2 Years At Wealthy Affiliate
Just got a notice I've been at Wealthy Affiliate for 2 year which is pretty crazy.
Here's what I've learned and gone through:
When I started 2 years ago I've never heard of affiliate marketing, seo, keywords and never really thought how Goggle worked before.
I started a health website that went nowhere. I kept with it for a year and just couldn't gain traction. I think I made one sale in 12 months. Not good lol
Then I came across a post that changed things around for me:
http://www.viperchill.com/goog...
Basically this guy said he got a lot of traffic from finding keywords with the year in them. So best lawnmowers 2017 would be easy to rank for, converts at a high rate and gets a lot of traffic.
My Second Website - Fast Results And A Faster Fall
After I read this article I started researching other websites and people were making a killing using this strategy of using the year in their best of lists. I gave up on my first website and started a new sports website.
The only problem was I started in August. It takes about 5 months to see results. If I made best of lists with 2016 in them they'd show up in December when the year would turn to 2017.
So I held off until September and got the idea to write best of lists for winter sports with 2016-2017 in the title. I figured winter sports spill into the new year and I could get credit for both and I was right.
From September to mid November I focused on best of lists for winter sports here was my results:
Month 1 in August: $1 earned
Month 2 in September - $20 earned
Month 3 in October - $60 earned
Month 4 November - $120 earned
Month 5 in December - $1350 earned
Month 6 in January - $2360 earned
Month 7 in February - $1800 earned
So as you can see things just kind of took off.
From Mid November all the way to March I focused on keywords with 2017 in them.
I wrote 3 times the amount of content and I was fully expecting to hit around $5000 a month by summer and $10,000 by winter
And then it happened.. Goggle Fred Update in March
Here's what happened:
I only had best of lists with affiliate links in them. No other content and the best of lists were around 1800 words for 12 affiliate links.
That doesn't look good to Goggle. Their Fred update targeted websites like mine. They didn't it like it when you put revenue ahead of user experience and according to their algorithm that's what I was doing.
I lost all my ranking and my earnings quickly dropped to around $200 per month.
Lesson Learned - Third Website Up And Running
I decided to start over instead of trying to save the website. I sold it on Flippa for $2000 and used that money to start a new sports website.
So around May I started writing extremely long best of lists for winter sports (so 2017-2018 keywords). My content is around 5,000 words to 8,000 words now and I outsourced a bunch of non-affiliate content too. So half my content is best of lists and the other half is "how to" content.
So that's where I'm at. I wrote a TON of content that should make money this fall and winter. I left myself a lot of time this year so I don't get penalized and I have probably double the amount of content this time around than I did last year.
My keywords are sitting in nice spots right now and are only going to go up.
I'm expecting this winter to be more than last winter and I'm hoping to be over 5K by next summer. I think I'll truly get a full time business this time. I'm confident and I know what I'm doing.
***Update***
My website is doing better than I could have hoped for. For December, which is the 7 month, it looks like I'll be around 5K for the month.
If you want to copy my strategy I highly recommend that you do, especially right now. Start researching 2018 keywords and create lengthy best of lists (around 250 to 400 words per product). So if you're doing 13 best lawnmowers 2018 your post should be around 4,000 words. You'll want a short 600 to 800 word buyer guide too.
You can learn more about the strategy here:
Sign up for the training there, it's free.
If you have ANY questions please let me know and I'll help out. I've learned so much this last year and I'm eager to help!
Recent Comments
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Hi Dylan. Just want to stop by and thank you for the awesome free training you mentioned here. I've finished the training and I can say the it's a true eye opener. While WA is the best for beginners with step by step instructions, this training is brings it to a whole new level - especially for Amazon affiliates.
I'm currently writing my first "best of" post and trying to get some backlinks. If there is a thing that I don't quite agree with the training is on Semrush. I believe Ahrefs is a better and more comprehensive tool for competitor and keyword research (and much better than jaaxy imo).
Cheers!
Hey Isaac! I agree that training is excellent for Amazon affiliates.. I actually found the guy's website if you want to look at it: https://elitegamingcomputers.com/
I honestly don't use anything but the free keyword tool here at WA. I should look into Ahrefs though because I want to start building links
Thanks for sharing his site buddy! You really should check out Ahrefs. It's quite expensive with starter plan at $99/mth but the amount of data is outstanding.
Btw Dylan, I noticed that his guide has ratings for products. Is it required to put ratings next to our best lists? What do you think about it?
I put a rating but I don't have a star system.
I'll do something like this
Title of the product in H3 heading
company: company name
Rating: 4.8/5
Price: $$$$
Then I write my description of the product. After I put "Take a closer look at (insert product name)" and link it to Amazon
I do this for each each product listed.
I don't do anything fancy and I seem to convert pretty well.
Hey Isaac and Dylan.
I went through the training too (almost done) and I have a serious question for you. Brent heavily focuses on backlinks being super important for rankings.
But I remembered Kyle perspective that backlinks actually not good for rankings: Are Backlinks Good for Rankings? Nope. I am confused to be honest. What do you think of Kyle's post??
You don't need backlinks as long as you write quality best of posts.. 3,000 words per 10 products and you'll be fine. I haven't created a single back link and I get around 650 views a day and I'm only at the 6 month mark.
