My First Affiliate Journey

[Dark Hat 007]

[An Update]

Earnings/Traffic June - August+

Month	Sessions	Amazon	Mediavine	Earning Totals
June	28,327	$1,200	$760	$1,960
July	25,514	$700	$590	$1,290
August	18,000+	$560+	$480+	$1,040

Possible Total

71,841

$2,460

$1,830

$4,280

God is the Greatest!!!

Sitewide Update

Number of Posts - 404

Pinterest

I paid someone on Fiverr to help create PINs and share them on my Pinterest; I saw growth for the two months I ran it until Pinterest suspended the account. I appealed, and they didn't respond; I am considering whether I should try again.

Featured Images

I also paid someone to create customized featured images for my site; I'd love to see if there'll be any improvement.

Backlinks

I finally decided to do proper Backlink outreach. My site's best season is barely four months away, and I am hoping and striving and praying to get enough returns this time, double last year's, so I looked up my competition's site and have emailed over 300 of the sites that link to them, and I've gotten a few positive replies.

I'm budgeting around $600 for these links. I'm going for the very best, and by very best, I mean sites with high traffic and, in most cases, ancient active sites and, in rare cases, sites with low traffic but substantial social media presence; if you can throw in advice here, please do.

I also want to buy 301 redirect links from big sites and see if they'll add any juice. While I know it may not give me that traffic bump I expect, at least it should increase my DA/DR so I can deter some new sites who may want to steal my easy-to-rank KWs.

I also want to bump up my links with those Google subdomains.

Content Push

I have two and a half months to do a severe content push, and I'll start that once I'm done with the backlink outreach.

Personal Life

I would be lying if I didn't admit to God's blessings this year, the best year of my life SO FAR, and I believe the best is YET to come.

I paid off my mother's house, and life has been great. My mental health is way better; I feel what I suffered from at the beginning was "Imposter Syndrome." I still feel it today because I don't feel like I deserve to have a life a bit better than a few people in my peer group and even those above me. Still, again, if I hadn't had this little success this year, I would have been mad and sad.

Well, thank you for coming to my TED talk. Have a great day.

 

[Kikerinka]

Earnings/Traffic June - August+

Month	Sessions	Amazon	Mediavine	Earning Totals
June	28,327	$1,200	$760	$1,960
July	25,514	$700	$590	$1,290
August	18,000+	$560+	$480+	$1,040

Possible Total

71,841

$2,460

$1,830

$4,280

Great results! Keep it going, the best is yet to come this year for this niche!

Featured Images

I also paid someone to create customized featured images for my site; I'd love to see if there'll be any improvement.

I like this. Even if it doesn't provide any ranking boost, having something unique on your website, some graphical element, is always positive for the authority of your domain in Google's eyes. It is part of the EEAT definitely.

I also want to buy 301 redirect links from big sites and see if they'll add any juice. While I know it may not give me that traffic bump I expect, at least it should increase my DA/DR so I can deter some new sites who may want to steal my easy-to-rank KWs.

Why would you take a risk with 301 redirects, when you're doing well, growing in traffic and earnings every month? Forget the DA/DR thing, it is almost a talk of the past... How many people start genuine sites now? Not many .
Nowadays people will try to attack you with AI, stealing & rewriting your content, or going for massive AI content pushes in your niche (just like they do in any other niche). I do not want to speculate if it will work or not for them (though almost certainly in a long run it won't work for them), but I am sure that people using these strategies do not care a dime about DA/DR of the domains they are scraping & producing content from.

To sum it up, I see no benefit for you getting the redirects, but certainly see some risks of getting penalized because of doing it...

Content Push

I have two and a half months to do a severe content push, and I'll start that once I'm done with the backlink outreach.

Good luck to you, hope you will publish at least 50 new posts .

I paid off my mother's house, and life has been great. My mental health is way better; I feel what I suffered from at the beginning was "Imposter Syndrome." I still feel it today because I don't feel like I deserve to have a life a bit better than a few people in my peer group and even those above me. Still, again, if I hadn't had this little success this year, I would have been mad and sad.

Well, thank you for coming to my TED talk. Have a great day.

Love to read this, especially the part about your mother's house! Keep it up, and you definitely deserve the success with all the effort you've been putting to your website. So do not feel that you don't

 

[Dark Hat 007]

Great results! Keep it going, the best is yet to come this year for this niche!

I was to check up on you today via the DM... Amen, Amen, thanks very much.

I like this. Even if it doesn't provide any ranking boost, having something unique on your website, some graphical element, is always positive for the authority of your domain in Google's eyes. It is part of the EEAT definitely.

Exactly, I often see sites with customized Featured Images as highly professional and authorities in their niche.

Why would you take a risk with 301 redirects, when you're doing well, growing in traffic and earnings every month? Forget the DA/DR thing, it is almost a talk of the past..

Really? To be honest, I'm having serious second thoughts on it as a whole, as I've been doing research here also, especially since the possibility of finding an expired domain that is niche-relevant is very slim, and like @Waifu_tatyana advised in the DM, I should think like Google;

If I must, it should redirect to very relevant pages, and he also pointed out that "imagine redirecting a teacher's domain to a site for plumbing" doesn't make sense in Google's sight, and that makes a lot of sense to me.

I feel if I must, I should look out for sites with zero spam and ugly pasts that have posts that are really targeted at my niche/have backlinks from reputable sites and redirect to a similar relevant page.

Nowadays people will try to attack you with AI, stealing & rewriting your content, or going for massive AI content pushes in your niche (just like they do in any other niche).

This is true.

To sum it up, I see no benefit for you getting the redirects, but certainly see some risks of getting penalized because of doing it...

Arghh!!! haha, mehn!

Good luck to you, hope you will publish at least 50 new posts .

I must, I have to, thanks very very much.

Love to read this, especially the part about your mother's house! Keep it up, and you definitely deserve the success with all the effort you've been putting to your website. So do not feel that you don't

She's been grateful for the place, and that's a driving force to do more!! Thanks once again.

 

[Trent Beasley]

Good luck for your journey.

 

[Lucas Bonsaint]

Good Luck!

 

[Dark Hat 007]

Latest Update

The September Helpful Content Update has stuck with me, down by 80% just a few weeks to my "usual" best season.

I'm out.

 

[Bing]

Latest Update

The September Helpful Content Update has stuck with me, down by 80% just a few weeks to my "usual" best season.

I'm out.

any stats?

 

[Dark Hat 007]

Latest Update

The September Helpful Content Update has stuck with me, down by 80% just a few weeks to my "usual" best season.

I'm out.

For the past 1 month I've been doing a whole lot to see if I can come back, as I speak there's not even a glimmer of the possibility that I would be back especially before my "best" season, but when I see that "come back" I'll try as much as possible to be detailed about what I have done - because I have tried a whole lot.

Something somewhere gives me this optimism (I don't like being optimistic) that I would come back anytime soon but this is fkn GOOGLE!!!

 

[Bing]

Something somewhere gives me this optimism (I don't like being optimistic) that I would come back anytime soon but this is fkn GOOGLE!!!

it's buisness