Hello World, today, I’ll share the case study of one of our law clients who offers consultancy and other services in California.

The client reached out to us 3 months back with a simple website having no proper CTA, pages & content structure, etc. But we managed to get the client to over 3.4K+ visitors in a month (580% increase) generated 150+ simply by using SEO (no other marketing channel was used) and managed to convert 30% of those leads into sales.

See stats --> https://imgur.com/a/6C8xIjk
Enough bragging, this is how we achieved this.

Website Analysis:

- We Analyzed all of the client's service pages and did a SWOT analysis

- Optimized Page structure, Content, and the Schema Markup

Competitor Analysis:

- Our client had 2 of his main competitors in the area

- We did the complete analysis of where he was lagging and where he could improve and then shared that plan with the client

- Including the keywords and our backlinks strategy

Keyword Research:

- At first, we focused on low-competitive sales pages

- Found some other competitors and worked on the gap

- Created a sheet of keywords with a topic cluster strategy

On-Page SEO:

- Started publishing TOFU/MOFU topics with proper On-Page SEO

- Optimized URL, Title, and Meta Description

- Did proper internal linking

- Optimized GMB profile and got genuine reviews from previous happy clients

Backlinks Strategy:

- Created Citations, Listings, and Social Media links at the start

- Niche-relevant guest posting & Digital PR

And the best part?

We've nailed 150+ leads so far.

Let me know if it is helpful. Peace ✌

I started building a website last September just hit a 500k Impressions on by blog and around 30k total clicks on google search console. got hit with the google updates and lost 95% of the traffic lost month and it keeps going down each day and my new articles are not ranking(everything still indexed though) . I know I'm going to keep working on this because its more or so a hobby as well then just a website but I do want to have good traffic and eventually start making money so I'm left with two options:

-Keep going and complete the site(tbh its only 70is % done from what my vision is), start working on getting backlinks, and hope for the best.

-Accept that its dead....move on with new site with same idea and start from scratch and not use AI? with the knowledge I have now, I think I should be able to build it up quickly.

I know even before the updates and stuff therewas something called sandbox.....is it possible that my site is in a sandbox and will eventually gain traction.

Also I think its important to mention that while I wrote all the articles, they were all run through ChatGPT to remove any grammar/spelling mistakes so I'm assuming that it could be the reason i got penalized so I'm thinking of starting a new site where I would just write everything again and only use grammarly for spelling check.

I know there may not be a right answer to this but some of you have been doing this for a long time now and know what the trends look like. I would love to hear more insights. Thank you for reading the post and your time!

Hi all - looking for advice as my website I have been working on for around 9 months has been absolutely killed in the SERPs.

Reviewing the WoW comparison of last week vs a week in Feb, I can see impressions of 16K vs 400 and clicks of 850 vs 30.

I understand that there was a Google Core update early March, but I also added Ezoic to the site around 6th Feb, and can see that doing so has changed my Core Web Vitals metrics. No manual penalties showing.

I know a lot of people are going to say it's the Google Core update, but Ahrefs keyword report shows my best keyword went from #1 to Lost!

I've also checked the site is still indexed in Google using a "site:DOMAIN" search, and I can see all appears fine.

No significant changes otherwise to themes/structure etc.

Any ideas?

EDIT: Added screenshots to show Ahrefs, Google Console (Impressions/Clicks), and Core Web Vitals tab - https://imgur.com/a/tUfaamX

Preface: Wanted to see if I still had the technical skills and edge since I rarely contribute code these days, so I built a live-streaming platform.

I started research on a live-streaming platform back in 2019-ish and put in quite a bit of time(years)

into it but my pet project never took off because I didnt have the time, resources or capital to make

something like that work.

Fast forward to 9 months ago, I came across my old research while going through an old HDD and decided to

finally take a crack at developing my old research into a usable product.

You guys remember PAN(reddits public access network)? Well I loved what PAN stood for and was kinda sad to

see it go away.

So I asked the r/PAN community if they would like a replacement in the form of a different platform.

AND THE ANSWER WAS A RESOUNDING YES!

Ill take the narrative from here to a more diary like one.

Month 1 (what I did)-------------------------------------

1. I spent day and night setting up and testing the bare bones of my research and making updates as I just pulled it out of storage
2. bought a domain
3. built a simple website with a register form
4. Asked the people who were interested to sign up on the website (got my first 10 signups)
5. Started a discord server for the project

Month 2-3 (what I did)-----------------------------------------

1. It was full on development hell, apart from managing my own development firm during the day, I was now developing on my free time at night. Thankfully my wife was a supportive angel throughout this period of time.
2. Started talking to users about what they would want and expect and doing research
3. Had long conversations with my lawyer. A livestreaming platform is a very difficult place to moderate specially when you dont have the funds to play on the same level with the bigger and more established players. Anyone could start streaming anything including very nasty stuff and this could bring in lots of legal troubles. To make sure nothing of this nature got through, I asked for all interested streamers to give me their full legal name, email and a working phone number. My aim with this was to make sure all the streamers knew that with great power (streaming) comes great responsibility.
4. updated the community on the progress of the development link1 and link2
5. Went live for the first time! We had couple of streamers come online and stream for the community!!

Month 4-now (what I did)----------------------------------------------

1. Setup a patreon. Live-streaming is not cheap and I was bankrolling the entire thing because it was nothing more than a cool project for me but shit we were in the red every month hahaha! Any money is/was welcome hence the patreon.
2. Tried to setup a gold system (kinda like reddit has) but this proved to be very very difficult. It was not difficult because it was technically challenging, more so it was diffuclt because almost all the payment gateways agreed on 1 thing, we were high risk (apparently all livestreaming is, who knew..) and they didnt want to take that risk. This made for a very difficult situation. I was honestly thinking about building a payment gateway system from the ground up lol.
3. Built a crude version of gold nonetheless and it worked for a few months until it didnt (the vendor kindly let us know that by servicing us, they were breaking TOS of their service provider).
4. Started a little something called the "Saturday Stream-A-Thon" event. Since the platform was small (at this point we had like 60 users) it made sense for everyone to stream together and support each other than stream at seperate times. This event was very successfull when we hosted it. We had streams back to back and viewers coming to watch and at one point we had like 15 viewers per stream, and yes the platform is pretty small haha.
5. We made some money through these events via our gold system! All of it went straight into the servers.
6. We had our first patreons sign up. Big shout out to them <3
7. One of the local banks decided they liked what I was doing and offered a permanent solution to the payment gateway problem as well!
8. Had an experience with our first hater/troll? On our public discord no less.
9. Today we have close to 300 users, but very little activity.

TLDR: my journey of developing a livestreaming platform.

If you have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer.

Ok, so here’s my first update.

Right off the bat, our goal to create a site and monetize a directory site via lead gen/rank and rent and advertising hit a snag.

Things got super crazy with my agency, and then Google dropped this core algo update (biggest I’ve seen in 10 years) so we spent a lot of time monitoring that pretty closely.

So, I had less time than I thought I was going to for this project and just paid a friend do the site for me. We’ve got the page templates done and the URL structure mapped out and logo created.

