Journey to 2K a month.

[lightningblitz]

Before I get into the how, I would to share the why.

I work a 9 - 5 and make good money. Problem is, I am not exactly a fan of the job. I have some skills. I was a writer for a once well known Gaming website and have written a few kindle books. Additionally, I run a website and business for a specific niche which is hard to emerge into. After spending a lot of money learning SEO and website building, making a lot of mistakes, I figured a lot of this out. I learned a lot from my failures.

My primary website is not a business model which makes a lot of money up front. It is more of a passion site for me and my team and we are not exactly making money. Although I will continue with this project, I have learned more about what to do right if I did it again.

Content was never a problem. Budget is what ever it takes to start earning.

My primary business model is:

1. Kindle Books and eBooks to build an email list.
2. SEO to get users to the free offer.
3. Build relationship and trust.
4. Sell expensive coaching.

Straight forward, makes us good money when we get clients, but it takes a LOT of work. The private coaching takes hours in a large block which I frankly do not have. So that brought me to making additional sources of revenue.

I already figured out the whole Kindle marketing thing, by trial and error. I made decent money but my niche is purely informational. And a lot of the content can be found in some extent for free. Thus I have a problem with my business model. People often will not pay for something if they can get it for free. Plus my industry has authorities which are well trusted and make a bulk of the money.

That brings me to how I plan to make 2K a month. Off of Authority sites.

I plan on building THREE authority sites and have them to a decent size within six months.


I will also support these three sites with three feeder micro niche sites. The goal of the micro niche sites is to give me some income while I work on these projects so I do not may out of pocket as I did with my passion site.

So far I have:

• Three Authority Sites in the works.
• Three Micro Niche Sites in the works.
• Some Black Hat tools to put a few links to the sites.
• A bunch of KW research done.
• Hosting.
• Domains purchased.
• Six months training on 'what not to do'.
• The ability to spew content.

After doing research on what I am good at, and what I am not, I decided to play it smart. I will not spend hours trying and failing at what I cannot accomplish. I plan on doing what I can do well and excelling at it. That is content. For me to do 5x article a night with at least 500 words is not an issue. I plan on getting 5 articles per authority site a week up minimum, thus the point of an authority site.

By six months, all three sites will have at least 120 articles centric mostly around KW's which are profitable. I do plan on some 'fluff' to make the site appear more natural and to interlink to other profitable and related KW's which will lead to more income.

Money is a secondary thought for these sites.

My link building strategy is simple:

1. A couple High Authority links per authority site.
2. A plethora of inter linking between articles within category/silo.
3. Providing my existing sites to put my own ads on to funnel people to my other sites, which have good ranking already.
4. Blast a few links (Low amount) of links to the high authority links to keep my site clean and provide some juice to my links.

How I plan to earn money is to start with Adsense. I want to do this as White Hat as possible and Rank KW's off of site size and authority primarily. I will use secondary incomes streams such as Click Bank and Amazon if applicable to my niche and what traffic I get.

If I am missing something, please let me know. I think I have this down to a good start. As of right now, content is king in my opinion for my type of site. I am looking for a long term revenue stream.

 

[NoHeadBoyz]

Thanks for this great post! Keep it up man

 

[nanavlad]

You seem to have most things covered
You may need some more backlinks at some stage
But since you have time on your si
I would build some web20 and put up some videos as i go along and run some backlinks at them
at a steady pace

Social signals count for a lot these days
so do a good job on them

 

[lightningblitz]

You seem to have most things covered
You may need some more backlinks at some stage
But since you have time on your si
I would build some web20 and put up some videos as i go along and run some backlinks at them
at a steady pace

Social signals count for a lot these days
so do a good job on them

I can get some web 2.0's up and will outsource a video or two if possible once I have some content to not make it look spammy or fake.

Same with social pings and signals. Once it is up and running I will drip them in to look natural. Thank you!

 

[lightningblitz]

Today I am doing additional KW research.

