{{{Journey}}} To Reach ☞ 3 000 euros ☜ Until December 2021

Sounds like a plan, looking forward to seeing where this one goes! All the best mate.

I wish you best of luck in your journey

I don't think that a dash in the domain name makes that much of a difference. I have a domain with a dash, and I never felt any disadvantage of it (it is a 20 years old domain, though). Also, one of the biggest websites in my niche has two dashes in the name, and they have more than 7 million monthly visits, according to Similarweb.

Good luck!

Keep going...All the best

I've seen quite a few domains with a dash in them performing pretty good in the SERPs so I think you'll be fine. But since it's a new domain you could easily buy one to replace it with no consequence.

Good luck with the journey, I'll follow along.

Sweetrevenge said:

Hello everyone,

Welcome to another journey of mine. The first one was a success IMO because I reached the monthly income goal. In the second one, I failed miserably because of the niche I chose.

This one, I’ll focus on 3 websites:

* Website 1: my writing agency
This is a new domain name that I bought last month because the last website of my agency didn’t perform well although I continued to manage to earn at least 1,000 euros per month offsite.

** Website 2: an affiliate website in French
It will be in a niche where I’ve already written a ton of articles. It’s a pretty technical niche, but I have a personal interest in it.

*** Website 3: a blogging website in English
I’ll blog about something related to my work.

All of them are newly bought domain names. I even made some mistakes for Website 3 because it has a dash in the name and it’s not brandable so that I read here last week that a dash makes a website look spammy and it makes it hard to rank in the first page of the SERP.

You may have guessed it by now, English is not my native language, nor does French. But I’ve been a freelance writer in French since the end of college. So it’s been 10 years that I work in this field and I’m pretty good at it even if it’s not my first language too (but I’m not one of those cheap writers anyway, even if I’m from a Third World country too).

My primary goal this time: To EARN 3,000 euros/month in just profit (earning minus expenses)

I’m giving myself one year and one month for that. So this will last until December 2021.

My plan:
- I’ll write some of the contents for three of them, but I’ll still outsource a good chunk of this, because I still have to manage clients’ needs and my freelancers staff on a daily basis. I’ve already found someone for the English website, and I’ll hire someone here for the French website.
- Spend up to 500 euros per month on them
- Follow a whiter hat path for website 2 and a blacker hat path for website 3.
Mainly because I don’t know how to buy links and all of those things in a foreign market. BHW taught me everything about SEO and links and I found that none of the knowledge I gathered here can be applied in a foreign market when it comes to links. Or I might be wrong. I’ll continue to search for a way to build links to it, if I can, to make the process go quicker.

What I’ll do until the next update:
- Do keywords research for 3 of them. I already have done that, but I think I missed some point the first time, so I’ll do a deeper research this time as this part is one of the best foundations for a good SEO campaign.
- Search for a more brandable name for Website 3 and switch the hosting to it or decide to keep it.
I definitely need to understand the correlation between dash in domain names and ranking before doing that.
- Plan at least 25 articles for each of them with title, keywords, structure and sources to use
- Buy logo for each of them

What I’ve done so far:
- Bought domain names and hosting
- Website 1: finished the Wordpress and plugins setup + homepage and installed all the necessary tracking of the major search engines + Order the new logo (the agency is registered in my name on paper, but I have all the rights to change its name each time I switch to a new domain name. Although, I want to keep this last one for years to come).

My expenses so far this month : 95 euros

In both of my previous journeys, I failed to update both of them here. This time, I’ll try to update this thread as often as possible thanks to @Shaunm, @Bloooop and @SpezzNacci frequent updates. They know how to keep people thirsty for new updates.

Let’s do this!

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great ideas! good luck!!!

SocialNed said:

Sounds like a plan, looking forward to seeing where this one goes! All the best mate.

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Thank you
Yes, I'm eager to see where it will lead as it is the very first time that I try to manage to update a journey regularly here.

