Journey to become the beautiful butterfree I am meant to be (10k/m SEO journey)

I've been doing IM on and off for about a decade. I'm in my late 20s. Tried a lot of things. Failed at most of them and if I'm being honest, the failures weren't about the opportunities. They were about me. I couldn't stay consistent long enough for anything to compound.

The winners were print on demand and dropshipping. Those I was actually consistent on. But those petered out for various reasons. Eventually I burned out and pivoted to crypto.

Lost a lot of money there. Made a lot of money. Still got some left. Crypto's dead now, so I'm pivoting back to IM. What drew me to crypto in the first place was asymmetric returns risk a little, earn a lot. That worked for a while. Doesn't anymore. SEO has a similar return profile, so it's time to take another stab at it.

Back in the day I ran the full gauntlet: parasite SEO, EMDs for Bing, PBNs, Amazon affiliate sites all of it, to varying degrees of success. The point of this thread is accountability. I want to document the journey as I go.

What's different this time is me. Over the last year and a half I lost 83 lbs (37 kg) and I'm now in a bulk. Look like a completely different person. Conquered the health issues I'd been dragging around for years, and I'm fairly handsome now too. I've held the line on this one thing losing the weight and now building the muscle for nearly two years straight.

That's the variable that was missing before. If I can be that consistent with one thing, I can be that consistent with another.

Time to point it at SEO.

I'll cover what I'm actually doing in the next post.

Interesting. Good luck with your journey.

consistency being the real variable tracks, but the compounding thing cuts both ways. print on demand i scaled to about 4k/month on redbubble before it stalled, and looking at it now the stall wasn't burnout, it was that i stopped refreshing designs and the algorithm buried old listings. crypto is the same trap in reverse, the wins feel like skill but they reset you emotionally in a way that makes it harder to grind something slow again.

Solid intro. The weight loss angle isn't just motivational fluff — two years of sustained consistency is actual evidence you've cracked something about yourself that most people haven't.


The SEO graveyard is full of guys who knew the tactics. The ones still standing just didn't quit during the dead zone between "site is live" and "rankings move." Sounds like you've got the right variable locked in now.


Following this thread.

Let’s cover the things that I did before the past 2-3 months. Here’s what I’ve learned.

1. EMDs still effective to rank for zero competition keywords on Google
2. Medium still effective as a parasite but it has about a 50% success rate. Sometime it works. Sometime it doesn’t. Tried a bunch of different parasites but they all got deindexed at some point.
3. Tested PBN services from BHW & Fiverr onto some of my parasites. None of them were effective and deindexed my shit.
___

What I’ve done so far:

1. Retrieved access to old software and bought new ones: GSA SER, A Parser, scrapebox, ranker X. Looking to potentially acquire xRUMER & Zennoposter. But not yet. Obtained proxies.
2. Set up these tools on a VPS. Scrapebox, GSA SER, and Ranker X are operational. Still setting up A parser.
3. Did a JV w/ a close relative who has a more technical background. This offloads a lot of the grunt work that I don’t really want to do and helps me focus on the more important things.

Overall objective is to set up infrastructure to build a bunch of backlinks myself. Then I’ll test and iterate on various churn and burn websites.

I’ve already done some keyword research on some niches that I want to do but priority going forward is keyword research and looking for more ideas.

So the goals going forward are:

1. Continue to build out the backlink infrastructure. Lots to do on this front.
2. Further keyword research on niches
3. Sign up for more affiliate programs. (Have access to an adult & health one rn. Need to sign up for Amazon associates and others.)
4. Spin up some parasites to target some keywords I have in mind.
5. Think about what domains I want to purchase for a more long term project.

Consistency changes everything
SEO should follow.

Today was mostly finding footprints for GSA SER. Was distracted with other things but my relative spent a few hours building out a seed list.

Got accepted to another health affiliate and Amazon associates.

Objective is to continue to scrape for my own private foot prints.

will post another update in a couple of days

Hello,
Congrats on the weight loss and the bulk, impressive stuff.
Question about POD, why quitting it since it made good money ? I want to start it, what do you think ?

ybadr said:

Hello,
Congrats on the weight loss and the bulk, impressive stuff.
Question about POD, why quitting it since it made good money ? I want to start it, what do you think ?

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All of my accounts got banned. To do it again I'd have to buy another POD account and then upload thousands of designs again. I think the approach that made me money before is largely dead as Amazon has cracked down on it aggressively and they've started to PvP with third party sellers. Juice doesn't seem worth the squeeze at this point.

Okay. I have a small update.

Relative was able to work on the footprint task yesterday. Got a seed list of 7 so far. Objective is to have 50-100 initial footprints as a seedlist. Then we will scrape via software to expand the footprints and go from there.

On my end I did a bunch of keyword and niche research. Found some movie keywords ranking via weird parasites. That led me down a rabbit hole and I found an interesting process & workflow that allows me to find parasites that aren't as abused.

I spun up three parasite pages. None of them indexed. Tried social signals. Doesn't work. So that's something I have to tackle on pretty quickly. Because those pages are indexed and not mine? lol. Will need to test different things. Trying out Speedy Index.

Thinking of biting the bullet on a Ahrefs sub and just go hard on keyword research and back link research on competitors. But I'm feeling a bit cheap lol.

