Complete noob building Authority Site Journey to 20$/day

Yo BHW!
I've been lurking here for some time now and today I decided to register and start my own journey to get advice and motivation. I am computer science student at university and have a little bit knowledge on html. My dream has been for a long time to be able to work from home, therefore I chose computer science.

I have about 3 hours every day to spend working on my site.
I have 1000$ starting capital. Maybe I should outsource articles?

My Goal:
- get consistently atleast 1500$/month

My Plan:
- Build authority site
- Not to irritate google -> no too dark black hat SEO
- Work long term
- monetize with adsense

What I have done:
- registered a new domain & bought hosting for 2 years -100$
- bought and customized template -25$
- written 5 articles, 500+ words each

I am building my site on Joomla! and this is my first time using it. Does anyone have any tips on how to optimize its ONSITE SEO? Also I am not doing any kind of keyword research yet as I am aiming to offer some value for the reader.

My Money:
starting capital 1000$
template -25$
domain & hosting -100$
= 875$

Any mentors here?
Tips are more than welcome!

I'd suggest you to start with the keyword research to discover what people are actually searching for and measure competition. From there you can come up with a good basis for a content strategy. Stay consistent and motivated and you'll get there. Good luck with you journey!

Write your own articles and only outsource the articles that aren't as important to you that fill up the site. Check phpbuilt's on-page SEO guide for more details.

Brendo said:

I'd suggest you to start with the keyword research to discover what people are actually searching for and measure competition. From there you can come up with a good basis for a content strategy. Stay consistent and motivated and you'll get there. Good luck with you journey!

Click to expand...

Thanks man I appreciate it. Is the keyword analysis such a big thing right now? I want to build "naturally" as for now so that word of mouth will get me visitors.

everythingred said:

Write your own articles and only outsource the articles that aren't as important to you that fill up the site. Check phpbuilt's on-page SEO guide for more details.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip, bookmarked the guide and will follow that! I was thinking to write the filling content myself and outsource the HQ ones. I'm not so confident writer, I think I can't really entertain people even I'm writing in my native language (finnish).

What I have done today:
- Ordered 1 very HQ article with 4 days TAT -25$
- Ordered logo gig on Fiverr -15$
- published the 5 articles I wrote yesterday
- got accepted to Adsense

My money
Starting capital 875$
logo -15$
HQ article -25$
= 835$

theqbot said:

Thanks man I appreciate it. Is the keyword analysis such a big thing right now? I want to build "naturally" as for now so that word of mouth will get me visitors.


Thanks for the tip, bookmarked the guide and will follow that! I was thinking to write the filling content myself and outsource the HQ ones. I'm not so confident writer, I think I can't really entertain people even I'm writing in my native language (finnish).

What I have done today:
- Ordered 1 very HQ article with 4 days TAT -25$
- Ordered logo gig on Fiverr -15$
- published the 5 articles I wrote yesterday
- got accepted to Adsense

My money
Starting capital 875$
logo -15$
HQ article -25$
= 835$

Click to expand...

Looking great and good luck! I will be following. $25 for an article? Was it a press release?

Authority site and $20 a day does not really fit in the same sentence. Unless it is "I am making an authority site, I want to be making way more than $20 a day".

theqbot said:

Thanks man I appreciate it. Is the keyword analysis such a big thing right now? I want to build "naturally" as for now so that word of mouth will get me visitors.


Thanks for the tip, bookmarked the guide and will follow that! I was thinking to write the filling content myself and outsource the HQ ones. I'm not so confident writer, I think I can't really entertain people even I'm writing in my native language (finnish).

What I have done today:
- Ordered 1 very HQ article with 4 days TAT -25$
- Ordered logo gig on Fiverr -15$
- published the 5 articles I wrote yesterday
- got accepted to Adsense

My money
Starting capital 875$
logo -15$
HQ article -25$
= 835$

Click to expand...

Wow $15 Dollars on a logo? Be careful and spend the money wisely.

My first observation is you spent too much money for your domain and hosting, but it's too late now.

I can help you with anything Joomla related, I've been using/developing with it since it was developed and before that I was into Mambo.

Here's a list of plugins that I would recommend you installing:

Free:
1) Admin exile - Protects your site from Brute Force and unwanted people getting to your Administrative Login page.
2) K2 - getk2.org (free plugin)
3) Widgetkit- Free dumbed down version from Yoothemes, ( https://yootheme.com/widgetkit ) exellent for adding slideshows, Twitter feeds, Accordions, Tabbed Content, Maps, Photogalleries, Lightboxes, Slidesets and Media Players very quickly.

Paid:
1) K2 canonical - keeps you from having duplicate content on your site
2) J Sitemap Pro - simple sitemap plugin, creates all of them for you and updates when you add content
3) JFBConnect - Adds social connectivity to your site (Facebook, Linked-in, Google+, Twitter)
4) Joocial - Automatically updates all of your social profiles when you add content. Additionally you can plugin RSS feeds and it will go out and get the content and post it to the relevant category for you on a schedule as well as post your 'evergreen' content to your social sites.