SpezzNacci said:

I wish you best of luck in your journey

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Thanks a lot
It is not going to be easy but I'll work smart and I think it is very achievable.

stoat said:

I don't think that a dash in the domain name makes that much of a difference. I have a domain with a dash, and I never felt any disadvantage of it (it is a 20 years old domain, though). Also, one of the biggest websites in my niche has two dashes in the name, and they have more than 7 million monthly visits, according to Similarweb.

Good luck!

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I hope so too because I like this domain name. You know I had this doubt because of someone who asked about a domain name here few days ago and the comments were so harsh about it. A few of them mentioned the dash.
Thanks by the way

IamKing said:

Keep going...All the best

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Thank you

Bloooop said:

I've seen quite a few domains with a dash in them performing pretty good in the SERPs so I think you'll be fine. But since it's a new domain you could easily buy one to replace it with no consequence.

Good luck with the journey, I'll follow along.

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Thanks
You were a real inspiration for me. I followed your journey for a few months now and I see that it is still going strong even after selling the initial website. Glad you keep updating it too.

Polelol said:

great ideas! good luck!!!

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Thanks a lot

Time to smash it dude .

Shaunm said:

Time to smash it dude .

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Yeah I hope so

UPDATE 1 :
It really was a busy week for me.

Website 1 :
- Setup the homepage
I really took the time to make it look professional as I guess most of the visitors will land here first.
- Wrote a sales page of 2100 words for the main service
- Plan 25 content ideas for the first silo
--------Need to be done :
I think I'll write everything about it first as this is the core service of the agency. This will be done by 3 months as I'm planning to write all its content myself and I have to publish there long read quality content twice a week.

I already have all the keywords for it since the last website. I just have to write and publish regularly for it.

I'm thinking about advertising it on Google ads and Bing ads also as I naturally earned coupon when I linked it to my GSC and Bing webmaster tools. That will be perfect around New Year as it has always been one of the perfect time to earn new clients. I'm not too worried about that right now because my team has just reduced from 5 to just 2, me and a translator. And I need to hire new people and train them about our standard of quality before searching for new clients.

There is a little issue about image not showing in the logo and everywhere on the website. I have to resolve that by Monday. I think I over optimized WP Optimize. I even removed it but the problem remains. Guess I have to dig deep on Worpress forum to know what is exactly the problem here.

Website 2 :
- Searched for the keywords
- I already have the structure there for 3 guides of 1500 words each
I just need to write them next week.
- I have a huge pillar post of 7500 words too.
I'll proofread and optimize it on Tuesday before publishing it.
- I have the structure to follow for each product review for 2500 words each.
---------Need to be done :
- Setup entirely the website.
I'm waiting for the logo that I ordered last Monday but they didn't deliver it yet. Maybe this one was a little complicated compared to the one that I ordered for Website 1 where they had so many ideas to suggest to me.
- Write and publish those 3 guides
- Publish the huge pillar post
- Write the first product review.
This should be done last week.

Website 3 :
I thought I had already this niche all figured out, but I was totally wrong.
When I searched for the keywords, I saw a bunch of nonsense.
I think I'm too broad or the niche isn't that interesting although this is one of my biggest interest in my work and I see many people talking about it here and in many other Facebook groups I'm in.
So I just ended up brainstorming about everything I know about it and I might be already on something, but I don't know. I'm not sure of that yet.
We'll see. I'll perform another keyword research of all of the seeds I gathered this afternoon.

So that's it. That's all I've done so far. I might be slow but I'm steady and "slow and steady wins the race". And I'm firmly convinced that earning 1 k per website this time next year is more than doable. I've seen many people do so here. So why not me ?!

Good luck

Seem a concrete plan, looking forward for the result

So I found out that it was the plugin WP Cerber Security which caused the image to never load on Website 1.
I had to deactivate and reactivate the plugins one by one to find that.
I deleted it completely and move back to Wordfence. I've never had any issue with it before, but Cerber was a preinstalled plugin when I installed WP with Softaculous and I didn't bother to remove it. Wrong idea!

Miderich said:

Good luck

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Elvlin said:

Seem a concrete plan, looking forward for the result

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Thank you guys

Hey,

Just a little update here to say that this journey is still alive.
I missed to update last week as the proofreader of the agency isn't working until next week and I handle her part of the tasks.
That gave me just a little time to take care of the websites.
I'll give a real update next week as she'll return to work at that time.

