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

Update, 22nd January 2021, Day 256

- Today I worked on monetizing articles with my BIG general digital product. I managed to monetize 19 articles out of the 78 on the list.

I hoped to do more, but did not manage to do so, for several reasons:

• Some articles (especially older articles, published long before the start of this journey) needed quite a big update, in terms of content, layout, pictures, structure, everything. In several cases I spent more than 30 minutes with one article, which slowed down my progress a lot.
• I tried to not rush it even with newer articles, thinking carefully about each word I add while trying to promote the product there, following everything I learned during the three rounds of tests. I just wanted to do it right the first time, and hopefully my effort will translate into reasonable CTR for each article, given the article category and topic.
• My focus was poor, because I had one difficult email to write--refusing to lend substantial amount of money to one of my best friends who has some serious problems. Not because I cannot lend him the money, but because I came to a conclusion that for his own good, in a long term, and knowing all the circumstances of the problem as I do, it is better if I refuse to lend him anything... I was trying to find the right words, and my mind kept wandering away from work. Eventually I wrote the email explaining my reasoning, which alone took 90 minutes, but even after that my focus was not that sharp, and I kept thinking about the email.

Anyway, tomorrow is another day, and I will continue with the list, hopefully managing more than 19 articles.

- Traffic and income-wise, yesterday was a great day:


- $280 is a new ad income record in 2021. 14,695 sessions is new record for Thursday, beating the previous record for the same day in the week by more than 1K sessions.

Things keep growing, and browsing the Analytics, I cannot get my head around the traffic numbers some of the articles published in this journey deliver on a daily basis-- tenfold the ahrefs expected volume, but also two times more than what I would expect, based on my knowledge of the niche...

- I actually hoped to have about 330,000 - 350,000 monthly page views by the end of this journey. I calculated that as a good enough number for the income goal. But it seems we'll have that many page views in January already.

- Product sales also "woke up" slightly yesterday. 7 sales and $178 in revenue is OK, considering how they fared in the previous days. In total we made $458 yesterday, if I remember correctly it is the 2nd best day in January and one of the top 10 days overall in the journey.

- One of the sales was the newest eBook I published just like 3 days ago, and that's always a good sign to see for the future potential of the product.

sabhan said:

As such there is no harm in getting more traffic from any country but these ad networks want traffic from US, hence the need to choose the topics carefully. Ezoic kills me when they charge $500 per month for displaying premium ads when I can get the same ads from adThrive without paying that amount. At the end of the day, majority of ad demand comes from google ads so the RPM numbers should be same on Ezoic, Mediavine and adThrive.

Its the monthly fees of Ezoic premium ads that I totally don't like. On top of that fees is not fixed, it keeps on increasing on the basis of income generated by the website. That's not good.

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I honestly think Ezoic went over the top with those premium ads... It is totally ridiculous to charge you $500/month, when you make less than $1K/month from ads.

If I was you, I would turn that option off. Maybe you would end up with a better ROI without the premium ads.

Anyway, it's not only about Google ads with Adthrive or Mediavine, or Ezoic.
It is also about the technology and matching of the Ads, the bidding in the background, the way each networks manages to deal with ad/cookie blocking, the private deals they sign with big advertisers, special rates they can get as a network based on the traffic volume, and many other things.

I cannot comment on Mediavine or Ezoic, but seeing what Adthrive does, and on how many important boards (related to online ads industry) they are present with a member from their team, I'd say they are a league on their own at the moment.
I hope you will get in soon Sabhan, and see the difference for yourself

Nice journey mate, im from Kosovo and i saw you got a sale in Kosovo. Just wanted to say that covid hit us hard and Kosovo people were already struggling with money since our country economy is bad, however people here are reading online a lot more during this time and people who actually got good salaries wont hesitate to buy online ebooks.

AlbinKurti said:

Nice journey mate, im from Kosovo and i saw you got a sale in Kosovo. Just wanted to say that covid hit us hard and Kosovo people were already struggling with money since our country economy is bad, however people here are reading online a lot more during this time and people who actually got good salaries wont hesitate to buy online ebooks.

