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How Shawn Hill Grew His BBQ Site to $25k Per Month in 2 Years

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How Shawn Hill Grew His BBQ Site to $25k Per Month in 2 Years

How do you grow a profitable site in a competitive niche in 25 months?

That’s what we learn in Shawn’s interview on the Niche Pursuits podcast.

Shawn dives into lots of important topics:

  • His strategies for keyword research
  • How he deals with the seasonality of his niche
  • What he does for link building
  • The affiliate programs he uses
  • And a whole lot more…

But his story is also super interesting and inspiring.

He was a social media marketing guy before taking a course about SEO.

He now works for Forbes as an SEO strategist in his day job, grows his niche site in his free time, and still finds time to work on interesting projects.

For example:

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In early January, he built an AI chatbot using Chatgpt in 2 days and sold it to Originality.ai for $10,000 (one of the great ChatGPT success stories).

Oh, and did I mention he also has 7 kids?

Check out the interview and hear this soft-spoken juggernaut give you all the motivation you need!

Topics Shawn Hill Covers

  • His social media marketing background
  • How he learned SEO
  • Starting his site from his RV
  • Working as an SEO strategist for Forbes
  • How he chose his niche
  • The seasonality of his niche
  • How much he now publishes per week
  • When his site started making money
  • His income growth
  • Why he started making info content
  • Tips for HARO
  • Planning seasonal content
  • His video strategy
  • Using Jared’s photography course
  • The affiliate programs he uses
  • His revenue split
  • Plans for the future
  • Competing against bigger sites
  • Selling vs. scaling
  • And much more…

This Episode is Sponsored by Search Intelligence & Nichesites.com

Watch The Interview

Read The Transcription

Jared: Welcome back to The Niche Pursuits podcast. Today we are joined by Shawn Hill. With the grilling dad.com, Sean joins us to tell the story of a website that he started just over two years ago. Now, fast forward just 25 months later and the site just broke $25,000 in revenue, getting several hundred thousand page views a month.

Pretty quick growth, and we get to hear all about it from A to Z from the start to the finish where it’s at right now. Sean, it does know what he is doing when it comes to S seo. He works for Forbes as his day job doing SEO for. And so he does bring a good amount of experience, but it’s still wonderful to hear about how he started this site from scratch.

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The keywords that he started off by going after, he did start with this site being focused on affiliate revenue primarily, and has since moved into adding a lot of informational content on that is monetized through ads. We get to hear about how he grew the site, how the growth trajectory. And of course along the way, all the different things that he had to make decisions around.

We do get into his backlink strategy. We talk about where he is going with the site. We talk about Google updates and what they’ve been doing to the site and maybe how to futureproof things. I ask him about social media, what he’s doing there. He does have a background in social media prior. To his job at Forbes.

And so it’s really cool to read how he’s using and starting to leverage other areas like Facebook groups. We talk about YouTube and we talk about whether it’s a good play here in this space. It’s always fun to get the story, uh, about a single website at its growth. And obviously Sean’s doing some great things.

We finish off the interview by talking about where he is going with the site, gonna keep it, gonna grow up more, gonna start other sites, et cetera. I hope you. Introducing niche sites.com. Are you looking to scale your niche site portfolio or build your first website? Look no further than niche sites.com with a portfolio of successful websites.

And over 700 plus satisfied clients. The [email protected] have the skills and experience to help you succeed from keyword research to link building content writing to done for you websites. Niche sites.com offers a full range of services to help your content site grow as the same. Goes at trial is worth more than a thousand.

And they’re offering a special trial just for new customers. You get 5,000 words of content completely free with your order of 10,000 plus traffic back links. Don’t miss this opportunity. Head on over to niche sites.com/trial and take advantage of this amazing trial offer. Again, it’s niche sites, plural.

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Niche sites.com/trial. Go claim your free content. Before we jump into the podcast, I wanted to let you know that today’s episode is sponsored by Search Intelligence. Here’s a short clip of Ferry from Search Intelligence showing you how their agency built digital PR links to a client’s website. Do you remember this campaign?

Shawn: It was all over the news. It is the most intelligent royal campaign with over 100 links generated in the world’s biggest online public. This is one of the most viral PR campaign of 2021. This is how we’ve done it. The methodology was pretty simple. We looked at the QS World University rankings for the institutions attended by key members of the royal family to discover which royal is the brightest wall.

Naga Markle came out on top, followed by Kate Middleton and Prince William. We put these findings in a press release and sent it to mainstream media and journalists who riot about royals from Russia to the uk, the us, Vietnam, and Japan. This story got massive coverage landing over 100 links, and created a massive buzz on social.

Simple research, but a great story that journalists love to write about. I hope this will put you on fire and will give you inspiration. 

Jared: If you want similar link building PR campaigns for your website, head to search dash intelligence. Dot co.uk and get in touch with them now.

All right. Welcome back to the Niche Pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Baum. Today we’re joined by Sean Hill. Sean, welcome on. Hey, thanks so, 

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Shawn: so much for having me. 

Jared: Yeah, thanks for, for coming on. I am very excited for today’s discussion and I know that, um, you have a, a great background in, um, in marketing and website building, but we’re gonna be talking about some of the websites that you’ve built, uh, along the way.

So before we get into some of the details, how about giving us some backstory, uh, and catch us up to, to maybe where the website building journey. 

Shawn: Yeah, definitely. So I started, you know, had a background in sales professionally and transitioned from that and started a marketing agency that was primarily focused on social media.

Uh, a couple of the clients asked if I would start writing blog posts for ’em too. So I started to, and I didn’t know much about it and just being competitive, I was a little frustrated that. What I was writing wasn’t showing up very high on Google, and that led me to like asking a lot of questions and learning like, oh, there’s this term called seo.

So I was joining like every group in forum I could possibly find and asking questions and just digging in. And ultimately, you know, through that journey. Met this guy named, named Brock. Uh, he said he, you know, had had a little bit of help from this guy named Shane. And Shane had this course going. Um, so I took the course, paid him for some, um, some coaching along the way, and really just kind of followed that, that playbook.

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And, you know, now we are here where the last couple of months was, you know, over $25,000 in revenue on the site. Two years later. 

Jared: Wow, that’s great growth. I, um, you know, it’s funny, I share a very similar story, which I don’t even tell that much, but I was, um, doing marketing at my old company and the only thing we didn’t do well was seo.

We did social media and email. I just couldn’t figure it out. And I put my, I just kind of like a dog on a bone set out to figure out why, and, and, you know, now here we are later. That’s mostly what I do with my 

Shawn: agency, . Yeah. That’s awesome. So 

Jared: are you, um, still running the agency? Where, where are you at? A job perspective.

Um, I mean, that’s great income on your website where, where’s the full-time job at? 

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Shawn: Yeah. So I was, I was doing that as I started kind of learning more about it. I realized I didn’t like having a whole bunch of bosses and I really didn’t like social media in using it, uh, for other people. So I started transitioning away.

