My journey to building a massive website
- Thread starter Carolus Rex
- Start date
Carolus Rex
Regular Member
- Nov 20, 2023
- 244
- 210
Hey thanks. I posted an update last Sunday. Yesterday the site saw its first day with over 100 clicks from Google, actually just over 110 clicks. Looks like we might get to 3k+ clicks in May but we'll see. The site is still very young.
Carolus Rex
Regular Member
- Nov 20, 2023
- 244
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I've been thinking lately. While the tool in it self could potentially attract 1M+ visitors per month from Google, I don't want to just rely on one source of traffic. But the current pages are not something I can post to YouTube, Pinterest, or even Twitter. So what I want to do is start a news section in the niche. I will also post some supporting blog posts and link throughout the site.
My main source of traffic will probably still have to be Google. But I want to diversify with Google discover/news. I need to build out the news section, add the site to Google Publisher Central, create some web stories and share the posts a lot on social media. This should, in theory, make my site show up in Google Discover. Then I would like to get on TikTok but that will be further down the line.
We'll see if this is possible or not in the next few months.
My main source of traffic will probably still have to be Google. But I want to diversify with Google discover/news. I need to build out the news section, add the site to Google Publisher Central, create some web stories and share the posts a lot on social media. This should, in theory, make my site show up in Google Discover. Then I would like to get on TikTok but that will be further down the line.
We'll see if this is possible or not in the next few months.
Carolus Rex
Regular Member
- Nov 20, 2023
- 244
- 210
A few days ago the daily clicks from Google almost doubled compared to the week before. Yesterday it got 176 clicks in GSC. I can see the traffic from Russia is increasing but this time they don't come from Yandex (not ranking on there at all it seems), they're coming from Google. Didn't even know Google was a thing in Russia. The biggest country is by far the US but it's only about 20% of my overall traffic. This site gets visits from every single country in the northern hemisphere. Which of course is bad for RPMs, but I think we'll be just fine once we start display ads.
If the trend continues we should see 10k clicks in July at the latest.
If the trend continues we should see 10k clicks in July at the latest.
Carolus Rex
Regular Member
- Nov 20, 2023
- 244
- 210
Interesting. One of the competitors that popped up about a month ago only had 1 page, so didn't see him as a threat. Now when I check they have separated the tool into individual pages in the exact same way as I have. This site was launched in April, and now they have thousands of pages, all major languages as well. I don't see this guy as a big threat at all, but it will be interesting to see if he keeps ranking or get deindexed. His approach is a lot like my approach for the old site, and that one got absolutely hammered.
Carolus Rex
Regular Member
- Nov 20, 2023
- 244
- 210
3 Month Update
May has been a great month in terms of growth. On track to do the same numbers as the old site in 1-2 months now. I've started link building more seriously now and I hope that will help the site stay strong in any future Google updates. Currently doing social shares, foundational links and niche edits.
Here's the GSC for the month of May:
On May 30th we saw an all-time-high of 217 clicks coming from Google. Traffic is stable right now around 180-200 clicks per day.
A few weeks ago we finally got the topical authority to kick in. Every single page I upload is indexed and ranking #3 in a day. Well almost, except for one that just won't index for some reason. Might have to send some backlinks to that page but it's not a big volume keyword so I'm not too worried.
Out of almost 200 keywords I have only a handful that is ranking #4-#10 and one or two that is ranking on page 2. These keywords are a little bit more competitive but I'm sure we'll reach top #3 for them as well. The site now has 2 keywords ranking #1 and a handful ranking #2.
The main keyword is ranking #5-6 and it did bring in close to 1000 clicks in May. I'm sure if I get this to rank #1 I will have 50k+ monthly traffic from this one keyword alone.
As for the Google Analytics.
Sessions: 6051
Unique users: 4927
Time on page: 55s
Pageviews per user: 1.76
US traffic is around 20% but we also have plenty of traffic from Canada, Australia, UK and western EU.
The old site is now completely deindexed so I'm no longer competing with myself on some keywords.
What's next?
In June I want to reach at least 250 total published pages. This would mean I'm about 25% done with the pages. We're growing this site slower than the old one but I think it's the right move.
