[Journey] Scaling an Authority website to 10K a month (and beyond)

Your journey is one of the best here on BHW! Could you break down how long it takes you to write an article on average? How much time is spent on research vs writing - do you find images and format all posts yourself still? I really want to do an epic content project in September or October with 2-3 daily posts, but I'm not sure how realistic it would be for me!

jaymaybe said:

Your journey is one of the best here on BHW! Could you break down how long it takes you to write an article on average? How much time is spent on research vs writing - do you find images and format all posts yourself still? I really want to do an epic content project in September or October with 2-3 daily posts, but I'm not sure how realistic it would be for me!

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Thanks mate .
In average, it takes me about 90-120 minutes to write & publish a 1,500 words long article.

- For some articles I do not need to do any research, I simply write from my head, benefiting from the real experience in the niche + from writing experience. Sometimes I can get such an article done in 60-70 minutes.

- For certain articles I have to do some research, it can take anything from 5 minutes to 45 minutes, just very rarely it takes longer.

- I do not spend too much time looking for some superb images. I just enter the right keyword to Pexels.com or Unsplash.com , quickly scroll down the images and choose the one or two I like the most, download them, change names, and directly upload them to the article without making any other changes.
If there isn't any good image, I definitely won't make any images, and may simply publish the article without an image.

- Formatting is done on the go, as I write.

- Once I publish the article, I do one quick review, checking for errors, and possible improvements. This review takes about 5-7 minutes for 1,500 words article, and is included in the total time of 90-120 minutes.

- Last step is submitting the new URL to search console, to ensure the article is indexed as quickly as possible. For my website this typically takes less than 10 minutes after I submit it to search console. Sometimes it is indexed within seconds.


2-3 article a day over two months is a very solid plan. It can give you around 150 pieces of new content, and that's definitely something that can push your website a lot. Wish you good luck and most importantly lot of discipline--you will need to to get this done

wow, great journey, 10k/month is a big number.

Kikerinka said:

Thanks mate .
In average, it takes me about 90-120 minutes to write & publish a 1,500 words long article.

- For some articles I do not need to do any research, I simply write from my head, benefiting from the real experience in the niche + from writing experience. Sometimes I can get such an article done in 60-70 minutes.

- For certain articles I have to do some research, it can take anything from 5 minutes to 45 minutes, just very rarely it takes longer.

- I do not spend too much time looking for some superb images. I just enter the right keyword to Pexels.com or Unsplash.com , quickly scroll down the images and choose the one or two I like the most, download them, change names, and directly upload them to the article without making any other changes.
If there isn't any good image, I definitely won't make any images, and may simply publish the article without an image.

- Formatting is done on the go, as I write.

- Once I publish the article, I do one quick review, checking for errors, and possible improvements. This review takes about 5-7 minutes for 1,500 words article, and is included in the total time of 90-120 minutes.

- Last step is submitting the new URL to search console, to ensure the article is indexed as quickly as possible. For my website this typically takes less than 10 minutes after I submit it to search console. Sometimes it is indexed within seconds.


2-3 article a day over two months is a very solid plan. It can give you around 150 pieces of new content, and that's definitely something that can push your website a lot. Wish you good luck and most importantly lot of discipline--you will need to to get this done

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Thank you for the solid answer! So impressive

Regarding discipline, yeah, that's where I probably struggle a bit - but that's why I'd set it up as a challenge as content is sooo crucial. I already have products and affiliate offers set up on auto pilot through email, so all I need is more ways for people to find me in the first place...

Keep up the great work!

Glad you're back. Missed your posts since I read them before bed to sleep tight

Anyway, I have a few questions for you.

I'm currently in the process of learning all about my next niche, reading articles, watching videos, buying ebooks, etc. So, I wondered how did you get started with your niche.

How did the research of your niche look initially? Did you know some information about your niche before you started writing articles on your websites? How much time did you spend on research before you felt confident to start writing about it? Were you hesitant to write about certain topics because of the lack of expertise or knowledge?

Update, 23rd August, 2020, Day 104

- Published 2 new articles today, 1,633 words, 1,427 words

- Took care of all emails I had to answer, there's no backlog now.

- Next week the plan is to continue writing new articles, plus I will add PDFs to some of the new articles. I will explain why I do this, how, and what the benefits are, while I work on it during the week.