I have a friend that has like a, a full service marketing agency, so I just started kind of shipping clients that way and filtering ’em over there. And then I was really focused on my site and kind of like something you had mentioned in the intro there. It was at the time, like in Covid, we started traveling around the country.

In an RV with the whole family. It was a ton of fun. And I was spending, you know, hours every day, you know, learning and building this site as I was going. But from there, you know, once we came back to a house, I’m like, Hey, I, I actually need a job. Like our savings are starting to dwindle. So the site wasn’t making that much money yet.

And so I went back to a job, but I had actually, you. Working with Shane had asked him a question. He’s like, Hey, that’s a question. One of our SEO analysts would ask, like, have you ever thought about doing this for a living? And so that kind of opened the door where I was working with him and, and this other agency where they had some partnerships with some really large media sites.

And so my first, you know, s e o was working on these large sites, you know, that were doing really well. So I got to learn, you know, if you make one small. You kind of see the impact of that within a day. Mm-hmm. , because they’re such big sites. So really got immersed into it there. And, um, kind of fast forward now, uh, I’m now an SEO strategist at Forbes, uh, full-time and running the site a couple hours a night is kind of what I spend on it now, 

Jared: man.

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I feel like, which direction should we go? We could fill a whole hour talking about Forbes and what you do with them, or fill a whole hour talking about your website, how fascinat. 

Shawn: Yeah, so it’s a lot of fun doing both and it’s one of those things where I haven’t experienced really any burnout, but I’m, you know, working all day, you know, at Forbes and seo.

And then afterwards, after the kids are in bed is when I typically come back down here and spend a couple hours and do it all again for myself. I, I know 

Jared: that there’s gotta be a lot of things and, and I don’t wanna take us too far off course cuz we do want to talk about how you’ve grown this website from, I mean, basically zero to 25 k a month in two years.

But maybe could you give us a little bit of insights because most of us don’t get the opportunity to work on really, really big sites and whenever we have someone on that’s, that’s worked. We just had, um, uh, Nick who had worked on dmv.org on a little while ago, and these big websites are so different than.

The types of websites a lot of us are operating. What are some of the things you’ve been able to learn from working on a big website, like say a Forbes or other websites and that you’ve actually applied, you’ve been able to apply to 

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Shawn: your website? Yeah, I think the, um, two biggest things are finding, I don’t know the, the right word to use it, I guess like managing a.

which was like brand new to me, but how they’re able to manage in all the different parts that come with running these sites, whether that’s, you know, a writer or an editor or photos or you know, other multimedia actually publishing it. Formatting like optimizing for search, doing all these things. Like usually on these big sites, there’s like a person that’s specialized in their one task.

Uh, and on these sites we’re kind of wearing all the hats, right? So it’s learning how to delegate and which. Are, you know, better to delegate versus you doing yourself. But then the other thing, and it’s definitely the biggest, is branding. Mm-hmm. . I mean, if you, you know, everyone’s heard of Forbes and it’s because they’ve done just a phenomenal job.

Everyone knows the brand name, uh, and it’s usually trusted and for good reason. 

Jared: That’s great, man. It must be fun. Must be fun to work on a big site and kinda like what you talk about, like make a change in, I mean, hours, days later, it’s, you’ve seen it . Yeah, 

Shawn: it is. It’s a lot of fun in 

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Jared: the wild. That’s great.

Well, let’s, um, I mean, let’s go through if we can, and really get, uh, into the weeds on how you built this site and, uh, maybe. Here, the foundation, how you picked the website that, or the niche that you wanted to go after. Was this your first one or, or there a couple maybe failed ones before that, like take us to the foundation of this, this particular site.

Yeah, 

Shawn: so I thought I had it all kind of figured out before taking the course, just from asking people questions and forums and, you know, learning all the free information I could. And I had a couple of sites that just didn’t do well and the, the first one really was, The one I actually like was like, I guess trying to rank things for, and it was in parenting.

You know, I’m a dad of seven kids. I’m like, I’ve got experience here. Like I can, I can talk about write the book. Yeah. Well, nothing ever ranked. It was horrible. Social media profiles grew pretty quick, but. I just, it wasn’t translating into traffic and I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. And you know, that’s kind of led down the way.

So then I just had to say like, I’m gonna pretend I know nothing, uh, and just be ignorant and while I’m taking this course, I’m gonna follow it step by step. Mm-hmm. Um, and so that’s really what I did. And you know, as far as the foundation, I think you’re right. Like I wanted to, to pick a niche that I had experience in where there were products I could help promote.

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But also, you know, something. It has search data behind it. Mm-hmm. that way. I was going into something I knew I could find traffic for. Um, so ultimately, you know, I was kind of narrowed it down to a couple of different niches that I thought would be interesting, one of which was gardening. Knowing what Epic gardening has done now, like, I’m so glad I didn’t go there and try to compete with them because what they’re doing is just amazing.

Um, and ultimately I decided on BB. So, um, I’m running the, the site, the grilling dad.com. Um, and it’s been a lot of fun. You know, there was search volume, I didn’t know it at the time to even think about or check for seasonality. So there are huge 

Jared: peaks and huge value. I was, I just literally wrote in my notes seasonality.

We’re gonna have to talk about that one. . Yeah, it 

Shawn: is. It’s not Anisha. I would tell people to go get in and it’s not just cuz I’m there, it is just really big, you know, peaks and. Yeah, started from there. So pick the niche, you know, pick the name, had a simple logo. It’s, it’s definitely changed over time. As the site started making money, I’m upgrading it.

So that’s kind of the, you know, the model was just getting, getting started and getting content out there. Um, and I was going just super low difficulty, keywords, just a lot of how-to type of posts. The original intent of the site was to, An affiliate site. So I had no intentions of ever adding, you know, a Mediavine or Adri to the site.

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Um, so a lot of best of type of Roundup posts and a lot of how to, that was what the whole site was made up of. Originally when you 

Jared: sought after going down the barbecue route, was it, was it based on, hey, here are three or four, you know, gardening and barbecue and these are three or four areas I’ve interest in, interest in, and I’m confident I can go, I can find keywords for these categories.

These niches? Sorry, if I pick one, or did you kind of drill into trying to see if there was a lot of good keyword opportunities and that’s what guided you to the grilling side of things? 

Shawn: Yeah, I was a little, a little biased just because I had, um, while working with social media, I was actually starting a lot of Facebook groups before.

Facebook groups were cool. So I had this like, gardening group. It has a hundred thousand members in it. Geez. Um, and you have a thing with social media, I’ll tell you. . Yeah. And then I have a barbecue group that had, you know, at the time, like 25,000 members, um, and no site or anything. So I kind of did it backwards.

Um, and then the, the dad group too. And I’m like, all right, well, the parenting didn’t work. Uh, it was too competitive, you know, I just, it wasn’t for me. Um, and ended up going with barbecue simply because, , it was something I was actually doing like every weekend and like really passionate about learning. Um, so learning how to, you know, whether it’s smoking brisket or ribs or grilling burgers and, and also like when I was searching for content, a lot of the content sucked and right.