Hacks:

If you plan on building a list I have some hacks that will help you, for example:

-A user logs in to your site via social login (JFBC)
- That user is now on your GetResponse list AND you can now send them text messages VIA a service.
- One click (Facebook login) and the user is on your GetResponse list, a member of your site and you have their cell phone number to send text messages.

Great Templates:

Rockettheme.com
Yoothemes.com

Good day sir and I wish you the best of luck!

Peace,
Z

Great start. My personal advise though:

1. Don't outsource, if you can write yourself, write yourself. It won't take long to blow that 1k otherwise.

2. Do keyword research. It is without a doubt the most important part: the initial keyword research for my auth site took me 2 days, and I do another 15 minutes per article.

SEO advice:

The first thing that I would do is install K2, import your content into K2, goto one of those pages you just imported and check for over optimization, it's the bain of the CMS (pretty much all of them)! You may have to add a link to your menu to see them

Once done, relink your content in your menu to the K2 links and add 301's from your 'old' default Article Manager page to the new K2 pages. If you look in the Components dropdown there is a 'Redirect' component built in, but I use RE DJ http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/site-management/url-redirection/7189 (FREE) instead.

Second, put some content on your University account, most schools give you some free space and a URL to get to it to post your research. Put a link to your site and then Ping that link ONE TIME with Pingomatic. This will send Google to your University page and then to your site, congrats, you just got your first .edu link.

Peace,
Z

Zekie said:

SEO advice:

The first thing that I would do is install K2, import your content into K2, goto one of those pages you just imported and check for over optimization, it's the bain of the CMS (pretty much all of them)! You may have to add a link to your menu to see them

Once done, relink your content in your menu to the K2 links and add 301's from your 'old' default Article Manager page to the new K2 pages. If you look in the Components dropdown there is a 'Redirect' component built in, but I use RE DJ (FREE) instead.

Click to expand...

Thanks Z I'll get K2 after I have confirmed it's not going to break anything like my custom code.

I came up with a problem today:
The site looks like sh*t on mobile devices!

My site template is tableless/css and I'd like to make it mobile friendly. One freelancer/friend said that he could convert it to responsive with just 50$.. Is this a good deal?
I wouldn't like to change the template as it fits perfectly, I've worked on it for long time and it is just the way I like it.

i'm also noob in seo so i will definately follow your journey

Good luck with your journey. What is your site about?

theqbot said:

Thanks Z I'll get K2 after I have confirmed it's not going to break anything like my custom code.

I came up with a problem today:
The site looks like sh*t on mobile devices!

My site template is tableless/css and I'd like to make it mobile friendly. One freelancer/friend said that he could convert it to responsive with just 50$.. Is this a good deal?

I wouldn't like to change the template as it fits perfectly, I've worked on it for long time and it is just the way I like it.

Click to expand...

Personally I wouldn't waste time with this, I would just find a new template. Don't make the noob mistake of trying to do everything yourself, trust me I've done this and wasted too much time. Go to Yoothemes or Rockettheme and buy one that is already responsive, if you do decide to go with YooThemes you will get the full version of Widgetkit, not the 'Lite' version with your purchase.

If your friend will do that then it's a good deal but it's going to take him a bit of time. That's my only point there!

Peace,
Z

I've been thinking hard about changing the template to responsive. This is kinda sad as I have already invested 25$ and many hours on the old template. Well I guess that a new responsive template is a good investment and proceed to search for good-looking template tomorrow.

What I have done today:
- written and published 1 article of 500 words
- made facebook & twitter pages
- created site map

Also got very little revenue from adsense today...
My money:
starting capital: 835$
adsense: 0.01$

Few questions:
How often should I publish articles to maximize the authority growth and get ranked?
What is a good price for a template?
How should I keep eye on my rank in google?

Today was a little bit slow day, spent it searching for the template. Didn't publish anything on the site today.

What I have done today:
- bought responsive template 50$
- hired web developer to customize it 30$
- ordered 500 words article 10$
- written 1 awesome article of 1000 words

My money:
starting capital 835$
template -50$
web development -30$
article -10$
= 745$

I still have these few questions:
How often should I publish articles to maximize the authority growth and get ranked asap and amap?
How should I keep eye on my rank in google?

Not much done today as I was fighting with my gf and also waiting for the new template to be installed and optimized.

What I have done today:
- ordered 1 keyword from a user here 10$
- published 1 article of 500 words

My money:
starting capital 745$
keyword -10$
=735$

How are things coming along, any further income? Hope the PM with a few tips helped.

tg01 said:

How are things coming along, any further income? Hope the PM with a few tips helped.

Click to expand...

Things are going pretty well I guess... No any further income, the first ones were from page views as I was building the site
Thanks a lot for your PM, I would have answered with further questions but haven't got enough posts yet.

All the best to your journey .... planning to build an authority site now ... hope your thread will answer some of my queries as well.