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[Journey] Growing A Money Tree Via Blogging In 2021!

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  • Increased the Tailwind post frequency to 10 posts per day.
  • I have been using some new pin designs for the Pinterest pins too and researching different ways to pull traffic from the platform so curious how its traffic grows over the coming months. I have asked a few friends who are pulling solid traffic from Pinterest and they all said they saw a sandbox effect on their Pinterest traffic too so expecting the same for my account.
  • Self sourced a niche edit link for this project as it was only $15, its low DA but for the price I am happy as it helps to pump up the total number of referring domains for the blog anyway.
  • Article 1 - 1680 Words.
  • Article 2 - 1487 Words.
  • Article 3 - 675 Words.
  • Article 4 - 1649 Words.
  • Article 5 - 1666 Words.
  • Article 6 - 2144 Words.
  • Article 7 - 1673 Words.
  • Article 8 - 1424 Words.
  • Article 9 - 1234 Words.
  • Article 10 - 2936 Words.
  • Article 11 - 1574 Words.
  • Although there was a small drop off for a few days at the end of last week, daily traffic has climbed back up and got another all time high today.
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  • Set Tailwind to 15 posts per day to Pinterest but I might have to look at bringing a VA on to make pins if I set it any higher.
  • While messing around on Pinterest I found a few new sub-niches that are high comp on Pinterest but seem low comp on Google so its more content to scale into for the blog in the future.
  • Pinterest impressions increasing, did some research and an impression to view ratio of 1%-5% seems to be average so I am going to need to workout a way to pull a ton of impressions to get any decent traffic from them but I will see how it grows with current tailwind post rates and pin designs.
  • Article 1 - 7055 Words.
  • Article 2 - 1587 Words.
  • Article 3 - 1930 Words.
  • Article 4 - 2311 Words.
  • Article 5 - 1252 Words.
  • Article 5 - 1252 Words.
  • Article 6 - 2043 Words.
  • Article 7 - 1902 Words.
  • Article 8 - 1443 Words.
  • Article 9 - 1384 Words.
  • Article 10 - 1258 Words.
  • Article 11 - 1924 Words.
  • Article 12 - 1690 Words.
  • Seen another organic traffic jump this week, up to around 250 hits per day right now. If growth stays at this rate I can probably get the domain onto Ezoic next month to start earning more from the display ads on it.
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  • The 100 forum links I ordered at the start of the month have been delivered but I haven't had time to check them yet, I will probably order another batch of 100 next week.
  • Going to add this blog to Ezoic next week to pump the display ad income potential of it and I will start to add weekly income screenshots for the project for both Ezoic and Amazon.
  • Did some layout prep for adding the blog to Ezoic by moving a few things around like the menu and side bar widgets to try make it fit placeholders better.
  • I was thinking of a possible whiteboard video YouTube channel for the project, I think it could work but it would be a ton of additional effort so I am side lining it for now.
  • DA of the domain jumped up to DA10.
  • Article 1 - 2628 Words.
  • Article 2 - 1296 Words.
  • Article 3 - 1822 Words.
  • Article 4 - 1550 Words.
  • Article 5 - 1705 Words.
  • Article 6 - 1143 Words.
  • Article 7 - 1884 Words.
  • Article 8 - 1537 Words.
  • Article 9 - 929 Words.
  • Article 10 - 1611 Words.
  • Article 11 - 3312 Words.
  • Article 12 - 1225 Words.
  • Article 13 - 1616 Words.
  • Article 14 - 1906 Words.
  • Article 15 - 1235 Words.
  • Article 16 - 1503 Words.
  • Article 17 - 2145 Words.
  • Nice little traffic bump up to around 350 organics a day this week but then it dropped down a little. Not worried though, pretty sure its just Google testing pages in the SERP for in the future so confident it will bounce back up over the coming weeks/months.
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Just uploaded the monthly update video for the project for anyone following along.

Ezoic have just opened up their Access Now program too so you can join their network without 10,000 monthly sessions that is usually required so I have added this blog to it to get more income from my ads but it was very close to 10,000 monthly sessions per month anyway. If you do have a blog that is under 10,000 monthly sessions and want to join Ezoic you can do so via this page using their Access Now program.
 