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That’s kind of what hit like, I can do better than this. 

Jared: You were probably looking around cuz you were actually doing it, realizing, wait a second. This is not taught. I, I have this problem with my brisket when I do it, none of the articles actually address it or whatever it is. Yeah, exactly. Wh when it comes to coming outta the gate, talk about the, the, the approach you took with the affiliate and op, you kind of buried the lead a bit, I’m guessing it went a little bit of a different direction now, but why, um, why the affiliate focus, especially when you were getting.

Shawn: Um, it was the focus because I wanted to at least break even on like the hosting costs, which we know, you know, it’s not a lot, but when you’re broke and you’re driving around the country in an RV and you’re literally living off of your savings, um, you know, I, I just wanted to break even as fast as possible and it seemed like the lowest.

Um, I guess barrier of entry, getting to dollars, um, you know, getting to 50,000 page views a month. I was like, there’s no way like I’m ever gonna do that. It seems so far away, but, you know, making 20, 25 bucks a month from affiliate sales, like, I felt like I could do that. . Mm-hmm. . So 

Jared: how, how about we get a snapshot of where you’re at right now and then we’ll kind of undo how you grew this.

Um, you mentioned the, the, the 25 K a month, um, but maybe anything else you’re comfortable sharing in terms of page views or, or other types of metrics? 

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Shawn: Yeah. It’s getting around 250,000 page views a month. Um, and there’s around 300 published posts. That’s 

Jared: great. That’s the 300 published posts, especially not as affiliate focused.

It sounds like that must be driving some good revenue and traffic. 

Shawn: Yep, definitely. Is it, it won’t, uh, like January, February, not so much as we ramp into summer, you know, that’s when we’ll see some, some nice little peaks and then. Holiday time, people buy a lot of stuff no matter what in each. So those 

Jared: are fun.

What kind of fluctuations are there? Like maybe could you, like what’s the low month in terms of page views and what’s the, the 

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Shawn: high month? Yeah, so in 2022, um, January, which I mean, again, the site had just hit one year old in January of 2022, um, and it made $1,200 and then December of 2022 it made 25,000.

So like the, the winter months are just so much worse. Um, but there’s also like just a lot of growth. Um, and then this year, January, you know, there was still like 300%, um, year over year growth. January over January. So that’s a, a big drop off, um, from making 25 grand, you know, two months ago to making, you know, about five grand this month or last month.

Yeah. 

Jared: Right. Yeah, I mean, it’s easy to understand conceptually, but maybe talk to the person who is still a little skeptical on why seasonality is so hard. Um, you know, Because when you talk to someone who has a site like yours, it’s heavily seasonal. They, they tend to always say like, oh man, dude, seasonality is such a bummer.

But at the same time it’s like, well, I don’t know. You have high months, you have low months. It all averages out. Like what are some of the big frustrations or, or problems with, uh, having a site that’s so seasonal? Yeah, I think there’s, 

Shawn: there’s a lot of different factors that go into it. Not only are less people just searching for those terms that you’ve been going after.

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but also those who are like, they’re just, they’re different, right? There’s a lot of shopping and not a lot of buying. Um, like Christmas just ended. They racked up all these credit card bills. January, they’re starting all these new spending habits and getting their, you know, uh, financial planning in order.

So it’s kind of the opposite. Like if you had a financial site, you’re probably getting a lot of traffic right now in January and February while people are, you know, starting to, you know, take control and get their finances in order. Um, with their, their New Year’s resolutions and all of that. I’m sure weight loss is the same whereas other things, you know, it just depends on, each niche is, is different as far as the seasonality impact goes.

Um, and even some, you know, will have seasonality, but it, you know, may not be as severe. Like, I’ve worked with other categories in the past, like moving as an example where it’s not as, uh, impacted, but it does have some seasonality where spring and summer are just. More going, moving. Yeah, 

Jared: that makes a lot of sense.

Does it change the way that you approach, um, like your content calendar, your updating? Um, does it just, like, do you have to approach it differently? Uh, if you don’t have a seasonal site, you kind of just, you know, you, you come, uh, I’m not trying to say this is what you do, but you don’t have to factor in timing.

You can publish keywords and articles as they come through. You can update articles as it sees fit, but with seasonality, is there like an added layer of calendaring that you almost have to do? 

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Shawn: Yes. Um, like right now, you and I had mentioned before the show, like I’m doing a whole redesign on the site. Um, it was built with the page builder, Elementor, uh, it’s really slow.

Like I started failing core web vitals and I’m like, Hey, this is a, a big deal. You know, this is middle of December, and I’m like, I need to fix this, but I’m not doing it right now. Like, I’m gonna wait until January to start this because I know nobody’s gonna be on the site. And I say nobody, I mean it just like cuts down.

It’ll be around like it was a hundred thousand people came to the site, which is much lower than that two 50 that I had, you know, was getting used to Right. Anyway, like, so going through that, like the timing of it made more sense. Cause you know, there’s less, you know, it’s less risk averse and, um, Just needed to Yeah.

Time it right. And so hopefully it’ll be finished, um, soon. Maybe by the time this people are actually watching this, they should be redesigned and, and looking good to go, ah, 

Jared: you got a target now you gotta, you got a date to work towards Target now? Yep. Nothing like a deadline to motivate. Right. ? 

Shawn: I would say it’s probably like 90% done.

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Um, the one thing that. You know, stinks is the, the image size that I was using for featured images doesn’t work well now. Mm. And the way I had it positioned on the page, now, it’s like in a different spot and it just, it looks wacky. So about 300 pages, I’m gonna have to go through and create new featured images.

Ah, that’s not fun. . Well, you hire, you hire help and, you know, yep. Form a team and get it done. Step by step. Start out 

Jared: guys. Yep. Yep. So you started off publishing a lot of affiliate focused keywords. Um, maybe walk us through like how many articles in the first maybe six months or so, how many articles were you publishing?

Uh, they were, sounds like affiliate focused. How long were they, what were some of the, the ways you did your research? I, I, I gather from the way you talk about it, you were, you were the one writing, you know, you’re out in your RV, traveling around and you were the one creating the content yourself. 

Shawn: Yep. I was writing everything I could until I made enough money to pay someone to write for me.

Um, and I don’t know how it happened, uh, luck probably, but I found someone who was just starting, like right outta college, starting their freelance career as a writer. She was pretty good. I would say like b, b plus type of writing. And it was like $5 per every thousand words. Wow. I know. And I’m like, yes.

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Like, how much can you write? Like now my site’s, you know, making, you know, $50 a month or whatever it may be. Like I, I want to outsource all of the writing. Um, so I still do some, I, I actually enjoy writing. It’s just so many other things to focus on. Um, so that was the plan I was publishing about one per week when it was just myself and I wasn’t having the growth that I wanted.

Um, the goal was to get to, you know, sprint to 30 posts and I’m like, man, this is gonna take forever. Finally got there. That’s when it started making a little bit of money. Um, getting to 50 posts roughly is when I started outsourcing all the content. And then now from there, I’ve actually hired, you know, a different writer that is much better, uh, as far as the quality goes.

