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

Escehas said:

Alright, I finally managed to finish reading the entire thread (took about three months ). First of all, congratulations on not only achieving your goal, but also surpassing it in the predicted time. Secondly, I had expressed my curiosity in how you manage to create three articles a day (at the beginning of your journey) and I can say that I understood a few months back. If you know your niche inside and out, words will essentially pour out. I managed to create two articles that rank high in about 3-4 hours, so it's doable. But it's still awesome how you can also do such an excellent keywords analysis. Congrats again and I will stick around more, maybe I can learn a few new tricks.

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Kudos mate, I find it amazing that someone still takes time to read the entire thread, considering how long it has become by now . But perhaps it was worth it considering what you said, that you can now do 2 articles in 3-4 hours (which is a normal time, it will take me approximately 2.5-3 hours to get two articles done on this website).

With the words "pouring out" it isn't that simple though . Sometimes, when in a right mindset & good balance, and not distracted but either things from outside, or useless thoughts of my own mind, it is as you say. But on certain days the words are just not coming out that naturally, and I have to battle hard to get things done, and it takes longer to write each article. The key is to continue nevertheless, on both good and bad days .

Thanks again, and I hope you fill find here more valuable information down the road!

Rufin jazz said:

This was a fascinating and lengthy read.

OP, I'd like to ask a couple of questions.

What do you plan to do with the money you earn from this site, and what are your goals now? what motivates you to keep going despite a satisfactory outcome?

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Hi mate, glad that you found it fascinating. It's been quite a ride and we aren't at the end yet .

I have an offline project on my mind in Spain, a non-profit one, that demands considerable initial investment, and some investments down the road as well. Vast majority of money I earned from this website so far (and will earn this year) will go in there.
If things go well, the biggest investment will be made in October/November 2022. And if I realize this, it will change my life in many ways...

Besides that I have other ideas, but I do not want to chase two rabbits at the same time. Let's see what happens this year and next year. In any case, in the world we live in now, you will always find many good uses for a big chunk of money.

And why I continue? Well, because I always will . It may surprise you, but I never plan to "retire", as old people do. I may retire financially one day, but I plan to always work on projects that I find interesting and useful...

Lying somewhere on a beach with a Pina Colada in my hand and a nice lady nearby all month long is not my thing . For one day that's fine, but I do not like passivity.

For me it's always about trying new challenges, going out of the comfort zone, and putting my creativity to the test. At the time being, considering the plans in Spain (and the need of money for these plans), to continue working on IM and on the three smaller side projects I work on presently seems simply like the right thing to do, and something I enjoy doing.

In one year from now this may not be the case anymore, and I may sell all for-profit websites except of my authority website(which I do not plant to sell), to keep things simple. But we will see. The motivation is still there though, and I do not see it dying soon

Kikerinka said:

Kudos mate, I find it amazing that someone still takes time to read the entire thread, considering how long it has become by now . But perhaps it was worth it considering what you said, that you can now do 2 articles in 3-4 hours (which is a normal time, it will take me approximately 2.5-3 hours to get two articles done on this website).

With the words "pouring out" it isn't that simple though . Sometimes, when in a right mindset & good balance, and not distracted but either things from outside, or useless thoughts of my own mind, it is as you say. But on certain days the words are just not coming out that naturally, and I have to battle hard to get things done, and it takes longer to write each article. The key is to continue nevertheless, on both good and bad days .

Thanks again, and I hope you fill find here more valuable information down the road!




Hi mate, glad that you found it fascinating. It's been quite a ride and we aren't at the end yet .

I have an offline project on my mind in Spain, a non-profit one, that demands considerable initial investment, and some investments down the road as well. Vast majority of money I earned from this website so far (and will earn this year) will go in there.
If things go well, the biggest investment will be made in October/November 2022. And if I realize this, it will change my life in many ways...

Besides that I have other ideas, but I do not want to chase two rabbits at the same time. Let's see what happens this year and next year. In any case, in the world we live in now, you will always find many good uses for a big chunk of money.

And why I continue? Well, because I always will . It may surprise you, but I never plan to "retire", as old people do. I may retire financially one day, but I plan to always work on projects that I find interesting and useful...

Lying somewhere on a beach with a Pina Colada in my hand and a nice lady nearby all month long is not my thing . For one day that's fine, but I do not like passivity.

For me it's always about trying new challenges, going out of the comfort zone, and putting my creativity to the test. At the time being, considering the plans in Spain (and the need of money for these plans), to continue working on IM and on the three smaller side projects I work on presently seems simply like the right thing to do, and something I enjoy doing.

