Just Sold My Portfolio for 7 Figures USD, AMA.

Congratulations on your success!

Did your domain names contain any keywords for your niche?
What % of traffic was Google?
Did the sites offer signing up for newsletters?

Thanks for the AMA!
 
enivid said:
Congratulations on your success!

Did your domain names contain any keywords for your niche?
What % of traffic was Google?
Did the sites offer signing up for newsletters?

Thanks for the AMA!
Click to expand...

  1. Yes
  2. 90%
  3. No
 
Have you thought about putting together a journey thread in the Laboratory for you newest project? Or, are you too busy to document everything? Just curious!
 
DanielS said:
Have you thought about putting together a journey thread in the Laboratory for you newest project? Or, are you too busy to document everything? Just curious!
Click to expand...

I'm considering it but tbh most of those threads are pretty lame and I am unbelievably busy.

I now have 5 consultancy requests from this AMA so it is just a case of picking which I find most interesting to work on alongside my own projects.

Plot Twist: Out of the 1000's of views this AMA has had only 5 people had the initiative / drive to start a serious conversation with me about paid consultancy work.

TBH it is not something I considered but there are 2 projects that are looking interesting to me, enough to pull me out of semi retirement anyway lol.

You guys really need to up your hustle game :wink:
 
MrMedia said:
I'm considering it but tbh most of those threads are pretty lame
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Would you say the issue is the lack of significant goals/benchmarks being set? For example, my personal thread, I would imagine, seems quite lame from the point of view of anyone who has achieved success operating websites.
 
DanielS said:
Would you say the issue is the lack of significant goals/benchmarks being set? For example, my personal thread, I would imagine, seems quite lame from the point of view of anyone who has achieved success operating websites.
Click to expand...

They all die off after a few months with the few notable exceptions from the mods here.

Most are lots of inspiration chatter about lofty targets years down the line and the sign off by saying today I uploaded 500 words and created a reddit account :smile:

Not you personally - just in general.
 
For me it's like a deja vu lol. Till this day I keep one site that some day... somehow... will become a real gold to me (in all greatests ways :wink: ). I also have had one or two threads in that section here, mentioned by MrMedia, but all it was was BS and straw fire... After that no real work done. Anyway, it's good to see someone who make a fat deal from his grinding. Maybe one day I will get back to this project of mine, at the moment I'm just too lazy I gues? Or maybe not. The thing is, if person have no real, like REAL drive to make it happen, then it's all for nothing.

@MrMedia

- What kind of server capacity/plan was good enough for you? (for the biggest site)
- Have you been using devs (paid service, or free...) to make your WP sites faster? (speed optimization)
- Have you been using data from G search Console to choose what KWs to push harder?
- What free pics services have you been using to cover that many articles without same pictures over and over?
- Have you had enabled comment sections for articles?

If you can elaborate on these thanks a lot.
 
Congrats @MrMedia and thanks for doing this AMA! You have changed mindsets and inspired a lot of BUSO'ers :-)

My questions are:

1. Do you have separate affiliate accounts for each site? Or did you use one account for all? I know some affiliates provide better reporting than others. For example: Google Adsense shows you performance by site, but other smaller/medium affiliates won't. How did you deal with that?

2. Related to question #1 as well. I am sure you had to verify your earnings before you sold the sites. Was it a challenge in terms of organization/providing access based on question #1 above!

3. Did you use any 3rd party tools to manage your affiliate revenue/reporting?

Thank you!
 
Andrewkar said:
For me it's like a deja vu lol. Till this day I keep one site that some day... somehow... will become a real gold to me (in all greatests ways :wink: ). I also have had one or two threads in that section here, mentioned by MrMedia, but all it was was BS and straw fire... After that no real work done. Anyway, it's good to see someone who make a fat deal from his grinding. Maybe one day I will get back to this project of mine, at the moment I'm just too lazy I gues? Or maybe not. The thing is, if person have no real, like REAL drive to make it happen, then it's all for nothing.

@MrMedia

- What kind of server capacity/plan was good enough for you? (for the biggest site)
- Have you been using devs (paid service, or free...) to make your WP sites faster? (speed optimization)
- Have you been using data from G search Console to choose what KWs to push harder?
- What free pics services have you been using to cover that many articles without same pictures over and over?
- Have you had enabled comment sections for articles?