And she’s doing, you know, a lot more posts now. She’s kind of grown with me as the site grows. Um, and then recently hired on, uh, another gentleman to start writing some posts as well. Um, but that’s kind of been the progression as I was writing everything, doing everything, and it started making enough money for me to outsource the writing.

And now like it, we’re writing about six, six to eight posts a week now. 

Jared: Wow. Okay. So you’ve really ramped up the content schedule cause you had 300 articles live, uh, what are we just over two years in and so I mean, six to eight a week out of math is fuzzy, but that’s probably three or 400 a month right there.

Or three or 400 a year. Sorry. Right there. Yep. Good. When did, uh, like how did the growth go? Like is it one of those where you kind of woke up one month and it hockey sticked up to the right, or was it this slow progression of 

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Shawn: growth? It was pretty quick, and once it actually started to grow, it really just took off on its own.

All right, so month number. It took month number six when I first made my first money online. So five months of just writing content, usually one, one post a week. Six months in, I made a dollar 40. All right. And that was enough to keep me going, right? Yeah. Prove the concept. And, um, the next month. Took a downturn.

I made 21 cents . But then after that, so month eight, I made $127 and yeah, that’s, that’s quite. All right, I can, I can hire out for a few posts now because of this person, you know, that I, that I met. And then month nine it was 386, so a big jump, and then 643, and then it stayed right around 500 bucks. And then, you know, month 13 it made 2,400 and then 3,500.

And then we’re looking at, you know, month 19 is when it made its first $10,000 in a month. And then, you know, month 25 is when it hit 25. Oh. So it was a really slow start and then just huge ramp. 

Jared: So what do you attribute to that huge ramp up? I mean, many would say that if you’re working on a brand new fresh domain and publishing content, that’s gonna take three to six months to, um, to get any traction from Google in the first place.

So in many ways, It seems like you came outta the gates pretty well. After about six months, you were seeing a great growth curve. Like what do you think caused your site to do really well proverbially outta the gate, especially as compared to maybe your, you know, your parenting site and these other sites that hadn’t done that?

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Shawn: Really, I think the biggest thing was, you know, the, the planning on the upfront. With content. I was only writing content. I had a shot at ranking for, Hmm. Um, I wasn’t going after anything, any of the big keywords, any of the hubs, all the shiny objects. I was able to avoid those and add ’em kind of to a backlog.

And I was just really, you know, kind of a stickler on that. I made a lot of mistakes along the way too, uh, while trying to do that. Like, I was so reliant on KD as a metric to tell me if I could rank for it or not. Um, which, you know, I’ve certainly learned since then that. Great final indicator. But yeah, that, I mean, that was the plan.

I was only writing content. I thought I could make money from. Before we 

Jared: jump into the podcast, I wanted to let you know that today’s episode is sponsored by Search Intelligence. Here’s a short clip of Ferry from Search Intelligence showing you how their agency built digital PR links to a client’s website.

Do 

Shawn: you remember this campaign? It was all over the news. It is the most intelligent royal campaign with over 100 links generated in the world’s biggest online public. This is one of the most viral PR campaigns of 2021. This is how we’ve done it. The methodology was pretty simple. We looked at the QS World University rankings for the institutions attended by key members of the royal family to discover which royal is the brightest wall.

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Na Markle came out on top, followed by Kate Middleton and Prince William. We put these findings in a press release and sent it to mainstream media and journalists who write about royals from Russia to the uk, the us, Vietnam, and Japan. This story got massive coverage, landing over 100 links, and created a massive buzz on social media.

Simple research, but a great story that journalists love to write about. I hope this will put you on fire and will give you inspiration. 

Jared: If you want similar link building PR campaigns for your website, head to search-intelligence.co.uk and get in touch with them. Now, you talked about how you were very heavy on the affiliate side.

Did you start to change that at any point and start writing more informational content? 

Shawn: For sure. Like I said, I kept digging in. Really was fully immersed in there. So anybody who made content around these type of sites and making money, I was, you know, just diving in and learning everything I could.

That’s when I came across, you know, fat Tax Blog and John Dykstra and really, you know, I’m like, dude, he’s making this money and he’s not selling any products. Like, are you kidding me? And then I’m like learning while I’m working at these other sites, I’m like, oh, like they have these sites or these pages that are making all this money, but it’s.

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They’re ranking because of all the authority they have because of like the topical authority that they have with all these other post informational posts that aren’t making money. And so that’s when I’m like, man, I need to do that for topical authority. It’s gonna help improve my affiliate posts. But also I could, I could make a little bit of money on the side with these, you know, informational posts.

And, um, it was pretty much overnight. I mean, it was month 17 was like, you know, $3,200 or something like that. Uh, and then 18 it was. Over 7,000. So it flipped overnight. And that was because I turned ads on and it doubled my revenue. Yeah, 

Jared: well that kind of traffic, I mean, you know, I, that that’s, that’s enough to substantially increase your revenue just from traffic that comes to maybe a non monetized post.

Do you keep ads on, uh, posts that are monetized with affiliate offers and. 

Shawn: Right now, they’re minimal on any of those posts. Um, there’s the sidebar, like one sidebar. There’s the, you know, the one across the bottom and I think there’s one in content ad I plan to kind of fine tune that a little bit. I recently switched from Media Vine to Adri.

Still unsure on who I’ll stick with long-term. Um, but I needed to test it myself. But I think that having some ads on. Are gonna be good, especially like in between, as long as they look clean in between the different posts. After, you know, if someone’s scrolling all the way down, they haven’t bought anything.

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Yeah. Rather then gimme some money from ad 

Jared: revenue. You’re not gonna buy one of the products I recommend, at least let me get some ad revenue. 

Shawn: Yeah, exactly. So that’s, I think that’s gonna be the plan for me, one or the other. But those pages, they get a lot of traffic, so I don’t wanna not make money from ’em.

Yeah. 

Jared: Um, there’s kind of a, sometimes a bit of a different process in picking keywords for informational topics. Did you, did you kind of just go after, Hey, as long as it’s related to grilling, uh, I’m gonna go after maybe the easiest or the lowest competition keyword that I can find, or, because you were coming at it after publishing a bunch of.

Affiliate style comment, were you, were you kinda like, well, I’m ranking well for this, you know, such and such barbecue. I’m gonna write some informational content about this barbecue to try to try to round that topic out. Like what, what kind of approach did you take with that informational content? 

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Shawn: Yeah, I, when I first started it was, let’s find all the content we can, uh, and then I started kind of categorizing it and, you know, segmenting it out.

And I would write about certain, you know, whether it’s certain types of food and all the long tail keywords. And then I’m like, Hey, I could actually start writing like all these questions about the products that I’m promoting. Um, so I started doing that. Yeah. And a few of ’em, you know, there was a time rank changed a lot with this last update, but I was ranking ahead of the U S D A for how long does Bacon last in the fridge?