In one year from now this may not be the case anymore, and I may sell all for-profit websites except of my authority website(which I do not plant to sell), to keep things simple. But we will see. The motivation is still there though, and I do not see it dying soon

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Thanks for usual long form write up!

What is your offline project, what is in your mind that require big chunk of money?

Another question: What motivates you to keep writing at Blackhatworld over the years and to be so consistent? I ask because maintaining this thread and responding to everyone in here takes a significant amount of effort, while you also have big site to work at.

Kikerinka said:

Kudos mate, I find it amazing that someone still takes time to read the entire thread, considering how long it has become by now . But perhaps it was worth it considering what you said, that you can now do 2 articles in 3-4 hours (which is a normal time, it will take me approximately 2.5-3 hours to get two articles done on this website).

With the words "pouring out" it isn't that simple though . Sometimes, when in a right mindset & good balance, and not distracted but either things from outside, or useless thoughts of my own mind, it is as you say. But on certain days the words are just not coming out that naturally, and I have to battle hard to get things done, and it takes longer to write each article. The key is to continue nevertheless, on both good and bad days .

Thanks again, and I hope you fill find here more valuable information down the road!

Click to expand...

I still have articles that need 3-4 days to finish due to the insane amount of research, graphs and videos that accompany them, but I am more fond of the 'quicker' articles which also seem to rank just as well. So that made me wonder whether I have created a trap for myself with these huge well-researched articles. And it's why I started experimenting, going back full circle to your approach of doing things (sort of ).
The pouring was obviously a gross over-simplification, but yes, it does feel like that when I get 'in the zone'. Also, some good ANC headphones can do wonders to not get distracted. And thank you for replying because I can only imagine how difficult it is to keep all your projects afloat by yourself.

Reading through this thread is one that has taken a lot of time to do and It is one I have learnt a lot so far. Effective keyword research is key to the success one gets in this niche. Having a good knowledge of your niche also helps a great deal in churning out articles. I have was previously having difficulty in my article writing but have picked one or two tricks that are going to help me a great deal.

Good to know that you are successful in your journey and I will visit this thread again to see the nuggets I can pick.
All the best.

Rufin jazz said:

Thanks for usual long form write up!

What is your offline project, what is in your mind that require big chunk of money?

Another question: What motivates you to keep writing at Blackhatworld over the years and to be so consistent? I ask because maintaining this thread and responding to everyone in here takes a significant amount of effort, while you also have big site to work at.

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Thanks, was a pleasure . I prefer to keep some secrets when it comes to the offline project, at least for now. The day may come though when I reveal much more about it here...

To the other question: I certainly took me a lot of effort to keep this thread going, and no doubt over 500 hours when we count everything together. But I still think it was worth it, for many reasons:

1. It gave my IM work a "higher purpose" than just earning $XXXXX/month. Higher purpose is something I always look for, though sometimes it may sound a bit spiritual .
2. I helped others, but I also learned a lot through this thread from people who posted here.
3. Made a great connection with many people around here, either through the thread or PMs.
4. It was (and still is) also a good habit of discipline to always come back here and answer the questions, and to always update the thread on the 1st of each month (unless I am away). You need discipline for success in any endeavor, so any exercise that helps with building it is a good exercise to have .
5. Last but not least, this thread will be something I can look at in 1, 3, 5, 10 years from now, seeing what I achieved, and how exactly I did it. I forget things like everyone else. Sharing so much here, the information is not only for others but also for the future me .

Escehas said:

I still have articles that need 3-4 days to finish due to the insane amount of research, graphs and videos that accompany them, but I am more fond of the 'quicker' articles which also seem to rank just as well. So that made me wonder whether I have created a trap for myself with these huge well-researched articles. And it's why I started experimenting, going back full circle to your approach of doing things (sort of ).
The pouring was obviously a gross over-simplification, but yes, it does feel like that when I get 'in the zone'. Also, some good ANC headphones can do wonders to not get distracted.

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That's the thing. Some topics may need such long well-researched articles, but maybe they can wait until you bank some nice traffic numbers with those easy to write 1K words articles.

You can also always come back and prolong the stuff originally written, when the data from GSC show that you should do that. I really think it is better getting 100 1K words articles online than 25 4K words. Some of those 1K can always be prolonged for 4K in the future...

Escehas said:

And thank you for replying because I can only imagine how difficult it is to keep all your projects afloat by yourself.

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You're welcome, but believe me, it is not that hard. Working alone has many advantages. Of course, there is a certain roof, certain limit you cannot cross, because at the end your day has only 24 hours and you have just one brain and one pair of hands . You cannot scale infinitely.

At the same time though, you do not have to manage anyone, recruit anyone, train anyone, pay anyone, fire anyone, edit work of others.

