Welcome to BeerMoneyForum.com - BIGGEST MAKE MONEY FORUM ONLINE

OVERVIEW
My last journey was a flop, but I learned a great deal from that.

With the experience I got by running that first site in 2017, I've created 2 new sites in 2018.

• Hobby site (3rd of March, 2018).
• Affiliate site (5th of April, 2018).

The hobby site will be monetized by adsense and the like; tech field.

The affiliate site will be monetized with Amazon mainly; outdoors sports. For June, the pageviews are around 1000 already.


PLANS
They are rapidly growing, which is motivating, but the problem is, I can't work on them in the coming 9 months starting from July (military service).

With that said, what I've done is I've layed a sort of groundwork only. I have not monetized them yet because I'm not sure how things will end up with me not being around to babysit and/or collect the money... I'm just going to let them sit like this and grow (including June's work) for those 9 months, pretty much. Maybe I'll get to do some maintenance on them from time to time, but that's about it.


TECHNICAL
The domains are bought via GoDaddy for 2 years. They are on a VPS (virtual private server, Vultr, $3.60/m) managed by ServerPilot hosting service (free). I've implemented https for both of them and they're using relatively optimized simple free themes (Best Simple and Wisteria).


SEO
I feel good about the SEO on those new sites. The hobby site has no SEO-level competition basically. The affiliate site has relatively low competition overall - there's some room to snap untouched keywords basically.

The on-page SEO for the affiliate site in particular has:

• 1500-4000+ word articles with pictures, short paragraphs, useful content, etc;
• interlinking to useful and relevant sources within the site itself with ultimate pillar content for each category;
• low competition keywords for the most part already bringing in users with buyer intent.
• (user friendly - useful yet simple and pleasant overall feel of the site(s))

The off-page SEO is not something I'm overly concerned about. I feel like there's no need for it in all actuality. I'm pretty sure that simply having better content will do the trick over time. I'm in no rush.


MONI
All is paid in advance for 2 years. The affiliate site is sure to make at least some money, that's a given. Just needs more content and time...

I'm not quite sure how I'm going to monetize the hobby site though. The audience is not looking to buy anything in particular, but there are some potential ways to monetize it (adsense; contacting digital product sellers and suggest to give their solutions more visibility on my site by demanding a small monthly fee - right now the free solutions are at the front and most nobody needs to scroll past the free solutions on the lists of ways to do what they want to do; etc).

Expenses:

• 2 domains: $65
• VPS: $70

Revenue:

• not monetized yet

 

[balmain70]

i liked the meme above , and definitely you;ve put hard hours in and gotten success , wish you more good luck

 

[dbundus]

Happy New Year!
UPDATE (DECEMBER)​

December was profitable (in my eyes, that is).

Got 40.58 € from Amazon affiliate commissions on the affiliate site and 8.28 € from the hobby site, so 48.86 € in total. That's a huge sum of money made from internet for me, considering it's basically passive income. This month 2 items that I actually wrote about were bought on the affiliate site, and that alone netted me 39.25€ of that 40.58€ - just from 2 items!

I've accomplished my initial goals of 20 € a month from the internet, kind of.

It was the month before that I got from the affiliate site 49.54 €, and now 40.58 €. If it kept up like that, saying if I made another 40 € in January, I'd get close to 1000 € selling the affiliate site. That alone is just a good-to-know feeling. I'd not sell it though. The site is barebones still, lots of content that can be added, lots of money potential, I think. Though I have a feeling that all the current sales are due to the holidays, so it might just be a spike of sales these past few months, so the goal is not yet consistently reached.

​

Expenses:

• 2 domains: $65 (March, 2018 - March, 2020)
• VPS: $70 ($38.19 left of that $70, approx $3.60 per month)
• Outsourced content: $108
• Total: $243

Earnings:

• Adsense: 46.07 €
• Amazon Affiliate program: 95.20 €
• Total: 141.27 € ($163.13)

View attachment 32816

View attachment 32817​

Interesting! will like to know the website. I didn''t see the link :-)

 

[ThulfWaatu]

Interesting! will like to know the website. I didn''t see the link :-)

I'd rather not do that for obvious reasons. ^^

 

[ThulfWaatu]

Amazon Associates different region account hazzles.

Currently my applications for the Amazon Associates accounts for UK and US regions are approved. However, my application for Amazon Associates Germany was not approved after 3 sales and 2€ generated... I hope it's because none of those 3 items had anything to do with what the affiliate site is about. I hope that because the application for the AA account for Canada region is not yet looked into as it only just recently made 3 sales in total. 2 out of those 3 sales are for the products the affiliate site is actually about. I hope that the application for the AA Canada region account gets approved and not rejected like the German region account.

So...

• 2 approved (US & UK),
• 1 rejected (GE),
• 1 still up in the air (CA).

And that I hope the Canada region account gets approved.

 

[ThulfWaatu]

Amazon Associates different region account hazzles.