It’s built on wordpress using Mai Theme and we’re going to be creating mass pages.

Some of the tools we’re going to be using for content creation are:

Cora

Page Optimizer Pro

SEO CoPilot

Zimmwriter

Claude3

Team GPT

For keyword research:

SEMRush

Keyword Chef

For content clustering we’ll be using Keyword Insights

For competitive intelligence we’ll be using SEMRush, Ahrefs, and Majestic.

For monitoring and reporting we’ll be using Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and probably Agency Analytics too since we already use it in the agency.

For video creation, either Lumen5, Pictory, InVideo, or Wave.video

Additionally, we’ll be using Rank Week to monitor and automate page indexing, and Colinkri and whatever indexing tool is working at the moment for our backlinks.

Some of the wordpress plugins we’re using (aside from the ones in Mai Builder) are

SolidSecurity (formerly iThemes)

WP Rocket

RSS Includes Pages

LinkWhisper

Header Footer Code Manager

SEO Press PRO

WP All Import PRO

Our IFTTT ring will be finished in a day or two, and we’ll build tiered linking behind those properties. We’re also going to be setting up a YouTube channel and then sending out a press release.

By the end of the week we should have, at the very least, 60 pages of content

Homepage

About Us

Privacy Policy

Contact Us

10 Service Pages

1 Page For Each State

Like I mentioned above, we’re going to be doing a lot of mass pages written with AI for this.

I know, I know, this update hit a lot of mass page and pSEO sites, and Google hates AI content. The thing is though, we do mass pages for our clients and they’ve all come out of this update just fine. The trick is, we have a multi step optimization process for these, human editing, and hand write schema to put on our pages, and make sure they have internal links. So not completely programmatic, but we can still crank out tons of pages.

I’ve also been scraping the information of companies in our targeted niche to upload via WP All Import Pro to create the directory listings.

Link building has already started and will of course be a continuous process. We’ll be using niche edits, guest posts, PRs, etc, and then backing them up with tiered linking.

We did a bit of shuffling and reorganizing at the agency this past month, instituted more automations and hired new team members so I should have more time to work on this consistently in April.

Indexing was pretty slow in March because of the algo update, but once the roll backs in April are done indexing should be back to normal. Once the pages we publish get indexed we’ll start shooting links over to them.

Those are topics I am really interested in and spending a lot of time.

If I start with affiliate marketing, then it would make sense for me to look for something like that instead of health supplements, courses, finance ...

I don't have that big of a problem to put a year and years into something, when I kind of estimate if it'll work out for me (I know nobody could tell, but some can estimate better with their experience)

That's little information till now, but I prefer to keep it short

1. Are the mentioned topics worth it at all or just oversaturated for years
2. What if I would focus on my native language instead of English to niche down
3. Is it better to be super specific e.g. only VPN services or keep it open to allow all possible web tools and WordPress
4. As I am a lot into WordPress I would rather focus on a blog instead of other channels, or is this completely wrong these days?

there are probably so many other ways: forum, quora, reddit, social media groups if allowed, pinterest, .. I don't even know about other options

I kind of think there are several dimensions to niche down

a) topic and products/services

b) language, country

c) target group, buyer

d) channel, platform: website, social media, forum ...

​

I wrote 6 articles [ :(((( ] and received

258 impressions with three clicks.

Initially, I didn't plan to make a post, but I said I will in previous one. I aimed to follow u/PhilReddit7, but ended up writing six pages instead. Hopefully, I'll manage 30 next month...

What has this month been like for me?

When I wrote my first page, I didn't check the keyword difficulty KD or SERP. Although I'm getting impressions for that page, I'm not getting any clicks. When I eventually checked the KD, it was around 80, with a good SERP. I'm glad I didn't stick with strategy of not checking anything.

For my second-page keywords, I did some research, and all three of my clicks are from that page. The SERP, in my opinion, didn't show any good matches for the keyword; there were only a few questions answered on forums. What confuses me is that I'm not entirely sure which keywords I'm ranking for. When I select my second page in GSC under "performance" in the USA, the "average position" bar shows some positions at 1 for keywords much harder than the ones I aim to rank for. However, the keywords I've optimized in the title, H1, and description have positions lower than 30. When I search for the keywords ranking at position 1 in the USA, my page doesn't appear. I'm confused and must read more to understand this better.

Also, after March 8th, I didn't receive any clicks. Impressions from the page with three clicks have increased, and the position now confuses me. However, manually checking on Google Search shows the same results for several countries for the given keywords.

What was causing me depression and patience was the solution

1. When I added my third page great content, I believed it could be successful and was really excited. It got indexed immediately, as all my pages do (I request indexing in GSC). However, it didn't appear in the SERP for ten days, nor did it show up in the "performance" section. No need to say, I checked every day if it was there. Eventually, the page showed up, but 10 days felt like a long time. I discovered that good interlinking - not just through the navigation bar, but also when other pages link to the one I'm about to add - speeds up its appearance on the SERP, like within three days.
2. Additionally, I added a favicon, and it immediately showed up in the tab, but once again, it didn't appear in the SERP for about twelve days.

Discouraging posts
Discouraging posts claiming SEO doesn't work ))......I want to see for myself, so I'll continue.
Sorry if its too whiny

My story about Building JustExpired.net - A Personal Tale
My name is Len and after spending over a decade as a corporate IT professional, I felt this growing itch to create something of my own. The 9-to-5 grind was getting stale, and I craved a new challenge that would reignite my passion for technology. I have a background in User Experience design, business analysis and just working in web development teams.

I always have a lot of ideas but haven't pursued or fully implemented most of them. Pretty recognizable right? Well, I wanted to change that and also see how tools like GPT-4 how help me in this process! I felt like I was missing the opportunity to become a GPT-4 power user in a way. Those who master AI tools get a change at being more productive, especially in the digital space.

That's when the idea for JustExpired.net was born. I saw an opportunity to build a platform that could help people discover and claim valuable expired domain names with ease. As someone who had spent years tinkering with side projects, I knew how frustrating the process of finding a good domain could be. This would be my chance to solve that pain point. I wanted something that did most of the work for me, a pre-curated (pre-filtered) list of domain names.
So late 2023, I took the plunge and started this entrepreneurial dream. Was I nervous? You bet! But that fear was overshadowed by sheer excitement at the prospect of building something from the ground up.
The first few months were a whirlwind. I had to teach myself Python programming from scratch, which involved many late nights, gallons of coffee, and more than a few bald patches from pulling my hair out. But slowly, steadily, I chipped away at developing 14 different scripts to power the backend engine for fetching, curating, and enhancing expired domain data.
Each little victory filled me with a childlike sense of wonder and pride that I hadn't felt in years. Like a kid putting together a model airplane, I relished in the joy of creating something with my own two hands.

When you progress through each phase you uncover a new area you need to learn and uncover.
So I dove head-first into the world of cloud hosting, front-end design, you name it. Every challenge was a fun new puzzle to solve through good ol' fashioned learning by doing. I stumbled, I faltered, but I kept pushing forward. Leaving a trail of failed ideas and attempts while keeping the parts that worked.