Answers & Reactions

RadzNguyen said:

wow, great journey, 10k/month is a big number.

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Thank you, but at the end of the day it's just a number.
I hope to use the money to make some positive difference in the world, in a way & community that matters to me.
It's not the number that motivates me, but the possibilities I'll have if this pans out and the passive income materialize .
There won't be any pictures of flashy cars in this journey, or dollar bills in the bathtub like gurus fo it . My motivation is other than that.

RedMoonVPN said:

Glad you're back. Missed your posts since I read them before bed to sleep tight

Anyway, I have a few questions for you.

I'm currently in the process of learning all about my next niche, reading articles, watching videos, buying ebooks, etc. So, I wondered how did you get started with your niche.

How did the research of your niche look initially? Did you know some information about your niche before you started writing articles on your websites? How much time did you spend on research before you felt confident to start writing about it? Were you hesitant to write about certain topics because of the lack of expertise or knowledge?

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I had on offline business in this niche (for a few years), before I turned my focus online, saw the possibilities, and eventually, because of some events in my life, and change of priorities, I ended up working only online in this niche... passive income is the thing that decided it for me.

But offline wasn't the same thing as online...
To be honest, when I look back at the time when I started with this niche, I had more courage than knowledge... I didn't look for perfection at the start--and wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I just wanted to get some things done, and see what happens... But as I worked more and more with the niche, I improved all my skills, and everything got easier and better afterwards. The process still continues to be honest.

I would say you are doing the right thing now, watching videos, reading eBooks, and hopefully you enjoy the process! But you should not end up in this phase for too long... I'd suggest you to start writing, and perhaps split your time to learning & to doing the actual work, 50/50. Because practice is the best teacher at the end.

BTW, thank you for your kind words and I hope you'll continue following this journey

Kikerinka said:

I had on offline business in this niche (for a few years), before I turned my focus online, saw the possibilities, and eventually, because of some events in my life, and change of priorities, I ended up working only online in this niche... passive income is the thing that decided it for me.

But offline wasn't the same thing as online...
To be honest, when I look back at the time when I started with this niche, I had more courage than knowledge... I didn't look for perfection at the start--and wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I just wanted to get some things done, and see what happens... But as I worked more and more with the niche, I improved all my skills, and everything got easier and better afterwards. The process still continues to be honest.

I would say you are doing the right thing now, watching videos, reading eBooks, and hopefully you enjoy the process! But you should not end up in this phase for too long... I'd suggest you to start writing, and perhaps split your time to learning & to doing the actual work, 50/50. Because practice is the best teacher at the end.

BTW, thank you for your kind words and I hope you'll continue following this journey

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Thank you for answering this clearly and for the suggestions. You hit the nail on the head when you said that I should split writing and research 50/50. That's the exact problem I have. I tend to get into that comfort zone where "I'm still learning" and that becomes an excuse for the lack of action (in this case writing).

Since you're very disciplined with your work and you seem to stick to your schedule very well, what would be your suggestion on how can I be more disciplined? It seems that if there aren't some severe repercussions for not getting the work done, I'll always find excuses for doing less work than I should.

RedMoonVPN said:

Thank you for answering this clearly and for the suggestions. You hit the nail on the head when you said that I should split writing and research 50/50. That's the exact problem I have. I tend to get into that comfort zone where "I'm still learning" and that becomes an excuse for the lack of action (in this case writing).

Since you're very disciplined with your work and you seem to stick to your schedule very well, what would be your suggestion on how can I be more disciplined? It seems that if there aren't some severe repercussions for not getting the work done, I'll always find excuses for doing less work than I should.

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That's the tough thing about entrepreneurship... you have no boss, and unless there's a sword hanging above your head (like a bill you have to pay before a certain date, in order to not end up on the street), laziness slowly creeps in.
And believe me this is even tougher when you already make money, let's say 1-2K/month, which may be enough for you to live a decent life (of course depending on your country).

The only thing that works, in my opinion, is seeing a meaningful purpose in your online project. If money is the only reason why you do it, you'll lose your motivation very soon. Either because money won't start rolling in right after the start, or because once you make enough to live with a certain standard you'll stop working...
So try to find this meaningful purpose, set goals, and remind them to yourself often--it helps a lot with motivation .

