D
Deleted member 813988
Guest
What this about:
Building a Quiz website monetized with display ads and social media traffic.
Quizzes generate 10x more page views and ad impressions, therefore bring higher revenue vs other content websites.
What will you need:
- Domain
- Hosting
- WP
- Theme
- Quiz Plugin
- Content
- Traffic
- Analytics
- Ads
Domain
You can get domain completely free or with a minimum investment.
GoDaddy - 99¢ .com domain
Note: You can only have one 99¢ domain per user/account, therefore if you already registered one or have an account with GoDaddy either don't do it or do it with different details. You do not want to caught and your domain canceled.
PlanetHoster - FREE .ca domain https://www.planethoster.ca
Note: Same as above, do not abuse the service and avoid getting domains banned on the way as this may affect whole work.
Freenom.com - FREE .gq, .tq, .ml, .cf, ga
Note: Freenom can close your domain, so either make sure you follow their ToS (do not get domain until you have content on your site) or pay few bucks to own it.
Personally, I would not use Freenom service for the main domain unless I have a very good looking domain name.
Hosting
Digital Ocean - Free $100 credit over 60 days
https://try.digitalocean.com/performance/
This means you won't be charged first 2 months for the service and can use up to $100 credit on your hosting/droplets. This is enough time to make money so you can continue paying onwards.
Vultr Trial - $50 https://www.vultr.com/promo/try50/
Probably not the best solution, but Vultr is a good service
HostWinds - Paid BHW members can get a $100 to spend on cloud hosting services or Ultimate Business Hosting - 7 days free https://www.blackhatworld.com/account/partnerships
WordPress
Installation process would depend on what hosting you work with.
DigitalOcean - One-Click WordPress Install https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/marketplace/wordpress/
DigitalOcean - WordPress Lamp on Ubuntu
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-wordpress-with-lamp-on-ubuntu-18-04
Vultr WordPress - https://www.vultr.com/docs/one-click-wordpress
Hostwinds WordPress - https://www.hostwinds.com/guide/how-to-install-wordpress-using-softaculous/
Theme
You can either grab one of the free themes available on the web, or search BHW, or you can get paid themes from @Festinger 's vault.
I am not going to suggest a specific theme as it could be any theme you like.
Quiz Plugin
There are dozens of plugins available, check Festinger's Vault, BHW threads, or simply Google it. Choose any plugin that you like, but make sure that plugin is refreshing pages after each question and has the widgets to add ads around it. One page quizzes will not generate much revenue but only will increase scroll/time on site.
This also works, but won't bring as higher revenue and user performance.
We need to increase pageviews so amount of paid ad impressions increased as well.
Content
You can create content using Wikipedia, I have described this process in my other thread.
I suggest not to copy other quizzes, but if you completely out of time (or imagination) at least try changing pictures accompanying your questions, and rephrase questions.
Traffic
Getting traffic can be completely free. The easiest thing you can do is to find community on specific niche e.g. games. Games in particular work extremely well for quizzes and have a lot of younger users, which means you can get clicks easier and have better performance from this kind of traffic.
On this example, I am going to talk about Fortnite, however, it could be Pokemon, Diablo, or any other game, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that you know at least a little on the topic and if you were active on any groups related to your topic. If you were - you know your way around on that specific group.
We are going to get traffic from social media groups by posting our links to them with supporting text as naked links without explanation will get banned and won't bring much traffic. It could be any social media of your choice: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, and any other social media, but try to choose the one you're familiar with and/or if you are already active there.
On this example, I am going to talk about Reddit, but again, use media you're familiar with or a mix - they all can bring good amounts of traffic to monetize.
By typing in Google 'Reddit + Fornite' you can find 4 big subreddits, you can also make the same search on Reddit itself, I just prefer to use Google for search.
I got results for these 4 groups:
r/FortniteCompetitive - 8k live users
r/FORTnITE - 2.1k live users
r/FortNiteBR - 1.8k live users
r/FortNiteMobile - 150 live users
Note, that very popular groups can also be monitored 24/7 and have stricter rules. Make sure you read them.
I do not only target the largest groups but work with anything that I believe can bring over 100 visits a day, therefore few shares can bring 1k daily. Target for 1k traffic daily or over - it is not that hard to get as you may think.
The next step is to prepare your secondary domain as we don't want main domain to get banned.