Finally, after 4 grueling yet exhilarating months, JustExpired.net went live. I felt like a million bucks and couldn't believe I actually completed it, without cutting too many corners. Yes, it had been an uphill battle, but the sense of accomplishment made every ounce of sweat worthwhile.

These days, JustExpired.net is a labor of love that I continue nurturing and growing. For me, it represents the power of just starting and learning by doing. I know have a pretty good idea about back-end, data retrieval & processing, cloud hosting, front-end and so on. Now the next phase is here, figuring out:

• How to get people to find my service
• See if it sticks and really solves a big enough problem
• If not, no worries. I learned a ton. This was also a learning project.

For my next project, I wan't to develop a bit more market research skills to better determine the value in advance. It is always easy to just start but better to have a good understanding what problem you're solving and for whom.

So if you're feeling stuck in a rut or have a crazy idea you can't stop thinking about, I encourage you to take that leap. Trust me, the view is amazing on the other side.

hey everyone,

Considering paying for some facebook pages to share my website + pull in some social traffic.

Has anyone tried it/used any services they found success? Found some services online but i'm a little skeptical and don't want to get my google account banned with invalid visitors.

Otherwise, is the best way just to message relevant facebook pages and ask for their pricing? Or is it a terrible idea entirely. Curious to hear if anyone else has explored this. Thanks!

Last progress report: https://www.reddit.com/r/juststart/comments/18dgd71/month_8_progress_report/

This is going to be my last update, seeing as how I am passed the 'Just Start' phase. I did it! I started and have just continued chuggin' along. I have graduated from having zero experience to having just the faintest clue as to what I am doing. Progress! Maybe within 5 year's time, I'll graduate into the realm of mediocrity. One can hope :)

tldr; Have 71 published articles/pages, seemed to hit a ceiling with traffic - then decline, making pretty good money, IMO

Backstory and Learnings:

Since my last update, I have only managed to publish/create 12 articles/pages. I took a little time off before the holidays to relax, and then during the holidays, I got sick and am still dealing with that. But, I sort of got back in the groove the past few weeks as I have been creating new content for my site.

I am using one of my affiliate partner's API to bring in product details & images (hundreds upon hundreds) and dynamically creating affiliate links on evergreen pages I am creating. The best way I can describe what I am trying to achieve is essentially a Pinterest board focused only on this single topic. I had to develop that functionality on my own so I leveraged ChatGPT again to help me code the PHP. I'd say I am about 50% of the way complete with the whole process.

One thing I noticed when creating these pages was that once they were finished, I manually submitted them to Google for indexing. Once submitted, they would be indexed within literally 60s. Not sure why that is, but I'll take it. Another thing I have done within the past month was (finally) set up my site using CloudFlare's CDN.

I have to say, I am really impressed. My site was by no means slow, but with CloudFlare, it loads near instantly on both my desktop and phone. I am very happy with the results of using their CDN. It still takes a bit of time for the ads JavaScript to load, but that all happens after the page is fully rendered and is usable for the user.

Traffic:

Last update, I was talking about a 300 click wall I seemed to stuck on. I never did really break through that wall. There was a small window where after Christmas where I would occasionally eclipse 400+ clicks per day from Google, but that fell to around 350 clicks per day until the last third of January. Then I was back to the 300 click wall again.

Now, with the March update currently in progress, I am down to what feels like a 250-275 click wall. It seems like odd days are high 200s and even days are mid, to even low, 200s. The weird thing is that my GA4 traffic is not as chaotic as GSC's traffic. I have a post that trends on YouTube and FaceBook nearly every single day, so that is definitely helping out.

According to GA4, I am getting anywhere from 600-775 page views per day. I suppose we are all just riding this out to see how April looks once this update is over. I'll be 100% straight, I am lowkey just waiting for the day for Google to take it all away. Obviously, I hope I am wrong, but that is my gut feeling. But, until then, I'll be carrying on as normal.

Videos:

I have not made any new videos. It is something I know I will need to continue doing, especially with the rocky seas at Google. I have a few ideas and things I want to shoot, but I just really dislike the editing and voice over work. All that being said, I will say, the lone long-form video I have uploaded has a thumbs up/down ratio of 197/5. So at least people are getting value of it and enjoying it.

Numbers:

Despite my traffic being down, or at least not growing at the moment, I feel like I am making good money from my site. For context, I joined the Impact site on 10/31. I joined the Share-a-Sale site on 10/25. I joined Monumetric for ads on 12/10. I joined Amazon in April 2023.

Money:

• Amazon Associates

• Monumetric Ads

• Impact

• Share-a-Sale

For full transparency, here is what I have made each month (USD):

Traffic

• Google Analytics

• Google Site Search - Search

• Google Site Search - Discover

Things I am Investigating:

• Nothing really at the moment. I am sort of in a waiting pattern until the March update is complete. Then I will assess everything and possibly make some changes to my site

• I lied, there is one thing. Amazon's Creator Rewards. How do you get these bonus offers? I had bonus targets for Oct-Dec and then, albeit smaller amounts, bonus targets for Jan-Mar. But nothing for Apr and beyond. Those bonuses sure are nice and losing them will be a bit off a bummer. Anyone have any advice, my ears are open

Lastly, I just wanted to thank all the countless members of this sub (and many other subs) who provide advice, encouragement, criticism, audits and all that fun stuff with their free time. I don't post a ton, but I do read a ton and have learned so much from these SEO subreddits. That has been the main point of me posting my journey. A way for me to help anyone, in any way possible, with my extremely limited SEO knowledge.

As you may know, Amazon no longer allows affiliates to get direct image URLs for product images through their SiteStripe program. Late last year, many YouTubers made videos claiming you can simply grab the HTML code with the image from the Amazon site using ScratchPad, and that's all you need. Articles like this one also suggest this method.

However, this is a misconception and violates Amazon's policies. Here's an excerpt from the PA API Usage Requirements:

"You will not store or cache Product Advertising Content consisting of an image, but you may store a link to Product Advertising Content consisting of an image for up to 24 hours. You may store other Product Advertising Content that does not consist of images for caching purposes for up to 24 hours, but if you do so you must immediately thereafter refresh and re-display the Product Advertising Content by making a call to PA API or retrieving a new Data Feed and refreshing the Product Advertising Content on your application immediately thereafter."

So Amazon is just saying you can hotlink the image from their servers and have it updated at least once daily. If product images get updated on Amazon's end, hotlinking the old HTML-embedded images violates their policies.

In other words, bloggers who hotlink current Amazon images this way do so at their own risk. Technically, they should verify these images every 24 hours, which they likely aren't doing.

Having Amazon API credentials generated could potentially mitigate some risk, but if Amazon checks and sees no API calls coming with those credentials, it could be grounds for an account ban.

​

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to share a quick update on my journey with starting a newsletter business. About a month and a half ago, I took the leap and launched my own newsletter, and the response has been positive so far!

In such a short time, I've had the opportunity to collaborate with two amazing content creators. By making myself known and putting in the hours researching and writing, I managed to amass a solid following. This following was significant enough to catch the attention of micro to medium-sized content creators. It took everything I had just to write that cold DM, especially considering they were much bigger than me. However, I still reached out, and eventually, I secured the cross-promotion.

