[Successful Journey] Scaling Amazon Affiliate from $1000/m to $10k

[thachvv]

Noted for reseach

 

[Gumnby]

Update

For the next few updates, my thread will be dedicated to all the fallen soldiers of the April Products Reviews Update.

I know lots of you got impacted by the update. So it's quite surprising that no one is talking about it.
It's just like when you die there's a huge crowd talking about you but after a while, everyone moves on leaving the mourners.

I would've loved to be a part of the crowd that moves on but sadly I'm not.

With that said, I believe in resurrections and never giving up especially when you go from almost $10k to $1k. (On a side note, it's funny how long it takes to get to $10k but how quickly you can go from $10k to $1k)

But I think there's good news for people that can stick it out a bit longer. And unlike penalties from core updates, there's a good chance of recovering from this update after a couple of months IF you do the right things.

Recovering from the Update

So over the past 2 months after I wrapped my head around the fact that I got hit since I've never gotten hit before "doing everything right," I started heavily researching the competition.

And also looking at reviews that I think are great. Here's a good example of one that I think is an almost perfect review: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/best-inflatable-kiddie-pool/

I also started listening to youtube product reviews and other video reviews of the products and how the reviewer "sounds" and the type of points they mentioned throughout the review.

I even dug into the deep end of Google SERPs (past page 8), Reddit forums, SEO forums, Facebook groups, and videos. To go even further, I check out all the competing sites that seemingly took a hit from the update in my niche or other niches.

To sum it up, I spent a great deal of time researching how exactly I could recover from this shitty update!

And guess what I found...?

...
..
.

Nothing.

I bet you didn't expect that.

But I already gave the answer away beforehand when I said no one is really talking about it. So by now, you’re probably wondering…

Where am I going with this rant?

Nowhere to be honest. I just want you to realize how to start writing your new product reviews.

Look:

I know it might not be obvious right off the bat but I literally wrote this update in the kind of format that Google is now looking for when ranking their reviews.

To spell it out for you, they want you to:

• Express expert knowledge about products where appropriate?

Now I know a lot of you might automatically assume EAT this, EAT that but y'all EAT gurus can eat s***. Google still can't accurately analyze the EAT of an author and magically give that article a higher ranking.

Even if they can, I don't think this is the reason why my site and maybe yours lost rankings. From what I've seen, they appear to be looking at how you establish your expertise on a given keyword topic.

If you go back to the beginning of this post, that's exactly what I've been doing. Writing about my expert knowledge that I gained through months of research and how I gained it.

I don't remember where I saw it exactly but they say they want “content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well.”
The key part here is enthusiasts and what better way to be recognized as an enthusiast than by talking about how passionate you are about the subject/keyword.

One thing other thing I noticed that stood out is that the Tone of the article matters.

• Always think about how would an enthusiast review this product. What words would they commonly used when discussing features of a product.

The second point you want to pay attention to is this:

• Identify key decision-making factors for the product’s category and how the product performs in those areas? For example, a car review might determine that fuel economy, safety, and handling are key decision-making factors and rate performance in those areas.

Write your reviews around the key features that you determine are important. Use headings to make it clear what features you are talking about or separate the features by paragraphs.

Next in order of importance is this:

• Show what the product is like physically, or how it is used, with unique content beyond what’s provided by the manufacturer?

If you only have affiliate images that are generic (Using AAWP, or ripped product images) then you need to fix this.

The last point that you shouldn't ignore is this:

• Describe key choices in how a product has been designed and their effect on the users beyond what the manufacturer says?

There are many ways to do this but I'll leave it up to your imagination.

Most of the other guidelines they give, I feel like most of us should have covered. So I won't mention them.

So now you may be saying "Yeah, I already know all this but does it work?"

View attachment 176972

I started working on that page around the 10th after I noticed it declining. After publishing the change the article tanked, so I figured I shouldn't have touched it after all #10 for a "Best XYZ" keyword is better than #80. So I reverted to the previous version and it came back after a few days.

Later on, I still felt like the changes I made should've brought me back to #3 where I was before the update so I went back to the updated content. And the article tanked so I gave up on it completely and started researching more.

About a week ago, I finally put together a structure, tone, and format to update the reviews and made changes to another article. That article went from #11 to #6 and fluctuated between #5-#7.

So I figured if I tweaked this article that fell to the 80s I might get it back up. So said, so done and within a week it jumped back up to #9.

Now I'm not saying, I've perfected it or that the same method will work on all the pages of the site but at least it shows that recovery is possible.

Some hope is better than no hope. At least now there's a direction to work towards.

