My journey to quitting my job by creating affiliate sites

Hello BHW,

Decided to post a journey thread to help keep me motivated and focused on my goal. I didn't want to start the thread until I had an idea, a goal, and a plan of action. Now that I have it, I'm ready to start this thread.

My Background

I have been in Internet marketing since 2000 working for either myself or for large corporations as an engineer or as a consultant focused on web development, SEO, and SEM. I consider myself a pretty decent programmer focused on the LAMP stack for web dev. My greatest personal success in internet marketing (solo, not working for a company) was a site I created in 2005 that at it's height was bringing in $750 a day from Adsense. After college I sold the site and took a job with a large company. Ever sense I've dabbled in IM on a personal level, but never fully committed to getting back to generating all of my income online. Now with a series of transitions in my life taking place (just married, health is hurt from corporate stress, desire to have a kid in the next couple years and want to be a present father), it felt like it was time.

My goal

My goal is to replace my corporate income and get to a point where I can pay my bills with IM. To hit this I need to make at a minimum $6,000 a month or roughly $200 a day. I currently generate $0 of income online.

What I'm Doing

I've decided to focus on creating comparison sites that are monetized by affiliate programs. Each website I build will focus on a product category that I can get into at least 5 different affiliate programs per website. These sites will contrast and compare prices between products. Pricing data is automatically scrapped each day. My goal is to have at least 500 individual products listed on each site. This will help chase after lots of long tails, while also building authority sites. Each site will have sister sites that carry related but the same products. And example in a niche I am not in would be building a site that focuses on car mufflers, that has a sister site that focuses on rims, and another sister site that focuses on wind shield wipers.

What I've done so far

I started last weekend by buying a recently expired PR3 domain name in a category I plan on focusing on. I then spent about 36 hours over 3 days building my own CMS and price scrapers. I signed up for four affiliate programs, creating a 160+ page site to start. This site will be expanded over the coming days to hit my goal of 500 pages per site. I already have a sister site half done and will interlink these sites. With my own CMS, my ability to create additional sites is pretty easy. Just rinse, repeat. For the site I created I already have 39 pages indexed in Google, and have purchased an SEO package from a vendor here. Should take 2-3 weeks to see initial results.

SEO

Due to the lack of time I have, I needed to focus on my time on either creating sites or SEO. That said, I've decided to outsource my SEO to a reputable vendor here on BHW. I believe a focus on creating high quality sites will in the long run generate a greater return then outsourcing site creation, which can be a headache.

Frequency of updates

I plan on giving a weekly update plus additional updates as things happen. This is not a daily thread as those die quick. I want to focus my time on building sites, not writing updates. I'm more than willing to answer any questions that I can, but will not be able to answer some questions (things like what niche I'm in, etc).

That's it for now. Thanks BHW as I've learned a tremendous amount of info from this site in the years that I have been a member.

Wish me good luck!

Wish you all the luck and really looking forward to see the updates.

Best of luck

Hope you succeed mate!

Subscribed. Looking forward to see your updates. Good luck!

Dude, I think you will make a lot of money!

Good luck on your journey! will be following.

You got experience in this, you got a solid plan, you seem organized - now go execute it and you will make it! How many sites will you be tracking here? Or will you talk about each of your sites you make and this is your overall goal?

EDIT: What? Did you make a 160+ page site just like that? How thorough keyword research did you do for each of these articles? Completely missed this when I read it the first time haha.

This is gonna be very interesting. Waiting on your next update.

Good luck bud.

hekke said:

You got experience in this, you got a solid plan, you seem organized - now go execute it and you will make it! How many sites will you be tracking here? Or will you talk about each of your sites you make and this is your overall goal?

EDIT: What? Did you make a 160+ page site just like that? How thorough keyword research did you do for each of these articles? Completely missed this when I read it the first time haha.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the comment. Right now I have plans laid out for six sites. Two sites relate to each other, and the other four relate to each other. For content, I am using a blend of hand edited content, scraped content, and a custom spinner when scraping. After grabbing data, and letting the code do it's job, I just review and check for each product. Each site has products and articles. The articles are hand written and target medium to high competition keywords. The product pages are designed to chase lots of long tails and be the jumping off point for my affiliate links.

Hope that answers your questions.

I'm In sounds awesome. Good Luck bud

Goodluck I look forward to all updates!

Good start, all the best. Keep going.

Wishing you best of luck! Please keep updating on your progress.

Hey everyone,

First want to say thanks for all the well wishes on the journey. BHW is a very inspiring community. It's why I've been a member for seven years.

Update

Since my last post, I've gotten about 70% of my second money site done. I've created a new logo, update the look and feel. I've also signed up for three additional affiliate programs. I'm currently seeking a writer and am trying to source one locally. If any of you know of a good writer here on BHW, I'd love a suggestion. I need someone who is quick and can produce high quality content.

From the traffic side, I've starting to receive some minor search traffic. According to Google Webmaster Tools, approx. half my first money site is indexed. I purchased an SEO package from a vendor here on BHW and expect to see first results in a couple weeks.

My goals for the next update is to finish my second money site, and expand my first money site by adding at least two more vendors.

That's it for now. Thanks again to everyone for the encouraging words.

Looks good.. Good Luck buddy

Good Luck im am also on a journy with nearly the same target

Hey all,

Quick update on my progress. I've added a new companies products to my first money site which brings it up to 6 affiliate programs and about 180 individual products listed. Traffic is very light from search (~10 visits a day), but since I only just started link building, I am good with this level of traffic now. I'm showing up on page two in Google for some decent keywords, and about half the site right now is indexed, so it's making good progress.

The second site is almost complete. I've signed up for several affiliate programs and plan on making the push to finish tomorrow. Only thing left is to add in all the products. It's tedious as it has to be done by hand, but throw on Spotify, smoke a good sativa, and it shouldn't be to bad. Once that is done I'll outsource the SEO.

I've also started interviewing a couple writers. Going to hire local and pay on a word count basis. Got a decent amount of interest in the gig and should hire by Tuesday.

That's it for now. Will update again early next week.

Subscribed to your journey OP. Good Luck