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Thank you mate, I know that life for Kosovans has been difficult in the last decade, for more reasons than one.
Glad to see you here, and I sincerely hope that the digital product the guy from Pristina bought from me helped him a lot.
Also hope that you will find some inspiration in this journey, and build some online assets .

GL, and have a nice weekend!

Still following. I got a question in my mind a few days ago and forgot it for a while. Now it came back and I am here. If it's been answered never mind.

Lately I've been having trouble understanding search intent. I mean, lets take that dog for example, if someone searches "how to raise species_x dog" how do you go about it? If your article is about the same subject, do you start it so it makes the searcher click google for your article, or do you write a different meta description for it?

Update, 23rd January 2021, Day 257

- Continued with monetization of already ranking articles with my general digital product. Today I managed to monetize 36 articles. Progress so far:

• First time monetization (often major changes, takes a long time for most articles): 55/78 done.
• Adjustments to already monetized articles (minor changes only or no changes at all--if CTR and time on page for sales page is good enough already, after the three rounds of tests): 0/114 done.

- Weather was incredibly shitty today (strong rain and wind all day), so except of going for yet another covid-19 test (had an appointment this time, so no waiting), I did not leave the house. That's the first day since the start of the year without either a run, or hike, or a ski ride... Feels weird and I wonder if I won't struggle falling asleep because of this change to my routines .

Anyway, the positive thing is that I managed to get a lot done today. Tomorrow I hope to finish the first time monetization stuff, and also made a decent progress with the 114 already monetized articles (going through them and making minor changes to some of them only, since for many the numbers are satisfactory enough).

- Good run with traffic and income continued yesterday as well:

$17.33 is incredibly high RPM for January. I do not know why I had such a superb RPM yesterday, but it wasn't due to high percentage of US traffic--that was at 41%, which is a standard for the website on weekdays.

- Had also 7 product sales, mostly with lower price tag, making for $159 in revenue. In total, we made $388, which is a fantastic number for Friday.

I am particularly happy about seeing 2 sales already for the very last eBook I published:


My expectations for this one were 30-45 sales/year. But I made 2 sales in 4 days already. Interestingly enough, the CTR from landing page to sales page is at 9.5% so far, and the conversion rate at 8.3%.

For my niche, these are extremely good numbers. It's early to tell of course, can be just a coincidence, but I am definitely optimistic about this eBook, and will keep my eye on the stats.

Halch said:

Still following. I got a question in my mind a few days ago and forgot it for a while. Now it came back and I am here. If it's been answered never mind.

Lately I've been having trouble understanding search intent. I mean, lets take that dog for example, if someone searches "how to raise train species_x poodle dog" how do you go about it? If your article is about the same subject, do you start it so it makes the searcher click google for your article, or do you write a different meta description for it?

Click to expand...

Not sure if I understand you properly, but I will try to answer.
First of all, I will try to make an eye catchy title. It is always good to include some numbers, and also a year, to improve the CTR.

The title can be something like: "Easy 5-steps guide on how to train your stubborn Poodle [2021 edition]" Of course that's just an example .

I do not write any meta descriptions. Always let Google to pick the most fitting part of the content. It works well for me, but honestly very few people read descriptions--the focus is on the title.

Then I will simply write the guide - making a short intro, and then going about the 5 steps, one after another. I likely won't include the keyword a second time in the article--unless it is natural to do so.

I will definitely include some nice pictures of Poodles from free image libraries, or take a pictures of a Poodle I know someone has around here .

And I will end the article with a short summary, or some encouraging CTA.

Not sure if this answers your question, please let me know if you need anything else.

Joseph F. said:

I will follow, I read a few pages. Good luck!

Click to expand...

Thank you, GL to you too!

Kikerinka said:

Not sure if I understand you properly, but I will try to answer.
First of all, I will try to make an eye catchy title. It is always good to include some numbers, and also a year, to improve the CTR.

The title can be something like: "Easy 5-steps guide on how to train your stubborn Poodle [2021 edition]" Of course that's just an example .

I do not write any meta descriptions. Always let Google to pick the most fitting part of the content. It works well for me, but honestly very few people read descriptions--the focus is on the title.