From my test results, I want to point out a few things to sum it up:

• The changes that you make may take more than a month and up to 3 months to start showing.
• Not all changes will work the same way depending on many factors.
  • So you have to analyze the SERPs for your keyword and make your article better than most if not all the current pages.
• My site is still bleeding keywords on ahrefs, so I still won't say you DEFINITELY will recover in a short time.
  • My site may just go through a phase where I have to establish trust with Google before they give me back all my keywords.
• Don't try to be an expert in your tone and instead become an enthusiast.
• Don't make your review like a pure affiliate window page.
  • Remove a few affiliate links and add more information.
  • Greatly increase the number of images to be more than your competitors (I don't believe they are checking if a photo you share is the actual image. At most they scan for duplicate images and look at alt tags)

The last piece of advice I want to give in this first post for recovery is that you should start developing a backup plan(website) just in case you can't recover. And don't focus all your attention on recovery for months on end.

Luckily, I had a bit of foresight and started working on my second site. Otherwise, I'd be incredibly down right now.

To everyone that took a hit especially the higher earners at least $4k-$15k/month, I feel your pain. It hurts to make $20/day. Feels like making peanuts but don't quit.

Here's some motivation to keep pushing and diversify your portfolio of sites:

View attachment 176973


View attachment 176974

I used to believe in 1 site to success. Now I believe in multiple sites to a point in the $$$$-$$,$$$ range then flip as soon as you get a chance.

Hope you all get something from this. And I'll start mass implementation on the things I found to recover the site until the end of the month. Once that's done, I'll finish up the info content for this site then move on from it.


IKR, it sucks but it is what it is. Amazon was always a starting point for people like myself that always have difficulty getting into programs and the more premier affiliate networks. But since it was so easy everyone hyped it up and it became the new thing and people stopped treating it for what it is 'a stepping stone'. A few more steps "selling at least 2-3 more sites and I'm out too to go after more secure income.

I'm not sure either. But I probably won't do another affiliate + ads site for quite a while. At least not until I'm sure it isn't a part of my problems.

Sure, glad to share with everyone the struggles of "making it" so everyone can see the ups and downs and the time it takes behind the scene to either put in the work or spend a bunch of money like some others that won't say it.

Dude this is the most useful update from a BHW journey I've ever read!

Thank you for sharing all of this information, I just started two sites
one informational and one review based. It totally sucks that google hit people this hard and I pray I can get the correct tone of voice and layout style, you've certainly sent me in the right direction.

Also wtf, what exactly were you changing in your article to make it jump from rank 80 to rank 6!?

 

[dlyhai]

What backlinks have you done?

 

[tagghor]

Hello, If I understood correctly you get $ 486 with 15,000 visitors. Are you using adsence? Do you put a lot of advertising in your articles?

 

[Mrnewbie]

Hello, If I understood correctly you get $ 486 with 15,000 visitors. Are you using adsence? Do you put a lot of advertising in your articles?

He is using Mediavine Ads, sorry op, as I don't want to hijack your thread.

 

[Bloooop]

Wow man. How long did it take you to get your earnings to a decent level like this?

Is it all from google or some from Pinterest and elsewhere?

what advice would you give me starting out I have no problem whipping out a ton of articles on any topic.

ijust wrote a 4000 word article but realized it’s the wrong niche nobody has money in music production lol.

$6,000 a month and I’d crap myself.

would you say just pick a niche start writing article after article and then make a few sub sites to build authority?
Any advice you could throw my way would be awesome I’m down in the dumps.

It took about 2 years from being a newbie to knowing what I'm doing to make 5k per month.

It took 9 months to do it a second time, and then about 4 months to do it a third time on an aged domain. I'm currently doing a test to see how long it'd take on a brand new domain.

Initially, 6k a month to me seemed like great money but once you get there you won't feel any different. You'll start feeling like its not enough and keep wanting to go higher which is where I'm at.

And I'm sure it'll be the same once I hit 10k-30k per month.

I'd say spend a good month learning keyword research and understanding website metrics and website authority. After that then you can pick the best niche you can find and just start putting up articles for the keywords that you see you can compete for in the niche.

The biggest advice is to avoid looking at other people's earnings alone and think it's simple, it takes a WHOLE LOT OF WORK and most people can't stick through the work to reach anywhere. Some people are lucky but most people take a few years to make a decent income from their sites. Apparently, I'm not/wast one of the lucky few as I work my ass off.

Dude this is the most useful update from a BHW journey I've ever read!

Thank you for sharing all of this information, I just started two sites
one informational and one review based. It totally sucks that google hit people this hard and I pray I can get the correct tone of voice and layout style, you've certainly sent me in the right direction.

Also wtf, what exactly were you changing in your article to make it jump from rank 80 to rank 6!?