I like the recent postings of @Bloooop a lot, who sorts of documents the process with hiring/training/working with a team of writers. The work one has to do is insane, and remember that that's all just to have some decent team in place, without they even deliver any work.

For me, as long as I set realistic goals and organize myself well, and do not push it too hard, I can find good life-work balance while achieving good results, and still have time to reply to this thread .

janelaneme said:

Reading through this thread is one that has taken a lot of time to do and It is one I have learnt a lot so far. Effective keyword research is key to the success one gets in this niche. Having a good knowledge of your niche also helps a great deal in churning out articles. I have was previously having difficulty in my article writing but have picked one or two tricks that are going to help me a great deal.

Good to know that you are successful in your journey and I will visit this thread again to see the nuggets I can pick.
All the best.

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Thanks mate, great keyword research is pivotal in any niche, not only in mine .
Good luck to you and looking forward to see you around!

Hey, @Kikerinka ! I'm back again with my own report

Took your advice to the heart and started to publish as much content as possible. Again, I'm working full-time, writing a bachelor thesis and creating my own website on the side. Currently, I have published 64 blogs, and have about 12 ready for publishing. Will have 100 blogs published by June. The domain is currently ~1year old, however only started posting 4-5 months ago at slow pace.

Because I neither have time nor passion for writing, I'm outsourcing all the articles. Have sunk in quite a bit of money into this, however, 90% of the pages are still not indexed. I'm having 5-10 impressions per day.

Ofc, 4-5 months is not a long time, especially when I have only built content for the web. From June I will have more free time. So, my plan is to spend 200-300 euros for Google ads just to get some action on the site. At the same time, I'm looking to start commenting on different forums, perhaps place my website into some directories, so I get some free links. Afterwards build some links using guest post technique (5-10). At this point I would probably a bit sad of not making a single penny out of the website, so there are 2 options for me to take: affiliate articles or building my own informational product.

This is my current situation. I started this knowing it will take some time, however, I still feel quite demotivated of the current situation. Even though, I'm finishing a great university, already have a good job, which pays well, I'm very hard on myself, and consider that I have never achieved anything in life that I would look to as MY great achievement.

I will keep going, and stick with my plan, however, any advice regarding my project would be nice from this Thread's community and especially you Kikerinka.

Kikerinka said:

That's the thing. Some topics may need such long well-researched articles, but maybe they can wait until you bank some nice traffic numbers with those easy to write 1K words articles.

You can also always come back and prolong the stuff originally written, when the data from GSC show that you should do that. I really think it is better getting 100 1K words articles online than 25 4K words. Some of those 1K can always be prolonged for 4K in the future...

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I agree, but I have a tendency to brute force my way through life and not really make a finer plan, which I know it's completely stupid. Which is why I am trying to follow the advice of more level-headed people than myself. Also, I am trying to push my main website to 10K a month as well, but the Google updates keep on standing in the way. So, again, I realized the traps that I set for myself along the way and hopefully, the website will leave the stagnating status that it's has been for years.

Hey mate, first of all nice to see you around again . I will try to comment & give some suggestions to different points you made.

Juicerjuice said:

Currently, I have published 64 blogs, and have about 12 ready for publishing. Will have 100 blogs published by June. The domain is currently ~1year old, however only started posting 4-5 months ago at slow pace.

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I'd say that's a decent progress. Not like LOADS of publishing, but considering your situation (employment, university), you did a great job here!

Juicerjuice said:

Because I neither have time nor passion for writing, I'm outsourcing all the articles. Have sunk in quite a bit of money into this, however, 90% of the pages are still not indexed.

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This doesn't seem right to me. Sure, Google takes long time nowadays to index new blogs, but still 90% of posts no-indexed is just too much.
BTW, how do you check this? In Google Search Console?

What I find out lately is that there's a lot of difference between:

1. Indexing data shown in GSC
2. URLs in the index shown when you type: site:[name of your domain] to Google.
3. Pages that may actually show for some queries, regardless of what Google says.

Let me give you a real life example with one of my side projects, the non-profit website in travel niche. Check the Analytics for last 30 days first:


- 28 pages got at least 1 PV, virtually all traffic is from Google. Funny enough though:

• Google Search Console shows only 21 indexed pages out of 40.
• When I type site:[my domain name], only 10 results show up.
• From top 5 most visited pages, two do not show as indexed either in GSC, or when I type site:[my domain name] to Google.

Yet when I type the keyword these pages target, they pop up in SERPS!
What I try to demonstrate with this is that there is a lot of discrepancy, and maybe in fact more of your pages are indexed than you think.

