Attention Bloggers: You Are Doing It Wrong

Hello Bloggers!

My name is Lightningblitz.

I started as a blogger myself. And now I have dozens of websites ranging from a small agency (Local SEO) website down to small Micro Niche Websites.

I wanted to share my journey, how I made my first buck online, and what I did wrong. Then add some helpful tips from my experience. This is how I made money online and the experiences that shapped me.

Nearly 15 Years Ago I was a Paid Blogger

When I was 12 or so I was a featured writer and Administrator for a trading card game website. Those who want to dig into my past (I have given plenty of clues) will find I went by a simular username.

I started as a regular forum member. My in real life experience was in the shipping sector. I was, and am, an expert at shipping packages. I can guess the weight and cost of sending a package in the US by holding it in my hand.

This was due to child labor. Got to love parents, right?

My experience and love for gaming made me a Moderator for a trading card game website. I dove into the job and ended up catching reported posts within minutes.

I also answered all questions about trading online. A HUGE part of my niche was trading online. I became a free 'middleman'. Two parties would ship me goods, I would verify contents, quality and authenticity and then send out to the desired party.

I would pay the difference in shipping and used my own materials to send items.

I remember getting burned myself on a different forum. I sent about 2K of goods to Croatia and got nothing in return.

Anyways, my writing (as a kid) gained the interest of website owners. They first promoted me to be an 'Super Moderator' on their website, so I could patrol the entire website. I managed everything except two sections.

1. Magic the Gathering
2. World of Warcraft Online

I did not have enough experience in those areas, and the users had a very specific way of doing things.

About the same time I started my own gaming blog. I added it to my signature on the forum.

I soon was offered a position at three cents a word for the niche I started in.

This was before my first 'job' at 12. I was an expert in my niche. I was soon promoted to Administrator of the forum and cleaned house for about 9 months.

No Pay means No Play

After not getting paid for my Administrator duties I decided to move on. I asked the website owners for compensation but never got any for moderation. So I moved on.

I did start a couple websites / forums to earn money, but I couldnt get traffic. I gave up.

A couple years passed. I ignored my gaming blog. I went to high school. I started boxing. And I started a boxing blog. This (and my first blog) was on blogger.

I made a few dollars on adsense. But as I grew up, I realized I REALLY liked girls. Off I went to college for education.

I Started a PUA Blog

I started a blog sharing how I learned to meet women. From learning from guys at the gym I learned a lot. Most of it was self confidence.

From my blog, I met local guys who wanted to learn. I went out daily (and nightly) working on my social skills. I shared lessons weekly on my blog.

I shared my experiences and also 'one upped' content from popular PUA websites. I shared their topics but covered it better. You know the 'Skyscrapper' articles people try to use? It didnt work for me nearly a decade ago. Aside from black hat link building, nothing worked.

Before I knew it my adsense was banned for adult content. With the help of a financial backer I met due to my blogs local popularity, and his friend, a local ladies man, I converted the blog to a Squarespace website.

Squarespace SUCKED. I lost most of my blog posts via there 'blog transfer' system.

I learned how to build a website. I learned basic coding. I learned email marketing. But I had an audience cap. I had to learn SEO for new clients.

I tried social media marketing first, but I couldnt make it work as a teen. I had our investor spend hundreds on the SEO but that didnt work. I know now it is because the keywords were too high competition.

After I got the mechanics of the business going I decided to leave. After helping a few men (and a couple women) the business was going in the wrong direction. I gave up my blog, my 'system' and the domain (with a brandable name) to my coowner and financial backer. I took a small payout and transfered everything.

Here Came SEO

While trying to make my PUA website work I learned a lot about IM. Namely SEO. I learned keyword research. I learned link building. I decided to start my first project.

It made minimal money with a then girlfriends adsense. That eventually ended and my niche wasnt great. I found black hat world.

I found BHW from a google search and read a lot before I signed up. Before this point I learned from Fiverr. I learned SEO from services I bought on fiverr.

I built a couple websites and another blog and made some money.

I bought websites

I bought a lot if Micro Niche sites on fiverr, online, and a few from BHW before I registered. When I signed up, I bought 'authority' sites on BHW and services.

Reinvesting all my profits I continued to scale up. I tested on MNS and purchased Authority Sites. I built a couple authority sites on my own.

I tested every SEO method I could find. After paying with my PUA website and failing, and then linkbuilding myself, I knew I needed to become an expert to get traffic.

I came to BHW

I started posting on BHW about this time. I knew a lot. I had a few successful websites. I never stopped testing.

Over time I built many websites I still own and turned a healthy profit.

What does this have to do with blogging?

Nothing. Except I failed as a blogger twice. Without keyword research plus SEO or Social Media Marketing, I never had enough traffic as a blogger.