You should also try to add more information to the article and try to make them seem less of a sales page. Also, I found that adding more info articles seems to help a bit for the site that was penalized.

The article that jumped in rankings has all the steps I listed down perfected.

What backlinks have you done?

I haven't done any. But one domain was an expired domain. The other has a 301 redirect from a highly relevant site. The first site I only bought 5 niche edits.

Hello, If I understood correctly you get $ 486 with 15,000 visitors. Are you using adsence? Do you put a lot of advertising in your articles?

All articles on the site that was penalized have ads from Mediavine.

 

[Bloooop]

Update - End of August

Last month I was completely hands-off all the projects for this journey but things went well.

My main site hasn't seen any improvement in traffic even though I added a couple of articles a few months back. They don't seem to be getting any traction as they would on a brand new site or at the beginning of building this site.

This leads me to conclude that once a site has been hit, no matter how much you work on it you won't see any improvement until Google decides that it's back in their good graces. It's not even regaining positions for info keywords or any of the info articles that were recently added. Most are stuck in the top 11-20 even though they are properly optimized and interlinked.

But I won't complain as the site is still making $1800/month on average.

If I have anything that I could say is causing this issue it might be Ads. But there's no way to prove this unless I turn them off for a month and see what happens.

Traffic for Main Site(Penalized):



Some of the articles I tweaked saw some improvement in positions and jumped to #1-3 but they aren't sticking for more than a few days in and out.



Prior to the product reviews update, I had 79 in the top 3, about 115-130 in the top 10, and 155 in the top 30. Once the update happened the top 30 fell to 136 at the lowest but it has since recovered. But I can't seem to recover the others for now.

Second Site:



This one has been doing well so far and has grown by 20%. I could consider putting mediavine ads on it right now and it'll possibly generate another $1500+ per month but I'm still considering whether the ads impacted the last site.

So for now I'll keep this as is. I also wanted to set up GEOS for amazon and can't seem to get it to work. Neither through AAWP or one link.

I can't figure it out as it works for my main site but doesn't for this site. So I just left it and moved on to the new project.

I'm also expecting a little dip in traffic/earnings since a few keywords are summer-based. But we'll see how that goes.

Earnings for Last Month:



Earnings from Ads:



Total Earnings: $6,840

Overall, it wasn't a bad month. I definitely need to add a few more pieces of content to the second site but for now, I'm leaving the main site as-is. And If this continues the same with no changes I'm anticipating hitting $10k in November hopefully.

If not well fuck it. Moving on with my projects and hopefully I can keep scaling my earnings by diversifying my site portfolio.

 

[leit]

Wow, nice earnings mate, are those earnings coming from your two sites, or do you have more in your portfolio? I'm thinking about creating more sites starting in January, you never know what might happen.

 

[Sammm]

good
I'm following this one so i can learn what you said

 

[Gumnby]

Beautiful keep up the great work mate

 

[bernardklimek]

This looks solid. Lets hope you live up to the things that you are saying here. Best of luck to you.

Are you having only one Site or Multiple sites for your Amazon generated income?

Thanks for the useful information! I will definitely use it!

 

[Thomas Shelby]

I also wanted to set up GEOS for amazon and can't seem to get it to work. Neither through AAWP or one link.

I can't figure it out as it works for my main site but doesn't for this site

Did you make sure the AdBlock was off, and you were not using short links on amazon?

Did you also make sure on AAWP you choose a site for localization service for geotargeting? When I use the "default" one, it wasn't working.

You can also try Geniuslink, but I don't think link cloaking is allowed on Amazon.

You can try to read their blog here.

 

[tester234]

Wrote 56 new articles for the main site which totals about 90k words. Only half are uploaded and indexed. I'm getting the others edited and will upload 3 per day going forward.

You use an external pari for edits? What else do you use external parties for?

 

[beriener]

Good luck with your journey

 

[Bloooop]

Wow, nice earnings mate, are those earnings coming from your two sites, or do you have more in your portfolio? I'm thinking about creating more sites starting in January, you never know what might happen.

Did you make sure the AdBlock was off, and you were not using short links on amazon?

Did you also make sure on AAWP you choose a site for localization service for geotargeting? When I use the "default" one, it wasn't working.

You can also try Geniuslink, but I don't think link cloaking is allowed on Amazon.

You can try to read their blog here.

Thanks for this, I completely missed that checkbox. Hopefully, this works now.

You use an external pari for edits? What else do you use external parties for?

I only had someone I know editing the articles I wrote using Grammarly. I don't use any other external help and have since stopped using that person to edit since she's now busy with her 9-5.

 

[Bloooop]

Update - September Income Report

Sorry for the lack of updates across my journeys, had a major family issue come up(somewhat expected) that I have to deal with. For now, the situation is somewhat stable so I'm trying to get back to work starting with this update.

