Journey to Income Diversification

Currently I rely on a single authority site, primarily monetized with AdSense, to pay my bills. I have other income but not enough. Everyone has heard of horror stories about using SEO+Adsense and then getting f'd by Google. So I need to mix it up.

The goal here is to have enough income where I am not stressing about money and where I can consider longer-term business projects that require bigger investments. I'm past 30 and married - I've got all the lazy days and reckless nights out of my system and want to do something with my life, ya know? I have a background in programming and a little list where I jot ideas when I get them.

But for now I'm adding in some other IM stuff. Starting with...

(1) SEO + CPA

The goal here is to keep my SEO ability fresh and to set up passive income from promoting CPA offers. I'm starting with this one. I am making four websites of ~15 pages each to focus on a small cluster of 2-3 keywords each, all for the same product. I will be creating a blog network using expired domains (with backlink profiles) and fresh web 2.0's. I will be experimenting with using -no- software backlink tools and basically just doing enough backlinks to get everything indexed.

So far: I've set up the four Wordpress accounts and assembled a swipe folder of stuff to rewrite and photos to use.

(2) Ads + CPA

The goal here is to get more practice with media buying and, obviously, to make some money.

If I get fancy here, I might start building a list in a niche and set up auto responders.

That's it, really. These should be able to get me to the point where I diversify my income and start more serious projects.

Well, off with the journey then. I never got the point of these threads but now I know: journey writers are usually procrastinating.

Oh right, financials.

Day One
Four domains (Namecheap): -$39.16 USD
Hosting (Digital Ocean): -$5.00 USD/mo.
Total: -$44.16

Recurring Expenses (Monthly): $8.26
Projected Revenue (Monthly): $0
Net (Monthly): -$8.26/mo.

The next step is to get me some expired domains. For me this is fun. It's bargain hunting. I do it by hand with free tools.

(1) I sign up for a 30-day trial with Moz/OpenSiteExplorer with the intent to cancel.

(2) I already have a GoDaddy account with the auction feature (this is a couple bucks).

(3) With a free login, I go to http://www.expireddomains.net/godaddy-closeout-domains/

(4) I apply the filter "no fake PR" and "min pagerank 1" and apply descending order by "SEOkicks domain pop."

(5) I go through the list. I am looking for real sites, written in English, that have never been SEO-spammed and that are supported by 3 or more (the more the better) solid backlinks from different, legit sources (do-follow, authority, low obl, etc). I avoid a lot of sites just by avoiding the ones with SEO names (hyphens, EMD's) or non-English names.

(6) After looking over the backlink profile (can supplement with backlinkwatch.com etc. if you want) and feeling that those are the kind of white-as-snow backlinks I want to have, I buy.

It's really very simple. I'm giving away the tip because I don't do this every day.

I got a really great catch of 8 domains. Some listed in Yahoo or on DMOZ, one with a .gov backlink, one with a Huffington Post backlink. All of em with DA ~15+ and PA ~30+. I'm pretty happy. Whether you look at this as time savings (building backlinks) or price substitution (buying backlinks), it's a pretty good deal.

I don't give a d*** about the old niche or the domain name because I'll re-purpose all of these to my niche (somehow or other) and throw some niche-relevant backlinks on to them from web 2.0 sites I build. The only thing that bothers me a little about this is a manual review, but I hope I chose a niche without so much competition that I am ratted out instantly.

Day Two
Eight expired domains (Go Daddy Closeouts): -$198.36
Total: -$242.52

Recurring Expenses (Monthly): $18.76
Projected Revenue (Monthly): $0
Net (Monthly): -$18.76

With some tutorials and info (and the search function at BHW!), I figured out how to use Scrapebox to find expired Tumblr blogs. Not exactly the best-kept secret, I know, but it's progress.

