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

[shaunm]

Update

• One of the worse days for conversions this year, pretty sure its just from the dip in traffic from election day though. Fingers crossed it picks up again soon.
• Article 1 - 2600 Words.
• Started working on some Inflection Point Routeins that I decided to do after reading The Power Of Habit, its basically an initial cue to try trigger a productive habit or get you to do something you dont want to do. The hardest part is thinking up things that I could use them for as I am back into a pretty good routine right now.
• Seen a bunch of people saying a Google update rolled out this week, not sure if it actually happened or if its just people seeing less traffic due to the election. I spent some time going over my rank tracker data though and although some sites are down slightly, I dont think it is an update or at least if it was, it hasn't hit me and my traffic seems to have bounced back after the dip for the election.
• Started thinking up possible niches for my Pinterest project for January. Its a pain because most of the most popular niches on Pinterest are on subjects I have no idea about. I do have one idea shortlisted for now though that will probably have to do and I guess it can work well but its not showing up on the ideas tab of their most popular niches.
• Finished reading Enchiridion by Epictetus, some of it is decent but its hard to read due to it being so old and the language not flowing well.

A very distinct possibility. Everybody worldwide is glued to their TVs to see how it's all going to end. If it ever does, feels like it's been dragging on for years already.

Hopefully, once the world has done a collective sigh of relief, things will pick back up. If no other reason than Black Friday and Christmas are coming!

Yea its been a crazy few days/2020, just hoping it gets better for 2021!

This is prediction from many blogs
That it will be the biggest shopping event in internet history

Not sure about this one, I think there may be fall out after the election and the virus is causing more and more people to lose their jobs or have less money.

 

[Honeybadger]

One of the worse days for conversions this year, pretty sure its just from the dip in traffic from election day though. Fingers crossed it picks up again soon.

Exactly the same, normal ranking, earning crashed

 

[azgold]

Well, guys, the election was just called, so maybe people can now take a deep breath and shift their focus to Christmas shopping.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1131 Words.
• Made more pins and I think I am at a stage now where I only need to make more pins for the new articles that are Pinterest friendly rather than keep churning out pins for my older Google friendly content for my niche site case study domain.
• Definitely settled on the niche for my Pinterest project that I want to start in January.

Uploaded my video going over my plans for next year for my Blogs and YouTube channel.

Exactly the same, normal ranking, earning crashed

Well, guys, the election was just called, so maybe people can now take a deep breath and shift their focus to Christmas shopping.

Ya fingers crossed everything goes back to normal now.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1559 Words.
• Article 2 - 1056 Words.
  
• Made pins for the above articles and a few others then scheduled them in Pinterest. Although I used to hate making pins, it doesn't bother me now so glad I stuck with it. Just need to hope the traffic keeps on growing now.
• Started thinking about going for a niche for my MNS project for January as I found a niche that is underserved this week when trying to research something. By chance someone on Reddit inboxed me today asking about the same niche for their project so I might try find something else instead as it looks like a good, open niche for a first time blogger.
• E-mailed the Income School and Authority Hacker teams about how much time their courses need per week as I was thinking of trying to run a follow along video series with one of their courses next year too if I have time.
• Started researching bullet journaling as I have seen so many people talking about it. After trying to migrate away from ToDoIst to Google Calendar then to a physical to do list I think it will probably be the best way forward and looks like I can use it for offline projects too.
• Noticed the Black Friday pre-deals are online for Amazon.co.uk so hoping they are also online for .com to try get the conversions back up as the last two weeks have been really bad.

 

[Honeybadger]

• Noticed the Black Friday pre-deals are online for Amazon.co.uk so hoping they are also online for .com to try get the conversions back up as the last two weeks have been really bad.

Thanks for posting this about Amazon

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Although income is still down a little, I think it's due to the lack of shipping over the weekend as conversions are slowly increasing again.
• Article 1 - 1439 Words.
• Made a few Pinterest pins for the new article trying a few different things with the text.
• I started playing around with making the Pinterest domain a kindle project where I push traffic from Pinterest to my books on Kindle. Not sure if it would convert at all though so need to do a little bit more research. Although having an income from Kindle books is still based around Amazon, it does add diversification of income.
• I noticed that staff from Google have a mini survey for force indexing now, I cant help think that this is the first step in them turning around and saying it has no use and not brining it back.

 

[AmNovice]

Pinterest

Quick question about your Pinterest strategy! Are you making Pinterest posts to drive traffic to your content sites? Just trying to understand how Pinterest intertwines into it all. Thanks!

 

[shaunm]

Quick question about your Pinterest strategy! Are you making Pinterest posts to drive traffic to your content sites? Just trying to understand how Pinterest intertwines into it all. Thanks!

Kind of, if they click the pin they dont automatically come to my blog, they go to another page on Pinterest and then they have the option to click a link on that page to come to my blog to read more.

 

[Honeybadger]

I think it's due to the lack of shipping over the weekend as conversions are slowly increasing again.

