[Journey] Scaling an Authority website to 10K a month (and beyond)

Update, 26th August 2020, Day 107

- Published 2 new articles today, 1,526 words, 1,289 words

- Added PDFs to 24 new articles. I am not adding the PDFs to all new articles, just to about 50% of them, when it is fitting.

Sometimes I even skip a fitting one, for diversity, or add it to an article where it's not necessary. During this batch I want to add a PDF to about 100 articles. 75 done already, so I should safely finish this job tomorrow or the day after tomorrow (schedule is rather busy for tomorrow...).

- Yesterday for the first time ever I broke $150 mark with Adthrive:

Obviously it's just a small milestone, and a one day result (nothing to get too excited about). On the other hand, last month I had just a single day when the Adthrive earnings were above $120, so month over month it's a nice progress, and I am sure it's not the last record we will break during this journey ...

I have a feeling that my website is a part of one of those direct deals with advertisers, something that really sets Adthrive apart from their competitors.

I've been seeing a selection of adds promoting one specific event all over my website yesterday and also today, sometimes taking all ad slots.
And I haven't seen the same ad on other websites I've been browsing during the last days (sites running Adsense).
This can perhaps explain the superb RPM, but of course I can be wrong, and it can be something else.

Guys, those of you running Adthrive ads on your sites (@Bedros for example), did you also see great numbers yesterday and the day before yesterday?


- I want to talk a bit about more about my strategy with PDFs, and some twists that can be added to it.

The first one is email collection. @Songhort already mentioned it in an answer to my original post about PDFs.
Though I am not building any lists currently, I experimented with list building in the past. Both on this website, and on five or six other MNS websites.

What I found out during my experiments (and I am almost sure it still holds true) is the following: The best placement for the form is always within the main content. Because:

• The reader already spent some time on your website. If your content is good, if they enjoy what they are reading, they have already given you some credit (subconsciously) and will more likely join the list of your subscribers.
• The reader knows exactly what he is getting, and it is directly related to his search query. Hence it motivates him more than a general subscriber form somewhere in the sidebar, or one that covers the entire page right after he landed on your blog, and in fact just bothers them.
• The form is a part of the primary content, and that's where the attention of the reader is...

If you are into building lists, I highly recommend you to try the PDF technique...


Other twist I am doing with PDFs is using them as a "second chance for making a sale". Let me explain it on a dog niche...

- Imagine that I have an article called "Step by step guide on How to train an akita puppy". This article has about 2.5K words, and offers decent information to the reader... However, at the end of the article I promote an eBook (or a digital course), basically something for people who want to know more, and are really into training their stubborn puppy.

- Some people may click the link to the course, but some will not. Perhaps they are in rush, not thinking about the purchase right now, or browsing the website on their mobile phone, just browsing random stuff. Anyway, some of these people may download a PDF summary posted in the middle of an article, because they like what they are reading, and want to refer to it later.

- In this case, however, the PDF will be a bit different. I will on purpose show them something special in the PDF (it won't be a mere summary, there will be an extra information that isn't published in the article, and typically it will have something with the course). Basically my goal will be to use this PDF as another tool to motivate them to check out the course...

- At the end of the PDF, instead of linking to the 2.5K words article about akita puppy training, I will link directly to the sales page of the course, and I will tag the link (to be able to track conversions in my Analytics).

Doing it this way, I am simply utilizing another opportunity to make a sale.... How well does this strategy work? See the screenshot from Analytics:


What you see on the screen is event tracking I use for sales, with secondary dimension "landing page". Each unique event is a sale. The table is for the year 2020.

Now, each click from within one of my PDFs is tagged with "?pdf" , as you can see on the picture. Surely, this isn't the major source of conversions. The best one is no. 45 on the list of landing pages.
But when I scroll down the table, and count all sales that came from sales pages tagged with PDF, I find out that in 2020 alone, I made 26 sales in this way.

