ObfuscatedMind
Newbie
- Sep 15, 2019
- 28
- 20
[WARNING: LONG READ]
Hi all,
I have recently created an account on BHW purely to make this journey thread and try to give back to a community who has taught me so much over the years.
I have been 'dabbling' with internet marketing since 2015 and been lurking on BHW and other forums on and off since then.
Until now, I never really took IM seriously. I had a few minor successes - my affiliate site I created in 2015, until recently, has been earning around $50 - $100 a month consistantly without me doing anything (I didn't even updated the wordpress plugins).
The site was in the medical niche and since the update earlier this year - it's measely traffic has diminished to a trickle and earnings have all but dried up - it was a good run though!
Recently, like many other full time 9 - 5 wageslaves, I had a particularly bad day at work and contemplated whether this is what I really saw myself doing for the next 30+ years and had a mini-panic attack.
I decided then and there that I would put my all into this internet marketing thing and see if I could make it work. Either I am going to be successful or I am going to be able to say I gave it a damn good shot!
The overall plan is to create an Authority site with a mix of informational and 'money' pages utilizing both Amazon affiliate and ad networks to generate revenue.
Now, I mentioned earlier that I have a full time 9 - 5 job, this coupled with the fact I have a young family means that I am going to have to prioritise and maintain a super strict schedule in order to make this journey work.
Part of making this thread is to keep myself accountable - the other half is that to succeed, I am going to have to 'work' during the time I would otherwise use to socialise. This has proven to be a rather lonely endeveour - so meeting a few like-minded people would not go amiss!
(Obviously once the site starts to return $$ I will outsource a lot of the content writing).
I have been following the journey thread by @Big Ron who has started a website following on from the Project 24 guys Jim and Ricky.
My plan closely emulates the Project 24 timeline - however, I have made a few unique tweaks of my own which I will implement and test along the way. I will share as much of what I do as possible with all of you.
What I Have Done To Date
I started my website on 31 August 2019. So it has almost been a month. To date I have published 19 articles written by myself with over 47,000 words at an average of 2,473 words per article - QUICK MAFFS!
As I am loosely following the Project 24 guidelines - my efforts will be soley whitehat (at least to begin with). This means keyword research, on-page SEO and content are paramount and my main focus.
Up until now I have done the following:
Niche Selection
I found my niche pretty quickly. Because my goal is to make an authority site, I chose a very broad niche that I am able to start off pretty focused - but expand A LOT as things begin to snowball (if they do).
I didn't focus too much on competitiveness - other than not picking a niche in the fitness/weightloss, finance or health (f*** you E-A-T update) niches.
I am of the belief that all niches can be profitable - you just need to find an 'angle' and low competition long-tales to target areas of your niche that are a bit less competitive. We will see if I am right
.
Sorry - I won't be disclosing my niche. It is something I'm interested in learning about, but is not something I'm an expert in.
To start off - I am going to write articles on a lazer focused area of my niche - I will go into this a bit more later but it is going to essentially be my first 'silo'.
Keyword Research
I have spent 1 day doing keyword research. I didn't use any paid tools, just google and a few free ones.
My process was as follows:
How I judge keyword difficulty
To me keyword difficulty is an art not a science. Basically I took a high level look at the search results for the keyword I am targetting.
The types of things I looked at:
If yes and I am not up against giants - the keyword gets added to the list.
Green = Forum/quora/reddit in top10, results that don't answer the searchers intent, other affiliate sites with thin content - ranking off authority alone.
Orange = Some affiliate sites directly targeting the keyword, content is thin / spammy, some links and low PA & DA. I think my content would be 100x better than these results.
Red = Multiple affiliate sites / some high authority sites directly targeting the keyword. Medium / High DA & PA. Articles are pretty good and cover most of what the searcher would want - but not all. These are keywords that if you rank for - will bring in a TONNE of traffic.
Ommited = Resutls with authority sites that focus on the niche - answer the query completely with backed up sources / research. Orginal pictures that back up the articles. Links and referring domains out the wazzoo. I'm not rich and their are easier battles to fight!