Kikerinka said:

If money is the only reason why you do it, you'll lose your motivation very soon. Either because money won't start rolling in right after the start, or because once you make enough to live with a certain standard you'll stop working...
So try to find this meaningful purpose, set goals, and remind them to yourself often--it helps a lot with motivation .

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Absolutely agree, that happened to me before.

Kikerinka said:

That's the tough thing about entrepreneurship... you have no boss, and unless there's a sword hanging above your head (like a bill you have to pay before a certain date, in order to not end up on the street), laziness slowly creeps in.
And believe me this is even tougher when you already make money, let's say 1-2K/month, which may be enough for you to live a decent life (of course depending on your country).

The only thing that works, in my opinion, is seeing a meaningful purpose in your online project. If money is the only reason why you do it, you'll lose your motivation very soon. Either because money won't start rolling in right after the start, or because once you make enough to live with a certain standard you'll stop working...
So try to find this meaningful purpose, set goals, and remind them to yourself often--it helps a lot with motivation .

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Excellent advice mate, really makes sense.

Now that you say that, I think I should change my way of thinking. When for example, my goal is to educate people and make them more knowledgeable for their own good, or make them more safe by informing them, my goal is much bigger than money and motivates me to cover all possible topics in order to provide the best information possible. It also makes me write better articles because I want to help first.

Thank you for this solid advice, I'll for sure implement it now that I'm planning my next project.

Kikerinka said:

I decided to create this journey primarily to monitor my progress, but hopefully it can also serve as a motivation for some of you guys, plus maybe you can also motivate me a bit .
It's a journey and a case study at a same time. Let's see where can it take me/us.

Basic background & overview:
- The website is 9 years old, evergreen niche
- Informative content, currently monetized with digital products & AdThrive
- Current stats - 339 informative articles + 80 other articles (sales pages, about stuff, etc)
- The best monthly income from this website so far: February 2020, $5,778
- The niche is quite heavily impacted by covid 19, but this should be a temporary thing.
- Goals: To at least double the number of informative articles by the end of 2020, and to reach 10K/month from this site in one year from now.
- No links will be built in the process. I will try to achieve the goal purely with quality content creation, on page SEO, and optimization for conversions (increasing the RPM of existing content). That's what maybe makes this an interesting case study...

GWMT, last six months:
View attachment 134898
- notice the heavy drop in the middle of March when covid restrictions really started in US and other major English speaking countries. The situation is the same for all sites in this niche...


A bit longer background & overview:
This is actually the first website ever I started in IM as my own website (did SEO for clients before), back in April 2011.

I worked on it quite a lot at times, and did nothing at other times. For example: Entire year 2014 - 0 articles published, from May 2015 to August 2017 (over two years) - 0 articles published...

Why didn't I do anything on this website for such long periods of time?
- At certain periods I worked on other, smaller sites (MNS) in the same niche (had more than 30 at peak times), since back in the day it was easier to rank them, and they brought in vast majority of my online income. That's not the case anymore, of course, since MNS is almost a dead strategy...
- At other times I devoted a lot of time to traveling and non-profit ventures, not working in IM at all.

Why do I start this journey now?
Actually my original plans for 2020 were completely different. I didn't plan to work on IM much.
Had some offline business/non-profit plans in a certain country in the south of Europe which I love a lot.

However, due to covid situation I can't realize the plan this year... What's more, covid has a lot of impact on my other non-profit and personal ventures, so basically almost everything is stopped, and there's suddenly a lot of time to work on my authority website .

One of the lessons I learned in life is that there's nothing like an entirely good, or entirely bad situation (speaking about business, relationships, whatever).
Certainly it's a pity that I can't realize my original plans this year, but instead of crying and complaining I try to find something positive in the situation, and make the best out of it...
Perhaps it can be this journey .


Other things and methodology of work:
- I will write 80% of new content myself. 10% will be written by an expert in certain sub-niche of my niche, a guy I've been cooperating with for a long time. 10% I hope to actually sell as free/paid guest posts on my site (not starting any service or whatever, simply replying positively to a few serious outreach emails I get each month)...

- My main goal of this project is not making money, but building something of true value for people. When there is value, money will come. I've been following this philosophy a lot in my life, and so far it's been working. That's also one of the reasons why I will write 80% of content myself, becasue any writers I tried before (for this website and others, instead of the one guy I mentioned in previous paragraph) just didn't meet my quality standards. Either in writing style, or in expertise (mostly in both )

- The plan is to focus 80% of time on content writing for the rest of 2020 (20% on improving monetization and on page SEO). From January to April 2021, almost all focus will be on improving monetization (increasing RPM), since all new articles should be published by that time, and I will drop the frequency of publishing to 1 article/week.