My original goal of 120 pages per site is seemingly too low. I plan on bumping it up exponentially. The goal is to get potentially thousands of KW's ranked. Minimum 1K is what I am shooting for. This means I will need to potentially expand the scope of one of my sites as it seems too narrow for this goal.

A risk is involved with one of my sites for duplicate articles about the same KW, it will still have fresh content. This is due to the nature of one of my sites. It will not hurt my KW rankings, but it will extent the ranking of other KW's. The point of an authority site is to completely cover a topic to appear natural, so that goal takes precedence over KW ranking from an organic stand point.

Additionally, I am taking risks with my passion site as far as SEO goes. I want to see what I can and can't do as a trial. It is full of content and unique to the niche which is a rarity. I am trying to expand and see what limitation I would have as far as SEO goes.

 

[lightningblitz]

What was done since the last update:

- Very careful KW research for Ad revenue
- Very careful KW research for product selling
- Research various product selling options

Obviously some KW's are better for CPC and getting your site more money from AD's by paying better. Others are better to get more traffic to sell a product too.

I studied sales funnels for my niche, found products which have untapped potential (Low cost, not over saturated, and which would sell in the portion of the sales funnel my sites are in - Informational).

This is a LONG way from making money, but this expanded my scope of KW's and what to write about. I can target KW's which do not make as much from traditional Ad dollars (Which most people focus on) and focus more on quality traffic which converts specifically in my sales funnel.

I will be doing more KW research and reviewing the products I am attempting to sell by contacting the distributors and creators of the products and doing a review of them.

Site will focus on the following sales funnel:

- Get traffic from good CPC traffic
- Get traffic from broad high traffic, low comp, N/A CPC traffic
- Filter in quality content to hit more traffic based KWs quickly to establish a base
- After base is established of average traffic begin filtering in specific KWs based on selling products
- Monitor, and scale up


In the past I failed because I had a plethora of great content, but did not have the homework done before I threw content up. I refuse to make that mistake again.

 

[lightningblitz]

Strategy matters.

i have been doing a lot of KW research and am mapping articles now. I should be able to pump out ten a day easily.

The amount of content is still too low for projection sake. I am hoping for each site to break 1000 per site.

The goal is to get the sites big, make passive income, and flip all six sites.

SEO is going to be diverse. Not my specialty so I am out sourcing. I have a link service from BTB and am getting high quality 2.0s and doing tiered building with tools from them. I am also building a public blog network off of free servers to use for some link juice regulation. Last step is social signals which I have not done.

 

[lightningblitz]

I have been taking action and turning KW's into articles.

My past writing and writing KW content is interesting. Obviously, not ALL material should be about specific KW's, that looks bad to the reader and to SE's. The best bet is to err on the side of caution and put up a plethora of good content, with KW's sprinkled in.

In total, between all 6 sites I am working on I have 200 articles. I finished another ten last night. All articles vary from 400 words to 900 words.

I notice it is hard for a LOT of people to write anything in that amount of time.

When I wrote for websites previously I learned a few things.

1. I needed to have some interest in what I was doing.
2. I needed to be learning something.
3. No distractions.

1 is listed for the simplicity of if I don't care about the topic, it will suck. I can write about a LOT of things. I am a jack of all trades, have had every hobby under the sun and had a job in every field. But I can't do some things, like fashion. I have zero interest in women's fashion which will not come off perverse, so I steer clear.

2 is for the simple reason that if you are an expert at something, you leave out the details. This is the guru mentality. It was great when I started my passion project, I knew the industry better than the top dogs. The problem was, like them, I never could write out the 'entire truth' For example sake, if I wrote a post about, 'How to make a widget'. I would 'forget' many steps as after enough time and doing the same thing over and over again the steps come naturally. Due to this, when ever I was an expert, my content lacked some steps.

Some of MY best work was done when I knew NOTHING about a subject and had to learn it. Writing about doing something I had not done in three years and other people have improved upon allowed me to re-learn and make the article, post or blog while I did it. This type of content always was shared the most, reviewed the most, and the best quality. This is because it completely covers a topic and subject.

You go into the article as a novice who wants to become an expert on what the article is about, and that is how you write it. Nothing fancy. No flashy writing techniques, this is the quality approach. Even if you cannot replicate this, you need to take the same steps when writing to ensure you actually cover a topic, rather than spew garbage you would be better of buying.

3. Remove distraction is the biggest piece of the cranking out content puzzle. Music is a distraction. A dog is a distraction. Movie is a distraction. Other programs running is a distraction. Your wife or GF is a distraction. Co - workers are a distraction, an employee is a distraction. Food is a distraction. Smoking is a distraction.

You need to sit down, give yourself a few hour block, and write. Set realistic goals (10 articles in two hours is a good goal with research) and you must finish. You must work straight through. If you fail, you fail. But if you fail because of distractions, start that two hours over again.

Writing for hours is not for everyone, but it is a lot easier than everyone thinks.

 

[lightningblitz]

Update:

- Minimal SEO to 3x Smaller Sites
- 10 more articles written for one of three big sites.
- 2x Fivver Gigs sold

I put up a fivver gig and so far it has been doing mediocre. I put it up and forgot it. Not counting on the revenue and the service I offer is automated for the most part. It costs me a buck per gig including me overdelivering what I offer. A couple sales will improve my ranking and I am slowly building relationships with those I work with. It has potential for another revenue stream.

 

[lightningblitz]

I have been playing with plug ins and have a total of six sites running.

I was never a word press person, used Blogger, Squarespace, and had sites built. It is a slight adjustment period, but I am getting the hang of it.

Still not ranking. Need more content up on all six sites for this journey.

One site is up to 110 articles, which is a great thing.

I am optimizing each article I post with at least two images I get from google image search, no royalty images. It takes more time, but it well worth it for the reader experience.

 

[lightningblitz]

Started getting a bit more aggressive with link building on two of the sites.

One of the sites has 20 articles, and I got two quality links to help push two of the articles which are a bit higher competition.

The other site has 110 articles, is getting minimal traffic from search engines, so I decided to do a link push.

Staying as white hat as possible with my link building, looking for quality only which costs more.

I am using Link Lure on all six sites as it appears more natural for a new site and gets the ball rolling.

Due to the nature of my sites I was unable to use a Silo. They will be big site, sure, but they do not have clear cut categories. With the next site I work on I plan on trying to incorporate a silo. Not for SEO purposes, I like the look and think it is easier to navigate for my users.

I also made my first money off of Adsense, just over 2.00 for a click. I still do not have good enough traffic but it was nice to show I did my KW research well.

I plan on getting my three Authority sites to 100 pages each by the end of Feb, and the one with 100 to 250. It is a big goal and I will spend many days writing, and will need to out source some content, but I think it will be worth it to get them to scale quickly.

 

[RB1987]

My best wishes to you. Carry on

 

[lightningblitz]

Thank you my friend.

I have been testing various methods on all three sites I have going now.

Site One: Has 120 articles, all hand written. I ordered 180 more articles for this site. It set me back a bit, but this is apart of the strategy. Lucky for me, my credit card decided to raise my limit 1K due to me rotating off debt over and over for IM, they want some to stick, so I invested. I will have this paid off with my first substantial earnings.

I have a base now and can more aggressively build links with far lower risk. I have been building links with Link Lure. LinkLure is HANDS DOWN the best SEO service I have come across for starting new sites to get some traction and getting your sites indexed quickly while not appearing spammy. I used LinkLure on two of my sites and webmaster ate it up, spewing out all of my KWs with some positive movement on both sites. Site one was no exception and I have 99 KWs with some ranking, many of which I did not use LinkLure for, I just made movement due to my sites size.

