Introductions Thread

abbykmorley said:
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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Interesting and obviously very niche-dependent. My proportions were completely the reverse (with even more of a bias to affiliate earnings). When AS CPCs continued to drop and Google started shaving 'invalid clicks' I ended up taking it off the sites.
 
@chromeboss, I think that's the fatal mistake the large majority of people make. The shiny nickel syndrome means nothing gets completed, nothing gets the attention it needs, and nothing earns the way it could.

At the same time it's an okay way to learn at the beginning and to cast out a ton of fishing lures. You won't necessarily know what your strengths, weaknesses, and preferences are until you try things. You don't want to latch onto a $5k a month project like it's the only thing going when you might have discovered a $20k a month project by trying something new.

But you have to continually then shed the stuff you don't like or isn't working, and eventually settle on the one or two projects that are working, and go full force at them. There's a fine balance between testing waters and never committing to anything.
 
Potatoe said:
Heya, welcome to BuSo!



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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Can you give some tips on how to find the right names?

I believe the same applies for social media handles etc.

I've had it happen to me finding a domain name, and then not being able to find the respective name on social media platforms.

It can get awkward sometimes with different names or variations across the board.
 
larcha said:
That's some solid monthly income. Do you use ads on your site? Adthrive/mediavine?
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I do not. I honestly hate automated ads. They bloat up sites. Cause issues with UX. I like to do direct ad deals.

I'm leaving a ton of money on the table for sure
 
msa123 said:
I like to do direct ad deals.
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Nice work.

Do you have a special system or team to chase down advertisers? How do you manage the ads? Big companies or small businesses?

Sorry for all the questions. I haven’t seen many direct ad sales threads around here so it would be cool to see how to do it successfully.
 
mikey3times said:
Nice work.

Do you have a special system or team to chase down advertisers? How do you manage the ads? Big companies or small businesses?

Sorry for all the questions. I haven’t seen many direct ad sales threads around here so it would be cool to see how to do it successfully.
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Good questions. First, you have to have a quality site. Can't be your run of the mill Amazon site. Branded and authority. Social authority as well.

I am currently building a team to reach out to brands and pitch advertising. My packages include banner ads sitewide, banner ads specific pages, social shoutouts, email blasts, hands on product reviews, collaborative article. I will have a media sheet that explains packages and pricing

For the time being all deals I've done have come organically via my Contact page. That gave me the impetus to reach out myself.

I keep it simple. I use Ad Inserter to place banner ads. Paypal for payment. Nothing crazy. I've worked with some big startups; wouldn't say big brands per se.
 
Hello everyone!

I have been reading quite a bit on this forum and really liked the whole vibe. Finally decided to join and participate.

I'm a 33 y/o digital marketer. I mostly do SEO for clients as a freelancer I have started a website last year while I was still working in an SEO agency. This site is in a broad niche and my goal is to turn it into an authority.

On top of that, I am building 4 affiliate sites with an associate.

My approach to building sites is focused on content and user experience. I don't build links as I believe that they don't offer as good a return on my money and time invested with the strategy I use. I also don't want to play a mouse and cat game with one of the biggest companies in the world. I like the fact that I can go to sleep without thinking about getting penalized.

Looking forward to exchange ideas with you all!

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Hey, that's quite impressive.

Just out of curiosity, how many words do these 453 articles amount to? Or what's the average word count per article?
 
Hey buddy, welcome to BuSo.

I was going to say that working at an SEO agency could give you a leg up when it comes to getting links for your site, maybe access to some helpful assets, but it sounds like you are no longer working there and not interested in building links so that's moot.

What is your plan to acquire links without actively building them, do you do anything different in your content creation to encourage people to link to you naturally? How do you get your foot in the door to even be discovered by people who might cite your website in the first place, are you doing a social/viral play here as well?
 
Hey Potatoe,

Thanks for the kind words and the interest.

To be completely honest, I don't even worry about links at all. I believe the SEO world is a bit too concerned with links. The trend we've been observing from Google's algorythm is that their impact on rankings is growing thiner with every update. As the algo gets more clever, the less it's going to have to rely on backlinks to evaluate the value of a content. That's my personal opinion and I could be very wrong. Only time will tell :smile:
 
In a hypothetical linkless world of the future...

