I've only been taking it really
seriously for a couple of months and and
yeah I did okay before that but if I had
started with a much better plan from the
beginning I feel like I could be so much
you just heard Evan and Evan is another
success story interview he basically
doubled his traffic and doubled his
revenue by using the keyword golden
ratio you're gonna hear a story in this
episode my name is Doug Huntington this
is the Doug show in this episode episode
I think 14 Evan is going to tell us
about his affiliate site his affiliate
site is partially monetized with Amazon
Associates and then he has some other
affiliate programs and there too what
are the cool things about this site is
that it was about 14 months old at the
time that we recorded this interview he
was working on it for a little while but
wasn't taking it super seriously for a
bit it's really relatable because that's
a very common thing to happen where
maybe you start a site you get some
traction and by the way Evan was doing
really well making like 1,500 to 2,000
bucks a month for a stretch and
basically once he started pouring on
more keyword golden ratio content he was
getting a lot more traction now a little
behind the scenes I recently caught up
with Evan in the early part of 2019 so I
have an update interview coming up in a
few episodes so please do keep an eye
out for that it's he's he's still
growing a site basically things are
going great for today in this interview
we'll just be looking at talking about
the initial content sprint that got Evan
close to about 4,000 bucks a month let's
send it over to the interview and I'm
gonna answer some questions at the end
[Music]
hey Doug Huntington here and I'm sitting
with my friend Evan how are you today
hey thanks for contacting me and letting
me know the success that you're having
with your Amazon affiliate sites so
before we get into the details can you
just share the results that you've seen
just in the last couple months here yeah
definitely so my site is actually a
little bit older it's about 14 months
old started as a hobby site
I wanted to monetize it eventually but I
had no real plans or her strategy for
that so you know I did a couple things
here and there and it got myself to a
certain level but I was kind of stuck
and it was in about February late
February that I started kind of pouring
on the kgr I was decided to go all-in
since then I've written about 50 to 55
kg our posts since that point so it's
been about three months each traffic has
roughly doubled I was getting about a
thousand visitors a day and now it's
about two thousand and the revenue is
shot up oh you know as well you know in
February I think I made about $600 this
month I could hit 4k depending on how
things go it's been a good start to the
month so that's in the cards I'm hoping
gone through the roofs been great I'll
quickly summarize here the site's about
14 months old June of 2018 right now and
it looks like you could hit 4k this
month and it's been since you've been
putting about 50 keyword golden ratio
compliant articles up traffic has
doubled sounds like you're at about 60 K
per month over the last month or so yeah
exactly
congratulations that's a huge feat I
mean some people that's like you know
they're thinking about quitting their
job and stuff like that but before we go
down that road why don't you just
introduce yourself let us know your
background what do you do for your day
job that sort of thing sure sure so yeah
my background I guess in some ways is
tailor-made for this I I'm background
writing I'm a writer by trade I've
always run my own blogs and written for
you know the school newspaper and then I
got into copywriting back in 2012 worked
for a digital agency eventually ended up
running content strategy and content
marketing there and copywriting and then
eventually I graduated to writing for
like one of the really really big viral
news publishers and so yeah I mean I
have experience like helping smaller
brands for blogs and then also right
content that's optimized for a publisher
with like 13 million Facebook fans so I
kinda have a cool Breathitt experience
there that's really helped me jump into
this I think actually in my day job
which is kind of funny you bring that up
I did quit my job a couple months ago
not for this specifically but I was like
hey you know it's time for a change I'm
gonna move on and and while I'm looking
for a job I'm gonna work on this thought
I would get a job and this would just be
nice side income but this has gone
better than I thought the job hunt has
gone worse than I thought
and where you from by the way I'm in
Atlanta or the suburb of Atlanta called
Marietta so down there in Georgia cool
and that's my old hometown before we
started recording we're chatting about
you know old times sitting in traffic so
in luckily you don't have to commute
because that it would be a nightmare
from Marietta even if you have to just
like go to the other side of Marietta
that's kind of bad too right yeah I used
I used to work in Midtown from you know
from OTP as we call it and that was a
nightmare so now I just tried not to
leave the house at all yeah yeah I mean
that's that's how you got to do it
otherwise it's just a nightmare anyway
so that's cool and I guess you had like
a writing or English background in
college and stuff I didn't study English
but I just like always wrote my own
stuff and built a portfolio and was able
to like get smaller and you know bigger
and bigger writing jobs as I went along
so no formal training but you know
creative writing is I've got a good
background in it nice that's pretty cool
so do you remember when you first heard
about like internet marketing or niche
sites in general yeah it was at my
agency job back in 2012 to 2015 I worked
there and one of my buddies there worked
in SEO one day he told me he was
quitting and I was like oh you know
that's cool what are you doing he's like
yeah I'm gonna run my blog and I'm like
I was like what yeah this guy's the guy