I don't expect you to follow my advice, but if you want to take it into consideration, feel free to:

1. Target micro influencers: In the beginning, focus on connecting with micro influencers. Don't be scared to reach out to them; they are just as eager to grow their audience as you are.

2. Be honest about your following: Never lie about your following. If you don't feel comfortable sharing that information, try to avoid the question, but always maintain honesty in your interactions.

3. Value is key: Keep value as the main conversation topic when reaching out to collaborate. Explain how both content creators and their audiences can benefit from the collaboration. Highlight the mutual value exchange to encourage partnerships.

4. Don't be intimidated by subscriber count: It's okay if the influencers you reach out to have a much larger following than you. Remember, the quality of subscribers also counts. For example, the first influencer I worked with had close to 70k followers on Instagram, while I had only hundreds. However, we managed to send each other almost the same amount of followers. Focus on the engagement and relevance of your audience rather than sheer numbers.

5. Build genuine relationships: When reaching out to potential collaborators, focus on building genuine relationships rather than just seeking transactions. Invest time in getting to know the content creators and their work. Building trust and rapport can lead to more meaningful and long-lasting partnerships. I still talk with Alex from time to time.

6. Research audience compatibility: Make sure your audiences are compatible!!! Ensuring compatibility between your audiences can lead to more successful collaborations and increased engagement with your content.

What is my newsletter about? Sending you entrepreneurship books every week, straight to your inbox. With all the key takeaways, favorite quotes, and actionable next steps, so you know how to apply each books concepts in real life. We also added a challenge every week, so you can focus on consuming more books in less time.

For the sake of self-promotion, I'll share where to find my newsletter only if you ask for it in the comments. Hope it helps and hope these tips help you secure some cross-promotions and growth!

I have had this problem for at least two weeks now. Whenever I click the link to add a new website, so the link that says "Edit Your Website, Mobile App, and Alexa Skill List": https://ibb.co/vxpHSZq

Which takes you here: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/home/account/profile/sitelist

I'll get a "Bad request" error: https://ibb.co/1vL2cpH - "Bad request! Sorry, we couldn't understand your request"

I have retried it nearly daily for two weeks now. I've tried using different browsers, different internet connections / IP addresses, different devices, clearing cookies and cache, signing out and in again, etc. Nothing helps, so it looks to be a problem on their end - either with their entire system, or somehow my account with them is bugged.

So I was wondering if any of you guys have the same problem? And if you were able to fix it? By the way, I only have this problem with amazon.com, I don't have this problem with my Amazon.de affiliate account, or those for any other regions.

I have already contacted Amazon.com Associate support, and they have been 'looking into it' for over a week now, so that hasn't been any help either.

So I'm completely unable to add my new website to Amazon. I can still create a new tracking ID / tag (here: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/home/account/tag/manage) though, but I just don't want my account to get into trouble for promoting Amazon on sites I haven't listed down the line, especially since I'm already using this account for a few other sites.

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Hey guys,

I'll just preface this post by saying I'm not at all an expert when it comes to black hat SEO or SEO in general. However, for this year, my aim is to get a bit more into it and hopefully diversify my traffic sources from being 100% social media-based.

I have this idea that I am looking to execute but I'm just not sure how Google will view or react to such a tactic. I'm looking to build around 15-20 sites targeting each of my main site's money pages. The sites that I am looking to register will be branded as the target keyword (not very competitive ones) meaning the domain name will be the actual keyword itself.

However, my goal isn't really to make these sites into their own unique identities with a ton of content behind them but rather develop them in such a manner that every visitor knows that it's just a subsidiary site of the main money site. I'll be utilizing them in my social media campaigns using my original brand name so it's kinda imperative that they see the logo/identity of the brand that ultimately referred them to the site relating to the target keyword/service. Each subsidiary site is gonna be just one simple landing page that ultimately leads back to the specific service page of the actual money site.

A good example that I was able to find was this site here: cannabismarketingpr(.)com.

As you can see, it clearly uses the brand name strategy for ranking but makes it abundantly clear that the main brand is behind this particular subsidiary brand. The subsidiary brand doesn’t even have its own logo.

If I were to implement a similar strategy, would I need to go through the same process and take the same precautions as if I were building a PBN (buy a bunch of server droplets for hosting, use different registrars, not registering all of the domains in one day, being super careful about how many links I insert to my money page, etc.)? Or would a project of this scale not warrant taking the same sort of precautions that you'd need to take when building a PBN of 500+ sites?

Grateful for any advice!

I have a page running for a couple of years now that provides a weather related status. So if some weather conditions occur, I make a calculation and provide the user some info.
This is just one page with a bit of text and an emoji :)
My other hobby projects run Google Adsense, but Google won't accept this page because it is a status page.
For reference some search console screenshot, as you can see, if people search for this, they click on my site.
I am thinking of going international with the page, but then I would at least breakeven on the domain costs ;)
Thanks!

I love this community, and wanted to share some hopefully inspiring progress.

I launched a free app on the iOS App Store to allow users to compare their total tax burden across all 50 states in the U.S. Without any promotion, it's already gotten 2k impressions and 36 downloads in the App Store! I know it's not much, but I was excited to see some traction!

This was something I built for myself in Excel, then decided it would be a good opportunity to learn how to make iOS apps. I took the course on codecademy, and launched the app about 30 days ago.

I have no plans for monetization. For now I'm just happy to be helping people make more informed decisions about where to live. If it continues to get more usage, maybe I'll invest more time into building it out and adding paid features.

You can check out the app on the App Store or on my ugly HTML landing page (State Tax Calculator).

I would appreciate any advice and feedback (positive or negative). I'm new to building software, so please tell me what I'm doing wrong!

I don't know if it is useful to anyone but here's my RPM/CPM by country on Mediavine (from September 2023 to February 2024).I decided to look into it because I have another smaller website in the same niche I plan to translate into a few more languages and I was undecided between Swedish and Dutch. Feel free to share yours as well if you feel like it.

Niche: Travel / Outdoors

PS: CPM for Switzerland is even higher (3,87 USD) but for some reason swiss traffic does not appear to be monetized on MV? Or at least my website has earned nothing from this.

Hello, folks! I am just starting up a blog about living and traveling with a cat in Japan. I posted my first post last week (yay!). But I'd like some feedback as I start to shake out my plans.
For context: Japan currently has a growing campaign around going out and/or traveling with dogs called "Dog Run," but there isn't much information around going out with your cat. As someone with an adventurous kitten, I want to help fill that gap.

I'm planning on doing 3 categories of content: At Home, In Training, and Adventuring. At Home is meant to cover whatever someone might need to know about living with a cat while here (guides to finding cat-friendly rental properties, how to get a cat here, good brands and products for things, etc.). In Training will focus on what a person would need to train their cat to do to safely adventure outside as well as information a human would need to keep their cat safe (what plants are dangerous for cats to eat, how to protect your cat if you run into a wild animal, that sort of thing). And Adventuring will include content on cool/fun places to go with your cat and what you need to make the most of those experiences.