Till then, take care

UPDATE time:
It's been 8 months since I launched this journey here and I failed to update (as always). But ENOUGH is ENOUGH.


To be honest with all of you, I've done practically nothing during those months, but I have enough and I want to take it seriously from now on. Yes ! Shame on me if I don't update this thread of mine at least once a week and if I still don't do anything about it.

What I've done so far?
Website 1 :
I let it as it was when I started this journey. And my copywriting skills landed me 8 more clients.
* 1 of them scammed me and still owe me 200 euros (approx 244 $). This client has scammed many other agencies and freelancers in my country. I was the one who made her scam system public in many groups on Facebook and more than 5 persons told me that she got them too. So basically, she owe more than 4 000 euros to all of us combined right now.
* 4 of them were just with me for less than 2 months.
* 3 of them still work with me right now.
Their rates are great and I already earn around 2K euros on pure profit from them alone right now. In the meantime, I lost one of my oldest clients and that is why I don't reach the 3K euros yet. If I were still with them, my profit would be more than that amount right now.

I think this is the last time I talk about Website 1, because it has nothing to do with my goal of earning money with my own assets (ie. blogs and websites).
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Website 2 :
For Website 2, I published 20K words.
I have a long list of articles I've already ordered to one of my freelancers. But it takes her forever to deliver them all. They are around 3,5K to 7,5K words and the website is still unfinished without them. That will make the website around 60K words with all those articles.
I already have another batch of order to give to her after that to make the website around 100K.
This is the white hat project, so I really take the time to analyse each of its keywords for each article and I optimize them for SEO after that.
*************************************************************
Website 3 :
I dropped the domain name for the initial project. I read in many places that a domain with multiple dashes is ugly and not trustworthy. And it wasn't brandeable in any way too.
Funny thing is, I've already bought a domain name for this project around February or March, but I completely forgot about it after the government here announced a new total lock down for 15 days. I just remembered about it last week when I bought a new domain name and hosting for this project. So right now, I have 2 domain names and hosting for the black hat part of this project. I don't know if I'll be able to handle 3 websites at the same time. But I want to try it and see for myself
*************************************************************
What needs to be done?
/// I need to update this often (at least once a week) to keep me accountable, because I tend to drift from one idea to another when I don't remind myself of it. Shiny Object Syndrome got me and I don't want to be trapped in its hole.
My lazy ass prevents me from reaching my full potential too and self doubt creep me out every time.

/// I have to do a proper on-page SEO for Website 2.

/// Waiting for all the articles to be published on Website 2. I think she'll finish them all this weekend or next week. She's so late on the schedule due to this pandemic. She has been tested positive in May and still recovers.

/// I have to set the autoblog for Website 3 (Yes, really BLACKHAT). And I have to do all the required research for Website 4.

/// I have to learn the best way to do black hat SEO (black hat links) in order to rank and bank with Website 3 and keep it alive for at least two year. I hope all the investment I'm gonna do will be rewarded soon enough and won't be a waste of time and money. There is no guarantee for any of that but I'm hopeful for this project to keep me going.

/// I have to search for 2 people for the social media part and some repetitive tasks which need to be done for Website 2, 3 and 4.

That's it for this huge update.

Good luck! I like how you're realistic and panning it in small step(s) and small rewarding amount.

Today, I spent hours to setup Website 3. I installed Cloudflare apps instead of plugins on Wordpress. I hope that this will make real difference in term of loading when the website will be full of content.

For website 2, I checked with the writer and she said that she only finished 5 article from all of what I ordered to her. 4 of them are just filler contents. So I guess I have to wait for the pillar contents to be published before putting them on the website. I is far from being finished.

Finally, it will be only two websites. I just don't know what I was thinking when I ordered the one that I just remembered las week. Anyway, it doesn't matter anymore. I have to move on with this project.

Good luck with your Journey

vewyher said:

Good luck with your Journey

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Thanks a lot