Consistency is key, but it's also important to stay adaptable and adjust your strategy as things change. Scaling a print on demand business to 4 figures a month requires constantly refreshing designs and staying on top of trends.

Comrade Luigi said:

On my end I did a bunch of keyword and niche research. Found some movie keywords ranking via weird parasites. That led me down a rabbit hole and I found an interesting process & workflow that allows me to find parasites that aren't as abused.

Click to expand...

That's what I like to hear! Nothing better than working things out for yourself and finding your own way - good luck to you!

Small update.

collected 15 footprints so far. once there’s 50 is when I’ll have the software do its work

2/3 of the parasite pages indexed. Think that indexing service I used works. Didn’t rank for any keywords though. So I’ll have to wait till my backlink capability is set up. I basically don’t trust any third party backlink service at this point. Need to build everything on on my own.

I picked up a EMD domain for $2 and spun up a quick website. Doing a indexing experiment with this one.

I think my gameplan is going to be pick a niche and domain that’s good for SEO + media buying. I’m a bit slow though have to iterate faster.

Next update in a few days.

so this ended up being a dud in totality

just compleeelt gave up on it

but im back now

I started a Tik Tok 2 weeks ago to monetize my transformation. Setting up a basic funnel of ppl going to my profile > ebook > paid calls > coaching. I made a 30 page ebook. now im editing it. Plan is to sell it for $10. I’m throwing stuff at the wall on Tik Tok different posts different angles. just getting a feel for how the algo works

I uploading videos of me talking into the camera and I’ve been using Claude code and a repo to edit the videos

my relative is finished with college and the job market is horrible so he’s available to help me with the ventures full time for now

he located 12 footprints. I’ll have him find 10 more and then we can get the ball rolling with A parser

im also working on how to go about doing a faceless YT channel

ok. I got stuff done. made 2 more Tik Tok videos. im gonna need to plan out a day and film myself yapping on camera. im getting more used to putting myself out there on social media. I edited the ebook some more. was trying to set up a paid call thing on one platform but it wasn’t working so I switched to Calendly. eventually I’ll need to work on my own personal website where I sell coaching. Immediate priorities is to set up paid call form, finish the ebook then set it up on gum road. then once that’s done set up personal website.

once I have basic funnel in place I can switch up my videos to direct ppl to my funnel. I want to first go organic find some winning angles then I’ll go hard with the paid ads later

on the SEO front.

we located 25 footprints in total. then out of those 25 only 10 were actually good. goal is to find 5 more then begin the A parser work

setting up this backlink infrastructure is going to take some time and im kind of impatient

so these 2 journeys struck out to me as interesting because these ppl ranked sites without any backlinks

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/journey-ranking-ai-sites-for-passive-income.1797877/

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/j...eers-perspective.1805541/page-3#post-20989962

so with that in mind there will be 2 SEO approaches I’ll be taking in the short term

1. Amazon affiliate SEO
2. Programmatic SEO

and then once the backlink infra is ready then I can test it on churn and burn parasites

I have my Amazon associates account ready so now I just need to begin with the research phase of things. I already have one domain acquired so I should at the very least develop this domain

I spent abour 30 mins doing keyword research for programmatic SEO I have a handful of niches that I think are promising. I haven’t bitten the bullet yet w/ domain acquisition but I’ll get that done this week

don’t want to overwhelm my relative with tasks haha

i am thinking of tapping into my network and doing a JV with a developer oriented person

I know one guy who is basically a wizard in ai agents and that’ll come to play when I really want to scale this

but that’s thinking a bit far ahead atm.

anyways im making small progress here and there but obviously i need to do a lot more

my relative has been banging his head against the wall trying to get A parser to work because all the tutorials are in russian or something. so that got paused for now. was banging my head against the wall seeing all these pdf parasites ranking. been attempting to insert pdfs into all these different pages. now having relative work on it. and hes making tiny progress here and there.

@Steptoe lot of your past posts have been informative on this particular topic.

i bought a domain for programmatic seo and currently having Fable spin up a big ass website. nearly done. ill try to deploy it by tomorrow or day after.

also bought a domain for amazon affiliate. gonna work on this tomorrow

tik tok stuff i havent worked on. energy has been on seo stuff.

Comrade Luigi said:

was banging my head against the wall seeing all these pdf parasites ranking. been attempting to insert pdfs into all these different pages. now having relative work on it. and hes making tiny progress here and there.

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Be sure to check for X-Robots-Tag: noindex tags after you've uploaded - a lot of the pdf upload targets are not indexable thanks to this, and it's not immediately apparent.

ok i deployed the programmatic seo website. connected to google search console and everything. now it's just wait for it to index and rank.

next step is work on amazon affiliate domain ill get that live tomorrow

no luck today with the pdf parasite thing. i was able to deliver the file but getting the file url is tricky

not giving up though. im saving the work i do with ai prompts so its easier to do next time

Comrade Luigi said:

ok i deployed the programmatic seo website. connected to google search console and everything. now it's just wait for it to index and rank.

next step is work on amazon affiliate domain ill get that live tomorrow

no luck today with the pdf parasite thing. i was able to deliver the file but getting the file url is tricky

not giving up though. im saving the work i do with ai prompts so its easier to do next time

Click to expand...

Do you know if PDF parasites still work in 2026? Great journey you have.