And here's 20 tumblr blogs with PR2 or PR1 that I found open. Gratis.

happy-323.tumblr.com
80sbaby90skid.tumblr.com
themissingwinchester.tumblr.com
itskyo.tumblr.com
unhinged-nobody.tumblr.com
purexinnocence.tumblr.com
ragevx.tumblr.com
motivating-healthy-lifestyle.tumblr.com
blackstarmagazine.tumblr.com
rawralaralara.tumblr.com
registrydefrag.tumblr.com
aradicalcentrist.tumblr.com
mirai-tae-yun.tumblr.com
otherkinquotesss.tumblr.com
meloyell0w.tumblr.com
bunniyy.tumblr.com
lakodagirl.tumblr.com
lycanthropiclibrary.tumblr.com
supernaturalrecipes.tumblr.com
darrenliferuiner.tumblr.com

I'll update in a bit about my experience scraping Tumblr blogs, how-to, and costs.

I learned a lesson today about the difference between giving a man a fish and teaching a man to fish as it applies in IM.


If you give a man a fish or a dollar in real life, you help him out. And it's only for a day. But it still genuinely helps.


If you give a man some IM tips without explanation or justification, that doesn't necessarily help very much. It could even hurt. IM tips are like stock market tips. There is so much noise and so many bewildering claims that information without understanding is useless. It only becomes useful when the person who got the tip starts to understand it, if only by experience.


Also, experience is a great way to learn. Never just stock up on reading. Get your hands dirty constantly! It'll tell you the right questions to ask, if nothing else.


What's wrong with the list of tumblr blogs above?


In the past, if I saw such a list, I might be excited and want to try them out. From now on I'm sure I'll ignore 'em... and not just because others are trying to register them at the same time.


I don't know the QUALITY of the stuff that's being handed to me unless I learn all about how to do it myself. In real life, you can tell if a fish stinks immediately. You can't tell if the "step by step guide" stinks unless you try it (or have enough experience already to know off the bat).


What I learned about these tumblr blogs is that a lot of them get all their links within Tumblr. Sometimes they're 100% nofollow. Sometimes they're not. But a blog that only can get links from other Tumblr blog... that's not as strong as one that has actual (do-follow) links off-site.


And when I'm going through the trouble of making something look really good (like a Tier 1 blog site), do I want that? Na, I'll throw that back in the sea.


My time - and your time - is valuable. If it doesn't take that long to find something better to build on, why not start from a better foundation?


What do I look for in Tumblr blogs now?


I'm looking for external (do-follow) backlinks offsite from Tumblr. I'm looking for MozTrust. That 30-day trial with OpenSiteExplorer is starting to pay off big-time, saving time. (Maybe the other backlink checkers do all that too -- I'm not there yet and I don't really need to worry about that right now.) It's so much faster just to punch stuff in there and look for a couple numbers so that I can make a snap decision whether I want to register the Tumblr blog.


This is not just saving me time. If I can do this faster, there's a better chance someone didn't get to it first after the drop.


Maybe there's a script to do this (I don't know) but for now I'm glad with the system I got going. I can see that the MozTrust number (which I didn't completely understand - even though I've heard this before) is basically doing programmatically what I was doing by hand in a previous post: seeing if any of the backlinks come from the starting seed of "trusted" sites (like .gov, yahoo, dmoz, etc). That's valuable information! That means (in my mind) that MozTrust is maybe the most important number on that screen. And I couldn't really be very sure and really undrestand that claim without testing it from experience.


This post itself is not a substitute for going out and trying... maybe I'm lying.

Not sure if anyone gives a **** about this thread.

I'm going to be doing some work with clients for a bit before I come back to the doing the writing.

This morning I sketched a psychological profile for each of the 4 money sites. They are going to be little blogs where people are piddling about their personal lives and happen to mention the product positively.

I got the 8 domains that I bought and the 16 Tumblr accounts that I scraped. I'll mix in a few other web 2.0's. I don't actually bother making them look good. I just make sure they look reasonably human and don't use spinner software. Basically make them look like the random crap people post online (sometimes stealing content as long as it does not get flagged as duplicate). The point is to make them fast and unique and large enough to be counted as an internet property by the algorithm, not make them good.

