Follow Along Journey to 250 USD Daily Profit with CPA & SEO "passive"

OpenAFF is the first technology affiliate network

Serpheus

Super Contributor
Joined
Jun 11, 2018
Messages
69
So, this is my first journey thread. I'm into the affiliate space for the past 5 years and spend most of my time with SEO and Facebook. Till now I monetized my SEO blogs with Ads, Amazon, and some Clickbank. I decided to start this in response to the SEO follow along from @Akbal here.

This is my first "CPA&SEO" try. I usually sell Amazon products with a price point of above $120 so for calculation and planning purposes I will use similar conversation stats as I see on Amazon. An average SEO page converts at about 25-30% CTR to Amazon and 2-4% sales conversation there (4% is the lowest end of the spectrum I usually see, but I can't assume now that I will see a 20-30% purchase conversion on a CPA offer, but let's see)

You might be asking by now, why this is important? Forecasting. You need to know what to expect to budget how much you put into it (don't forget your time is "money" to). In my opinion, that's one of the most overlooked aspects of affiliate SEO. Therefore I will spend some time elaborating my thoughts.


Prerequisites:

1) I will use an already established but not authority blog. That means the blog itself is only getting about 3-4k organic traffic a month yet (I might conduct a further experiment with a higher traffic blog at a later stage). The URL has a UR/DR of 20/9 and a CF/TF of 10/16 (not great but decent for that test ;))

2) The product is closely related to the overall topic of the blog

3) I will include the product into already existing articles AND write at least one long-form article for the product itself

4) No direct "review" article type; all the articles are "questions/ problem-solving" style (not "best hammer" - but "how to nail it like a pro" ;)"

5) No black hat - only white & grey hat tactics

6) Link building is only an option if the strengths of the domain can't get the KW to rank

7) dependent on the "success" I will consider building a PBN at a later stage



So there are the following steps involved:

Phase1:
1. Product selection (found three products on Maxbounty and Peerfly that fit)
2. Keyword research (I use ahrefs.com and long tail pro for that)
3. Competitor analysis
4. Content decision (size and type)
5. Content production
6. Content publication
7. Internal linking (check Google analytics which of your current pages receive similar traffic and place an internal link on those pages
8. Ad the KW's to your KW tracker
9. Sit back for a week and do nothing... (I know there are SEO gurus out there telling you, you should see traffic within hours and explain to you how to do that... I don't like to do it that way AT ALL, and I don't like pretending that I fully understand how Google does things and... you get the point)


Phase2:
1. On page optimization (if needed)
2. Drop some links on Pinterest
3. Sit back and wait for a week...


Phase3:
1. Start link building (if needed)
2. Monitoring

Phase4:
1. If the articles showed the expected 4-7 conversions per month, I would add additional 20-30k content for the same sub-niche to strengthen the domain authority
2. If I see even more conversion, I will add about 10 PBNs for the same KWs and sub-niche
3. If I don't see any result, I will go grey hat and build links...
4. If I already see some decent conversions I might run search ads to the best converting articles


Phase1:

As mentioned I found about 3 comparable products. I did some KW research for 1 angle. That angle showed that there is about 10,500 monthly organic traffic. Given the competition and the domain I'm working with, the best I can expect is a page1 position 5-3 ranking (without using a PBN or other grey hat methods). So on pos5, I would get about 8% of the search traffic, on pos4 about 9% and on pos3 about 13%. So let's say I get 8-13% of 10,500 monthly searches, that's about 840-1,365 monthly visitors. With a landing page CTR of 25% that would be 210-341 product page visitors and if that page converts at 2% that would be 4.2-6.8 monthly sales. With a product price of about $50, that's $210-$340 per month with that particular main KW. Going a bit deeper in it reveals that there is a minimum of 98,100 if LSI KWs are taken into account (dependent on the exact definition even sometime about 200k searches...). So, the KW's can make the tenfold of the above calculation. That's pretty ok for a first shot and a single angle. If that angle/product works out, additional keywords and angles are added. The goal is to hit about $250 daily with that only product and minimal ongoing maintenance.

A rough competitor analysis shows, that I will need at least 3k words for the main KWs to rank them. Finding the competitors is again relatively easy. I still use ahrefs for it, but any tool is fine. Create a list of the 5-10 highest ranking competitors, google "bulk website word counter" and use one of the tools you'll find and you have the info you need. I ordered the 3k article and some additional content for the already existing and ranking articles in the same sub-niche (as mentioned, the first step is adding the CPA offer to existing content).

