finish updating affilaite links (3 pages to go).
[ x ] Get the test article back and decide to go with the provider or try someone else.
[ ] Improve 32 of the existing articles with updates for titles and keywords.
[ ] Look for a new niche to start.
[ ] Improve montetization on pages by looking for opportunities to add Amazon links or other affiliate links.

I have recieved the first article and it was very good for the price. Was it spectacular, well no. It was decent and only needed minor tweaking though to be good enough for my site. The article ended up costing $15.00 for 1500 words (1c per word). At this price it was a bargain. I reworked and added my own voice to it in places and it ended up being 2098 words by the time it was posted.

I have put in an order for another 8000 words across 6 articles. The cost for this was $79.20 as the content proivider had just raised their prices to $1.10 per 100 words and I had a 10% discount for over 5000 words ordered.

Metrics
August Articles Posted: 1
August Words posted : 2098
August Expense ($USD) : $15.00 + $79.20 = $94.20

So far its been slow progress but there is movement forward which is the main thing for now. I am building my processes as I go so that things can be eventually outsourced.
 
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