Absolute newbie taking a first shot

[IAmFromTheInternet]

Hi guys,

I'll keep the introduction short for your reading pleasure: Haven't done anything IM / SEO related until last month. I was looking for ways to make money online. I have been into poker all my life and took multiple shots at making it as an online pro player last year, but it never worked out. It is taking up so much time (hours, days, weeks, months of grinding) and I was only seeing little result.

I was looking for something else: affiliate marketing, AdSense websites, etc.. Came across WarriorForum, read about everything there and, of course, ordered some WSO in hopes of making it big with a spoon fed method. Too bad.

Then I discovered BHW, was absolutely amazed by the sheer amount of information and peoples' willingness to help on this forum. For the last month I have been reading and learning only. Followed some threads (BlueMatter, Napster, and some others) and tried to wrap my head around all this new information.

But having knowledge without applying it is as valuable as not having the knowledge at all. So: time for action!

(Ok sorry, that introduction was not as short as promised..)

The plan
I'm making an online magazine authority site. Going for a different longtail keyword for every post. All posts will be around 750-1250 words. Some a little longer, some a little shorter. Will be writing some my self, but I am also checking out several writing services to speed up te startup proces.

It's not really in a niche but just about everyday topics. (I'm still a wondering a little if this was a good idea, or that I should go for one niche. But since I started it, im probably gonna stay with this idea of broad topics. It's about the individual posts anyway.)

When this site is up and running, I will be posting articles every now and then and keep on doing SEO, but also looking into other types of websites / techniques to develop, like Clickbank and Amazon affiliate sites.

The money
I'm going mainly for AdSense income. Once I have about 15 750+ words articles I will apply for adsense. When relevant, I might also add some Amazon/Clickbank links in the articles.

The goals
Well, since I have never achieved an IM goal before, I will have some small goals first, working up to the big ones:

[TABLE="class: outer_border, width: 500, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]Made first IM money ever
Made first $1
Made first $50
Made first $100
Make $1 / day for a week
Make $5 / day for a week
Make $10 / day for a week
Make $25 / day for a week
Make $50 / day for a week
Make $100 / day for a week[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Work done so far

• Bought domain and hosting
• Picked premium theme, and tweaked it a little (colors, layout)
• Designed logo and favicon
• Installed a bunch of plugins (Yoast Seo, ContactForm, WordFence, Social plugin, Smushit, and some others)
• Created visitor pages (about us, contact us, privacy policy)
• Created first article, 1000+ words, not published yet.
• Copied my website from my local laptop to online domain (this was a pain)
• Installed Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools (was this too soon? since now it's indexed in Google already without any articles)
• Wrote second 1000+ article. Optimized on-page seo with keyword density, header tags, image alt text, some LSI.
• Smushed all images
• Ordered a 750 word article in BST section here, to check out quality. If it is good, I might just buy 20 or so, and focus more on SEO then writing. This will be quite a big investment for me, but will save me a LOT of time.
• Made Facebook, Twitter, Google+ profiles with profile/cover pics

Focus for now: getting 15-20 articles with 750-1250 words. After that, start off page SEO and apply for AdSense.

That's about it. I will be updating when something it's worth mentioning or when I feel like

Hopefully I will achieve my goals, I don't give up easily

All comments and critique is appreciated!

Cheers!

 

[IAmFromTheInternet]

Did some keyword research, found two new nice longtails for articles.

Question: when looking at search volume/CPC, should I look at global (English) or at US volume? US volume is a little less most of the time, but hey, I'm targeting all english reading visitors in the world right? Should I set a geo preference in Webmaster Tools?

 

[blommas]

Good luck. You have a nice plan and you sound very professional.

 

[IAmFromTheInternet]

Small update:

* Added 750+ word article
* Published the 3 posts that I had in que, just to check out how long it would take to index, and I am curious how my post will rank with 0 off page seo
* Added XML Sitemap to GWT
* Signed up for Bing Webmaster tools
* Checked sitespeed, scored 51/61 for mobile/pc. Installed 2 plugins, now score is 90/92
* Made Tumblr profile

The idea to buy a lot of articles turned out to not be a great one. The article I ordered was not money-site-worthy in my opinion. Had to correct too many mistakes and didn't read well. It will be better if I do it myself, so that's what I am up to.

 

[waver407]

dang you you are truly prepared for your journey, I'm sure you will succeed if you're consistent with the work ethic you're putting in right now. I wish you the best of luck!

 

[IAmFromTheInternet]

Thank you blommas and Waver407. Hopefully you are right and hard work will pay off.

Quick update from today:
* Wrote + published another post (900 words)
* Pages are indexed, and 1 post started to rank already (104th place in Google, yay!). Appearently Submitting your URL to google yourself makes it insta-index. *mental note*
* Replaced Smushit plugin with EWWW Image Optimizer, since Smushit has only been giving me errors.
* Upgraded page speed to 93/95 by enabling page cache in W3.

I'm aiming to write at least 1 750+ post per day from now on.

 

[IAmFromTheInternet]

Another small update:

Have been very busy with other stuff, almost no time.

Just added 1 article (970 words), and made a Pinterest account (still finding out how to use that properly )

Alos applied for AdSense already, let's see if they accept me with 5 posts

 

[chichisama]

Good luck on your journey, I myself as a total newbie too, is going on and raising money through content writing, if you have your keyboard and your words, you will never run out of opportunities, you can literally make your way up as i'm doing right now, you're a hard worker, good luck

 

[ankame]

Good luck on your journey OP. Once you get into the habit of writing quality articles why not get dragon naturally speaking and just dictate. You'll knock out even more in a day then.

I'm following this thread and looking forward to your updates.