September was a pretty good month, but again I'm pretty much on autopilot with the sites. I started going through and checking amazon images and links to see if they are working so I can boost my earnings. That process was cut short due to family issues but I'll start it again tomorrow. Then I might write a few articles for the second site and get them scheduled to post one per week.

Website Stats:



I saw a good jump in traffic but I think this is the limit that it'll go without links and 100 articles. So I'll either have to get links or add another 50-100 articles to this site to boost the earnings. Which I'm not inclined to do at this point. I'm more feeling like letting go of this site because I need more capital to scale and branch off.

As it is this site will be worth about $150k in another 2 months if everything remains as it is. So considering that it took 3 months to build, and a little less than $3k investment I'm really tempted to sell it.

But...

I really love the opportunities presented in the niche. I can make it into a brand and develop an audience/community. I can sell products or info products. There's just a lot of opportunity that I never really planned to let this one go and wanted to keep it.

Just that once you get burnt once there's no point in getting burnt twice. My main site which would've been valued at $190k was wrecked in weeks for no apparent reason so I'd hate for that to happen again.

Anyway, that's how I feel right now, we'll see how the next two months go and then try to get a valuation. If it's acceptable I'll sell it if not then... I might even still sell it.

I honestly don't trust affiliate marketing long-term anymore. Right now it's just a means to an end for me to diversify.

Second Website Analytics:



Weirdly enough this site saw a few keyword gains, and improvements in positions as you'll see below. But the traffic decreased slightly. We're out of the peak season for this site (March-August) since it's in an outdoor niche. So I guess that has something to do with the reduced traffic.



At the peak, I had 75 keywords in the top 3 and 115 in the top 10 so this improvement is pretty good. I'd really love it if this site could miraculously recover before Christmas.



But apart from tweaking a few articles, getting all the pages in the green for CWV, adding about 60 new articles (if I'm remembering correctly), I haven't done anything else since about July.

So this recovery is automatic? And nothing I did from March till July worked...?

Earnings For September:



Ads:



Total Earnings: $7,865

Overall, it's a great income for no work done. And it's 100% profit with no hassle of customers BS to deal with or anyone over my back. I can honestly say building sites is well worth the effort, sacrifices, and dedication it took over the YEARS to get to this point.

Here's to hoping we all achieve your goals next month and the months following.

 

[unib]

What an inspiring journey man! For newbies like me, it is ever more important to understand that we have to put in the hard work, day after day to reach the income goals we often come across in money making courses and ebooks. Truly inspiring to see this. Thank you.

 

[clientica]

Dude, what about your other websites? Do you see any opportunities with them? Did you post new pages and links?

 

[Dankedydank]

Took a couple days to read your journey so far. Man, what a ride it's been.

I'm not sure if this is still applicable but, I know amazon used to penalise their affiliates when they saw them use ads. I know that's not the case here but I've also heard the same about google doing the same. I can only imagine that to be the case given that you seem to have literally tried everything.

I've been away from affiliate for 5 years. So this has been a great inspiration and a strong wake up call. Thanks. I just went live with a new affiliate site and given the set backs you've had, it makes me a little nervous. You've made it clear to me that diversifying and not just working on 1 site is the way to go, but I don't have a budget so it's going to be tough. I may create another 2 sites and keep them strictly info only with just ads then work on them passively over a longer period of time.

You told us your overal goal, 10k a month to get your 8 year retirement but, where do you see your business in 2 years? It's evident affiliate (products - definitely amazon) isn't a long game, so thinking about the future and where you're going to take things, where will that be?

 

[Kikoo75]

Update

I've been out all weekend so I couldn't make updates. But I had a great weekend with the site's performance.

Earnings for Days Missed:

View attachment 160602

Considering that I'm outside the peak period for my niche, I'm excited to see what'll happen during those months. I'll just need to maintain the rankings and keep my fingers crossed that I can survive every google update while diversifying.

On another note, I read an interesting story that is a huge wake-up call for me and should be for you if you procrastinate.

I don't know what you'll get from it after you read it but I realized that anything that distracts you from your goals is meant to stop you from reaching your true potential.

You might've been on a path to becoming a billionaire but because of simple things like porn, the internet, social media, drugs, friends you lose the chance to achieve greatness.

If you really want to achieve greatness, you'll know what to do after reading the story.

https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeterson/comments/kyjzbu

Thanks for this share. This make me realize that
I thought I was working hard but it wasn't the case.
I began amazon affiliate program and have only 40 articles making 90 dollars per month.

Now, I will produce at least 3 articles per day targetimg low competition keywords.

Thanks again and sorry for my english, i am french.