When we count with an average product price $20 (it's likely a bit higher, but let's count with the lower end), this strategy yielded me an extra $520 this year... Maybe not much, but for example it pays the VPS expenses for the entire year ....

This was just an illustration what can be done with the PDFs placed within the article.
I am far from having this strategy set up perfectly, and sure that much more can be achieved with that... will try to optimize it better during the 2nd half of this journey...


That's it for now guys. Hope that some of you may benefit from this strategy with PDFs, and as always, any questions, do not hesitate to ask .

Yes, ad rates are doing great right now. It's the end of a month so kind of expected.

And thanks again for your great thread. Your traffic and earnings should explode soon

Update, 27th August 2020, Day 108

- It's almost midnight here, and I am finally home to make an update. Today I had a busy schedule but I woke up at 5:50am, in order to publish 2 new articles before I left the house at 9:30am.

From 9:30 until now I've been home only for a few short spans of 15-45 minutes each, but I always managed to squeeze in a few PDFs to the articles + I even managed to read one new journey thread here on BHW, in which I really like the writing style of the OP...

That's the level of discipline necessary to succeed in this journeys, I guess .

- So, published 2 new articles today, 1,567 words, 1,311 words

- Added PDF to 25 articles, which rounds it for 100 exactly from Monday, and this job is done for now.

- Another $140+ day with Adthrive yesterday, but had a bad day in terms of refunds.

Maybe you remember a few day ago I mentioned a Mexican guy, who opened the case with their banking institution, to dispute the transaction they made on PayPal, a purchase on my site. I decided to respond to the case, submitted some screenshots from Analytics that clearly demonstrated that the guy downloaded the item.

Result? As expected, the case was decided in buyer's favor. Which means that the full purchase price was refunded, plus I had to pay a stupid charge-back fee of $20 .

If it wasn't enough, there was another "expert" yesterday... I won't mention the nationality, but the name from the screenshot will help you to guess...
This guy sent message to 3 different email addressees from the website, plus he also opened the dispute with PayPal. The message was always the same:


From his text you can clearly see that he's a native speaker. Irony here .
Of course there are no misspellings in the eBook, or maybe a few over the 15K words, but nobody has ever complained about that, certainly no American buyers have...

But this guy just wanted a freebie, and this was his way of getting it. Nothing else left for me than to process the refund.

So while I made 6 sales yesterday, I can effectively count only with 3 sales (1 refund plus 1 charge-back, which counts for 2 losses).

Such days also belong to selling stuff online, however, and the only logical thing to do is to get over it and forget it quickly .


- Tomorrow the schedule is not so busy, and I will try to publish 3 articles, without having to wake up before 6am.
During tomorrow's update I will also specify how many new articles started to get Google traffic in August, and I will publish some screenshots.
Good night guys

Update, 28th August 2020, Day 109

- Published 3 new articles today, 1,517 words, 1,652 words, 1,471 words

- Adthrive is crazy this week. 4 days in a row $140+, and overall RPM over $20. I must say I really love this ad network

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- Let's move to the thing that probably interests you the most guys: how the new articles are doing. I know that many of you are on similar journeys, publishing a lot of new content, waiting for the traffic to finally start to kick in.

I started this journey in the middle of May, writing a lot of content almost daily. This is what happened so far:

• In June, 0 new articles started to see some traffic from Google.
• In July, 3 new articles started to get some clicks.
• In August, 25 new articles started to see some traffic from Google.
• September - .... any bets?

Let me post some screenshots from GA with some comments. I won't post here 25 screenshots, but will choose about a few as a good representation of the entire group, including both high end and low end in terms of traffic:


I appeared at position no. 9 for the main KW for this one at the beginning of August. Now already on position no.3.


Was on position no. 10 from the beginning of august, today already position no. 3, and a much better traffic is expected for this one in September.


Firstly got position no. 15, now already position no. 10. Lot of potential here, but it's also a very competitive keyword (by the standards of my niche). Let's see where great on-page metrics will take us over time...


