100K Project: Episode 4 (The Baseline)

100K Project: Episode 4 (The Baseline)

July went fast. I think it was Marylyn Monroe who said time moves fast when we’re busy having fun. However, I had everything but fun in July. I was busy grinding on this 100K project.

For starters, if you haven’t checked the previous update, you can read it here.

I’d like to start this post with a recap of the goals I made for July.

In July, my goal was to create and post at least 50 articles on the site. Doing this will get my site to 100 articles. Apart from this, I was to build Web 2.0 links.

I managed to write 60 articles in July. I also got some content written for Web 2.0 sites (which, unfortunately, I haven’t posted yet.

Overall, I was a little more productive in July, especially in terms of content creation. However, I could have done more.

July Niche Website Review

I went all in on content in July. I got about 70 articles written, but have only published 60 at the moment. I have 2 writers helping me with creating content for the website. The writers are also part of my content agency, TheContentBear.

I’m doing the bare minimum with the content, i.e. writing, putting images and links and publishing ASAP. I haven’t really concentrated on optimizing the articles with keywords or doing any on page optimization for them.

My goal at the moment is to let the content “bake” on Google’s SERPs, before I optimize them.

Content Promotion

I’ve also been semi-actively promoting my website by building links and answering questions on Quora. I pointed a couple of PBN links to the website in July. I haven’t been tracking the links nor any keywords to determine their impact.

However, it’s on Quora and Pinterest where I’ve been spending most of my time.

Quora Marketing

I have three Quora accounts that I’m using to drive traffic to my niche site. I just started answering questions related to my niche on Pinterest during the last week of July. So far, I’ve been getting a few views and clicks on the Quora links to my site. Nothing really major to report.

quora marketing
100K Niche Site Project Quora, 1st August

However, I think Quora has upped its moderation game. A couple of the answers I made from the Quora accounts were deleted. These were not spammy answers or overly promotional. They were genuinely helpful content. Perhaps I’ve been linking too much to my website in the answers? I don’t know. I had to appeal to get the answers reinstated.

I’m thinking of slowing down on answering questions on Quora in August and concentrate on other platforms to get traffic.

Pinterest Marketing

Coming to Pinterest, I’m using Tailwind to schedule my posts. The tool is easy to use and saves me a lot of time with scheduling. However, I still haven’t cracked the Pinterest code, yet. I’m not sure how people get thousands of traffic from Pinterest. Users are following me and repining my content. However, very few are visiting my website from the pins.

Check the Pinterest followers’ growth chart below:

pinterest account growth
Pinterest Followers

So, people are following my Pinterest profile. However, followers are not important. What’s important is how many of them are going to visit my website. And this is how many:

pinterest traffic
100K Niche Site Project Pinterest, 1st August

Yes, just 20 people visited the site last month from Pinterest.

This is why I believe I haven’t cracked Pinterest yet. Perhaps I’m using the wrong images? Or maybe my CTAs are too bland?

Any Pinterest masters here that have a tip or two?

Here’s how my Pins are:

  1. The pin usually has the title of the article that it’s linked to e.g. Best tents for 2 year olds
  2. I usually put a nice picture on the pin

I will be testing a couple of things this month to see whether Pinterest traffic can improve.

But before we continue, the ban hammer happened. Yes, Pinterest banned my account:

pinterest suspended
I noticed my Pinterest account was banned on 31st July. The reason for the ban is that I’ve been spamming or engaging in other activities that go against their Terms of Service.

pinterest suspension email

I really haven’t been spamming. However, I think I may have been banned for re-posting images that I’d already posted. Or perhaps a competitor maliciously reported my account? Who knows.

I’ve appealed the ban, and I’m yet to hear from Pinterest team.

Anyway, life goes on.

The ban is just a small challenge on my road to making $100K from the website. If the ban is not lifted, I will just create another account and start over.

That’s all for the website.

Niche Website Stats

Now let’s get into some quick stat:

Ahrefs

Traffic is steadily growing, as well as the number of keywords that are getting picked. This is probably due to the additional content I’ve been adding as well as the links I’ve built.

SEMrush

100K Project; Semrush Stats July, 2019
100K Project; Semrush Stats July, 2019

SEMrush has a similar story. Traffic improved from 124 in June to 203 in July.

Google Analytics

july sessions
Niche Site Traffic – July

Well, according to Analytics, traffic actually reduced a bit. However, I can see the bounce rate has also reduced, which is a good sigh

Income

100K Project Niche Site Amazon Earnings July 2019

For income, the site generated $88, from $7 in June. The majority of the income was from an unrelated product. I guess this is why many people love the Amazon Associates program.

I also made $1.44 from Viglinks

August Goals

I’m still following the long term goals I have for the project, which are:

  1. Short term – Publish 200 articles on the site (July to September)
  2. Medium-term – Optimize and expand the content based on performance (October to December)
  3. Long term – Diversify monetization (December – February)

For August, I plan to get 100 pieces of content published on the site. If I manage to do this, I’ll have completed the short term goal of publishing 200 articles from July to September. And then, I’ll have more time to concentrate on marketing the site in September.

Here is an overview of this month’s goals:

i)                    Content

The goal is to publish 1000 articles. I’ll be writing as well as getting help from TheContentBear writers with this content work.

ii)                  Promotion

I’ll be upping my promotion game in August. I have a general goal to get at least 1,000 visitors to the website this month. Here is an overview of the things I have in mind:

Pinterest. I’ll try to learn as much as I can to drive traffic from Pinterest to the website. I’ll also be creating five new Pinterest accounts for driving traffic to the site. I really want to master Pinterest traffic.

Q&A site. I’ve been thinking of starting a Q&A site for my niche. There’s an expiring domain I’m eyeing (should be bought by Monday) for the project. The domain doesn’t have any links but I like it because of its name. It’s quite brandable.

What I’ll basically be doing is creating a Q&A site on my niche. I’ll get my VAs to post the questions as well as answers. Some of the answers will be linking to my site while others will be linking to other sites. The Q&A site will be open to anyone but moderated to ensure it is not spammed with low-quality posts.

Pinterest like site: I’ve not seen this being done anywhere else, but I’m thinking of creating a Pinterest-like site. Basically, the site will have images of the products in my niche. Then there will be something like a small description of the product and a link to the full review, which will link to my website and other websites just to stay under the radar.

Something like what ThisIsWhyImBroke does.

Twitter: I’ll start building my Twitter accounts. At the moment, I plan to register five different accounts just to see how things will go. I have some ideas on how I want to use the accounts. For example, the accounts will be used to promote all my properties, from PBNs, web 2.0s, social media sites, Quora answers, etc.

I’ve found a few Twitter bot tutorials that I’ll be following. If stuff doesn’t work out, I’ll just hire a coder to do the work for me, or use some of the scheduling tools available.

May the winds to fair to my competition.

Are you building a niche site? How are you fairing on?

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