Then I will simply write the guide - making a short intro, and then going about the 5 steps, one after another. I likely won't include the keyword a second time in the article--unless it is natural to do so.

I will definitely include some nice pictures of Poodles from free image libraries, or take a pictures of a Poodle I know someone has around here .

And I will end the article with a short summary, or some encouraging CTA.

Not sure if this answers your question, please let me know if you need anything else.



Thank you, GL to you too!

Click to expand...

Actually, that answered it pretty well. I was being too concentrated on the meta I guess. I've been trying to make conservative titles, you don't care that google will cut that title short? I guess that if the eye-catching part is in the first half it doesn't matter that much. They probably know what they're searching for and can guess the rest.

Other than that, I've been pretty much doing the same. Trying to stay on topic and getting pics on topic. With free images, it's a pain but can't whine while being cheap.

Ty for your time.

It continues to be a great fun to follow your progress!

Kikerinka said:

Then I will simply write the guide - making a short intro, and then going about the 5 steps, one after another. I likely won't include the keyword a second time in the article--unless it is natural to do so.

Click to expand...

I have a question about this. What do you mean by "the 5 steps"? I probably missed something that you have already written.

This gives me an idea. Since the thread is already incredibly long and many probably don't have the time to read each of your posts it would be great if you would list in the start post some of your other posts with #number, where particularly valuable info can be found. For example, how you do keyword research, structure your articles or how you manage to work so disciplined day by day. That would certainly be very helpful for many of your fellow readers.

Maybe you will find the time to add this someday. Thanks a lot in advance!

Best
OLS_

Update, 24th January 2021, Day 258

- Continued with the process of monetizing fitting articles with my BIG digital product. Progress so far:

• First time monetization (often major changes, takes a long time for most articles): 78/78.
• Adjustments to already monetized articles (minor changes only, or no changes at all): 31/114.

Form the 31 in the second group I went through today, only 10 actually needed any adjustments (I was happy with the numbers for the rest), and only in three cases I had to do some major adjustments that took more than 7 minutes.

- I really hope to finish this process tomorrow, because I still want to add one new eBook in January, and it will be fine to have 6 days for that task, in case it takes me longer to write it just like it was the case with the last one...

On 26th or 27th I also plan to do my favorite activity of each month, checking stats for each article published during this journey in G. Analytics, and updating you guys on how many articles started to rank in January.

- Good run with traffic and income continued even on Saturday:


7,543 sessions is a new traffic record for Saturday, the lowest day of the week in my niche. The RPM may seem low, but as it is normally the case, we had only 32% US traffic on Saturday, and $12.82 betters the RPM from last Saturday by $1.61.

- Had 6 product sales as well, bringing in $157 in revenue. $274 definitely isn't a bad income for Saturday. Better numbers to come during the week.

24 days in January, 0 days off. I'm starting to feel it on my eyes and mental tiredness.
With the strict lockdown in place and the weather we have here right now, however, I do not know what I would do away from computer for 24 hours .

That's it for now, GL for the next week!

OLS_ said:

It continues to be a great fun to follow your progress!

I have a question about this. What do you mean by "the 5 steps"? I probably missed something that you have already written.

This gives me an idea. Since the thread is already incredibly long and many probably don't have the time to read each of your posts it would be great if you would list in the start post some of your other posts with #number, where particularly valuable info can be found. For example, how you do keyword research, structure your articles or how you manage to work so disciplined day by day. That would certainly be very helpful for many of your fellow readers.

Maybe you will find the time to add this someday. Thanks a lot in advance!

Best
OLS_

Click to expand...

Thank you, this is a good idea, but today I am just too tired to do it ).

By "5 steps" I simply meant that if the Title has some number in it, it attracts the eyes and has a better CTR than a title without a number. Example:

1. Guide on How to Train Your Poodle.
2. Simple Guide on How to Train Your Poodle.
3. Simple 5-Steps Guide on How to Train Your Poodle.
4. Simple 5-Steps Guide on How to Train Your Stubborn Poodle.
5. Simple 5 Steps Guide on How to Train Your Stubborn Poodle [2021 Edition].

