Journey to Stress-Free Life - Building an Authority Website

Hey,
I’ve been following your journey and was impressed by your results, you’re doing an amazing job man, keep going!

Since you said you were outsourcing content, I was curious how you find writers that fit your writing goals. Where do you find these writers and how do you negotiate the price with them(flat rate per article or price per word?)

good journey, your site will be big authority very soon

H1ghSky said:

Hey,
I’ve been following your journey and was impressed by your results, you’re doing an amazing job man, keep going!

Since you said you were outsourcing content, I was curious how you find writers that fit your writing goals. Where do you find these writers and how do you negotiate the price with them(flat rate per article or price per word?)

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Thanks for the warm words!

My topics are easy and interesting, so finding writers is not that hard, but finding a high-quality budget article writer is very hard. I tend to hire people not from the USA, for example, people from the Philippines, Balkans, and countries like that. People seem to underestimate their English abilities, especially the Balkan people, but they're really great, so there's a hidden tip for you I find the writers through freelancing platforms such as Fiverr, Upwork, Peopleperhour, and I also had luck finding writers through Facebook groups and Reddit.

purplehaze.69 said:

good journey, your site will be big authority very soon

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Thank you! That's the plan!

Intresting - can you share the plugins you use @ your homepage?

I was curious if you were willing to tell us which (if any) link-building services you've used that you believe brought good results.

Bhikku said:

Intresting - can you share the plugins you use @ your homepage?

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Sure, here you go Nothing special and out of the ordinary

fheaky said:

I was curious if you were willing to tell us which (if any) link-building services you've used that you believe brought good results.

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I haven't used link-building services from BHW that much for this site. I just did some forum links from Crowdo, and some Web 2.0's. The rest of the links were through my manual outreach and guest posts, and I believe they're the main reason for the results I'm seeing right now.

Weekly update

Last week has been a pretty positive week. The site has beaten the previous record in terms of users in one day. So, right now, the record is 864 users in one day! I'm getting very close to being accepted into Adthrive/Mediavine, which is my main goal for this site.


- There are currently 242 published articles on the site.
- My writers have been a bit more active last week, so I've scheduled around ten new articles on the site. I'm now covered with content until the 2nd of August.
- I haven't done a SINGLE THING this weekend. I went to the beach three days in a row and was just chilling with my friends. I have to admit that this has done a lovely reset on my brain Anyways, I've also told my two clients not to contact me during the weekends anymore as I've decided that I'll NOT be working during them anymore.
- I bought four guest posts last week on four good-enough sites. I negotiated very well, so I've got four excellent guest posts for $240 in total.

That's it for the last week's update. Stay tuned, and if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them! Cheers!

I find that running websites is never stress-free. I compulsively check on them 365 days / year (there's never a day off) and I wake up every morning stressed that something will be broken. When things do break the pressure of fixing them ASAP is pretty brutal.

it doesn't give you the sense of inescapable existential dread that normal jobs do, but its still stressful.

Good luck mate!!

wankawonk said:

I find that running websites is never stress-free. I compulsively check on them 365 days / year (there's never a day off) and I wake up every morning stressed that something will be broken. When things do break the pressure of fixing them ASAP is pretty brutal.

it doesn't give you the sense of inescapable existential dread that normal jobs do, but its still stressful.

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It definitely is stressful, and it's not for everyone. As I've said earlier in the thread, I'd much rather make $1K per month from my own business than working 9-5 for someone and having a $2K per month. It's just how I am, and I know that not everybody is like that. I just can't stand the thought of working for someone else, I tried that before, and I hated every single day when I was hustling for somebody else. They never appreciate the work you put in. This is probably because my parents also have their own business, so I come from a sort of "Entrepreneurial" family -- they have a small business, don't think that they make millions, but I think you get my point.

I was also checking my Analytics and statistics multiple times per day when I first entered this SEO world, but nowadays, I just check it in the morning and check the earnings from the previous day in the afternoon. That's it. It's still stressful when I see a 2% drop in traffic compared to the last week, but I love this shit. I'm always looking for ways to improve the site, content, and backlinks. I absolutely LOVE this GAME.

By the way, here's what I meant when I put the stress-free life in the title of this thread. My main website makes around $10K-$13K per month; I made this journey, and this site, to cover my living expenses, so I don't have to touch the earnings from my main site. I want this site to completely cover the food, the possible rent of an apartment when I change locations or when I'm traveling, and so on. I hope you got what I meant to say, I'm typing on my mobile phone, so I'm not sure if I completely expressed my thoughts.

bulloff said:

Good luck mate!!

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Thanks a lot!

Weekly update

New week, new record.
The site broke the previous record of 864 users, and the new record is 894 users in one day. Just six shy of 900, but we'll get there soon
- There haven't been that many happenings since the last update, just doing boring tasks
- There are currently 249 published articles on the site.
- My writers have been a bit lazy this week once again, so I've decided to find more writers, and I managed to find 4 of them that I really liked. They're all working at an $11 per 1000 words rate.
- I've decided not to sell my main website, at least not this year. I've received an offer of $410,000 for it, but after many sleepless nights, I've decided to decline it and try scaling the site even more. This is the 4th offer I've received for my main site. The first one was one and a half years ago, and it was $60K; after that, I received offers at $110K and $230K. We'll see how it goes. This is a significant risk, but I have high hopes that it'll be worth it. You can follow my journey where I'll try to scale the website to $20K per month here: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/scaling-my-authority-site-to-20k-per-month.1405460/
- I began going to the beach again after (maybe) 4-5 years of not going there. I practically live on the beach, so I didn't find it that interesting to take a quick swim in the sea, but I had so much fun when I went for the first time this year, and then I went 6 times more after that. Chill, beer, cocktails, and playing with friends are entertaining activities
- I managed to grab two guest posts for free. I provided the webmasters with 2 1400-1600 word articles, and they've agreed to give me a link back. Excellent deal!