However, if they really aren't, you can try (even temporarily) adding some menus to the home page, or listing many post in a sidebar on the home page. You likely do not want to keep such a site structure for a long run, but it can help with indexing I believe (I did that on another of my side project and it worked like a charm ).

You can of course also manually resubmit them for indexing in GSC. Try stuff, something will work! Last but not least, not sure who you outsource the articles from, but make sure the writer isn't copying the content from someone, since that could be the reason why the pages aren't indexing...

Juicerjuice said:

So, my plan is to spend 200-300 euros for Google ads just to get some action on the site. At the same time, I'm looking to start commenting on different forums, perhaps place my website into some directories, so I get some free links. Afterwards build some links using guest post technique (5-10).

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I do not have experience with trying to kick-start the website with Google ads, but why not? Can be an interesting experiment .
If you do so, I suggest you to make many micro-campaigns, targeting a lot of different posts on your website--and perhaps it will help a great deal with Google indexing your content. This is just a theory though, but worth a try, and for sure better than pointing all the campaigns to your homepage only.

Posting on relevant forums cannot harm you as well, so if there are such forums go ahead and do it.

Juicerjuice said:

At this point I would probably a bit sad of not making a single penny out of the website, so there are 2 options for me to take: affiliate articles or building my own informational product.

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Once you start sending paid traffic, it will be better if visitors can convert somehow. If you have time, I'd go with an informational product, since it can be hard getting campaigns approved when they point to landing pages with affiliate links.

Juicerjuice said:

This is my current situation. I started this knowing it will take some time, however, I still feel quite demotivated of the current situation. Even though, I'm finishing a great university, already have a good job, which pays well, I'm very hard on myself, and consider that I have never achieved anything in life that I would look to as MY great achievement.

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I found it one of the tragedies of 21st century, that young people are so hard on themselves.

Do not want to go into details why it is so, though I understand it quite well. Let's just say that the "cult of perfection" prevails nowadays online, especially on social media. Though 99% of it is complete fake, it is a sure recipe for depression for the masses of young people.
Most people nowadays think that they are failure unless they are millionaires by 25 years of age . In a way it is funny, but it is a serious problem...

You say that you are just finishing the UNI, so I guess you're like 23-24 years old. Most of your pals probably just waste time in bars or watching series on NETFLIX, while you try to make something with your life, learn new stuff, build a passive income for yourself.

To me it alone is a success, regardless of whether you make a single dollar from your website . So keep going, and do not be that hard on yourself!

Escehas said:

I agree, but I have a tendency to brute force my way through life and not really make a finer plan, which I know it's completely stupid. Which is why I am trying to follow the advice of more level-headed people than myself. Also, I am trying to push my main website to 10K a month as well, but the Google updates keep on standing in the way. So, again, I realized the traps that I set for myself along the way and hopefully, the website will leave the stagnating status that it's has been for years.

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Glad that it helped . We cannot completely change, so I think you will still "brute force your way through life" (BTW I like your writing style, that's why I quoted it). But even small adjustments to your writing routine can help you push towards the goal.

Good Luck to you, and I hope to receive more updates from you in the future.

Kikerinka said:

Hey mate, first of all nice to see you around again . I will try to comment & give some suggestions to different points you made.

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I'm glad to be back here and still see so many curious people sharing their thoughts on their projects. It is also very awesome to see you still replying and helping us out! It is very much appreciated. Your thread was definitely one of the factors that pushed me to take action and create my own website, thanks, Kikerinka!

Getting back to my indexing problems... So, I did only check GSC for a long time, however, just checked my site with site: operator and in fact got 8 results, which is even worse than GSC. Also checked GA, and 10 pages got some users but it might be me checking my web while working. It might registered as unique users as we constantly rotate IP addresses in my work.

Regarding copied content: I have worked with the same guy for several months now and see how he has changed, how his knowledge about the niche is getting better and better. I also review each article and all the parts I want to be edited, he does, so according to my notes. I'm outsourcing this service through writeraccess and the website has free Copyscape API (or something like that) and it checks for duplicated content every time he submits an article. So, I don't think it is duplicated. Before you say anything about the quality of it - I make sure it is good I also try to rank for keywords that have at least 1-2 pages that completely thrash in the 1st page, so it is definitely not the quality issue.

I have a gut feeling that Google just doesn't have enough various data, so their algorithm can be sure that this is something worth indexing. That is why I thought of that Google ads idea and inserting links into forum comments + directories. Will keep posting blogs till June, then slow it down a bit and work on other stuff as I mentioned previously. It was also a great idea to include more blogs into the homepage for while. Currently I have a slice which has only 6 blogs in it, so I can just extend and see if it changes anything regarding indexing. Thanks! I will try it

And you are right - I'm very hard on myself, however, trying to keep the balance as well as possible. Trying to squeeze in some workouts, some gatherings with my friends and spending time with my girlfriend. I value those things greatly, and no money is worth what you get from that. However, at the same time I have never proved that I'm worthy of something. This website was a try to reach for that, and oh lord it wasn't a good choice to pick an SEO journey for killing imposter syndrome A business model that can take months to even get a single click...