Excellent video, enjoyed every second
Please embed future videos in your thread
Promise to watch them all start to finish
Got a bunch of questions for when you have time

Question 1 --> 1.12
$111 from $3385 is 3%
Which product category are your targeting?
Amazon should pay you more than 3%?

Question 2 --> 3.20
Top 10 average time on site is incredible
How are you maintaining 10+ minutes per session?
Any copywriting/layout tips to share?

Question 3 --> 4.24
4 months in your rankings are fantastic
What is your ranking software called?

Question 4 --> 4.35
There's a noticeable increase in traffic around April 5
What do you attribute this to?

Question 5 --> 5.07
Agree with you, same here
Waiting for a penalty before taking any action
Are you serving AMP pages?
Google page experience completes end of August
Update -->
developers.google.com

More time, tools, and details on the page experience update

developers.google.com developers.google.com

Question 6 --> 6.22
You have 299 valid and 57 excluded pages
Are all the excluded pages category and tag pages?
I've had this problem before
Solved by a) adding more posts in those sections
Also by b) linking to those sections in global footer
It does make sense that Google will ignore empty, thin or duplicate/similar categories or tags
This problem is solvable by keeping category pages consistently populated

Question 7 --> 9.12
Great idea listing your affiliate business expenses
Are you using any specific software to keep track of this?
Also related (you don't have to answer) do you use a personal or business banking account?

Question 8 --> 9.52
How do you know about Pinterest algorithm updates, is there an update page?

Question 9 --> 10.57
I'm pretty much 100% white hat SEO
Should I avoid BHW forum?

Question 10 --> 14.29
I've never used Moz backlink crawler
Do you cross reference backlinks in with actual traffic shown in Google Analytics as well as Search Console?

One final question !!
Do you know who your main competitors are?
If so what if any competitor research did you undertake at the start?

Thanks for answering my questions @shaunm
Well done for smashing 100,000 words
350 organics per day is extremely good
I really enjoyed your video
You're a real inspiration
 
Honeybadger said:
Question 1 --> 1.12
$111 from $3385 is 3%
Which product category are your targeting?
Amazon should pay you more than 3%?

Question 2 --> 3.20
Top 10 average time on site is incredible
How are you maintaining 10+ minutes per session?
Any copywriting/layout tips to share?

Question 3 --> 4.24
4 months in your rankings are fantastic
What is your ranking software called?

Question 4 --> 4.35
There's a noticeable increase in traffic around April 5
What do you attribute this to?

Question 5 --> 5.07
Agree with you, same here
Waiting for a penalty before taking any action
Are you serving AMP pages?
Google page experience completes end of August
Update -->
developers.google.com

More time, tools, and details on the page experience update

developers.google.com developers.google.com

Question 6 --> 6.22
You have 299 valid and 57 excluded pages
Are all the excluded pages category and tag pages?
I've had this problem before
Solved by a) adding more posts in those sections
Also by b) linking to those sections in global footer
It does make sense that Google will ignore empty, thin or duplicate/similar categories or tags
This problem is solvable by keeping category pages consistently populated

Question 7 --> 9.12
Great idea listing your affiliate business expenses
Are you using any specific software to keep track of this?
Also related (you don't have to answer) do you use a personal or business banking account?

Question 8 --> 9.52
How do you know about Pinterest algorithm updates, is there an update page?

Question 9 --> 10.57
I'm pretty much 100% white hat SEO
Should I avoid BHW forum?

Question 10 --> 14.29
I've never used Moz backlink crawler
Do you cross reference backlinks in with actual traffic shown in Google Analytics as well as Search Console?