I go to the Freenom service and create a domain name related to the niche of a particular quiz. On the current example, it would be anything related to Fortnite + Quiz, but be careful, in some cases it is better not to add word quiz in some groups and you can use anything like FortniteNews or FortniteWorld etc.
Avoid using .tk domain - it was spammed a lot, I personally like .ml domains but it could be any domain extension. You can even invest 99¢ for a specific domain and get .com domain or use free .ca domain from PlanetHoster.
Once you register a domain, do the 301 redirect to your quiz URL, so by clicking on it user lands on the welcome page of the quiz (not your home page). The way I share link is that I make it look like a share of specific article e.g. domain.com/fornite-quiz and not domain.com - I it brings better results in terms of click quantity as it looks less suspicious.
Once your quiz, domain, and redirect is ready - you're good to go!
You need to share your link with a message: "How well do you know Fortnite weapons? Number 10 totally got me" or 'I think there's a mistake in #7' and so on.
The idea is not making a clickbaity title that will attract many clicks that will bounce off the first page but to attract those clicks that would want to go to #10 (last question or about that) and engage into a conversation on the group thread after passing the quiz. Avoid using misleading titles and avoid titles like 'Top 10 Fornite Weapons'. Be straight to the point and encourage discussion. Some subreddits even allow you using flairs like 'Discussion'.
If you're posting to the same niche groups (e.g. 4 Fortnite groups) do not use the same description text, you will be flagged and there can be users that are on both groups that can report you. Preferably to register a separate domain for each share as well.
The same method of getting traffic works with any other social media. With Pinterest and Instagram, you would just need to add an extra step for pictures, but all other steps are the same.
Analytics
Analytics is an extremely important process of monetization, no matter what you work on, it is important to understand where your money coming from. The same work with quizzes and traffic.
Google Analytics gives a pretty good understanding of what's going on on the site, but I always like to add some extra bit of analytics that allows me to track a little deeper. Per each share that I do (with or without redirected domains), I use UTM URL parameters (source/medium), which means I add a bit of text to my URL and track each share separately in GA.
To do that go to URL builder: https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/ and provide details of your campaign. E.g. 'reddit' + 'fortnitebr' or 'facebook' + 'fortnite_mobile'. This way you will know your performance from the share of a specific post to r/fortnitebr and won't confuse it with the share to the other subreddit/group. This is extremely helpful with Reddit as traffic from Reddit is not always visible in GA as traffic from Reddit or even social media.
AdNetworks
To get approved by most ad networks your website need to have at least some traffic as well as be attractive for those ad networks so they want to advertise on your site.
To get approved by most ad networks you would need to have about 30 quizzes on your site. The more content you have - the better, especially quizzes. If you have less you can still pass easily, but the more quizzes you have the more differnt kind of traffic from different niches you can attract, as well as traffic can go from one quiz to another. If you have a single quiz or just a few - most of your traffic will just bounce after finishing the quiz the landed on.
Make sure that your theme is properly configured, everything is in place and looks properly - you need to make a good first impression. Check for things like misplaced widgets, grammar, links/buttons working and so on. Your site won't be evaluated for hours by the network rep, but it should have everything working.
If you have no accounts opened yet - you can apply for AdSense without any traffic, but most of the other networks will require you to have it, so you can start sending traffic to your site first before you apply.
Send traffic for a week or two so you have info on what your average daily traffic volumes are and have sufficient data to show the network. Within a couple of weeks, statistics of your website will become visible on aggregators like Alexa and ad networks will have sufficient info to make a positive decision on your site.
Note that quiz sites are treated differently by ad networks because they bring 10x more ad impressions and revenue. The decision will vary from case to case, but ad networks love quiz websites as they bring them different kind of revenue.
Do not apply before you have anything, apply only when you got something to show. If you're refused you cannot re-apply and most probably you'll have to wait till you can apply again.
How long does it take
Technical part - 1 day.
Content - 3-7 days for 30 articles, depending on your availability and quiz length.
Traffic - 7-14 days (daily process once your content is ready).
AdNetworks - 1-2* days to open an account.
*Depends on the ad network
Conclusion
Based on the free use of services you can get about 2 months where you don't have to pay anything or a very little investment below $10. It could take anywhere from 1 week to one month to start monetizing (making money) and your revenue depends on how long you're willing to work e.g. create quizzes, register domains, make shares.
The process is not exciting, but so is laying bricks, it gets exciting when you getting 1k users and 20k pageviews per day at $1-$10 CPM.
This is something that could replace your 9 to 5 job and grow into huge publishing website.
