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How stable is this? Are you always one algorithm / policy change away from disaster? It seems to rely primarily on Google ranks. Good gig if you can generate t

How stable is this? Are you always one algorithm / policy change away from disaster? It seems to rely primarily on Google ranks. Good gig if you can generate them. Anyone have any other perspectives on how difficult this is?

Azkar 9y ago
It sounds like he's doing quality work, really. There's no secret. He claims to have a GREAT copy writer for his niche and provides them with the exact info they are looking at google for. Do that for a few hundred well written articles and any site will rank well too. But a google algorithm change could definitely crush his income.
- rokhayakebe 9y ago
  Do that for a few hundred well written articles and any site will rank well too. There, no secret. That is the barrier to entry. 100 hundred well written articles will probably cost a good $10,000 on the mid/low end. Not many people want to spend $10,000 then see if Google will send them traffic.
  - imron 9y ago
    He mentioned he spent $7,000 on articles before seeing any affiliate income.
    - MattLeBlanc001 9y ago
      That doesn't mean that he didn't get any income until he spent the whole 7k. It could be that he spent the 7k over 6 months period (assuming 1-2 article per week for $100 each). He could have started earning a few hundreds of dollars and re-invested in his business.
      - imron 9y ago
        It took him 4 months to reach $100/month in income and 6 months to earn $1,000/month, so it was an outlay of thousands of dollars before seeing enough income to pay for itself.
  - paulcole 9y ago
    That is way low and you're not going to get anything decent for that price. Honestly, what you get might not even be worth publishing. I've done this as a full-time job (both in-house and in an agency setting) and you're off by about an order of magnitude for anything worth paying for.
    - jermaustin1 9y ago
      From American and Western European English Speaking writers, this is true. I have paid 5-10c per word for articles between 500-1000 words, that were all very well written in Eastern European countries by expats and fluent English speakers. A few colloquialisms needed editing out, but if you are getting only 5 articles a week, you are spending $300-500, and 1-2 hours of editing per article if that (which includes formatting, adding hyperlinks, etc).
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    Google does not care about how much content you have; Google's claim that "the best way to rank is to have good content" is a lie, they've been completely gamed for the last decade. Google cares only about how many links that content has. Links do not occur organically, especially not in the age of social media, where most natural non-commercial activity is locked away in walled gardens. Content owners have to actively pursue them. When serious competitors come in, they will have their own "private blog networks" that cross-link and crush any hand-made link networks. SEO is a lie. You have to spam to win whenever there is significant competition.
jameslk 9y ago
I made $600 with some friends on Amazon's affiliate program with a couple weeks worth of Facebook advertising, but I personally wouldn't recommend it as more than a side business. It doesn't scale very well due to the massive number of conversions you need, it's hard to track performance since you can't cookie the potential buyer, any sales outside of your country is usually lost (you have to sign up for separate affiliate programs for each country to make money abroad) and of course you're at the mercy of Amazon's business decisions. It's better in the long term to set up your own store and build up lifetime value around your own brand, which is what I'm currently doing. You can start out that way dropshipping from AliExpress or with print on demand products. It's more work, but it's also more stable and of course scales a lot better. But an even better suggestion is to build SaaS products. It scales even more and not many people know how to do it.
- baybal2 9y ago
  Yep, Aliexpress rullz. They have an affiliate campaign of their own. As of today, they have no restrictions on getting affiliate cut on your own products
  - sitkack 9y ago
    Why would they? A sale is a sale.
    - baybal2 9y ago
      I have no idea, but some marketplaces do have such restrictions.
    - JoblessWonder 9y ago
      I could see an argument for how it is double-dipping... I'm not sure I agree with it though.
- seibelj 9y ago
  Very experienced people have told me to sell my VPN routers[0] on amazon, and I never, ever will. I own the distribution, I own the content, I own the marketing. I'm probably leaving a good chunk of revenue on the table, but overall I think it's the better longterm solution. [0] https://easyvpnrouter.com/ https://easyvpnrouter.com/
tyingq 9y ago
>Are you always one algorithm / policy change away from disaster? Yes. I saw a peak of around $5k a month in AdSense around 2008 with a similar model as the story described. Personal finance articles. That got cut in half a few times by algorithm changes. Then I quit working on it altogether, and it slid more slowly. Though it still makes around $300/month with the current stale content and no updates for years. It's not easy...basically a ton of outreach to get links, with few takers.

