I'm going to tell you why I don't use
private blog networks or PBS my name is
Doug Cummington I'm the founder of niche
site project and I write about Amazon
project management best practices to
make it easier so let's rewind a little
bit I got into internet marketing about
four years ago and well frankly before
that I didn't know anything about
internet marketing I didn't know you
could actually make money online first
of all I didn't know how easy it was
especially back then you know when I
first got into it it was 2013 and I mean
I guess it was easier back then in some
way the landscape has definitely changed
in SEO and I know if you rewind a few
years even before that if you just put
up a website and loaded it up with
keywords you could rank and then a few
years after that things change it's just
the changing landscape but we'll bring
bring us back to 2013 and at that point
I found the smart passive income podcast
in fact I listened to it from episode
one all the way up to you know current
days back then which you know there must
have been 50 or 70 episodes by that time
and I remember I heard the interview
with Spencer Hawes from niche pursuits
and I thought it was super interesting
so I hopped over to the niche pursuits
website and blog and the podcast as well
of course I was super interested in the
whole concept of an Amazon affiliate
site you could imagine if that's where
what I'm still talking about today not
only was I super interested but I got
obsessed with it so at that time they
were Spencer was actually launching
niche pursuits niche site project it was
his niche site project thanks Spencer
for the name idea by the way
I obviously ran with it at the time ties
in with my project management background
so I feel okay using it but nevertheless
your Spencer was launching his first
niche site project he was doing a public
case study and he was documenting
everything I read every single post but
I could everything that he published I
listened to all the podcasts that I can
get my hands on and back then Spencer
was a proponent of private blog networks
it was kind of the leading edge of what
the SEO industry was doing it was sort
of frowned upon it was a gray hat but
even you know people like Pat Flynn and
Spencer we're talking about private blog
networks and you know link pyramids and
link rings and I mean if you go and look
at the smart passive income blog you'll
find you know the SEO that works posts
from 2011 or so had all sorts of what we
consider gray hats and generally
ineffective practices for that time
period or sorry if they're ineffective
now but they were you know what people
use back then so anyway I was following
along with this case study and sort of
launched my online marketing internet
marketing career based on what Spencer
was implementing as I mentioned he was
implementing private blog network so I
did that and in fact it worked great I
was able to you know rank my site for
two fairly large search terms so one of
them I think got about maybe 1,500
searches per month and then the other
got about 6,000 searches per month and I
was able to rank both of those number
one in Google within two or three months
you know nowadays its 2017 when I'm
shooting this right now nowadays it can
take you six months to a year to 18
months depending on how
competitive spaces but 2013 was a
different time you could buy a hot
package with web 2.0 which I did you
could build a private blog network and
then buy other links from other networks
that were out there which I did and I
want to say within like four months or
so I was making over $1,000 a month and
then within I think it was less than six
months it within five months my side
made six thousand four hundred and fifty
two dollars in one month
that was actually December so of course
the retail season is a big you know a
big thing to consider there but
nevertheless I went from you know not
knowing what a niche site was to making
I think that year that first German over
ten thousand dollars just from the
Amazon affiliate program so that was
really cool and I felt great about it I
thought I was going to you know quit my
job real really pretty fast actually and
I'm just you know go all in with this
niche site stuff and then it didn't even
really take that much time I thought
maybe well I'm just going to keep my job
and build these sites on the side and
you know continue getting good benefits
and why not you know be able to save all
that money
great well fast-forward just one more
month so we're talking January of 2014 I
think it was like January 9th or 10th
there was a mail that I received from
the Google Webmaster Tools section and
unfortunately my site was penalized for
unnatural link building so they they
detected unnatural links those were most
likely private blog network links and my
site went from getting I think it was
about 1,300 unique visitors per day to
about a hundred and my income went from
you know a few hundred dollars a day to
like a hundred dollars a month so is a
devastating thing that happened and I
mean it's kind of a story that you hear
over and over again from SEO s I was
making six thousand dollars a day and
then my side got penalized and my all my
