jamesjk1
Supreme Member
- Nov 1, 2012
- 1,237
- 845
Hey everyone,
Had a bit of good news and just felt like sharing.
After a long time (too long, in fact) I finally made a sale off my site, $56.46 to be exact.
I'm pretty embarrassed to say exactly how long its been between-sales, so lets just say it's been long enough. I previously had some semi-decent success with my first-ever site but after feeling the wrath of Google's panda/penguin updates, I was knocked back into oblivion, as was my confidence. My current site has been my attempt at resurrection and learning from my mistakes, so it's nice to see a payoff (however small) for my work and perseverance. For those wondering, it was a clickbank product that I promoted via a WordPress site targeting a variety of long-tail keywords in the same niche.
Instead of just telling you 'Hey, I made a little bit of money', I've decided to share some lessons and important notes I've learned thus far. This will likely be old news to most folks here so please, if you don't have anything constructive to say, please keep it to yourself (skyrocketseo, I'm looking at you). For others, I hope this helps and serves as a reminder to take action and never give up.
NOTES:
1. Search Volume: You don't need to go after these huge terms. Sure, if you manage to rank them the money will speak for itself, but the keyword I targeted only had 140 searches per month and managed to rank it #1 without building a single link to it. There's plenty of low-hanging fruit out there. For higher-volume keyword pages to which I am building links, all are slowly moving up with most hovering around page 2.
2. Regarding link building: I can't tell you how many hours I've 'wasted' reading about link building, looking at different seo packages and trying to figure out what's best. You know where this got me? Nowhere. Sure, I had some knowledge about general stuff but I (more often than not) didn't apply it. The only results (good or bad) came when I took action. I know the term 'taking action' gets thrown around a lot here, but it's true. Figure out what it is that's stopping you and address it, otherwise I can guarantee you're going to be in exactly the same place. If money is the issue (it usually is) then...
3. Get a Job: If you haven't got an income stream you can put towards seo, get one. I don't care how, cut grass, flip burgers - anything. Each week I dedicated a small amount to seo (buying expired domains etc) which allowed me to move forward.
4. Regarding on-page: Again, nothing groundbreaking here. Put the keyword in the title (along with some other words - i.e. 'how to lose weight in 6 minutes (what!?)' - for the keyword 'how to lose weight'). Most of my articles are ~1000 words and while I'm certain content is NOT king, it DOES help to a degree. For the rest, I don't worry too much - if you're writing about a keyword/topic, LSI and variations will naturally find their way onto the page which should suffice. Pics and vids are good and help user engagement so add a few where it makes sense to do so.
4. Regarding off-page: There really is no secret here. PBN's, web 2.0's, videos, press releases - they all work and contribute to building a balanced link portfolio. As far as I can tell, everything comes down to PR (trust/authority etc) and relevance. If you can get these two factors right, you can rank for just about anything. Instead of blindly buying seo packages and hoping for the best, focus on gaining authoritative links and improving what you have via tiered link building. I'll hold short of saying quality is always better than quality as it depends on what you're trying to do. Honestly, I'm still a little 'miffed' as to what constitutes a 'quality' link so perhaps others with more experience will chime in below.
I know $56 is f**k-all and there are guys killing it here, but if my post helped 1 person then that's great.
Had a bit of good news and just felt like sharing.
After a long time (too long, in fact) I finally made a sale off my site, $56.46 to be exact.
I'm pretty embarrassed to say exactly how long its been between-sales, so lets just say it's been long enough. I previously had some semi-decent success with my first-ever site but after feeling the wrath of Google's panda/penguin updates, I was knocked back into oblivion, as was my confidence. My current site has been my attempt at resurrection and learning from my mistakes, so it's nice to see a payoff (however small) for my work and perseverance. For those wondering, it was a clickbank product that I promoted via a WordPress site targeting a variety of long-tail keywords in the same niche.
Instead of just telling you 'Hey, I made a little bit of money', I've decided to share some lessons and important notes I've learned thus far. This will likely be old news to most folks here so please, if you don't have anything constructive to say, please keep it to yourself (skyrocketseo, I'm looking at you). For others, I hope this helps and serves as a reminder to take action and never give up.
NOTES:
1. Search Volume: You don't need to go after these huge terms. Sure, if you manage to rank them the money will speak for itself, but the keyword I targeted only had 140 searches per month and managed to rank it #1 without building a single link to it. There's plenty of low-hanging fruit out there. For higher-volume keyword pages to which I am building links, all are slowly moving up with most hovering around page 2.
2. Regarding link building: I can't tell you how many hours I've 'wasted' reading about link building, looking at different seo packages and trying to figure out what's best. You know where this got me? Nowhere. Sure, I had some knowledge about general stuff but I (more often than not) didn't apply it. The only results (good or bad) came when I took action. I know the term 'taking action' gets thrown around a lot here, but it's true. Figure out what it is that's stopping you and address it, otherwise I can guarantee you're going to be in exactly the same place. If money is the issue (it usually is) then...
3. Get a Job: If you haven't got an income stream you can put towards seo, get one. I don't care how, cut grass, flip burgers - anything. Each week I dedicated a small amount to seo (buying expired domains etc) which allowed me to move forward.
4. Regarding on-page: Again, nothing groundbreaking here. Put the keyword in the title (along with some other words - i.e. 'how to lose weight in 6 minutes (what!?)' - for the keyword 'how to lose weight'). Most of my articles are ~1000 words and while I'm certain content is NOT king, it DOES help to a degree. For the rest, I don't worry too much - if you're writing about a keyword/topic, LSI and variations will naturally find their way onto the page which should suffice. Pics and vids are good and help user engagement so add a few where it makes sense to do so.
4. Regarding off-page: There really is no secret here. PBN's, web 2.0's, videos, press releases - they all work and contribute to building a balanced link portfolio. As far as I can tell, everything comes down to PR (trust/authority etc) and relevance. If you can get these two factors right, you can rank for just about anything. Instead of blindly buying seo packages and hoping for the best, focus on gaining authoritative links and improving what you have via tiered link building. I'll hold short of saying quality is always better than quality as it depends on what you're trying to do. Honestly, I'm still a little 'miffed' as to what constitutes a 'quality' link so perhaps others with more experience will chime in below.
I know $56 is f**k-all and there are guys killing it here, but if my post helped 1 person then that's great.
