($4,899 For 16 HOURS Work) How Many Words? How Many Articles? How Much Time?
So, after engaging in conversation in Live Chat about the length of my blog posts… Hahahaha!!
Guess What?
I’m just gonna give it to you straight.
No RAMBLING NONSENSE!!
No Pretty Images!!
No Funny Stuff!!
(I can’t promise on that last one,... actually I can't promise any of the above, LOL)
Let Me Tell You a QUICK Story
Something that I often do is to purchase a domain name and then quickly whack out a few articles and then LEAVE that website alone for ONE YEAR.
I then see what has happened, and look to either move the site forward, or even potentially sell it.
On one such occasion I made a website in the relationship niche.
More specifically about How to Get Your Ex Back.
For anyone who has been doing this for any particular length of time, they’ll know that there were literally HUNDREDS of “How to Get Your Ex Back” affiliate programs, and this was a HUGE money-spinning niche for MANY years, and still is.
A great way to create a niche website is to find a topic whereby the people in that niche have a specific problem, and you then write articles to SOLVE these problems.
So, I set about writing 12 articles, yes just TWELVE articles around this subject.
The only form of monetization were a few Clickbank Banners for relevant products.
The 12 articles were around 800-1200 words and in total it probably took me around 16 hours to write, add ONE featured image, add ONE relevant YouTube video to each article, and then publish.
I then left the website to it, and NEVER checked any stats at all.
One year later I checked the website.
The previous month I had received approximately 14,000 visitors.
Over the course of the year my Clickbank banners had produced 4 sales at a total of approximately $136.
I then added Ezoic ads to the website, left it for a couple more months, earning on average $150 per month.
Eventually, I put the website up for sale on Flippa and before the 30 days auction were up I accepted an offer of $4,899.
JOB DONE.
Experimental website that took 16 hours to produce, left alone for a year with NO MORE CONTENT added, and then selling it for nearly $5,000.
THIS IS NOT THE POINT OF THIS BLOG POST
The point I wish to make, which I have made MANY, MANY, MANY times before
IS
This business DOES NOT work on LINEAR PROGRESSION..
What do I mean by this?
Okay, I get it, if you’re new you want to know specifics.
Plus, the way in which Kyle and Carson have created THEIR NICHE WEBSITE (yes, you do realise that Wealthy Affiliate is in fact a NICHE WEBSITE - just goes to show where you can take ONE niche website to if you carry on working on it for 17 years), it is specifically aimed at doing everything in a particular way.
This is absolutely fine, as Kyle and Carson’s NICHE isn’t specifically just Affiliate Marketing.
If you look at how the training is laid out and the way the videos and instructions work, Kyle & Carson’s INITIAL niche was people looking to make money online who have NO EXPERIENCE in this field.
In fact, I would go as far to say that their NICHE even encompasses “People With Very Basic Computer Skills”.
There’s nothing wrong with that, we ALL have to start somewhere.
However, you do realise that being in business and being an entrepreneur doesn’t always mean you follow a specific path.
YOU MUST START TO THINK FOR YOURSELF.
However, the way in which the training is laid out is PERFECT for those who have very little computer experience and even less online marketing experience.
That being said, and this something I see Eric say ALL THE TIME, this is a CONSTANT LEARNING PROCESS.
Basically, you should be educating yourself EVERY SINGLE DAY.
When you take care of your education and personal development on a daily basis (irrespective of what you do in life, e.g. affiliate marketing, lawyer, builder, unemployed, etc). You soon start to see that LIFE IN GENERAL doesn’t work in a linear fashion.
What I mean by this is that just because you do X amount of work you shouldn’t expect X amount of results.
The exact same can be said for THIS BUSINESS.
I often see members asking:
- How Many Words Should Each Article Be?
- How Many Articles Should I Write a Week?
- How Much TIme Will This Take?
I gave an example in a previous blog post:
“How Many Times Do You Have to Swing an Axe to Knock Down a Tree?”
Do you honestly believe there is a specific number?
The same can be said for affiliate marketing, blogging, etc.
There is NO PERFECT NUMBER to aim for.
Diane wrote yesterday about Google Potentially Preferring Shorter Articles.
I guess this is in line with how human beings are in the Informational Age (the last 2 decades).
There’s no two ways about it, we have become more naive, delusional, attention-seeking, and in need of INSTANT GRATIFICATION than EVER before in human history.
Basically, we’re ALL a bunch of spoiled little brats, yes I include myself in this, LOL.
Trust me, when you’re dealing with OTHER human beings and their EMOTIONS, there is NO PERFECT NUMBER, so please stop looking for it.
You write an article until you have said what needs to be said so that your reader has ALL the information they require on that subject.
That’s it.
If you do that in 500 words, and it’s of good quality, then fine.
If it takes you 20,000 words, once again fine.
The main thing being, DON’T WRITE TO SATISFY A CERTAIN WORD COUNT.