income what am i overnight so there's a
little hyperbole a little dramatic on my
part but nevertheless it is quite
possible for this business model to to
bite you in the ass I mean it'll come
out of nowhere and you could be making
$400 a day and then next thing you know
tomorrow 0 so it's quite volatile when
you're depending on you know the Google
algorithm and if you're doing any sort
of thing that violates the Terms of
Service
it puts you at risk so I think you see
where I'm going for me I would prefer a
lower risk situation I'm trying to build
a long term asset through my Amazon
affiliate niche site and I would much
prefer that it takes me longer to rank
than for me to be at risk not knowing if
my site's going to be penalized you know
I just I can't handle that I don't have
the stomach for it anymore now I will
tell you I have a lot of friends that do
use PDS and you know what they make lots
of money now they will tell you it's
higher risk and a lot of times they when
someone hits a certain level using pbn I
feel like most of the time they seek to
diversify a little bit and build a white
hat site using guest posting or maybe
they want to have a services business to
diversify their risk
because they know while things are good
right now
all it takes is you know a competitor to
report their site and then their network
could be discovered the network could be
you know D indexed I mean it's possible
that their site may not be penalized but
their network could be be indexed and
that would cause their site to lose
ranking so that's a factor too now I'll
go back to my story here so in 2014 in
January my site was penalized and I
thought hey that sucks I need to do
something so fast forward a couple more
months
I actually remember this quite well in
Austin Texas we were you know doing some
slow travel we were spending about a
month there so I remember you know
setting up the site building the sites
in Austin in this house that we were
renting and I set up four sites it was
actually a case study so I was doing two
brand new domains and then I built two
other domains there's our two other
sites on expired domains that had good
metrics so I thought hey I'm going to do
a little experiment I'll launch four
sites two on one topic in two on another
topic and that I'd have my experiment
right interesting data and at the end of
the day I could just you know move the
content over to whatever site one and I
was hoping to have two profitable sites
this was like in March or April of 2014
and I was also still doing my gray hat
link building technique so I was using
web 2.0 from the Hoff I would normally
get like I got a hot package for each of
the sites a hot platinum package that is
so it was sort of the higher end of the
work that you get done by the Hoff I
still like the work that the hot does by
the way they they do an excellent job
damn fantastic customer service actually
the best customer service that I've seen
in internet marketing industry so moving
on I also had a TV I had a very large
pbn we're talking roughly 50 sites or so
which I guess it depends on who you talk
to they may say that's not very large
but 50 sites was a reasonable size pbn
for me I felt like it was as much as I
wanted to grow there's a lot of overhead
with dealing with a pbn and there's a
lot of footprints you need to make sure
that you're not leaving or else you're
susceptible to being penalized so if you
fast forward a few more months to around
the September timeframe of 2014 you may
remember that several people were
penalized with what we what we referred
to as like the thin content penalty so
again I got an email and it said my
sites were penalized because of thin
content and I thought hey that's crazy I
have thousands of words of content these
are written by you know American or
english-speaking writers I proof read a
lot of the content myself and the
content is not thin it's actually quite
helpful so I thought there must be some
kind of mistake but it turns out the
reason why I got penalized at least in
my opinion is I was sharing my pdn with
other people and they in turn they were
sharing their network with me so what
happens is you end up with this huge web
we had our own sort of intranet of PBM
we thought we were safe we thought we
were safe because it was a private group
right it wasn't a place where we were
selling links or anything like that we
were just sharing it amongst our you
know small group of you know handful of
people right I won't say this specific
people that were in the group
with me or how many sites we had or
anything like that we were taking you
know good measures to make sure we
weren't leaving footprints
unfortunately the huge footprint that we
were actually leaving was the fact that
we were sharing in that work among
several different people so when you
took a step back I'm sure it was pretty
easy to dissect the whole network and
then reverse engineer what we were doing
the other part is you know even if I was
following I'm not saying I was but even
if I was following all the best
practices for implementing and using a
pbn without leaving a footprint that
doesn't mean that my friends were doing
the same sort of OCD approach to make
sure they weren't leaving a footprint
