[PureHustle] 2020 Journey Thread

[PureHustle]

Its time for (yet again) another PureHustle annual journey. I'm looking to grow my current setup and make 2020 the most successful year yet.



First, Lets Recap 2019 - Idea Validation:

2019 was a great year to validate my ideas. I spent a decent amount of time building out a successful azon affiliate site. Details below:

• Grew it from the ground up focusing on long-tail keywords and focusing on SEO.
• ~150,000 words on site so far
• Hired a writer

Point of This Journey:
The point of this journey is simple:

1. Remain accountable for the goals I've set myself for 2020.
2. Share insights and strategies with readers.

High-Level Goals For This Journey:

• Continue to grow the current site
  • Optimize the site (on-site SEO, UX stuff, site speed, etc)
  • Invest in Whitehat SEO
  • Continue to add content to current sites ( minimum of 5,000 words per week)
• Build an additional 2 sites that pull in at least $500/Mo by end of 2020. I'll be expanding out beyond amazon.
  • Heavily invest in content (at least 5,000 words per week on each site once they're up and running)
  • Invest heavily in white-hat SEO.
• Explore other channels for traffic for these sites:
  • Paid Channel
  • Youtube
• Find a better project management software & system to keep track of everyone's work.

 

[lukaslukas]

Good luck, this is exactly what I want to build on my journey.

You can check it here.

 

[smartdna]

nice journey, good luck dude. Will watch your thread

 

[SirTop]

Find a better project management software & system to keep track of everyone's work.

You mind sharing the one you using currently ? I

 

[PureHustle]

You mind sharing the one you using currently ? I

I've found that the best FREE solution is asana. It works great for now. Each writer has their own board, with due dates, and more.

 

[PureHustle]

January Update:

Team Updates:
Hired 4 More Writers and got them up-to-speed. They're all set up in my project management tool and its pretty hands-off. they understand the deadlines and the work to do. I will now be able to push out a total of ~15,000 words per week

Website Updates:
Site #1 [Azon Site | ~150,000 Words]: Nothing too crazy to report on. adding new content weekly. Focusing on improving on-site optimization. I also purchased some expensive guest posts this week, so im excited to see the results in a week. I'm also trying to teach a new team-member how to find competitor backlinks oh ahrefs and try to get one on these pages to our site.

Site #2 [Non-Azon Site | ~70,000 words]: I've been trying to build site #2 for a while. its not getting the traction i want, so im moving it over to an expired domain. Thus, Site #2 is reborn. I moved ~70,000 words of content to the new site. Strong domain with a nice DR and powerful backlink profile. I expect a few months for this guy to start hitting the first page.

 

[codemaker]

Great journey! Following.

Suggestion: Try to find a manager for writers - to build you a process that you can work with easy.
Later on, you'll maybe use social media platforms to promote content - so you'll need designers for post images, people to post and manage/answer comments.
Maybe even a person who does uploading and formatting articles to your website, so you can focus on other things.

Think big from start, trust me.

 

[PureHustle]

Great journey! Following.

Suggestion: Try to find a manager for writers - to build you a process that you can work with easy.
Later on, you'll maybe use social media platforms to promote content - so you'll need designers for post images, people to post and manage/answer comments.
Maybe even a person who does uploading and formatting articles to your website, so you can focus on other things.

Think big from start, trust me.

Roger that, thanks for leaving your thoughts. Eventually I'll scale up in these areas, but the monthly revenue isnt there yet. especially with a manager for these writers.
Im a digital marketing manager in my corporate job, so i know EXACTLY what you're talking about. Once the monthly revenue increases, thats the direction im heading

 

[Purush]

good luck mate. seems to you are having continuous progress. cheers.

 

[Andrew Scherer]

Find a better project management software & system to keep track of everyone's work.

Trello

 

[IamKing]

Wish a great 2020 for you. All the Best

 

[yesofcourse]

Looks solid. Good luck

 

[zionbar]

good luck OP.

