[Journey] College Student Niche Site

Hidden Network

Hidden Network

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Joined
Dec 5, 2016
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My Journey

I'm finally beginning my journey after a lot of research and many years of contemplating whether or not I should start Internet marketing. I have a full time job this summer and I'm finally making enough money to save and delve into this adventure. This thread is for me to stay motivated, disciplined and on track.

I'm planning to grow a money site from nothing to at least $500 a month. I plan to generate traffic through search, social media, social bookmarking, and PBN's. Income will come mainly from display ads and affiliate sales.

Background​

When I was 15 my parents divorced leaving me with my mother who was not financially well off given we relied on my father for most of our income. She found a job and supported me and my older brother. This was very tough on all of us financially and I watched my mother suffer, doing without to provide for us.

During high school I got into a lot of trouble legally this caused my mom so much disappointment and heart ache. I had let her down after all she had done to provide for me and lead me on the right path. I had the right motives at the time just the wrong mindset and this is what led to my incarceration.

After seeing her so disappointed and let down I decided to change, I needed to make her proud and change my life around. So I applied to college and got accepted. I'm currently in my last year and working towards a degree while working part time. However I'm tired of watching my mother suffer financially till this day. I want to provide for her and plan to do that through my career and hopefully someday through Internet marketing. I know it will take time to achieve this goal but I''m willing to put the hours in.
​

Completed so Far
​
  • Built a website and let age for 6 months.​
  • Researched keywords with KWfinder.​
  • Outsourced for 2 Articles with @NatashaNixon (waiting on 1).​
  • Ordered some expired web 2.0's PA 30+​

I'm new to all of this so any advice or constructive criticizing is more than appreciated. I plan to update this thread at least once a week as I'm still working full-time. I will try to add at least 3 articles per week hopefully more.

​
 
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Hidden Network said:
Completed so Far
​
  • Built a website and let age for 6 months.​
  • Researched keywords with KWfinder.​
  • Outsourced for 2 Articles with @NatashaNixon (waiting on 1).​
  • Ordered some expired web 2.0's PA 30+​
Click to expand...

Have you already built the website and let it age for 6 month? If so I would say you are doing well just knowing to do that. There is a whole bunch of back and forth as to if there is a sandbox or not. Personally, I believe there is one and from my personal experience, the quickest I have ever ranked a page on a fresh domain is 3 month but that was using moderatley powered PBN domains. With my automated stuff like SER it usually takes closer to the six month period.

Back when I used to coach people from the GSA forum I would see that time and time again, I would spend hours or days working with people to get their rigs running smoothly and then after a month or two they just disappear even though I told them it takes months for the domain to age in.

I am not a fan of tools like KWfinder as they don't give you a way to adjust the variables that determine the KC score for the keyword. Low comp for someone using high powered PBN, a medium powered PBN, a low powered PBN and automation is all different. I published this post a few month back on how I do my own keyword research for FREE and still stand by it. I recently had an AHRefs subscription and loved their keyword research tool but outside of that, I have not found one that I thought was worth the time and even the AHRefs one is crazy expensive if you are only using it for that small part of your subscription.

I used to use Natasha back in the day but moved elsewhere. I have no idea what shes charging these days but I used to use her content on both money site pages and tier one pages and the projects worked fine. I recently published this post on why I moved my content orders over to Upwork. I have found it a great source of content at low prices but as I explain in the post I think the fact I have spent a few thousand dollars on it helps freelancers bid on my jobs as they see I am paying my past workers. I have had a number of people over on Reddit say they have struggled to find writers at the prices I have been able to but they are still getting good content but probably closer to what Natasha charges for hers.

Theres a guy in the BST called Furykyle, his content gigs are sick but he charges around $100 and I have a guy working with me on upwork who provides very similar content for $25 at the same wordcount now so I use him but his prices is based on me pushing so much work to him.

I'm not sure if it was yourself or someone else I was talking to a few days ago about expired web 2.0s and SER but a friend used to use expired tumblrs and hit them with SER but they changed something and now he uses over blogs and as far as I know he is still doing it. He is rarly online these days and I Havent spoken to him much since before Fred so no idea if it is still working for him but I am interested to see how you get on with them :).
 
Yes my site is at least six months old. By the way took a look at your article on free keyword research and turns out both of my main keywords are under 2000 results. I'm assuming that means theres low competition?
@Shaunm
 
Hidden Network said:
Yes my site is at least six months old. By the way took a look at your article on free keyword research and turns out both of my main keywords are under 2000 results. I'm assuming that means theres low competition?
@Shaunm
Click to expand...

Good luck with your journey.

Just because a keyword has under x searches a month doesn't make it easy. I've seen keywords with 10 monthly searches that are virtually impossible to rank for without a massive budget. I'm talking Amazon affiliate keywords so not super super big earners. Just on small under $50 products that get barley any commission. Manual SERP check is needed for doing keyword research.

How are you monitizing your site btw?
 
Hidden Network said:
Yes my site is at least six months old. By the way took a look at your article on free keyword research and turns out both of my main keywords are under 2000 results. I'm assuming that means theres low competition?
@Shaunm
Click to expand...

Is that with the both modifiers intitle:”” inanchor:”” or just one of them? If its both I would say thats a pretty hard keyword to rank for in all honesty. I you like PM me it and I will take a look.
 