Do you know what all these questions about words, number of articles, how much time, etc. says to me.
It says, YOU ARE STILL LOOKING FOR A PUSH-BUTTON SYSTEM?
- You STILL believe there is something MAGICAL about 1,500-word articles (please DON’T quote this figure in the comments below, it’s an EXAMPLE).
- You believe there is something magical about posting 2-3 times a week.
- And you believe there is something magical about 3 months, 6 months, or 12 months.
SORRY!!
THERE ISN’T!!
Remember, you are dealing with HUMAN BEINGS.
Here’s another example.
Someone reads your article, clicks your affiliate link, is about to make a purchase… and their phone rings.
They have a long conversation with a friend, laugh and joke, and then go and meet up with their friend.
Two days later, they remember they were going to purchase something, but remember the exact name of the product and go directly to Amazon.
They purchase it and they are HAPPY.
Unfortunately, YOUR 24-hour cookie has run out, you receive NO COMMISSION.
You see this example above here, this is looking at the HUMAN ELEMENT.
Not everything in life runs in a linear fashion.
Not everything in life has an exact meaning.
The more you try to find these “exacts” and “perfect numbers”, the more frustrated you’re going to become.
Believe it or not, this is true in EVERY walk of life.
When you’re dealing with human beings there are so many other factors at play.
Another way to look at it, if you are working to EXACT NUMBERS and hoping everything progresses in a LINEAR fashion.
- It took you 100 articles of 1,000 words and 6 months to earn your first commission of $10.
- Does this mean that you will have to write 1,000 articles with a total of 1,000,000 words over the course of 5 years to earn $100?
- Does this mean that you will have to write 10,000 articles with a total of 10,000,000 words over the course of 50 years to earn $1,000?
OF COURSE IT DOESN’T
Life doesn't work in EXACTS or in a LINEAR FASHION.
Stop looking for that magic button, because trust me, that is what you are still doing, whether you want to admit it to yourself or not!!
(oh btw, not EVERY time I write 12 articles do I receive 14,000 MONTHLY visitors, I've done it with LESS, but usually it takes MUCH MORE <===Are You Getting it Yet? THERE ARE NO EXACTS - STOP LOOKING FOR THEM).
If you want me to be 100% Honest (No-One else will EVER tell you this)
If you are completely new to this, unless you are an extremely gifted individual (and I mean REALLY gifted, not just THINKING you are), the likelihood is your first website isn’t going to go anywhere.
Why?
Because you’ll make mistakes along the way, you’ll get frustrated, you’ll stop working, you are still looking for EXACTS, LINEAR PROGRESSION, and a PUSH-BUTTON MIRACLE.
It is the people who LEARN from these mistakes that will succeed.
I wouldn’t say every time, but I would hazard a guess that MOST successful people in this business will have had a “failed website”, possibly many.
But, do know what they didn’t give up, they continually educated themselves and they stopped looking for EXACTS.
Remember, LIFE and HUMAN BEINGS don’t work in this way.
Final Thoughts
If you really want to succeed, you should ENJOY THE JOURNEY, and not solely concentrate on the DESTINATION.
If you’re not enjoying the journey, then perhaps this business ISN’T FOR YOU.
Then again, it’s probably because even though you won’t admit to yourself, you are STILL LOOKING FOR A PUSH-BUTTON SYSTEM.
- There is no perfect number of words per article.
- There is no perfect number of articles per day, per week, per month, per year.
- There is no specific amount of time this will take.
(Not to put too fine a point on it, you do realise there are people who have been doing this for a number of years, who have 100s, possible 1000s of articles, and still don't earn enough to pay for their membership? There NO EXACTS)
Once you understand this, and if you’re willing to carry on with your journey, you are actually MUCH CLOSER to success than you were with your previous mindset.
Finally, if you are still struggling after a fair amount of time in this business, I would day your biggest issue is STILL keyword research.
Your keyword research is CRAP, sorry, but it is.
I have spent well over 300 hours writing and publishing blog posts HERE at WA about Keyword Research and SEO.
Reading them, half-reading them, reading them and then moaning but not taking any action - NONE of these things will work.
Are you an entrepreneur or simply someone looking for a push-button system?
There are NO Exacts, NO Linear Progression, NO perfect results - STOP LOOKING FOR THEM.
If you want to succeed, learn, fail, learn some more, overcome frustrations, don't let the negative voice in your head lead to another day of no work, learn even more, stop looking for a push-button system, keep pushing forward, learn some more.
Thank You For Reading
Partha
P.s. YES, I KNOW!!! Don't Start Old Fluff & PHILIP, I know this is longer than 800 words, but I reeeeeaaaalllly tried!!! Hahahahaha!!
Recent Comments
106
My first website had I known Partha's method back then may have seen some success a lot earlier.... Still after 2 1/2 years it is doing ok.
Now my 3rd site (In the Coffee Niche), following Partha's methods to the letter is a little over 6 months old and Is already getting 3 x the traffic my 1st site gets, and is regularly earning me a few hundred dollars a month purely on sales (No adsense, no ezoic) just affiliate sales.
I will continue to develop more niche websites using this tried and tested method, and thanks ole mate for always having the time to give a detailed, human response (Woops that was another of your blogs LOL)
Mark, my experience is very similar to yours, using Prince Partha's Potions. 🙂
They work!
I am currently reconfiguring my WA MMO site and starting a new website in the Coaching Niche.
PPPs are being applied to both sites and the progress is refreshing.
Wishing you continued success.
Cassi
Hi Partha,
I totally agree with your conclusion. There is no one size fits all kind of solution.
We never know which one of our posts will hit the jackpot. It depends on the impact it has on the most number of readers. That’s why I feel people advise to write a LOT of posts.
All it takes is a few to strike a chord with people in your target market to burst the money dam. Once we find out what kind of posts we write draw the most readers and click throughs, only then we can duplicate those kinds of posts to increase our income.
Of course, the better our quality of research, the probability of striking gold will occur sooner. And perhaps with fewer posts.
Thanks for writing this insightful article Partha.
Edwin
Bud you just cracked my head wide open. Talk about a mind hack! I guess being a victim of shiny object syndrome for so long I assumed there was only one way to create a successful blog. Now I see that as long as certain parameters are met according to web standards and good key word research everything should turn out at least ok. Thanks.
After 45 minutes writing a comment to this and accidently touching the screen somewhere I can't see and deleted my entire message I am out of time, But there is a whole other group of people that you are excluding that are not trying to bleed you dry with getting free stuff. They just don't trust ANYBODY and need to see what you are really providing and they have extremely limited incomes or resources to get started. If they had more to start with they wouldn't come here. They would invest it directly into starting a conventional business. Raising fees to get access to services I already had access to when they went to 99.00 made me feel like I was suddenly being excluded for what I was already paying for and there was no real added value for the change. It looked like pure greed. Don't get me wrong, I have been here for three years trying to follow everyone's methods and I'm still trying to make it work with every moment I can spare from my day job. But you want to know what it looks like. I'm not trying to complain or to promote either way. I'm trying to say what it looks like from this side of the screen. Remember user intent.
Partha you never cease to amaze me with your generosity of spirit with sharing your valuable insights and information.
I've been away for a while, but I'm back now and ready to catch up on all your tutorials that I've missed out on these past few months!
This share is so true. I'm still a beginner (yes even after all these years) and still not making an income, but I've already realised that the journey may be longer or it may be shorter (shorter for others that is lol) but that I'm in this now and I'm not going to just stop and give up. Oh no.
So now it's time to apply some more Partha lessons to my site (and oh if you can recommend any other super online platforms/sources for learning, please let me know as I'm hungry to learn more and more).
Thank you so much for continually giving us so much of value to think about.
Soraya x
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1853 words, to be precise, but nothing could be left out from this much-needed and honest post.
I am quite happy to admit that my first website was a dismal failure.
I diligently wrote 30 posts in about 10 weeks, of around 1000 to 1500 words, and relied on my years of expertise in copywriting to see success.
But my keyword research was terrible, so no matter how convincing my writing was, people were just not searching for the topics.
In effect, I was writing for myself, and I had lost focus on who my reader was.
And yes, it was an Amazon site, and I didn't hit the 3 sales target in 6 months and had to re-apply after being removed from the program.
But I didn't give up, realizing I had so much more to learn, and I began to subscribe to SEO blogs, watch YouTube videos from experts, and educate myself.
I have never stopped learning over the last few years, and continue to do so every day and have numerous notebooks filled with my findings.
If you do only one thing after reading Partha's post, take a look at his keyword research methods and set yourself on the path to success. The ULTIMATE Guide to Keyword Research PART ONE (Inside Partha's Mind)
Yep, we've ALL been there, LOL.
It's usually the excitement of doing something new... until you realise that you may not be doing it right.
But, as you've said, you better educated yourself in the process and moved forward from there.
Partha
Muy buena experiencia compartida, te felicito por tu determinación. Así es que se hace.
¡Gracias por probar nuestra comprensión del español!
Gracias a Google Translate, pude refrescar mi comprensión de su comentario.
Estoy de acuerdo, Diane es de hecho un muy buen ejemplo de determinación seguida de éxito.
Blessings
Johan
It is pretty amazing though...following Partha's keyword method for the last few months - the same exact keywords WA says have zero traffic are all articles now getting regular traffic for me. So glad I stuck with your method!
You are a wise man. Your mother did well.
Darutin honrado por tu comentario,.Este proyecto es una gran oportunidad que debemos de aprovechar.
De nada.
Te deseo lo mejor.
Johan