One final question !!
Do you know who your main competitors are?
If so what if any competitor research did you undertake at the start?
Click to expand...
  1. Its a number of categories so the exact percentage on the dashboard isn't correct as its the average across a bunch of different commission brackets on Amazon.
  2. Its more the actual keyword as some of them just take longer to explain while some of the other ones will be done in real time while reading the article pushing the on page time up. For example, think of something like an article on solving a rubix cube and you do the steps in your hands with your own cube while reading so you are on the page much longer. This can help make me a fair chunk of change as the anchor ad on smartphones and the float sidebar ad on desktop and tablet will refresh every 15 or 30 seconds with the Ezoic system showing a new ad and paying me even if the person not looking at their screen.
  3. I use SERPRobot, there's a bunch of similar tools out there but they tend to be almost double the price of SERPRobot. Although their UI is not as flashy as some of the others, it gets the job done and their dev team has been responsive to feedback.
  4. I don't remember now to be honest, probably a higher search volume keyword or a bunch of keywords jumping into the top 3 of Google all at once. As soon as the domain is out of the sandbox things can move pretty quickly if your keyword research is correct.
  5. I have heard nothing but bad things about AMP, I messed with it on a test blog but never used it on a real one.
  6. Pretty much, there's a few new pages in there too that have been crawled but Google haven't indexed yet but that's normal. I am pretty lucky right now as a bunch of people I know are having a nightmare with a potential indexing bog in Google holding them back.
  7. I just use a spreadsheet for the video, I used a SAAS tool called quickbooks for my tax return though as it makes it much quicker to submit to HMRC and workout what I need to pay. I am registered as a sole trader for tax purposes so its my bank account but I have been trying to work out if it is better to switch over to a LTD soon.
  8. Not that I am aware of, I watch YouTubers such as Anastasia Blogger who has a channel about Pinterest traffic and she talks about their updates sometimes but Reddit seem to be pretty spot on with when a Google/Pinterest update rolls out.
  9. 100%. BHW is essentially a pyramid of users with a very small number of people at the top actually making money from their blogs or online projects that don't sell anything on the forum, a slightly larger number of people below that who may or may not make money from their blogs but make most of their money from selling stuff to noobs in the BST on the forum with many of the things they sell being useless, then a huge number of people who are either new to making money online or looking for a silver bullet to get rich quick who just get ripped off by many of the "services" offered on the forum. BHW used to be really good about 5 years back but the majority of the people who know what they are doing are on invite-only discord servers now with a similar thing happening to various Reddit subs in this niche.
  10. Yea, its never even close.
  11. This niche is strange with very few real authority sites that have both high domain strength and enough content to dominate the niche so there are plenty of gaps for me to fill. I don't really do competition research using AHRefs or anything like that, I just spend about an hour using the free keyword research methods I go over in this YouTube playlist to see how many keywords I can find I that time frame and then make a decision.
 
@shaunm
You've helped me bag sick new skills
www.serprobot.com

Free SERP checker - google ranking check | serprobot.com

Free SERP check, track and monitor your search engine keyword ranking quickly and accurately
www.serprobot.com www.serprobot.com
String for Google advanced search
Shows top 1 Google result --> https://www.google.com/search?q=millionaire&num=1
Shows top 10 Google result --> https://www.google.com/search?q=millionaire&num=10
Shows top 50 Google result --> https://www.google.com/search?q=millionaire&num=50
Shows top 100 Google result --> https://www.google.com/search?q=millionaire&num=100
Limited is 100 results
Over time this saves alot of clicking
Useful for product research
Many other things too
TY
 
