My Biggest Journal Yet: Going 10x on SEO

What’s your strategy for the manual outreach?

Also, would it be unfair to out the service that gave you a disappointing result? I know I’d appreciate being able to avoid a service like that when looking for outreach links

nifferr said:

What’s your strategy for the manual outreach?

Also, would it be unfair to out the service that gave you a disappointing result? I know I’d appreciate being able to avoid a service like that when looking for outreach links

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I've only toyed with outreach a little. I had a script pull in all my competitor's links and their links then fetch contact FB/IG or email from hunter.io. Ideally, the outreach message should be specific to the site you're contacting if they're big enough. It's time-consuming but your best shot at a response. Smaller sites got the same copy and paste message I'm less concerned if they reply or not.

As for the services. I've given them a money site and they did technically provide exactly what they said on the tin. My current opinion is any service is going to provide the bare minimum. They give links based on metrics, not what they would point at their own site. If you care about the quality of the links, do it in-house.

Great post.
Following...

This is more or less my plan but I keep losing focus

SEOMadHatter said:

I've only toyed with outreach a little. I had a script pull in all my competitor's links and their links then fetch contact FB/IG or email from hunter.io. Ideally, the outreach message should be specific to the site you're contacting if they're big enough. It's time-consuming but your best shot at a response. Smaller sites got the same copy and paste message I'm less concerned if they reply or not.

As for the services. I've given them a money site and they did technically provide exactly what they said on the tin. My current opinion is any service is going to provide the bare minimum. They give links based on metrics, not what they would point at their own site. If you care about the quality of the links, do it in-house.

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thanks mate, all the best with the journey!

Today is the first time in maybe two months that I've actually ticked off my entire to-do list from the start of the day.

Got some links for site 3. It has a dozen spots on pages 1-3 of Google, the YouTube channel is growing and the content is coming through at a good rate. It'll probably be finished before most of the others at this rate. Figured it could use the extra links.

Today was kind of light on content from the writers. I've got someone new handling site 6 but it might be time to get someone new for sites 2 and 5. God keeping these straight in my head is getting confusing. No more sites this year.

I caught up on some Pinterest and parasites today. Going to push more on that tomorrow.

Content:

• 2,500 site 1
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• Parasites: 8,000

Spent: $610

I've potentially got a second writer for site 6. I'd like to speed that one up a bit. It's already got a couple of page 2 results and decent traffic from the parasites. It's the kind of niche where negative SEO is a possibility though so I'll need to start getting some decent looking links in place sooner rather than later.

Not a huge amount done. I'm taking part of the weekend off. Not much else to report.

Content published:

• 2,500 words site 1
• 1,500 words site 2
• 1,800 words site 2
• 1,000 words site 3
• 1,000 words site 3
• 1,000 words site 6
• 1,000 words site 6
• 1,000 words site 6
• Parasites: 2,000 words

Spent: $189.05

Good luck on your journey. I feel the same. See my join date in this forum was 6 years back and I didn't even come back. I could have learnt so much and built my business in these 6 years and missed it. Making up for it now.

Tomorrow I have to deal with some admin stuff. It's so damn boring I'm not expecting to get much else done. Tried to get a load done today but other projects tying up time as well.

I got a new writer for site 6 started and published a bunch of content.

• 1,700 site 2
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,600 site 5
• 1,700 site 5
• 1,000 site 5
• 1,000 site 5
• 1,000 site 6
• 1,000 site 6

Spent: $246.15

rajkumar31 said:

Good luck on your journey. I feel the same. See my join date in this forum was 6 years back and I didn't even come back. I could have learnt so much and built my business in these 6 years and missed it. Making up for it now.

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By... getting yourself banned?

SEOMadHatter said:

Tomorrow I have to deal with some admin stuff. It's so damn boring I'm not expecting to get much else done. Tried to get a load done today but other projects tying up time as well.

I got a new writer for site 6 started and published a bunch of content.

• 1,700 site 2
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,600 site 5
• 1,700 site 5
• 1,000 site 5
• 1,000 site 5
• 1,000 site 6
• 1,000 site 6

Spent: $246.15

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Where is the daily income screenshot?
Just seeing it daily inspire me so much to pursue my own venture.

