The SEO Website business model, in a nutshell, is building an authority site by publishing tons of helpful articles about topics people are searching for in a niche! This will slowly build up a large stream of daily traffic, then monetize that traffic through Ad Networks, affiliate offers, and your own products.
Summary of the strategy:
- Start a website/blog around a niche/topic
- Write high-quality, information-rich articles about topics people are searching for
- Post at least 1 a week, for 2-3 years, to build up consistent traffic
- Monetize those eyeballs!
- Ad Networks – Starting with Google Adsense, then upgrade to a more profitable one like Mediavine once you have 25k views a month, the one Dan currently uses.
- Affiliate offers – Recommend products & link to them w/ an affiliate link.
- Your own products – Courses, ebooks, consulting, etc.
Note: This is a long-game business model! You won’t make money overnight with this! It often takes 2-3 years before building up enough traffic to start making your consistent $1,000+/mo. It takes time to build up traffic! Which is why it ideally is built around your passion/interests, so you can enjoy writing & building the site on the side of your main business.
The SEO Blog Site Strategy:
1) Find a niche:
Choose a niche to focus your website around. Ideally, this is something that you’re interested in and/or like talking about anyway.
Have each article target a specific keyword in that niche (install the Keywords Everywhere chrome extension to find keyword ideas), that you think you can rank on page 1 of google for. The niche can be as broad as personal development, entrepreneurship, or travel.
How to choose a niche? See the below Ikigai graphic. Ideally, you find something that’s a balance of what you LOVE talking about, what the world NEEDS, what you are GOOD at, and what you can get PAID for talking about.
2) Quality over Quantity:
Google’s new SEO algorithm is all about quality! The article must be genuinely interesting and/or provide some good value.
Major Key: if a reader would want to share it with a friend or refer back to it later, that’s the golden ticket. Your best articles will so good, they will get consistent traffic over multiple years – this is the goal.
3) Consistency:
Think long-game! You gotta post consistently for 2-3 years before traffic starts to build up! Think 5-10 years down the road. You are building an ‘Authority Site’ in your niche that will make you consistent Cash Flow $$ for the long run!
4) Guest Posts to build Back-links:
“Backlinking” is a key part of SEO strategy. This means getting other websites to link to your website. Because, more quality sites that link to your site, the ‘Domain Authority’ Google gives site – it’s like a behind the scenes score that the Google algorithm gives to all websites to determine how authoritative/quality the site is, thus affecting how it should rank in search results. The higher the Domain Authority, the higher Google will favor you in search results. You can check a website’s domain authority or Page Authority at this site.
One of the most common ways to this is to reach out to other blogs and offer to write a ‘guest post’ for their blog. This a) helps spread your name, and b) gives your site a backlink, which improves your site’s SEO
5) Build, build, build, then hire writers
Dan wrote at least 1 article per DAY all by himself for 1-2 years. He was dedicated! Hiring good writers can be expensive, so you will want to do as much writing yourself as you can! Quality native-English speaking freelance writers typically start at around $25-40/hr, so a nice 2000 word article, can cost you $100-$200. This may or may not include SEO/topic research.
Tips to get Backlinks:
Write about others & they might link to your article: Write articles ranking other websites, e.g. “Top 20 Fitness Websites”, then they might link to you showing that they’ve been featured.
Write articles that are so good that other articles will naturally want to link to it! If the info is valuable, you might get other blogs linking to it as a resource! Free backlinks!
Case study: 24-year old Dan Western profits $50k a month from his blog WealthyGorilla.com
I interviewed Dan Western, who now profits around $50,000+ USD a month from his blog / SEO website. At 24 years old. Yep. Dan has been running WealthyGorilla.com for the past 5 years, while working remotely, based in Canggu, Bali. To this day, Wealthy Gorilla has become one of the fastest-growing self-development sites in the world; getting over 1 million visits a month. Dan’s mission is to inspire others to chase their dreams and live life to the fullest.
Some notes on Dan’s journey:
- He started in the online game at 19.
- He learned from internet mentors like Joel Brown from Addicted2Success.com.
- He personally wrote articles every day at first, then hired a couple of quality writers.
- He followed a proven strategy and stuck to it.
- His profit jumped up 10x when he switched to his current Ad Network partner last year.
- He’s now grossing at least 50k a month, all through Ad Network revenue.
- He’s not even monetizing yet through his own products or affiliate offers – another huge potential revenue source.
- Hit site gets over 1 Million views a month.
Major keys: quality, consistency, and guest posts.
Business model score:
- Income potential: very high
- Stability: very high
- Up-front time investment: lots of writing, but part-time – growth speed is to you
- Up-front cash investment: very low (under $100)
- Longterm Passive score: high
- Realistic goal to $1,000+/mo: 2-3 years
- Realistic goal to ‘full-time’ ($4,000+/mo): 3-5 years
- Note, if you monetize your audience through affiliate offers and/or your own digital courses/products, you could monetize much faster. For example, many bloggers/influencers in the digital marketing niche offer highly-profitable affiliate offers with recurring commissions like ClickFunnels funnel builder and BlueHost WordPress hosting. Also create & offer your own video courses around what your audience wants, like how I created an Amazon FBA Course called The Amazon Method.
First steps:
- Start a blog – buy a domain & a WordPress site by going to Bluehost.com, clicking Get Started and following the instructions. It will set up your WordPress site for you and have you ready in no time.
- Choose a niche
- Write your first post – introduce yourself, share your story & why you started the blog, and your mission with this!
Business model Summary:
This business model can be a very profitable and stable long-term income stream that is relatively passive – especially if you have a topic that you enjoy talking/writing about. But, like any business, it takes a lot of time and effort and work and smart strategy to build!
Remember, ANY BUSINESS TAKES A LOT OF WORK TO START! But, totally worth it! Over time, you can hire a team/employees to run it for you = business 101! This is a business that can be run from anywhere in the world – which is why if your goal is to have freedom & flexibility, it’s a great option.
I’m excited to double down on this strategy in 2020 and start building up the authority of LivinThatLife.com and turn it into a highly profitable cash flow property!
What are your experiences & tips? Share in the comments section.