Will continue with the link building strategy for a few more months and then analyze the results. Later, as I've mentioned before, I want to start buying more premium guest posts.
My predictions for June is that the site will reach 7k+ monthly clicks. This would bring us closer to 10k sessions and I should be able to start applying for some ad providers in July.
By the end of the summer I want the site to be earning $100/month or more. We almost did that with AdSense on the old site before Google shut it down so I'm confident this will not be a problem.
May has been a great month in terms of growth. On track to do the same numbers as the old site in 1-2 months now. I've started link building more seriously now and I hope that will help the site stay strong in any future Google updates. Currently doing social shares, foundational links and niche edits.
Here's the GSC for the month of May:
On May 30th we saw an all-time-high of 217 clicks coming from Google. Traffic is stable right now around 180-200 clicks per day.
A few weeks ago we finally got the topical authority to kick in. Every single page I upload is indexed and ranking #3 in a day. Well almost, except for one that just won't index for some reason. Might have to send some backlinks to that page but it's not a big volume keyword so I'm not too worried.
Out of almost 200 keywords I have only a handful that is ranking #4-#10 and one or two that is ranking on page 2. These keywords are a little bit more competitive but I'm sure we'll reach top #3 for them as well. The site now has 2 keywords ranking #1 and a handful ranking #2.
The main keyword is ranking #5-6 and it did bring in close to 1000 clicks in May. I'm sure if I get this to rank #1 I will have 50k+ monthly traffic from this one keyword alone.
As for the Google Analytics.
Sessions: 6051
Unique users: 4927
Time on page: 55s
Pageviews per user: 1.76
US traffic is around 20% but we also have plenty of traffic from Canada, Australia, UK and western EU.
The old site is now completely deindexed so I'm no longer competing with myself on some keywords.
What's next?
In June I want to reach at least 250 total published pages. This would mean I'm about 25% done with the pages. We're growing this site slower than the old one but I think it's the right move.
Will continue with the link building strategy for a few more months and then analyze the results. Later, as I've mentioned before, I want to start buying more premium guest posts.
My predictions for June is that the site will reach 7k+ monthly clicks. This would bring us closer to 10k sessions and I should be able to start applying for some ad providers in July.
By the end of the summer I want the site to be earning $100/month or more. We almost did that with AdSense on the old site before Google shut it down so I'm confident this will not be a problem.
Carolus Rex
Regular Member
- Nov 20, 2023
- 244
- 210
Hey guys, sorry for the hiatus... Been a lot going on in my life lately.
I wanted to post the June update but decided it might be better to just do the June and July updates together since July is almost over. Just wanted to update you guys, let you know I'm still around and the site is still growing.
Finalized a purchase of another site yesterday. Everything seems to be in order but man do I hope it doesn't crash and burn like some other smaller sites I've bought in the past. The site is in a completely different niche and it makes around $500/month on Journey, the price was mid 4-figures so about 10x multiple. However, it has only been on Journey for a couple of months so I'm hopeful the RPM will keep climbing.
As for the main project of this journey, it's still climbing in the SERPS. I just checked the Search Console and am amazed by how many visitors I get to the front page. Keep in mind the main keyword is still only ranking #5-6, but in July it reached just shy of 2.5k visitors from Google alone. My second largest page only has 820 visits from Google. If I can manage to rank even #3 I would be getting tens of thousands of visitors to the front page.
The majority of the other keywords and pages rank #2 now. Except for about 4 that rank #1 and a handful that rank #3. I'm seeing a few of my biggest pages, about 4-5 total, that jump in and out of the SERPS from day to day. Not sure what that is all about, trying to reindex but it seems to be just random.
I've also been slacking a bit with publishing new pages but so far I've yet to be punished for lack of consistency.
Oh and I finally got accepted to Journey, so will start seeing some income from this project now as well. Will post a longer update for both June and July this weekend hopefully.
I wanted to post the June update but decided it might be better to just do the June and July updates together since July is almost over. Just wanted to update you guys, let you know I'm still around and the site is still growing.
Finalized a purchase of another site yesterday. Everything seems to be in order but man do I hope it doesn't crash and burn like some other smaller sites I've bought in the past. The site is in a completely different niche and it makes around $500/month on Journey, the price was mid 4-figures so about 10x multiple. However, it has only been on Journey for a couple of months so I'm hopeful the RPM will keep climbing.