From the 5 titles, the last one will have the best CTR in Google SERP, and the first one the worst... numbers, days, and certain words (simple, stubborn) help a lot to make your title stand out in the SERP. And better CTR helps with higher SERP position as well .

Hope it helps for now, I am do what you suggested some other day!

So you don't strictly place the keyword phrase in the title then.

free said:

So you don't strictly place the keyword phrase in the title then.

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I place, but it does not have to be the exact KW ahrefs shows, or any other tool.
No harm in adding a word here and there, to make your title stand out, and more eye-catchy.

When you check top 10 of serps for any informative keyword, you will actually see that such titles as I write are always in top 10, and often in the top spot .

See the example below:

the first result, have a completely different title than the KW. But the topic is the same. Notice words Puppy, 10, TEACH FIRST. They all help with making this a TOP result...



First test results, below the video and the "people also ask" stuff. Notice that the first result again has nothing to do with the KW. Also notice numbers and "power words" for this niche in other titles...


I said it many times already that optimizing your articles in a way "this and this KW density", "having the main KW in title and H1", etc, is 2015 on-page SEO stuff...
But because it is all over internet and still heavily promoted by many "gurus", including some people on BHW, it is the way majority of people still do it.

In reality you can rank for a KW without having the exact key phrase in your article a single time. I know it from first hand experience, because my website ranks for hundreds if not thousands such keywords .

When monetizing an article with an eBook, do you only link to it from that article or do you also have a shop page with all your ebooks?

Love your explanation. I think I need to learn more in copywriting since English is not my first language.

I also started optimizing monetization of my website.

Apart from ezoic ads, today I added some Amazon products in posts that get USA traffic (using Aawp plugin)

Can you please tell me if people buy info products after reading a single article on your website or first they visit 2-3 pages to look around the website before making the purchase decision?

Update, 25th January 2021, Day 259

- Continued with the process of monetizing fitting articles with my BIG digital product. I managed the remaining 82 articles today, leaving around 30 as they were in the last testing round, and making changes to 52, mostly of minor character. I had one article twice on my list (a duplicate), but haven't noticed it in previous rounds.

Anyway, it means that at the moment, I have 190 articles monetized with either this BIG general product (priced $39), or with its light version (priced $19, this is the case for 10 articles from the 190).

Considering that I have around 700 informational articles on the website (not counting in sales pages, thank you pages, about, privacy policy and stuff), 27% of them are monetized with this product only.

Never before have I had such a big chunk of traffic monetized with digital products (either the general one, or specialized eBooks), so I hope it will translate in better income from DP sales in January already and then in all other months to come. We will see...


- Good run with traffic, income, and sales continues:

10,570 sessions is a new record for Sunday. $12.50 RPM is also decent, considering we had only 33% US traffic yesterday (again, typical percentage for Sunday, the numbers add up during the week when US traffic percentage attacks 45% on some days).

- We also sold 9 digital products on the website, bringing home $213. That's a second day in a row when DP sales income beats Adthrive income. I hope to have many such days, though it won't be easy, simply because Adthrive income from Monday to Friday is too good .
Total income for yesterday: $373

- I am getting many outreach emails the last few days, and I think that somehow my website appeared on some list/database of websites accepting guest blogs again...

With the income we have currently, however, I cannot be bothered with this stuff, and losing time in price negotiation and arranging details with these guys, who hope to get the post for below $100.

Sometimes when I feel that they can have the budget, I just quickly reply that the price is $200 and article must be 1,500+ words and exceptional quality. And that discounts are not possible.
That's typically when the conversation ends--which honestly I am happy about.

When it seems they do not have the budget, I just hit unsubscribe (when there's such an option), or delete the email without replying.

- Tomorrow I plan to take an easier day. Will probably do the research and content plan for the 4th eBook from the current batch, and then I will spend time in Analytics, checking how many new articles started to rank in January, posting stats in my evening update...

JD90 said:

When monetizing an article with an eBook, do you only link to it from that article or do you also have a shop page with all your ebooks?

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I only link from that particular article. It's the most relevant eBook for the person reading the article, and if they do not buy it, the chances that they would buy any other one is zero really. That's because of the variety of topics on my website.