- The journey should end by May 12, 2021

- Will try to update this journey daily, to keep track of my progress. However, there are days, sometimes more in a row, when I am simply offline, not touching my laptop at all. On such days I won't make any updates... I will make for it once back.
Will also try to post some interesting ideas at times, so you guys can also benefit from my journey, while working on your own projects.

That's it guys. If you have any question, do not hesitate to ask. I will try to answer everything relevant, but won't monitor this thread more than twice a day, simply to focus on the main work .

P.S. If this journey ends up a success, I'll buy 3 people who post here (anytime during the duration of the journey) Jr. VIP, or any service of their choice from BHW of the same value. The members will be chosen at random once the journey ends (if it ends successfully).

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Just started to read this thread. I have no words to say further... super excited to continue reading. Thanks a lot for you.

Update, 24th August 2020, Day 105

- Published 2 new articles today, 1,539 words, 1,378 words.

- Added simple PDF for download to 24 articles published during this journey.

Adding PDFs to articles is an important part of my on-page strategy, and during this week I will explain what I do, how I do it, and the benefits I see.

First of all, a screenshot from Google Search Console:


- As you can see on the picture, I rank for many keywords in my niche, with "PDF" added to the end of the search term.

- Many bloggers/SEO guys do not realize this, but when we talk about informative articles, and especially about certain types of it, such as how to guides, or lists (of whatever), quite a lot of people add PDF to the end of their query. It's also a common Google suggestion (as you type in your keyword) which induces even more people to do so.

How much extra traffic you can get this way? Well, for me it's about 5K extra visits a month. Definitely not bad, considering that all I have to do to get this traffic is adding a simple PDF to the article. But it's by far not the only benefit of this strategy...


Let me explain briefly what I do. As an example, I will again use a dog training niche.

Imagine that I have an article called "10 steps guide to train your akita puppy." The article has 2.5K words, 10 subheadings, each about 250 words. After it's been online for some time, I will do the following:

1. Run Open Office, and open a default template I have for this purpose. The template has a website logo and name in the header, and link in the footer.
2. I will make the same title, and below it I will simply copy-past a brief summary of each sub-heading. I will try to make it not longer than 1 page. This can be easily adjusted with font size, line spacing, etc.
3. At the end I will add: Source & more information: [link to the website]
4. Then I will export it as PDF, open it in a free PDF viewer, make a screenshot, and save it as PNG.
5. I will upload both PDF and PNG to my website, and insert the PNG into the original article, and link it to PDF., in a fitting place. This can be the middle of the article, the end, or after a specific paragraph. I will add a caption to the picture, saying something like "exclusive one page PDF summary, free download". (I actually write something else, but I cannot specify it here to not reveal my niche)
6. So, when someone comes to the article now, and they like what they are reading and perhaps want to refer to it later on, they download the PDF. How often this happens? See for yourself on another screenshot:

More than 5K downloads in a single month, of different PDFs from the website. Apparently visitros are happy about the option .

- Besides the primary benefit, which is the extra 5K traffic from Google, as you could see on the first screenshot in this update, there are other, secondary benefits:

- Extra direct traffic. Since my PDFs are always only summaries, people often click the link at the end of the PDF, to come back to the website, to refer to the original full article again. How much traffic this is? See for yourself on the next screen:


Obviously not all of this is direct traffic from PDFs, it's also some unrecognized traffic from YT and from websites with blank referrals, etc, but based on some tests I did (with the help of tagging the links), at least 3K-4K hits a month is a result of the clicks from the PDFs....

- Many people do not realize the importance of direct traffic. In the eyes of Google, direct traffic means brand recognition, and brand recognition means website authority. There are studies online that prove that the no.1 factor the most successful websites have in common (when we talk about SEO) are not links. It is a substantial portion of direct traffic.
Because when people go to the website directly, it clearly indicates to Google that they recopgnize it as an authority in a given niche, and Google gives it credits...

That's it for today to the PDFs, let's call this the basics.
I will talk about some specialties when it comes to this strategy, and also some other benefits, in one of my other updates this week... As always guys, any questions, do not hesitate to ask.

sika1 said:

Just started to read this thread. I have no words to say further... super excited to continue reading. Thanks a lot for you.

