My First Affiliate Journey

[federer907]

Amazing Journey, Keep going bro

 

[Dark Hat 007]

good luck with your journey !

Amazing Journey, Keep going bro

Thank you very much guys!!

 

[Dark Hat 007]

5th November 2022 - 11th November 2022​

Summary of the week

I did write quite an amount of new posts this week; although I didn't write as much as I wanted to, it sure was a productive week. I've been hitting all-time highs for quite a while now.

I applied to Monumetric; bruh, their onboarding is too long and slow, and they seldom reply while I'm waiting for them if I meet any high traffic levels making me eligible for any other Ad platform I am out of. Damn!!!!

One reached out for the so-called onboarding process; I've replied with the questions I was asked, yet no reply... hmm

Meanwhile, who has any idea how I can bypass the so-called $100 fee!! I heard there's a way to.

About my traffic, I've hit so many all-time highs, 600+, 700+, I believe the best is yet to come, and my niche is pretty active during Q4/Winter.

So, I summed up my traffic for this month so far, and it was about 7000+; I then saw that just 4% of that number is converting via my Amz for a deep Amz affiliate site like this; at first, I was a bit gentle with my Google Ads, but I've taken out my gloves, and I've allowed the ads to flow. Of course, I was conscious enough of my user experience.

The thing is, I need this site to pay; there's a lot on the line. Besides Monumeric and, of course, Ezoic, can you recommend any other good similar services?

Ohh, for Adsense users, I strongly advise you to try the Multiplex Ad format; if possible, have it in the middle of your content after a substantial part of it; it has a good CTR.

Images

-> Analytics



11th Nov hasn't been updated, GA4 issues. Speaking of GA4, we all got the email right; after moving to Ga4, please set up BigQuery to import your data from Ga4 there; Ga4 has a poor report for data gathered a year ago.

Crazy, for two days straight I had a total sessions of 666!! If you are a Christian like me you might get the joke!

-> GSC



-> Amazon



Cool, Cool, Cool!!! My target from Amz for this month is at least $1,800!! Yes, and I hope I get there.

-> Word Count



More Post, I think, up to 16; I was to do 20, though!

Plans for this week ​

I haven't curated yet. However, my plan this week is to target two types of KWs, 0 SV kws, while also building topic clusters that target kws I rank for but don't have posts on them. I'll get the KWs for my topic clusters from my GSC and my free Ahref reports.

I should watch Koray Guber's videos on Entity SEO.

Question

How does your Grammarly appear when you are editing content, like a small box that seldom scrolls with the article or its just annoying in one place? I sometimes hate when these platforms carry out updates, they sometimes ruin things.

Write Write Write.

I also want to use this opportunity to give a shout-out and show of support to @Kikerinka, I'm rooting for you!

 

[EpicTasking]

Nice work you got there! I wish you success and nothing less

 

[UltimateBeast]

Great journey! You're doing a splendid job with your website. It should be a lesson for those who say that Affiliate sites are dead concept. Keep proving them wrong!
I'm also in the initial phase of starting niche blogs. Keep thinking that should I start a journey about it or not?
I'm fighting with my laziness & procrastination habits for now which stop me from posting articles regularly. A tough battle!
Good luck to your journey, though. I'll be a silent follower as long as you're on this path.

How does your Grammarly appear when you are editing content, like a small box that seldom scrolls with the article or its just annoying in one place? I sometimes hate when these platforms carry out updates, they sometimes ruin things.

I use Grammarly with MS Word to write my posts. It appears on the right side and scrolls in sync with the pages.

 

[Dark Hat 007]

Nice work you got there! I wish you success and nothing less

Yoo! Thank you very much.

Great journey! You're doing a splendid job with your website

Yeah! Thanks!

It should be a lesson for those who say that Affiliate sites are dead concept. Keep proving them wrong

Hahaha... I'm doing my bit.

I'm also in the initial phase of starting niche blogs

#JustStart.... Just start mehn... Do your research and start.

Keep thinking that should I start a journey about it or not?
I'm fighting with my laziness & procrastination habits for now which stop me from posting articles regularly.

I think you should start a journey it is awesome zooming out, this week I had 700+ traffic, barely a week ago it was around 400+ and I felt that 400+ was so big now I see it as small hahaha... So, journeys help you zoom out and see how far you've gone.

Also, it could be a part of your CV or portfolio, people can see your SEO prowess from it.

It could also motivate someone.

I use Grammarly with MS Word to write my posts. It appears on the right side and scrolls in sync with the pages.

Ohh... Thanks thanks.. I edit directly from my WP... Well, let's keep seeing.

Thank you very much.

 

[Dark Hat 007]

Good luck sir

Thank you very much

 

[UltimateBeast]

#JustStart.... Just start mehn... Do your research and start.