Juicerjuice said:

I'm glad to be back here and still see so many curious people sharing their thoughts on their projects. It is also very awesome to see you still replying and helping us out!

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My pleasure

Juicerjuice said:

Regarding copied content: I have worked with the same guy for several months now and see how he has changed, how his knowledge about the niche is getting better and better.

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That's a nice way to check whether a writer is genuine. If he really keeps improving, then no doubt he does the job, and perhaps even enjoy it to some extent (which is important as one can feel it when reading the content).

Juicerjuice said:

I have a gut feeling that Google just doesn't have enough various data, so their algorithm can be sure that this is something worth indexing. That is why I thought of that Google ads idea and inserting links into forum comments + directories. Will keep posting blogs till June, then slow it down a bit and work on other stuff as I mentioned previously.

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I like that, especially the Google ads idea. Please run it for a couple of weeks with many micro-campaigns and then come back to tell us whether or not it helped indexing those pages you ran campaigns on.

Juicerjuice said:

It was also a great idea to include more blogs into the homepage for while. Currently I have a slice which has only 6 blogs in it, so I can just extend and see if it changes anything regarding indexing.

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My idea was to insert the links to a location that appears on every page on your website, such as sidebar for example.

If you categorize your posts, it may be enough posting links to categories. In such a way, on any page of your website, Google spider is just two clicks away from any post (1st click on the category, 2nd click on any post in it). I just feel that making it easier for it to crawl your site will help with indexing.

Juicerjuice said:

And you are right - I'm very hard on myself, however, trying to keep the balance as well as possible. Trying to squeeze in some workouts, some gatherings with my friends and spending time with my girlfriend. I value those things greatly, and no money is worth what you get from that. However, at the same time I have never proved that I'm worthy of something. This website was a try to reach for that, and oh lord it wasn't a good choice to pick an SEO journey for killing imposter syndrome A business model that can take months to even get a single click...

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Great to hear that. It is always good having an active life, doing stuff. Helps with better sleep as well. Enjoy your life and journey with this website, when you have many activities time really tends to fly, so even those six months won't feel like too long

Wow! I'm halfway through your journey thread and I feel really inspired. Your commitment to your site is admirable.

Good luck with your journey mate

@Kikerinka Coming back a bit shorter than anticipated.

Added all blogs to the homepage (not into every single page, as you mentioned) and added 1 directory link.

After 2 days from 5-10 impressions, it got to 20 in the first day and it got to 63 impressions today.

Will not do any work on the site for several days now, as I have ~5 days to finish my bachelor thesis, however, getting straight back to it after it!

Monthly update, April 2022

Analytics:

• Visits: 704,790 (-12% vs last month).
• Page views: 832,761
• Average time on page: 6 mins, 39 seconds (-2 seconds vs last month).

Screenshots from G. Analytics:

- Quite a drop compared to last month, which I contribute to several factors:

• 1. Easter week, which was about 18K traffic loss combined over several days, especially Thursday, Friday, and Monday.
• 2. Five weekends during the month, as you all know weekends and holidays are low periods for my niche,
• 3. Approaching Muslim holiday on the beginning of May (the drop visible in the last 2 days of the month),
• 4. Overall trending down of the niche in April (which I can observe also on some of my MNS sites in the same niche).
• Competitors activity, more on it later

- Year over year growth, down to 50% "only" likely the first time in last 13-14 months. I still believe there's an outside chance of us reaching 1 million PV in May or June this year, but seeing how it's going it really is just an outside chance, like 0.2% at best ,


Earnings:

- Adthrive: $15,855 (-18% vs last month). The drop was quite significant, and resulted from a combination of lower traffic and also lower RPM when compared to March ($19.04 vs $20.15)

- Product sales: $4,363 ( -7% vs last month, gross sales, deduce approximately 7-8% PP fees to get real profit I can eventually transfer to my bank account. Out of it:

• The BIG product (general one) generated $1,557 in revenue (compared to $1,659 last month).
• The many small specialized eBooks generated $2,806 in revenue (compared to $3,038 last month). Sales of specialized digital products are still a lot down when compared to last year, when we made $4,700 from sales of these products in April.

- Affiliate program: $98. Four commissions of normal value. Not any breakthrough here, but I haven't expected any anyway.

- Total earnings from the website in April 2022: $20,336 (-15% vs last month).