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Thank you sika1! Hope it will help you on your own successful journey .

Wow, great share about the PDFs! Do you let visitors download them without asking for their email address? I mean, this could be a good opportunity to build a list, right? Or are you not into lists?

Songhort said:

Wow, great share about the PDFs! Do you let visitors download them without asking for their email address? I mean, this could be a good opportunity to build a list, right? Or are you not into lists?

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Yes, exactly, this is one of the strategies I wanted to talk about later on.

You can ask for their email address, which has both pluses and minuses. Minus is that most of them will just close the page (and you lose all other benefits, such as direct traffic, brand recognition, event happening on your page (again a positive sign for Google, because when there's an event there's no bounce)), while plus is that you will get some extra subscribers How many depends obviously on the attractiveness of the given PDF, how badly they want it.

I am not into building lists, but if I was into it, I would definitely experiment with asking for an emails, and see how many of them will actually give us their email.
After one month, for example, I will compare the benefits of both asking & not asking, and decide accordingly.

Kikerinka said:

Yes, exactly, this is one of the strategies I wanted to talk about later on.

You can ask for their email address, which has both pluses and minuses. Minus is that most of them will just close the page (and you lose all other benefits, such as direct traffic, brand recognition, event happening on your page (again a positive sign for Google, because when there's an event there's no bounce)), while plus is that you will get some extra subscribers How many depends obviously on the attractiveness of the given PDF, how badly they want it.

I am not into building lists, but if I was into it, I would definitely experiment with asking for an emails, and see how many of them will actually give us their email.
After one month, for example, I will compare the benefits of both asking & not asking, and decide accordingly.

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Thanks, that makes sense! I'm gonna have to run some tests, then.

Update, 25th August 2020, Day 106

- Published 2 new articles today, 1,555 words, 1,331 words.

- Added PDF to 28 articles, all new articles from this journey

- Yesterday another record with Adthrive. Just slight improvement of the numbers from the last record, but slowly, step by step, we are approaching $150/ day:



- I also had 8 sales on the website yesterday, mostly less expensive items ($18, $20, etc), but overall it made for $176 in sales, so yesterday was the best day so far in the month, with $319 daily earnings from the website.


Always love the days when you open PayPal, and the earnings for yesterday spread across the entire screen . Didn't have many of such screens this month on PayPal, but once we will approach the end of this journey, I hope to have such a screen every day. Lot of work to do until then though...


- Today I met a graphic designer who did some excellent work for me in the past, for a project outside of IM. He called me and said he needed some advice about taxes and stuff regarding earnings on PayPal.

It turned out that he recently published a font, on the following website: https://creativemarket.com/ , and on two other platforms. I found it almost hard to believe when I saw his accounts there. In July he made over $1K passive income, just from selling one font .

Wanted to share it here for you guys, if someone of you is into graphic design. This guy is pretty good designer (I wouldn't cooperate with him if he wasn't), but still, he's new on the platforms, and published just 1 font. Yet me made $1K from sales of it in July.
Definitely an interesting model, and maybe some of you may find some inspiration in it...

That's it for today. Tomorrow the plan is to again publish 2 new articles, and continue with adding PDFs to existing articles.... Have a nice evening everyone!

Update, 26th August 2020, Day 107

- Published 2 new articles today, 1,526 words, 1,289 words

- Added PDFs to 24 new articles. I am not adding the PDFs to all new articles, just to about 50% of them, when it is fitting.

Sometimes I even skip a fitting one, for diversity, or add it to an article where it's not necessary. During this batch I want to add a PDF to about 100 articles. 75 done already, so I should safely finish this job tomorrow or the day after tomorrow (schedule is rather busy for tomorrow...).

- Yesterday for the first time ever I broke $150 mark with Adthrive:

Obviously it's just a small milestone, and a one day result (nothing to get too excited about). On the other hand, last month I had just a single day when the Adthrive earnings were above $120, so month over month it's a nice progress, and I am sure it's not the last record we will break during this journey ...

I have a feeling that my website is a part of one of those direct deals with advertisers, something that really sets Adthrive apart from their competitors.

