How I built an $86,000 website using SEO in 8 months
Content structure
It is said that the goal of the journey is not to reach the finish.
I totally agree.
Sometimes you have to look back to really appreciate how far you have come.
In the world of online marketing, this idea is doubling down.
Today I’m going to share with you part of the journey of my latest affiliate project in the US and show you how I built an $86k authoritative website in 8 months through SEO.
For those of you who don’t know me yet – my name is Viktor Holas and I have been building affiliate projects in the US using SEO for several years.
So I get my experience from my own real projects in which I have invested tens of thousands of dollars. This makes me different from traditional SEO consultants because I don’t just draw knowledge from client work.
This series is dedicated to both beginners and more seasoned SEO/affiliate scouts who can pick up interesting tricks and tips for their projects from this series.
What will you learn in this series?
I won’t go into specific procedures, 9 articles in the series would definitely not be enough for that.
You will learn, for example:
- Goals and budgets
- Development of individual months (attendance/revenue)
- Tips and tricks (content creation, link building, team management, workflow)
Let’s get this straight…
Initial brief
At the time I start this series, the site has 8 months of active work behind it. The current monthly income is $2,411 (affiliate commission income on Amazon)
In the US market, affiliate projects typically sell for 36 times the average monthly income.
Of course, many other factors also influence the value of a project, such as the potential for further growth, the diversification of monetization elements, the branding of the project and many others.
This project meets these parameters, so its future sale will be much easier.
If we recalculate, the value of the project exceeds $86,796 (36 × $2,411).
Plus, I’m getting pretty good traffic. For example, If I turn on advertising on MediaVine, I get another $700-$900 a month. So the monthly revenue would be over $3,000.
That’s pretty good for an 8-month-old site, right?
About the project
This is a content site in the beauty and grooming industry, specifically a site focused on barbers and hair stylists. Monetized primarily through affiliates (Amazon).
Pro Tip: If you are starting out with projects, I recommend you look at other partners, and consider Amazon more as a supplement. The amount of commission is what will make you money to continue to grow the project and Amazon cuts commissions almost every year.
After 8 months of work, I have only one monetization topic (product) covered out of X other topics I can address on the site – which indicates to me how much potential there still is in the project.
Project background
I registered the domain in January 2018. I uploaded 6 articles to the site, had about 10 comment links made to speed up indexing and let the site run its own life until February 2020.
I didn’t have the space for it, I was dealing with a lot of other projects and I don’t like to start projects on a domain with no history.
So from February, I started working hard on content and at the beginning of April, I started working on link building.
Goals and budgets
In the time I’ve been doing projects in the US, I’ve already got some insight and know roughly what’s realistic and what’s not.
In most cases, however, it still ends up being a crystal ball divination.
Every project behaves completely differently and you react to changes over time. That’s why you simply can’t copy anything.
The main goal
My first goal was to get to a monthly income of $1,000 within 6 months of starting active work on the project.
I didn’t want to invest too much in the project, rather to show how you can start with the minimum and gradually reinvest the money back and grow slowly. Which is actually the goal of this series.
In business, there is a simple rule – as much as you put into a project, that’s how much you will grow. And this is true both in terms of time and money.
The Budget
In the first months, an average of $340 per month was invested, this amount then increased with the start of link building.
The goal of the site was to get the first conversions as soon as possible and reinvest the money back into the project.
With Amazon, however, you have to take into account that it is valid for three months backward. So for at least the first three months, you have to rely on your own funds.
The story doesn’t end here…
Would you like to be notified as soon as I release the next episode?