What will you do to tell Google that your content deserves to rank above everyone else who is putting out great content?

How long are you prepared to grind away at this site without ranking, until the algorithms maybe shift enough to accommodate sites without links? Are you going after very, very low competition stuff where you can sneak in without links, in the meantime, and then hoping that will open the door to hit the more competitive topics later on?

What will set you apart from the other 99.something% of websites that don't have any backlinks?

I'm genuinely curious, I hope this doesn't come across as antagonistic. Links are a big bottleneck in my strategy.

It sounds like the plan is to swim against the tides until the tides shift, but I wonder if there isn't some middleground between 'a bunch of high-risk links' and 'no links'?

Is this something you've already had success with for freelance clients, or are you doing linkbulding for their sites still?
 
Who said I wasn't ranking?

You however raise very good concerns, and give me some perspective indeed. I guess I would be more concerned if everyone was focusing on content quality (which isn't the case).

I also don't believe links will never be a factor, I simply chose to shift my strategy towards content.

Let's put it this way, if I had 10k to spend on links vs 10k to spend on content, what would yield the best return? In my case, my money's on content because I can efficiently produce it (that would be 700k words for me, so essentially 350 articles at 2000 words on average.

One of the first articles that made it into the top 5 on my site was focusing a buying intent keyword with 900MS. This was 3 months after I had bought the domain. No links, no fancy tricks, just wrote the main content myself and posted 3 supporting content to create a mini cluster and voila!

The key (I believe) resides not only in your ability to produce good content and find low-comp keywords, but also in your site's architecture and macro-strategy. Building clusters, internal linking, your attention to detail and UX, and many more on-page signals (not going to share all my secrets just yet but you get the idea).
 
Travelingpizza said:
Who said I wasn't ranking?
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haha I didn't mean to be presumptuous, I misread and thought the site was newer + no links, just figured it might take a bit longer to get things rolling.

Anywoo, thanks for sharing your insights and I hope you'll pop up a thread in the Lab at some point to document the journey!
 
Hehe that doesn't make your concerns and questions invalid though. I still haven't accomplished anything worth writing home about on my own sites. What I'm saying above is purely my opinion on what I was able to observe with my clients.

I could be 100% wrong about everything and have to eventually adjust, bite the bullet and buy links like everybody else I guess!

Potatoe said:
I'm genuinely curious, I hope this doesn't come across as antagonistic. Links are a big bottleneck in my strategy.

It sounds like the plan is to swim against the tides until the tides shift, but I wonder if there isn't some middleground between 'a bunch of high-risk links' and 'no links'?

Is this something you've already had success with for freelance clients, or are you doing linkbulding for their sites still?
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My apologies, had not seen this part of your message.

I know what I'm saying may sound a bit crazy indeed. I'm not saying you can make it without links in any niche, with any type of website by just throwing content at your site. It all depends on a bunch of factors.

One of my current client operates in a super competitive ecomm niche where a lot of negative seo is going on. Not only you have to constantly build links to keep up with the competition, but you also have to monitor if they are building toxic links to your site at the same time.

There's no one size fits all strategy as you already know. You have to see what the market demands and if there's a gap you can fill.

May I ask what type of site(s) are you operating?
 
"Sometimes you need to run your ships aground, burn them, and leave yourself just one option: succeed or go down"
- Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War

I've run the ships aground, I've watched as they burnt, there is now no turning back.

Yesterday I handed in my 2 week notice for my well paying job to test myself as a man to see if I have what it takes to survive with nothing more than my experience and my laptop.

Do or die, there is no try.
 
Thank god there are still people left with balls.

"Always bet on yourself"​

There are people that go around with "6 months reserves", and "plan B", "plan C", "plan D" - somehow plan B is going to college, but yet they focus so much on plan B, they walk out of school with plan B debt they have to pay off for the next 10 years. Then kids, mortgage, car payments, and "plan B" really was just playing it safe their whole lives.