And I’m like, there’s, there’s no way, like Google got this wrong. Like , I should not be ranking here. Um, same thing like I ranked for the word smokers. I was like, oh, just the header term. Yeah. I was number one for a couple months for the word smokers and like, there’s no reason I should have been. Um, so I’ve definitely had some luck along the way.

Um, but as far as like picking the, the informational keywords, yeah, I was kind of just shotgunning and then seeing what would happen because they were ranking me really well for that, you know? How long does, you know, bacon last in the fridge? Every food possible, right? Like let’s write, how long can you know steak last?

How long can ribs last? And just started going down that, uh, kind of rabbit 

Jared: hole You bring up a good point. I think it’s worth kind of doubling down on. Um, I had a client email me, um, a couple months ago and say, Hey, we, we lost a lot of traffic to this one page. Can you look at it? And it was something very similar where they had been ranking for a couple of terms that they had no business ranking.

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and it was one of those things where it’s like, Hey, enjoy it while it lasts. You didn’t exactly get hit by an, an update, an algorithm update. You probably just kind of lost the traffic you didn’t really deserve in the, in the first place. So I wouldn’t really worry about it too much, you know, just be glad it happened,

Yeah, 

Shawn: for sure. Exactly. I think that there’s, um, for a lot of these sites, it’s like a, a Google boost that you can get, um, you’re kind of like in the flow. Everything you publish. The next day it’s already on page one, right? Like all these things are happening for your site and you’re ranking for these terms that you shouldn’t be, and then it could just be gone.

Um, and like you said, it’s not because of like your site got hit, it’s, it probably now just where it should have been the whole time, or it should have actually been 

Jared: the whole time. Yeah. Well, let’s spin at least 30 minutes in now, and we haven’t talked about back links. . I’d be curious to hear from you if, if you, um, put any emphasis on back links, uh, how you’ve gone about tackling links.

Um, again, uh, for a two year old site, it’s doing very well. Um, and so I would, it would be remiss if I didn’t ask you about. 

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Shawn: Yeah. Uh, I think it’s a, an important topic. I think that the double e a t, um, factors, I think a lot of it is gonna come down to back links and which sites can be trusted. There’s a lot of studies out there that, you know, kind of prove that, um,

And so that’s, I had a focus on it early, but it was all harrow. Right, right. And that was all manual process. And so now I’m kind of doing a few other things where I’ve hired out, um, you know, an agency to write this big, like skyscraper type post, and then they go and pitch it for me. Um, It was not cheap, but you know, that did okay.

And then now I’m actually, I’ve hired someone to do hero pitches for me as well. Um, and I even like tweeted about it today. Someone I had reached out to and won a backlink from, like a freelancer. They’re, they’re doing a different post on a different site now, and they reached back out to me and asked like, Hey, like, you helped me out before.

Can you help me out with these quotes? Um, so I think networking with other site owners and freelancers, uh, is really important for, for links. How did 

Jared: the Harrow Link building go? I mean, if you, especially if you’re doing it at the outset, um, uh, was it successful or did you find that, you know, it was, it was tough 

Shawn: going.

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Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun, um, doing it because I’ve met a lot of fun people, but it is a lot of pitching without getting a lot back. As far as feedback, cause if you’re not in it, sometimes, even if you are chosen, like you don’t even know until you, you see it live. Um, and so those who are communicating the whole time, I try to stay in touch with them, uh, to build those relationships.

Um, but I would say a really low percentage, like I haven’t actually tested it, but probably around 10% of all pitches that I’ve done ended up with a link. And the things that I found that worked the best was replying as soon as possible. Like I’ve got filters set up where I don’t even see her’s emails unless it contains a keyword that I want.

So then if it’s in there and I see it, it comes up on my phone. You know, even if I’m not at my computer, like I’m replying, I wanna be the first one in their inbox. And I think the thing is not saying, oh, I would love to be a great source. Like, no, what question did they ask? Like, answer it right now, like in bullet points, make it look good.

Tell ’em that you’re credible, and tell ’em what other sites you’ve been in. At the end of it, after you’ve addressed their question, 

Jared: hero’s gotta be tough too, because when you’re starting out with a new site and you’re putting time into hero as well, here’s a, it’s a lengthy feedback loop, right? Like sometimes these articles take months to go live, and so you have to almost like writing for Google.

You have to wait a long time before you figure out what’s working and what’s not. And with Hero, it’s, it’s, it can be the same thing, right? It takes some time, several months, and you don’t even find out when it goes live. You only find out cause of a, like a backlink checker or something like that. . 

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Shawn: Yeah, exactly.

Um, 

Jared: what other, uh, strategies, if, if any, have you used to grow this site? We, we’ve kind of talked about your approach to content and, and keyword research and talked about back links and, um, obviously you have a, a social media background. It seems pretty successful. Have you, have you used that or, or any other things to help 

Shawn: grow this site?

Yeah, so the, um, The Facebook profile page for the grilling dime just hit 22,000 followers. Um, so I don’t post on there nearly as much as I should be. Um, there was actually an issue with like Yost and the featured images I was using before with Elementor and they weren’t talking together. So if I would post a link on Facebook, it wouldn’t.

Like show up, like an image preview. Oh, mm-hmm. . So I couldn’t like, schedule these posts, so it had to all be manual and I don’t, I don’t have time for that. So I, 

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Jared: uh, , I just wasn’t actually posting to Facebook in the moment. Who’s got time for that? 

Shawn: Yeah. So I haven’t, uh, haven’t been doing as much as I should with it, especially with the growth that it’s had.

Um, and then I would say as far as growing it, I think. Clustering a lot of keywords together that are informational and going after it, um, pretty hard. Like as an example, um, we went after Turkey content, um, cuz we know there’s a lot of questions about Turkey. And we like myself and you know, the, the main writer on the side, we’ve got a lot of experience ourselves, like smoking and baking or, you know, roasting Turkey.

So we went through, we found a bunch of questions that we thought could be answered and on Thanksgiving, like the day before and Thanksgiving day, like we hit over a million impressions in a day. Um, all because of, like in September, we were looking ahead like. We need content that’s gonna be, you know, focused where we know people are searching.

So taking, I guess, um, risk like that, like, Hey, we’re gonna publish all this content. It may or may not rank by the time we need it to be there. Um, but just keeping it closely focused together in a cluster, I think was important to give us enough authority to, to rank those. 

Jared: I might have been one of the, uh, million impressions on your site that night.

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I, uh, I for the first time, spatchcocked a Turkey. I smoked a Turkey via Spatchcocking at this Thanksgiving, so, um, I did not know what I was doing. . Yeah. Well I spent a lot of time. Um, but that te that segues nicely into my next question because not only did I spend a lot of time researching online, but I was on YouTube trying to figure it out.

It feels like there’d be such a good YouTube play for you in this industry. 

Shawn: Yeah, it’s definitely a focus. That’ll be this year I’ve done a few short. , I don’t want to be in the videos. Um, mainly because like I’m not super comfortable in front of a camera. Um, so I’ve always been kind of the behind the scenes guy, so we’ll see how that goes.