Some content is in English and some is in Japanese. There are translations for some parts, but I also plan to have content exclusive to each language because the audience is different. The English content is directed at foreigners living here. I'm also including a list of relevant Japanese vocabulary words for people studying the language for each of the posts. The Japanese content is for Japanese people who want to take their cats adventuring across Japan. Long term, I want to have a map of cool places to go with your cat, but it seems like that requires an investment, so I'm waiting to roll that out until I have some consistent traffic.

Any feedback is appreciated as I am just starting and am feeling a bit overwhelmed. I also have a couple questions for you all:

1. Is this a reasonable niche? Should I aim bigger or smaller?

2. Should I also include content about feline-focused experiences like cat cafés and cat islands?

P.S. Shoutout to u/GetaSubaru for recommending r/juststart as a forum for feedback and discussion.

Hey everyone, I'm a long time lurker and this is my experience so far running a blog. I've read so many case studies.

I started a travel blog about 7 months ago now and I want to show you the stats so far, what I've done and my future plans to continue to grow it. I started this blog on July 28, 2023. It's based on my experience studying abroad so I speak from that point of view.

I have no social media for this blog and up until about a month ago, no logo and an ugly bare-bones design. I have only just recently made a basic logo and changed the website design (new fonts, a basic logo made in Figma, adding a subtle background pattern that's easier on the eyes). I've also started to rewrite old blog posts and I've already noticed a noticeable bump in CTR and session time.

As of now (Feb 24/24)

Revenue: $4.24 (from one affiliate booking)

Posts: 37

My process:

I first started writing about the technical, niche aspects of moving abroad like how to get money, how to get your visa, student discount guides and started branching into more experiential, first hand experiences like hotels I've stayed at, or places I've visited, walking tours etc. These are my best articles and I've found success so far.

For my articles, I try to imagine I'm writing with a tone of "Speaking to someone you met recently that's planning to go where you stayed". I'm not very keyword focused, but I am trying to incorporate them more. Not sure how much this has hurt my growth, but given how much HCU has hurt other sites, I'm happy with the slow, consistent growth.

Biggest challenges I've encountered so far:

Writing - I need to write more, no excuses

Treating the blog seriously, pursuing other channels of growth rather than just organic (started a Pinterest account as a start, thinking of TikTok)

Backlinks - I need to improve my internal backlinking and have only one, pretty spammy external backlink according to Ahrefs

Stats per month

August (+ last few days of July):

Posts written: 16

Impressions: 579

Clicks: 32

Average CTR: 5.5%

Average Position: 18

September:

Posts written: 9

Impressions: 1.39k

Clicks: 70

Average CTR: 5%

Average Position: 16.2

October:

Posts written: 7

Impressions: 2.82k

Clicks: 134

Average CTR: 4.8%

Average Position: 17

November:

Posts written: 0

Impressions: 3.74k

Clicks: 176

Average CTR: 4.7%

Average Position: 15.5

December:

Posts written: 0

Impressions: 4.87k

Clicks: 215

Average CTR: 4.4%

Average Position: 16.3

January:

Posts written: 0

Impressions: 6.94k

Clicks: 288

Average CTR: 4.2%

Average Position: 15.8

February (Feb 1 - Feb. 23)

Posts written: 5

Impressions: 7.83k

Clicks: 297

Average CTR: 3.8%

Average Position: 13.5

I wrote 0 posts from November to January because of burn out and a bit of a mental rough patch and I just could not bring myself to do it.

Thankfully I'm passed that and is when I started redesigning the site and writing more. Feeling pretty good with how things are going though.

I've also started to add more affiliate banners, rather than just in-text links and I've noticed my impressions for my affiliate offers has increased already, although no new sales.

I've been rejected from AdSense twice so far, my guess is due to weak content or a lack of other pages like a privacy policy and an about page. I've been working on both of these, trying to improve the readability of my content, adding those pages and growing on socials like Pinterest.

My takeaways so far

*-*For travel bloggers especially: TAKE AS MANY PHOTOS AS YOU CAN OF EVEN THE MOST SEEMINGLY MUNDANE SHIT.

Advantages: No need to pay for stock photos, your images rank, you give the readers more context, can incorporate the image into your writing better, get article ideas from pictures you have. None of my pictures I use show me or people I was with either.

-The tone I use for my blog seems to be working.

-Experience is so crucial for writing. It not only makes things 10x easier, but some of my best articles were based on my really niche experiences.

-There are so many ways to improve my articles that involve little writing. Improving backlinks, changing fonts, spacing between elements, adding a related posts plugin, adding affiliate banner widgets (without being intrusive).

Future plans:

-Write more. Don't do a 0 post month again, at least not for a while.

-Use socials to get traffic. I think short-form videos like Tiktok, reels etc would work well.

-Grow enough to use ad networks like AdSense, but especially others like Ezoic or Mediavine.

-Focus on affiliate traffic. I want my articles to have high quality affiliate links that tie in with my articles rather than having an ad heavy experience. Not to mention, affiliate potential is way higher, especially for travel which is experience focused (easier to sell).

What I mean is, say your website is about XYZ which is a brand new product that people don't know much about but still search for.

You make a page titled 'Introduction to XYZ' and you link it in your menus and also link to it from a couple of your articles.

Now, what if you made a few more pages with titles like 'What is XYZ?', 'Learn about XYZ', 'How does XYZ work?' with the content being the exact same as the initial 'Introduction to XYZ' page and you publish them but you *don't* put those pages in the menus or link to them anywhere.

Will that help with targeting those keywords for people who search them with that specific wording without clunking up your site with duplicate content? Will Google punish you for 'spammy' content? Will those even show up in search engines?

I want you feedback regarding seo/marketing software and platforms!

TL;DR: Hey fellow entrepreneurs and webmasters! I’m working on an SEO software and I’m super curious about your experiences with similar tools. What do you love or hate about the SEO software you’ve used? Why did you pick it? I’m not looking for tips on developing the software, running a business, or marketing strategies – just your honest user experiences. Thanks in advance! I have nothing to sell!

Hey everyone on r/juststart

I’m in the midst of creating an SEO software, and I realized something important – what better way to make something useful than to ask the people who actually use these tools? That’s why I’m here.

I’m not after advice on how to build the software (got that covered, thankfully!) nor am I here to get a lecture on the ‘do’s and don’ts’ of running a business or marketing strategies. I’m pretty clued up on how competitive this field is, so no need to go down that road.

What I really want to dive into is your raw, unfiltered experiences with SEO software. What features made you go “Wow, this is awesome!” or “Ugh, why can’t they get this right?”. Did you choose your current SEO tool because it had a killer feature, an irresistible price point, or just because it was easy to use?

I’m super curious about the real reasons you picked one software over another. Was it the analytics, the user interface, customer support, or something else entirely? And what about regrets or frustrations? Any feature you wish existed but doesn’t?

Your feedback is like gold dust for someone like me. It’s not just about building another tool; it’s about creating something that actually solves real problems and makes your entrepreneurial journey a tad easier.

So, if you’ve got a moment, I’d love to hear your thoughts. No detail is too small, and every bit of your experience (good or bad) can be incredibly enlightening.