I've been seeing a selection of adds promoting one specific event all over my website yesterday and also today, sometimes taking all ad slots.
And I haven't seen the same ad on other websites I've been browsing during the last days (sites running Adsense).
This can perhaps explain the superb RPM, but of course I can be wrong, and it can be something else.

Guys, those of you running Adthrive ads on your sites (@Bedros for example), did you also see great numbers yesterday and the day before yesterday?


- I want to talk a bit about more about my strategy with PDFs, and some twists that can be added to it.

The first one is email collection. @Songhort already mentioned it in an answer to my original post about PDFs.
Though I am not building any lists currently, I experimented with list building in the past. Both on this website, and on five or six other MNS websites.

What I found out during my experiments (and I am almost sure it still holds true) is the following: The best placement for the form is always within the main content. Because:

• The reader already spent some time on your website. If your content is good, if they enjoy what they are reading, they have already given you some credit (subconsciously) and will more likely join the list of your subscribers.
• The reader knows exactly what he is getting, and it is directly related to his search query. Hence it motivates him more than a general subscriber form somewhere in the sidebar, or one that covers the entire page right after he landed on your blog, and in fact just bothers them.
• The form is a part of the primary content, and that's where the attention of the reader is...

If you are into building lists, I highly recommend you to try the PDF technique...


Other twist I am doing with PDFs is using them as a "second chance for making a sale". Let me explain it on a dog niche...

- Imagine that I have an article called "Step by step guide on How to train an akita puppy". This article has about 2.5K words, and offers decent information to the reader... However, at the end of the article I promote an eBook (or a digital course), basically something for people who want to know more, and are really into training their stubborn puppy.

- Some people may click the link to the course, but some will not. Perhaps they are in rush, not thinking about the purchase right now, or browsing the website on their mobile phone, just browsing random stuff. Anyway, some of these people may download a PDF summary posted in the middle of an article, because they like what they are reading, and want to refer to it later.

- In this case, however, the PDF will be a bit different. I will on purpose show them something special in the PDF (it won't be a mere summary, there will be an extra information that isn't published in the article, and typically it will have something with the course). Basically my goal will be to use this PDF as another tool to motivate them to check out the course...

- At the end of the PDF, instead of linking to the 2.5K words article about akita puppy training, I will link directly to the sales page of the course, and I will tag the link (to be able to track conversions in my Analytics).

Doing it this way, I am simply utilizing another opportunity to make a sale.... How well does this strategy work? See the screenshot from Analytics:


What you see on the screen is event tracking I use for sales, with secondary dimension "landing page". Each unique event is a sale. The table is for the year 2020.

Now, each click from within one of my PDFs is tagged with "?pdf" , as you can see on the picture. Surely, this isn't the major source of conversions. The best one is no. 45 on the list of landing pages.
But when I scroll down the table, and count all sales that came from sales pages tagged with PDF, I find out that in 2020 alone, I made 26 sales in this way.

When we count with an average product price $20 (it's likely a bit higher, but let's count with the lower end), this strategy yielded me an extra $520 this year... Maybe not much, but for example it pays the VPS expenses for the entire year ....

This was just an illustration what can be done with the PDFs placed within the article.
I am far from having this strategy set up perfectly, and sure that much more can be achieved with that... will try to optimize it better during the 2nd half of this journey...


That's it for now guys. Hope that some of you may benefit from this strategy with PDFs, and as always, any questions, do not hesitate to ask .

Yes, ad rates are doing great right now. It's the end of a month so kind of expected.

And thanks again for your great thread. Your traffic and earnings should explode soon

Update, 27th August 2020, Day 108

- It's almost midnight here, and I am finally home to make an update. Today I had a busy schedule but I woke up at 5:50am, in order to publish 2 new articles before I left the house at 9:30am.

From 9:30 until now I've been home only for a few short spans of 15-45 minutes each, but I always managed to squeeze in a few PDFs to the articles + I even managed to read one new journey thread here on BHW, in which I really like the writing style of the OP...

That's the level of discipline necessary to succeed in this journeys, I guess .

- So, published 2 new articles today, 1,567 words, 1,311 words

- Added PDF to 25 articles, which rounds it for 100 exactly from Monday, and this job is done for now.

- Another $140+ day with Adthrive yesterday, but had a bad day in terms of refunds.