As for the main project of this journey, it's still climbing in the SERPS. I just checked the Search Console and am amazed by how many visitors I get to the front page. Keep in mind the main keyword is still only ranking #5-6, but in July it reached just shy of 2.5k visitors from Google alone. My second largest page only has 820 visits from Google. If I can manage to rank even #3 I would be getting tens of thousands of visitors to the front page.
The majority of the other keywords and pages rank #2 now. Except for about 4 that rank #1 and a handful that rank #3. I'm seeing a few of my biggest pages, about 4-5 total, that jump in and out of the SERPS from day to day. Not sure what that is all about, trying to reindex but it seems to be just random.
I've also been slacking a bit with publishing new pages but so far I've yet to be punished for lack of consistency.
Oh and I finally got accepted to Journey, so will start seeing some income from this project now as well. Will post a longer update for both June and July this weekend hopefully.
Carolus Rex
Regular Member
- Nov 20, 2023
- 244
- 210
4 Month Update
Right, it's Monday time for an update.
So let's start with the month of June since I missed that update. Here's the GSC:
Pretty good growth compared to the month of May, with an all time high on the 26th with 357 clicks. I was a bit concerned that the traffic started to stagnate but overall happy with the month. CTR is up, clicks almost doubled and impressions shot up well over 100k.
Google Analytics for June:
Sessions: 11k (+83%)
Unique users: 8.7k (+77%)
Time on page: 56s (+1s)
Pageviews per user: 1.7 (-0.06)
The site did not earn anything for the month of June.
5 Month Update
July was also a month with good growth. This is the first month that we surpassed 10k clicks on Google. This is also the month that I finally applied for Journey by Mediavine but still did not show any ads for the entire month of July, hence no ad revenue.
Here's the GSC for the month of July:
Even though the month started out pretty slow the CTR is looking great, steady growth. Impressions and clicks also grew by a decent amount, just wish it would have grown a bit more. All time high reached 471 clicks on July 31st which is pretty good. Now I have a few days of data for the beginning of August and the site keeps growing. Not a single day in August has been below 540 and yesterday it saw an all time high of 591 clicks which is very close to the ATH of 611 clicks on the old site. CTR for August is currently at 9.3% which is very healthy.
Enough talking about the current month, we'll see by September how the month progressed.
Google Analytics for July:
Sessions: 15k (+36%)
Unique users: 12k (+38%)
Time on page: 56s (+0s)
Pageviews per user: 1.8 (+0.1)
Not the best growth but I'll take it. As I mentioned before, I kind of procrastinated a bit in July unfortunately. Been busy with other stuff and I also acquired a new site. I will not go into detail about the site I purchased but it's looking good, the past week we made $100. Should be able to get closer to $400 for August.
Journey by Mediavine
Finally got accepted after almost a month's wait, and I think they could make the backend a bit more user friendly. Still early days so no idea where we're going to end up in regards to the RPM, so far we've only made $2 in August. I'm really hoping the RPM will get closer to $20 in the next couple of weeks or months.
If anyone is interested: My site was not previously approved on Adsense, so that's not at all a requirement. I'm not even on the Google ADX network which is required by Ezoic for example. I simply installed the Grow plugin and followed the process of applying, waited for close to 4 weeks and finally got an email telling me I was accepted. My traffic is still around 20% US, around 30% tier 2, and another 30% tier 3. My site also does not have a lot of content, which is a bit worrying as I'm not sure how many ads I can fit without the visitors bouncing. Let's see what happens until the next update.
If the traffic keeps steady in August I'm expecting closer to 16k clicks for the month and well over 20k sessions. Revenue wise I think August will bring in around $50, not too bad for a 5-month-old website.
Right, it's Monday time for an update.
So let's start with the month of June since I missed that update. Here's the GSC:
Pretty good growth compared to the month of May, with an all time high on the 26th with 357 clicks. I was a bit concerned that the traffic started to stagnate but overall happy with the month. CTR is up, clicks almost doubled and impressions shot up well over 100k.