Keep up the great work

Not expecting to get much done today. Dreading dealing with some horribly boring stuff and a meeting with a JV to do as well.

Did buy a new kindle (and one for my mum). My screen has been damaged back when travel was a thing so I’ve been reading with broken pixels covering words on the screen. My reward for dealing with today will be being able to see the page again.

Sweetrevenge said:

Where is the daily income screenshot?
Just seeing it daily inspire me so much to pursue my own venture.

Keep up the great work

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There were a couple of sales over the weekend but it’ll be a while before this journal might have any real daily income. 6 months if I’m very lucky. SEO is not that interesting to watch from the start.

There are a few SEO journals which started a while ago and do have a daily income report. There’s loads of case studies on /r/juststart as well.

SEOMadHatter said:

Not expecting to get much done today. Dreading dealing with some horribly boring stuff and a meeting with a JV to do as well.

Did buy a new kindle (and one for my mum). My screen has been damaged back when travel was a thing so I’ve been reading with broken pixels covering words on the screen. My reward for dealing with today will be being able to see the page again.



There were a couple of sales over the weekend but it’ll be a while before this journal might have any real daily income. 6 months if I’m very lucky. SEO is not that interesting to watch from the start.

There are a few SEO journals which started a while ago and do have a daily income report. There’s loads of case studies on /r/juststart as well.

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Sites usually begin to grow rapidly by month 3, so if what I've experienced is anything to go by, the daily income you're looking for is not far away.

Jerk55 said:

Sites usually begin to grow rapidly by month 3, so if what I've experienced is anything to go by, the daily income you're looking for is not far away.

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I'd really like to share your optimism but I'm looking at my last two SEO projects and they were 6 months+ before they started seeing any meaningful growth. Those projects were much smaller in terms of content but did have more links and less competition.

There's been some growth. Site 1 was 60 unique yesterday and between the batch of sites they pick up sales here and there from the trickle of traffic coming in but I'm really not expecting anything meaningful for a while. In the back of my head, I figure I'll finish these sites and maybe a couple more over winter and then if any of these get decent results I'll resume them in spring.

If any decide to beat that expectation I'd not complain though.

SEOMadHatter said:

I'd really like to share your optimism but I'm looking at my last two SEO projects and they were 6 months+ before they started seeing any meaningful growth. Those projects were much smaller in terms of content but did have more links and less competition.

There's been some growth. Site 1 was 60 unique yesterday and between the batch of sites they pick up sales here and there from the trickle of traffic coming in but I'm really not expecting anything meaningful for a while. In the back of my head, I figure I'll finish these sites and maybe a couple more over winter and then if any of these get decent results I'll resume them in spring.

If any decide to beat that expectation I'd not complain though.

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Perhaps it depends on the strategy applied to the sites. I've seen my own sites and those of other Amazon affiliates grow rapidly within 3 months. My all-time record was 1 month and 2 weeks, but I use risky techniques with my sites that produce results much faster. Since you're building your sites for the long term, they'll grow at a slower pace. I didn't consider that previously.

Jerk55 said:

Perhaps it depends on the strategy applied to the sites. I've seen my own sites and those of other Amazon affiliates grow rapidly within 3 months. My all-time record was 1 month and 2 weeks, but I use risky techniques with my sites that produce results much faster. Since you're building your sites for the long term, they'll grow at a slower pace. I didn't consider that previously.

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Yeah, bit different. I've enough churn and burn style projects on the go I wanted to switch things up.

Just to be clear, not complaining. I knew going in this would be boring as sin for the first couple of months but I can see it getting more interesting next year. If enough of the first sites go well and I can shift more of the boring work to a content manager then I just get to do the fun stuff.

Just a super boring slog before getting there.

Got a couple of things done yesterday so just a short update. It's looking like the admin side of things is going to drag out a little longer so I'm probably losing today and maybe some more time next week. My accountant has the patience of a saint but I have the organisation skills of a chimp so there's some work to do for that and a tech issue for a different project I'm going to need to look at.

I might have found a writer for site 5 which is good news at least.

