Introductions Thread

EyesExist said:
Keep it up. Def some great numbers you're doing. Def a good reason to quit hwen you've found a path to making $40k a month.

Affiliate site or what?
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Yeah, affiliate and display ads.

EyesExist said:
Have you changed your mindset now?

Instead of 14 hours work days.. DELEGATE Tasks. Lose a little profit to begin increase your production potential.

1) Hire people to write/work

2) Are you thinking about issues that will come up in future? Losses.. that way you can be prepared and hit the ground running. New highs come with new lows.

3) Can you repeat the model with help?
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Yeah - I need to be smarter with how I delegate. I'm working on that. I'm going to sense check my approach in my next post.

1) I have 3 writers and 1 proofreader / minor editor (my smart ass younger brother). I just found that in trying to scale by having others write and edit the content, the quality of said content went down. Long story short - I'm reevaluating that approach.

2) Can you elaborate? One thing I'm worried about is the "nuclear winter" that's probably coming soon / post-covid. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about?

3) Honestly, I took the "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks approach". I think I got lucky in that a lot of shit stuck. I want to better understand why that shit stuck, but am so far still feeling a bit clueless. So, I don't know if I can repeat it. I hope so.
 
Thank you again!

1. In your experience, which areas of my endeavor will my skills as a developer be usful?
2. Do you currently recommend any SEO resources for newbies apart from the Crash Course?
 
@gordian, Your skills as a front-end developer will help you understand and get the fastest page speeds possible for your sites. It'll save you time making some customizations you need or want. If you can understand PHP as well as know HTML and CSS like the back of your hand, you can pretty much get anything you want done, especially with Wordpress.

I'd recommend this forum and asking the questions you want answered. There's nowhere better with more qualified people. That's for asking specific questions and being motivated. A complete newbie will probably enjoy reading some of the bigger blogs like Backlinko or Neil Patel's site, etc. Just to learn the bottom-line basics. Once you dig through any one of them, there's no need to read any other of them. They all have the same info and never leave the newbie bubble.
 
Ryuzaki said:
If you can understand PHP as well as know HTML and CSS like the back of your hand, you can pretty much get anything you want done, especially with Wordpress.
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I work almost exclusively with WordPress (even have a few core contribs) and I've considered that from a page speed standpoint it may not be ideal. When evaluating a platform (which I don't want to spend too much time doing), how seriously should I consider other options? I'd say the only other contender would be a GatsbyJS site which pulls posts from WordPress (so using WP as the CMS but rendering everything using React) because it would be absolutely lightning fast. The major drawback to something like that is a possible deterrent effect for future buyers of the site because WP plugins wouldn't be usable use in that scenario and the overall ecosystem structure would be a bit complex for a non-developer to wrap their head around.

Ryuzaki said:
A complete newbie will probably enjoy reading some of the bigger blogs like Backlinko or Neil Patel's site, etc. Just to learn the bottom-line basics. Once you dig through any one of them, there's no need to read any other of them. They all have the same info and never leave the newbie bubble.
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Thank you so much for this, it's huge! Seems like there are so many resources out there and just getting a thorough understanding of the dogmatic basics is exactly where I'd like to start.
 
Hi there,

I am new to Builder Society but not new to building massive amounts of content to a website. I launched a website back in April of 2020 and have added over 453 articles! Currently at 350-500 organic views a day and I have been monetizing with Amazon Affiliates & Ezoic ads. I look forward to sharing my journey thus far with this community and learning how I can achieve $100/day in the future with this site!

Patiently waiting to exit the sandbox!

Best,
larcha
 
O boy you're gonna fit in here.

We've been getting a lot of mass content style webmasters lately.
 
secretagentdad said:
O boy you're gonna fit in here.