Building a Quiz website monetized with display ads and social media traffic.
Quizzes generate 10x more page views and ad impressions, therefore bring higher revenue vs other content websites.
What will you need:
- Domain
- Hosting
- WP
- Theme
- Quiz Plugin
- Content
- Traffic
- Analytics
- Ads
Domain
You can get domain completely free or with a minimum investment.
GoDaddy - 99¢ .com domain
Note: You can only have one 99¢ domain per user/account, therefore if you already registered one or have an account with GoDaddy either don't do it or do it with different details. You do not want to caught and your domain canceled.
PlanetHoster - FREE .ca domain https://www.planethoster.ca
Note: Same as above, do not abuse the service and avoid getting domains banned on the way as this may affect whole work.
Freenom.com - FREE .gq, .tq, .ml, .cf, ga
Note: Freenom can close your domain, so either make sure you follow their ToS (do not get domain until you have content on your site) or pay few bucks to own it.
Personally, I would not use Freenom service for the main domain unless I have a very good looking domain name.
Hosting
Digital Ocean - Free $100 credit over 60 days
https://try.digitalocean.com/performance/
This means you won't be charged first 2 months for the service and can use up to $100 credit on your hosting/droplets. This is enough time to make money so you can continue paying onwards.
Vultr Trial - $50 https://www.vultr.com/promo/try50/
Probably not the best solution, but Vultr is a good service
HostWinds - Paid BHW members can get a $100 to spend on cloud hosting services or Ultimate Business Hosting - 7 days free https://www.blackhatworld.com/account/partnerships
WordPress
Installation process would depend on what hosting you work with.
DigitalOcean - One-Click WordPress Install https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/marketplace/wordpress/
DigitalOcean - WordPress Lamp on Ubuntu
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-wordpress-with-lamp-on-ubuntu-18-04
Vultr WordPress - https://www.vultr.com/docs/one-click-wordpress
Hostwinds WordPress - https://www.hostwinds.com/guide/how-to-install-wordpress-using-softaculous/
Theme
You can either grab one of the free themes available on the web, or search BHW, or you can get paid themes from @Festinger 's vault.
I am not going to suggest a specific theme as it could be any theme you like.
Quiz Plugin
There are dozens of plugins available, check Festinger's Vault, BHW threads, or simply Google it. Choose any plugin that you like, but make sure that plugin is refreshing pages after each question and has the widgets to add ads around it. One page quizzes will not generate much revenue but only will increase scroll/time on site.
This also works, but won't bring as higher revenue and user performance.
We need to increase pageviews so amount of paid ad impressions increased as well.
Content
You can create content using Wikipedia, I have described this process in my other thread.
I suggest not to copy other quizzes, but if you completely out of time (or imagination) at least try changing pictures accompanying your questions, and rephrase questions.
Traffic
Getting traffic can be completely free. The easiest thing you can do is to find community on specific niche e.g. games. Games in particular work extremely well for quizzes and have a lot of younger users, which means you can get clicks easier and have better performance from this kind of traffic.
On this example, I am going to talk about Fortnite, however, it could be Pokemon, Diablo, or any other game, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that you know at least a little on the topic and if you were active on any groups related to your topic. If you were - you know your way around on that specific group.
We are going to get traffic from social media groups by posting our links to them with supporting text as naked links without explanation will get banned and won't bring much traffic. It could be any social media of your choice: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, and any other social media, but try to choose the one you're familiar with and/or if you are already active there.
On this example, I am going to talk about Reddit, but again, use media you're familiar with or a mix - they all can bring good amounts of traffic to monetize.
By typing in Google 'Reddit + Fornite' you can find 4 big subreddits, you can also make the same search on Reddit itself, I just prefer to use Google for search.
I got results for these 4 groups:
r/FortniteCompetitive - 8k live users
r/FORTnITE - 2.1k live users
r/FortNiteBR - 1.8k live users
r/FortNiteMobile - 150 live users
Note, that very popular groups can also be monitored 24/7 and have stricter rules. Make sure you read them.
I do not only target the largest groups but work with anything that I believe can bring over 100 visits a day, therefore few shares can bring 1k daily. Target for 1k traffic daily or over - it is not that hard to get as you may think.
The next step is to prepare your secondary domain as we don't want main domain to get banned.
I go to the Freenom service and create a domain name related to the niche of a particular quiz. On the current example, it would be anything related to Fortnite + Quiz, but be careful, in some cases it is better not to add word quiz in some groups and you can use anything like FortniteNews or FortniteWorld etc.
