My New SEO Journey – Building Two Content Websites 1k/Month

Hello everyone,

Some of you may remember my previous journey thread. https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/j...on-affiliate-marketing.1694237/#post-18989077

Unfortunately, I had to discontinue that project because I ran into legal issues here in Germany. The domain name I had chosen turned out to be very similar to that of a large, well-known website, which eventually caused problems. I could have continued the project under a different domain, but the original domain was the perfect fit for the German market, so I decided to shut the project down and start over with something new.

The experience wasn't a waste, though. It taught me a lot about SEO, content creation and, most importantly, that I don't want to rely on just one monetization method anymore.

So... here we go again.

The Projects​

This time I'm building two completely different websites at the same time. First goal is 1k/month

Website #1 focuses on technology, software and digital business topics. Besides publishing informational articles and product-related content, my long-term goal is to build enough organic traffic to sell my own digital products directly through the website. Amazon affiliate links will still be included where they make sense, but they won't be the primary source of income.

Website #2 is in the fishing niche. The strategy here is different. The main monetization will be Amazon Associates, and once the website reaches a healthy amount of traffic, I also plan to add display advertising and partnerships with companys who want to sell their products.

Both websites are built almost entirely around organic SEO.

My Strategy​

I'm trying to keep the projects as lean as possible and focus primarily on creating high-quality content.

Rather than chasing highly competitive keywords, I'm targeting topics where I have a realistic chance of ranking and gradually building topical authority.

For every article I focus on:

• High-quality, helpful content
• Proper keyword research
• Internal linking
• Optimized page structure
• Relevant images
• Manual indexing through Google Search Console

AI Content​

Yes, I use ChatGPT extensively.

However, I don't simply generate articles and publish them.

I use AI to speed up the writing process, but every article is manually edited, expanded, optimized and structured before it goes live. The goal is always to satisfy search intent and create content that people actually want to read.

SEO Tools​

At the moment I'm mainly using:

• Semrush
• LowFruits
• Ahrefs
• Ubersuggest
• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics

For backlinks, I'm also using one of the well-known SEO services offered here on BlackHatWorld for both websites. I'll share my thoughts on the results as the projects continue to grow.

Current Progress​

Website #1​

• First article published around 6 weeks ago
• 30 high-quality articles published
• Around 64 organic ranking keywords (Semrush)
• Organic traffic is growing steadily every week
• First Amazon affiliate commissions generated

Website #2​

• First article published about 2 weeks ago
• 19 published articles
• Already ranking for multiple keywords
• Around 3 organic visitors per day
• Google is indexing new articles surprisingly fast

I'm honestly very happy with how quickly Google has started picking up both websites.

What's Next?​

The plan over the next few months is pretty straightforward:

• Continue publishing high-quality content consistently
• Strengthen topical authority
• Improve internal linking
• Expand affiliate content
• Launch my own digital products on Website #1 once traffic is high enough
• Add display ads to Website #2 when traffic justifies it
• Continue building authority through content and backlinks

Long-Term Goal​

My goal isn't to build quick churn-and-burn sites.

I want to build two websites that continue growing over the next several years and generate income from multiple sources.

For Website #1, the focus will eventually be on selling my own digital products alongside affiliate revenue.

For Website #2, the primary income should come from Amazon Associates and, later, display advertising as traffic increases + fishing companys.

I'll keep updating this thread with traffic numbers, rankings, milestones, wins and failures as everything progresses.

As always, I'm happy to hear any feedback or suggestions from people who have already been down this road.

Hey, all the best! Hope it all works out.

The stats look great. Good luck to you

Small Progress Update​

Time for another update.


Things are moving in the right direction, especially for Website #1.

Website #1​

Google continues to pick up more and more pages, and organic traffic has been increasing steadily over the last few weeks.
I'm also seeing more keywords appearing every time I check Semrush, so that's definitely encouraging.
The best part is that the first affiliate sales are becoming more consistent.
Over the last few days I had 10 Amazon affiliate sales, including two higher commission sales that generated €7 and €8 in commission in a single day.
I know that's still a small amount, but considering how young the website is, it's nice to see proof that visitors are actually buying through the affiliate links.
I'll definitely keep an eye on which types of articles convert the best and focus more on those going forward.
traffic:

semrush:


Affiliate sales:

Website #2​

This project is still in the early building phase, so there isn't much traffic yet.
However, Google has already started ranking the site.
As of today, Semrush is showing 7 organic keywords, which is a nice milestone considering how new the website is.
Right now the focus is simply to keep publishing content consistently and build topical authority.

traffic:

semrush:

Are you writing the content yourself?

Beklink said:

Are you writing the content yourself?

Click to expand...

Movementking said:

AI Content​

Yes, I use ChatGPT extensively.

However, I don't simply generate articles and publish them.

I use AI to speed up the writing process, but every article is manually edited, expanded, optimized and structured before it goes live. The goal is always to satisfy search intent and create content that people actually want to read.

Click to expand...

Good luck

If you can touch anything with local or service intent like home services, legal, finance, insurance, anything where a business pays to get a customer, lead gen will out-earn ads and affiliate by a wide margin at the same traffic. A content site doing $1k/mo on display can do several times that if even 10% of the pages have buyer intent you can capture with a form and sell. For purely informational niches, stick with ads/affiliate. So give it a thought before you lock both sites into the same model. Also, two sites is the perfect setup to run one of each and compare data.