Sx4qG0P.png
  • Added the site to Ezoic and set up the initial placeholders how I wanted them. I am still doing a little testing for the placeholder layout for this site to see if I can push the income higher but it will take a month or so to workout if it works or not.
  • Set Tailwind to only post a pin to Pinterest 5 times a day as making the pins is taking too much time. I will probably just get a VA to make pins in the future if the blog starts to get traffic from Pinterest.
  • Ordered 8 guest posts and 100 manual forum links for the blog.
  • You can see a slight drop in traffic in the analytics above but it started before the broad core algo update rollout from Google so I think its just a keyword or two dropping out of the top 3 of Google but that's normal for a site this age anyway so not worried about it.
  • My laptop has started overheating and turning off making it a pain to publish content. Hoping Apple confirms the 16 inch Macbook Pro with the M1 chip at their event tomorrow and releases it soon as I have been waiting for that laptop for almost two years and the one I am using really is on its last legs now.
  • I realised I had forgot to set up the Amazon affiliate accounts for the other storefronts outside of the USA so I set them up for all countries I have valid accounts for. I usually make around 75% of my income on Amazon from .com and 25% from the rest so it should increase income a little.
  • Found another sub-niche for this niche I could use when researching an article. At this stage I could probably consistently work on this blog alone for the next 3-4 years with the amount of ideas I can try expand into. With Google/Amazon changing stuff so frequently these days I am leaning more towards taking this approach rather than building up multiple micro-niche sites while I also work on other none blogging related projects.
  • Article 1 - 1680 Words.
  • Article 2 - 1950 Words.
  • Article 3 - 3523 Words.
  • Article 4 - 2103 Words.
  • Article 5 - 1602 Words.
  • Article 6 - 1776 Words.
  • Article 7 - 1307 Words.
  • Article 8 - 757 Words.
  • Article 9 - 972 Words.
  • Article 10 - 1047 Words.
  • Article 11 - 2043 Words.
  • Article 12 - 2443 Words.
  • Article 13 - 1517 Words.
Honeybadger said:
Shaun
Quickbooks package
Which 1 do you use or recommend

QuickBooks®: official Site | Smart Tools. Better Business.

Organize & manage your business with the #1 rated solution. Fast & easy setup. Sign up for a free trial to join 6.5 million businesses already using QuickBooks.
quickbooks.intuit.com quickbooks.intuit.com
TY
Click to expand...
I think mine is the £10 a month one but it will depend on how you have your company set up. If you are an LTD you have to go with the higher price one I think but if you are a sole trader then you can go with the same one as me but I really don't know much about it, I just leave it to do its thing then login when I need to put my tax return in.
Honeybadger said:
@shaunm
You've helped me bag sick new skills
www.serprobot.com

Free SERP checker - google ranking check | serprobot.com

Free SERP check, track and monitor your search engine keyword ranking quickly and accurately
www.serprobot.com www.serprobot.com
String for Google advanced search
Shows top 1 Google result --> https://www.google.com/search?q=millionaire&num=1
Shows top 10 Google result --> https://www.google.com/search?q=millionaire&num=10
Shows top 50 Google result --> https://www.google.com/search?q=millionaire&num=50
Shows top 100 Google result --> https://www.google.com/search?q=millionaire&num=100
Limited is 100 results
Over time this saves alot of clicking
Useful for product research
Many other things too
TY
Click to expand...

Cheers.
 
OTcHxtw.png
  • Jumped to above 400 organics from Google per day consistently this week.
  • The new Macbook Pro wasn't announced at the Apple even so I picked up an iPad Air 4 with the magic keyboard to tide me over as my current Macbook Pro is overheating and turning off about every half an hour right now. The new iPad is actually better than I thought it would be for blogging though so I am happy.
  • Article 1 - 1820 Words.
  • Article 2 - 1466 Words.
  • Article 3 - 1513 Words.
  • Article 4 - 1739 Words.
  • Article 5 - 1301 Words.
  • Article 6 - 2178 Words.
  • Article 7 - 1456 Words.
  • Article 8 - 2147 Words.
  • Article 9 - 2544 Words.
  • Article 10 - 2234 Words.
  • Article 11 - 1409 Words.
  • Article 12 - 1182 Words.
  • Article 13 - 1734 Words.
  • Article 14 - 1150 Words.
 
shaunm said:
OTcHxtw.png
  • Jumped to above 400 organics from Google per day consistently this week.
  • The new Macbook Pro wasn't announced at the Apple even so I picked up an iPad Air 4 with the magic keyboard to tide me over as my current Macbook Pro is overheating and turning off about every half an hour right now. The new iPad is actually better than I thought it would be for blogging though so I am happy.
  • Article 1 - 1820 Words.
  • Article 2 - 1466 Words.
  • Article 3 - 1513 Words.
  • Article 4 - 1739 Words.
  • Article 5 - 1301 Words.
  • Article 6 - 2178 Words.
  • Article 7 - 1456 Words.
  • Article 8 - 2147 Words.
  • Article 9 - 2544 Words.
  • Article 10 - 2234 Words.
  • Article 11 - 1409 Words.
  • Article 12 - 1182 Words.
  • Article 13 - 1734 Words.
  • Article 14 - 1150 Words.
Click to expand...
I am actually impressed that with only 14 articles you can reach such a daily organic visitors. Well done! so far so good.
 
shaunm said:
Its articles added since the last update.