650 views a day is impressive! And that's enough to make around $1-2k, right? I assume it's all organic visitors too?
I am so forever thankful I came across you - I started a new site and working on my first best of post - because there are different products and around 200-300 words per each, it doesn't seem as tiring!
That's why I was pretty reluctant writing reviews on a regular basis because there's so much to cover on one program/product/subject and it gets a bit, well, annoying lol
Yep, it gets me around 1k to 2k. It's all from from Google. I'm hoping to get those numbers way up in the next year.
I feel the same way about reviews. It's way easier writing a 3,000 word best of post then a1,000 word single review.
HUGE thanks to you, Dylan!! You've inspired me. I've been getting pretty small income this whole time and I started getting discouraged a bit. (Although, better than nothing). But, seems like I just needed a new strategy to make more money.
I went a full year before making a dime. I switched up my strategy to this one and changed my niche. Next thing I knew I was making 2k a month in 6 months!
Thanks for your feedback again, man. I'm reading your post here and found the "year" thing interesting. I sort of intuitively got that I should add a year to my review, because when I search online for reviews, a lot of the top results have the year in them. Do you think this works if you actually change the year in the keywords themselves as the years change?
Let's say you have a 2017 review post on a product that's still selling and will continue to sell as time goes on. When next year comes, do you change the year in the title to 2018? Or does it confuse Google? Or do you just write a brand new review again for the same product for 2018?
I would switch it to 2018 and google should know. You might want to update it a little (add 1 or 2 more laptops), this way google will look at the post again. When ever you add content to an old post google takes notice.
That's what I plan to do atleast. You have a good website, though, and you should keep going.
Take a look at the examples of successful affiliate websites I wrote about in one my previous blog posts (I wrote two of them). You'll see websites getting a ton of traffic doing what you're doing - you just have to stick with it
Here's the post. 10 Examples Of Very Successful Affiliate Marketing Websites There's one website where someone reviews computer monitors and gets 2 millions views a month!
No problem. The free training I recommended at the bottom is worth looking at too. The guy makes around $200,000 a year as an Amazon affiliate and he's in niche that's similar too (he does gaming computers),
Hi, man thanks for sharing these and congratulations for 2 years :)
Seriously a long time I checked your posts on here and these actually helped me ;) Thanks for that.
I actually knew about fred and well when that happened my site was so new and I actually did not know anything about it. But lately, I have been thinking about what should be the good (how to content / review). I write 1 informative content and 2 review type for a very long time and I think it works but do you think is it a good ratio? My content actually depends on the subject I have 700 words of content and I also have 3500 words of content too.
What do you think about it?
Hey thanks for the comment. I think you're doing fine. I really stuffed my content with affiliate links and it hurt me.
My new website is doing well and I've lengthened my content so much that I'm pretty sure it'll avoid any penalties. Plus, 40 percent of my content is now "how to"
My advice is this:
Over 750 words for how to articles and individual reviews.
And if you ever do a best of list I would try and get to 3,000 words per 10 affiliate links. So 10 best shampoos for dry hair would be 3,000 words (writing a short 600 to 800 word buyer guide and adding to the post makes it easier to get to those numbers).
Make sure to check out the free training I recommend in those posts at this website:
http://incomeaddon.com/
This guy makes a lot of money doing exactly what I do and I think he recommends the best content strategy.
alright man, that is what I think I used to write 2000+ words for best of lists and for a month or so I wrote 3000+ words for best of lists. And I will add up more content in old 2000 words best of articles.
I will definitely have a look at it, thanks, man hope you will reach all of your goals :)
Thanks for sharing this and congratulations on 2 years! I really appreciate how you've outlined your experience and the strategy that is working for you now. Hopefully you're headed to great success this time around!
I'll definitely look into the links you've advised, Dyla. First of all, you may feel you've stumbled, but I take my hat off to you for making what I call substantial earnings. And for reinventing yourself three times over!
I've been here nearly 18 months, where I started seeing small earnings since last autumn till this June. Since then, nothing. But I'm also aware that I'm not producing nor marketing half as much as I should.
My new short term goal is to be able to write a two year post next March, where I can tell my successful story as you just did today. Well done!!!
Giulia
Definitely check out the bottom link and sign up for the free training. That guys makes 200k a year being an Amazon affiliate doing exactly what we do.
I'm not really discouraged either. I'm pretty sure I know what Google wants and how to avoid penalties from here on out. It took failing a few times but I think I got it this time around.
What niche are you in if you don't mind me asking?
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If I create a website using this strategy, should I target keywords with 2018 at the end since it takes time to rank? (by that time it will be 2018) Or should I still use 2017-2018?
Thanks!
I only used 2017-2018 because my keywords were winter sport related, so the season is in both. Definitely put 2018 at the end. Make sure not to put 2018 in the url, though. Only the title.
So in goggle it'll like this: Best "keyword" 2018 but the url will just say best "keyword."
This way when 2019 comes around you just have to switch the 2018 to 2019 without writing the entire post over (you'll want to update it a little but it's better than having to start from scratch).
Now is the perfect time to start for this strategy too.
What's your niche btw? Maybe I can help
Thank you for all the information!
I am still deciding on my niche. I want to spend a week or two researching and learning the best strategies and best niches before I start.
Sure thing! Let me know