Thanks a ton for taking the time to share your insights. It means a lot, and who knows, it might just help shape a tool that you’ll end up loving to use!

Looking forward to your responses!

I just started!

(if you are interested in stats only, go down to the bold text)

Hi everyone who is trying to be successful in creating a website and hoping for traffic, and to those who dream about passive income and being free birds. I'll be describing my journey here as well.

I've wanted to create my website for about six months now, but without a CMS. Why? Because I tried one cms and couldn't do what I wanted. I didn't have full control. I couldn't even create a vertical sidebar with dropdown menus. I didn't try other CMSs; I decided that if my website failed (no traffic), at least I would gain some new knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which would be helpful when I eventually beg for a 9-5 job. :DDD

So, I started learning HTML and CSS (although I procrastinated a lot), and JavaScript (only basics at the end). I created my website after months of learning and trying (scrolling through Instagram and honestly working for just 30 minutes a day).

I bought the domain a week ago and hosted my website for free on a known platform.

What is my website about?

It is an educational website.

How many pages does it have?

It has only two pages now!

Impressions: 27

Clicks: 0. Yes

I will update after a month. I wish everyone would stop procrastinating and follow their dreams.

Hey all,

I started a website last year about a niche that I'm really passionate about and love. It's technically two built into one site but they're closely related.

I did this because I'm super passionate about it and want to write about it and share my knowledge with the world. However, I don't really get any traffic and I don't know if there really is much traffic to be had. it's in the music category and has to do with a pretty under-served genre as far as recognition goes. Up until this point though, I've only gotten my SEO score (via RankMath) up to about 91 on one article, I normally average 85.

So I'm asking for advice with what I should do in this situation. Do I continue just writing articles that make me happy and not try to monetize? Or do I put in the work to do SEO when there might not be that much traffic?

Also, what effect does post frequency have on a site? I generally post twice a month because I want to take time for my articles to be quality.

I'm happy with my website the way it is, but ultimately it would be nice to have traffic just for engagement and meeting people with similar interests if anything.

I started my website in June 2022.

As I approach two years of working on it and investing some money in it, I wonder if it's worth continuing.

The experience has been fun and interesting, but also stressful and frustrating. I put unnecessary stress on myself to meet "imaginary deadlines". I feel I need to turn out about 3 posts a week.

I have a full-time job and a wife. I tried making this website because it's related to my field of work and I was hoping for a way to earn more money, and if lucky, some more mobility/freedom, choosing when and where I work.

My site has grown, but not enough. My AdSense generates about $15 a month and my affiliate stuff has earned $0 since I started. I did start that much later and keep adding partners, but not lucky enough to get any sales.

My top two competitors get millions of view each month. I get around 8,000. My original thinking was I could steal away at least a hundred thousand views from them. I guess I was wrong?

When do you know it's not going to work? Is there anything I can/should do to get more of their traffic? I've tried some Facebook ads and it does help. Should I just dump a bunch of money into that?

I'm just feeling lost and confused. I don't want to quit, but I think it might be the healthier option. My website is even losing to a site that hasn't been updated since 2019!! We are "news" websites for English learners... That's crazy...

Well, thank you for reading. I needed to get this out of my system.

My views since the site started
My site versus my top two competitors. Mine's the one with the least visits...

So I’ve been in SEO professionally for nearly 2 decades now, and a hobbyist before that. First started ranking sites back when there was actual competition in search engines, way back at the turn of the century.

I’ve spent most of the past decade focusing on maps and local SEO, ranking HVAC, Pest Control, tree service, dental, and legal clients.

The thing is, after so long, clients really start to get on your fucking nerves.

I’m not getting any younger. I’m 38 years old, have a son in middle school, and want more of my time back, maybe try to get an RV and hit every single MLB park in one summer.

So I figured now is the time to finally start building out some revenue generating properties for myself.

The Plan

The plan is to take all my knowledge, SOPs, and my existing team and start building out rank and rent directory networks, starting with the HVAC niche.

There are approximately 100,000 HVAC contractors in the US, so there is a fairly large potential pool of customers, and I already know they are paying for SEO.

What I’ll do is build out directory sites and attempt to rank for the biggest cities in each state, as well as the major neighborhoods in each city, and for multiple services. I’ll start with HVAC, because why the fuck not, then move on to tree service (another favorite of mine), dental, and pest control.

So, what I'm going to do is get pages ranked for “hvac contractor los angeles”, “ac repair los angeles”, “furnace repair los angeles”. Then we’d do the same for 1000 other cities in the country.

Not too hard, once you know a few tricks local SEO is pretty easy.

I'll use AI content that is tuned for entities and quadgrams according to my SOPs, and include relevant geographic info so that the page relevant for the entire entity query rather than the exact keyword “hvac company in (city)”

Then, once those are ranking, I'll start shopping around each city to different companies in the area to rent on a monthly basis. Each city page would then have a silo built out behind it with additional pages for that customer, almost like an auxiliary site for them.

If I'm able to even rent out 100 at an average cost of $100/month, that’s $10,000 MRR for one site.

At the same time, I’ll be building links to them and turn these sites into authority monsters, and offering paid “premium” citations that include NAPW, dofollow links and click to call buttons.

I'll eventually have a blog component and sell ads on that end too. That might be programmatic.

The Foundation

February is month 0. I have the domain name from Namecheap, hosting through Siteground, and I’ll be using 3 different onpage software to tune the content.

Site will be built on Wordpress.

Content will be written with Zimmwriter and ChatGPT using some of my own prompts that I use in my agency.

I’m using a paid theme from Elementor since I’m no designer.

I’ll be scraping and uploading business listings via WP All Import.

The Goal

The first goal is to have the entire site built out and published by the end of the month.

Hello!

Would you believe we’re fast approaching a year of me documenting my latest online journey?

This stuff goes super quick (for me at least), it’s a good reminder that today is the best day to Just Start! (How cheesy, eh)

That said - and I feel like I say this every time, but I’ve been slacking again to be honest and wish I’d done more in the last couple of months, but meh.

Anyway, here’s an overview of what’s happened since the last update:

• I made a total of £5,452.49 from both channels combined in Dec-Jan.
• I had some more videos picked up by local media; didn’t drive much traffic but it’s good exposure.
• I did a content push in December on the stock channel releasing a video daily for most of the month, but hardly touched my other channel making just one video.
• I probably worked somewhere in the region of ~75-100 hours across two months.

NB - I had some hate mail last update from people saying none of this can be true without screenshots (it’s the internet, I get it), so I included a lifetime analytics screenshot for each channel:

Channel 1 - https://imgur.com/a/VkeTUGi

Channel 2 - https://imgur.com/a/lvZiIAv

Overview of Stats for Both Channels

Channel 1

​

​

Channel 2

Channel 1 – Here’s What Happened

I still have one video responsible for 99% of the traffic and earnings on this channel. Not sure how long it will last, but it is still paying the bills.

I went hard back in December releasing a video almost every day. I wanted to test out a few different topics, headline styles, and some other things.

I didn’t really figure anything out, to be honest. It’s tough cracking the algo with this channel and I can’t seem to get any decent momentum with the subs or the audience.

