Finner

Been awhile but figure it is time for an update!

Ranking hasn't much improved for my main keywords, for my #1/#2/#3 i'm sitting at about 5-10, however i'm driving in tons of long tail stuff. Only about half my traffic comes from keywords i specifically targeted and remainder comes from long tail.

For example, i added an amazon carousel on my site a couple days ago, and for some reason one of the products on the carousel is driving tons of traffic as somehow i'm ranked #1 for product name + review. Its not a lot of traffic, but its stuff like that.

I'm hovering between 30-50 daily visitors generally. Today i had 53 uniques.

The only linkbuilding i've done has been the River SBB, a Stacy package and a Gittar blog post package. I also bought a 150 SB package off of fiverr for another keyword i was working on, and that keyword which has a EM search of about 8000 i'm ranked 27th for.

I recently also purchased an EDU package from fiverr for my main 3 keywords, but it has not been completed as of yet.

On adsense i've switched to a large rectange from a square and to both image/text ads and by click through rate has definitely improved but the payout per click has dropped.

On the 22nd i earned 0.44 on 1 click
On the 23rd i earned 0.29 on 3 clicks
Today i have earned 0.54 on 1 click

I have 5 clicks on 349 page views, for a 1.43 % CTR since the 20th, however i'm unsure if that is a good or bad ratio? What is good?

Overall i've earned $3.12, with the higher CTR only really coming in the last 4 or 5 days.

The 16th is when the site first started getting visitors (about 30ish) and these are the stats from Analytics since the 16th to today.

287 people visited this site
309 Visits
287 Unique Visitors
1,175 Pageviews
3.80 Pages/Visit
00:01:55 Avg. Time on Site
1.94% Bounce Rate
91.59% % New Visits

Are these good or bad numbers?

Next on the list may be another SBB from River to some of my sub pages to rank some of the secondary higher volume keywords i'm targeting.

I think i may try and turn this site into an "Authority site", the main KW is broad enough to write multiple articles and i have already written 13 for the site. I think if i can rank on some of the more recent related keywords i have selected i could break 10000 visitors per month without too much issue.

I think the biggest thing I had to learn so far was patience, just sit and relax, write an article every few days, wait a week between figuring out what backlinks package next etc, and in my spare time look at other ideas.

In the meantime i've begun working on a second site, again a site that potential to be an "authority" site (albeit with lower traffic but 4 to 5 times the CPC). I have ordered an SBB for this site with my 3 main keywords. I'm ranked 7th currently on the main keyword but it is a low volume search. (700 EM)

I also found a keyword for a good "one pager" site, just so i can test the difference in terms of difficultly ranking. I have purchased domain, wrote a sales copy, and about 150 social links to it, but a few days later it has still not been ranked.

Again patience.

For my affiliate marketing, currently i'm going through amazon on my main page. I have got 7 clicks, but 0 conversions. I switched ad formats from static images to see if that improves, and then will also add contextual text ads to my articles about each product.

Will keep everyone updated...this site has been an incredible resource so far.

Finner

So it has been about a month and it is time for updates!

I have learned a ton on this journey so far, and it seems every day that i learn something else new.

I've still kept with my initial site, and i now rank #1 for my main keyword. I've written approximately 25

Hurray!

However i've made many changes since i've started.

For my current stats:

Visitors / day = 150-200 most days
Page views / Visit = 3.69
Average time on site = 2:01 (2 minutes that is)

Overall my visitors are doing well, i'm averaging higher amounts in the later part of the month.

For my SERPS:

Keyword #1 - Ranked #1 - I get anywhere from 30-80 visitors per day from this one. Locally (USA) 1900 exact per month

Keyword #2 - Ranked #7 - I get 20-50 visitors per day from this one, Locally it gets 9900 exact month

Keyword #3 - Ranked #9 - I get 4-10 visitors per day from this one, locally it gets 5500 exact per month

Keyword #4 - Ranked #7 - I get 2-10 visitors per day from this one, locally its gets 2200 exact per month.

I have a pile of long tail keywords. About 40% of my traffic comes from non targeted keywords. Each post i make i try to tailor to a low competition 100-300 exact search that i can rank high for easily.

I've actually thrown away most my main KWs that i originally targeted when i started the site for a variety of reasons. For the most part, KWs 2-4 are new KWs.

Now the big one:

REVENUE:

In the month of February, through Adsense i earned $33.54

I had 5671 page views, 97 clicks, with an average payout of $0.35 and a CTR of 1.71%. My earnings per thousand ad views were $5.91.

From AM, all from organic traffic, sent to Amazon, i earned: $9.25. I had 141 clicks for a conversion of 4.26%.

Total Revenue: $42.79

Ongoing concerns and questions for the experienced members here:

1. My site has ranked for #1 for main KW and has stayed there for several weeks. I doubt it will be difficult to maintain. I'm trying to rank for my #2 KW as it is highest traffic, what services should i use? I've used ALN, SBB, high PR blog comments, Web 2.0 etc. What is a good next service?

2. Revenue vs Spending - I ended up signing up for the highest level of BLG as i was tired of paying 15 here and 20 here, for a service i could do myself and better on BLG. Obviously the income to payout is significant at ~$150 per month vs ~42 back this month. All of this was done to start ranking for Keyword #2 and more significant KWs. Is this worthwhile? Just any suggestions?