What kind of white hat seo you're buying that got u the best results just out of curiosity?

 

[PureHustle]

Trello

I've definitely used trello, but it just didnt work as well as i wanted. Im pretty happy with Asana for now! i think of asana as trello on roids lol

good luck OP.

What kind of white hat seo you're buying that got u the best results just out of curiosity?

Just your typical whitehat stuff - Press Releases, Guest posts, links/comments on forums/blogs where relevant. Basically staying clear of PBNs

 

[PureHustle]

January Update:
Site #1:
Overview:

• Not sure what happened, but I might have been hit with one of the January updates. I saw a huge drop in # of keywords I’m ranking for (according to AHREFS). I’m still troubleshooting this and trying to investigate but this was a red flag. According to AHREFS, i lost about ~3,000 organic keywords or about 15% of organic keywords. interestingly, my organic traffic has risen, due to increases in ranks for target keywords, even though i disappeared from a lot of long-tails.
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    I should note that this is not a huge issue as this is a LONG TERM project. I'll just need to correct my course as i continue building this monster site. Im not using any shady link-building tactics or cutting corners on the content, so im not really thaaaaat concerned.
• What’s interesting is that none of my large keywords moved. It seems that my site got removed as result from many long-tail keywords. Im still investigating & trying to understand what happened.. I'm not seeing any spike in load times, spammy links, or anything out of the norm.
• I invested in some expensive niche edits, they’re slowly getting indexed.
• Jan Stats:
  • Content Added: ~29,000 words
  • Jan Gross Revenue: ~ $1,300
  • Jan Traffic: ~16,500 Sessions

Other Things I did:

• Changed the theme of the site
• Worked hard to improve the mobile experience on the site. Its awesome now.
• Worked to improve site performance.

What I’ll Be Doing In Feb

• I'm going to be updating a ton of my old posts, see if I can revive them.
• I'm going to be pushing some more ‘foundational’ backlinks to the site this month. A nice Press Release and a few Niche Edits.
• Internal Linking – This is something I’ve neglected to do for a while, but I need to start focusing on this.
• I’ll continue adding content to the site on a regular cadence.
• If I find the time, I’ll investigate the user experience using hotjar screen recordings & heat-maps.

Site #2:
Overview:

• Slowly building out the content on this site and letting it settle in for another few months. We got a few sales, which im happy about.
• Jan Stats:
  • Content Added: ~26,000 words
  • Jan Gross Revenue: ~ $30
  • Jan Traffic: ~400 Sessions

Other Things I Did:

• Invested in some nice niche edits
• Added new content to the site.
• I tweaked the mobile experience a bit.

What I’ll Be Doing In Feb

• The site really needs a re-design. I’m going to change the theme this month. This will also include a mobile revamp.
• I’m going to focus on continuing to push content on this site.
• I’ll invest in some backlinks if there is any budget for this month.

 

[Leodegarius]

Hi Mate,

I watched your previous threads. There were quite inspirational. This one is starting with the right foot from what you posted. What's your KW research strategy for this website? Is your Amazon website built on a new or expired domain?

Keep the good work mate!

Following this one and good luck

 

[Downhillguy]

Seems you know what you are doing and that's what is required. I am again going to start something similar will be following your thread.
Thanks for this journey.

 

[PureHustle]

February Update

Site #1:

MONTH	SESSIONS	REVENUE	NEW CONTENT ADDED
JAN	16,200	$1,200	28,000 WORDS
FEB	12,000	$900	12,000 WRODS

What Happened in Feb
Q1 has been rough for site #1. According to ahrefs I lost of 4,000 keywords organically. Thankfully we are slowly starting to see my site recover. I have been scrambling to try and fix this issue. This includes:

• Hopping off Cloudflare CDN and using a different CDN (saw some reposts suggesting that perhaps the negative hit in dec/jan could have something to do with cloudflare CDN).
• Updating old content. I am focusing on going back an updating all ~170 blog posts. The goal to increase length of each post between 500-2,000 words. I want to add more detail to each post. (some early signs that this could be helping me recover).
• Internally linking between posts – I hadn’t been using internal links, so I went back and updated a ton of posts. All posts have between 0-6 internal links.