This one grows really quickly. I didn't check the ranking before, but now it's on position no. 3 for main KW. Already getting close to 30 page views a day, though Ahrefs says the KW has only 200US monthly searches. As many other times, the numbers from tools do not tell the entire story... In my opinion, this can soon be a 100PV/day article.


This one is another example of inaccurate Ahrefs monthly searches. A few days ago this one jumped to no. 1 for main KW, and already approaching 30PV/day. Even here I see a potential of 100PV/day, from main KW + different long tails.


What I expect to happen with the page views for the 25 articles? A good indication is what happened with the 3 articles that started to rank already in July:



This is the very first article from this journey that started to rank in July. Remember how I estimated that it will get close to 1K page views in August already? As you can see on the screenshot, I wasn't much wrong with my forecast . BTW, the articles has RPM $31.5 with Adthrive, so already made close to $30, just from Ads.



The second one is a smaller KW, but still, it almost tripled monthly PV in August, and I expect the same trend to continue in September


The last one from the three is growing slowly so far, but there is growth, and I expect it to continue in a similar way in September, and perhaps explode later on, because in my view, though Ahrefs says 80 monthly searches, this can be 80PV/day article.


I also want to mention (for you guys who do not follow this journey from the beginning) that I have not built a single link to these articles, or to the root domain.

This is simply a result of writing the best articles in the niche (or at least honestly trying to do that), not for Google, but for the readers. It results in great on-page metrics (notice the average time on page on the screenshots), and Google continues to move them up in the rankings, and display them for more and more long tail keywords over time... Hence the nice growth .

Obviously good KW research and right titles (that induce clicks at the beginning) also play a role. But top-quality articles with personality are the foundation stone of success, for ranking, sales, for everything.... Without them it would be impossible to succeed in this journey.


That's it for today guys. Any questions, do not hesitate to ask. Have a nice weekend everyone!

Kikerinka said:

top-quality articles with personality are the foundation stone of success, for ranking, sales, for everything

Click to expand...

Exactly this! I found a writer for my website who has a lot of experience in my niche... I personally enjoy reading articles I get from him, and since I'm getting a lot of new traffic, I guess other people enjoy reading it as well.

Update, 29th August 2020, Day 110

Another late update.
I think my next online project will have something to do with climate change. The storms we have here in the last years are just crazy, stronger every year... During the last 10 day trip I got totally soaked twice, with lightnings all around, but at least that happened in the mountains.

This evening I got hit by a huge storm during a festival in a city, not even 300 meters above sea level. Totally unexpected and so heavy that I could barely drive home...

I'm not super old, but old enough to tell that things have changed a lot with the climate here in Central Europe in last 10-15 years. If it continues like this, soon we'll have here tornadoes, hurricanes, and sh1t like they have in the Americas...

- Published 2 new articles today, 1,579 words, 1,416 words.

- Got a ton of trackbacks from some shitty sites that publish pictures, linking to a lot of articles on my website (and also to other websites from the niche). Not sure what it their business plan or intention, maybe it is some AI stuff, or just experiments.
Apparently people still try to find some shortcuts, some ways to game the system.

Maybe there are some ways (I'm not seeking them, so cannot tell), but what they are doing certainly isn't one of them...

- Tomorrow I may take the entire day off. Maybe to reflect on the climate change issue . Or I will work, depends on the mood in which I wake up. Let's see.

SpezzNacci said:

Exactly this! I found a writer for my website who has a lot of experience in my niche... I personally enjoy reading articles I get from him, and since I'm getting a lot of new traffic, I guess other people enjoy reading it as well.

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Congrats on finding such a guy. Be sure to treat him (or her) well. You can even pay them a bonus here and there, to ensure they will stay with you. Someone who has a lot of experience in the niche, and can writing engaging articles at the same time, is a priceless figure in your business model.

BTW, I follow your journey, and congrats on the great growth month over month. If it continues like this, soon you will beat my numbers with the visits .

This is so motivating! Do you have a daily overview of august from analytics for visitor count?