Avoid using .tk domain - it was spammed a lot, I personally like .ml domains but it could be any domain extension. You can even invest 99¢ for a specific domain and get .com domain or use free .ca domain from PlanetHoster.
Once you register a domain, do the 301 redirect to your quiz URL, so by clicking on it user lands on the welcome page of the quiz (not your home page). The way I share link is that I make it look like a share of specific article e.g. domain.com/fornite-quiz and not domain.com - I it brings better results in terms of click quantity as it looks less suspicious.
Once your quiz, domain, and redirect is ready - you're good to go!
You need to share your link with a message: "How well do you know Fortnite weapons? Number 10 totally got me" or 'I think there's a mistake in #7' and so on.
The idea is not making a clickbaity title that will attract many clicks that will bounce off the first page but to attract those clicks that would want to go to #10 (last question or about that) and engage into a conversation on the group thread after passing the quiz. Avoid using misleading titles and avoid titles like 'Top 10 Fornite Weapons'. Be straight to the point and encourage discussion. Some subreddits even allow you using flairs like 'Discussion'.
If you're posting to the same niche groups (e.g. 4 Fortnite groups) do not use the same description text, you will be flagged and there can be users that are on both groups that can report you. Preferably to register a separate domain for each share as well.
The same method of getting traffic works with any other social media. With Pinterest and Instagram, you would just need to add an extra step for pictures, but all other steps are the same.
Analytics
Analytics is an extremely important process of monetization, no matter what you work on, it is important to understand where your money coming from. The same work with quizzes and traffic.
Google Analytics gives a pretty good understanding of what's going on on the site, but I always like to add some extra bit of analytics that allows me to track a little deeper. Per each share that I do (with or without redirected domains), I use UTM URL parameters (source/medium), which means I add a bit of text to my URL and track each share separately in GA.
To do that go to URL builder: https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/ and provide details of your campaign. E.g. 'reddit' + 'fortnitebr' or 'facebook' + 'fortnite_mobile'. This way you will know your performance from the share of a specific post to r/fortnitebr and won't confuse it with the share to the other subreddit/group. This is extremely helpful with Reddit as traffic from Reddit is not always visible in GA as traffic from Reddit or even social media.
AdNetworks
To get approved by most ad networks your website need to have at least some traffic as well as be attractive for those ad networks so they want to advertise on your site.
To get approved by most ad networks you would need to have about 30 quizzes on your site. The more content you have - the better, especially quizzes. If you have less you can still pass easily, but the more quizzes you have the more differnt kind of traffic from different niches you can attract, as well as traffic can go from one quiz to another. If you have a single quiz or just a few - most of your traffic will just bounce after finishing the quiz the landed on.
Make sure that your theme is properly configured, everything is in place and looks properly - you need to make a good first impression. Check for things like misplaced widgets, grammar, links/buttons working and so on. Your site won't be evaluated for hours by the network rep, but it should have everything working.
If you have no accounts opened yet - you can apply for AdSense without any traffic, but most of the other networks will require you to have it, so you can start sending traffic to your site first before you apply.
Send traffic for a week or two so you have info on what your average daily traffic volumes are and have sufficient data to show the network. Within a couple of weeks, statistics of your website will become visible on aggregators like Alexa and ad networks will have sufficient info to make a positive decision on your site.
Note that quiz sites are treated differently by ad networks because they bring 10x more ad impressions and revenue. The decision will vary from case to case, but ad networks love quiz websites as they bring them different kind of revenue.
Do not apply before you have anything, apply only when you got something to show. If you're refused you cannot re-apply and most probably you'll have to wait till you can apply again.
How long does it take
Technical part - 1 day.
Content - 3-7 days for 30 articles, depending on your availability and quiz length.
Traffic - 7-14 days (daily process once your content is ready).
AdNetworks - 1-2* days to open an account.
*Depends on the ad network
Conclusion
Based on the free use of services you can get about 2 months where you don't have to pay anything or a very little investment below $10. It could take anywhere from 1 week to one month to start monetizing (making money) and your revenue depends on how long you're willing to work e.g. create quizzes, register domains, make shares.
The process is not exciting, but so is laying bricks, it gets exciting when you getting 1k users and 20k pageviews per day at $1-$10 CPM.
This is something that could replace your 9 to 5 job and grow into huge publishing website.