I don’t do a lot of recipes on my site. Um, very, very few of them. And so I think those would do really well on social and YouTube, all the other ones. We’ll see. I’ve got a, got a plan, but, um, we’ll see how it goes. Working on some scripts right now. Yeah. 

Jared: Would um, would you be comfortable outsourcing that if you could find someone who would be able to adequately get in front of a camera and kind of carry the brand?

Or is that something where brand-wise you think it would just be too far removed? 

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Shawn: No, I would totally do that. Um, you would, yeah. Yeah. I would say one of my, like biggest competitors, there was this dude, um, his name is Jordan and he’s on Instagram and he makes these amazing recipes and I’m like, dude, if I could get him.

Write for my site or you know, publish content on my Instagram or YouTube, like that would be really cool. So I’m like reaching out to him and then I’m like, oh. And I realized like my biggest competitor had already hired him. Oh. And I’m like, man, that was so smart. But then I started looking at their YouTube and they have someone else that I think has their own type of like YouTube channel, but they, he’s also doing posts like for their brand, and I think that’s really cool.

Um, the competitor themselves, I mean, their, their site is amazing. So, um, hats off to them for the growth they’ve had. I mean, they’re, they’re over a million views a month now, so they’re huge. 

Jared: Wow. Yeah. It just feels like a great site too, you know? To do the YouTube, uh, not only shorts, but maybe, maybe full length videos.

And it feels like you could get away without having to have this crazy high production value. You know, it could be very outdoor oriented without needing to, uh, you know, become a professional videographer. . 

Shawn: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that’s, that’s the plan. And to start, Like, this is horrible to say. Like I think you should actually try the products before you recommend them.

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And I usually do on most products on my site. Um, the issue is I can’t show people that, cuz I like wasn’t confident at all in taking photos or videos. It’s just not something I’m, you know, I’ve done a lot with, it’s actually why I bought your course. Um, so it’s gonna help me, uh, going through that course to actually.

Adding my own photos. I’ve got nine smokers in my garage. Oh man, you got 

Jared: a gold mi of content waiting to be, literally, 

Shawn: there’s nine of ’em. Like I, some of ’em I haven’t even done reviews on. Like some of ’em I’ve like recommended, but I don’t even have any of my own photos on the site, like with that. Um, so that’s a big part of this year and, and going through and, you know, updating the featured images, it’s gonna open an opportunity to start adding my own images and photos.

Um, you know, again, not to toot your horn, but I’ve learned so much like from your course that I’m like, Hey, I actually feel like I could take good enough photos, um, with my smartphone to start adding these on the site and making it look. Much better. 

Jared: Oh, that’s super cool. Yeah, you don’t need more than a smartphone.

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I mean, all the phones these days. Um, and the same with YouTube. You could, I know a lot of people who are using their iPhones and then they just attach like an external, uh, microphone and they’re, they’re filming, I won’t say great, but pretty darn great YouTube videos too, you know? Mm-hmm. for sure. Um, let’s talk about that.

It’s on my list. You segued perfectly. Like are you going, the classic Amazon route with your affiliate product recommendations is, is this, uh, an area where there’s private affiliate deals? Um, you know, how, how are you, uh, how are you going about the affiliate route? 

Shawn: You know, so it was all Amazon at the. In fact, like when I was first starting, I didn’t have my own like affiliate ID on any products just because I knew I wasn’t getting traffic.

And I’m like, you know, gotta have so many sales. And so I waited and then it was only until I think last month, maybe December, some of those original posts just now got updated with my affiliate id and they’ve been getting traffic for two years. I’m like, okay, well here’s a lesson learned. Um, and so now all those are updated, but it was all Amazon at first, and then it slowly started to turn into, um, some direct deals, right?

Whether that’s some of ’em just through, you know, um, like impact or share sale. And some of ’em are, you know, private. And it’s been a lot of fun learning and growing that way and learning, you know, more about conversions and, you know, considering that side, uh, of it and if it makes sense, like the extra percentage, like if they can’t convert at all, like it doesn’t matter, I’d rather send ’em to Amazon and make 3% of something than.

12% of nothing. So that’s 

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Jared: what I was gonna ask you, like, have you tested and seen some perform better than others? I’m so fascinated all the time about that because any, anytime you talk to someone who has gone down the road of either private deals or just off Amazon affiliate programs, they seem to always say like, EHS hit or miss.

Some do great, some don’t, and, and it’s so tough to figure it out unless you just sit down 

Shawn: and. Yep. Even in the, I mean, same category, same page. I have some where it’s like a private deal that pays really well, but they don’t convert at all. And another one that, you know, pays okay. But it converts really well.

Um, and I 

Jared: What do you think that comes down to? Like, have you got any insights on what it comes down to? 

Shawn: Just their site? Yeah, their site. Some of ’em are set up for conversions, some of ’em aren’t. Some of ’em are better at, you know, retargeting and you still getting credit for it, those type of things. So I think that’s a big part of it.

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And I think that, overall, just recommending products that are actually good and not just recommending products that are gonna pay you a lot of money. Mm-hmm. Hmm. like, it, it like shows, so I don’t know. The, the product that actually performs the best is like the second cheapest on the site or on that page.

And, um, I mean, it pays out at like 9% and it’s still, you know, $800 product. 

Jared: You’re right. Cheap in the barbecue industry is still pretty good. You, you had mentioned that the site broke the $25,000 mark. What is, what is the split between the earnings from affiliate versus the earnings from, um, from ad revenue?

Shawn: Yeah. So it’s almost exactly 50 50. Okay. Um, so November and December they flip-flopped where, you know, November it was like 51%, um, you know, display ads, and then 49% affiliate, and then it flip flopped in December. And it’s really, since I added ads, it’s been consistently close to 50 50. That’s, 

Jared: I was gonna say, so it’s, it’s been pretty much 50 50 along along the way.

Um, and I would imagine that in the seasonality page views drops, your ad revenue drops, but then again, the page views to the affiliate content drops, so probably the affiliate revenue drops as well. So it might actually stay pretty 

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Shawn: consistent. Yeah. This, I think the low months, the affiliate content will significantly out.

Display ads. Mm-hmm. . And so, um, last month, I mean, it was almost like 75% affiliate. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. 

Jared: Well, there you go. That’s, that’s the, the benefit of having that affiliate, uh, content on there. Yep. What, um, what’s next? What’s next? I wanted to ask you about that. I have a couple other questions too, but in terms of where you’re going, you’re publishing a, a ton of content.

You’re really ramped up the production schedule. We talked a bit. You, you know, maybe YouTube, maybe videos, maybe imagery, all these other things like, uh, what’s the plan for a time of recording? You know, we’ve got most of 2023 ahead of us. 

Shawn: Yep. So a lot of video adding in those, um, you know, images that no one else can have cuz they’re mine.

Right. Like, just making it a better quality site is a huge, you know, task for this year. Um, we’ll still. Publishing new content? Uh, it won’t be, it probably won’t be as much as, like at one time we had planned like 10 pieces of new content a week. We’re probably gonna keep it around six. Mm-hmm. . Um, and it’s just gonna be better, right?