If you want a guide to scraping Tumblr blogs, just search BHW...

I'm going to set up Twitter accounts for these 4 blogs or just buy them, not sure yet.

Financials - Day Three

Cost of getting Scrapebox (already had it): $57, use the BHW discount
Cost of getting 25 IP (used InstantProxies.com - note, they were Romanian, but that's ok): $25 (with intent to cancel)
Cost of hosting the 8 domains: $0/mo. - use 8x free hosts and a spreadsheet, I don't care if it's slow
Total: -$324.52

Recurring Expenses (Monthly): $18.76
Projected Revenue (Monthly): $0
Net (Monthly): -$18.76

Good luck! A question: How do you create fast content for the tumblrs/domains if you're not using a spinner?

It seems I'm reading something solid, It's to me much much better than those journey threads with number in title, you know what I mean.

KingKerv said:

Good luck! A question: How do you create fast content for the tumblrs/domains if you're not using a spinner?

Click to expand...

It's about scale. I can't make 15,000 blogs this way. But I can make 30 blogs this way, each with 5 posts or so, for a total of 150 posts. That's enough, if these blogs already have their own backlinks.

You really have to think outside the box a little, like:

(1) Go to a library, pick up a book, search whether the book's been put online, and if not, cut out excerpts.
(2) Go into the so-called "deep web" that isn't well-indexed. Chat logs, private forums, whatever. Copypasta.
(3) Use pictures or video that you have modified so that a computer can't tell it's not unique.
(4) Pretend you're slightly off. Just babble. You can even just use speech recorder software, like Dragon Naturally Speaking.
(5) Read something, think about the main points, then just burst writing as fast as you can. Tell yourself that you can't step moving your pencil or fingers or mouth (however you are recording). Edit a little as needed, then post.

If it's content and it's unique, and if someone can't tell (without spending more than 30 seconds) if it's a computer or just someone goofing off or being weird, it's already more than fine.

Interesting journey, I'll be following. Which CPA networks are you going to use in this journey?

KnightRider said:

Interesting journey, I'll be following. Which CPA networks are you going to use in this journey?

Click to expand...

When looking for something to promote, I look at the factors:

(1) Do other people promote it or this niche a lot? (No is a good answer.)
(2) Does it have good conversion+payout? (Yes is a good answer.)

Like a lot of people on this forum, I don't like to give too many details about what I am promoting because I don't like direct competition. I can say what I don't do: I don't promote offers like "payday loans" or "forex" or "lose weight," and I don't promote offers where I can't make a reliable $$$ from the targeted traffic (good conversion X payout).

Yeah, it's kinda lame, but that's all I want to say there.

I don't think I asked about your niches or the offers you'll be promoting. I just wanted to know the networks you'll be working with. Anyways, thanks and good luck.

KnightRider said:

I don't think I asked about your niches or the offers you'll be promoting. I just wanted to know the networks you'll be working with. Anyways, thanks and good luck.

Click to expand...

You're right. It is a good question that can be answered without giving away the niche or offer. I'm just a tiny bit paranoid.

I spent some time with buying ads and promoting CPA offers and ended up sending 120+ clicks with no conversions. I might be able to get good at this, but it is not really what I enjoy the most, as I can see from spending a few days at it.

I'm more of a builder/architect and like to see things that last.

Today I feel like dropping the ads/CPA approach entirely.

I have made an authority site before and have a good understanding of them, as well as an idea for one that I really like, so I'll just start building that.

I may go purely whitehat with it (and do some SEO for clients on the side) or go "grayhat."

Apologies for another fairly useless journey. ;(

Subscribed to this journey, Hope to see some good results for you OP.

good post. bookmarked

I'm really new there and i feel your thread is interesting. Thanks for sharing

This is going to be interesting, best of luck to you.