• 1,700 words site 2
• 1,200 words site 5 (finally)
• 1,200 words site 5
• 1,600 words site 6
• 1,200 words site 6
• 1,200 words site 6

Spent: $320.75

I might get more content out tomorrow but I'm not expecting it. Should be back in the normal swing of things tomorrow. Will get a bit of a break from the boring stuff until next week I think.

Had a couple of days without getting much done here. Finished the admin side of things for now and should be back on track this weekend. Let's catch up, starting with the good news:

• Site 1 hit 120+ uniques on Friday. 80% of that was organic search, the rest was Pinterest.
• $83 in sales on Saturday from a mix of sites. Couple more sales throughout the weekend as well, it certainly broke $100.
• Site 3 took a big upswing as well.

Site... 6 (struggling to keep these right in my head) took a whole bunch of page 2 practically overnight. Not sure if the traffic from the parasites is giving it a boost or there's just not a lot of competition for this niche - I'll have to take a proper look. I can see some negative SEO going on in the top spots and I'm not sure how much I want to commit to a single niche at the moment.

Overall, things are slowly growing and I've ticked a number of things off my to-do list to free up more time to put into this.

Not all great news, however.

Two writers have been hit by COVID at the moment so production for some sites has been slowed down. Obviously can't fault them for that one just wishing the best for them.

Looking less likely that my own plans for moving back to the city are going to happen either. The place I was going was exposed, went into lockdown and now someone's in hospital. Plus we're all potentially facing a stricter lockdown again.

I shouldn't care. I've enough work to keep me occupied for the rest of this god awful year at the least but holy fuck some days are tough. Anyway. Shall keep focused as best I can.

I've fallen behind on the parasites and Pinterest work I wanted to do. I've done some work getting the affiliate links setup for site 6 and I'm hoping to have that finished tomorrow.

Content published:

• 1,600 site 2
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,500 site 4
• 1,500 site 4
• 1,000 site 6
• 1,000 site 6
• 1,000 site 6
• 1,200 site 6
• 1,200 site 6

Spent: $527.35 this was all getting content lined up for this week. I still have a backlog to publish tomorrow.

A busy couple of days in the real world. Had family going to the hospital (luckily everything looking fine now) and just generally not getting much done here.

Did make a little money trading on the election results which was fun. Got in on Tuesday when I thought the Trump odds were undervalued, greened up Wednesday morning right before it went sideways for him. That's going to cover some content and links.

It is looking like I'm getting back up to a city in the next couple of days. Likely mean my working hours change a little but probably good for my productivity to be able to exercise properly again and I'll be around other people working.

Got a ton of content published today. Catching up on the backlog I've let build up and I'll get through more of it tomorrow.

• 1,800 site 2
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,800 site 2
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 6

Writers for sites 4 and 5 hopefully back at it soon. I need to sort a new writer for site 1 I think.

I put some time into tinkering with the YouTube setup. Slowed things down a little there, we've been publishing the videos slower and putting up the really specific keywords first. It's gaining some daily subscribers and I want to keep the keywords with more mass appeal for later on and not flood the current ones with the specific ones just now.

Spent today: $144.50

Not dead. Just recently moved back to the city and took a couple of days off. I have a new office setup and I'm more unpacked than I've been in about 3 years. I have clothes in drawers and books on a shelf. Wild.

I have a couple of backlogged issues to deal with. An email marketing project needs some work and I need a day or so into another coding project. I've been at the desk today but just dealing with things that I've let get stacked up.

Expecting content production to resume in a day or two.

I was back in civilization for 7 days and spent 5 of them climbing. Heading back to a climbing gym this evening but at least I've started to get back to work in the meantime. I didn't mean to take so much of a break but it looks like this city is facing another proper lockdown and, either way, I'm feeling better for the break.

Sites 1 and 2 have had some good organic growth lately. In fact, 3 and 4 are doing pretty well too. At the end of the month, I'll dig through for the actual traffic stats for each site.

Planning to take some time this week to push backlinks a bit. I also want to catch up on pushing more social traffic properly but today was all about catching up on content.

Content published:

• 1,700 site 2
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 6
• 1,000 site 6
• 1,000 site 6
• Parasites: 22,000 words

Spent today: $527.35

Bit of a long one here. Rather than wait for the end of the month, I thought I'd dig out the stats of where we are so far.