with like a family and a kid and I was
like you're gonna quit to run a blog I
don't understand that's when I first
found out about how he he was using kind
of affiliate marketing and you know left
his full-time job to do it got it I had
no idea how but you know you just heard
of the concept and what year was that by
the way that was a couple years ago
maybe like 2015 okay so pretty pretty
recent overall all right now take us
through the timeline of your site so you
mentioned you started at about 14 months
ago it's a hobby site
you were yeah just take us through the
timeline so yeah so kind of inspired by
my my friend I was like I would you know
I want to do that I don't really know
how but let me start a site based on
something I like and I'll just have an
outlet and you know and I have that
background in blogging and content
marketing and I knew I could write good
articles and get traffic like I knew I
can do that I didn't know how to
monetize I didn't know anything about
Amazon affiliates or affiliate programs
really so I thought I figure that out
later I had a couple of like reviews I
wanted to do based on things in the
niche that I enjoyed and was already
using and so you know I did those and
had some success I mean the site grew I
got traffic you know pre-kg are pre
getting at this stuff I was still at you
know 20 30 K visits a month and doing
pretty well with certain product reviews
but I just kind of was stuck there and
you know was started think about like
how can I take this to the next level
and I've been following you know the kgr
stuff for a couple months and was really
on the fence I was gonna one of those
people was like I don't know is all
title really work and right you know
what if the keyword is this and what is
this and you know I think it was about
that time in February I was like it
sounds good I've seen the other success
stories let me just try it let me write
a couple dozen of these and like see
what happens seeing the success from
each batch that I did like kept me kind
of going you know Here I am very cool
and how many posts did you have on your
site before you started adding kid gr
stuff probably like 20 I actually
haven't counted but yeah around 20 okay
so you had 20 articles over the span of
like a little less than a year maybe 10
months or so yeah and then you've added
like 50 more about how long are those
kids you are posts they're usually about
1500 like 1200 scan of the floor and
then some of them are just barely
cracking mm yeah got it okay that's cool
and basically as soon as you started
publishing them you were out of the
sandbox already you had actually a
pretty good amount of traffic you know
you're getting like what 800 to a
thousand visitors per day right and you
started putting like content that you'd
be able to rank for right away so how
fast would you rank after you would
publish it that's a good question I feel
like it actually took some time for me
like this is something that's kind of
weird and maybe you know about it but
I'm on Squarespace which like if I could
go back in time could go back to
WordPress I would do it but it feels
like it takes my pages a long time to
get indexed I want their index their
ranks okay pretty pretty quickly but it
just seems like it takes like a week or
two for Google to really figure out like
what's going on and
I don't know if that's a Squarespace
thing or not yeah you know I think to be
honest with you I was publishing so much
stuff that I didn't even pay attention I
just like published it and then like I'd
come back three weeks later and have a
look and see like what was going on and
yeah slowly it would happen you know of
course you can go to the Google search
console fetch yeah specific page but I
find it's not necessary unless I make a
specific change
I want to re indexed immediately I just
try to you know just keep moving with
the content make sure my internal links
are good and just kind of let it go
because it gets there you know alright
and once it's once it's indexed like I
said like it's it's usually pretty high
up so and I take it you don't have any
other writers since you're a good writer
yourself but I'll ask anyway yeah no I
had actually used some up work writers
up I mean I can be a little bit Precious
about the content as a writer myself but
I really wanted to scale up and I had to
learn to let go
a tad I tried one writer from up work
like back in March and it just didn't go
very well but then I used kind of some
of your tips about hiring people that
maybe didn't have the big up work
history and just seemed like good smart
people and and that went way better so I
did that in May and that's I was able to
get a lot more work done cool how many
writers did you hire I was working with
two just to start and they probably did
10 to 15 pieces for me oh yeah cool and
yeah that's a good dent and do you
remember what you were paying them
between 15 and 20 bucks for you know the
full article how long it was yeah yeah I
guess there's a writer yourself you
don't want to like beat him up too much
on price and you're like when it give
him a fair wage I'm sure yeah sure well
I gotta use a little bit of what you
talked about about like giving them
raises like for the test article it was
like lower and then sure the next batch
I gave them like a little bit more in
you know yeah in like it's really cool
not to let them know that you're gonna
do that
because then it's like it's like winning
the lottery you're like oh wow that's
crazy it's in you know a scratch-off
it's an extra 10 bucks or whatever yeah
are you continuing to work with them
right now like getting a lot more
content done or what's the situation
they don't they're not working on
anything right this second but yeah I'm
thinking about doing another batch with
them because they did a good job and it
helped me get a lot done so it's just
about how much I want to spend okay cool
now it sounds like you
are working with other affiliate
programs aside from Amazon based on what
