My SEO Journey

So I've tried a few methods but gave up on them, but that being said, I haven't given up IM.
Back in December, I created a blog in a niche that I'm comfortable talking about and wanted to do SEO on it but it was the "slow results" issue of SEO that turned me off, so I tried other methods.
I started an amazon site but then dropped that route since I didn't consider the competition. (It's really high)
I then tried to start a funny picture site with getting only social media traffic but my site had problems within plugins, plus it looked really plain so I gave up on that. Plus now, I feel that it's hard to monetize a funny picture site since it is just a picture site, plus there is a crap load of other funny picture sites so the content will 90% be non-unique.

So the past few weeks, I've been reading up on SEO again and learning how to do it properly and I'm going back to my old blog.
Needless to say, trying all those methods were a waste of time I consider since all it did was lose me time and money (for the themes and plugins).
But yeah anyways I'm going back to my blog and this is my blueprint.
2 Parts. 1st part of the blog is just useful content and help, the second is just random related scraped pictures that are posted automatically to tumblr, twitter, facebook and stumbleupon

Blog-Tier1-Tier2.
Tier 1:
High quality blog comments
Somewhat unique Web 2.0, this is my plan for it -->http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/white-hat-seo/540332-tier-1-question.html
Helpful YahooAnswers answers.
Sign up to to forums and put link in signature + helpful comments
Social Media - Currently have a Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. Most of traffic is from Tumblr
Social Bookmarks - Currently have it automatically posting to stumbleupon

Tier 2 (GSA) blasting Tier 1s
Web 2.0
Directories
Wiki
Blog comments
Social Bookmarks

What I have prior to today:
-16 articles on blog + some onsite SEO (keywords are >5000 global exact)
-2 web 2.0 blogs with 2 articles each
-Created approx 200 GSA backlinks to the web 2.0's mentioned above. (most aren't related)
-Some YahooAnswers comments
-High bounce rate traffic due to main traffic source being tumblr and stumbleupon
-Approx 50-70 UV daily
Today's plan
-Find tutorial on GSA to get targeted links
-Create articles + create spintax with SpinChimp
-Get my second YA account to level 2 to upvote my primary YA account
-A few backlinks to my blog

So far today, I've made this thread and created an article and spun it. Would've done more but school sucks lol.

As for monetizing, I plan to put affiliate products related to my niche once I start getting some search engine traffic atleast.
I know SEO is slow and boring but I'm in it for the long run so I won't give up. My goal is to start making some money before school is over so I won't be suckered into getting a 9-5 job. I also won't have a specific money goal yet in order to keep me from being disappointed if I don't meet it.

If you guys have any tips or suggestions or criticisms, feel free to let me know!

Ok so I was busy yesterday and today with school and other stuff but I'm free tomorrow.
Here's the plan for tomorrow:
Syndicate + spin 2 more articles
Build 2 web 2.0s
atleast 10 blog comments
atleast 10 yahoo answers

Scrape a list from GSA and run GSA on current tier 1's

Today's progressL
Did all of it but half the amount since I had to go help my parents look for stuff.
Damn waste of a day but there's tomorrow to catch up.

Today's Update:
-Created 1 web 2.0
-2 social bookmarks (reddit + stumbleupon)
-2 blog comments
-Scraped another list for GSA
-GSA still running on the Tier 1's

-Fixed up my setup of tumblr linking to my money site
-Changing major stuff money site
-Set up IFTTT
-Applied for adsense

Not much in terms of backlinking today. Focused more on the money site but tomorrow I'm aiming for 2 squidoo lenses, atleast 15 blog comments, 5 social bookmarks, 20 yahoo answers, 1 article directory and create + hand spin 2 400 word articles for future tier 1 links. But before that I still have to redo some stuff on the money site.

On a side note: creating articles are a bitch

you are doing pretty fine!

good luck on your journey and keep us posted how it goes

Good luck! It's easy to lose patience with SEO, but give your sites some time before moving on to the next idea. Anything that's going to make you serious money will take a while to build (unless you're really lucky!)

Update:
money site
-Created 15 blog comments all PR 1+
-Fixed metas
-Added an article to money site. Isn't optimized for keyword though.
-Downloaded SEO Powersuite mainly for spyglass
-Got backlinks of competitor sites using spyglass.

tier 1
-still kept GSA SER running.
-Scraped PR1+ forum sites from spyglass
-Scraped PR0 urls from spyglass. (I'm using the PR1+ for money site)

Still didn't do much as terms for backlinks though since I was busy with other stuff too. Tomorrow and Friday is going to be the same thing so hopefully Saturday I'll be able to create a lot more stuff for tier 1's (backlinks, web 2.0s, articles)

Today's Update:

Money Site:
Decided to redo keyword research as I was only targeting 4. In total now, I have 5 that are moderate difficulty according to default inspector and 2 that are easy. As long as I build high quality links, I know I can reach page one and then target more difficult ones.
Did ~15 relevant niche blog comments + 10 yahoo answers
Currently 90% of my answers with the blog links are best answers so that should get people to visit the blog if ever they come across the question.

