- Jun 10, 2011
- 2,270
- 1,995
Afternoon all,
I've been writing this on and off for a while now, and what better time to finish it than on a bank holiday.
I've added this into the Making Money section so that as many eyes as possible can see it. I hope these tips can be of some help to others on here, whether it's their first day on here, or they've been around for a while. Thank you as well to the others that I've linked to on this thread and how you have all contributed to BHW over the years.
I've been writing this on and off for a while now, and what better time to finish it than on a bank holiday.
I've added this into the Making Money section so that as many eyes as possible can see it. I hope these tips can be of some help to others on here, whether it's their first day on here, or they've been around for a while. Thank you as well to the others that I've linked to on this thread and how you have all contributed to BHW over the years.
- Put a plan in place. Before you even start anything, take some time to work out what your intentions are for the site. Are you going to use it for churn and burn, a long term money site, or rank and punt it?
At this point of the plan you should work out how much money you’re willing to spend on the site going forward. This will include domain and hosting fees as well as the cost of any themes you may want to use. Likewise, it’s important to make note of any paid plugins you want to use such as Amazon Associates plugins.
You should also think about how you’re going to monetise the site. Will you do this through adverts, CPA, or affiliate sales such as Amazon? This can change over time and be expanded upon, but it’s important you make these decisions from the get go.
- Picking your niche. I’ll probably get some backlash for stating this, but in my personal opinion, it is always the better option to start out in a niche you know a lot about. With Google updating how it handles the ranking of reviews, you need to have a strong grasp of the items you’re reviewing. This isn’t like the old days where you could just pull the details from Amazon, add in some generic crap and hope for the best.
If you want some true inspiration on how much you can achieve by writing your own articles, check out the great threads by @Bloooop He's an absolute machine when it comes to generating content and is a great inspiration for all of us!
When you’re writing about a topic you’re passionate about, this is easily conveyed to the reader. They are much more likely to click through to the product you’re promoting compared to some shitty list article. Case in point, I have a “best of” article on one of my sites. This is full of informative information that is generally helpful to the reader. In comparison, a website in a somewhat similar niche that has over 300 links to it’s page is now performing really poorly. The information isn’t helpful to the reader at all and this is being reflected in its ranking in Google. Speaking of links…
- Choose your links wisely. I get it; you’ve just launched your website and you want to get it ranking right away. The sooner it ranks, the sooner you’ll be richer than Bill Gates and you can retire early. Pretty sweet, eh?
Links are an important part of any website, there’s no denying that. However, you need to think of this logically. Why would a brand new website amass a large number of links so quickly? It wouldn’t. This looks really spammy right away, and it’s the last thing that you want to do.
Instead, my recommendation is that you take the time to decide what links you’d like to have for your site. Private Blog Network (PBN) posts, do still work extremely well, presuming you choose the proper vendor. I’m not going to be evil and start telling you who not to go to for your links, but if you see a BST on here and all the reviews are from newbies with tiny post counts, then that should be an indication of the kind of seller that they are. I’m being extremely careful here not to push anyone in the direction of a seller that I recommend as well. I previously did that and got hit with a warning of selling outwith the market place, so that mistake won’t be happening again.
I would also highly recommend that you do add in niche edits, again from respectable sellers. The benefit of niche edits is that they’re already on pre-existing websites and your link is being dropped into the page. This can be a great way to increase your ranking in a short turn around time. When buying any kind of link from here, remember that what worked for person X may not work for you.
Whilst they’re not anywhere near as useful as they used to be, I still like to add web 2.0s and profile backlinks into the mix as well. Whilst they’re not going to be adding a lot of power to the site (they can help for low competition keywords), they do add a bit of link diversity to your backlink profile over time. Unlike the PBNs and niche edits, I build the web 2.0s and profile backlinks myself. I just take my time in doing it, and use a VPN to change my IP address. Don’t cheap out and get a free VPN, buy one instead.
- Don’t be afraid of low competition keywords. It still amazes me that a lot of site owners won’t touch low competition keywords. They’re prime for the taking and are a great way to bring traffic to a site. By liking to higher competition keywords on your site, low competition keywords can be great to bring in traffic to them. Likewise, low competition keywords are great in bringing in some additional sales. It may not make you the next Elon Musk in terms of sales you’ll get from the page, but money is money after all.
- Site layout. @splishsplash is the authority on here when it comes to site layout. He’s written a lot of guides on siloing a website. It’s always worked for me. I highly recommend that you read it and get better acquainted with the theory of silo structure websites.
- Stick to your plan. Nuff said really.
- Invest your time in social media, if appropriate. Regardless of your niche of choice, it’s safe to say that you should be able to use Twitter and or Facebook at the very least. If you’re really fortunate, you should be able to also use Instagram, YouTube and also Pinterest. For one of my sites, I use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and also YT.
I’ve only just started with Pinterest, and the jury is out on if I’ll continue with it. The thing is though, they’re all free to use. You might not see much of a conversion from using them. On the other hand, they’re all free to use, so why not use them?
- Do not get complacent. We’ve all been there that when the site doesn’t perform as well as you’d like it to. However, this does not mean that you should immediately neglect the site. It takes time for pages to rank.
Thanks for sharing and making the process as simplified as possible to understand. Definitely takes time to rank. Unless you have a ton of experience with spam tools, or access to big-budget links & guest posts. But that isn't a negative thing I think. Newcomers forget ranking 100th after your first month is your starting point. Not your end point, lol.