Yes, I'm trying to do my best with all of the projects. Whatever it takes!

I think you should start a journey it is awesome zooming out, this week I had 700+ traffic, barely a week ago it was around 400+ and I felt that 400+ was so big now I see it as small hahaha... So, journeys help you zoom out and see how far you've gone.

Also, it could be a part of your CV or portfolio, people can see your SEO prowess from it.

It could also motivate someone.

I'll take your advice on this and start a journey thread soon. Don't know if someone like me can even think of motivating anyone, but you're right about the zooming-out part. It'll help in the long run for sure.

 

[Kikerinka]

You're really killing it . Your niche should explode towards Christmas, I would not be surprised seeing you making $3K+ in December.

By the way, if I was you I would not mess up with ads right now. This is the best time of the year for your niche. Wait until Christmas, collect as much as possible on Amazon, and just then play around with Ezoic/Monumetric. In any case, I keep following

 

[Dark Hat 007]

You're really killing it . Your niche should explode towards Christmas, I would not be surprised seeing you making $3K+ in December.

By the way, if I was you I would not mess up with ads right now. This is the best time of the year for your niche. Wait until Christmas, collect as much as possible on Amazon, and just then play around with Ezoic/Monumetric. In any case, I keep following

Okay.. Let me discuss what's running in my head with you.

First, 3k+ in December would be a dream come true.

Next.

I feel this next few weeks would see my traffic sky rocket so I believed I should milk this as much as possible because I fear it may drop after the season, it often does.

Typically others in my niche don't run ads so I know I'm not doing great.

What do you suggest??

Finally, not gonna lie, I'll love to have your personal email or professional... Can I get it in your dm?

 

[v_kumar36]

Great results

 

[Dark Hat 007]

what's ur niche and do u use adsense? Thanks

I use Adsense.

My niche, I can't categorize it, let's say family or socials.

Great results

Thank you so much.

 

[1337Alex]

"I write my contents, so please from what you've just read, will an American easily know a native speaker didn't write it??"
Your English is pretty good. It's like 85% there. Some may notice.

 

[Dark Hat 007]

"I write my contents, so please from what you've just read, will an American easily know a native speaker didn't write it??"
Your English is pretty good. It's like 85% there. Some may notice.

Yeah yeah.. Thanks thanks!

 

[Kikerinka]

Okay.. Let me discuss what's running in my head with you.

First, 3k+ in December would be a dream come true.

Next.

I feel this next few weeks would see my traffic sky rocket so I believed I should milk this as much as possible because I fear it may drop after the season, it often does.

Typically others in my niche don't run ads so I know I'm not doing great.

What do you suggest??

Finally, not gonna lie, I'll love to have your personal email or professional... Can I get it in your dm?

I definitely agree with you that you should try to get the most out of this period. However, adding ads does not necessarily mean you will earn more, especially considering your niche, and that those ads will often display "products" of the same category you have affiliate links pointed to.

Hence instead of clicking your link and eventually spending money on Amazon, some people will click the ads. Of course, if you had a lot of traffic, and a chance to get in a premium network already, adding ads would make a lot of sense.

But now I guess you are at about 30-40K PV/month at best. With Ezoic you cannot hope for $10+ RPM at the start, since it takes time until their machine learning finds the optimal placements etc. That means that at best, the ads will add maybe $300 extra/month.

Now that's great, but the question is whether it would not cost you more on Amazon conversion that you will lose because of showing ads?

Of course, the only way to know this is making a test, and actually running ads . But I feel that your website is doing good, exceeding your expectations. Christmas are near, you will make a lot on Amazon, and hence in my opinion it simply isn't the right time for such an experiment...

To your other question: We can discuss things here in DMs if you want. Don't worry, if I decide to leave BHW I will let you know how you can stay in touch with me. But so far I am here, so it is not needed.

 

[Dark Hat 007]

I definitely agree with you that you should try to get the most out of this period. However, adding ads does not necessarily mean you will earn more, especially considering your niche, and that those ads will often display "products" of the same category you have affiliate links pointed to.

Hence instead of clicking your link and eventually spending money on Amazon, some people will click the ads. Of course, if you had a lot of traffic, and a chance to get in a premium network already, adding ads would make a lot of sense.

But now I guess you are at about 30-40K PV/month at best. With Ezoic you cannot hope for $10+ RPM at the start, since it takes time until their machine learning finds the optimal placements etc. That means that at best, the ads will add maybe $300 extra/month.

Now that's great, but the question is whether it would not cost you more on Amazon conversion that you will lose because of showing ads?

Of course, the only way to know this is making a test, and actually running ads . But I feel that your website is doing good, exceeding your expectations. Christmas are near, you will make a lot on Amazon, and hence in my opinion it simply isn't the right time for such an experiment...