But, it’s all good. There is a minimal expense involved, and I still get to sharpen my skills with every video I make.

Channel 2 – Here’s What Happened

This is the channel where I love making the content. I get to go out and visit places across the UK, interview people, film interesting places and things, and it’s been a blast.

My main issue is that I go out filming with a friend as it’s so much easier and more fun that way, but he’s been really busy.

He actually has a job, would you believe. He’d love to change that if this channel provided a full-time income, and I believe that could happen if we can get out often enough.

We didn’t go out for weeks, but we have been out a couple of times in the last few weeks so I have some footage in the pipeline to release a couple of videos.

I’ve been targeting newsworthy topics in recent videos which is something I said I wanted to do in a previous update.

It’s been working really well. I’ve been featured several times in the local and national media, I’ve even been ‘recognised’ 3-4 times by random people now. (It’s a faceless channel, but as soon as I explain what I do they ask if I'm ‘the guy from that [name] channel’).

Online media doesn’t send a lot of traffic my way, unfortunately, the journalists don’t often embed my videos and they tend to put a link to my channel very discreetly in the article - all tactics to keep people on their page.

It’s Business As Usual

Going forward it’s more of the same. I’m tempted to start a new channel to fill the gaps in time between working on the others but I’m hesitant to start getting bogged down working on multiple channels.

In reality, I need to double down by persuading my friend to go out filming more and spend more time trying to crack the algo on my stock channel.

How's things been progressing with you guys?

Previous post:

I started my blogging journey following u/Philreddit7's technique of targeting low-competition keywords.

I had written 59 articles with 66 clicks and 7.37k Impressions.

My social media presence and commitment were next to nothing, but my primary goal was churning out articles!

My approach for the last three months:

Similar strategy but with a little more experience in finding better keywords and targeting them in the article (which has shown). I have tried to write as many articles as possible, but I struggled as work ramped up and I had a break around Christmas.

Numbers (specific to each month, not accumulative):

November: 9 articles written (total 68), 78 clicks, 12.8k Impressions, £0 earnings

December: 5 articles written (73 total), 136 clicks, 15.1K impressions, £0 earnings

January: 4 articles written (77 total), 273 clicks, 23.4k Impressions, £0 earnings

In total over the 6 months:

Articles - 77

Clicks - 553

Impressions - 58.7k

General reflections:

I am delighted that some of my articles are performing very well. I have three articles ranking in the top 5 for their top keyword, with a handful of others in the top 10. My most significant success is having a few featured SERPS briefly. I don't know why they're no longer at the top, but it seems Google has crowned a new king.

Generally, the trend of increased traffic and impressions is optimistic, even though over the past few weeks, I've seen my clicks decline a bit (I wonder if that results from top SERPs being lost).

However, I am concerned that only three articles pull more than 50% of my traffic to the site. Is this normal? Because of that, I am at a crossroads.

Should I optimise my other articles for better keywords or forget them and continue pumping out content?

I have never bothered acquiring backlinks, but I want to know whether I should start. I have 16 backlinks to my articles with a Domain Rating and URL Rating of 0 and 4.5, respectively, according to Ahrefs.

Should I begin to focus more on improving this? Or is this a standard position to be in after six months?

Social Media:

I still have no social media presence, mainly because I do not post.

Should I start diversifying my organic traffic through social media or continue as is?

Going through all the articles to post on Pinterest and Facebook will take time away from writing. But given the poor performance of many articles, this may be better.

For the next three months:

For the next three months, I want to see a continued improvement in my Google Search Console numbers. I enjoy the emails I receive with the milestones hit! I will need to decide three things:

1. Whether this is the month to break onto the social media scene.
2. Whether to optimise and edit existing articles or ignore and continue writing.
3. Whether I should try accumulating more backlinks through guest posts and reaching out to fellow bloggers or appreciate this will sort itself out over time.

TL;DR:

- Started blogging 6 months ago, focusing on low-competition keywords.

- Grew to 77 articles, 553 clicks, and 58.7k impressions with no earnings.

- Three articles rank in the top 5 for their keywords with multiple top SERPs.

- Concerned about over-reliance on three articles for 50%+ traffic.

- No social media presence or backlink strategy yet.-

Considering: 1) Starting social media. 2) Optimising existing content vs. producing new articles. 3) Seeking backlinks to improve site metrics.

While exploring recent developments on technology websites, I stumbled upon a blog that seems to contradict Google's HCU guidelines. Yet, it is remarkably successful, which piques my curiosity. I'm intrigued by how this strategy has managed to succeed so significantly and for such an extended period.

The blog's domain is fritzboxes.de. Here some insights from my semrush analysis:

• Launched approximately six months ago.

• Unhealthy backlink profile, with an excessive ratio of dofollow links compared to nofollow links. However, many image backlinks.

• Features content, including images, that are AI-generated (mostly depicting non-existent routers).

• Heavily uses Amazon affiliate widgets.

• Lacks author profiles and an "About Us" page.

• Demonstrates high integration in SERP features, especially "People Also Ask."

Interestingly, it outranks well-established websites like giga.de or vodafone.de, which have high topical authority. For example, searching for "Fritzbox 7590 vs. 7590 AX" (with a volume of 1300) shows this site ranking highly against top competitor.

So my question goes out to all SEO-Experts: What's the secret? Why is this approach succeeding while other blogs, striving to meet EEAT criteria in every aspect, struggle to make it to the top ten in SERP? Is this just some kind of honeymoon effect or the new HCU-adapted 2024 strategy of making money in AM?

If you're not familiar, Grow is a single sign on tool that opts readers into a 1st party ad network across all MV sites, and also opt into your email list at the same time.

Here's how they describe Grow:

While they are logged in to their Grow account, that reader is logged in across all sites running Grow — and we ask for their permission to serve personalized ads at sign-up.

With Grow, advertisers can run campaigns across all kinds of sites and reach the right user. Publishers running Grow have the advantage because Mediavine is the only company with an SSO first-party data tool that’s ready for publishers right now.

Why should this matter to you?

Individually, no single publisher can generate the volume of authenticated traffic and first-party data advertisers need. We believe advertisers will pay more to reach their target audiences when the network across which readers are logged in is so much larger and more versatile.

I'm running MV ads but I haven't enabled Grow. I dont like the user experience - using my lead magnet as the bait to have someone create an account that just signs them into an ad network without adding any other value for them.

Any thoughts or experiences with it?

Hi all,

on Dec 19th I launched DataAnalyst.com. In total, this is the 13th update, this time covering the first month of 2024.

Want to make sure I document the journey, and keep myself honest, so each month I will be making a post about the statistics, progress, some thoughts and what are the next steps I want to be focusing on.

While the main purpose for the post is to bring everyone along on the journey, I do think that members of r/juststart might benefit from the site, especially those looking to start their first online project.

So, just a reminder that early stages vision is to become the #1 job board for data analysts - hand-picking interesting data analyst job opportunities across industries.

Let's dive right in:

2023 Monthly Statistics update

2024 Monthly Statistics update

General Observations

DataAnalyst.com has been online for just over 13 months, and we're bringing new, hand curated data analyst jobs onto the site daily. As it stands, we've published over 1,800 data analyst jobs in total, all of them including a salary range.