Shaunm said:
Is that with the both modifiers intitle:”” inanchor:”” or just one of them? If its both I would say thats a pretty hard keyword to rank for in all honesty. I you like PM me it and I will take a look.
Click to expand...
I can't pm yet and for both its like 990 for 1 and 51 for the other
 
Shaunm said:
990 for both is pretty high, do many of the top 10 have the keyword in their title?
Click to expand...
I changed my keyword slightly and now its only 119 for just intitle and 288 for both
 
What important for you is to have FOCUS on that project... it's easily to get distracted on the next shiny thing.
 
Hidden Network said:
I changed my keyword slightly and now its only 119 for just intitle and 288 for both
Click to expand...

Thats the kind of range I go for but I also check the number of the top 10 that have the keyword in their title and stuff too as well as try work out the power of the domain.
 
Update Today

Busy day today so not a lot of time since it's fathers day and celebrating it with my girlfriends dad. Got as much done as possible​
  • Received 15 PA 30+ Web 2.0's today and have set-up two of those with a logo, one article, and a backlink to my site.
  • Ordered 5 articles for my web 2.0's and will continue building around 3-5 web 2.0's for each article page on my site in the upcoming weeks.
  • Performed some more keyword research. Thanks to @Shaunm I feel like I can perform more in depth research from following his guide. He has been a tremendous help!
 
As much as I would love to give you some tips or advice but I'm no expert in SEO. I'm glad that shaunm was giving you alot of information and hopefully you'll achieve your goal soon. Best of luck in your journey.
 
magneticbucks said:
As much as I would love to give you some tips or advice but I'm no expert in SEO. I'm glad that shaunm was giving you alot of information and hopefully you'll achieve your goal soon. Best of luck in your journey.
Click to expand...
Thank you!
 
Shaunm said:
Have you already built the website and let it age for 6 month? If so I would say you are doing well just knowing to do that. There is a whole bunch of back and forth as to if there is a sandbox or not. Personally, I believe there is one and from my personal experience, the quickest I have ever ranked a page on a fresh domain is 3 month but that was using moderatley powered PBN domains. With my automated stuff like SER it usually takes closer to the six month period.

Back when I used to coach people from the GSA forum I would see that time and time again, I would spend hours or days working with people to get their rigs running smoothly and then after a month or two they just disappear even though I told them it takes months for the domain to age in.

I am not a fan of tools like KWfinder as they don't give you a way to adjust the variables that determine the KC score for the keyword. Low comp for someone using high powered PBN, a medium powered PBN, a low powered PBN and automation is all different. I published this post a few month back on how I do my own keyword research for FREE and still stand by it. I recently had an AHRefs subscription and loved their keyword research tool but outside of that, I have not found one that I thought was worth the time and even the AHRefs one is crazy expensive if you are only using it for that small part of your subscription.

I used to use Natasha back in the day but moved elsewhere. I have no idea what shes charging these days but I used to use her content on both money site pages and tier one pages and the projects worked fine. I recently published this post on why I moved my content orders over to Upwork. I have found it a great source of content at low prices but as I explain in the post I think the fact I have spent a few thousand dollars on it helps freelancers bid on my jobs as they see I am paying my past workers. I have had a number of people over on Reddit say they have struggled to find writers at the prices I have been able to but they are still getting good content but probably closer to what Natasha charges for hers.

Theres a guy in the BST called Furykyle, his content gigs are sick but he charges around $100 and I have a guy working with me on upwork who provides very similar content for $25 at the same wordcount now so I use him but his prices is based on me pushing so much work to him.

I'm not sure if it was yourself or someone else I was talking to a few days ago about expired web 2.0s and SER but a friend used to use expired tumblrs and hit them with SER but they changed something and now he uses over blogs and as far as I know he is still doing it. He is rarly online these days and I Havent spoken to him much since before Fred so no idea if it is still working for him but I am interested to see how you get on with them :).
Click to expand...
You the man, Shaunm! Your website is incredibly insightful and useful. I highly recommend everyone to check it out.
 
Holzr said:
Good luck with your journey.

Just because a keyword has under x searches a month doesn't make it easy. I've seen keywords with 10 monthly searches that are virtually impossible to rank for without a massive budget. I'm talking Amazon affiliate keywords so not super super big earners. Just on small under $50 products that get barley any commission. Manual SERP check is needed for doing keyword research.

How are you monitizing your site btw?
Click to expand...
I'm monetizing my site with the Amazon affiliate program and Adsense
 
Hidden Network said:
Update Today

Busy day today so not a lot of time since it's fathers day and celebrating it with my girlfriends dad. Got as much done as possible​
  • Received 15 PA 30+ Web 2.0's today and have set-up two of those with a logo, one article, and a backlink to my site.
  • Ordered 5 articles for my web 2.0's and will continue building around 3-5 web 2.0's for each article page on my site in the upcoming weeks.
  • Performed some more keyword research. Thanks to @Shaunm I feel like I can perform more in depth research from following his guide. He has been a tremendous help!
Click to expand...

Why did you buy the web 2.0s if you were just going to put new content in them anyway? Are they expired ones or something with backlinks already?
 
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