Maybe you remember a few day ago I mentioned a Mexican guy, who opened the case with their banking institution, to dispute the transaction they made on PayPal, a purchase on my site. I decided to respond to the case, submitted some screenshots from Analytics that clearly demonstrated that the guy downloaded the item.

Result? As expected, the case was decided in buyer's favor. Which means that the full purchase price was refunded, plus I had to pay a stupid charge-back fee of $20 .

If it wasn't enough, there was another "expert" yesterday... I won't mention the nationality, but the name from the screenshot will help you to guess...
This guy sent message to 3 different email addressees from the website, plus he also opened the dispute with PayPal. The message was always the same:


From his text you can clearly see that he's a native speaker. Irony here .
Of course there are no misspellings in the eBook, or maybe a few over the 15K words, but nobody has ever complained about that, certainly no American buyers have...

But this guy just wanted a freebie, and this was his way of getting it. Nothing else left for me than to process the refund.

So while I made 6 sales yesterday, I can effectively count only with 3 sales (1 refund plus 1 charge-back, which counts for 2 losses).

Such days also belong to selling stuff online, however, and the only logical thing to do is to get over it and forget it quickly .


- Tomorrow the schedule is not so busy, and I will try to publish 3 articles, without having to wake up before 6am.
During tomorrow's update I will also specify how many new articles started to get Google traffic in August, and I will publish some screenshots.
Good night guys

Update, 28th August 2020, Day 109

- Published 3 new articles today, 1,517 words, 1,652 words, 1,471 words

- Adthrive is crazy this week. 4 days in a row $140+, and overall RPM over $20. I must say I really love this ad network

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- Let's move to the thing that probably interests you the most guys: how the new articles are doing. I know that many of you are on similar journeys, publishing a lot of new content, waiting for the traffic to finally start to kick in.

I started this journey in the middle of May, writing a lot of content almost daily. This is what happened so far:

• In June, 0 new articles started to see some traffic from Google.
• In July, 3 new articles started to get some clicks.
• In August, 25 new articles started to see some traffic from Google.
• September - .... any bets?

Let me post some screenshots from GA with some comments. I won't post here 25 screenshots, but will choose about a few as a good representation of the entire group, including both high end and low end in terms of traffic:


I appeared at position no. 9 for the main KW for this one at the beginning of August. Now already on position no.3.


Was on position no. 10 from the beginning of august, today already position no. 3, and a much better traffic is expected for this one in September.


Firstly got position no. 15, now already position no. 10. Lot of potential here, but it's also a very competitive keyword (by the standards of my niche). Let's see where great on-page metrics will take us over time...


This one grows really quickly. I didn't check the ranking before, but now it's on position no. 3 for main KW. Already getting close to 30 page views a day, though Ahrefs says the KW has only 200US monthly searches. As many other times, the numbers from tools do not tell the entire story... In my opinion, this can soon be a 100PV/day article.


This one is another example of inaccurate Ahrefs monthly searches. A few days ago this one jumped to no. 1 for main KW, and already approaching 30PV/day. Even here I see a potential of 100PV/day, from main KW + different long tails.


What I expect to happen with the page views for the 25 articles? A good indication is what happened with the 3 articles that started to rank already in July:



This is the very first article from this journey that started to rank in July. Remember how I estimated that it will get close to 1K page views in August already? As you can see on the screenshot, I wasn't much wrong with my forecast . BTW, the articles has RPM $31.5 with Adthrive, so already made close to $30, just from Ads.



The second one is a smaller KW, but still, it almost tripled monthly PV in August, and I expect the same trend to continue in September


The last one from the three is growing slowly so far, but there is growth, and I expect it to continue in a similar way in September, and perhaps explode later on, because in my view, though Ahrefs says 80 monthly searches, this can be 80PV/day article.


I also want to mention (for you guys who do not follow this journey from the beginning) that I have not built a single link to these articles, or to the root domain.

This is simply a result of writing the best articles in the niche (or at least honestly trying to do that), not for Google, but for the readers. It results in great on-page metrics (notice the average time on page on the screenshots), and Google continues to move them up in the rankings, and display them for more and more long tail keywords over time... Hence the nice growth .

Obviously good KW research and right titles (that induce clicks at the beginning) also play a role. But top-quality articles with personality are the foundation stone of success, for ranking, sales, for everything.... Without them it would be impossible to succeed in this journey.


That's it for today guys. Any questions, do not hesitate to ask. Have a nice weekend everyone!