But I definitely think that on many other informational websites (for example a website dedicated to Border Collies), it makes sense to have a shop with all products

free said:

Love your explanation. I think I need to learn more in copywriting since English is not my first language.

Click to expand...

Great that it helped, and thank you for following this thread for so long . Everything is about practice. Write, read, and watch quality stuff in English, and you'll get better.

sabhan said:

I also started optimizing monetization of my website.

Apart from ezoic ads, today I added some Amazon products in posts that get USA traffic (using Aawp plugin)

Can you please tell me if people buy info products after reading a single article on your website or first they visit 2-3 pages to look around the website before making the purchase decision?

Click to expand...

This differs for specialized eBooks and my general product. For specialized eBooks, the funnel is always the same: Landing Page -> Sales page -> Sale. In some cases, when they come from a YT channel (currently about 500 visits/month), there can be one extra step in the funnel: YT video -> Landing page -> Sales page -> Sale.

For general product, however, I saw as many as 16 page views for an user before they made the purchase... I monetize a variety of articles in a variety of categories with this one.
Especially for category 2 (my internal classification), the sale often happens after they browsed more pages in this category...

I definitely think that both models can work, but probably things work differently with Amazon, even in info articles? Maybe @Shaunm or @Bloooop can shed more light on this, since they are crushing it with Amazon affiliate .

Kikerinka said:

This differs for specialized eBooks and my general product. For specialized eBooks, the funnel is always the same: Landing Page -> Sales page -> Sale. In some cases, when they come from a YT channel (currently about 500 visits/month), there can be one extra step in the funnel: YT video -> Landing page -> Sales page -> Sale.

For general product, however, I saw as many as 16 page views for an user before they made the purchase... I monetize a variety of articles in a variety of categories with this one.
Especially for category 2 (my internal classification), the sale often happens after they browsed more pages in this category...

I definitely think that both models can work, but probably things work differently with Amazon, even in info articles? Maybe @Shaunm or @Bloooop can shed more light on this, since they are crushing it with Amazon affiliate .

Click to expand...

@sabhan It's always the same principles as he said. And that's the beauty of digital marketing, get targetted traffic to a landing page -> Sales page -> Make a Sale.

The only key point to note is that said landing page (in this case, a page with amazon list products) must be addressing a pain point that helps solve some problems for the user. So think "Best XYZ for AAA problem."

That type of landing page could convert an ebook if the page is specific and well written to address the readers' issue. It shouldn't be a page that just wants to sell a list of products instead it should be written with the aim of selling the ebook first with the list of items being additional solutions.

You could also sell them on a broader domain basis(think niche-specific traffic to the domain) by having said ebook in the sidebar, header, or footer section. So if say you had a site about bass fishing you could have such products on the sidebar while doing amazon and still make sales.

However, if you had a generic fishing site that's all over the place it'd be harder to sell. But you could still go with page and category promotion of the book.

Update, 26th January 2021, Day 260

- Started working on the 4th eBook from the current batch. Today I did my research, reading articles and watching some relevant YT videos, making notes, trying to understand some peculiarities about the topic for this eBook.

Once done, I printed my notes, went over them, and eventually made a content plan for the eBook. Some stats about this one:

• Article I plan to monetize with this eBook had 582 PV in last 30 days.
• Traffic distribution: US 50%, UK 31%, Canada 10%. It's almost all tier 1, so buying potential should be there.
• I rank no.1 for main KW and also for other important keywords.
• There isn't much info published on the topic online, which should help with conversions. On the other hand, this topic itself isn't as elaborate as topics some of my other eBooks deal with, and of course the "simpler" the subject is, the less attractive it is for people to pay premium for the information. But I still see some potential here, maybe for 3-4 sales/month, and that's good enough for me to proceed...

- I also spend several hours in my Analytics today, checking each of the 345 articles published during this journey, with an aim of identifying articles that started to get Google traffic in January, and also to see how articles there were getting G. traffic already are growing in traffic... The stats so far were:

• June: 0 new articles started to rank in Google.
• July: 3 new articles started to rank in Google.
• August: 25 new articles started to rank in Google.
• September: 71 new articles started to rank in Google.
• October: 76 new articles started to rank in Google.
• November: 34 new articles started to rank in Google.
• December: 41 new articles started to rank in Google.