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Um, where we are showing our own photos, you know, our own videos, we’re gonna start doing things on YouTube, uh, and really kind of branding. Um, that’s, that’s the big thing in the focus this year. If I had to boil it down to one word is branding. , 

Jared: you talked a bit about Google updates and man on man, we’ve had no shortages.

No shortages of those. Um, how has the site performed through those and is there anything you’ve kind of learned from watching the various updates roll out and how your sites responded? 

Shawn: Yeah, so I’ve had a couple of times where, you know, after an update I saw some drops, um, and then it would pick back up.

And right now, Almost everybody that I’m tracking that are like competitors are seeing drops right now where media sites are coming in and starting to take some of those top positions where before they weren’t touching these at all. So we’ve had some drops there and it’s interesting to see like HFS chart, it looks like my site like just died overnight.

Oh, does it? Yeah. but it didn’t. And so it’s just interesting to see some of those pages that they just have wrong where it’s mainly cuz they have one page that says, I get like 120,000 visitors a month if I’m in position one, but I get 50,000 per month if I’m in position two. And the reality is like, I’ve never gotten more than 400 page views.

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Are you serious in a given month 

Jared: for that? It’s that Dr. I mean I know it’s off, but that’s dramatic. Yeah, it’s dramatic. 

Shawn: And then, you know, the flip side too, there’s some pages. I mean, I won’t go into detail on these that say I’m getting like four or 500 views, but I’m actually getting like over 10,000.

I’m like, I like these. No one’s going after these. 

Jared: Oh, that’s, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, it, it, you were saying you, you saw, you’re seeing some, some rankings slip a bit to some big publishers, but nothing that’s, 

Shawn: um, over Yeah, nothing, nothing dramatic. Um, and most of the time it seems warranted, right? For these big media publishing sites, they’ve done a great job showing how they tested it.

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Um, their methodologies, you know, seem on point and they probably do deserve to be ranked higher. Um, I haven’t really seen any that are, that seem unfair because of the algo updates. 

Jared: When a big media site goes after a keyword, they’re actually matching search intent. Right. Um, and they actually do a killer job.

And they have a crazy, strong domain. What do you, what do you do? Like, what’s your approach? Do you just kind of bend that article off and say, well it was, you know, it was nice ranking there while I, while I had it. Do you kind of, do you try to update it and try to compete and just try to make it better, try to make yours different?

Do you repurpose that article for something else? Like, I’m just curious how you approach it when a big media company with a strong domain actually does produce a good piece of. 

Shawn: Yeah, for me, I try to compete, uh, if I’m there and I’ve shown Google like, Hey, you know, I was a, a good person there at position one.

Like let me try to update this and make sure I’m matching user intent and see if I can do, you know, a better job at showing, you know, my hands-on experience and doing these type of things. Right. I think it’s important and I’m just like to a fault, really competitive, so I’m not just gonna give up just cause somebody else strolled into town.

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Makes sense. Makes 

Jared: sense. Yeah, you’re right. You, if you were number one there for a while, you probably have a case to be made that you could get back to number one. Yep. Yep. Let me ask you, as we kind of start to close, what, I guess the long-term plans for this side hustle business. You have, you know, you, uh, you have one site, it sounds like, or at least from what I’m interpreting, you’re really focused on one site.

Would you ever start another one? Would you try to sell this and, and go into another one, or maybe purchase a site and use that as a springboard? Are you gonna just stay knuckled down on one site? 

Shawn: Yep. Site did. I bought a second site a while back. Um, And I wasn’t sure why and I just haven’t had any time.

It was making some money. It’s not making any money now. I was kind of frustrated with that cause I had to redo a bunch of the content. I didn’t do a good job up front. Um, actually looking at the site, I just looked at the revenue potential that I saw. So lesson learned there and I don’t focus on that at all.

Now. I started like a, a test site that I’m trying some programmatic SEOs stuff on, and so that’s going okay. But again, I’m very little time. Maybe two hours a month that I’m spending on that long-term goal. For this, I think I can go one of two routes. I’m either gonna go the route of full out branding and products and kind of following that playbook or.

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Selling, right? Like those are kind of the, the options. And I’ve thought about it. I think it would really stink if I sold it and then, cause I know the potential, right? I don’t want to have that like, man, what if I would’ve kept it? Um, but at the same time, you know, with all the changes we’re seeing in search and, you know, AI being integrated into search, like, I don’t know, like it doesn’t really scare me.

I think we’re years away from any really big changes like that happening and affecting the general public. Um, but it’s definitely crossed my mind to sell it, you know, while I can. Yeah. 

Jared: Yeah. Well, you’ve got a very good thing going. It’s a great site. Um, I can’t thank you enough for coming on and talking about the journey to where you’re at now, but also sharing the site and.

Upfront about it, that people, I mean, it’s just, especially all of us, but especially when you’re brand new, I remember being brand new and when I could get my hands on, um, like looking at it while I hear someone talk about it, it was just so impactful for my learning. So I thank you for coming on and, and, and being so upfront about, you know, some of the different levers you’ve pulled to get this site where it is.

Shawn: Yeah, no problem. Like you, like you said, I remember what it was like being brand new and having, you know, a site to look at and you. It sounds weird saying it now, but like look up to, which is weird cause I’m looking up to so many other sites, but I, I do, I think it’s important. I think that being transparent with your site, I think we’re gonna see more of that moving forward.

It just adds more credibility to you and your site. 

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Jared: Where can people follow along with what you’re doing? Obviously we have your website, the grilling dad.com, but, you know, um, if they wanna chat with you about other things, maybe more website or seo. . 

Shawn: Yeah, I mean, I’m on Twitter a lot. Um, so you can catch me on there.

It’s at Sean Hill, but without the vow. So that’s S H W N H L L. Uh, and then also like helping start a, like an SEO niche site community [email protected] 

Jared: Okay, cool. Well, we’ll get all that in the show notes and, um, yeah, Sean, thanks for coming on. I, I 

Shawn: learned a lot. Oh, well thanks for having me, Jared.

Again, appreciate you having me on here, but also for the course too. It’s been a a huge help. Good to hear. Good to 

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Jared: hear. All right. We’ll talk again soon. Awesome. Well thank you. Introducing niche sites.com. Are you looking to scale your niche site portfolio or build your first website? Look no further than niche sites.com with a portfolio of successful.

And over 700 plus satisfied clients. The [email protected] have the skills and experience to help you succeed. From keyword research to link building content writing to done for you websites. Niche sites.com offers a full range of services to help your content site grow. As the thing goes, a trial is worth more than a thousand words, and they’re offering a special trial just for new customers.

You get 5,000 words of content completely free with your order of 10,000 plus traffic backlink. Don’t miss this opportunity. Head on over to niche sites.com/trial and take advantage of this amazing trial offer. Again, it’s niche sites, plural. Niche sites.com/trial. Go claim your free content today. I wanted to let you know that today’s episode is sponsored by Search Intelligence.

