[Journey] Yet Another Amazon Affiliate Niche Website

Greetings fellow IMers,

After trying my luck with different venues, I have been able to make some money through e-commerce. Since I no longer want to deal with the stupidity of people (customer service), I decided it was time for me to reinvest in an Amazon Affiliate website.

My plan is to create a middle-sized website within a niche where the competition for my main keywords has been identified as "easy". Since I am a beginner in the whole IM world and to SEO, I will share everything here, failures and successes, questions and answers in the most honest way possible.

What I have done so far:

- Keyword research: Identified 3 main keywords for my website (Total of 16k Monthly search volume) and hundreds of LSI / Longtails.
- Keyword grouping: Grouped them by topic for article writing.
- Planned the website's overall architecture
- Ordered a 3000-word main article for the homepage
- Bought hosting and setup WP
- Bought domain

Total expenses: 96€

Next steps:

- Chose / Buy a WordPress Theme
- Install essential WP plugins
- Build the website's architecture
- Design a logo
- Setup analytics and tracking tools

First Objectives:

- Complete "Next steps" section
- 6 Main articles integrated into the website and interlinked
- Be indexed by Google and start monitoring SERPs movements

I hope I can rank for longtails easily in order to help my rankings for my main and more difficult keywords. I will not talk about off-page SEO before I have at least 30-50 articles and properly siloed the whole website because I won't start working on it before that and also because I have no idea how to do it yet.

I may have some misconceptions about what SEO is, once again I am very new to all of this and I will make plenty of mistakes. Feel free to ask any question or to give me some advice if you feel like I deserve one.

Thank you all for reading me and let's take this journey together!

Jonathan

Good luck for your amazon affiliate sites, im also following few sites these days and sooner hope to make sales thread

Update #1

I have received the main article, the quality is below what I had anticipated and I have to rewrite it myself. I am now wondering if I should write my own content or keep looking for writers. Lots of pros and cons with both options, my main issue is that I have no experience with writing/rewriting articles and that it is very time-consuming.

Also, I have been struggling with Amazon plugins for a couple of hours only to realize that my API Keys are inactive on the 3 amazon regional sites I will be working with.

The solution I came up with is tedious because I have to build every link through the Amazon website but at least I am satisfied with the visuals and the integration on the site.

Here are the tasks I have accomplished today :

- Chose / Buy a WordPress Theme [x]
- Install essential WP plugins [x]
- Build the website's architecture [x]
- Design a logo [x]

Next steps :

- Rewrite and correct the main article
- Make my main article the homepage
- Setup analytics and tracking tools
- Setup Google Webmaster tools
- Order / Write a new article
- Interlink with the first article where it's relevant
- Decide what widgets or sections to display on the site
- Design an infographic for the main article

Objectives:

- Complete the updated "Next steps" section
- 6 Main articles integrated into the website and interlinked [0/6]
- Be indexed by Google and start monitoring SERPs movements [ ]

For all the people that are also in the Amazon affiliate business, is content creation usually an issue? Do you prefer creating it yourself or do you outsource to qualified (and expensive I presume) writers for your money sites?

Good luck.

It's great that you have a solid plan. That's one of the keys to success in IM.

If you want to make a business out of IM then yes content is expensive and it's an investment along with hard work. If you have the skills and the knowledge to write yourself then you can save a lot of money.

Thank you for your answer @Holzr, I am done completely rewriting the article I had ordered, the more I was correcting it, the more I realized it was unusable and decided to rewrite it from scratch. It was very tedious and I am now contemplating other options.

Can I translate and slightly rewrite/spin content from other niche related blogs in different languages and still rank properly as original content? Or maybe Google is too smart and will notice it?

TravelingPizza said:

Thank you for your answer @Holzr, I am done completely rewriting the article I had ordered, the more I was correcting it, the more I realized it was unusable and decided to rewrite it from scratch. It was very tedious and I am now contemplating other options.

Can I translate and slightly rewrite/spin content from other niche related blogs in different languages and still rank properly as original content? Or maybe Google is too smart and will notice it?

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Sometimes it's easier to write yourself in your own style, or a cheapish option is get the cheap articles done and have someone rewrite them and proof them for you.
All depends on your content budget and expectations.

G/L with the journey.

It's impressive to have such clearly anticipated actions even before you hop in the wagon.

Keep going!

Just a couple of advice from my experience of building Amazon Niche websites-

1. Move towards a dynamic homepage from a static one(as long as you've enough contents).
2. For the initial 3-4 months, try earning ranks for ultra low-comp informative keywords.
3. The idea is optimizing for long tail keywords is dead(at least some SEOs say that). Try creating some relevancy signal instead.
4. Put as much effort as you can on healthy, crawler-friendly on-page SEO. It's the best weapon in the early days to overcome struggles with rankings.

Best of luck!

Update #2

First of all, I would like to thank you all for your kind words and greatly appreciated recommendations. I decided to completely delete the article I had ordered because it was of terrible quality and simply unusable. Therefore, I have tried my luck and written an article myself, we will see if it ranks but I like it.

After this unfortunate experience, I decided that for now, I will be writing my own content. I do not have the budget to order articles which quality can meet my standards anyway.

Also, the site now appears in Google, before the next update I hope we can get some keyword to rank.

