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

[shaunm]

So I have spent the last 18 months or so building up a few Amazon affiliate sites that are primarily focused around the Amazon affiliate program. I managed to grow the network of three domains to bring in >$3000 last month as shown in the image below but with the changes in the Amazon affiliate program terms I have decided to make a brand new hybrid site.

My plans for this new domain are to essentially build it around informational intent content that uses display ads as a primary income source with various affiliate programs as a secondary income source. I plan to focus on organic traffic as its primary traffic source but also want to try out Pinterest and Quora for the domain too as I have been interested in them for a while but never got around to doing anything with them.

Heres today's entry:-

• Registered the domain and did the initial setup, running the free Astra theme and added in the various plugins that I want on the domain.
  
• Article 1 - 2213 Words.
  
• Article 2 - 1854 Words.
  
• Article 3 - 1774 Words.
  
• Ordered a logo off Fiverr.
• Reached out to my freelance upwork writer about increasing his workload and he said he can take on more work from next month, I also sent out a test order to a new writer.

 

[shaunm]

• Article 1 - 1994 Words.
  
• Article 2 - 2000 Words.
  
• Article 3 - 2111 Words.
• Did a little more keyword research for this project today in my down time but I have over 1000 actionable keywords for it now so probably going to focus on content generation from now on. I enjoy keyword research though so will probably do it between articles to take a break from writing or something.
• I had some issues with my hosting for this new domain but Sitegrounds seemed to be having issues with the cluster that it is on and they managed to fix it quickly.
• I spent a little time coming up with some article templates for this project as there are a few reoccurring themes and it should help to save time over the coming months.

 

[Graybeard]

Care to share the general idea of the 'informational content' the subjects or context?
I have been working on a data driven site about the pandemic same basic monetization schema.

 

[shaunm]

Care to share the general idea of the 'informational content' the subjects or context?

Basically terms where the user's goal is to get information rather than to buy stuff. For example, "How do you change the ink in a pen?" would be informational content and "The best black pen." would be buyer intent.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 2090 Words.
  
• Article 2 - 2159 Words.
  
• Article 3 - 1581 Words.
  
• Used an Ultimate Addons free Astra template to set the home page up for the site today. I usually just leave them as a regular Blog roll as less than 1% of my traffic tends to see it anyway according to the analytics from my other domains. Someone pointed out that the premium ad networks may want a more professional looking home page and it only took 10 minutes with the template.
• Set Pinterest up, had a little play and made a few boards and stuff. I will just warm it up over the rest of the month before actually putting any of my own content on there until next month now.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 2048 Words.
  
• Article 2 - 2200 Words.
  
• I thought of a new affiliate idea for this new domain that is not Amazon based, found a platform that offers what I want and applied but it said it can take 5 working days to be approved. No idea if they are even open due to the lock downs so I might have to wait longer. I am basically just putting a pretty link in as a place holder then if I get approved I will flip the pretty link on the back end to my affiliate link.
• Spent a little more time researching Pinterest and warming the account up a little bit more.
• Did a batch of initial keyword research and search volume checked the batch but haven't manually processed them yet.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1743 Words.
  
• Article 2 - 1669 Words.
  
• Setup the Quora account for this new domain to start warming it up with posts.

 

[Faelmaran]

Congrats for growing your affiliate network of Amazon sites to that big level absolutely and for sure I am really regret about that changes with Amazon, have you tried CJ, Shareasale, Linkshare and Pepperjam and so on entirely and clearly please.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 2050 Words.
  
• Article 2 - 1500 Words - Outsourced Upwork.
  
• Article 3 - 2012 Words.
  
• Article 4 - 1987 Words.
  
• Article 5 - 1995 Words.
  
• Another article was due today from another writer on Upwork but I can't login to check if its been delivered. I think Upwork are having issues with their login server or something.
• Started the Surfer SEO trial and used it for some of today's articles and it is much quicker and easier than SEO Hero.

Congrats for growing your affiliate network of Amazon sites to that big level absolutely and for sure I am really regret about that changes with Amazon, have you tried CJ, Shareasale, Linkshare and Pepperjam and so on entirely and clearly please.

My two main niches have stayed at 4% so I shouldn't be hit too badly, I am just building this new domain to diversify.

 

[thelegend]

Thats its a nice succes man ,keep going . But please also make me understand .Do you make a information website where it deliver information to people and related to that article you put a product from amazon ?

 

[shaunm]

Thats its a nice succes man ,keep going . But please also make me understand .Do you make a information website where it deliver information to people and related to that article you put a product from amazon ?

This new informational project will be mostly based around informational articles and display ads, I will add affiliate links where possible but its not the main focus. My other domains are based around buyer intent keywords where the main focus is to push the user to Amazon.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 2149 Words.
  
• Article 2 - 1981 Words.
  
• Article 3 - 3282 Words.
  
• Article 4 - 2050 Words - Outsourced - Upwork.
  
• Article 5 - 1986 Words.
• I sent the next jobs out to my new content writers on Upwork using the Surfer SEO content editor tool, its definitely growing on my and I will probably subscribe after the trial.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1459 Words.
  
• Article 2 - 1523 Words.
  
• Article 3 - 1910 Words.
  