Google Analytics for June:
Sessions: 11k (+83%)
Unique users: 8.7k (+77%)
Time on page: 56s (+1s)
Pageviews per user: 1.7 (-0.06)
The site did not earn anything for the month of June.
5 Month Update
July was also a month with good growth. This is the first month that we surpassed 10k clicks on Google. This is also the month that I finally applied for Journey by Mediavine but still did not show any ads for the entire month of July, hence no ad revenue.
Here's the GSC for the month of July:
Even though the month started out pretty slow the CTR is looking great, steady growth. Impressions and clicks also grew by a decent amount, just wish it would have grown a bit more. All time high reached 471 clicks on July 31st which is pretty good. Now I have a few days of data for the beginning of August and the site keeps growing. Not a single day in August has been below 540 and yesterday it saw an all time high of 591 clicks which is very close to the ATH of 611 clicks on the old site. CTR for August is currently at 9.3% which is very healthy.
Enough talking about the current month, we'll see by September how the month progressed.
Google Analytics for July:
Sessions: 15k (+36%)
Unique users: 12k (+38%)
Time on page: 56s (+0s)
Pageviews per user: 1.8 (+0.1)
Not the best growth but I'll take it. As I mentioned before, I kind of procrastinated a bit in July unfortunately. Been busy with other stuff and I also acquired a new site. I will not go into detail about the site I purchased but it's looking good, the past week we made $100. Should be able to get closer to $400 for August.
Journey by Mediavine
Finally got accepted after almost a month's wait, and I think they could make the backend a bit more user friendly. Still early days so no idea where we're going to end up in regards to the RPM, so far we've only made $2 in August. I'm really hoping the RPM will get closer to $20 in the next couple of weeks or months.
If anyone is interested: My site was not previously approved on Adsense, so that's not at all a requirement. I'm not even on the Google ADX network which is required by Ezoic for example. I simply installed the Grow plugin and followed the process of applying, waited for close to 4 weeks and finally got an email telling me I was accepted. My traffic is still around 20% US, around 30% tier 2, and another 30% tier 3. My site also does not have a lot of content, which is a bit worrying as I'm not sure how many ads I can fit without the visitors bouncing. Let's see what happens until the next update.
If the traffic keeps steady in August I'm expecting closer to 16k clicks for the month and well over 20k sessions. Revenue wise I think August will bring in around $50, not too bad for a 5-month-old website.
Seo Captain
Elite Member
- Jun 16, 2022
- 2,103
- 586
Will you be using AI content on the site sometimes ? What AI tools you plan to use for this ?
Carolus Rex
Regular Member
- Nov 20, 2023
- 244
- 210
Well, I'm not planning on using too much AI. The little text that is on each page originates from AI, is tweaked a little bit but uniform for most pages, if that makes sense? I also have some edited AI content for the front page and the about page but that's it pretty much.
Carolus Rex
Regular Member
- Nov 20, 2023
- 244
- 210
Hey guys, sorry for the absence. This website is still going but we hit a snag in 2024 and it was completely dead for a long time. I'll post an update in a bit detailing what happened, how I recovered and where we are standing today. Still believe this site can become big, maybe not $100k per month lol, but maybe $5k+ per month is possible.
Carolus Rex
Regular Member
- Nov 20, 2023
- 244
- 210
Update
Right, so this will probably be a long update, long due. Last when I left you off it was August 2024 and the site was looking good, growing month-to-month and we just started earning from Journey by Mediavine. Around this time I was out travelling and setting up base in Spain, which didn't exactly go as planned.
Here's what happened
I still was working on the website but not as much as I probably should have. Along side the website I also set up an Amazon arbitrage business with FBA, I was making decent money until they started messing with me for no reason at all. The first payment went through, no problem. However, when it got time for the second payment they declined my bank info as well as my business info. To this day they still owe me thousands of euros and I have given up on trying to please them. After resubmitting my papers for the third time they outright banned me for 6 months, I'll never work with Amazon EU again.