To your other question: We can discuss things here in DMs if you want. Don't worry, if I decide to leave BHW I will let you know how you can stay in touch with me. But so far I am here, so it is not needed.

Ohh!! Thank you so much for your input!!!

 

[mikaop]

great journey , to be 2 years consistent is something that is interesting .
my questions :
what's the niche (if you're comfortable)
have you been affected by the google update ?
do you write all the content yourself ?
what's the info / transactional ratio on the site ?

 

[invigorate]

Wow, great journey mate

 

[Dark Hat 007]

November 11th 2022 - November 19th​

Summary of the Week

So, I had over 280 posts but was barely getting enough traffic, look I get there's nothing like "enough traffic" in this game, but 280 posts for crumps!!! Besides that, my niche performs well around Q4. However, I realized that 80% of my traffic was coming from posts I wrote this year, especially after I started the content push on April 25th 2022, so I decided to do some digging with my GSC. I discovered that quite a several posts, especially those written in the first year of my site, 2020, weren't giving up to 1k impressions.

I set GSC to show data for 12 months; I had posts that were two years old plus and were given like 100 impressions in TWELVE MONTHS!!! And no traffic at all, Jesus!! Just a few from way back, the few of those I've rewritten and reoptimized many times gave good impressions and a little traffic.

So, I asked if I should delete those posts that were not giving traffic in this thread, and guess what! 98% of people said I should not delete it; I should reoptimize them!! Phew! Well, I 410ed, aka Deleted, about 41 posts that had just a thousand and < in the last 12 months.

Now, obviously, I went against what the smart folks on here advised, and trust me, my heart is beating severely; I'm checking my traffic almost every hour for the slightest drop... Look, why I went ahead was after I saw this posted here, something from Google that they wrote on the so-called "Helpful content" I'll quote it below;

"Any content — not just unhelpful content — on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that's better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content."

So, yup!! That quote above gave me the guts to delete these posts. Well, I used 410 instead of leaving it at 404 and read that Google advises we use both but prefer 410. I didn't completely delete them; I just set them to "Pending review" and redirected some to similar posts while I watched and waited; the slightest issue is that I'm putting them back.

One thing I fear is that if those content added to my EAT? I had posts getting indexed in split minutes - hours and ranking on the first or second page for their targetted KW same day in the last two weeks..... And also, I feel those posts are responsible for my traffic plummeting around July.... hmm, you never know when it comes to Google!

So guys, if I succeed, I'll be praised for being courageous and if I fail, I'll my chastised and called foolish.

Now we wait...

Well, I won't just sit and watch my pot; I'll put out so many articles but quality articles with top-notch KW research and target very, very easy KWs, zero SV, forums, zero allintitle, and KWs I rank for, but I don't have any posts about.

The greats on here call SEO a place to run experiments, right? Well, I guess this is my experiment and ON MY MAIN SITE - I must be mad!!

Ads

I got tired of waiting for at least a reply from Monumetric, I mean, I was about to give you guys $100, but you won't even reply to my email, at least? Anyways, I moved to NitroPay.

NitroPay offers what Ezoic, Monumetric, and co offer; the only difference is they don't optimize the ads for you, unlike Monumetric and Ezoic with their so-called AI, but their ads are as light as Adsen's, zero tolls on my speed compared to my suffering on Ezoic.

I joined Nitropay four days ago, the onboarding would have taken longer, but I explained to them how urgent I'd have loved them to onboard me, so they got me in with about five bidders, and now I have seven, including Google. They reply quickly during working hours and are willing to help; II met their cofounder, oRedditit, a nice guy.


Anyways, that aside... These are the performance for last week.

Images

-> Analytics



My traffic has been growing; I've reached so many ATHs... I hope it keeps getting better.

-> GSC



Progress!!

-> Amazon



It's the 19th day of November, right, I have more clicks on my Amz links than last month, but I've made less so far compared to the previous month, well!!

-> Word Count

I don't think there's any need for this; I had about 288 posts before the slash, which took me to 247!! I must write as much as possible to get to at least 270.

Plans for the week

Besides being anxious about the outcome of my deleting a whooping 41 posts, I'll just be writing and writing and updating those other posts that have high impressions but aren't still performing well enough... Wish me good luck, guys!!!!

Have a lovely week!!

 

[Dark Hat 007]

what's the niche (if you're comfortable)

Let's call it family and love ones.

have you been affected by the google update ?

Yup! I was around July 18th - August 15th 2022, damn I was sad!

do you write all the content yourself ?

At the very beginning, I had a friend write like 10 articles or so, but now, they are all written by me.

what's the info / transactional ratio on the site ?

100% Affiliate content.

Wow, great journey mate

Thank you very much.