On their deathbeds they wish they taken more risks in life, then poof gone. And the world keeps spinning without a second thought about them.

Go for it! Fuck conventional wisdom and go all in!
 
FIREman said:
Best of luck. What's the battle plan?
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I'm going to build a Wordpress Amazon affiliate blog, churn out some content and hope Google brings visitors to my affiliate review pages where I can earn a few dollars per conversion.

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Srsly, the plan is to start a legit - not run from moms basement, agency focusing on offering CRO to Shopify store owners.

Leads will be generated through Facebook ads, qualified based on monthly spend on marketing and sales through the store. Billing will be a retainer for auditing and implementation + % of uplifted conversion value.

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Op, I have a conversion rate problem. My shitty sites don’t convert as good as Ccarters and I want more monies. All these crazy threads are making me feel poor. I need an audit. How can I make keyword shitter convert better with out resorting to css? Gimme some cro tips. I’lle try em
 
How about a big popup on pageload that says give me money and I'll be your fwend?

Gotta hit that statistical significance though.
 
How many visitors is statistically significant? Should I use PayPal?
 
09-24-2009, The date I joined Wickedfire. WaFo was the month after.

Closing in on almost 11 years later, and my SEO/affiliate game hasn't grown, it died. I've started and stopped with SEO multiple times throughout that time. I've started multiple projects over the years, and they all dwindled to nothing. I've followed the shiny object more times than I can remember, and more times than I care to admit. None of it panned out.

My guess is it was mainly due to being comfortable - with my situation, money, relationships, life. It was never "bad", it was always "ok", "good", etc. - never enough of a push to bring me to really want more.

Over the course of life, getting older, more mature, and I find myself wanting more from life, and so far the 7 am-5 pm isn't where I want to be. Long commutes, less time for family and friends, always wanting more, and nothing to show from any projects over the years.

I work for other people very successfully, but for some reason, in the past, I wasn't able to do the same for my side projects. Too comfortable? Lazy? Procrastination? A combination of all them, but whichever the reason(s), it's my fault.

Now, it's time to change those habits and get back on my horse.

I found BuSo Nov 22, 2019, and never really dug in (I did say I started/stopped with SEO multiple times!).

Time to dig in, relearn, and get serious. I'm jumping into the crash course headfirst and taking notes. Time to make the transition.

I used to confuse activity with accomplishment.

No more.
 
You got this.

Sounds like you have starting anxiety.
Just start. Everything fucking works if you actually do it.
Big sites, small sites, sales sites, info sites all of them.
All the plans work if you actually do them and don't quit.

If you want help, make a journal and the rest of us will creep on you.
A few might even offer advice or encouragement.
 
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secretagentdad said:
Everything fucking works if you actually do it.
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I agree, but I'd add that you can't do things that'll sabotage you. So if it's an SEO project you don't need to be messing with mass spam and PBNs. Obviously you aren't going to compete in some giant competitive niche either. Pick the right target. If it's some kind of sales site and you blow your PPC budget without optimizing your campaigns, that's your fault.

I think the main obstacle in the internet marketing business is getting out of our own way. Don't sabotage yourself, don't get too nifty and tricky at the start. All of the info you need to do it right exists in places like Builder Society. There's really no magic secrets any more until you hit the mastery level. And those aren't necessarily secrets, but methods most others aren't doing because they don't know to do them, but the magic book is wide open for anyone willing to walk the straight and narrow road long enough.

You can do it. You're obviously drawn to this industry. Start, stick to it, listen to the data, pivot when necessary, and keep going. If something is a dud, let it go soon. Don't get emotionally attached. Find the winner and keep going, and then keep going. Don't distract yourself once you find the winner. Put on (the amazing) horse blinders and keep going.
 
Good luck to you mate, I can relate with a lot of what you explained there. I guess it all boils down to whether or not you enjoy building sites, seo, growing a business, and all that comes with it. Personally I love it and even though I put 70 to 80 hours a week, never have I regreted walking away from the 9 to 5 lifestyle.
 
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