Currently my applications for the Amazon Associates accounts for UK and US regions are approved. However, my application for Amazon Associates Germany was not approved after 3 sales and 2€ generated... I hope it's because none of those 3 items had anything to do with what the affiliate site is about. I hope that because the application for the AA account for Canada region is not yet looked into as it only just recently made 3 sales in total. 2 out of those 3 sales are for the products the affiliate site is actually about. I hope that the application for the AA Canada region account gets approved and not rejected like the German region account.

So...

• 2 approved (US & UK),
• 1 rejected (GE),
• 1 still up in the air (CA).

And that I hope the Canada region account gets approved.

An update on Amazon Associates different region account hazzles.

• 2 approved (US & UK),
• 2 rejected (GE, CA).

I think the reason for why these 2 got rejected was because of OneLink.

Amazon OneLink enables US Associates to link multiple international AA accounts and earn revenue from international traffic.

Since the source affiliate link was the US region product link, Amazon automated application system didn't pick up on CA and GE region affiliate links, so it couldn't trace back where the sales came from for those regions. This hints at OneLink being a little broken in that part.

This would explain how UK region at the time got accepted. There was this one product not available on the US region Amazon, so I had to link from UK region directly. That's how the Amazon system must have picked up on a link that would connect UK buyers with UK region sales.

I didn't do that for neither for GE nor CA region because I assumed OneLink did its thing and it would have been counterintuitive for me to go out of my way and link from CA or GE region directly...


I guess I won't be getting my hands on that 60€ that CA region generated for me within 3 sales... Now I'm just hoping it can be appealed rather than me having to re-apply and take appropriate countermeasures only just to get the applications approved.

 

[ThulfWaatu]

An update on Amazon Associates different region account hazzles.

• 3 approved (US & UK & CA),
• 1 rejected/in the air (GE).

So I kind of tried to appeal my CA & GE rejection with the argument that there must've been a misunderstanding with OneLink not clicking with whatever their automatic/script-based application system checked on. Upon a new manual review they determined that the "previously rejected application is eligible to be reinstated".

That means I get my CA 37€ from last month (June) and the 55€ CA brought in in this month (July) prior to the rejection.



I'm very happy to hear this.

I was afraid that... I was sawing the branch I was sitting on by getting them to manually review the site again just to get a region that didn't bring all that much money to begin with and determine that maybe it wasn't a simple error but an actual determining that the site wasn't following the rules which would mean losing all the regions instead of getting 1 back. Now that that's over, I can rest easy again.

 

[ThulfWaatu]

a lil' UPDATE
(01.07.2019-11.07.2019)

I have not lifted a finger this month, and this is what I've gotten so far:

I remember kind of imagining having something to my name that was generating me money passively. I daydreamed about it almost every day as I was walking towards the vocational school I went to, then a few years later I started to go to uni and again I dreamt about that first thing one day happening as I walked there... I was back then only dipping my toes into the IM waters by doing the beermoney stuff and hadn't set up a site yet, but I definitely saw the potential.

I kind of just imagined myself walking merrily without worrying about money and how that would feel like...
I believed IM could help me financially, maybe even push aside the need to go down the line of a traditional work.

​

Looking at the numbers alone right now, it does seem like I've reached that dream temporarily. But when I'm starting to look at how I thought I'd feel about it, I'm currently not feeling about it that way. I'm not merrily going around being oblivious about things around me because I could. At least not yet. It's mainly because I know this site is SEASONAL, and that means this thing this site has going on for me right now won't be there to last... Which is kind of sad to be honest.

I'm really just hoping that it's going to be at least 100€+ each month outside the season. This would motivate me to work on my new project(s) with a little more passion. I want this thing I'm seeing right now to last a year or 2 from now.

 

[ThulfWaatu]

... I think it's going to be the first 100 € month this time around. Report says it's already 90 € and somebody has bought yet another item that generates me another 10 € at least (it's not yet delivered to them, so...).

It's the first 100€+ day on the affiliate site this time around (there might be one other day that reached 100€ before as well, but I didn't really care to calculate that...). The day is not yet over though, so it might even hit 200€ when everybody gets back from work and starts buying stuff.

Granted, I do think that this one is partly because of the Amazon Prime Day. But whatever, it works for me. 100€ is 100€ after all. ^^


The absolute best part is that I haven't had to do anything to get this. Like... It's really free money at this point. Passive... Great stuff.

 

[ColdAndDark]

Really love your thread!
I would pass out some advice, Donot Buy Backlinks!
At best, they might boost your rank for short time, at worst, they will get you banned from Google. So be careful.

 

[ThulfWaatu]

Really love your thread!
I would pass out some advice, Donot Buy Backlinks!
At best, they might boost your rank for short time, at worst, they will get you banned from Google. So be careful.

Thanks!

And yeah. I mean, backlinks can definitely be useful if done right, but since it turns out I don't need backlinks at all, there's really no point getting them anymore. ^^ Google actually loves good backlinks. It makes the web more valuable that way as well.

 

[ColdAndDark]

It's possible.