you mentioned before so can you tell us
a little bit about that why you are
working with other programs yeah so you
know like I said there was a this I
started as a hobby site and there was
this kind of like sweet informational
products that I used that really helped
me a lot and I noticed that nobody else
except spammers were really writing
concept for them and they had an
affiliate program and so I was like
pretty quickly easy being able to take
over like all the traffic regarding X
reviews for them for all their different
products and as an info product you know
the Commission's can be pretty good
because there's no like physical
physical product there's no overhead for
it so yeah I mean that's been a big
chunk of what I've made but the cool
thing about the kgr is that I've been
able to because those are so profitable
for me I've been able to like use kgr
style articles to funnel even more
relevant people to those reviews that
are earning me a lot of money and so
that's been part of the growth even
though it's not Amazon you know it's a
big contributor right and I think a
couple takeaway so I get questions like
can you use the kgr for X or Y or
whatever so a couple of things that
you're doing differently than a lot of
this standard model it's you're using
Squarespace number one so yours which is
I mean I've never used it but it's
supposed to be easy to use and all that
well I think it's great it's like for
like a landing page or like a static
website blogging it's like it's kind of
a but right so anyway so you're on
Squarespace and you're also doing other
affiliate programs and do are you able
to share like whatever platform or
marketplace you you worked with or
whatever yeah so they've actually kind
of hopped around they were they were
doing their own thing and then they were
on a quick bank and now they're Abdeen
of the website teachable or they people
host courses and so now teachable is
like launching their own affiliate
marketplace and so it's going through
there now and it's like it's early on
yeah so things that you can't change a
lot because this is like a young brand
that I'm working with but they keep
hopping around but you know it's it's
doing well for me so gotcha okay and I
guess it just sounds like the specific
hobby or niche that you're involved in
like there's just good products and you
it sounded like you used the product so
you actually like could write about it
knowledgeably and all that stuff right
yeah for sure for sure it's a it's a
competitive niche but you know I think
that there's little little spaces here
and there you know to fit in and write
them and yeah and it helps being
because you kind of know a little bit
more and you can you can find those
niche topics sure I know you told me the
niche so I know what it is and other
people don't but I was gonna say it is
competitive and it's like super
impressive that in 14 months
you can like ramp up a site you're
heading for 4k hopefully this month in
June so it's a competitive space I can I
can tell people that so very cool now
link building did you get into link
building at all or what's the situation
there I have done kind of one link
building push and this was pre-kg are
anything like that but I did a kind of a
guest Oh graphic approach I had someone
on up work make an infographic for me it
actually turned out really cool and I
did some outreach for it and yeah I got
a couple of links nothing nothing like
really impressive the niche is like very
branded like it's everyone's kind of
like a guru expert like people aren't
really linking to each other's content a
lot so link building is a little bit
tough in this niche is I didn't go
amazing but I got a couple a couple
there here and there and and yeah it's I
think it's something that should revisit
though gotcha actually again this is
because I know the knit I have an idea
where you can go outside the niche but
there's some overlap where I think you
may have good traction so afterwards
yeah so it sounds like you didn't do
much link building and you know the
power of the cagey are like carries the
organic traffic so that's cool do you do
much on the the social side any platform
so you're active on or anything like
that I'm actually really bad at social
media in general so I'm not good at like
running these accounts but I do I do get
a good influx of social traffic from you
know people who stumble upon my content
and there's there's one owner core
article in particular that every once in
a while I don't know how exactly it
happens but it gets these huge Facebook
spikes up like thousands of visitors a
day and you know it's hard to track down
where that's coming from like you can I
know you can go into Facebook and put
the URL in but it doesn't always give
you everything and just wanna like thank
the people who work there
yeah yeah there's so many like just
little or actually really large like
Facebook groups that yeah I mean if
somebody shares something can go viral
in that group and you may not even I
mean there's no access to it you have to
be like at it in so yeah sure exactly I
think maybe that's a selling point for
like doing really really solid
informational content because that kind
of thing can
you know we will happen organically cool
now on page a sort of SEO and how you
lay it out for you know an affiliate
post are you using like native ads or
buttons tables like how do you set that
up yeah I use the tables with the HTML
table generator that you've talked about
that has really helped like adding those
to the top of most of my kgr pieces um
it's helped me get way more clicks over
to Amazon I mean like I've learned
anything from like this and my time at
you know big big viral publishers that
people don't want to read anything they
really just like want to skim and and
find what they need I remember when I
was writing that kind of viral news
stuff like we would we would sometimes
have our h2s tell the entire story so
that you didn't have to even read the