Site 1

Last 30 days: 1, 800 visitors. A little over 800 from SEO, 700 from Pinterest and the rest from parasites. Roughly 70 posts and 110,000 words.

Looking at the stats for the last 60 days there's been some pretty steady growth. I've no steady writer for this site at the moment so the content has really slowed down but it's slowly getting somewhere. I want to make some more time for it.

Site 2

Last 30 days: 530 visitors. 310 from SEO, 20 from Pinterest and the rest were parasites. 99 posts and 170,000 words.

We hit a new all-time high yesterday but the growth over the last 60 days has been a lot slower for this site. I have two active writers for it but it's 100% more competitive than site 1. Not surprised to see the traffic taking longer. Probably about done with this site soon and we'll just leave it to age in.

Site 3

Last 30 days: 300 uniques. 120 from organic search, 20 from Pinterest and the rest parasites. 75 posts roughly 77,000 words.

This site has a YouTube channel that is dripping in a video or two a day. Wanted to make time to push it harder but it's growing steadily, yesterday was a new all-time high of views and subs. I don't have a strong CTA over to the site so it's not going to be turning a profit by itself anytime soon but I'm using it as a test to see what ad revenue would be like with YouTube. Maybe start starting in a proper CTA for later videos.

Growth of the site looking good. I've only recently made a push on the content so I'm not surprised it's lagging behind a bit. It'll reach the target of 100 posts in the near future and I'll probably leave it like that for a while.

Site 4

Last 30 days: Bit tricky. Overall a little over 2,000 uniques however that's 50 from SEO, 30 from Pinterest and 50 from parasites. The rest was traffic diverted from a similar project. 42 posts 57,000 words.

Interestingly the SEO traffic does spike right after I was sending traffic and dies off afterward. It's far too low to say there's really a correlation and it could have been navigational searches. Something I want to test properly.

The main writer for this site caught COVID so production has hit a standstill for a couple of weeks now. I also don't think we've built a single link for this domain and there's some competition in the niche so I'm not surprised it's moving slowly. It's a niche worth pushing though so I'll be putting some work into it over the next couple of weeks.

Site 5

Last 30 days: 700 from parasites and 250 from organic SEO. Maybe 5 posts around 5,000 words in total.

I know that doesn't sound like a lot of traffic but the niche for this one would surprise you and it makes consistent sales. I haven't actually paid a lot of attention to it because I've been waiting for the writer to become available but I'm actually surprised to see the traffic is where it is. Especially for organic SEO.

It's a niche I could make a real push in and apparently now I'm going to have to.

Site 6

Last 30 days: We actually don't have tracking setup for the last 30 days so it's more like 3 weeks. 460 uniques, 370 from parasites, 20 from organic search and the rest were Pinterest. Two dozen posts and roughly 24,000 words-ish.

I'm still in two minds about this niche. There's traffic there from the parasites with very little effort and I could scale the ever-loving hell out of that and make some money but the whole idea was to avoid a short-term focus. The longtails for this niche have a whole bunch of SEOs and some of them have a negative SEO war going on which is something I'd have to deal with.

Will have a think about this one.

Moving Forward

Lockdown rules kick in as of Friday. 3 weeks of nothing but work and I want to make a real push to finish a number of these sites.

Site 1 isn't that far from done but I'll need to hire a writer.
Sites 2 and 3 will finish themselves pretty soon.
Site 4 will finish eventually when the writer is feeling better - but I really like the niche so I might put in some work myself for it.
Site 5 might be where I start focusing a lot of time. There's more potential there than I thought.
Site 6 I might backburner for the moment. I know a writer who can handle it but the organic rankings might take more work than I'm looking to give a single site at the moment. Might set up a funnel and see how it converts with the parasite traffic - if it looks alright then it might be worth competing properly.

Today

• 1,000 site 3
• 1,200 site 4

Since we have a lockdown coming I took most of the day off. Most of the time I did have, I put into setting up a test for a different project. I'm probably going to keep pushing into the evening for lack of anything better to do. Likely going to take part of tomorrow off as well to get climbing on the rock the one dry day we're getting. Should have enough time in the evening to make a good push on publishing and try and find another writer or two.

Ordered a couple of guest posts for site 2 and outsourced some content.

Spent today: $379