maybe they left the footprint and then
all of a sudden our whole network was
exposed in fact many many many people
were penalized in that September 2014
time frame so at that point I kind of
learned my lesson that not hey is it
really worth the risk I spent all this
time in 2013 and it worked out made lots
of money and I thought hey maybe I found
a new career for myself but then in 2014
I got penalized twice not just once but
twice and then for the four sites that I
set up for the case study I ended up
spending you know thousands and
thousands of dollars and many many hours
of time I don't even want to think about
how much time I lost working on the site
and they didn't even make any money at
the end of the day they only made a few
dollars and it was a terrible half
experience overall but I learned a lot
through this head of penalizing uh you
know issues that I had so basically I
learned a few things about myself one I
can deal with some risk but that level
of risk with that amount of
investment in time it's not for me right
so like I said I know PBM can work and I
know a lot of people use them
effectively but for me that's not what
I'm trying to build I'm trying to build
a long-term business that you know one
maybe I could sell it later
I could sell a site later maybe I want
to have the nice cash flow that comes
along with a successful Amazon affiliate
site and if you want to have a income
source that you can actually rely on you
need to make sure that you're not
setting yourself up for failure by
putting it at a huge risk
so when you use tvN's even if you are
doing the best practices and you're not
leaving a footprint there's still more
risk than if you use white hat
techniques now I'll be the first to tell
you that even if you use white hat
techniques you're still at risk right I
mean you're trying to rank in Google so
you don't really control that part of
the picture and then the other part
right so we if you you know follow my
blog a niche type project you'll
remember that in March of 2017 Amazon
changed their Terms of Service as far as
the commission rates that they pay their
affiliates so I mean being an affiliate
marketer you don't have control of you
know your source of traffic and then you
don't control the affiliate model now I
mean I'm happy that I'm part of this
ecosystem and I'm happy to play within
the rules that Google and Amazon have
laid out before me it's totally fine
like I understand why Amazon would
change their commission rate for them
it's a great move and for me I took you
know I took a big hit a 35% decrease in
the revenue from my Amazon affiliate
sites just I happen to be hit fairly
hard but it still turns out that you
know 65%
of that revenue is still there which
turns out to be a large amount of
revenue that I'm still happy with the
other part is it you know makes me
tighten up when I'm doing so I can say
add more content I can try to improve my
conversion rate and do a better job
which I was kind of lazy right the
Amazon affiliate program one of the
great reasons that it's so powerful is
you can kind of be sloppy and put up the
site as long as you're providing good
information there's some things that you
can be sloppy with I mean you don't even
have to have that much content on your
site but you know if I want to recover
that thirty five percent that I'm that
I'm lost I just need to publish more
content make sure I'm giving the users
what they need and you know maybe even
provide higher value content that
encourages the visitor to actually go to
Amazon and make the purchase so when you
put it all together here I think the
picture that I'm painting is really um I
went out that I learned a lot I made a
lot of mistakes and then I eventually
figured out the business model that I
want to be a part of is one that is
lower in risk it's a site that I would
be happy you know sending it to my
parents and you're showing them hey this
is a solid review if you if you're
interested in this product X and you
want to know about it and you want to
know what features what models you
should care about go read this review
and I can assure you that it brings
value and you can learn from it so
that's the kind of site I want to have I
don't want to have one that you know
have some dodgy backlinks from you know
weird site that are from expired domains
so that's just personally when I try and
do and for me the the value of the long
term a said the long term cash flow is
huge and I think your most people if
they had the choice they would opt for
the lower risk
so for me with a longer time frame to be
able to build links and to build my site
I think is definitely the way to go to
not use private blog networks now I
wonder what you think do use private
blog networks let me know in the
comments below and let me know why or
why not
you use PBS if you enjoyed the video I
encourage you to check out some of the
others I actually have you know about a
dozen or more Amazon affiliate site
examples I actually care down the sides
and show you what I like I show you what
I don't like and people seem to really
like those videos so check it out
we'll see you soon thanks
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