 

[chichisama]

Good luck on your journey OP. Once you get into the habit of writing quality articles why not get dragon naturally speaking and just dictate. You'll knock out even more in a day then.

I'm following this thread and looking forward to your updates.

Very good point, anyone looking for a free one check this thread http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/member-downloads/740002-get-dragon-naturally-speaking-13-0-premium.html

It can be hard at first because it needs to get used to your voice and your style of talking, but if you talk naturally for a couple of days and just correct the mistakes and keep grinding it, you'll find it way faster if you have a clear mind. Be careful of a foggy mind too, it can hinder your progress. So my advice would be use it when you're smashing it! When you are exhausted or thinking about something else, Word can be more productive.
Good luck

 

[KnightRider]

Nice start to your journey. What are the plugins you installed to improve site speed?

 

[IAmFromTheInternet]

Good luck on your journey, I myself as a total newbie too, is going on and raising money through content writing, if you have your keyboard and your words, you will never run out of opportunities, you can literally make your way up as i'm doing right now, you're a hard worker, good luck

Thanks for your kind words. Good luck on your journey as well.

Good luck on your journey OP. Once you get into the habit of writing quality articles why not get dragon naturally speaking and just dictate. You'll knock out even more in a day then.

I'm following this thread and looking forward to your updates.

Thanks for your reply.

I have downloaded Dragon because it was mentioned somewhere before, but haven't gotten around to trying it yet. Besides that, I'm not sure it will help me in writing my articles, since english is not my first language. They way I produce an article is to research a lot, and kind of combine 20 other articles (with half of them being in my own language) into 1 new unique text. I do a lot of copy/pasting/translating/rephrasing in the text editor, so I doubt that speaking will make the process any faster.

But who knows.. I will try it anyway soon. Thanks for the tip and for following!

Nice start to your journey. What are the plugins you installed to improve site speed?

Thanks for your reply.

The plugins I have installed up untill now are:

- ASync CS and CSS (Didnt really do anything, disabled it again)

- W3 total cache (Played around with the cache/minify settings to see what would make it faster. Some option just slowed it down)

- EWWW Image Optimizer (Before this one I tried Smush.it, but that one keeps giving errors)

- Javascript to footer (This one made my website really fast, but also a little 'weird', because my theme appearently has quite a bit of javascript to make it look good. Buy enabling this plugin, the first half / whole second of my site loading would look like some 1970's HTML site (text only with links), and then change to a nice looking homepage. I'm not sure the gain in speed outweighs that change in user experience, so I disabled that one again for now.)

- WP Optimize (not sure this did anything for me, I guess it speed up the server side by cleaning DB/drafts/etc)

As you can see, I think page speed and needed plugins really differ per page. Another theme, another web server configuration, etc.. Some things that work for one page, may not work for another I guess.

 

[IAmFromTheInternet]

LOL, got approved by AdSense in less then 3 hours

 

[DonnieBrasco]

Very interesting journey, you seem to have a good work discipline.

I currently build my first IM website too, out of curiosity, what content you already got on your site when you applied for google AdSense?

Bookmarked this thread,will take a look in it once a day to be updated.

Regards

 

[ankame]

LOL, got approved by AdSense in less then 3 hours

Open the French Champagne!!! :clap2:

 

[TeKn1qu3z]

I see your hard work and lost hopes making money on the internet, but you will achieve your goals and all they were short time required.
Also make sure try alternative ways to make money like youtube videos and other marketing methods.

Nice to hear from your mouth, but I was too in the same condition long back, but now I am happy with making money online.

 

[ChanzGrande]

Good luck. You seem like a motivated action taking individual, so I'm confident you will reach your goals. I like the way you broke them up into smaller more achievable pieces when setting your goals. Very many people just jump out with a big old "I want to make $100/day goal" when they have no basis to set such lofty goals right out of the gate. It's nice to see you have the common sense to know it might take some time and a lot of hard work to get there. You can do it!

 

[IAmFromTheInternet]

Very interesting journey, you seem to have a good work discipline.

I currently build my first IM website too, out of curiosity, what content you already got on your site when you applied for google AdSense?

Bookmarked this thread,will take a look in it once a day to be updated.

Regards

When I applied for AdSense, I had 5 unique informative articles (800-1000 words) on my website. Website looks decent though (brand, logo, favicon, premium theme). Also make sure you have the required pages for AdSense (Contact, about, privacy policy)

 

[IAmFromTheInternet]

I see your hard work and lost hopes making money on the internet, but you will achieve your goals and all they were short time required.
Also make sure try alternative ways to make money like youtube videos and other marketing methods.

Nice to hear from your mouth, but I was too in the same condition long back, but now I am happy with making money online.

Good to hear you are happy with your IM business. Hopefully I can say that for myself someday.

I'm definately going after different types of revenue, once this website is up and running. I'm will be looking into Clickbank / Amazon affiliate sites, since they already sparked my interest. But for now, I think it's best to stay with one method, and try to learn as much as possible. Probably fail a couple of times, but that only makes me better prepared for future journeys.

Good luck. You seem like a motivated action taking individual, so I'm confident you will reach your goals. I like the way you broke them up into smaller more achievable pieces when setting your goals. Very many people just jump out with a big old "I want to make $100/day goal" when they have no basis to set such lofty goals right out of the gate. It's nice to see you have the common sense to know it might take some time and a lot of hard work to get there. You can do it!

Thanks for your reply! I like to take small steps and one goal at a time. This way the progress will be evident, and it doesn't look like a huuuuge assignment.

Good luck to all of you!

 

[IAmFromTheInternet]

Very small and quick update to let you guys know this thread ain't dead yet

Really busy at the moment. Just did some on-page optimization (adding at least 3 authority OBL to every post, and some internal linking), and made some small and easy backlinks.

The time for article writing will hopefully come back soon again.