- Expenses: $39 (VPS).

- Profit: $20,297.

- Best day during the month (in terms of earnings): 7th April 2022, $1,121, just $7 shy of overall daily record. This month we had only two days with $1K+ in earnings, compared to 6 in March.

- Worst day during the month (in terms of earnings): 30th April 2022, $283 (the only day below $300)

- Daily average: $678, which is worse than both March and February

Adthrive screenshot:
- Not much to comment on here really. RPM didn't really hit some crazy heights on any day, with the highest RPM of $22.53 on 14th April.


Work done in April 2022:

- The only work I've done on this website was scheduling 6 new articles (one a week), to have a publishing schedule ready until mid June.

- Worked mostly on my side projects in April, especially on the content website I bought at the end of December 2021. I added 59 articles to the website in April, the number with which I surprised even myself... But on some days I really enjoyed writing content for this niche, and it went also a bit faster than I expected.

I will monitor the ranking and traffic of these new articles during the following months and will update you guys on it. I believe it will be an interesting comparison with my authority website, knowing how long it took the articles there to rank, how much traffic they eventually delivered, etc.
My hopes are high that in 6 months from now, with these new articles ranking on Google, I will be able to join Adthrive with that website.


Observations:

- Life's not always an upward journey, and the same is true with any website . Of course, I work on this website very little these days, while many of other websites (including the one belonging to top 200 most visited sites on the internet) keep pumping out content in numbers.

The big website publishes literally hundreds of articles in my niche a month, and some of them cover keywords with big potential that previously very few people discovered, or I was the only one who discovered them.

I feel that this is one of the factors that takes the traffic slightly down, though it isn't any sort of a catastrophic drop.

I stay calm though, since I knew it was inevitable, and also that law of action and reaction cannot be broken.

Since I do not publish 50 articles on this website a month anymore, but do just 4, and at the same time others try hard to get their fraction of the pie in this niche, I cannot expect any other outcome.

The website still makes $20K/month though, which I find amazing considering that I published just 21 new articles in last 5 months.


- Got one of those emails from Ahrefs, and it suggests the website is trending down a lot:


Do not trust these tools much to be honest. According to the chart I should be losing like 30% of traffic in last two months, whereas in March we had all time traffic record, and April wasn't too bad either.

We will see what happens. As I said, I do not trust these tools by any means, but still decided to post the charts since I know some of you guys use Ahrefs a lot, and may find it interesting..


- With everything's going seemingly down , I still see some articles suddenly getting a strong presence in the SERPs. This one is a prime example:

- Published it on 2nd of November 2021. Early March it barely got 5 clicks/day. Now it approaches 200 PV on some days. I sincerely hope that more similar surprises await us in next few months, and will help with balancing out some of the negative trends I mentioned earlier.


Personal update at the end:
As all of you know, I had plans to leave to Spain, originally at the end of April, then I postponed it a few days. I still have a ticket, and should fly away on Tuesday, but I do not know if I will....

The thing is that I fell badly while trail running yesterday, and instead of ending a run having a beer with my mate, and two nice girls we ran with on the day, I had to call an ambulance and ended in a hospital.

Long story short, apart from other non-important smaller injuries, I dislocated my left shoulder. (those of you who experienced this injury will probably agree that it is a very painful one--maybe 9 out of 10 on my personal pain scale).

When they finally drove me to hospital and did x-ray and eventually put the shoulder back in place, I was half dead from pain and fatigue (the injury happened towards the end of a 5 hour trail run).
And I thought the trip to Spain is over, and no chance I could go in this condition...

To my surprise, when I explained the nature of my trip to the doctor who treated me, he said that with some precautions it possibly could be done, as long as I do not experience pain when carrying a backpack.
Of course, the likelihood of dislocating the shoulder again is very high, should I endure a fall, or simply put my left arm in some undesirable position.

So far I haven't decided whether I will go or not. Will try a short hike with backpack tomorrow and decide afterwards. Hopefully the short hike won't end in an ambulance...

But I wanted to come to some point with this story .

It may seem like it was just an accident, a stupid unlucky fall on a stupid terrain. At the end of the day, I fell so many times running, cycling, skiing, with no injury.
But maybe there was more to this particular fall?

The thing is that I really pushed a lot of things in April.
The 59 new articles on one of my website, playing a lot of Piano (often at night) trying to reach a certain level in an application I have to learn piano (called Piano Marvel) before I leave for Spain, trying to take part in every long run/cycle with my mates here, including some competitions (since I thought I was going away and would not participate in such events for some time), and basically being everywhere, meeting everyone, taking care of everything, never say no when someone asked for help, or wanted me to join some activity...