3. As a further to above, how much did you have to spend on an "authority" site to start seeing major dividends in terms of what you had spent to rank?

4. Would any experts be willing to take a look and let me know what i'm missing in terms onpage SEO? I don't have facebook or twitter setup, not sure how important this is. Also linking structure etc.

In terms of my thinking for revenue, i'm earning through Adsense say $5/1000 ads served, and i'm serving 180-350 / day. If i can rank #1-#3 for my #2 KW I believe i can hit 1000 ads served per day if not more, and start breaking even, with any further earnings going towards revenue. I have no problem spending money, but don't want to be throwing it down a hole.

I have a bigger KW in mind, that gets 40000 EMD per month. I it contains two of the words found in both my #1 and #2 KW. Right now i rank on 5th page without any anchors built for that KW. I want to target that KW after i have some income, as i figure it'll be an expensive link building campaign.

Basically what service next? I have ALN, BLG Elite (doing the 3/4 day campaigns they have), did Stacey in December for other KWs, a SBB from River....what next?

Thanks for any help and for the long read!

Finner

Couple other questions (sorry and thanks)

1. How important is KW difficulty in an authority site? If i'm going to write and keep it for years, does difficulty matter?

2. Is it better to operate 1-5 authority sites, ideally earning a few hundred each or have 50 small ones? I feel better writing and operating authority sites, but is there a clear and easy winner?

3. As a KW strategy does for example having www . greenbrightwidgets . com and targetting first "green bright widgets", then "green widgets" and "bright widgets" (more difficult KW and more traffic" and then lastly just "widgets". Is that a smart strategy for "main" KWs for an authority site?

4. In terms of site speed, how important is it to ranking. Analytics says i'm 6-9 seconds, but that is because i have 25 posts show on my home page. Should i be say having 10 posts show to improve page speed?

Also from recent Google update, site is a pagerank 4.

Finner

Bump! Updates for all those who i'm sure have sat around anxiously awaiting my next post.

So a couple more months have gone by. To be honest, it feels like the learning in IM never ends. And it probably never does, even for the gurus.

My site in March did fairly well, grossing ~$130ish, plus with earnings so far in April I've earned ~$320ish since i started, so more than i put in. At its peak, my site was getting ~500 unique visitors per day. Unfortunately it seems as my visitors climbed my CTR fell drastically. Overall my best Adsense day was $8, but I averaged around 4/5 through late March. I earn ~30-50% of my money through Amazon.

On the downside, I did get the dreaded WMT message on my site in mid march, probably due to the numerous ALN links + poor link diversity. Site took an original hit, but long tails continued to perform until yesterday when entire site tanked, disappearing from results for many keywords. Thems the breaks. Will keep adding content, haven't added links since early March, but will start once things stabilize in the SERPs.

Since then i've done a few things:

-In late march i also launched 3 new sites, all .coms, no EMDs. The idea is to have 3 somewhat relate-able authority sites.
-I listened to Guerilla's Webinars. I picked up some useful tips. Highly recommended.
-I have primarily been building out one of the 3 new sites. I created a facebook and twitter for that site, and also created a newsletter opt-in form for the site. I also feel i did a better job on onpage SEO compared to my first site. I've written 12 posts for this site (along with 2 for each of the others, while still maintaining 2 other sites).
-Using the webinar information I did some backlinking by hand. It does work, but takes a lot of time and effort. I understand the process, but for someone with a full time job, I found it difficult to find time along with writing content. Although i haven't been particularly successful, I did find it a great learning experience.
-Ideally once these new sites have traffic i will market my own product. Still working on that one, but that seems the greatest way to success.

What i've learned:

A lot of this could be wrong (after all this is coming from a guy whose made $320) but here goes:

1. Never stop learning

2. Quit overthinking shit. A lot of stuff i read when i was first getting started was all about KW research, EMDs, KW density, H1/H2 tags etc. Don't get bogged down in the details. Do a touch of KW research on something you could write about, register a brand-able domain, and write content. Worry about the tiny shit later. I remember getting slowed down reading about traffic diversity, link velocity and all this other crap. Just build the site. Figure it out as you go.

3. Patience is key. On my first site I was checking SERPs every 2 hours, logging into Adsense every 30 minutes, and wondering why that package i'd ordered hadn't taken effect. Now? I check Adsense/Amazon once every few days, SERPs maybe twice a month, and i haven't ordered any link packages for awhile. Why? Because my time was a lot better served either learning something or writing content. Write Content - > Get Traffic -> Then worry about monetization/optimization/diversification of traffic.

So where do I go from here?

Who the fuck knows.

Seriously. I still have a pile to learn. I still don't know what/if any links I should get. Do I follow the spammy pile of links/poor anchor diversity school of thought, or the high quality linking diverse anchor school of thought? Who knows. I just know i'll write good quality content, update the twitter/facebook page regularly, do some backlinking when I have time, and maybe eventually get a package and see how it works out. ?????? then profit.

My idea with these 3 sites is that its not a race to the finish line. It may suck to sit and write content for the next 6 months with no large payoff, but that may be what it takes to make money.

Hopefully my initial site eventually comes back, but even if it never does, what i learned building it was well worth the time and effort i put in.

Anyway its good to get out my thoughts, and hopefully this helps some other newbie along the way.

I'll update again next time i'm so inclined.