rest because that's up that's just how
people do it so having like having
tables is great and I don't use buttons
but I usually just like text calls to
action that are the stand out in some
way yeah cool all right that's exactly
what I do is like buns are just a little
little extra but yeah it doesn't really
matter and it sounds like no native ads
at all I tried some here and there and I
just see a return on it so I was like
yeah yeah same here I find that it just
comes off a little more salesy versus
the text call-to-action where you could
you let them know that they're heading
over to get more information or whatever
so yeah it's kind of like throwing
spaghetti at the wall it's like
hopefully one of these products you like
and just throw you know it's like it's a
little bit much for me yeah exactly and
at the end of the day ends up being a
lot more affiliate links like in a small
section which as you know can be
problematic by the way how many
affiliate links you usually put like on
say a thousand word two thousand word
post yeah I've really brought it down I
used to do a lot like I had basically
every mention of the product would be
linked but now I've really stripped it
out and at the top I usually will do
like a little bulleted list of like you
know here's the best budget best
mid-range best high end of this those
are linked the tables linked and then
maybe just one at the end and that's
kind of it okay cool it sounds like you
watched a couple of the webinars that
I've done yeah for sure
less is more I think and and and that's
that's kind of interesting too like I
used to think that not necessarily
saying it was going to Amazon was if it
was better and maybe it was like let's
say
and more subtle but it's actually a good
thing to be like hey this is if you want
to buy it here's where you go you know
like something to open up a new window
and just look for it on their own like
it's very clear right yeah Bittan really
in life you want to like meet
expectations right yeah we're
disappointed when the expectation is
different than reality so if they're
like oh yeah I'm gonna read more about
whatever product yeah but and they think
they're going to another page on your
site and then they're like it's in my
cart like why yeah okay so when I got
started I made a lot of mistakes in fact
I still make mistakes all the time
they're just much bigger now so did you
make any mistakes as you were coming up
that you learned something from you
wanna share yeah I think I could think
of a couple I mean I wish that I had a
plan from the beginning honestly because
I started you know this is 14 months old
I've only been taking it really
seriously for a couple months and and
yeah I did okay before that but if I had
started with a much better plan from the
beginning I feel like I could be so much
further along even just if I had started
kgr when I first saw your video on it
like but I feel like I want that I lost
like precious time because you know it
does take months for this stuff - like
really ramped up you know and you can be
if you just start now you know in a
couple months from now you'll be way far
ahead versus if you sit on the fence and
think about it that was a big one I mean
I just wish I had started with a
strategy yeah the other thing I think is
when I was starting with kgr I thought
like okay you know we're gonna get this
kind of trickle of traffic at first and
it's gonna slowly build so let me go
after like the most expensive things in
my niche that I can possibly find right
because that's gonna make me the most
money right but but it's true what they
say that there's kind of a sweet spot of
like what people will buy online quickly
things that are $2,000 are just the
decision cycles just too long and I mean
you can get commissions on that but it's
harder so that kind of like 50 to 150 or
200 range is just a much better place to
be or even below that honestly is fine
but you don't want to miss out on on the
can you know having the better
conversion rate because you're going
after these crazy expensive items and I
know I was gonna say I made those same
sort of mistakes where it's like well
yeah you just want to recommend like the
most expensive thing possible because
you'll make more money but there's
definitely a value in in the volume that
you
see I am as I'm so in at this point I'm
just like I'll publish any like or I'll
target any product even if it's only a
couple bucks because I just want Google
to like my site and visitors to be on
the site and that's fine with me
so yeah minimum threshold or anything
like that not really I mean I haven't I
don't think I've done anything less than
like ten bucks but I mean you know I'll
write stuff about products that are ten
twenty thirty bucks I mean yeah it's
like it's something that'll rank and
bring visitors and people will like it
and you're still sending clicks to
Amazon which is great so very cool
Evan you have any questions for me yeah
yeah totally I do you know you've kind
of heard the journey of my site and you
know hopefully we'll hit around 4k this
month maybe a little bit below but I
kind of want to get to that five figures
a month you know that we talked about
and you know the full like living wage
off of this and you know knowing what
you know about like my site in my niche
like would you recommend you know
another huge batch of kgr posts maybe
going after some higher volume stuff or
link building or you know where's my
time best spent like in your opinion do
you think sure first thing don't forget
you have to pay taxes so that's like 40%
out than before so don't forget about
that part
I'm assuming you've already taken that
into account the other thing is you're
getting good traction and I know you
mentioned before like you know you're
sort of you published a bunch of stuff
and you're sort of regrouping right now
you don't have writers working on more
stuff I would say if you do have the
budget to probably you know keep
publishing like more content and you
know I refer back often to when I