But it was too much for me, and I felt quite strange the last 7 days. Often tired and dizzy, sometimes I felt I would fade in my chair.
Perhaps the fall was sort of a culminating point, finally stopping me from this endless mental & physical activity, which was just too much for me to handle, and might have soon ended in some sort of a collapse, though I ignored the signs (like the fatigue, dizziness, etc)

Perhaps it is a sign that I should slow down, regardless of whether I go to Spain or not.
And I made myself a promise to follow this sign.

It doesn't mean that I plan to abandon this journey or anything similar. In the coming months though, regardless of whether I am here or travel, I will take things much easier, and include more relaxing activities in my daily life... let's see where it will take me.


That's it for today. Thank you again for following and contributing here. If I am not replying messages from Tuesday, it means I went for the trip. In such a case good luck to you and see you here once I'm back

Kikerinka said:

Monthly update, April 2022

Click to expand...

Hmm, I see that both traffic and RPM went down for both, that's a bummer.

And about your accident, I hope you get better soon, I had a left shoulder injury a few years ago and the pain was pretty intense, I remember it like it was yesterday.


I have a question for you, I have seen some people talking about the "content optimization" that adthrive has, have you tried it, any opinion about it? Because if so, it would save me a lot of money on a tool that does the same thing.

Get better soon!

Wishing you good luck.
I'm bookmarking this thread for later, best journey to follow according to many members here.

I am new to BHW and I was going through each posts and I got to learn many things but mostly I cam across people talking more about link building and Ai related content.
This is the only post which is fully focused on giving quality content and then earning through ads and digital products. I can understand it's a very difficult path to follow. It's similar to body building. I was into bodybuilding so I know how much it's important to go the natural way instead of protein supplements and steroids. It's a difficult path to follow. You feel proud of yourself when you see the results after few years. And nothing can beat that feeling. Whereas the person who uses steroid and protein supplements start to see results in few days but that's not long lasting.

I am interested in following this path of yours. But there is a big problem here. Just by reading this reply you would have understood that I am not good in English. But I am sure that it can be improved over time. The Pro Grammarly version can help me in correcting my grammar.

I have one question for you. Is there any method you follow to write the content ? I mean how you write good articles and how do you judge that yours is better than the people who hire freelancers or AI based contents. What questions you answer while writing the content ?

Is there something you can share with me which would help me to write good quality content ?
Thank you.

Hi @Kikerinka

I also don't trust these tools but the general trend is usually correct. Your site is still doing great but I think what I expected to happen is coming true which is that passive income on this scale isn't possible in the long run.

I think these days you constantly need to shovel content into your sites in order to maintain your rankings and grow them. It makes sense because your competitors are probably posting daily, earn more backlinks, and have more direct visitors because of it.

Anyway, I hope someday you can do another content push on your main site to see if this would reverse this general trend. Or better yet, hire writers to scale your site and grow it to $100K+ (which I certainly believe is possible).

Media Rookie said:

Wow! I'm halfway through your journey thread and I feel really inspired. Your commitment to your site is admirable.

Click to expand...

Thanks mate, it was super intense for one year, and we are still reaping the rewards of this effort .

Nowadays I am not that committed to this website. In this stage of the journey, it is more about testing how long it can bring an almost passive income, with me working on it for 1 or 2 days per month maximum.

Boruto123 said:

Good luck with your journey mate

Click to expand...

Thanks, GL to you as well!

Juicerjuice said:

@Kikerinka Coming back a bit shorter than anticipated.

Added all blogs to the homepage (not into every single page, as you mentioned) and added 1 directory link.

After 2 days from 5-10 impressions, it got to 20 in the first day and it got to 63 impressions today.

Will not do any work on the site for several days now, as I have ~5 days to finish my bachelor thesis, however, getting straight back to it after it!

Click to expand...

Great to hear that it has been working for you . From 5 impressions to 63 is a big jump, and I suppose your content is jumping into the index, slowly but surely.

GL with the bachelor thesis! Once done you should have quite a break from your studies, and perhaps can give a decent content boost to your website.

leit said:

Hmm, I see that both traffic and RPM went down for both, that's a bummer.

And about your accident, I hope you get better soon, I had a left shoulder injury a few years ago and the pain was pretty intense, I remember it like it was yesterday.


I have a question for you, I have seen some people talking about the "content optimization" that adthrive has, have you tried it, any opinion about it? Because if so, it would save me a lot of money on a tool that does the same thing.

Click to expand...

Thanks Leit (still find it strange calling you this name ). Certain things are hard to forget, especially the painful ones.