I had this too
Amazon sales for Saturday were 3rd best ever
Commission was about $1
Then I looked at ordered 24, shipped 2
Who is shipping Saturday night or Sunday?
Explains it

 

[Honeybadger]

Made a few Pinterest pins for the new article trying a few different things with the text.

What tools do you use for Pinterest SEO?

 

[Honeybadger]

I noticed that staff from Google have a mini survey for force indexing now

Do you have a link? pls
I dont know what it means

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1504 Words.
• Article 2 - 1104 Words.
• New organic traffic record for my new niche site domain of 41 hits in a single day, Pinterest traffic has nosedived though after having a good week last week.
• Researched KDP a little bit more but I think normal blogging will probably be the better way to go for that project. I still have six weeks or so before starting it though so see what happens as I will probably end up changing my mind a few times between then and now.
• Started to do some keyword research for the YouTube channel for video ideas in 2021 based around commonly asked questions. The goal is to bring in more search traffic from both Google and YouTube and I might also start using Pinterest more often to promote my channel depending on how these tests go with my niche site blog.

What tools do you use for Pinterest SEO?

I just use Tailwind for pin scheduling and then type a decent title and description into it for the pin.

Do you have a link? pls
I don't know what it means

The article reporting on it, the tweet from John Muller.

 

[Strickland]

Hi Shaunm, I just read about a new Google core update coming this month. Apparently Google will index select passages from an article and not the entire article itself
Have you heard anything about this?

 

[shaunm]

Hi Shaunm, I just read about a new Google core update coming this month. Apparently Google will index select passages from an article and not the entire article itself
Have you heard anything about this?

Yea, this is the Google Passages update, I have been trying to plan my new articles to work with it for a week or so now but I have to wait until its live to see what actually happens. I think it could potentially cause havoc on my old affiliate content because of the way that I built the sites but I am hoping my newer stuff moving forward be fine but time will tell.

 

[azgold]

Who is shipping Saturday night or Sunday?

Around here, we've been receiving orders seven days a week. Not to say that Amazon ships seven days a week, I don't know, just know that packages can arrive any day of the week.

 

[shaunm]

Update

Wed

• Article 1 - 1612 Words.
• Read up on the Google Page Experience Update to launch in May 2021, I checked my current Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console and I doubt that it will do much to me in all honesty as they are showing that most pages are ok.
• Pretty sure that my account on Pinterest has been shadow banned or something as traffic has been 0 for like 3 days now. I checked my email account and they haven't emailed me or anything so not sure what's happening. I know a bunch of people said they have had issues with Tailwind so it could be that. I will just do manual posting for my next domain in January.
• Prepped Q&A video for YouTube but never got around to recording it due to having some offline stuff to do.

Thur

I had to get the rest of the offline stuff done today and haven't got the motivation for any online stuff so I am taking the rest of the day off.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Typed up a 1650 word article and when I was adding images to it realized its a keyword that I have already targeted back in September so just going to keep the article for a potential backlink in the future.
• The Pinterest account for my niche site case study domain was banned today, not sure if it is due to having Tailwind post 25 times a day or not as their reason is very vague. I appealed their suspension though but if they uphold the ban I will just make another Pinterest account and try again with Tailwind posting 10 times a day to see how it goes.
• Built out a spreadsheet for video ideas in the future where I can just use a random number generator to come up with the video topic.

I also uploaded my Q&A video for November.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1549 Words.
• Finished reading Atomic Habits, excellent book, tightly recommended if you are wanting to try improve your habits for something more productive.
• Pinterest account unbanned after appealing the initial ban, still no reason as to why they banned me. Tailwind set to schedule out10 posts per day focusing on content optimized for Pinterest, going to manually re-pin and comment every day too.
• Designed a new Greenscreen background for the YouTube channel to use from January, thinking of ways to also integrate social media more and I may actually use my personal blog to type up content relating to the videos too.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1983 Words.
• Out of the 118 posts I have published on my niche site case study domain since they locked the force indexing tool, 56 have been indexed although most seem to have bounced out of the index due to the Google dance/bugs. 34 of them are currently indexed so it does seem like the Google indexing system is doing its job again, just at a much slower rate than it once did. Fingers crossed the bring back their force indexing tool ASAP.
• Started to prep my personal blog for content starting in January to help promote the YouTube project. Stripped a bunch of old posts off it, tweaked a few things and changed a few plugins.
• Spent some time researching Pinterest to try prevent future bans, I have seen a bunch of people reporting that their accounts have been banned for similar activity to mine on a fresh account. I don’t think it was Tailwind, just the post frequency, people have said they posted 25 post a day manually and still got banned. I am going to leave Tailwind at 10 posts per day for now and just keep manually re-pinning/commenting on what other people pin. I have also seen people saying that Pinterest are just really ban happy no matter what you do.
• Made more pins for a few tests I wanted to run after getting banned and scheduled them out with tailwind. My pin creation process is pretty streamlined now so I can make them much quicker than I used to be able to.
• Ordered a new blog logo and some new custom graphics.

I also uploaded my new video on things that I would do differently if I could start my blogging journey again from scratch.