published 200 articles and like it took
a little while for everything to come
together but once it did I mean like
skyrocketed and it was way more
profitable than I imagined and I just
reinvested a modest amount of the
earnings each month and was able to you
know pay for it without like any money
out of my pocket so I would say take a
look at that additionally one thing that
I didn't do I'm gonna give you like a
few things
assuming no constraints but I assume
there are constraints so the other part
is I did another sprint like last fall
where I published you know a similar
number of articles in a short amount of
time
and I just happen to have a Content team
ready so that's why I did that
in hindsight I should have probably
spent a little more time on outreach and
link building as well so kgr works
really well even with minimal link
building but if you do link building and
outreach it can be really helpful
especially when you're trying to rank
something more difficult so I would
recommend spending some time on that or
I mean some people would spend time on
social instead although I would say you
know time on the SEO portion is probably
more valuable especially if you're not a
social media kind of person the other
part back to the content is you're
probably starting to rank like number
one for a few posts and you're ranking
well for certain things I would add more
content to those so you'll be able to
attract more longtail keywords if you're
already ranking number one you may think
don't add anything to that it's fine add
more content to that you could take a
look at google search console to see
like what else that specific URL is
ranking for you know if you don't have
any details about that you could add
more information so for example if it's
like you know the best ballpoint pen for
journaling and you see your ranking for
like something about bullet journaling
then you can add a section about bullet
journaling hopefully attract more
longtail traffic to that post it's
already getting a lot of love and then
you'll just get like more traffic to it
so that's one thing you'll do and I
mentioned a couple other things like if
I think you're probably already doing it
but like having more images keyword rich
images can be helpful you know you got
to make sure you take care of the alt
tag the caption and you know the other
information file name and stuff but that
could be helpful just to add more
relevancy around that topic so I would
say doing I mean usually it comes down
to content and link building and this is
you know the same deal I guess to
emphasize don't forget the outreach can
can go a long way especially if you you
know if you focus on like one keyword or
Early's topic that maybe you have a
couple keywords associated with it if
you could focus link building on that
topic that would be great
you may be able to push up like three or
four posts because your sites like more
relevant about that topic okay
interesting yeah when I look back at
like the timeline I think it takes my
belief is there's another sandbox right
there's the same months for a URL
whenever you publish something and I
think it's probably about six months
like if the search volumes over I'm just
making this up on the fly if the search
volumes over like seven twenty I feel
like there's another six month
Sammis right if it's a lower search
volume it's a much shorter sandbox and
there's like fewer you know competitors
out there the point is a lot of times
you know you're seeing good growth now
you just started in February so I would
say for another two months you're gonna
see the same like I have the graph so
I'll show it to people but your curve I
guess it's this direction probably the
curve is gonna continue growing for
probably two months at this like very
like sharp cool to look at earnings
curve and then it will probably taper
out a little bit the really neat thing
is it'll probably you know that'll put
us to August and then it'll probably be
you know another two two and a half
months and then it'll jump again because
of the retail season now if you keep
your foot on the gas and you keep adding
more content like right now there's a
good chance you'll have some kind of you
know continued crazy exponential growth
in the November and December timeframe
which is what I what I saw by the way so
interesting I published 200 articles
between like June around this time to
October or so maybe May to October or
something like that and then it slowly
grew and then you know at the beginning
of that period it was like a thousand
bucks a month and by the end again
retail season it was like fourteen yes
that's the kind of I mean it'll blow
your mind it's really hard to like
anticipate the earnings that you can
really pull in yeah I know for sure I
mean it's funny cuz I feel like I've
been grinding away at content forever
about like like you said it's only been
three months and almost every single
piece that I've written has seen some
growth from like month one to two and
two to three and so like I have all
these ones that I just wrote like are
gonna keep going and going and you know
yeah that's pretty
and Google is like liking your site even
more so by the way did you do do you
have like healthy interlinking
throughout your site like to and from
each article I do I would that's
something I've worked on recently
because I wasn't doing it before but I
was like yeah you know but um but no I
got back in there and I made sure
everything had at least one or two
internal links as well as like outbound
links to quality you know references
online earning,make money online, earn money online, online earning, online earning sites,
make money online free, online money income, earn money online free, money online, best way to earn money online, online income site, money earning websites, best online earning sites, easiest way to earn money online, earn money payment bkash, online money income site
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment