Gold [Journey] Growing An Informational Intent Site To $10,000 A Month From Scratch!

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1563 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Did a bunch of keyword research for the buyer intent terms for the new affiliate program, kind of in two minds about it right now but its definitely something I will try chase in the future if I get approved to their affiliate program. I found out that the program is actually on Share A Sale so I have applied to see if I get applied with the blog in this state and if I do I will probably start ordering some content based around these keywords.
• One of the Web 2.0 guys that I reached out to about the manual web 2.0s to increase referring domains and dilute anchor text has got back to me and I will probably put a test order through next month as his service looks solid.

Hey @shaunm How's everything going? You had great posts and was wondering if you have more to share

Cheers dude, I am actually in the very early stages of creating a follow-along series of videos that I will upload to YouTube but they probably won't be online until July/August as I am so busy with my money site projects right now. This answer I published on Quora might be able to tide you over in the meantime though if you are looking to get started with affiliate blogging.

 

[Tuavale]

This answer I published on Quora might be able to tide you over in the meantime though if you are looking to get started with affiliate blogging.

This is straight gold. Thank you so much.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 2061 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 2 - 2040 Words.
  
• I finished the buyer intent keyword research but heard nothing back from ShareASale about my application to the specific affiliate program that I need. I will just bank all of these keywords and see if they approve me or not. If they do then this buyer intent content will likley be my main priority for this new domain as it has a much higher income potential than display ads.
• Found a new manual forum post service that I am planning to test early next month as they are cheaper than my current supplier while their samples are pretty much the exact same link type.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Took Friday off for a BBQ so this is for both days.
  
• Article 1 - 1501 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 2 - 2004 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 3 - 1585 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 4 - 2795 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 5 - 2039 Words.
  
• I got accepted to the new affiliate program that I applied to via Share A Sale for this new project. They needed me to add a specific disclosure about being a part of their program below my article titles. The spacing makes it look a little off right now so I will have to look into it in the future but it will do for now.
  
• Found another affiliate program for this new project on Share A Sale that offers around a $15 commission per conversion so spent some time doing keyword research for them. Although it's early days for these keywords, they seem to be lower competition than the other new affiliate program with the $60 referral fee so may split the new content between the two.
  
• Got the two content orders from the new writing service but they seem to be actually typing the content up in another program and then pasting it across to Surfer and it screws up the formatting wasting a ton of time when I put it into Wordpress and have to reformat it. Reached out to the service owner to ask if they are able to get their writers to actually write their content directly in Surfer to prevent this in the future as it's going to waste an absolute ton of time if I have to manually fix the formatting with each article and will have to go with another writing service if writing directly to surfer is not possible.
• One of my upwork writers needs a little extra cash so has said they will increase their article load for now so planning to try and take advantage of this as much as possible as they have been a solid writer so far.

I have also published the video below as a bit of a reality check that might be useful for anyone hunting for passive income from affiliate blogging.

 

[Strickland]

You're a legend mate, keep it coming, I love this thread.

At the end of that video you said "I didn't think I'd fail this many times and still be going"
That, right there spells "success"

 

[IM_Newbie]

The value inside this thread it´s just amazing!

I would like to thank you @shaunm for taking the time to write such an in-depth journey and asking everyone´s questions the best possible way.

KUDOS TO YOU MY FRIEND!

I totally agree with you in regard to the keyword research tool. I won´t go to the extent to say they´re a "waste of money" but "unnecessary".

You can perform in-depth and effective keyword research with nothing but free tools.

Having said that, I would like to add a little process I like to run when determining whether or not a keyword is worth targeting based on its competition levels.

I like to run a Google advanced search operator + keyword to see how many pages are actually targeting/optimize for the main keyword.

For example, if our main keyword is "best ink pens" then I would run it like this...

allintitle:best ink pens so we have this...

There are 98 pages targeting that particular keyword. So, if you running a competitive analysis and you find very low authority sites ranking for that keyword. This result should also give you a lot of hope in regards to how easy will it be to rank for it as well.

As a side note, I like to run a VPN when I am running results on Google for keyword research.

This way, I make sure my results don´t get skewed because I don´t live in the US

There are plenty of free VPN add-ons out there you can install on your browser and, many of them offer a free IP address to the US so, just look for it.

Anyway, I just wanted to stop by and thank you for this. I also don´t know if you´ve shared this before as I am just starting to browse the entire thread. If you did, kudos for you (and also sorry ).

Keep up the great work and don´t stop sharing!!!

 

[Strickland]

Hi @shaunm
Quick question, roughly how much do you pay for 1500 word article?

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 2105 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 2 - 1500 Words - Outsourced.
  
• So I was talking to a friend who has been doing really well with affiliate blogging and asked how he is diversifying away from Amazon and he basically said he is going all-in with Amazon and dropping more per month on scaling than I am earning from my own network in total. I asked him about shareasale and other programs like that and he basically said how they have their own issues too as vendors leave the platform or close their affiliate program down with little to no warning and its usually harder to find an alternative where as Amazon can just do their job of trying to show an alternative/more recent version of an item to someone who clicks your links. Although I am still wanting to scale this latest domain to diversify income sources, I also want to look at getting back into a fresh Amazon blog in a month or two as I have more confidence in actually ranking those types of keywords.
  
• I spent most of today fault finding on May 4th update, and it looks like the YouTube videos in the SERPs for my niche have normalized into the horizontal YouTube widget now rather than 3 individual YouTube entries in the SERPs. I have been doing keyword research in a bunch of niches for “review” and “best x” terms and this seems to be widespread unfortunately and the niche for the domain I started in January is affected too. Amazon.com does look like it will hold on the top page too now as its showing results for some really good customer reviews rather than the old product page it used to prior to the update so seeing Amazon on the first page of Google is not a tell for low competition and an easy keyword anymore. I am wanting to put more time into trying to tweak my keyword research method to try work out a way to quickly find low competition keywords after the May 4th update for the potential new Amazon Affiliate project in a month or two so that will probably be the plan for tomorrow.

I also published the video below going over my experiences with the Google Sandbox that might be helpful for anyone following along. Its more for the people from other platforms as the guys on here tend to agree that it does exist but might be helpful for some people.

You're a legend mate, keep it coming, I love this thread.

At the end of that video you said "I didn't think I'd fail this many times and still be going"
That, right there spells "success"

Cheers dude . Yea it's crazy how many people fall at the first hurdle kind of reminds me of the image below.

The value inside this thread it´s just amazing!

I would like to thank you @shaunm for taking the time to write such an in-depth journey and asking everyone´s questions the best possible way.

KUDOS TO YOU MY FRIEND!

I totally agree with you in regard to the keyword research tool. I won´t go to the extent to say they´re a "waste of money" but "unnecessary".

You can perform in-depth and effective keyword research with nothing but free tools.

Having said that, I would like to add a little process I like to run when determining whether or not a keyword is worth targeting based on its competition levels.

I like to run a Google advanced search operator + keyword to see how many pages are actually targeting/optimize for the main keyword.

For example, if our main keyword is "best ink pens" then I would run it like this...

allintitle:best ink pens so we have this...

There are 98 pages targeting that particular keyword. So, if you running a competitive analysis and you find very low authority sites ranking for that keyword. This result should also give you a lot of hope in regards to how easy will it be to rank for it as well.

As a side note, I like to run a VPN when I am running results on Google for keyword research.

This way, I make sure my results don´t get skewed because I don´t live in the US

There are plenty of free VPN add-ons out there you can install on your browser and, many of them offer a free IP address to the US so, just look for it.

Anyway, I just wanted to stop by and thank you for this. I also don´t know if you´ve shared this before as I am just starting to browse the entire thread. If you did, kudos for you (and also sorry ).

Keep up the great work and don´t stop sharing!!!

Cheers dude .

The google search modifier method is pretty old school and doesn't really work now as Google understands searcher intent these days. I basically do a full breakdown of why it's not really efficient anymore and why methods such as KGR and my own old keyword research method that I posted on Reddit like 3 years back are basically useless now and give a ton of false positives usually resulting in a ton of wasted time that could have been better spent elsewhere.

Hi @shaunm
Quick question, roughly how much do you pay for 1500 word article?

It depends what I need doing but its ranging from $15 at the low end up to $37.50 right now.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Did a ton of keyword research ready for the potential new Amazon Affiliate site in a month or two. I ended up getting a fair few decent keywords that could actually be split into two domains if needed. I found 127 for one sub-niche and 55 for another sub-niche but will probably initially go with a much smaller number initially. I basically want to try a scaling process where I do the keyword research and then outsource the backlinks and content to keep as much as my time as possible. This next site can probably work as a test for for this process.
  
• Spent more time fault finding the May 4th update. It definitely seems as though YouTube and Amazon have been given more power for buyer intent keywords and Reddit, Quora, and stackoverflow have been given more power for informational keywords with Pinterest seemingly winning on both fronts too. Some of the keywords for a domain that I started in January have been effected pretty badly by the update unfortunately before that project even had a chance to rank.
  
• The owner of the new writing service that I am using got back to me and confirmed that she will tell her writers to type my content directly into Surfer SEO to prevent the formatting issues that I previously had. I have built out the first buyer intent template for this new site as it is currently all informational content and put the order in to see how it goes. Once it has been delivered, I will do some initial backlinking as this is kind of a mini test for the new affiliate domain I plan to build in a month or two with as much of the process being outsourced as possible. Should be a week or so before I get this buyer intent article back, my other freelance writers should be returning their informational intent content over the next few days.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 2003 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 2 - 1509 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 3 - 2074 Words.
  
• The second affiliate program that I applied to on ShareASale seems to have been removed for some reason. Not sure if they ended their affiliate program or if ShareASale kicked them off or not but kind of goes to show that programs other than Amazon can have their own dramas too so the grass is not always greener.
  
• Google put out a tweet last night saying that they were aware of and have now fixed a bug with their indexing, as search console has a few days delay on it update it will take a while before I know if its the same bug on the coverage tab thats being a pain for two of my domains or not but I have my fingers crossed.
• Finished putting together the services that I wanted for my outsourcing team to try scale as quickly as possible in the future. After reaching out to a bunch of web 2 services, one seemed promising but they seem to be ghosting now so I will just stick with guest posts, niche edits, and manual forum posts for the foreseeable future as it has worked out well enough so far.

I also published my monthly update video going over the progress for my full affiliate blog network that may be interesting for some following along.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 2645 Words.
  
• Article 2 - 1496 Words - Outsourced.
  
• The Google indexing bug seems to be worse than ever, there's reports of all kinds of random stuff happening since Google pushed their fix live and it looks like one of my older sites may be affected by it now too. Until more is known about this indexing Issue I am slowing my content production right down when it comes to freelance writers to save cash.
  
• I got an email from ShareASale saying that one of the programs on there has changed their payout rates so with one program removing themselves from the platform and this new one changing their rates, it's making me just want to stick with Amazon even more. I have been asking around and people have told me that this is very common for platforms like ShareASale so I am just going to build out the keyword list for this next domain-based around Amazon and potentially eBay while also trying to fault find the indexing bug more.
  
• Spent some time doing keyword research for this new project, I have well over 100 keywords that fit my new keyword research method that I have tweaked since the May 4th Google update now but they are definitely harder to find than they used to be due to Amazon, Pinterest, Quora, Reddit, and YouTube taking up so much of the first page and seemingly being unshiftable able right now but I will keep doing keyword research.
  
• I had a little think about domain strategy for moving forward too, I am kind of looking more towards building smaller niche sites rather than bigger authority domains to try and reduce the risk and open the buyer pool more for potential exits on the domains in the future.

 

[shaunm]

I am slightly changing the goal of this journey thread to tracking progress for my full money site network as the domain I have been tracking the progress for since the start is on hold as of today to let the dust settle from the updates last month.

Update

Income is from my full money site network.​

• Did some fault finding for the Amazon.com pages pushing my blog pages down in the SERPs. From what I can tell, Google are now actually ranking reviews from Amazon in the SERPs as well as actual product pages. From what I can tell, if there is a decent review for the product on Amazon Google rank it highly but if its still just the regular product page then my articles are still beating them. Did a little keyword research based around this for my next project and it seems to be a mix of product pages and review pages from Amazon ranking for various keywords but I am still currently taking product pages in the SERPs as a tell for low competition but if a decent review is posted on Amazon then it could probably outrank me with ease.
  