Next is adding the keywords to your keyword tracker. With serprobot.com you can track 25 KWs for free, that will do it if you start.


Current Rankings:



Current CPA Income:
0 Conversions
0 Income


How to go forward:
I will update the thread with rankings and income report every Monday. SEO is a game of patience. Therefore I don't expect so see any results the next 3 month. Still I hope the existing articles will show some conversions in the short term.


All questions and inputs are welcome!
 
Last edited:
AdsEmpire
I have no idea why this post has gone days now without a response. I am about as impressed by this as you can be. Fantastic post and analysis. Your thought process makes a TON of sense to me for Phase1 and the numbers you give are impressive.

The URL has a UR/DR of 20/9 and a CF/TF of 10/16 (not great but decent for that test ;))

Can you elaborate on this? Where did you find the data and what does it mean.

Also, going to give serprobot.com a look. Thanks! PM'ing you as well 👍
 
Might chip in here. Unless mistaken DR = Domain Rating and UR = URL Rating. They are ratings used to measure backlink profiles for SEO purposes. The higher the UR/DR the more power [juice] they hold because of strong backlink profiles.

In regards to testing keywords, you get instant test data with paid search of course. I would personally do this first and then grow SEO traffic once conversions are happening for that keyword.

Just my way of doing things.
 
Might chip in here. Unless mistaken DR = Domain Rating and UR = URL Rating. They are ratings used to measure backlink profiles for SEO purposes. The higher the UR/DR the more power [juice] they hold because of strong backlink profiles.

In regards to testing keywords, you get instant test data with paid search of course. I would personally do this first and then grow SEO traffic once conversions are happening for that keyword.

Just my way of doing things.
Appreciate the info, Rich 👍
 
Can you elaborate on this? Where did you find the data and what does it mean.

UR is URL Rating, DR is Domain Rating, CF is Citation Flow and TF is Trust Flow. UR/DR is from Ahrefs and CF/TF is from Majestic. If you do a domain/url analysis in one of the tools, you'll get those indicators.

More important is what they exactly mean or what they try to replicate. In essence, they try to replicate some of the ranking factors Google uses to rank a website. UR is an indication of how strong the backlink profile of an URL is and DR how strong the links for a domain are. UR takes the DR into consideration to, as some link juice goes from the domain to the URL. Ahrefs uses both, number and quality of links for its calculation. Majestic uses the same approach for the CF and TF. CF speaks more about the number of links and TF about quality.

There is a third indicator called "Domain Authority" by MOZ.

In essence, all of those indicators try to show the strength of a domain/URL and mimic part of the Google ranking algorithm. There is a lot of debate which is the best and why. And yes, there are tons of studies, use cases etc. why one is superior to the other etc.
From my point of view, they are a good indicator and a good starting point, but they only mimic a part of the google rank brain. So, I use them, but I take them with a grain of salt and I wouldn't recommend praying to them as kind of ultimate ranking goal goddess...

In regards to testing keywords, you get instant test data with paid search of course. I would personally do this first and then grow SEO traffic once conversions are happening for that keyword.

Great idea as a proof of concept to know if the product converts or not!
 
Update 1: Monday, October 15, 2018

Recap of the Last Week:
My writer team was pretty busy the last week and I decided the keep their current priorities for the last week and not squeeze the additional task in. I could have hired a third party writer, but I prefer to stick with my own writers as I know their quality.

So, the previously mentioned articles have not been updated yet and the new one is also unwritten yet.

I already worked on the internal link structure of the website and I improved some minor technicalities of the website. I also transferred the website from one of my shared hosting accounts to a stronger VPS to increase load time. Not sure if those changes are the reason for the ranking improvements or if it's just natural ranking fluctuations. We'll see that next week.


Current Rankings:




Current CPA Income:
0 Conversions
0 Income


Up Next:
This week the 2 existing articles will be updated and the new article will be written to. I aim to publish the new article on Friday and update the existing ones by Thursday (at least that's what is scheduled with the responsible writer).


All questions and inputs are welcome!
 
Update 2: Wednesday, 24 October 2018

Recap of the Last Week:
The updates of the two existing articles have been published. Some on-site optimization has also been done. I changed the theme as I didn't like the "old" one anymore. The "main article" has not been published yet as I was out of office for the last three days.


Current Rankings:


More terms have begun ranking. As usual, some rank bouncing to.


