My second try with more experience

Traffic today is less than on the other days. And although I had 28 UV so far, I only got 6 tracked clicks on Amazon links. Damn that's such a low CTR and I didn't change a thing.

Let's come back to the To-Do List for today:

-Add legal pages:
Done. Added all that's necessary.

-Add new content:
Still missing, will do it later.

-Create social accounts:
Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus are all set up.

-Improve meta description to increase Google CTR:
Improved the meta description and added some "clickbait" like elements.

Things I achieved that weren't part of my to-do list:

-Coded a small and simple Twitter bot:
To get some social signals and some social exposure I coded a small bot that will tweet one of my posts every few minutes. Maybe that'll help indexing.

-Fixed an issue with the categories:
If you'd click on the categories in my menu you'd have only found a site that says "no posts found". Changed the code to display all my posts as they mostly are from a custom post type I developed. Hopefully that'll make it easier for google to get a hang on my content, too.

-Added a link on a web 2.0:
Posted to one of my aged web 2.0s I have used for another niche site. Don't care about possible footprints as I linked out to enough other unrelated sites.

-Improved some articles:
As my articles contain auto generated elements, they sometimes have some things in it that don't fit together. I checked all articles that got traffic today and edited them to look as good as possible.

Looking at the current stats of today, I don't expect a sale. I'm far more excited whether more links will be picked up in the Google index the next few days. Sales right now are fine, but not that important as the number one priority right now is to grow the site.

Best of luck to you, ill be following this closely. Thanks for posting, i'll try to learn from your mistakes

Gkay said:

Best of luck to you, ill be following this closely. Thanks for posting, i'll try to learn from your mistakes

Click to expand...

Thank you

Yesterday turned out to be quite okay, but today traffic is totally dead. Only had 1 UV so far, don't know what happened but will wait a few days to see if it gets better again.

Stats 12.01.2017
UV: 42
Clicks: 16
Sales: 2
Income (estimated): 6€

Overall stats:
UV: 245
Clicks: 119
Sales: 10
Income (estimated): 24.98

Traffic remained low yesterday as google had a low amount of my pages indexed and were not showing my pages on mobile devices, because my site was "not optimized for mobile screens". Using the google check tool google told me that my site is fine for mobile devices, wtf. Hopefully that issue is sorted out now as I already had 2 mobile UV today.

Started linkbuilding process yesterday to increase my domains trust to have more pages indexed soon. Did a few blog comments and guest book entries. Additionally I started working towards some strong quality links and did send out 10 outreach mails. Will try to semd 3-5 a day now to secure nice links.

Stats for 13.01.2017:
UV: 20 (-22)
Clicks: 7 (-9)
Sales: 1 (-1)
Income (estimated): ~3€

Overall stats:
UV: 265
Clicks: 126
Sales: 11
Income (Estimated): ~28€

Traffic still sucks today, although I've more pages indexed than ever before. Some changes I made to my on page and internal linking may cause that problem. I reversed some of them to see which results it will have on traffic and rankings. Although this site actually is my best earning yet I'll use it as a on page playground to effectively test what does bring results and what doesn't. Hopefully it'll be much easier to measure on a page that already is ranking and bringing in traffic.

Update time. Traffic yesterday didn't suck as I had expected, because in the evening it increased and I hit new UV record. Some of them came by guestbook entries I wrote and and some came by blog comments, but those visitors won't bring any money, because my site only works for organic traffic.

Stats 14.01.2017:
UV: 90 (+70)
Clicks: 26 (+19)
Sales: 3
Income (estimated): 2.5€

Total stats:
UV: 355
Clicks: 155
Sales: 14
Income (Estimated): 30.5€

Hopefully I can sell a few more high priced items again soon, because with those low priced items I sold yesterday I won't make any money (2x 9€ & 30€). As I use the german affiliate program of amazon the ref fees are fixed so I can't even use those Sales to raise my percentage.

Although updating daily might be boring for the most of you as there are always only new stats to see, I really enjoy it and it keeps me on track. Didn't do any serious outreach yet besides the 10 mails I send so I wasn't able to capture a link yet. Kept commenting for the last few days with an average speed of 5 links a day.

Yesterday the traffic was really really good and I'm really happy how nice everything worked out.

Stats 15.01.2017:
UV: 190 (+100)
Clicks: 82 (+56)
Sales: 17 (+14)
Income (estimated): 22.5€

Total stats:
UV: 545
Clicks: 234
Sales: 31
Income (Estimated): 53€

This actually was the best affiliate month I had so far (never crossed 50€ before as I had one return and ended up being about 48€), with only one week in with that new site. I'll further try to grow that site, I seriously need some strong quality links soon otherwise that will be tough. I got a new huge goal and I'll do my best to reach it, whatever it takes. New goal is to reach 500 UV/day and make a stable 20€/day.

issorc said:

I really enjoy it and it keeps me on track

Click to expand...

^then keep doing it

Congrats on the earnings! Nice to see your evolution and the new goals arise, keep it up man!

Wish you the best with your new journey!
Great you are starting getting sales

I learn from your mistakes
start new website

Good luck. The most successful people have learnt from their mistakes

bleedsix said:

^then keep doing it

Congrats on the earnings! Nice to see your evolution and the new goals arise, keep it up man!

Click to expand...

pedrovsky said:

Wish you the best with your new journey!
Great you are starting getting sales

Click to expand...

wolfup2014 said:

I learn from your mistakes
start new website

Click to expand...

Jason Bradbury said:

Good luck. The most successful people have learnt from their mistakes

Click to expand...