• I got the new article back from buyselltext and although the actual content is great, it has the same formatting issues in the Surfer SEO again so I have requested they fix it as its a 4000 word article and I can't be bothered to fix it myself as the writer was specifically told to type the content up in the Surfer template rather than copy and paste the text in due to it breaking their formatting.
  
• Manually checked the keywords for all 136 pages online for the domain I launched in May and only 37 (27%) of them seem to have made it through the Google May update without having their competition increased by sites like YouTube and such on the first page. As it is a brand new domain I don't have any pages ranking for it yet so I couldn't see a traffic drop in my analytics to see this happening but the domains and level of competition on the first page has definitely increased in general.
  
• Due to so many of the keywords for the diversification domain that I launched at the start of May being affected by the May 4th update I have just decided to flip my freelance writers over to working on my next affiliate project to let the dust settle for the informational domain to see what happens with it. I pushed the first article out to one of my freelancers and I will put the rest of them onto this new project as and when they deliver their content jobs that they currently have. This domain will be outsourced as much as possible to try and use it as a proof of concept for a scaling system that I am wanting to use to grow everything rapidly over the coming years. I also have some keywords for another domain that I can work on in my downtime too in another niche that I know pretty well too.
  
• Built out a bunch of surfer SEO templates for this next project so I can easily send them to my freelancer writers when required and did some final keyword research checks too to double-check a few things.

I also published a video going over a zero search volume keyword strategy that I have been playing with over the years that may be helpful for anyone just starting out.

 

[shaunm]

Update

Income is from my full money site network.​

• Article 1 - 3195 Words.
  
• Article 2 - 4371 Words - Outsourced.
  
• The buyer intent article from buy sell text was tweaked and the formatting issues have been fixed, the content is excellent for the price in all fairness. Ordered a test batch of 10 manual forum posts from the new provider for the article as a test to see how they measure up against the other service that I have been using.
• Really not feeling well today so I'm taking the rest of the day off and probably going to take tomorrow off and sleep to try and get better for next week.

 

[shaunm]

Update

Income is from my full money site network.​

• Article 1 - 1959 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 2 - 4124 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 3 - 1971 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 4 - 1955 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 5 - 1959 Words - Outsourced.
  
• I published a pretty long traffic leaking post for Reddit.
  
• Released one writer from the contract on upwork as they are more of an informational content writer. Templates for this new affiliate project have been sent out to the buyselltext team and the two writers that I have on Upwork still so they are all flipped to the content for this new project now.

 

[shaunm]

Update

Income is from my full money site network.​

• I feel better than I have the last two days but I still feel a little ill so I have just been in bed most of the day sleeping or watching YouTube videos on how to market on Pinterest.
  
• Ordered a >DA50 guest post from the new provider that I have been waiting to try. I have used it as more of a test of the service for my new project but targeted it towards a buyer intent term on the domain that I started in May as it has the highest chance of a return and may help push the other pages on that domain high in the SERPs.

 

[shaunm]

Update

Income is from my full money site network.​

• Amazons one link dashboard has frozen again so just the income for Amazon.com above.
• Had another ShareASale commission rate change so I am planning to just go with Amazon/eBay affiliates for this next project.
• I have 3 buyer intent projects and 1 informational project planned for the future now. The informational project is just an extension on the domain that I started in May based around display ads using my new keyword research method based around patterns since the May 4th 2020 update from Google, just waiting to see if more of its pages have issues with the Google indexing bug but if it holds as it is for the next few days I will start to push content out for it again.
• Reached out for to a broker about selling my two highest income domains but I probably wont now, I am planning to slow time scale rather than rapidly scale as I need a proof of concept that this new keyword research method that I Have developed over the last week or so works or not.
• Tried to do more keyword research but Keyword Shitter appears to be offline, fingers crossed they can fix it soon.
• Seen a few people talking about a new Google update over the last few days for "Best x" keywords where Google essentially add a snippet from the ranking pages with product recommendations directly in the SERP, probably not good news if they scale this out.

I also uploaded my Q&A blogging video for June that might be helpful for people following along.