Current CPA Income:
5 Clicks
0 Conversion
0 Income



Up Next:
Google analytics conversion goal set up (to monitor incoming traffic)
Tracker for organic link click setup
 
Any update on this? Wish you best of luck
Yep ;) - going to write a full update on Monday. My last update was late so I decided to skip one to have some more data to show. As of today, there are no conversions yet. Some improvements in ranking. I'll write a full update about what I did so far in Terms of OnPage and minor OffPage SEO on Monday. Let me know if there is any topic you would be interested in
 
Thank you, would like to know more about Offpage SEO. Do you think still blog network backlinking is working?
 
Thank you, would like to know more about Offpage SEO. Do you think still blog network backlinking is working?
Do you mean PBN's with that? If so, the clear answer is YES, it works! Absolutely no doubt about that! BUT (and yes all caps), there is always the risk of getting hit by Google. It gets increasingly difficult to maintain a decent PBN and Google is getting better every day fighting it.

1) Does it work; Yes!
2) Does it work longtime: Maybe - Depends if the search engines find your PBN or if it gets devalued.
3) Should you use it: well, that's up to you ;)
 
Update 3: Monday, November 05, 2018


Recap of the "Last Week":

- Internal linking to the new article(s) completed
- Created 30 Pins for Pinterest and dropped all of them on the website's profile (about 5k followers) and in several group boards
- No conversions yet
- The dedicated article has been indexed by Google
- I have the first organic visitors


Current Rankings:



Traffic:



Current CPA Income:
14 organic visitors
8 Clicks
0 Conversion
0 Income


Up Next:
That's the end of Phase2. Content, OnPage, and Social Linking are done. Now it's waiting for at least a week and serif there is some movement. After that, a small link building campaign might be needed (at least that's what I assume given the current data)
 
Update 4: Monday 19 November 2018

Recap of the "Last Week":
- As SEO is a slow-moving business (white hat it is...) I decided to update the thread every other week and not weekly
- Created a YT video and uploaded it
- Got some social shares for it on Fiverr
- Got Video Submission service for it on Fiverr
- Created an infographic for the topic
- Got an infographic sharing from Fiverr


Current Rankings:
"lost"

Traffic:



Current CPA Income
50 organic visitors
14 Clicks
0 Conversion
0 Income


Up Next:
The domain itself seems not to be strong enough to keep those keywords going. So I will engage in some more "grey hat" techniques. I'll wait till the end of November, but If there is no reasonable traffic increase, I will start to build links more aggressively. I'll describe the linking strategy in my next post.
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2018-11-19 at 10.27.46_censored.jpg
    Screen Shot 2018-11-19 at 10.27.46_censored.jpg
    138.1 KB · Views: 18
  • Screen Shot 2018-11-19 at 10.31.34_censored.jpg
    Screen Shot 2018-11-19 at 10.31.34_censored.jpg
    67.5 KB · Views: 18
Last edited:
Update 5: Monday, 3rd December 2018


Recap of the Last 2 Weeks:
- Some indexing for the YT video sharing, the YT video itself and the Infographic sharing
- Answered about 15 questions on quora for the keywords

Current Rankings:




Traffic:




Current CPA Income:
128 organic visitors
22 Clicks (14.97% CTR)
0 Conversion
0 Income


Up Next:
It's about two months now. The main article is life since a bit over a month. The rankings for the main keywords didn't improve a lot (only for some very small keywords). So the next step is to build backlinks to the article.
 
Last edited:
Update 4: Monday 19 November 2018

Recap of the "Last Week":
- As SEO is a slow-moving business (white hat it is...) I decided to update the thread every other week and not weekly
- Created a YT video and uploaded it
- Got some social shares for it on Fiverr
- Got Video Submission service for it on Fiverr
- Created an infographic for the topic
- Got an infographic sharing from Fiverr


Current Rankings:
View attachment 1507

Traffic:
View attachment 1508


Current CPA Income
46 organic visitors
14 Clicks
0 Conversion
0 Income


Up Next:
The domain itself seems not to be strong enough to keep those keywords going. So I will engage in some more "grey hat" techniques. I'll wait till the end of November, but If there is no reasonable traffic increase, I will start to build links more aggressively. I'll describe the linking strategy in my next post.
If you still have the screenshots from this post, it would be awesome if you could fix them :)
 
I was able to reproduce one of them but not the one with the rankings.. :(
That's okay. Appreciate the effort. It was my fault they got messed up to begin with :)
 
That's okay. Appreciate the effort. It was my fault they got messed up to begin with :)
No worry - stuff goes wrong from time to time. And hey, so I get at least a single comment on this journey ;) (not that there is a lot to comment on...)
 
Haha, people are following and reading, whether they're saying so or not (I am for sure) 👍
 
Top