Tasks accomplished :

- Rewrite and correct the main article [x]
- Make my main article the homepage [x]
- Setup analytics and tracking tools [x]
- Setup Google Webmaster tools [x]
- Design an infographic for the main article [x]

Next steps :

- Write a second article (2000-3000 article "best 10 whatever" type)
- Interlink this article with the main one
- Decide what widgets or sections to display on the site
- Create a privacy policy page
- Create an affiliate disclosure page
- Read @splishsplash siloing guide again

Objectives :

- Complete the updated "Next steps" section
- 6 Main articles integrated into the website and interlinked [1/6]
- Start monitoring SERPs movements [ ]

Are there any useful free SEO tools I should be aware of for rank tracking (possibly for yahoo and bing as well)?

Update #3

Sorry for the late update I have been traveling a bit these last few weeks. In the meantime, I have been searching for a writer and after getting scammed once again by so-called writers who don't know the difference between the verb "be" and "have", I decided to place an order with @JamesBlake.

Ordered 29 articles for a total of 30k words, delivery estimated: 7 days.

Will update the to-do list and objectives in the next update along with my impressions and review of the articles I have ordered.

Stay tuned, I feel it's about to get interesting.

Update #4

I finally found the content creators I was looking for which is a big step forward. The second one is a person that wishes to remain anonymous. He/she contacted me through this forum and has delivered an awesome article for the website. I should also receive the 30 articles ordered by Sunday.

Current milestones achieved and goals:

- Total words on website 5 320/30 000
- Total articles 4/30
- Google Analytics setup
- Google Webmaster tools setup
- Pages privacy policy and affiliate disclosure
- Ranking for organic keywords: 0/1

Next steps :

- Include newly received articles to the website
- Interlink the articles following @splishsplash siloing guide
- Setup Google alerts for some keywords
- Get started with off-page SEO

Total spent :

- Content creation: $750,00
- Hosting/Domain: $80,00

Total Earned :

- $0,00

I have to say you are following your gameplan to the extreme.
With this mindset, you are almost guaranteed to succeed, if your niche is just halfway decent.

I hope you will sticking to your gameplan in the long run, and dont change anything because its been 3 weeks and no money is coming. Its a marathon, not a sprint.

Best of luck!

Following this impressive journey! Any updates?

Keep it up! I'm trying to learn something about this through this kind of journeys. I have one question, what does "IM" mean? Thank you

Best of luck

Definitely following this, can't wait for the first results

following your journey to learn which you progress as I plan to launch an amazon site of my own, good luck

Best of Luck !!! I started Learning Amazone Marketing. hopefully this year complete my learn and practice
Thanks

khawk1 said:

I have to say you are following your gameplan to the extreme.
With this mindset, you are almost guaranteed to succeed, if your niche is just halfway decent.

I hope you will sticking to your gameplan in the long run, and dont change anything because its been 3 weeks and no money is coming. Its a marathon, not a sprint.

Best of luck!

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Thank you for those kind words, I don't know if the niche is decent or not as this is my first project of the sort. All I can say is that I have done my homework, we will see if I did it well!

Bitro said:

Following this impressive journey! Any updates?

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Thank you so much ! Very soon, I'm on a trip and coming back home the 11th so I will write an update then.

ArmFl8 said:

Keep it up! I'm trying to learn something about this through this kind of journeys. I have one question, what does "IM" mean? Thank you

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Hello and welcome. I also like to read other people's journey's as they are full of hands-on tips. IM means Internet Marketing

Zangzing said:

Best of luck

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Thank you !

andrieks said:

Definitely following this, can't wait for the first results

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Thank you for the support, results may take a while to show themselves but I will definitely achieve something with this website.

redbandit said:

following your journey to learn which you progress as I plan to launch an amazon site of my own, good luck

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Thank you and welcome. I hope I can be of some sort of help or inspiration in this case !

habibsoft said:

Best of Luck !!! I started Learning Amazone Marketing. hopefully this year complete my learn and practice
Thanks

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Thank you, you're on the right forum for that. This is full of gems and critical information on so many topics. It can feel overwhelming in the beginning but I think it's quite exciting to learn and share all these things with like-minded people.

Update #5

Alright, I am almost back from a road trip in Scotland but I have some time to give you a more formal update on the site's current situation. The biggest news is that I received 95% of the articles I have ordered and that I try to include them to the website as I go. Also, the website started ranked for its first organic keyword which is my first ever (amazing feeling tbh). This means that the website is no longer in the Google sandbox (it does, right?) which is also pretty cool. Here are the updated numbers !

Current milestones achieved and goals:

- Total words on website 15 315/30 000
- Total articles 13/30
- Google Analytics setup: OK
- Google Webmaster tools setup: OK
- Pages privacy policy and affiliate disclosure: OK
- Ranking for organic keywords: 1/5
- Setup Google alerts for some keywords (I probably did this wrong because I can't find anything relevant to post on): OK
- Optimize on-page SEO on each article 3/13
- Off-page SEO:
- DA 62 Profile Backlink to website's url (Non indexed. Have to figure out why)

Next steps :

- Include newly received articles to the website
- Find out why I'm getting error 503 on Google Search Console
- Interlink the articles following @splishsplash siloing guide
- Create XML Sitemap (once all the articles are up)
- Index website on Bing and Yahoo with created sitemap

Organic Keywords and rankings (Google only) :

KW #1 | MS: 50 | Pos: 55 | CPC: $0,28

Total spent :

- Content creation: $750,00
- Hosting/Domain: $80,00

Total Earned :

- $0,00

Can someone explain to me what is the use of the CPC metric for a given keyword? I know that this is what the keyword costs per click in a marketing campaign, but how is that relevant to me in this situation?

Also, do not hesitate to tell me or ask for information I may have forgotten to include in my updates.

the lower the cpc, the less competitive it is as less sponsored ads shown.