If you can elaborate on these thanks a lot.
Click to expand...

  1. Dedicated Server once needed.
  2. Yes - via Upwork.
  3. Yes - I always update articles that are postion 5-10/15 to push them higher up. I ignore everything else.
  4. Pixabay is good.
  5. No comments because it often becomes a mess of spam and insane people.

LinkPlate said:
Congrats @MrMedia and thanks for doing this AMA! You have changed mindsets and inspired a lot of BUSO'ers :-)

My questions are:

1. Do you have separate affiliate accounts for each site? Or did you use one account for all? I know some affiliates provide better reporting than others. For example: Google Adsense shows you performance by site, but other smaller/medium affiliates won't. How did you deal with that?

2. Related to question #1 as well. I am sure you had to verify your earnings before you sold the sites. Was it a challenge in terms of organization/providing access based on question #1 above!

3. Did you use any 3rd party tools to manage your affiliate revenue/reporting?

Thank you!
Click to expand...

  1. No affiliate accounts were used and all sites were within overall master accounts within each ad network which do split earnings by site.
  2. No this was easy - Empire Flippers have a solid process and made this pain free.
  3. Nope.
 
Hey MrMedia, thanks for sharing your valuable experience with us, and congrats on your success!

Please excuse me for the double posting, but I have deleted this from my previous post... - what I am wondering is if you are planning to invest into some SaaS project, media buying or any other kind of digital business or you are going to repeat what you already have experience with?
 
Vrve said:
Please excuse me for the double posting, but I have deleted this from my previous post... - what I am wondering is if you are planning to invest into some SaaS project, media buying or any other kind of digital business or you are going to repeat what you already have experience with?
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No. I have signed non competes so I will be looking for new niches and verticals.
 
Congrats on the sale of your sites!

What was your strategy for ad placements? Was it the same or different across your sites? Do you have any feedback about various unit sizes/styles that may or may not have worked well for you? For example, in-content, sticky sidebar, sticky top/bottom units on mobile, etc. Thanks in advance!
 
The networks tended to decide where the ad placements were placed for best effect.

When I was manually placing the ads in content ads were always the best.

With Adsense a link unit below the featured image in post also did exceptionally well.
 
What are your thoughts on publishing 100-150 articles on a website and never touching the website again aside from the odd post each month or two? I come from the YouTube marketing world and a strategy like this would be a death sentence. However, I’ve read that some people build websites where they grind out 100-150 articles at “x” number of words and never touch the website again, and the websites bring in consistent revenue once the articles rank even if a new article isn’t published ever again on the website. Is this strategy feasible or are people hiding details?
 
DanielS said:
What are your thoughts on publishing 100-150 articles on a website and never touching the website again aside from the odd post each month or two? I come from the YouTube marketing world and a strategy like this would be a death sentence. However, I’ve read that some people build websites where they grind out 100-150 articles at “x” number of words and never touch the website again, and the websites bring in consistent revenue once the articles rank even if a new article isn’t published ever again on the website. Is this strategy feasible or are people hiding details?
Click to expand...

Depends on lots of factors and it is impossible to give a definitive answer on this without additional facts.

Ever green content will always do well by its very nature but in most cases it is not enough just to hit publish and wait for the money.

You need to refine the content over time with updates and delete stuff that didn't work.

I'm a fan of simple working but your example approach simplifies the approach too far.
 
MrMedia said:
Depends on lots of factors and it is impossible to give a definitive answer on this without additional facts.

Ever green content will always do well by its very nature but in most cases it is not enough just to hit publish and wait for the money.

You need to refine the content over time with updates and delete stuff that didn't work.

I'm a fan of simple working but your example approach simplifies the approach too far.
Click to expand...
I think I made my question more complicated than it needed to be. Here’s the simpler version of my question:

Would it be okay to write “x” number of posts targeting evergreen keywords in the first 3 months of a website’s existence and to have those posts be the only posts on the website? Would a lack of new posts stall growth or would not publishing a new post for 6 months, 9 months, etc be okay if the existing posts were being edited/updated, shared, etc?
 