In the middle of all this shit the website tanked in the December 2024 update. I'll get to that in more detail shortly. Coupled with a severe mid life crisis and I started drinking heavily, probably one of the worst moments in my life. So I had to pack up and leave, move back home and try to figure everything out from the beginning again. My only income during this time was from student loans and a bit of savings. I'd say it was the right decision to move home but I'm still not quite alright. Been battling with some mental health problems ever since and still drinking a bit too much but it's getting better at least.
That's probably the biggest reason why I disappeared from BHW. The second reason was that I lost all hope for the website and IM in general.
The website: The downfall, the return and the future
As I mentioned the website got absolutely gutted in December of 2024. First I want to cover the stats for the months leading up to the Google update.
August actually saw some great improvements compared to July, and we ended up with 20.5k clicks in GSC, the keywords started ranking in the top 2 with some still at #3. Here's a screenshot of that:
In september we only grew a little:
And here is October with a slight growth as well:
And finally the month of November was the best one to date with just over 32k clicks:
Not too bad for a website set up in May. In terms of ad revenue we got the following from Journey by Mediavine.
September: $128
October: $124
November: $147
Unfortunately I don't have access to the RPM for these months but it wasn't the best, I'll tell you that.
Now come December, the website did grow quite a bit initially with around 1200-1300 clicks daily and all-time-high of 1509 clicks. But as you can see just before Christmas it got hit by the algorithm. Still we managed to make $155 for the month which wasnt all that bad.
During this time I tried to just keep publishing pages and buying backlinks in hopes that it would recover. That never happened... So I kind of gave up on everything.
As you can see there was no improvements at all for the first quarter and a bit. I noticed one of my competitors had also fallen off so I started tracking them. Suddenly they were back and ranking just fine. I really tried to find what they had done to recover and I saw that they had revomed A LOT of pages, as well as all their translations. So I removed about 150 of the low performing pages from prior to the update. I also removed all my translations as I had just started translating the site back in October/November.
Suddenly, out of the blue, one day I checked my ad revenue and saw that it was up by quite a bit (still not much but compared to Q1). So I went to check my GSC and rankings and to my surprise it was finally ranking again. I've tried to look for another explanation but I don't think there was any update at the time so most likely it was due to me removing all those pages.
Here's my GSC from May:
Still down a bit over 20k from November but this was a sign that Google had new trust for the site. It's actually insane that it jumped from 70 daily clicks to almost 650 in just two days.
This is when I decided to go back and try again. Slowly building the website back up, adding just a few pages per week and hoping it would grow even more. It felt like forever but I couldn't seem to get past the 700 mark for 4 months, it was completely flat all the way through August. Until yesterday, we almost broke 900 clicks:
I know September is far from over but I really do hope that this is a trend that will continue. My ad revenue has been stable around $120-140 the past few months. However, today when I look at the last 28 days it's up to $192 with the last two days both bringing in just over $10/day.
Perhaps the traffic and revenue will jump up and down a bit for the next couple of weeks but I'm finally seeing something positive here and thought I would share it with you.
Moving forward
I will not be doing any translations at all for this website, at least not for another couple of years when perhaps Google shows more trust. My thoughts are that I will grow this slowly for a while, publishing 2 pages, 2 times per week (so total 4 per week). Another good news is that I'm getting tons of organic backlinks from Reddit, and they seem to prefer my site over the competition in many cases!
Final words
The past year has been a hell of a experience, both physically and mentally, I really hope you guys have had a good year. I'll try to update monthly again, even if people don't read these journeys any longer (there really are none in this forum these days, which is quite sad). I'll do it for myself, to try and motivate myself and to clear my head a bit.
Right, so this will probably be a long update, long due. Last when I left you off it was August 2024 and the site was looking good, growing month-to-month and we just started earning from Journey by Mediavine. Around this time I was out travelling and setting up base in Spain, which didn't exactly go as planned.
Here's what happened
I still was working on the website but not as much as I probably should have. Along side the website I also set up an Amazon arbitrage business with FBA, I was making decent money until they started messing with me for no reason at all. The first payment went through, no problem. However, when it got time for the second payment they declined my bank info as well as my business info. To this day they still owe me thousands of euros and I have given up on trying to please them. After resubmitting my papers for the third time they outright banned me for 6 months, I'll never work with Amazon EU again.