Do not know yet whether I will have a surgery or not. I may try to take a conservative approach with physiotherapy etc. But it also depends on whether I go to Spain or not, whether I dislocate my shoulder there on the first day etc

To the content optimization on Adthrive: If I understand it correctly, you have to connect your data from GSC account to Adthrive, and after some time it gives you ideas on how to improve your existing content (covering this or that topic in this or that post), or adding a new post covering something you get enough impressions in GSC for. I sincerely believe it can work great.

However, I prefer not sharing certain data with anyone, and data from my GSC likely tops the list. Because by sharing the data you always sort of sign this "agreement" of giving the company (Adthrive in this case) permission to access the data and use them for their purposes, which can (though doesn't have to) entail an option of sharing them with third parties. Not that I say they will share them, but I prefer to stay safe on this, since I know the power of data and the value it has...

But maybe for your niche this isn't such a big concern, and you can benefit from the tool. Case studies Adthrive shared about some of their members growing their traffic heavily with the help of "Content optimization" tool looked more than promising .

BabyJoker said:

Get better soon!

Click to expand...

Thanks mate! You stay strong too

CampData said:

Wishing you good luck.
I'm bookmarking this thread for later, best journey to follow according to many members here.

Click to expand...

Thanks, and enjoy your read .

its.shailesh said:

I am new to BHW and I was going through each posts and I got to learn many things but mostly I cam across people talking more about link building and Ai related content.
This is the only post which is fully focused on giving quality content and then earning through ads and digital products. I can understand it's a very difficult path to follow. It's similar to body building. I was into bodybuilding so I know how much it's important to go the natural way instead of protein supplements and steroids. It's a difficult path to follow. You feel proud of yourself when you see the results after few years. And nothing can beat that feeling. Whereas the person who uses steroid and protein supplements start to see results in few days but that's not long lasting.

I am interested in following this path of yours. But there is a big problem here. Just by reading this reply you would have understood that I am not good in English. But I am sure that it can be improved over time. The Pro Grammarly version can help me in correcting my grammar.

I have one question for you. Is there any method you follow to write the content ? I mean how you write good articles and how do you judge that yours is better than the people who hire freelancers or AI based contents. What questions you answer while writing the content ?

Is there something you can share with me which would help me to write good quality content ?
Thank you.

Click to expand...

There are more journeys like this one on BHW. @leit , @Anon9109 , @BabyJoker , @welie , @jbarrett to name just a few (sorry to all others I didn't mention here ).

True, many journeys are also about LB and AI content, so it is up to you to choose what interests you, and where you should seek knowledge & inspiration for your own project.

I agree with the bodybuilding example, though in my view it is even more extreme, since taking steroids and hormones (and I know many people who did that) can be really harmful to your body in a long run, including some vital functions such as ability to reproduce...

With AI website, the worst thing that can happen is that you won't get any traffic, or you will get some and it will drop afterwards . But no damage to your body done really.
But I got your point, and definitely encourage you to follow approach of quality original content instead of AI.

Your English is not great today, but look, we were all there. English is not my native language either, and I actually studied German at school...

The key is to simply start, and spend as much time thinking in the language and working in the language as possible.
That means reading English websites & books, watching movies (perhaps with subtitles)/listening to songs in English, practicing with a help of an app like Duolingo, and most importantly writing the content--even when you know it isn't perfect at the moment...

When I look at the articles that I wrote when I started in IM, I have to laugh. The English was horrible really . But it got better and better over time. It cannot be any otherwise.

And how I judge my content is better than AI or freelancers generated? Well, I can read it and tell, but honestly I prefer to let readers & Google do the judgement. Looking at the results, I would say they like it...

GL to you on your journey, I really hope you will start one!

JLeons said:

Hi @Kikerinka

I also don't trust these tools but the general trend is usually correct. Your site is still doing great but I think what I expected to happen is coming true which is that passive income on this scale isn't possible in the long run.

I think these days you constantly need to shovel content into your sites in order to maintain your rankings and grow them. It makes sense because your competitors are probably posting daily, earn more backlinks, and have more direct visitors because of it.

Anyway, I hope someday you can do another content push on your main site to see if this would reverse this general trend. Or better yet, hire writers to scale your site and grow it to $100K+ (which I certainly believe is possible).

Click to expand...

Honestly, I never expected it to stay like $20K + for ten years . But if it stays at, let's say 10K+ / month for 5 more years, with the minimal activity I do on the website, I'd consider it a huge success anyway.

There may come a time in the future when I do another content push, but I do not plan to hire any writers for this website.
I want to keep the quality as it is, plus the niche isn't that big... Without expanding horizontally, to other related niches falling under an umbrella of one huge niche, I doubt it is possible taking this site beyond $30K/month - that's the upper limit really .

Thank you for following, and I hope your website is growing as well!