Wave Issue 6

First...

Wow...just Wow

My November 2020 Income Report is published and what an amazing month!

1075x in Earnings and 61x in Traffic after 6 months from purchasing Site 1 back in June. Site 1 earned $8599 with 65,622 user sessions. Amazon Associates earnings totaled $5074.47 and Ezoic ads earned $3,524. 53.

If only all months were like this! Read all the details in the income report at yoyao.com.

And...

Google just dropped a core update on Dec. 3rd. More below on that.

Income Reports

Collection of Monthly Income Reports

Here're the monthly income reports that I've come across so far. It's only the 4th right now, so maybe people are still counting their money from Black Friday sales and traffic 😄

If you do your own income report and would like to share, let me know. I'll be glad to include you!

WP Eagle - $1,071.23 from Amazon commissions and his first full month with Ezoic ads. He also mentioned he's using Niche Website Builder's skyscraper link building service like me. Seems I started 3-4 weeks earlier than he did. He did a follow-up video for his 4-month old public case study site in the wheelbarrow niche, that made $16.30 from Amazon.

Carl Broadbent - $25,772.85 from his affiliate marketing income. It's a much higher number than normal because he sold three of his sites for $18,179.85, a large one and a couple starter sites.

Shaun Marrs - $4,269.03 from all his niche sites. He's probably going to change the way he does his income reports in the future.

.ficks - $824.19 from all his sites and YouTube. He had a 50% drop in Amazon Earnings, but display ads made up for it, resulting in only a $100 drop from a month earlier.

SEO

Google Core Update - December 3, 2020

And now Google Core Update fun!

I hope that your site survived the update. I think my two larger sites survived as I didn't see any significant drop in rankings. Or it just hasn't been hit yet as the update rolls out over the next week or two.

Sadly, my 3rd site appeared to have been in the line of fire already with around 50% drops. They climbed back up a little on Dec. 4th, but not to where they were. Luckily, Site 3 is a small site. Will give it a couple weeks and see where it settles down.

There were already some backlink issues with it because of the expired domain that I originally purchased and later redirected to the current domain.

Keep an eye on your rankings. I'd be interested to hear if anyone sees any big changes in their Google rankings.

I feel the only you can keep doing is to keep putting out good content. I hear all the time "my content is great, but I still got hit". The site owner saying the content is great, doesn't make it great.

Spun content, automatic or manual, is not unique. Automated content is not good. Look at the SERPs and see what the top results have for content. Have native speakers proofread your article for readability, Grammarly is not a human.

Good luck with the update!

Does a TLD Domain Matter to Google?

Someone on Twitter asked Google's John Mueller if there's a difference between a .com and .io when it comes to global rankings on Google.

Mueller replied back "It doesn't matter for Google" and gave a link to Google Search Centrals page on managing multilingual sites. At the bottom is a list of location/country code domains that Google treats as a generic TLD (Top Level Domain).

Domains include: .eu, .asia, .co, .cc, .io, .la, .me, and more.

So according to Google, don't be afraid to buy those non-.com domains for your nice sites.

Content

SEO This Week Episode 186 - Keyword Clustering vs Topic Clustering - YouTube

Clint at Digitaleer discusses the differences between Keyword and Topic Clustering in this week's episode. This is one area that confuses many people. I know I was initially.

He breaks it down like this:

Keyword Clusters - e.g. "best drones for photography" - Google will see variations of the keyword that includes "best drones / good photography drones / Best Photography Drones / best drone for photography," as well as branded names like "DJI Mavic / DJI Phantom 4 Pro / DJI Mavic Pro."

These are all Keywords that you'd want to put into an article to help rank for your main keyword, as well as getting potential rankings for these other keywords.

Topic Clusters - these are Entities (aka Topics - person, place, thing, event), think the NLP and LSI entities. Clint jumps onto SurferSEO to show how SurferSEO has gotten better at splitting keywords and entities (NLP) into different lists.

He adds that you get the most value from Frase, Surfer SEO, Inlinks, and other tools by knowing the differences of Keywords and Topics.

Clint starts talking about Keywords and Topics at the 34:47 time mark. The link should take you there directly.

How to Evaluate a Site’s Content Before Buying: Five Mistakes to Look for (and How to Fix Them) - Empire Flippers

Empire Flippers offers some great tips for those who're writing/editing content and/or reviewing sites to purchase.

I'm always reviewing potential sites to acquire and content optimization is often the lowest hanging fruit that produces more fruit 😉

That's how I took Site 2 from $0.00 to $2,037.52 in 6 months. I purchased it for $500 and there were 9 posts on it. I added 10 through the 6 months and now it's a great source of income after having broken even in Month 5.

Here're their Top 5 content mistakes for affiliate sites:

Bad Intros - Definitely agree with hooking the reader in. First impressions are key to make the visitor stay on your site.
Incongruent Tone - Write more casually that fits with your audience. They give a great tip to watch YouTube videos to see how the experts in your niche speak. This isn't English class, so no extra points for using big SAT words.
Bad Formatting - No walls of text. "Short sentences, short paragraphs, lots of white space, paragraphs of varying length . . . these are key for user engagement."
Fluff Not Value - Fluff is so easy to fall into when writing to get more words. I fluff all the time when writing, especially as I get tired.
Boring Product Reviews - I think we all know how poorly written product descriptions will stop people from purchasing. They give a few tips like focusing on benefits, not features. Even if you don't write product reviews, informational articles should also be engaging. You want people to read the next paragraph and then the next one and so on. That's how you're going to increase those display ad earnings.

Link Building

9 Critical Criteria for Vetting Sites for Guest Posts

How many of you do guest posts for backlinks? Do you check those sites before writing a guest post for them to put up? You should.

Always check the site before asking for a guest post. The wrong site can do more harm than good.

Peter King at Authority Builders, one of the top providers of guest posts and backlinks. If you're unsure of what to look for when vetting a website, he offers a 9-step system. Steps include:

Checking the site's traffic and where it's coming from
Whether the sites label their guest posts as guest posts or similar
Where else the sites link to for any potential warning signs
The site's own referring domains
Checking social activity for engagement

The first and easiest thing I look for in a site is whether they have a Write for Us page or area. I cross the site off the list if they have that, because you're telling Google there's a high probability you paid for that backlink.

Education

Buy an Affiliate Website - Don't Build From Scratch

I purchased 2 sites 6 months ago and both have broken even now, so they're profitable. One of them just generated $8,599 and I only paid $2,000 for it 6 months ago.

Of course, it took a lot of work, but I wouldn't have been able to increase earnings 1075x in 6 months if I had built it from scratch.

Matt Diggity makes his case and I do agree with his 3 main points of why it's better to buy than build:

Know the minimum earnings
Avoid the Sandbox
Efficient use of Resources

I'm actually looking to buy another niche site. Something that I can possibly grow like I've done with Sites 1 and 2. We'll see if I can find anything that offers good value.