We've been getting a lot of mass content style webmasters lately.
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That's great! Seems like the informational content is a big trend lately.

msa123 said:
Hey everyone! Excellent forum! Been reading for a few weeks now and finally joined.
My background:
  1. Been buying, growing, and selling sites since 2008
  2. My first flip was in 2009
  3. Since then, I've been buying sites from my Flippa, Empire Flippers, and private buyers.
  4. I am a Super Seller on Flippa with over 100 transactions to date
  5. Currently, managing 5 sites for myself or with partners
The 5 sites earn as follows:
  1. Site 1 (purchased April 2019): $9,000/mo, monetized with 10+ affiliate offers in the niche
  2. Site 2 (purchased April 2020): $7,000/mo, monetized with 20 affiliate networks, email list of 15,000, social channels as well
  3. Site 3 (purchased August 2020): $400/mo, partnership with an operator in place. I advise
The other 2 sites are starter sites that I am building from scratch.
I prefer to buy sites and grow them. I have always found that taking something from $500 to $5,000 is much easier (at least for me), then taking something from $0 to $500.
My goals in 2020:
  1. Dominate a vertical as an authority (already own top 5 blogs in the space)
  2. Diversified earnings non-reliant on Amazon (only 30% of my revenue from the sites is from Amazon)
  3. Diversified traffic non-reliant on Google (working on this over time)
Looking forward to give back and learn! Thanks!
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That's some solid monthly income. Do you use ads on your site? Adthrive/mediavine?
 
Hi Buso folks,
Like thread title, I'm here to learn more and willing to achieve the goal within 2 years. Currently making $1.5k a month (3 sites are pretty new and earning from them are 95%/5%/0% atm).
Planning to expand my horizon to info sites (2 sites on the plan). Got inspired, thanks to threads from @MrMedia and @CCarter.

larcha said:
Hi there,

I am new to Builder Society but not new to building massive amounts of content to a website. I launched a website back in April of 2020 and have added over 453 articles! Currently at 350-500 organic views a day and I have been monetizing with Amazon Affiliates & Ezoic ads. I look forward to sharing my journey thus far with this community and learning how I can achieve $100/day in the future with this site!

Patiently waiting to exit the sandbox!

Best,
larcha
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Wow, I think your doing great. My site hit $100 a day when the traffic hit 1.5k visits a day.
But then G May Update came...
 
larcha said:
How old was your site at that point and how many articles?
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2 yrs old site, got strong link foundation from previous owner to homepage. 82 posts atm( around 70ish articles published by me later and ranked in 4-5 months)
 
gowiththeflow said:
2 yrs old site, got strong link foundation from previous owner to homepage. 82 posts atm( around 70ish articles published by me later and ranked in 4-5 months)
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That's awesome - thanks for sharing!
 
larcha said:
That's awesome - thanks for sharing!
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No problem, hope you reach your target real soon. You have content team in-house? 453 articles in 5 months is a lot.
One suggestion, if I may, is leave Ezoic off atm. As I have one site with them be4, their ads slow our website like hella lot.
With your massive content, just wait when you reach 25k/100k UV a month (I guess wont be long) then apply for mediavine or adthrive. I think it's better.
 
gowiththeflow said:
No problem, hope you reach your target real soon. You have content team in-house? 453 articles in 5 months is a lot.
One suggestion, if I may, is leave Ezoic off atm. As I have one site with them be4, their ads slow our website like hella lot.
With your massive content, just wait when you reach 25k/100k UV a month (I guess wont be long) then apply for mediavine or adthrive. I think it's better.
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I have a few writers, mainly from content providers. I do have my own writer from upwork. My massive push of content (300 articles) happened during July & August.

I make ~$10/day on ezoic right now. While my website is slow, I'm not sure if the speed will hurt rankings that much. Still debating whether or not to leave ads on my site. Will the speed actually hurt rankings? I haven't seen data prove this theory as of yet. I have had the ads for 17 days and my site has almost doubled in traffic during this time.
 
larcha said:
I have a few writers, mainly from content providers. I do have my own writer from upwork. My massive push of content (300 articles) happened during July & August.