My approach has always been get 10K words up, then add more links. So I bought two additional link services here. One is Link - Essence, all of which with generic click here anchors to give me diversity to my main page. The other service, a massive 5K web 2.0 service, with 50 web 2.0 links to each of my 120 inner pages to get all content a HUGE rank boost. This may appear not natural, but I have some social shares already and a lot of the content is GOOD. To this I did a link pyramid consisting of 100K links in total.

This is a MASSIVE test. Based on what I have done in the past, this will work fine. But you never know. As 'White Hat' as I want to appear, I have 5 authority sites in the works and one of which I am working on primarily is not getting the page one rankings I want.

My opinion on LinkLure is it is a great way to get your feet wet, and over time will rank a site. Think of multiple quality pyramids with some manual work. It will be good for a new site. Also, for link upkeep will work great. The worst thing you can do is spam 10K links and stop. It looks shady because it is.

An example I have is a Dating Niche site I made. I used fiverr and other cruddy links directed straight at it. No pyramids, no web 2.0s. All crap. Never sand boxed. No manual actions. I did filter in the 10K links over 4 months. But I was not shy off the gate. I went straight at it all. I highly doubt a site with quality content will be hit.

I also have articles made for ALL of my profitable KW's. After I filter in the 180 I ordered in the next couple months, I will need to go back in for extensive KW research and target more long tail KWs. This will be a pain in the rear, but this will be my up keep work. One article a week for the life of the site. Some duplicate content will happen, as a little bit already has. Too narrow of a niche. The niche is highly profitable though, for what its worth.

The final phase of SEO I have been doing is manual Yahoo Answers on an aged account. Sure, they do not help SEO much at all, but with ten answers with good content, I figure it shows I am being shared. Cant hurt for an hour of work total.

Site Two: It has about 30 articles up. I am hand writing the vast majority of the articles myself. I got my first $2.00 click off of this site. But traffic is non - existent. With no good links and slowly building with LinkLure, I expect some movement but nothing massive. My resources are pointed at site one. I plan to get to 100 articles in six months for this site. Nothing spectacular. But at that point, I can call it a mini - authority site.

At around 75 articles, budget pertaining from site one, I plan to replicate what I did on site one. Not to the T, but if I rank well why not use the strategy I have spent dozens of hours researching and learning.

Site Three: This is the interesting site. I did NOT submit it in LinkLure, my Business Pack only has ten slots and I gave one away to another member. Webmaster is not finding ANY KWs for the site. Which is odd. But with less than 10 links pointing to the site, that may be the culprit.

I decided to run another test. Using high comp KWs from PLR articles and re writing them. A LOT of learning about this niche, as I cannot write anything about it on my own. I figure this is a good way to test things out and test the power of an authority site. I have about 3 articles on it so far.


That is my update for now. We will see how it goes from here.

 

[lightningblitz]

Question:

At what point did you quit your non IM job?

I have been dealing with the question quite a bit. I cannot find an answer.

 

[SOCOM]

Quality sites can get hit, Google destroyed RapGenius' SERP results because it did unnatural link building so don't think that spam velocity is as safe as you make it seem.

 

[lightningblitz]

Thank you!

I do not think its impossible to get hit. I just tried to mitigate the damage as much as possible and am trying it for myself. Stupid, I know. But its how I am, I need to experience it first hand.

I will need to poke around and read up on RapGenius' hit site. I think it would help me immensely. Thank you for the share!

 

[lightningblitz]

I have been having some HUGE spikes in impressions and clicks for KWs on my site to fade away in a day. Weird.

 

[lightningblitz]

Domains registered just under a month.

The largest site has a bounce rate under 10% and avg of over 25 page views. Incredible so far with so few visitors. This is great motivation to keep plugging away.

 

[Deleted member 198715]

Just subscribed, Do let me know if you need any kind of help in SEO, Link building and Rankings.

 

[lightningblitz]

Can do my friend. Ordering some articles now.