Cheers mate :).
Click to expand...
ok you got me there :) I understand better. What's your articles count by now? I went back i saw 268 total from your first update till now. Is this correct? If yes when did you see the organic traffic taking off? after publishing 10 articles, 33, 50 or more?
 
iamb said:
ok you got me there :) I understand better. What's your articles count by now? I went back i saw 268 total from your first update till now. Is this correct? If yes when did you see the organic traffic taking off? after publishing 10 articles, 33, 50 or more?
Click to expand...
268 is about right for total articles currently on the site. The image below is analytics from the start of the blog, you can see traffic started to lift after around three months.

OEZR5r1.png

Honeybadger said:
@shaunm
Why do you link to your videos instead of embedding them?
TY
Click to expand...
It was to try see if Quora was triggering YouTube analytics correctly. Normal Google Analytics is much better than the YouTube platform and the YouTube one has problems tracking different things for external sources.
 

YheMFtK.png
  • Amazon only shipped a small number of the orders for this site all week and then seems to have shipped most of them last night to catch the income up.
  • Bounced off 500 organics per day a few times this week so fingers crossed I can get it next week.
  • Happy with how the Ezoic income is going, the EPMV on the backend is slowly growing every few days too. Not sure if this is due to their AI doing tests or more adspend on the network but I will go into it in more detail in the video for this project at the end of the month.
  • Pinterest really doesn't seem to be working, Tailwind has a bunch of pins loaded into it now to last it months so I will just see how things are by the end of its run and decide if its worth my time making more pins.
  • I set the Ezoic leap tool up myself for this blog and I was happy with the results but just curious if the Ezoic staff can get more out of it so I sent a request for them to give it the once over to see if there was anything I was missing.
  • Approved the eight domains for the guest posts I ordered at the start of the month.
  • Googles core web vital update has started to rollout and won't finish to August so waiting to see if that does anything.
  • The blog got its first natural backlink from a blog and its a DA23.
  • Article 1 - 1380 Words.
  • Article 2 - 1336 Words.
  • Article 3 - 1307 Words.
  • Article 4 - 1540 Words.
  • Article 5 - 1595 Words.
  • Article 6 - 1486 Words.
  • Article 7 - 1728 Words.
  • Article 8 - 1891 Words.
  • Article 9 - 1449 Words.
  • Article 10 - 1249 Words.
  • Article 11 - 1298 Words.
  • Article 12 - 1130 Words.
  • Article 13 - 1561 Words.
  • Article 14 - 1478 Words.
I go over the income differences and page load time differences for this blog since moving it from Google Adsense to Ezoic in the video below for anyone interested.
 
Great content as always @shaunm
Comment you made on your YT channel
"I was in the Airforce but yea, definitely. I try to use the fault finding skills I used in the military to find ways to push my content to the top of Google."
Can you share any of these Airforce fault finding skills you use for SEO?
TY
 
Honeybadger said:
Great content as always @shaunm
Comment you made on your YT channel
"I was in the Airforce but yea, definitely. I try to use the fault finding skills I used in the military to find ways to push my content to the top of Google."
Can you share any of these Airforce fault finding skills you use for SEO?
TY
Click to expand...
The OODA Loop is a great system to try stick to for anything like this when you are just starting out to reverse engineer Google. I still use it now for all of my blogging/SEO test and militaries all over the world use it too. Theres stuff like split half technique that is simple but can help narrow down what the fault actually is and split testing of having a bunch of tests up at the same time to get as much data as possible for your OODA Loops but it is the main thing I use.

It helps to keep you in a set order that loops back on itself to help you develop everything from your keyword research to your monitisation. Although I don't put much time into CTR optimisation, you can use it for stuff like that too and I'm sure it will perform great. Fighter pilots are trained to do it instantly in their heads I still use a pen and paper as I find it easier but you could use something like a free Trello account to set up a digital version if you don't like pen and paper.
 

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