Azkar 9y ago

It sounds like he's doing quality work, really. There's no secret. He claims to have a GREAT copy writer for his niche and provides them with the exact info they are looking at google for. Do that for a few hundred well written articles and any site will rank well too. But a google algorithm change could definitely crush his income.

rokhayakebe 9y ago
Do that for a few hundred well written articles and any site will rank well too. There, no secret. That is the barrier to entry. 100 hundred well written articles will probably cost a good $10,000 on the mid/low end. Not many people want to spend $10,000 then see if Google will send them traffic.
- imron 9y ago
  He mentioned he spent $7,000 on articles before seeing any affiliate income.
  - MattLeBlanc001 9y ago
    That doesn't mean that he didn't get any income until he spent the whole 7k. It could be that he spent the 7k over 6 months period (assuming 1-2 article per week for $100 each). He could have started earning a few hundreds of dollars and re-invested in his business.
    - imron 9y ago
      It took him 4 months to reach $100/month in income and 6 months to earn $1,000/month, so it was an outlay of thousands of dollars before seeing enough income to pay for itself.
- paulcole 9y ago
  That is way low and you're not going to get anything decent for that price. Honestly, what you get might not even be worth publishing. I've done this as a full-time job (both in-house and in an agency setting) and you're off by about an order of magnitude for anything worth paying for.
  - jermaustin1 9y ago
    From American and Western European English Speaking writers, this is true. I have paid 5-10c per word for articles between 500-1000 words, that were all very well written in Eastern European countries by expats and fluent English speakers. A few colloquialisms needed editing out, but if you are getting only 5 articles a week, you are spending $300-500, and 1-2 hours of editing per article if that (which includes formatting, adding hyperlinks, etc).
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  Google does not care about how much content you have; Google's claim that "the best way to rank is to have good content" is a lie, they've been completely gamed for the last decade. Google cares only about how many links that content has. Links do not occur organically, especially not in the age of social media, where most natural non-commercial activity is locked away in walled gardens. Content owners have to actively pursue them. When serious competitors come in, they will have their own "private blog networks" that cross-link and crush any hand-made link networks. SEO is a lie. You have to spam to win whenever there is significant competition.

jameslk 9y ago

I made $600 with some friends on Amazon's affiliate program with a couple weeks worth of Facebook advertising, but I personally wouldn't recommend it as more than a side business. It doesn't scale very well due to the massive number of conversions you need, it's hard to track performance since you can't cookie the potential buyer, any sales outside of your country is usually lost (you have to sign up for separate affiliate programs for each country to make money abroad) and of course you're at the mercy of Amazon's business decisions. It's better in the long term to set up your own store and build up lifetime value around your own brand, which is what I'm currently doing. You can start out that way dropshipping from AliExpress or with print on demand products. It's more work, but it's also more stable and of course scales a lot better. But an even better suggestion is to build SaaS products. It scales even more and not many people know how to do it.

baybal2 9y ago
Yep, Aliexpress rullz. They have an affiliate campaign of their own. As of today, they have no restrictions on getting affiliate cut on your own products
- sitkack 9y ago
  Why would they? A sale is a sale.
  - baybal2 9y ago
    I have no idea, but some marketplaces do have such restrictions.
  - JoblessWonder 9y ago
    I could see an argument for how it is double-dipping... I'm not sure I agree with it though.
seibelj 9y ago
Very experienced people have told me to sell my VPN routers[0] on amazon, and I never, ever will. I own the distribution, I own the content, I own the marketing. I'm probably leaving a good chunk of revenue on the table, but overall I think it's the better longterm solution. [0] https://easyvpnrouter.com/ https://easyvpnrouter.com/

tyingq 9y ago

>Are you always one algorithm / policy change away from disaster? Yes. I saw a peak of around $5k a month in AdSense around 2008 with a similar model as the story described. Personal finance articles. That got cut in half a few times by algorithm changes. Then I quit working on it altogether, and it slid more slowly. Though it still makes around $300/month with the current stale content and no updates for years. It's not easy...basically a ton of outreach to get links, with few takers.