Website Set Up
I have set my site up using wordpress and a simple fast loading theme (Schema by themeworkshop). The plugins I am using are the typical security plugins (wordfence, akismet, hide wordpress login), Rank Math for SEO and snippet customization, W3 total Cache, EWWW Image Optimizer and Remove Category URL.
The way I am going to structure my website is in silos - with each silo being an different topic / aspect of my niche.
I can't link anything yet (only just registered my account on BHW) - but there are a tonne of really good articles online and posts in here about siloing a site and the benfits for topical relevancy and passing link juice from homepage down silos.
My website is optimised and loads in less than 2 seconds and I plan to keep it that way.
I have included all the legal crap I need for an affiliate site and have opted to put a picture of myself and a bit of a blurb in my sidebar instead of the 'About Me' page. This is just to try and gain a bit more trust with visitors and come across as more personable / relatable.
"Look at me I'm a person like you - now buy some stuff!"
Oh - my domain is also fresh. Hello google sandbox, lets be friends for a few months.
Content Writing
As mentioned earlier I have published 19 articles so far. I try to write about 2,000 - 3,000 words per night. Now obviously research and family commitments sometimes stifle this - and sometimes I write more.
I am just trying to keep grinding away every moment I can.
At this early stage in the website - while it's so fresh and new and in the sandbox I am focusing on only green and orange keywords.
Initially I just want to get articles ranking and gain a bit of trust with the big G. Tickle the G-spot so to speak.
This does not mean I am slacking though - I said I was going to put my all into this thing and that's what I am doing. All articles I write are well researched and I aim to create THE BEST resource to answer the query as possible.
I am also interlinking where relevant between articles and including my Amazon affiliate links on the money articles I am writing.
Content Mix
The article mix I am aiming for is 65% Informational and 35% Affiliate / money pages.
I am not writing any XXX review type articles as money pages just yet. I think these are spammy - especially for a new site.
Instead I am writing articles like '5 things you can use right now to XXX' and 'Top 13 best XXX - the ultimate list' - clickbaity articles, but in my opinion are a bit less spammy.
I will then try (not always) link from my informational articles to these money articles.
Content Type
Keeping in the spirit of Project 24 I am very roughly following their 'Response', 'Staple' and 'Pillar' post recipe.
Basically, green keywords I try to write around 1,300 - 2,000 words to answer the query, orange around 2,000 - 4,000 and red, 3,000 - 6,000.
I said I am roughly following these guidlines. To make the ultimate resource for the search intent I generally find myself writing much longer form content.
Long form content appeals to me. I like the fact I can pick up a few more long tale keywords along the way and that I can answer the question / query as best and better than the other search results.
It will also help me if I decide to link build later on - sky scraper technique and just plain trying to steal competitors links ('hey I'm better than X, link to me plz').
There are a few rules I have kept with each piece of content I have and will write:
Practical Example of What I Mean (No this isn't my Niche):
Informational article: How to build a gaming computer - a step by step interactive guide for beginners (huge pillar post - 'how to build a computer' is a massive keyword.
I would first write 'Top 11 2080Ti Graphics Cards 2019 - Ranked and Reviewed', 'G-Sync or V-Sync Monitor? - 10 Reasons why G-Sync is better' etc etc.
I would then litter my informational post with my 'money posts'
If you really want an idea of what the content I am writing is like. Read this first post! (Although I haven't included pics or vids - it's midnight and I'm lazy!).
Silos
Earlier I said I was going to keep each topic in my Niche silo'd and this is true. I want to build a huge authority site. To do this I need to keep everything nice and organised.
In Project 24 you are supposed to write 10 response posts, 10 staple posts and 10 pillar posts on your website and then move onto the next Website (they also talk about youtube vids and stuff - aint nobody got time fo dat).
Instead - I am going to write 30 - 50 articles in a silo and then move onto a different silo. In this way I will constantly be building the same site - but different areas of it. I hope because I am only using content and on-page SEO at this stage that I won't get smashed by an algo update.
If this site goes well - I do plan to expand in the future. But 1 thing at a time!
Where to From Here
From here I am just going to keep pumping out content. I have no plans at this stage to do any link building.
That being said I am not counting link building out entirely. I am writing, what I believe to be great resource articles in my niche - this means I have avenues available to me in the future such as the sky scraper technique and stealing competitors links etc.
I won't be buying links at this point either. I have bought link packages from forums before in the past and they are, for lack of a better word, shit.
That's not to say all link packages are shit... its just not something I am looking at doing right now.
In terms of content - I am aiming for around 75k - 100k words per silo for a total of 1million words.
This is a huge stretch, but if I am going to set goals - I would rather set them big. At my current rate of writing this would take me over two years.... but once I start earning I plan to leverage content writing free-lancers.
Current Earnings: $Nil
Current Costs: $239.39 (hosting, domain, theme etc).
I will try keep this thread updated whenever I reach a milestone or when something meaninful happens.
Hell - I'll probably be here just to chat sometimes as its damn lonely writing in a room by myself!
Now that I have an account here - I will try to post more regularly!
Until next update - ObfuscatedMind out!
Hi all,
I have recently created an account on BHW purely to make this journey thread and try to give back to a community who has taught me so much over the years.
I have been 'dabbling' with internet marketing since 2015 and been lurking on BHW and other forums on and off since then.
Until now, I never really took IM seriously. I had a few minor successes - my affiliate site I created in 2015, until recently, has been earning around $50 - $100 a month consistantly without me doing anything (I didn't even updated the wordpress plugins).
The site was in the medical niche and since the update earlier this year - it's measely traffic has diminished to a trickle and earnings have all but dried up - it was a good run though!
Recently, like many other full time 9 - 5 wageslaves, I had a particularly bad day at work and contemplated whether this is what I really saw myself doing for the next 30+ years and had a mini-panic attack.
I decided then and there that I would put my all into this internet marketing thing and see if I could make it work. Either I am going to be successful or I am going to be able to say I gave it a damn good shot!
The overall plan is to create an Authority site with a mix of informational and 'money' pages utilizing both Amazon affiliate and ad networks to generate revenue.
Now, I mentioned earlier that I have a full time 9 - 5 job, this coupled with the fact I have a young family means that I am going to have to prioritise and maintain a super strict schedule in order to make this journey work.
Part of making this thread is to keep myself accountable - the other half is that to succeed, I am going to have to 'work' during the time I would otherwise use to socialise. This has proven to be a rather lonely endeveour - so meeting a few like-minded people would not go amiss!
(Obviously once the site starts to return $$ I will outsource a lot of the content writing).
I have been following the journey thread by @Big Ron who has started a website following on from the Project 24 guys Jim and Ricky.
My plan closely emulates the Project 24 timeline - however, I have made a few unique tweaks of my own which I will implement and test along the way. I will share as much of what I do as possible with all of you.
What I Have Done To Date
I started my website on 31 August 2019. So it has almost been a month. To date I have published 19 articles written by myself with over 47,000 words at an average of 2,473 words per article - QUICK MAFFS!
As I am loosely following the Project 24 guidelines - my efforts will be soley whitehat (at least to begin with). This means keyword research, on-page SEO and content are paramount and my main focus.
Up until now I have done the following:
Niche Selection
I found my niche pretty quickly. Because my goal is to make an authority site, I chose a very broad niche that I am able to start off pretty focused - but expand A LOT as things begin to snowball (if they do).
I didn't focus too much on competitiveness - other than not picking a niche in the fitness/weightloss, finance or health (f*** you E-A-T update) niches.
I am of the belief that all niches can be profitable - you just need to find an 'angle' and low competition long-tales to target areas of your niche that are a bit less competitive. We will see if I am right
.Sorry - I won't be disclosing my niche. It is something I'm interested in learning about, but is not something I'm an expert in.
To start off - I am going to write articles on a lazer focused area of my niche - I will go into this a bit more later but it is going to essentially be my first 'silo'.
Keyword Research
I have spent 1 day doing keyword research. I didn't use any paid tools, just google and a few free ones.
My process was as follows:
- Set up an excel spreadsheet to track keywords;
- Go to answerthepublic and type in my niche / keywords found in my niche;
- Write down all the keywords that I think are good / do not sound silly;
- These keywords are a mixture of buyer intent and questions;
- I then searched these in google and determined their 'difficulty';
- In my spreadsheet I highlighted the keywords as follows -green - easy, orange - medium, red - hard based on my percieved difficulty to rank [I will explain this a bit more below].
- I used ubersuggest to get an idea of the volume for each keyword and their determination of difficulty NOTE: I have taken this info with a grain of salt - a lot of my keywords make sense to me and show 0 volume in ubersuggest. Will be an interesting experiment.
- Other tools to find keywords: Google Alphabet Soup method, My personal interest / questions about the niche and running competitors websites through ubersuggest to snipe some of their keywords.
How I judge keyword difficulty
To me keyword difficulty is an art not a science. Basically I took a high level look at the search results for the keyword I am targetting.
The types of things I looked at:
- What domains are showing in the top 10?
- Are they high authority domains that are targeting that exact keyword? If so how many links do they have.
- Does their content answer the question / searchers intent in its entirety?
- Are there forums / reddit / quora in the results?
- Are there search results that are just pictures or videos - this would likely mean searchers aren't keen on a long blog post to answer this query - Thanks for saving me time RankBrain!
- What does Moz toolbar say about their DA / PA - Again - grain of salt!
If yes and I am not up against giants - the keyword gets added to the list.
Green = Forum/quora/reddit in top10, results that don't answer the searchers intent, other affiliate sites with thin content - ranking off authority alone.
Orange = Some affiliate sites directly targeting the keyword, content is thin / spammy, some links and low PA & DA. I think my content would be 100x better than these results.
Red = Multiple affiliate sites / some high authority sites directly targeting the keyword. Medium / High DA & PA. Articles are pretty good and cover most of what the searcher would want - but not all. These are keywords that if you rank for - will bring in a TONNE of traffic.
Ommited = Resutls with authority sites that focus on the niche - answer the query completely with backed up sources / research. Orginal pictures that back up the articles. Links and referring domains out the wazzoo. I'm not rich and their are easier battles to fight!
Website Set Up
I have set my site up using wordpress and a simple fast loading theme (Schema by themeworkshop). The plugins I am using are the typical security plugins (wordfence, akismet, hide wordpress login), Rank Math for SEO and snippet customization, W3 total Cache, EWWW Image Optimizer and Remove Category URL.
The way I am going to structure my website is in silos - with each silo being an different topic / aspect of my niche.
I can't link anything yet (only just registered my account on BHW) - but there are a tonne of really good articles online and posts in here about siloing a site and the benfits for topical relevancy and passing link juice from homepage down silos.
My website is optimised and loads in less than 2 seconds and I plan to keep it that way.
I have included all the legal crap I need for an affiliate site and have opted to put a picture of myself and a bit of a blurb in my sidebar instead of the 'About Me' page. This is just to try and gain a bit more trust with visitors and come across as more personable / relatable.
"Look at me I'm a person like you - now buy some stuff!"
Oh - my domain is also fresh. Hello google sandbox, lets be friends for a few months
.Content Writing
As mentioned earlier I have published 19 articles so far. I try to write about 2,000 - 3,000 words per night. Now obviously research and family commitments sometimes stifle this - and sometimes I write more.
I am just trying to keep grinding away every moment I can.
At this early stage in the website - while it's so fresh and new and in the sandbox I am focusing on only green and orange keywords.
Initially I just want to get articles ranking and gain a bit of trust with the big G. Tickle the G-spot so to speak.
This does not mean I am slacking though - I said I was going to put my all into this thing and that's what I am doing. All articles I write are well researched and I aim to create THE BEST resource to answer the query as possible.
I am also interlinking where relevant between articles and including my Amazon affiliate links on the money articles I am writing.
Content Mix
The article mix I am aiming for is 65% Informational and 35% Affiliate / money pages.
I am not writing any XXX review type articles as money pages just yet. I think these are spammy - especially for a new site.
Instead I am writing articles like '5 things you can use right now to XXX' and 'Top 13 best XXX - the ultimate list' - clickbaity articles, but in my opinion are a bit less spammy.
I will then try (not always) link from my informational articles to these money articles.
Content Type
Keeping in the spirit of Project 24 I am very roughly following their 'Response', 'Staple' and 'Pillar' post recipe.
Basically, green keywords I try to write around 1,300 - 2,000 words to answer the query, orange around 2,000 - 4,000 and red, 3,000 - 6,000.
I said I am roughly following these guidlines. To make the ultimate resource for the search intent I generally find myself writing much longer form content.
Long form content appeals to me. I like the fact I can pick up a few more long tale keywords along the way and that I can answer the question / query as best and better than the other search results.
It will also help me if I decide to link build later on - sky scraper technique and just plain trying to steal competitors links ('hey I'm better than X, link to me plz').
There are a few rules I have kept with each piece of content I have and will write:
- Answer the question in the second - third paragraph. In bold, or if possible a table. Then expand on it in the rest of the article.
The reason for this is two fold - it hopefully prevents bouncing / pogosticking because searchers get their answer straight away AND it also gives me a better shot of getting that rich snippet (if there is one).
- I do not use any of the fancy Amazon plugins that have the products with the prices / comparison tables etc.
Instead I just use text links where appropriate and in a 'Check the latest price' in my top 11 style articles. This is mainly because I think consumers are more aware of affilaite sites these days and I don't want to come across as desperate and pushy (personal opinion - subject to change).
- If there are other top 10 etc articles for my money sites. I always try to one-up them (preferrably on an odd number). This is just what I've read on psychology - humans like bigger numbers and are attracted to odd ones. We're weird.
- I break up all content with subheadings, white space, photos and videos. I make my articles personable.
Practical Example of What I Mean (No this isn't my Niche):
Informational article: How to build a gaming computer - a step by step interactive guide for beginners (huge pillar post - 'how to build a computer' is a massive keyword.
I would first write 'Top 11 2080Ti Graphics Cards 2019 - Ranked and Reviewed', 'G-Sync or V-Sync Monitor? - 10 Reasons why G-Sync is better' etc etc.
I would then litter my informational post with my 'money posts'
If you really want an idea of what the content I am writing is like. Read this first post! (Although I haven't included pics or vids - it's midnight and I'm lazy!).
Silos
Earlier I said I was going to keep each topic in my Niche silo'd and this is true. I want to build a huge authority site. To do this I need to keep everything nice and organised.
In Project 24 you are supposed to write 10 response posts, 10 staple posts and 10 pillar posts on your website and then move onto the next Website (they also talk about youtube vids and stuff - aint nobody got time fo dat).
Instead - I am going to write 30 - 50 articles in a silo and then move onto a different silo. In this way I will constantly be building the same site - but different areas of it. I hope because I am only using content and on-page SEO at this stage that I won't get smashed by an algo update.
If this site goes well - I do plan to expand in the future. But 1 thing at a time!
Where to From Here
From here I am just going to keep pumping out content. I have no plans at this stage to do any link building.
That being said I am not counting link building out entirely. I am writing, what I believe to be great resource articles in my niche - this means I have avenues available to me in the future such as the sky scraper technique and stealing competitors links etc.
I won't be buying links at this point either. I have bought link packages from forums before in the past and they are, for lack of a better word, shit.
That's not to say all link packages are shit... its just not something I am looking at doing right now.
In terms of content - I am aiming for around 75k - 100k words per silo for a total of 1million words.
This is a huge stretch, but if I am going to set goals - I would rather set them big. At my current rate of writing this would take me over two years.... but once I start earning I plan to leverage content writing free-lancers.
Current Earnings: $Nil
Current Costs: $239.39 (hosting, domain, theme etc).
I will try keep this thread updated whenever I reach a milestone or when something meaninful happens.
Hell - I'll probably be here just to chat sometimes as its damn lonely writing in a room by myself!
Now that I have an account here - I will try to post more regularly!
Until next update - ObfuscatedMind out!