What Im Focusing On In March

1. Finish adding content to old pages. Once done, continue getting content published.
2. Start link building on old posts that are top of page 2, or bottom of page 1. (I’ve historically really focused on just building content, targeting easy KW and hoping it ranks. I need to start adding links to really grow this site.
3. Exploring other channels of traffic. I've started testing PPC ads (so far zero sales). seems pretty low cvr so far...

Site #2:

MONTH	SESSIONS	REVENUE	NEW CONTENT ADDED
JAN	300	$30	33,000 WORDS
FEB	325	$3	27,000 WORDS

What I Focused On

• Pumping out content for this site.
• Optimizing the site for conversions
• Website redesign (chrome 80 broke my site and I had enough of my shitty theme)

What Im Focusing On In March

1. Im going to add more details to my previous content, as im doing with Site #1. I think this will really help me down the road.
2. Internally linking – I have not been doing this, but its something I should start doing.

I realize this is a relatively new site and I wont see much improvement on the site (in terms of rankings) for at least a few months. So the best thing I can do for now is push out content.

 

[kickasss]

Hey any news about your journey?

 

[PureHustle]

March Update

Site #1:
Overview:

Finally moving in the right direction again. Im seeing the # of sessions rise, and at least from ahref's the organic traffic is shooting back up. no idea wtf happened around december/january, but I think I'm starting to recover. Im starting to see more traffic trickle in from long-tail content that initially started to tank in rankings around december/january.

Note - April has been doing FANTASTIC so far, i hope this month ends this strong, it will be wonderful. I'm seeing a strong uptick in traffic & revenue so far. so fingers crossed.

Im going to keep adding new content to the site, improving old posts, and investigate what else i could do if i did, in fact, get hit with a YMYL update in January. Im going to purchase some niche edits, guest posts, to a few articles that are close to page 1 for large keywords. will continue to do this for the forseeable future (focus on content, wait for them to show signs of ranking potential, buy backlinks till they rank).

Ahrefs image for traffic rebounding(90 days):

MONTH	SESSIONS	# OF WORDS	REVENUE
JAN	16,200	191,750	$1,200
FEB	12,000	219,750	$900
MAR	12,750	231,750	$1,150

Details:

As you know, i saw a big dip in revenue/rankings/sessions after January so I've been busy trying to fix my site. some items were:

• Switched hosting to a fast hosting provider
• Added a bio for my authors on my site
• Went back and updated a ton of content, effectively trying to add 1,000 plus words to most of my articles. I have 150 posts, and the average length is around 1,600 words now.
• Getting back to a regular content posting strategy. historically I've just been blasting the site with new content once my writers give me their finished work. my sites will now post 1-2 times per week on a regular cadence with a few randomly posting throughout the weeks/weekend.

Site #2:
Overview:

Ill be honest, i haven't really done too much for this site. I did move this site over to a new hosting company as well, to test out the performance.

Ahref is showing a steady increase in organic traffic. and also a steady increase in organic keywords which is good, makes me think perhaps I'm in a sandbox that will take me closer to a year, year and a half to start seeing some serious momentum. For now just gonna keep on pushing out content and improving my keyword strategy.

Im also getting this site on a regular cadance of posting new content, which i think will help.

MONTH	SESSIONS	# OF WORDS	REVENUE
JAN	350	62,000	$30
FEB	325	95,000	$3
MAR	275	122,000	$7

Details

I'm at a turning point here. I had a really good unique strategy that i thought would make a killing. Im surprised I'm not ranking for a lot of the keywords i was targeting, but its clear to see that i misunderstood the competition for my target keywords. I'm re-evaluating my strategy this site and will likely adjust the site content/monetization strategy. there is too much content to only be pulling in pennies on the dollar. more to come next month!




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