MattELD said:

If you can touch anything with local or service intent like home services, legal, finance, insurance, anything where a business pays to get a customer, lead gen will out-earn ads and affiliate by a wide margin at the same traffic. A content site doing $1k/mo on display can do several times that if even 10% of the pages have buyer intent you can capture with a form and sell. For purely informational niches, stick with ads/affiliate. So give it a thought before you lock both sites into the same model. Also, two sites is the perfect setup to run one of each and compare data.

Click to expand...

And that's exactly what I'm planning to do. One of the sites is for my marketing agency, where I already have paying business clients for web design, SEO, marketing, branding, and related services. Alongside that, I'm building a blog to generate organic traffic and earn some additional revenue through affiliate marketing. Even with relatively low traffic so far, I'm already making Amazon affiliate sales almost every day. My long-term goal is to use those blog articles to build consistent traffic. Once the site reaches a certain level, I can monetize that traffic by promoting my own digital products, recommending digital products through Digistore24, or converting visitors into leads for my agency services such as web design, SEO, and online marketing. The second website is intended to become a pure traffic and information powerhouse. There's only one truly comparable site in the niche, and it gets around 160,000 visits per month. Looking at their content, I honestly believe my articles are significantly higher quality and much stronger from an SEO perspective. The only thing I can't accelerate is time, they've been building that website for years. I'm really curious to see what kind of Amazon affiliate revenue that level of traffic can generate. I also plan to run display advertising on the site, and I may eventually create a digital fishing course and sell it directly to my audience as well.

Movementking said:

and it gets around 160,000 visits per month.

Click to expand...

Sorry 70.000 per day is right not 160k per month

Movementking said:

70.000 per day

Click to expand...

So you're trying to take a piece of that pie. That seems like a pretty big website, is anybody else trying to compete with them on a smaller scale?

Yeah, I'm 100% sure I can capture a significant share of that traffic. There is almost no real competition in this niche. There are only two actual competitors, and both have extremely poor articles with no real focus on SEO or keyword optimization. The rest of the search results are mostly forum threads. I've researched this niche extensively, and the competition is surprisingly weak. They clearly don't understand how to create high-quality, SEO-focused content. Even the biggest website in the niche only publishes articles with around 200–300 words, and they're poorly formatted. What's even more encouraging is that my site has virtually zero authority at the moment, yet my number of organic keywords is already growing rapidly. That gives me a lot of confidence that I can dominate this niche if I keep publishing high-quality content. I genuinely think I can hit this niche like an asteroid.

blogmen said:

So you're trying to take a piece of that pie. That seems like a pretty big website, is anybody else trying to compete with them on a smaller scale?

Click to expand...

70.000 per month is right for sure lmao ive seen that i wrote /day just yet

Movementking said:

the competition is surprisingly weak. They clearly don't understand how to create high-quality, SEO-focused content

Click to expand...

If you're surprised that competition is weak you may be surprised yet again. In my experience when the competition is weak there's a reason for it.

High quality optimized content is not much of a factor nowadays. If you happen to get traffic for some phrase that they aren't using, they have the capability to create a lower quality version that outranks you due to their sheer authority.

But I hope you end up getting some of the pie.

Good stats, you only use semrush for kw research?

blogmen said:

If you're surprised that competition is weak you may be surprised yet again. In my experience when the competition is weak there's a reason for it.

High quality optimized content is not much of a factor nowadays. If you happen to get traffic for some phrase that they aren't using, they have the capability to create a lower quality version that outranks you due to their sheer authority.

But I hope you end up getting some of the pie.

Click to expand...

Okay, that's good to know. The reason I believe the competition is weak is that I'm pretty sure no one in this niche in Germany has expertise in both SEO and fishing at the same time. There are hardly any real blogs or high-quality informational articles, it's mostly online tackle shops. The few websites that do publish articles seem very lazy with their content. They don't target relevant keywords, the articles are poorly optimized(under 300 words also), and they often ignore basic SEO best practices. Almost all of the keywords in this niche have a KD below 15.
"they have the capability to create a lower quality version that outranks you due to their sheer authority."
I don't think they will, because they don't seem to have any real understanding of SEO. I doubt they'll even realize that they could target these keywords to outrank me. It honestly seems like SEO is the last thing on their minds. They've simply been publishing articles and news for the past 15 years, and over time they've naturally accumulated a lot of rankings and keywords.

We'll see what happens. Either my strategy works, or I'll get buried by their authority. Time will tell.

MarlboroBlackCPA said:

Good stats, you only use semrush for kw research?

Click to expand...

I use Semrush and Lowfruits and if i got a good one i also put it in ubersuggest, just to have a third opinion.





Fishing site(Website#2):






Agency site(Websit#1):





Afilliate Sales:

Conversion rate 6%

Do you know keyword research tool that is totally free? seems good outcome, also this dont have strong backlinks right? or parasite seo traffic?

MarlboroBlackCPA said:

Do you know keyword research tool that is totally free? seems good outcome, also this dont have strong backlinks right? or parasite seo traffic?

Click to expand...

just search for them on google. to get at least few more infos about the keywords you have to pay for the tools. in this forum you also get cheap 14 day semrush accounts.
Website 1 has already some strong backlinks, Website 2 none, i just started building. traffic of both is 100% organic directly from google. i dont post anything on reddit or other social media.

Do you worry about the number of articles you publish per day/week or do you publish when they are ready?
I just started my travel site and doing similar to you so was wondering what your publishing velocity was like.
I wrote in a similar way to you but added 30 to start then am drip feeding the next 40 I did, just wondering if that makes any difference (or am I just old school?)
Will be folowing your thread as its so close to what I am trying to do too.

You mentioned you write articles using chatgpt, then what process you follow?
Use tools to humanize it or you are personally checking full article word by word?