Fat Stacks Blog - a Podcast About Blogging, SEO and Traffic

Sponsored by Ezoic.
Show Notes:
Friend and fellow publisher sent me this:
I found a topic in Google Search Console for one of my posts so I decided to produce an article on it.
AHREFS says the Keyword Difficulty is 0 and the Search Volume 30.
They report traffic on the site as 2.4 over the last 30 days.
Published on Feb. 20, 2020
So far the organic in the last 30 days is 2,690 organic visitors
Overview of My Small Site (that’s chugging along)
Date domain registered: September 2016
Total # articles published: 39
Date first article published: Nov. 19, 2018
Date last article published: March 9, 2020
DA: 16 / DR (Ahrefs): 2.9
# of Referring Domains: 28 (all natural)
Traffic last 30 days (Apr. 2020): 12,423 Users
Yesterday (Apr. 29, 2020): 542 Users
Strategy
Fairly broad niche
Content quality: Mid-grade
Long tail keywords
Long form content (listicles - nothing to write home about)
Monetized with display ads (Ezoic)
EPMV: $6.02 (I need to improve placements - quickly slammed them up)
Takeaways
DA not the be-all and end-all
Long tail, low (or no) reported search volume can actually result in very good traffic.
Other sites will link to you in time if content decent.
It doesn’t take tons of powerful links to get traffic.
The simple secret to growing traffic...
In high school there was this guy who was tough. Liked brawling.
He joined the wrestling team which I was part of.
We became friends. Turns out he’s a super nice guy with a fearsome reputation.
He did brawl his fair-share. Seemed to like it. Always won.
Not that I was a brawler, but I asked what was the secret to winning in brawls.
His advice: “Never stop swinging.”
Applied to blogging and niche sites:
Never stop publishing... good content

Learn more by getting my free 6-Figure Blogger Course.

Brought to you by Ezoic
Not my idea

• Ashley Pearce of Future State Media posted this info in the Fat Stacks Forum.
• He said I could tell you about it.
• So here it goes...

Question: How much does my site make per 1 million words?

• Answer: $40,000 to $70,000
• Type of site: Amazon Affiliate
• Question: Is this good?
• Answer: Yes

The breakdown

• So from 1,000,000 visitors:
• 200,000-400,000 clicks
• Resulting in 20,000-40,000 sales
• Take an average product value of $30
• An affiliate commission of approx 5%
• 5% of 30 = $1.50
• 20,000 * $1.50 = $30,000
• 40,000 * $1.50 = $60,000
• Assume $10 per 1,000 visitors in display ads (assuming worst case of 1 page view per visitor)
• That’s also $10,000 in display Ad revenue.
• Assuming $50 per 1,000 words budget for writing.

That’s $50,000 to get the site to 1,000,000 words.
Applied to Jon’s biggest niche site
Analysis (Case Study)

• Here are my numbers for 2019:
• Total words published on the site by December: 7,100,000 (this is total words published, not just the number of words published in 2019).
• Total revenue in 2019: $568,624
• Revenue per 1 million published words in 2019: $80,087 ($568,624 / 7.1)
• Revenue per 1,000 published words in 2019: $80

Which means...

• Paying my current average rate of $.06 per word is worth it.
• I’m earning that back inside of one year.
• Of course, that’s partly a result of having plenty of older content earning quite a bit... but that’s the point. Aggregate content value grows as earnings stack.

What about traffic from 1 million words?
Ashley’s goal (that he achieved):

• 1 million words = 1 million annual visitors

Jon’s results:

• Total words published: 7.1 million words
• Total traffic in 2019: 9.3 million

Considerations
1. Site size: This analysis is much less helpful for sites less than one year old and/or with less than 100,000 words of content. However, keep this email in your hip pocket for when you get there.
2. My site earns above-average ad revenue per 1,000 visitors. It also earns a little from affiliate promotions. The analysis should result in more money per 1 million words for sites focusing on affiliate promotions.
3. Established: My site has considerable domain authority which helps in ranking. It’s an established site which skews the results favorably.
4. Site sale: The above analysis doesn’t take into account the additional proceeds realized when a site is sold. It merely looks at revenue generated, but as you can see, when also including the value of the site, content sites can be very lucrative.
5. Passive income: I use the term loosely. Over time, older content will be less effective. I do not suggest that content will earn forever.
How to count ALL the words on your site?
Very carefully - one by one.
There’s a plugin for that:
WP Word Count at wordpress.org/plugins/wp-word-count/

Learn more by getting my free 6-Figure Blogger Course.

The Divorce Dilemma with Blogging and Niche Sites

Learn more by getting my free 6-Figure Blogger Course.

Sponsored by Ezoic.
Show notes:

• Just because you can make money doing something doesn’t mean you should.
• And no, I’m not talking about robbing banks.
• I’m talking about being able to make it legitimately but choosing not to.
• I choose to leave money on the table every day.
• Most good businesses do.

Here are some examples of how I leave money on the table

1. Sometimes I don’t drop in affiliate links (GASP!)

• Conserve energy
• Not terribly lucrative
• MY FOCUS: Publishing content

2. I display fewer ads than I could

• Diminishing returns
• Visitors are people
• I want people to return

3. I send non-promotional emails

• I send out a good number of emails that promote nothing. This email is one example. This goes against the ABC of marketing which is ALWAYS BE CLOSING.
• I figure it doesn’t hurt sending out non-promotional content. More importantly, I like writing it.

4. I don’t publish spammy reviews

• I could leverage the authority of several niche sites and rank lousy product reviews that could make some money, but I prefer not to.
• Don’t get me wrong, I do publish product reviews across my sites, but only when I like the product and it’s a good fit for the site.

5. I gave up a large email newsletter for a niche site

• I had built up a sizeable number of subscribers for two niche sites that made money, but it wasn’t enough to justify the time it took to manage it.
• Again, that time and more importantly, energy, is better spent focusing on publishing content.

6. I don’t sell links

• Risky
• Too bad because very high profit/time ratio
• Instant cash
• BUT, Google doesn’t like it and it’s easy to discover

7. I don’t sell sponsored posts

• Hustle work
• I loathe hustling for deals
• The endless email thread
• It’s ALWAYS more work than you think

8. I don’t sell services

• It’s hustle work
• Telephone calls, meetings, emails, customer service... not for me
• That’s why I do what I do

9. I don’t translate all my content into multiple languages

• Jon, why don’t you translate your millions of words of content? Surely that would be a lot of traffic.
• Yes, it would but talk about a job I wouldn’t want to do.
• Ad revenue still low - not worth it for me IMO

Notice a trend?
Anything that veers from my main business model, I don’t pursue even if it means leaving money on the table.
I’ve fallen for the lure of “easy” money in the past but I’ve learned it doesn’t pay. Sticking to the game plan pays and the game plan is publishing as much great content as I can.
Whatever your game plan is, stick to it.

Learn more by getting my free 6-Figure Blogger Course.

In this episode, I set out exactly how I would get my site to the magical 50K monthly visitors for Mediavine ads from scratch as a sprint... as fast as possible.

Learn more by getting my free 6-Figure Blogger Course.