I make ~$10/day on ezoic right now. While my website is slow, I'm not sure if the speed will hurt rankings that much. Still debating whether or not to leave ads on my site. Will the speed actually hurt rankings? I haven't seen data prove this theory as of yet. I have had the ads for 17 days and my site has almost doubled in traffic during this time.
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Hmm, yeah, it's true no proof showing that. It could hurt your conversion if too many ads showing? Dont have big enough data from my side to analyse that.
Anyway, your huge content bounds to get lot of traffic, think it should be fine.
 
@larcha, Welcome to the forum, glad to have you join us.

I've got multiple projects of this type that mix both display ads and affiliate commissions as the monetizations methods at probably an 70/30 split, respectively. The ads don't hurt the conversion rates on the affiliate stuff nor does the decrease in page speed hurt my growth.

My newest one just hit 100 posts yesterday and just surpassed the $1,000 a month mark. A solid 50 of those posts haven't had a chance to age into the algorithm so I suspect traffic and revenue are going to be improving vastly by January. It's at probably 900 visitors a day now at about $40 a day revenue. I've taken zero profit on it yet due to starting on a nice domain and continuing to pay writers. But it's now digging itself out of the hole. You can read the case study here if you're interested: The Eternal Grind

Good luck with your project. Your big posting spree over July & August are going to pay off big time soon enough!

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Welcome aboard, @gowiththeflow, that's an interesting plan.

So you're going to cook up 2 more sites to get to a total of 5? How ruthless are you with yourself? Can you be non-attached enough that if 2 or 3 of those can't pull their weight that you'll kill them off or sell them early and focus harder on the 2 or 3 that are earning the most?

I think your approach is good. You have to cast out a lot of different lines to see which ones will catch the biggest fish. But you have to then be able to let the bad ones go so you can laser focus on where the revenue is. I know emotional investment is a tough one for a lot of us, with the sunken cost fallacy running wild in our brains.

Best of luck, I hope you'll start a Laboratory thread so we can keep up with how it's going. Catch you around the forum!
 
Ryuzaki said:
Welcome aboard, @gowiththeflow, that's an interesting plan.

So you're going to cook up 2 more sites to get to a total of 5? How ruthless are you with yourself? Can you be non-attached enough that if 2 or 3 of those can't pull their weight that you'll kill them off or sell them early and focus harder on the 2 or 3 that are earning the most?

I think your approach is good. You have to cast out a lot of different lines to see which ones will catch the biggest fish. But you have to then be able to let the bad ones go so you can laser focus on where the revenue is. I know emotional investment is a tough one for a lot of us, with the sunken cost fallacy running wild in our brains.

Best of luck, I hope you'll start a Laboratory thread so we can keep up with how it's going. Catch you around the forum!
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Thanks for your words and sharing @Ryuzaki. Tbh, I just spread out the risk. 3/5 of them make it to total earning $5k then I'm happy enough. Only 1 site is at its traffic peak. Other 2 site keywords are climbing steeply on page 2,3,4. So wont be long until those babies make some money.
My plan for each site is max out to at least 80 posts a site and let it age. If it moves as expected, then more content will be poured in. Otherwise, just let it stay at its current state.
 
Hi everyone.

I've been lurking for sometime and finally thought I'd say hi.

I've been in the internet marketing space since 2013. All these years I've had a ton of failures (hello, shiny object syndrome) and a few successes that have kept me going.

Right now, my focus is on making affiliate sites based on Amazon. My short term goal is to diversify to other affiliate programs and also create ad-focused informational sites. The ultimate goal would be to have sites that have multiple streams of income with multiple traffic sources (don't we all?).

Reading stuff from @Ryuzaki, @MrMedia, and @shaunm has motivated me to take more action. I also plan to start a Laboratory thread in the future where I'll document a new site's progress (in a competitive space). I have not registered a domain name yet, but I've started working on content (weird, I know). I'm planning to make it huge site, so that's going to be a lot of fun.