In January, 26 articles started to rank on Google. It is a decrease, but anything else couldn't be expected, considering how many articles ranked already .

- In total, from the 345 articles I published during this journey (all were published between 12th May and 26th October) 276 already rank on Google, which is exactly 80%.

Some screenshots from Analytics:

One of the first articles published in this journey... It took almost 8 months for this one to start getting any Google traffic. This confirms what I already said--that different articles on the same website have different "journeys", and the fact that some articles start to rank after 2 months already doesn't mean all articles will. Can take much longer for them...




Another late starter. Notice that I rank only no. 27 for this one at the moment, and the traffic is from long tails. But there is no doubt it will rise in SERP and may eventually get over 1K PV/ month.




Another one published all the way back in May. Notice that it got only Bing traffic until recently. Currently at position no. 10 in Google, so there's a lot of room for growth.





This one was strange, because it got traffic from all sources for a long time (Bing, Yahoo, Google Discover), and Google just recently picked it up in the search. Position no. 11, lot of room for growth.



This one is a part of MNS vs Authority experiment. My MNS still holds position no .1 for the main KW, and countless others, receiving over 10K visits in the same time period...
But I have no doubts we'll see a huge growth with this one, and it can eventually become one of my top 3 most visited pages on my website. Let's see .


- I expect that 10% of articles won't start ranking until the end of this journey (or they won't rank at all), that's just the factor of inexplicable randomness that simply happens with Google...

If my expectations prove correct, we should see 35 more articles starting to rank until the end of this journey. Of course, the traffic growth is fueled mostly by the fact that once these articles start to rank, it's an upward direction from there on.

Articles that are getting 100PV/month now, can easily be getting 300, 500, or 1K PV by the end of this journey... If not more.
Few examples how it can look like if things go well with the article over time:




Oops, wanted to post more screenshots, but it seems I am allowed to upload 10 max in a post . Anyway, I think the 2 are explanatory enough...

For the rest I must go without screenshots:

• Traffic yesterday: 14,832 sessions.
• Adthrive: $266
• DP sales: 5 sales, $137
• Total income for yesterday: $403

Solid start for the week, but hoping for better product sales in the coming days, and some new records. Stay tuned

Update, 27th January 2021, Day 261

- Started writing the 4th eBook from the current batch, managing 9,347 words today, more than 50% was recycled from older products.


- Records were shattered again yesterday.

When I checked my PayPal in the morning, I immediately knew it would be a big day in terms of product sales income:


I still had to check the transactions in my email, to see exactly which of them fall into the 24 hour Tuesday reporting period, and if any of them were generated by my MNS websites instead of the authority website this journey is about. And, of course, if someone didn't send a refund request by email .

Checking the email, I found out that we made 11 sales of digital products on the website on Tuesday, generating $280. That's a new journey record for product sales income. And there was no refund request.

Then at 4pm CET I checked my Adthrive dashboard (it updates at that time each day), and was extremely pleased:


- $328.50 is actually the third highest ad income ever, trailing only 8th and 10th December. What's more, it happened in January, which is statistically the month with lowest RPM...

- In total, the website generated $608 yesterday, which is the new record for the journey. The 16,236 sessions and 19,351 page views are also record numbers.


It was simply a day when everything clicked - long average time on page (= higher RPM), 43% of US traffic (= higher RPM), the sales funnels I've been optimizing lately so much delivered decent numbers, and new eBooks made for a big part of those sales...

Did I expect we would reach a $600 day during this journey, back in the daty when I started it in May? I didn't expect it .
But I've kept following the plan since the beginning, focusing on producing quality and top-notch value for the readers. It is paying off even better than I could have imagined. And we are not done yet...

One more screen, comparison of yesterday vs 12th May, the first day of this journey, whichwas also Tuesday:


That's it for today. Tomorrow I will continue working on the new eBook. Have a nice evening everyone!

There's not much to say except: congrats!

I am also speechless.

OLS_ said:

There's not much to say except: congrats!

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sabhan said:

I am also speechless.

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Thank you guys! You are both on your way as well, so hopefully this is a positive motivation to keep on going .