If I had to sum up January, it would probably be along the lines of:

"New Year, New Me, New Job"

Basically from 2nd January onwards we've seen incredible surge in visitor numbers over the course of the month. The only significant down days were when I accidentally deleted all the job postings from Google jobs schema, but managed to identify the issue fairly quickly - live and learn, right.

Unfortunately we're continuing to see layoffs, particularly in the tech industry, so combined with people's New Year resolution to move toward better pastures, I would say those were the main drivers for an uptick in visitors and applications made.

Where did 10,000 people come from?

• Organic - 65%
• Direct - 28%
• Social - 5% (automated job postings on Twitter, Linkedin, Reddit)
• Refferal and others - 2%

Scaling up ain't easy

I've been chatting and more actively keeping up with some other people in the job board industry over the last month, and overall the stories are very similar.

Those who purely provide a job board service (i.e no recruitment/coaching services attached), the experience over the last year has been largely the same - companies have very much stopped/decreased their hiring efforts, and any revenue from job posts, have virtually disappeared.

The sites that are doing better are those who also provide those coaching services, CV/cover letter reviews, and are operating more as a recruitment agency with a job board, rather than the other way around.

The second type of sites that are able to bring in revenue, are those that scrape all the jobs, don't do any curation, and then put a paywall and have job seekers paying for access.

Why am I saying this?

With the site hitting over 10,000 unique visitors, as well as over 50,000 pageviews, I've started receiving headache-inducing emails - "You're running out of bandwidth, upgrade your plan today to protect your site from downtime"

Alongside these emails, I've also noticed that one of the no-code tools that I am using, was recently sold (change of ownership) - how did I notice? Well, some of the features stopped working and support went AWOL.

And with the newsletter subscribers' count skyrocketing, I'm now also over the limit with my email marketing provider. I know, I know, it's a good problem to have (pls keep reading my emails and don't unsubscribe).

Put all three together, and the site is potentially about to face issues with job filtering, I'm pretty sure the view-count of individual jobs is also off, and as I'm trying to move to Amazon SES for emails, I've been fighting it off with their email support, over the last few days.

My main advantage still is that I'm "splitting" the costs of all these tools between DataAnalyst and BusinessAnalyst, so I still only really need one of the two to start getting traction.

As the technical issues started piling up over the last couple of weeks, it did also cross my mind to move toward a white label job board solution, that provides a comprehensive (and mainly) functional solution that won't need as much upkeep as my current monstrosity.

Upside:

• an option for people to create personal account and set up functional job board alerts into their inbox, submit their CVs for employers to browse and reach out directly
• overall probably a better option to monetize through various (already integrated) channels
• depending on the provider, some might also be able to do company outreach and sell directly for the site

Downside:

• all job boards look mostly the same
• no option to tweak and customise the solution to fit (what I personally think might be the best) user experience
• potentially higher expenditure per project, or on the other hand, profit sharing agreement with the provider
• depending on the provider, losing all the existing SEO benefits

No decision made, and I can continue as is, but I do personally feel that it won't be that long before I'll need to either monetize through ads, or through affiliates, in order to at least keep the costs at break-even.

But now, to the fun part.

Day in a life of a Data Analyst, with Gene and Rennie

Another two interviews from our series has been published. In these interviews, we aim to share stories and experiences about the route to becoming a data analyst, keeping up with the skillset, recommendations to aspiring data analysts and much more.

Huge thank you to Gene and Rennie for taking the time, and I highly recommend everyone to read their stories, there's an absolute gold mine of experience and tips that you can learn from.

Gene shares valuable insights into how data is being used in gaming companies

Honestly, this was an extremely entertaining and educating interview, that I can't really properly cover in a few paragraphs here, so let me provide a few bulletpoints that Gene covers

• from a Marketing Data Analyst role, to Head of External Operations (through a change of business ownership due to a gambling founder)
• how is the role of an individual contributor different to the one of a leader
• various ways how data insights drive behaviours and profits in a gaming organisation
• turning his passion for lacrosse, into an app

It was a rollercoaster of a few years for Gene, but he also shares some of his advice about starting out, and how does building your own projects help during the recruitment process:

"If I were to give advice from this point in my career (between retirement at 32 and unretirement at 37), I would say to definitely do projects, use online certifications as a proof of concept and to make sure you like what you're doing. Do some projects for yourself, you'll put more care into them. Everyone can copy a project from a youtube tutorial, but if you can find something you're interested in, your results will usually be better than if it's just some project you need to do to get a job.

For example: hate dating? gather data about your data and break it down, expand on it. Like sports? do an analysis on your favorite team or player. Nobody really cares about logistics rates and times personally unless you own the company, do something you actually care about.

I can, however, give a bit of insight from the employer's perspective. The things we looked for was results. Can you do this? Can you do that? I don't really care what school you think you got some prestige from (if any), I don't care what you got on your gender studies exam. I'm worried about what you can actually do."

Read the full interview with Gene

How an internal survey helped Rennie land her Marketing Data Analyst role

As we've seen with multiple people already, the path toward her marketing data analyst role started internally within her organisation.

When the company launched a firm-wide initiative to understand upskilling potential, Rennie was selected for parnership to complete a data science program, during which she learned python and used tools to create data visualizations.

It's after the completion of the programme, that she felt comfortable and confident enough to apply for data analyst roles, eventually leading her to her first data analyst role.

In her current role she works on major campaigns and brand partnerships with professional sports programs and non-profit organizations to increase membership growth and brand loyalty. 

She shares her best advice for anyone interested in becoming a data analyst, and recommends a few things:

• Learn SQL, most jobs will require some type of querying experience in your everyday role. There are a lot of free or low-cost resources available such as W3schools, Coursera, Datacamp, Udemy, YouTube, etc. 
• Learn a type of data visualization tool such as Excel, Power BI or Tableau. Excel and Power BI are free and easy tools to get creative and test your data visualization skills. I believe Tableau is discounted if you’re a student. 
• Learn a scripting language such as Python or R programming. Some roles may or may not require this skill, but it’s always a good thing to have more skills and experience with it.

The big thing is practice, practice, practice. 😊  

Read the full interview with Rennie

Things in the pipeline

• New data analyst jobs, added daily
• Figuring out what to do with the newsletter
• Monthly US data analyst market insights
• Improving the overall site experience (this one is a never ending activity)
• Continuing to bring you Data Analysts across their experience levels, to share tips, tricks and their thoughts

3 ways you could help

1. Looking for a new challenge? Check out the website - I'm adding new jobs daily
2. Looking to hire a data analyst to your team? Do you know anyone looking to hire? Shoot me a message on Reddit (or alex@dataanalyst.com) and I'll upgrade your first listing for free!
3. As I mentioned, we have an ongoing "Day of a Data Analyst" series. For those of you who are open to do an email based interview about your data analyst career journey, please just send me a message and we'll organise something - would love to get you featured and share your experience with our readers!

If you have any questions, concerns, come across glitches - please just reach out, happy to chat.

Thank you all again, and see you soon.

Alex