DanielS said:
I think I made my question more complicated than it needed to be. Here’s the simpler version of my question:

Would it be okay to write “x” number of posts targeting evergreen keywords in the first 3 months of a website’s existence and to have those posts be the only posts on the website? Would a lack of new posts stall growth or would not publishing a new post for 6 months, 9 months, etc be okay if the existing posts were being edited/updated, shared, etc?
Click to expand...

Could work, could fail.

In my experience I believe that even dripping a few articles a month keeps the site looking lived in and keeps the Google recrawling.

I believe that freshness helps.
 
MrMedia said:
Could work, could fail.

In my experience I believe that even dripping a few articles a month keeps the site looking lived in and keeps the Google recrawling.

I believe that freshness helps.
Click to expand...
Thank you for your response! I’ve been mass-producing content for my website but it’s getting more difficult to find keywords. So, I just want to make sure that the website won’t die if I only publish 2-4 articles a month- sounds like it won’t!
 
Hello @MrMedia

Thank you for doing this AMA. I have been doing something similar to what you did and the avalanche technique without knowing it (just started committing).

When I pick a keyword for an article, I always think about whether or not it has the potential to pay its rent.

Let me explain what I mean by that. If a 2000-word article costs me $30 to outsource, I want this content to increase my site's value by $30 or more. To do that, this content would need to earn 1$ a month if we consider a 30x multiplier on a site valuation.

With the display ads model, that would require around 60 pageviews per month.

When you target low-volume keywords that have 10 to 50 monthly searches, do they generally "pay rent" on their own by bringing traffic from tons of secondaries and one time searches? Or do their value reside in the fact that they help push your whole site through internal linking, clusters, and increasing your overall authority/topical relvancy?

Congratulations for your outstanding achievements!
 
Hi, congratulations on your achievement!

Just some questions surrounding content.

1. What percentage of your total daily traffic was split across those 1000 articles? I.e. Did 80% of your traffic come from 20% of your articles?

2. How long do you give an article to perform?

3. What do you do about content that doesn't perform? Delete it or leave it on the site?

Thank you,

Abby
 
Travelingpizza said:
Hello @MrMedia

Thank you for doing this AMA. I have been doing something similar to what you did and the avalanche technique without knowing it (just started committing).

When I pick a keyword for an article, I always think about whether or not it has the potential to pay its rent.

Let me explain what I mean by that. If a 2000-word article costs me $30 to outsource, I want this content to increase my site's value by $30 or more. To do that, this content would need to earn 1$ a month if we consider a 30x multiplier on a site valuation.

With the display ads model, that would require around 60 pageviews per month.

When you target low-volume keywords that have 10 to 50 monthly searches, do they generally "pay rent" on their own by bringing traffic from tons of secondaries and one time searches? Or do their value reside in the fact that they help push your whole site through internal linking, clusters, and increasing your overall authority/topical relvancy?

Congratulations for your outstanding achievements!
Click to expand...

You pretty much have answered your own questions and your approach via articles "paying rent" is an approach that I like to use when planning new projects.

Low volume kws will often bring tons of traffic via other related terms that do not show up on the rank checking tools.

Sounds like you are on the right path.

Stop with the questioning and now just do.

Good job.

abbykmorley said:
Hi, congratulations on your achievement!

Just some questions surrounding content.

1. What percentage of your total daily traffic was split across those 1000 articles? I.e. Did 80% of your traffic come from 20% of your articles?

2. How long do you give an article to perform?

3. What do you do about content that doesn't perform? Delete it or leave it on the site?

Thank you,

Abby
Click to expand...

1. My top article brought in about 3% of total traffic and the top 5 pages in total brought in around 10% so not quite 80/20 but not far off either.

2. 12 months

3. Delete or merge with another appropriate article.
 
Amazing thread, thank you! I have already been doing this, built a 650-page site over the past year. I ran out of keywords/ideas to write about. I should probably go through all the articles and try to improve the ones that are ranking 5-15 like you do.

I love your scale.

I've already been planning on starting another site and going bigger this time, but after reading your AMA I want to get started faster. Already got the first batch of 25 articles or so, I have to start posting them today!
 
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