Even with hundreds of articles or unique and long content, I never made real money

How to Succeed as a Blogger

This is my opinion, and my experience only.

1. Craft every blog post around a long tail, low comp keyword.
2. Share your blog posts on social media.
3. Interact with other bloggers via social meida and blog comments.
4. Try to create a brand.

If you cant drive traffic, your blog is WORTHLESS.

Blogging Lessons

Blogging alone will not make you money. SEO alone will not make you money. SMM alone will not make you money. Only a combination will work.

You do need at least decent content. But you need to promote it.

Bloggers have a HUGE advantage over other people in IM because they have an endless stream of content.

If you funnel your content and learn to craft it for your audience you can make great money.

Before BHW I made money with adsense (my first blogs), affiliate marketing (blogs and websites) and selling ebooks and services (PUA website).

If I had the IM and SEO knowledge from BHW then that I have now I am willing to bet I would be retired now.

Do not give up blogging. Blog smarter. Write content around keywords. Write better content than your competition. Build relationships with other bloggers.

If you do so, your blog can be a full time income.

@lightningblitz great story Eric. The thing about BHW is that most of the discussion and "how to' guides revolve around link building, which, agreeably is the number one ranking factor. The forum has numerous threads that are extremely powerful in this category.

What I find less being covered is keyword research. People talk about low competition, and SERP analysis (covered deeply). But how to actually go look for gold nuggets or what type of keywords to go for is rarely discussed. E.g. from PMing you in the past I learned that you built amazon affiliate sites but not around keywords such as best xxxx or xxx reviews but other keywords because the competition is much higher on those terms. I would really appreciate it if you would shed some light on that process.

Thanks again!

Joe, that story isnt special. I build niche sites and with keyword resesrch I found some products.

I then wrote article around those terms and added amazon banners and links. I was never good enough at keyword resesrch to find very low comp buyer intent terms on my own.

A huge help for me was find low comp keywords related to big ticket items and adding "for sale" to the end of the term.

For example, people look uo whirlpool dishwasher series 5000 about one tousand times a month. From keyword resesrch I found it was low comp. I added 'for sale' and thats how I narrowed down my keywords.

I would post a golden nugget thread if I were an expert at it. But Im not.

I know Jarred had a sales thread for his 'how to guide' on keyword research and I think I saw a couple others.

But, im not an expert. If I were Id make a lot more money.

lightningblitz said:

Joe, that story isnt special. I build niche sites and with keyword resesrch I found some products.

I then wrote article around those terms and added amazon banners and links. I was never good enough at keyword resesrch to find very low comp buyer intent terms on my own.

A huge help for me was find low comp keywords related to big ticket items and adding "for sale" to the end of the term.

For example, people look uo whirlpool dishwasher series 5000 about one tousand times a month. From keyword resesrch I found it was low comp. I added 'for sale' and thats how I narrowed down my keywords.

I would post a golden nugget thread if I were an expert at it. But Im not.

I know Jarred had a sales thread for his 'how to guide' on keyword research and I think I saw a couple others.

But, im not an expert. If I were Id make a lot more money.

Click to expand...

Individual products, smart, I thought of this before as well. More work up front but yeah less competition for sure. Thanks man.

P.S. Do you check search volume for the entire term e.g. 'dishwasher model123 review', 'dishwasher model123 for sale' or only for 'dishwasher model123'.

After I find a low comp product, I targeted terms with at least 50 searches a month for the 'for sale' varient.

Since it has buyer intent I could easily count on a conversion a month. With 500 plus products, I would make 30 + a sale (huge under assesment) a month.

Very profitable. Even with spending 100 an article, youd make the money back quickly.

You would be surprised how many searches 'for sale' variants get. The lowest I targeted was a term for 70 searches a month.

Thanks for share your experience

This guy deserves a Exec. upgrade period!

DeadJoe said:

@lightningblitz great story Eric. The thing about BHW is that most of the discussion and "how to' guides revolve around link building, which, agreeably is the number one ranking factor. The forum has numerous threads that are extremely powerful in this category.

What I find less being covered is keyword research. People talk about low competition, and SERP analysis (covered deeply). But how to actually go look for gold nuggets or what type of keywords to go for is rarely discussed. E.g. from PMing you in the past I learned that you built amazon affiliate sites but not around keywords such as best xxxx or xxx reviews but other keywords because the competition is much higher on those terms. I would really appreciate it if you would shed some light on that process.

Thanks again!

Click to expand...

Im contemplating writing a full on "identifying profitable niches/site focus" guide, if I people are that interested. I'll do it within three days.

lightningblitz said:

After I find a low comp product, I targeted terms with at least 50 searches a month for the 'for sale' varient.

Since it has buyer intent I could easily count on a conversion a month. With 500 plus products, I would make 30 + a sale (huge under assesment) a month.