That's it for this week's update; take care guys!

Just want to drop this here, to let you know that I'm enjoying your updates.

I hope you'd break the 900 daily users before the month end.

Good luck!

Godmade said:

Just want to drop this here, to let you know that I'm enjoying your updates.

I hope you'd break the 900 daily users before the month end.

Good luck!

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Thanks a lot! I'm pleased to hear that you're enjoying my updates! Looking forward to break the 900 daily users this weekend!

What an inspiring journey! Would you say that backlinks have been the main contributor to your early success?

What is the average volume for the keywords you go for?

Omega254 said:

What an inspiring journey! Would you say that backlinks have been the main contributor to your early success?

What is the average volume for the keywords you go for?

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Thanks a lot!

Yes, backlinks have 100% made a significant contribution to my early success!

Average volume is between 100 and 300, but I even go for 0 volume keywords if I think they'll bring traffic (logically).

Yo bro, I've noticed that you switched from a set of writers to the other, and paying a flat rate per article. My question is, is there a specific reason for this? I mean, you seem to have a solid project going on, and one would have thought that having a dedicated team of writers working on full time on the project as opposed to shuffling writers, would have been more ideal and perhaps more economical (fixed salary), considering the fact that you stated few of your writers live in low-income nations like the Phil, South-eastern Eu, etc.

What informed your decision to go this route?

Also, from your experience, how would you rate the chances of getting great/decent writers on places like, PPH or Onlinejobs, as compared to Freelancers or Upwork?

Get going with some quality guest post and other types of social links , try getting views and clicks from fb ads and many more things !

Godmade said:

Yo bro, I've noticed that you switched from a set of writers to the other, and paying a flat rate per article. My question is, is there a specific reason for this? I mean, you seem to have a solid project going on, and one would have thought that having a dedicated team of writers working on full time on the project as opposed to shuffling writers, would have been more ideal and perhaps more economical (fixed salary), considering the fact that you stated few of your writers live in low-income nations like the Phil, South-eastern Eu, etc.

What informed your decision to go this route?

Also, from your experience, how would you rate the chances of getting great/decent writers on places like, PPH or Onlinejobs, as compared to Freelancers or Upwork?

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I don't think you've understood me correctly. I just said that I've found more writers as the ones I have at the moment were slow, so I just brought in a couple of new ones, while still keeping the old writers. Maybe I didn't explain adequately, and if I didn't, I apologize. I'm still paying my writers a fixed per 100 words, and I'll continue to do so.

There's a high chance of finding good writers there, but you'll need to spend some time there and go through the many applications you'll receive. Out of like 80 applications, you'll probably find only 2-3 good writers, so be prepared for that.

Hawkeye Digital said:

Get going with some quality guest post and other types of social links , try getting views and clicks from fb ads and many more things !

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I haven't tried social traffic, especially paid one, so I can't speak from my experience, but I don't see how that would affect the site negatively, so go for it!

mentolinho said:

I don't think you've understood me correctly. I just said that I've found more writers as the ones I have at the moment were slow, so I just brought in a couple of new ones, while still keeping the old writers. Maybe I didn't explain adequately, and if I didn't, I apologize. I'm still paying my writers a fixed per 100 words, and I'll continue to do so.

There's a high chance of finding good writers there, but you'll need to spend some time there and go through the many applications you'll receive. Out of like 80 applications, you'll probably find only 2-3 good writers, so be prepared for that.


I haven't tried social traffic, especially paid one, so I can't speak from my experience, but I don't see how that would affect the site negatively, so go for it!

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Yeah, I do understood you correctly. I, however, think you must have misunderstood my question or the reason why I'd asked that. Maybe I should reconstruct it this way, why do you chose to pay your writers as you go (per written articles), as opposed to having 2-3 permanent writing team, placed on a monthly salary. I just want to get your opinion on this.

Godmade said:

Yeah, I do understood you correctly. I, however, think you must have misunderstood my question or the reason why I'd asked that. Maybe I should reconstruct it this way, why do you chose to pay your writers as you go (per written articles), as opposed to having 2-3 permanent writing team, placed on a monthly salary. I just want to get your opinion on this.

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Oh, gotcha. Well, I find it easier because this way I don't have to pay them a monthly salary. Let's say that we agree on 1-2 articles per day, and there are days when a writer doesn't send any articles. That means I'd lose money, but this way, I have more control as I pay them according to how much work they've actually done, or in this case, how many words they have written. That's just my opinion and how I'm rocking at the moment. I'll also open a company this week to go fully legit, and expenses in my country are very high when you hire someone. Like, when someone has a wage of $800, you'll actually end up paying around $1150-$1250 per month with expenses (pension, security, health, and some other stuff). On the other hand, when you have freelancers, you pay them through their platforms, and those platforms give you invoices so you can write them off as expenses for the company.

I'll make a monthly update on the 1st of June. Stay tuned!