The Bragging Thread - Inspire A Newbie

After being hit for our main site, losing 90% of organic google traffic in the mid-year core update, with around over $10k lost per month. The first time I was hit this hard, and it's still a real pain to deal with.

In the past, I got experience building one site to 1 million sessions/month and got it sold for some good money. That boosts my confidence with another site; however, I'm wrong, and Google changes fast.

I've been in this business for five years, and this is the most volatile year I have seen from Google.

Many white hats and good sites were hit. Most lost indexing rather lose ranking like other core updates. It's hard to know what Google will do next.

But fortunately, here are stats from another site of mine with about one year old. No links building done.

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So I'll diversify the traffic resources, income and build several sites instead of one or two sites.
 
So I've been at this SEO stuff for some time; I was reading everything under the sun and taking barely any action around 2-3 years ago.

Around a few months ago, I sold my first successful website for low 5 figures. A few months prior to selling it, I started a brand new site and reinvested the little that I was making from this website I sold, plus dumping money from my own pockets because my dream has always been to own a successful portfolio. It't been a lot of time invested and money but I am hoping by posting the below image, I inspire someone else never to give up and continue pushing.

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This website is less than 2 years old and started earning money in August 2022; prior to that... it was just money out of pocket. So keep pushing and never give up because it's possible.
 
I run a small one-product online store. Not a big earner but I'm happy on how things are going. It has been a hard and slow grind, but I'm enjoying the results. Bad months around 2K (net profit), good ones 7-8K. Here's a screen capture of a good day!

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I was gonna put the title "5 wordpress posts = £574.05 in revenue" but didn't want to be too clickbaity on my first post :happy:.

I've had an account here for a few years but never got into the SEO game because as somebody who started their affiliate journey promoting Clickbank offers (back in the days of Commission Crusher. Anyone remember that one?:happy: ) , SEO just seemed too hard and not very exciting. It excites me now by the way!

Anyway to get off the mark and hopefully start getting involved in the forum and asking questions I thought I'd post about something funny that happened in September 2016. Something that is proof that you just have to take action (and not neglect stuff!).

So it was around September 2016. A few months before this I had closed down a hosting account full of old crappy Wordpress sites that I lost interest in and I just happened to remember that I still had a Gmail account that I used for stuff related to these websites and didn't need it any more. So I logged into the Gmail account to close it down and noticed an Amazon Associates email. I'd never even logged into the account but I thought I'd just take a look before closing everything down. To my joy there was over £500 worth of revenue (which doesn't equate to much in commissions I know)...

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Not bad for a blog with no great design and literally 5 articles that were put together in no time. However the reason the site generated revenue was down to a plugin I purchased from envato that basically generates (pretty much copies) amazon listings to turn your site into an Amazon 'clone'. I may have generated 100 or more product pages for the site (on top of the 5 blog posts) and one product seemed to regularly pop up on page 1 of Google. Anyway the point is, the site took literally no time to put up. I then totally neglected it, forgot about it and this happened.

Luckily I had a backup of the database somewhere. I found it and had the site back up within a couple of hours. The site went on and generated a bit more revenue...nothing to shout about but still kind of free money...

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As far as traffic goes, there wasn't a lot (68 views was the best day!) so I knew there was good potential. I just had to come up with a strategy for growing the site.

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Not bad for a neglected site. May was when I pulled the plug. There was clearly an uptrend in traffic. The site was offline for around 4 months before I put it back online in September.

Anyway it only lasted for a few more months. Traffic and revenue went to zero pretty much. A Google update (must have been late 2016/ early 2017) killed all rankings and the plugin I was using that was responsible for generating the product content became totally useless.

I haven't used Wordpress for a long time. I'm currently developing my own web applications (using React.js and Node.js) and have recently started to use Next.js with one or two blog projects in mind. So I'm looking forward to learning a lot on here. I'll probably be reading the Devops threads most of the time so I can learn as much SEO as possible and apply it to my Next.js projects!
 
I dropped out of university at the age of 22, moved to a new country, took a job as a SEO executive ( junior SEO title in that niche), grinded away at a $27k PA salary for 2 years, got promoted to SEO Manager (sort of team lead position), salary increased to like $35k pa stayed in that company for another year. After those 3 years I was head-hunted by another firm in the same niche, started there as a SEO manager at 45k, 1 year later I was promoted to Head of SEO and am now getting $300k+ per year.

I never chased money, my intention was never to get rich. I just liked working within marketing and put in the hours. I'm average IQ. The ONLY THING I did that my peers didn't was showing up at office 7 days per week, grinding from 8 in the morning until 9 in the nights. Passion pays off.
 
I’ve applied @CCarter ’s avalanche technique on 6 different sites for the past 16 months, and 5 of them are now on Mediavine, the 6th site is eligible within 30 days. I’m doing 5 figures/month now. My biggest site will be sold for about $250.000 within 3 weeks.

Before starting my SEO journey, I was on welfare for 10 years with no future ahead of me.

I never thought I would accomplish anything in life. Now, I actually believe in myself. I have confidence in myself.

To top that, I found the love of my life and got married! I think my success helped me Come out of my shell!

I’ve never been this happy, and if you’d told me 2 years ago all of this would happen, I would probably not have believed it.

Thank you guys for posting such helpful threads over the years. I haven’t been active posting, but I’ve been reading and busy grinding!
 
My record day from ads back in 2021:
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With affiliate and other small incomings, it remains my only $3k day.

Absolutely nowhere near it these days as I start over. I remember feeling weirdly ashamed at the time. Next time I get a record day, hopefully in the next 1-2 years, I'll remember to celebrate it properly.
 
Just showing my growth since starting 8 or so months ago. Not through the roof or anything but steady growth which hopefully keeps on going upwards.

Mod Edit: Please embed images, don't link to them

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Great wins everyone! Here's a recent one of mine. This client's site had a lot of authority but was plagued by technical and onpage issues. After I fixed the site, here are the results...

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Freshly delivered into my inbox :smile:

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Not a whole lot but that's a day's worth in a day job!
Now it's all about scaling right?

Good luck everyone!
 
Hey guys. I thought I will post this here. I've been around here for over 10 years now, back when this group was on WF. Anyways, in two months, me and my business partner will meet with a friend and the plan is to sign papers. This 3rd person has 1 exit under his belt and is CEO of a VC backed company. He'll invest his own money into my company. Thanks for all the help over the years! I'm grateful! Hope this encourages some lurkers and noobs to make the commitment in their entrepreneurial journey. Much love everyone.
 
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