Very profitable. Even with spending 100 an article, youd make the money back quickly.

You would be surprised how many searches 'for sale' variants get. The lowest I targeted was a term for 70 searches a month.

Click to expand...

Nice, 500 products is a shit ton! Would you mind shedding some light on how you structure your website? About 10 products per page? So 50 money articles. If you do group them, it's hard to include 10 keywords in a page title for example (assuming each product has its own 'for sale' keyword). I can see how you can do that with 2 - 3 keywords. But since they're so low competition, you probably don't need to include them all in the page title for your site to show up for that keyword.

If you do research a keyword for each product, then how do you manage building links? If you target exact matches, that would mean 1 link / keyword = 500 (only exact matches) lol. I am over thinking this now. I'll just wait for your response.

JamesBlake said:

Im contemplating writing a full on "identifying profitable niches/site focus" guide, if I people are that interested. I'll do it within three days.

Click to expand...

Looking forward to it James! I love hearing how people select niches, structure their sites and especially their take on keyword research. Everyone does it differently and it's nice to see things from different angles.

Motivation ++
Respect +++

Great share! A very inspirational story for anyone feeling demotivated or unsure of what to do.

You should install the Grammarly extension. Grammarly is the fucking shit.

DeadJoe said:

Nice, 500 products is a shit ton! Would you mind shedding some light on how you structure your website? About 10 products per page? So 50 money articles. If you do group them, it's hard to include 10 keywords in a page title for example (assuming each product has its own 'for sale' keyword). I can see how you can do that with 2 - 3 keywords. But since they're so low competition, you probably don't need to include them all in the page title for your site to show up for that keyword.

If you do research a keyword for each product, then how do you manage building links? If you target exact matches, that would mean 1 link / keyword = 500 (only exact matches) lol. I am over thinking this now. I'll just wait for your response.

Click to expand...

By 500, I mean 500 dollar products. Not 5oo products being reviewed.

If I can group keywords I will, but I find I rank a lot better for smaller terms if my keyword is in the URL. You can play with h tags and title, but for super easy comp with no one else going after the term, perfect on page is the most important part.

You would be surprised what you could rank for. If I was working with corvettes I could group all keywords together "blue corvette for sale, red corvette sale, etc" but then I would need more SEO.

The negative is when using multiple pages, I would never rank well for 'corvette for sale' unless I had a static home page, but would rank for 'red corvette for sale' and 'blue corvette for sale'.

For a site like this it was absolutely aimed to be short term. Shitty PBN links (1 buck a post), cheap web 2.0s and blog comments to rank. I always needed links to rank. So I had a lot of web 2.0s.

The problem with linking to a site so specific, is your web 2.0 and pbn will often outrank your money site.

That is, unless, your money site is also Parasite...

My regular review websites were mostly informational. I would look for 'for sale' or 'best' or 'review' keywords. But those would often have even higher competition than the larger keyword due to buyer intent.

In cases like that I would a small site giving information on a few keywords in the niche. The article would include h2 and h3 tags targetting the other longer keywords. I would have the 'for sale' and 'best' terms as h2 tags.

Not hard to rank such a comprehensive article with good seo.

You are definately over thinking things. For long term site I want content in which I can change monitization methods if needed. So review style never suited me.

I am leaving money on the table doing this.

I have never had one of those huge 50 + product review sites. Again, im leaving money on the table due to this.

So, to clarify, when I build a site myself I have two options. One is super micro niche with color/year/model + keyword + for sale/review. Each page is informational with one or two recommendations. I just want them to click my link.

Keywords like that are never something I start looking for. I start by looking for low comp keywords and then check variations. I have only built a couple of these. Competition quickly increased for these when the guy who was ranking for 'blue corvette for sale' realizes he is making quite a bit less money.

Option two is a long informational post about the broad keyword, with h2 and h3 tags with 'best' or 'for sale' and so on.

I am not the guy to get review site advice from. I prefer informational and comprehensive articles. If I find

lightningblitz said:

By 500, I mean 500 dollar products. Not 5oo products being reviewed.

If I can group keywords I will, but I find I rank a lot better for smaller terms if my keyword is in the URL. You can play with h tags and title, but for super easy comp with no one else going after the term, perfect on page is the most important part.

You would be surprised what you could rank for. If I was working with corvettes I could group all keywords together "blue corvette for sale, red corvette sale, etc" but then I would need more SEO.

The negative is when using multiple pages, I would never rank well for 'corvette for sale' unless I had a static home page, but would rank for 'red corvette for sale' and 'blue corvette for sale'.

For a site like this it was absolutely aimed to be short term. Shitty PBN links (1 buck a post), cheap web 2.0s and blog comments to rank. I always needed links to rank. So I had a lot of web 2.0s.

The problem with linking to a site so specific, is your web 2.0 and pbn will often outrank your money site.