Again, thanks for this wonderful forum.

Cheers.
 
Heya, welcome to BuSo!

chromeboss said:
I have not registered a domain name yet, but I've started working on content (weird, I know).
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This makes perfect sense to me, never underestimate a great name, and the value in taking the time to find one.

Putting in the effort to get a great domain can make outreach a lot easier imo ("Hey, it's Chromeboss from Survival.com" vs "Hey, it's Chromeboss from TheSurvivalKnifeandPrepperSpotHQ.net".) A good name gives you instant authority.

One of my biggest missteps earlier on was not realizing this. It helps in a lot of intangible ways from the very beginning, right until your eventual exit. Whether it's getting lucky and finding a perfect handreg, or something you scoop for a few hundred, I think it's always a worthwhile investment (time or money) when you're planning on spending years, and pumping thousands+ into a project, to start with a solid name.

Are there any key lessons or takeaways from your IM career thus far that you're looking forward to carrying into this new project? Whether it's something from one of your successes, or from one of the shiny objects?
 
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Potatoe said:
Are there any key lessons or takeaways from your IM career thus far that you're looking forward to carrying into this new project? Whether it's something from one of your successes, or from one of the shiny objects?
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The biggest mistake I've made is not sticking with one style of sites, or one site for that matter. I've jumped ship too many times and too soon.

I've been constantly distracted and to avoid that will be my biggest goal for 2021. I hope to grow this new site into a 500 page site minimum (and hopefully more).

There are numerous occasions where I've looked back at a site I had stopped working on and wondered, "only if I had written 'n' posts on that site". With this new site, I'm planning to take it to a place where I can truly call it an authority site.
 
Hi there! Do you run any websites of your own, or do you focus primarily on client work? If both, how do you find time to balance the two? If you have them, do you ever use your "in-house" sites as a training grounds for new writers before they join your team, or as a way to keep them busy if there's ever a lull in client work?

How do you decide which writers gets assigned which project? For example, do you keep a profile of each person on your team with the topics they excel in, or does it just depend on who is available at the time?
 
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Hi,

I currently have 5 affiliate sites all between 6-18 months old. All amazon affiliates and using google adsense.

Building another 3 sites currently and looking for advice on best processes!
 
Heya, welcome to BuSo @abbykmorley!

How are your sites doing thus far, are your existing ones getting some traction? How do you decide when to focus on existing sites vs. when to launch new ones?

It's kind of tricky to give general advice about best practices without a bit more info on what some of your pain points and struggles are, what are some challenges you've faced or things you're unsure about?

One thing that comes to mind when you mention using Amazon and AdSense... Do you run both of those on the same pages together, or one/the other depending on what type of post it is (for instance, an informational style article or a product round-up/review style post.)

Are you building smaller, more focused types of sites where there's kind of an end in sight, where you'll hit a wall in terms of how much there is to cover in that niche, or larger sites with lots of room to grow?
 
Hi,

Thank you for your response!

My sites are growing in traffic but earnings seem to be stagnant. Adsense increasing slowly but no progress with amazon.

I seem to read a lot of conflicting info about building links and managing content - should you buy a lot of medium quality content and upload hundreds of articles? Or do you invest in high quality content and post less?

Is link building necessary?

I do run adsense and amazon on the same pages - is this not a good idea?

Initially i built a general review site but that was too broad. I'm now focusing on specific niches and products.
 
Do you wait until you have a certain amount of traffic before you add Adsense? Are your Adsense earnings anything to write home about? How are they in relation to your affiliate earnings?
 
ToffeeLa said:
Do you wait until you have a certain amount of traffic before you add Adsense? Are your Adsense earnings anything to write home about? How are they in relation to your affiliate earnings?
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The sites normally have 1K monthly traffic (GA) prior to adding adsense.

Adsense earnings are around £6 per day per site.

Amazon is around £10 per week across all sites.
 
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