 

[shaunm]

Update

Income is from my full money site network.​

• Article 1 - 4063 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Got a few thousand words of content back from test writers on Fiverr for a video for YouTube to show the quality of content available while also trying to screen for a cheap writer. So far, none of these initial test orders are what I would consider to be good enough to use on a money site but it gives me stuff for video content.
  
• Sent out two new test orders for new writers from Upwork that I am wanting to work with on the informational domain that I started in May as it doesn’t seem to be having the issues with the coverage tab that my other domain from January is having. As it is lower-income content due to being based on display ads I am looking to drop the quality and get my better writers to focus on my buyer intent domain.
• Started looking at ways to try and integrate Instagram into promoting my YouTube channel and personal blog, I think I have a plan set out now but doubt that it will work on any of my actual money sites.
  
• Finished my Pinterest marketing plan, I am going to proof test it with my YouTube channel as it is black hat in case the account gets banned or URLs get ghosted then I plan to try build a new site in the future based around nothing but Pinterest keywords to try diversify traffic sourced across the network.
• Keyword research with my post 4th May update method is now complete or my new site for next month as well as the rest of the keyword for the informational domain. I also have keywords banked for two more future sites too but these initial keywords that I will order content for over the coming weeks are more of a test batch and proof of concept.

 

[shaunm]

Update

Income is from my full money site network.​

• Unfortunately, I was absolutely smashed with returns last night dropping almost $100 on amazon.com.
• Article 1 - 4166 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 1 is from BuySellTexts and the feedback about using the Surfer SEO templates has all been taken on board so I have transferred $1000 to them to start getting these articles ready for the site next month.
  
• Set up the hosting for the blog I am going to launch next month but Namecheap took ages to propagate the DNS update so I will just prep the content and add the plugins and stuff tomorrow.
  
• Got both of the test articles back from the test writers for the informational domain that I put in last night and the content is actually worse than the stuff I got from Fiverr so not going to be moving forward with either of those writers. I have a guy in mind that I will probably use for it and he is starting writing again from Monday.

I also published a video going over some tips a friend gave me on how you can potentially get a higher blog valuation if you choose to try and sell the domain. I am going to try and implement as many of these as possible on the new domain that I am building to try and be able to sell it for as much as possible if needed in the future.

 

[shaunm]

Update

Income is from my full money site network.​

• Set up the new domain to launch next month, plugins and themes are all on there as well as the first few articles the first two 4000 word articles are now formatted and ready to launch on the 1st.
• Did some keyword research for the domain for next month based around the zero search volume keyword method that I have been playing with on other domains. I have about 50 keywords already, I have build Surfer SEO templates for 10 of them and will push these initial 10 to my Upwork writers when they are free ready for launch, the buyselltext team will be used for my higher search volume stuff.
  
• The writer that I was planning on using for my informational domain that I launched in May got back to me and said he is fully booked with content orders. I think I will just leave content generation for this domain until next month now and put the cash into my current writing team for the domain I want to launch on 1st July.

 

[shaunm]

Update

Income is from my full money site network.​

• I'm getting absolutely smashed with returns right now, the last three days have all had at least $50 of returns on Amazon.com. I'm guessing that it is due to so many people buying gear last month with their stimulus checks and then deciding to return it.
• Article 1 - 1463 Words.
  
• Article 2 - 4210 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 3 - 1455 Words.
  
• Spent some time getting my Pinterest marketing schedule up to date for my YouTube channel and setting tailwind up, I see some potential in it and if the strategy comes off then I will scale it into other money sites if possible.
  
• 100 manual forum links delivered, manually checked 25 of them and they are all good quality so I have pinged them to my indexer to try and get Google to crawl them, with the issues with indexing in Google these days though, not sure what kind of benefit this will offer is any.
  
• AAWP dev got back to me, the custom button idea is a no go but I have come up with a slightly different way to do it that actually looks better anyway so I have implemented it in the posts that are currently in draft ready for launching on the 1st July.
  
• Got suckered in by a paid traffic offer on Pinterest of £10 worth of credit if I spend £15 so I have decided to give it a little try to promote my Pinterest account.

I also published the video below on choosing a niche and ways that you can make money from them that may be helpful.