That is, unless, your money site is also Parasite...

My regular review websites were mostly informational. I would look for 'for sale' or 'best' or 'review' keywords. But those would often have even higher competition than the larger keyword due to buyer intent.

In cases like that I would a small site giving information on a few keywords in the niche. The article would include h2 and h3 tags targetting the other longer keywords. I would have the 'for sale' and 'best' terms as h2 tags.

Not hard to rank such a comprehensive article with good seo.

You are definately over thinking things. For long term site I want content in which I can change monitization methods if needed. So review style never suited me.

I am leaving money on the table doing this.

I have never had one of those huge 50 + product review sites. Again, im leaving money on the table due to this.

So, to clarify, when I build a site myself I have two options. One is super micro niche with color/year/model + keyword + for sale/review. Each page is informational with one or two recommendations. I just want them to click my link.

Keywords like that are never something I start looking for. I start by looking for low comp keywords and then check variations. I have only built a couple of these. Competition quickly increased for these when the guy who was ranking for 'blue corvette for sale' realizes he is making quite a bit less money.

Option two is a long informational post about the broad keyword, with h2 and h3 tags with 'best' or 'for sale' and so on.

I am not the guy to get review site advice from. I prefer informational and comprehensive articles. If I find

Click to expand...

Thanks man. Just what i had been trying to probe you for several days.

Persistence my friends, persistence. Nothing can beat the good old persistence when it comes to doing anything in life. Education, talent and hardwork, if you do not mix them up with persistence, achieving anything in life is practically impossible. Good story friend, I hope you do better with each passing day. Congratulation on such an achievement.

The story is really nice! How to Succeed as a Blogger - I agree totally with this part)

lightningblitz said:

By 500, I mean 500 dollar products. Not 5oo products being reviewed.

If I can group keywords I will, but I find I rank a lot better for smaller terms if my keyword is in the URL. You can play with h tags and title, but for super easy comp with no one else going after the term, perfect on page is the most important part.

You would be surprised what you could rank for. If I was working with corvettes I could group all keywords together "blue corvette for sale, red corvette sale, etc" but then I would need more SEO.

The negative is when using multiple pages, I would never rank well for 'corvette for sale' unless I had a static home page, but would rank for 'red corvette for sale' and 'blue corvette for sale'.

For a site like this it was absolutely aimed to be short term. Shitty PBN links (1 buck a post), cheap web 2.0s and blog comments to rank. I always needed links to rank. So I had a lot of web 2.0s.

The problem with linking to a site so specific, is your web 2.0 and pbn will often outrank your money site.

That is, unless, your money site is also Parasite...

My regular review websites were mostly informational. I would look for 'for sale' or 'best' or 'review' keywords. But those would often have even higher competition than the larger keyword due to buyer intent.

In cases like that I would a small site giving information on a few keywords in the niche. The article would include h2 and h3 tags targetting the other longer keywords. I would have the 'for sale' and 'best' terms as h2 tags.

Not hard to rank such a comprehensive article with good seo.

You are definately over thinking things. For long term site I want content in which I can change monitization methods if needed. So review style never suited me.

I am leaving money on the table doing this.

I have never had one of those huge 50 + product review sites. Again, im leaving money on the table due to this.

So, to clarify, when I build a site myself I have two options. One is super micro niche with color/year/model + keyword + for sale/review. Each page is informational with one or two recommendations. I just want them to click my link.

Keywords like that are never something I start looking for. I start by looking for low comp keywords and then check variations. I have only built a couple of these. Competition quickly increased for these when the guy who was ranking for 'blue corvette for sale' realizes he is making quite a bit less money.

Option two is a long informational post about the broad keyword, with h2 and h3 tags with 'best' or 'for sale' and so on.

I am not the guy to get review site advice from. I prefer informational and comprehensive articles. If I find

Click to expand...

Do you think those two forms - review and informational - can be combined? Like, I have seen people writing comprehensive/informational guide in this format:

How to buy the best blue widget in 2018

H2 - What is a Blue Widget?
H2 - Types of Blue Widget
H2 - Features to look out for in a blue widget
H2 - The Best Blue Widget in 2018
H2 - Blue Widgets FAQs
H2 - White Widget vs Blue Widget

Conclusion

They try to cover everything about their keywords so that all types of visitors will be attended to.

Awesome

None of it is rocket science.

The big problem is denial.

People simply will not admit they cannot create the content. They won't admit they can't write, that they can't get the keywords in naturally.

So piece of advice #1 is stop being so CHEAP and hire a PROFESSIONAL to write!

Piece of advice #2 is people pay lip service to social outreach.

Social outreach is going to be your bread and butter traffic, especially in the beginning.

WORK at your social outreach. If you can't hire a PROFESSIONAL to get advice!

Otherwise you might as well give up.

I am learning