Tier 1
Redid my GSA campaign adding the new keywords and also setting it up so that in total, I will have a 3 tier system instead of 2. In GSA I have manually created web2.0 blogs as my "money site".
I currently have GSA running only to my Web 2.0s though but no blog comments. Should I let it run on the blog comments too? (I saved a list just incase)
Also in addition to moving over to a 3 tier system, I plan to only use PR1+ as backlinks for my tier 1's

Tomorrow's main goal should be getting 2-4 articles to the money site that targets the new keywords and make another squidoo lens that targets my new keywords.
As for daily routines, the plan is 10+ blog comments, 10+ yahoo answers, 2+ social bookmarks and maybe join niche related facebook groups and post a link there. GSA will keep running again as backlinks for the tier 1's and tier 2's


On a side note, I searched up a part of my titles for some of my articles and they appear on page one.
This probably isn't that big of a deal but it did make me happy and motivate me to keep working harder. It shows me that I've made some progress and that's a good thing.

If anyone has any suggestions or criticisms to my blueprint, please feel free to do so as I'm still a SEO newbie and am still learning as I go on.

You already got on the first page with some articles man thats awesome

Can i know how much traffic you are getting now?

60+ daily. I hit 130 yesterday though but mostly from tumblr. Clickthru pics ftw!
as for the articles, the terms i searched were parts of the article's title so only a handfull uses that search term.

March 15:
Not quite as much done as I encountered a problem with one of my bots. Got it fixed though.
-10 blog comments targeting new keywords
-12 yahooanswers
-1 article targeting new keywords

The lower tiers are still the same. Still have to get on that other squidoo lens tomorrow.

Good news and bad news today however.
Good news- fully approved to adsense! And an article that was on #9 yesterday is now #3
Bad news-traffic today was only 30. It's a HUGE drop from yesterday. Not my lowest (22) but since my average was around 60's, I'll have to wait till tomorrow to see if I should start worrying or not.

Tomorrow and Sunday, not much is going to get done since I have to go to some meeting and parties but I'll do yahoo answers and blog comments and maybe a couple of directory submissions too.

March 16
-Made squidoo lens as tier 1
- made 1 backlink
-left GSA running while I was gone

Tomorrow, I will have to scrape more URLs as the ones I have are mostly no-follow

Good Going man. Keep it up.

March 18
-no backlinks today
-created an article
-created more accounts that IFTTT supports
-created a second tumblr, this time no pictures on it (in hopes to putting adsense on it while minimizing the chances of ban)
-left GSA running again as usual
-Found a google+ bot and am using google+ to share my links

I still have 2 more hours tonight so I'll probably be doing some backlinking
And another motivation that has happened for me is that someone clicked an adsense ad which gave me $.07. I know it's nothing but it's made me happy and it's proof that I can indeed make money from the internet.

yep, that's a good feeling getting the first affiliate/cpc on a new site. keep it up

Not bad man. Just STAY CONSISTENT. Never give up!

Thanks guys! And for sure I will keep going. And another amazing thing happened just now. I used to have a twitter account that got banned but I appealed it and just found out literally a minute ago that it's unsuspended!!

The only thing that's slowing me down right now is finding relevant do-follow blogs to comment on. Most of my competitor's do-follow links are just footer links as "partners" of a couple of sites so whenever that specific site posts a new page or blog post, he gets a backlink. Also, the comments for those sites are no-follow so I can't really spend too much time on them

March 20
Pretty productive today compared to the past few days
-approx 20+ blog comments on pr5+ blogs (not sure if they're n0follow or d0follow. Some comments on a post were n0follow where as some were d0follow). They're not autoapprove though but the comments were relevant so hopefully they'll get approved.
-created an article that has really good SEO optimization compared to most of my other ones.
-5 yahoo answer questions. For the past few days, there was some guy trying to spam and promote this one really shitty clickbank product so my yahooanswers efforts went into reporting him. He is now deleted and the spam questions were deleted so my best answer rate is back up to 50+%
-GSA running as usual for tier 1's
-made another tumblr but this time it's only going to be text posts. No image posts as I plan on putting adsense or CPA on it once it gets followers.

The night is still young so I'll probably be building more backlinks and working on that new tumblr account.
I'm also highly debating starting a new site. Strategy will be the same but the niche will be different. This new niche has a higher traffic flow and maybe could be better monetized than my current one.
I am not ditching my current site because I specialize in that niche. I'm also not sure if I should start the second blog though because it isn't really in my interest. But for the sake of getting traffic, it seems easier.

What do you guys think? Should I run 2 blogs? Both will be the same method but I may twist some things if need be.

March 21

Decided just to stick with this blog and focus all my efforts into it.
-made 10 backlinks
-1 guest blog
Got SEO Powersuite from a thread here working.
One of the keywords I'm targetting is in the top 100! Last week, it wasn't even in the top 100 pages of Google so I'm pretty happy. Nice to see that my efforts is actually doing something good for my blog.

keep going man good Job.

Keep it up dode. I'm learning seo too. I'll be checking on you.