• Spent some time doing various actions on the Quora and Pinterest accounts for the domain to keep warming them up before promotion.
• Did a little bit more keyword research for a new sub-niche I found when researching one of the articles.
• Started looking for new freelance writers on Upwork for this new project, out of 41 total applications I sent test articles to 5 of them.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1925 Words.
  
• Article 2 - 2338 Words.
  
• Article 3 - 3000 Words - Outsourced Upwork.
  
• Article 4 - 1000 Words - Test article with a new writer, ok for the price but won’t be putting more work their way.
  
• Article 5 - 1767 Words.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1097 Words - Test article from one of the new writers on Upwork, it's decent for the price so I have sent him a new order.
  
• Article 2 - 2063 Words.
  
• Article 3 - 1669 Words.
  
• Article 4 - 2002 Words.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1007 Words - Outsourced test order from Upwork took a fair bit of editing so won’t be putting more jobs their way.
  
• Article 2 - 3188 Words.
  
• I have a related domain in this new domains niche from years back so I made a quick niche edit link for the new domain as I have published most of its content today, its only DA18 but should help push crawlers to it as a minimum.
• Ordered 3 >DA50 Guest Posts for this new domain.
  
• Reached out to two webmasters I have worked with previously for niche edits, one replied quickly and the link is now live on a DA24 domain and still waiting for the other to reply.
  
• Pinned the images for the articles to Pinterest but I have no idea if I'm doing it right, kept hitting some rate limit thing too but it doesn’t seem to have banned or ghosted my domain. I think it was just because I was doing the pins for all of the articles at once.
  
• Posted my first promotional quora answer for the domain just to see if they remove it or not. My current plan is to post one none promotional answer to a question to everyone answer I post linking to my domain to try keep it diluted and prevent the account from being banned or my domain being ghosted or blacklisted. I am hoping to make at least one Quora promotional post per day but time will tell.
  
• All articles on the domain are now live with its launch wordcount as below.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 970 words - Outsourced test article on Upwork.
  
• Article 2 - 2091 Words.
  
• Article 3 - 2078 Words.
  
• Article 4 - 993 Words. - Test order with an Upwork writer, excellent content for the price, reached out about pushing more 2000 word articles their way.
  
• The other webmaster that I reached out to yesterday got back to me and the link is live on a DA45 domain.
• Ordered 100 manual forum links.
  
• Put some test orders in on iwriter to see if I can scale that way and reached out to my writers on Upwork for recommendations for new writers.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1019 Words - Outsourced
  
• Article 2 - 1665 Words.
  
• Article 3 - 1145 Words - Outsourced
  
• Article 4 - 991 Words - Outsourced
• Article 5 - 1004 Words - Outsourced
  
• Article 6 - 1942 Words - Outsourced
  
• Article 7 - 1789 Words.
  
• Upgraded to the $99 a month Surfer SEO plan from their trial as I like their content editor.
  
• Did a bit more keyword research for a sub-niche I found while researching one of my articles.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 2943 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 2 - 1980 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 3 - 1500 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 4 - 994 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 5 - 1996 Words.
  
• Article 6 - 1912 Words.

 

[Strickland]

Hey Shaunm,
Thanks for this thread, I really hope you keep it updated, I've been looking into organic traffic for a while and have already learnt alot from your posts. The problem is my brain is now full of questions Google can't answer so I hope you don't mind if I fire a couple your way

First off, do you have a rough idea how many articles you plan to publish, you've already done over 50 in under two weeks, surely you can't sustain that can you?

Second, If you found an expired domian name that fits your niche and has relevant seo and traffic, would you consider it a worthwhile investment or is that a lazy way forward?

Thanks and good luck.

 

[shaunm]

Update

• Article 1 - 1048 Words - Outsourced.
  
• Article 2 - 1775 Words.
  
• Article 3 - 1979 Words.
  
• Not sure if there is a Pinterest sandbox or if my domain is black listed or something because the analytics is showing 1 impression and nothing else. I will leave it a few weeks I think and just keep on adding new pins and see if anything else happens.
• My new domain has been approved for adsense, just waiting for them to detect the ads.txt and start serving ads on the site to see what kind of place auto ads creats.

Hey Shaunm,
Thanks for this thread, I really hope you keep it updated, I've been looking into organic traffic for a while and have already learnt alot from your posts. The problem is my brain is now full of questions Google can't answer so I hope you don't mind if I fire a couple your way

First off, do you have a rough idea how many articles you plan to publish, you've already done over 50 in under two weeks, surely you can't sustain that can you?

Second, If you found an expired domian name that fits your niche and has relevant seo and traffic, would you consider it a worthwhile investment or is that a lazy way forward?

Thanks and good luck.

Cheers dude.

1. I think I have about 900 keywords that I have manually checked for this project and are ready to be actioned and about another 4000 that have been through initial filtering but need manually checking, average search volume for the 900 keywords that are ready to go is just below 600 monthly organic searches. I also have a bunch of ideas for future keywords too, planning on trying to keep on scaling this project up for 3 years or more depending on how it goes.
2. Nope, I haven't used PBNs or repurposed domains since 2017. In my experience, the Fred update pretty much stopped that stuff from working and killed all of my PBN supported domains as well as the ones my friends had too.