In the middle of all this shit the website tanked in the December 2024 update. I'll get to that in more detail shortly. Coupled with a severe mid life crisis and I started drinking heavily, probably one of the worst moments in my life. So I had to pack up and leave, move back home and try to figure everything out from the beginning again. My only income during this time was from student loans and a bit of savings. I'd say it was the right decision to move home but I'm still not quite alright. Been battling with some mental health problems ever since and still drinking a bit too much but it's getting better at least.
That's probably the biggest reason why I disappeared from BHW. The second reason was that I lost all hope for the website and IM in general.
The website: The downfall, the return and the future
As I mentioned the website got absolutely gutted in December of 2024. First I want to cover the stats for the months leading up to the Google update.
August actually saw some great improvements compared to July, and we ended up with 20.5k clicks in GSC, the keywords started ranking in the top 2 with some still at #3. Here's a screenshot of that:
In september we only grew a little:
And here is October with a slight growth as well:
And finally the month of November was the best one to date with just over 32k clicks:
Not too bad for a website set up in May. In terms of ad revenue we got the following from Journey by Mediavine.
September: $128
October: $124
November: $147
Unfortunately I don't have access to the RPM for these months but it wasn't the best, I'll tell you that.
Now come December, the website did grow quite a bit initially with around 1200-1300 clicks daily and all-time-high of 1509 clicks. But as you can see just before Christmas it got hit by the algorithm. Still we managed to make $155 for the month which wasnt all that bad.
During this time I tried to just keep publishing pages and buying backlinks in hopes that it would recover. That never happened... So I kind of gave up on everything.
As you can see there was no improvements at all for the first quarter and a bit. I noticed one of my competitors had also fallen off so I started tracking them. Suddenly they were back and ranking just fine. I really tried to find what they had done to recover and I saw that they had revomed A LOT of pages, as well as all their translations. So I removed about 150 of the low performing pages from prior to the update. I also removed all my translations as I had just started translating the site back in October/November.
Suddenly, out of the blue, one day I checked my ad revenue and saw that it was up by quite a bit (still not much but compared to Q1). So I went to check my GSC and rankings and to my surprise it was finally ranking again. I've tried to look for another explanation but I don't think there was any update at the time so most likely it was due to me removing all those pages.
Here's my GSC from May:
Still down a bit over 20k from November but this was a sign that Google had new trust for the site. It's actually insane that it jumped from 70 daily clicks to almost 650 in just two days.
This is when I decided to go back and try again. Slowly building the website back up, adding just a few pages per week and hoping it would grow even more. It felt like forever but I couldn't seem to get past the 700 mark for 4 months, it was completely flat all the way through August. Until yesterday, we almost broke 900 clicks:
I know September is far from over but I really do hope that this is a trend that will continue. My ad revenue has been stable around $120-140 the past few months. However, today when I look at the last 28 days it's up to $192 with the last two days both bringing in just over $10/day.
Perhaps the traffic and revenue will jump up and down a bit for the next couple of weeks but I'm finally seeing something positive here and thought I would share it with you.
Moving forward
I will not be doing any translations at all for this website, at least not for another couple of years when perhaps Google shows more trust. My thoughts are that I will grow this slowly for a while, publishing 2 pages, 2 times per week (so total 4 per week). Another good news is that I'm getting tons of organic backlinks from Reddit, and they seem to prefer my site over the competition in many cases!
Final words
The past year has been a hell of a experience, both physically and mentally, I really hope you guys have had a good year. I'll try to update monthly again, even if people don't read these journeys any longer (there really are none in this forum these days, which is quite sad). I'll do it for myself, to try and motivate myself and to clear my head a bit.
Attachments
goodjob milly club is next
LinkZenith
BANNED
- Dec 30, 2024
- 235
- 94
Nice approach!
Excited to see your results.
Excited to see your results.
- Jul 9, 2015
- 782
- 40
Really ambitious goal respect for aiming high i like your strategy of going for fewer but stronger backlinks it’s something I’ve also been wondering about compared to bulk links from smaller sites. Your focus on building a functional large scale site instead of a bunch of small niche ones makes sense with the way Google’s updates have been hitting. Curious to see how your indexing and traffic grow once you get 30–40% of the pages live. Definitely following this journey!