Thank you all!



Yesterday was weaker again as it was to be expected on a weekday. The site's growth is currently on hold as the amount of content (and the amount of duplicate content) on my site grows and Google seems not to like this. Indexing of my pages fluctuate a lot during the day so earnings always depend on the amount of indexed pages at a specific time. We'll see if this gets better the next few days. Currently I just hope for the earnings to continue as they are, because around 7€ a day is better than what I've ever expected.

Stats 16.01.2017:
UV: 99 (-91)
Clicks: 45 (-38)
Sales: 6 (-11)
Income (estimated): 9€

Total stats:
UV: 644
Clicks: 279
Sales: 37
Income (Estimated): 62€

Still lacking today's update. Didn't add anything to that page. It's as crap as you would expect from automated articles so I'll let it sit, generate some money and wait for Google to (hopefully) index a few more articles before moving on.

I revived the site that this journey was originally created for and added a 500 word article. As this site has much more long term potential, I will try to work more on it in the future.

Here are stats:
Stats 17.01.2017:
UV: 75 (-24)
Clicks: 33 (-12)
Sales: 4 (-2)
Income (estimated): 5€

Total stats:
UV: 709
Clicks: 312
Sales: 41
Income (Estimated): 67€


Considering Google's quality guidelines this should only be a matter of days or weeks until this site gets slapped. But I've seen sites doing similar stuff being online for over a year, let's see how this continues...

Added another 600 word article to the first site.

Stats for the other project:

Here are stats:
Stats 18.01.2017:
UV: 90 (+15)
Clicks: 44 (+11)
Sales: 5 (+1)
Income (estimated): 9€

Total stats:
UV: 799
Clicks: 356
Sales: 46
Income (Estimated): 76€

Would love to spend more time on all projects, but I'm going to write exams soon so I can't dedicate as much time to that.

Sorry for the lack of updates.

Here are the stats for this full month 'til now:

Earnings:


Traffic:



So it's been quite steady right now and although my daily earnings vary from 5-25$ it should average at 10$. That puts me on a decent 300$ a month from this site. I'm currently in the progress of setting up a new site following the same principles targeting the American market. Will have to write a whole bunch of software, because I'll do it much more organized and even increase the level of automation for the new site. I guess that all together this will cost me 20-30 hours, which will definitely pay off in the end when I get everything to work as I want it. I decided to organize myself in a new way and take a cut on the other projects. As soon as the software is written and there's new stuff to update I'm going to create a new Journey thread to keep stuff more organized and leave this one behind.

This will most likely be one of the last updates in this thread. This journey was again full of failure because I wasn't putting in enough work, did some basic mistake or took too much risk. 2 sites failed again, one without a single sale and a loss of ~50 Euro, not taking into consideration the work I put in. The second site I was to risky with my anchors and a few neg seo links totally destroyed my rankings, just as my site started to get sales and made 70€. It seems like my chances of recovery aren't that high so I'll stop this project, too. Don't want to waste more money on it. I will focus all my effort now on the sites that I've proof for myself that they work and I can generate money with it. I don't know how much money exactly I've lost with the second site, but I guess it's a few hundred bucks. Should be a bit less than 400. This journey was created after my first affiliate site failed and left me with a loss of ~250-300 bucks, because I did want to outsource things, but didn't know how everything works and didn't have deep enough pockets in the end. This journey leaves me with a loss of ~450 bucks, only taking the sites in consideration and nothing I spend for stuff like guides etc. I don't count the earnings of my newest sites as this will be part of a new journey. God damn I wasted like ~700 bucks so far on niche sites. Maybe even more as I don't have the rank tracking and keyword services I use for a year in my calculation. So let's say 850 bucks. My newest site is ~100 in profit with some of that money already reinvested into the american counterpart. It still might be a long way to go for me to hit break-even, but with all that I've experienced and done so far and my recent success, I believe in it more than ever before. Thanks to everybody who contributed to this journey and helped me to make it as successful as possible! See you with a new journey soon!

Hey man, wish you sucess!

I am also planning to start a niche site in tech and your journey has really inspired me. Just wanted to ask..

1. Exactly what types of backlinks have you created for your website.

2. Did u bought an expired domain or was it a new one with .com/.net/.org or your regional tld

3. Which tool do you use for keyword research and can u please share the Keyword Comp of your keywords which you have shown in the images.

4. Which keyword position tracking tool do you use.

I will be waiting for your reply.

Keep sharing, keep earning and may God give u great success.

Thx.

sciita said:

I am also planning to start a niche site in tech and your journey has really inspired me. Just wanted to ask..

1. Exactly what types of backlinks have you created for your website.

2. Did u bought an expired domain or was it a new one with .com/.net/.org or your regional tld

3. Which tool do you use for keyword research and can u please share the Keyword Comp of your keywords which you have shown in the images.

4. Which keyword position tracking tool do you use.

I will be waiting for your reply.

Keep sharing, keep earning and may God give u great success.

Thx.

Click to expand...

Although I'm not longer working on the sites this journey was started for, I'll still answer your questions.

1. Nearly everything. Web 2.0, blog comments, guest book entries, social bookmarks, video submission, image submission, etc.

2. Except my newest project all were brand new domains.

3. Most of the time keyword revealer, but kwfinder is a great tool too, maybe even better. Comp. varied from 20-30 mostly.

4. In the beginning serpbook, but I changed to serpmarker. If you are on a low budget, Serplab is awesome for free and everything you need.

It's been great to follow your journey, issorc. Really looking forward to your third journey!

All the best