View attachment 56259​

You can try scaling it up even further.
Create more reviews on parallel niches, since you have some domain authority now, it will be easier to rank.

 

[ColdAndDark]

It's possible.

View attachment 56259​

Finally, hard work and experience pays off. Congrats!

 

[ThulfWaatu]

You can try scaling it up even further.
Create more reviews on parallel niches, since you have some domain authority now, it will be easier to rank.

I think for now I'll let this journey sit and handle itself. I feel a little burnt out with this one.

I'm focused now on the 2nd affiliate site. I'll maybe once in a whole polish a few things on the 1st affiliate site, but I want to build up the 2nd affiliate site as a personal achievement kind of thing. I want to see if my assumptions on what works and what doesn't is more or less correct. Because if the current template works, that means I can pump out multiple of these sites and just leave them to make me money once I've carried out the content plan. I want multiple sources, and maybe even sell one of them (assuming they work like I think they do).

I feel like I can safely ignore the 1st affiliate site because it's making money on its own now, so I should feel any guilt "giving up" on it. It's not reall "giving up" as much as it is a calculated expansion (niche site empire).


I wish... I wish this stuff worked out. It'd be so much fun if it did.

 

[ThulfWaatu]

It's 1500€ now!
​

Why do I find myself being so relaxed though? Why am I not excited over this?

I remember trying to come up with ideas of doing something silly (to express my excitement) if I ever managed to reach 1000€ for a single month from IM. That time is now here... And since I'm an INTJ (MBTI typology thing), I'm aparently just dissolving my excitement by thinking it through... Normally people feel emotions and act on them without having much control over it. I guess I'm not "normal"... ^^

 

[koliman]

This is motivating... Thanks!! <3

 

[ThulfWaatu]

An update on Amazon Associates different region account hazzle.

• 4 approved (US, UK, CA & GE),

I guess it was just a misunderstanding and explaining the situation got it sorted out. Now I can go back to working on the 2nd affiliate site with no haunting problems taking away a piece of my brainpower*.

 

[ThulfWaatu]

UPDATE
(July, 2019)

​

Expenses:

• 2 domains: $65 (March, 2018 - March, 2020)
• VPS: $95 ($37.99 left of that $95, approx $3.60 per month)
• Outsourced content: $447.50
• Off-page SEO services: $56
• Total: $663.50 (585.87 €)

Earnings:

• Adsense: 92.01 €
• Amazon Affiliate program: 2,913.34 €
• Total: 3,005.35 € ($3,327.93)

​

 

[ThulfWaatu]

This is some real passive money right here...

All this money I can invest back into IM is kind of nuts (I try not to use offline money for online projects).

I remember counting my cents from beermoney sites like scribie, prolific, rev, microworkers, etc before I was able to start my first site with the money gained... And now I'm looking at a 1700€ month... I won't be seeing that much money until next year, but even if August brought in 1000€, I'd be happy still.

 

[ThulfWaatu]

As a sidenote...

The outsourced $140 "Best [Niche Products]" pillar article has paid for it itself by now (a single product from that article can cost around 800€, so 4%-9% of those quickly paid things off). The best part is that I published it as it was with me only adding affiliate links to it. I couldn't be any more lazy than that, AND IT STILL WORKED! That article is creeping up on the SERPS like a snail, but it's climbing still. Sometimes I scream internally when I see one of those high ticket items bought in bulk. ^^

I'm thinking I should outsource a crap ton of such "pillar" money articles...

The idea is fairly simple on paper. Fairly actionable as well. The only problem in this plan is me. All this time has passed and I'm still at odds with myself. Yes, I could outsource those articles, publish them unpolished and profit after some time. However, doing so would not provide true value to the reader (as per my personal standards). It would mean I'd have to polish them at some point, which can be a risky timesink. I don't want to spend much time on this site until my next projects start to pick up (burned out). I also wouldn't want to feel like a cheat by outsourcing them and publishing them unpolished. But then again, who wouldn't want more money for doing basically nothing?! A few fundamental conflicting interests/values, you see.


My current plan is to simply take some time off when it comes to this 1st affiliate niche site, work on the other projects instead, and return to this one here once again later down the road.

 

[ThulfWaatu]

I love seeing people return purchases. It's basically like feedback to me.

So I've got 2 pillar posts (the "best niche products" one being half-assed). There I've mentioned almost all the products in the niche market. The better ones made it into the list while the rest are literally just mentioned at the very end. Some of the really bad ones I've kind of pointed out as being actually bad...

From time to time, I've noticed that people buy those "bad" products. I swear to god, I have no idea why they do that.

However, the neat thing is, they've returned those "bad" products like 50% of the time. (very rough estimate implying that these are the products that get returned out of all the returned items I see)


Sometimes the "bad product" has no reviews on Amazon. And when I see some1 buying one of them like that, a while later I see that the product has its first review. The review often reflects what I had thought about the product myself based on research, it being... well, not good.


It a positive thing in disguise... I think.