Here’s a short clip of Ferry from Search Intelligence showing you how their agency built digital PR links to a client’s website. Do you 

Shawn: remember this campaign? It was all over the news. It is the most intelligent royal campaign with over 100 links generated in the world’s biggest online public. This is one of the most viral PR campaigns of 2021.

This is how we’ve done it. The methodology was pretty simple. We looked at the QS World University rankings for the institutions attended by key members of the royal family to discover which royal is the brightest wall. Naga Markle came out on top, followed by Kate Middleton and Prince William. We put these findings in a press release and sent it to mainstream media and journalists who write about royals from Russia to the uk, the us, Vietnam, and Japan.

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This story got massive coverage landing over 100 links, and created a massive buzz on social media. Simple research, but a great story that journalists love to write about. I hope this will put you on fire and will give you inspiration. 

Jared: If you want similar link building PR campaigns for your website, head to search-intelligence.co.uk and get in touch with them now.



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AFFILIATE MARKETING

Common Affiliate Marketing Scams and How to Avoid Them

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Common Affiliate Marketing Scams and How to Avoid Them

At WPBeginner, we have been on both sides of affiliate marketing as affiliate marketers and as businesses running affiliate programs.

With over a decade of expertise, we have encountered all types of affiliate marketing scams and frauds.

While most folks in the affiliate business are honest, hardworking people, there are always people trying to make a quick buck at the expense of others.

Here, we’ll discuss some of the top affiliate marketing scams and how to avoid them. We’ll talk about it from both perspectives as a business owner and as an affiliate marketer.

Common affiliate marketing scams explained for beginners

How Do Affiliate Marketing Scams Affect Businesses?

Affiliate marketing scams try to steal from businesses by pretending to be affiliate marketers. Similarly, they may also defraud unsuspecting affiliate marketers by pretending to be a legitimate business.

Thousands of people make money online with affiliate marketing. It is a lucrative industry worth over $17 billion (Source).

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Due to the low barrier of entry, good payouts, and higher returns on invested time and resources, it attracts many businesses and marketers.

Affiliate marketing industryAffiliate marketing industry

However, this success also attracts many bad actors who want to profit by scamming and defrauding affiliate marketers and businesses running affiliate programs.

For these reasons, affiliate marketers and businesses may struggle to distinguish between legitimate opportunities and scams:

  • Financial loss – Affiliate marketing scams may use deceptive practices to hijack ads, change payment terms, or block payments, causing financial loss to marketers.
  • Reputational Damage – Some scammers create fake websites, advertisements, and landing pages pretending to be from a legitimate business. This causes harm to the business’s reputation.
  • Legal Damages – Some affiliate marketing scams may promote illegal products or fraudulent activities. This can lead to legal consequences and damage the affiliate’s personal and professional standing.
  • Increased Skepticism – Due to encountering scams, affiliate marketers may become more skeptical and hesitant to join new programs or promote certain products. This can limit their opportunities for legitimate partnerships and revenue generation. Similarly, businesses may find it difficult to trust affiliate marketers if they have been deceived by fraudulent actors in the industry.

However, this can be mitigated by carefully researching an affiliate program’s terms and conditions. Before signing up, you can also look for the common shady tactics scammers use.

Here are some of the most common affiliate marketing scams you should avoid.

Common Affiliate Marketing Scams Targeting Affiliate Marketers

Scammers often target affiliate marketers to promote illegal or dubious products with little to no payout in return.

Here are some of the most common scams targeted at affiliate marketers.

1. Get Rich Quick Schemes

Get rich quick scamsGet rich quick scams

Get-rich-quick schemes are perhaps the industry’s most common and longest-running affiliate marketing scam.

They promise affiliate marketers a much higher commission for promoting their products with dubious promises and big claims about earning potential.

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These scams can be harder to identify. Many niches in the affiliate industry offer higher incentives, and it is not uncommon to make big claims even by legitimate businesses.

These scams differ because they often sell questionable products with little to no value. These programs have their terms and conditions set up so that they end up paying nothing to the affiliate marketers.

How to Identify This Scam:

These businesses often make big promises of incredibly high earning potential. They are often selling dubious products with little to no value. Their affiliate program is not transparent, and terms and conditions are often vague or have hidden clauses to avoid any payment.

2. Fake Products

Another common scam targeting affiliate marketers is fake products. These scammers would sell a cheap (and often illegally obtained) copy of a legitimate product by a recognized brand.

However, often, they don’t even deliver the cheap copy and just steal money from the customers.

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Another variation of this scam involves digital products. After customers have paid up, there is no product to download or access, and the company’s customer support is non-existent.

On the other end of things, these scammers will also simply refuse to issue any payment to the affiliate marketers, meaning they get money for nothing.

How to Identify This Scam:

Fake products are often shown by copying an existing brand or business. Their pricing would be lower than the actual products to lure customers into believing they are getting a cheaper deal. Do your research about the product, search for real reviews, or dig into background information of the business.

3. Pyramid Schemes and Multi-level Marketing Programs

Pyramid schemes or they’re modern name, multi-level marketing (MLM) are scams dating back to pre-internet days. It is still effectively used to target innocent people.

They target affiliate marketers by asking them to recruit investors into often imaginary, fake, or shoddy products. Marketers are promised a commission on each new sign-up that their recruits or people they bring in make.

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Eventually, it becomes impossible to find new recruits, and the whole scheme fails. These scammers then go ahead and launch the scheme with different names.

Even if there is a real product being sold, a MLM company floods the market with affiliates, meaning no one makes any meaningful money and saturates the market.

How to Identify This Scam:

These scams often ask you to promote a fake business or product like a get-rich-quick scheme, dietary supplements, or cheaply made fake products. You will be promised higher payouts when people you bring in recruit more people. You may also be asked to deposit a joining fee, which they may label as an investment.

4. Pay to Join Affiliate Programs

Another common scam is to ask for you to pay a fee to join an affiliate program. These pay-to-join programs will claim that they run an exclusive affiliate partnership program, and in order to ensure that only serious marketers join their program, they need you to make a small payment.

Such programs will pretend to sell high-value items and promise to offer unrealistically high commissions.

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All genuine affiliate programs are free to join. It is possible that some affiliate programs may require you to demonstrate product knowledge or industry expertise, but they would never ask you to pay them in order to promote their products.

How to Identify This Scam:

The most obvious sign of this scam is that they will ask you to make a payment. Some may even want you to pay with Bitcoin so the transaction can’t be reversed or traced back. If you are asked to make any payment just to join an affiliate program, then it is most likely a scam.

5. Fake Gurus and Influencers

Social media influencerSocial media influencer

Another popular scam is when you are asked to promote a fake guru or social media influencer. These fake influencers or self-claimed gurus often pretend to be experts in something and typically sell courses and 1-on-1 training sessions.

You may be asked to bring in unsuspecting customers and will be promised a lucrative commission when they sign up for the course, follow the influencer on social media, or join an email list.

These scammers would then sell customers useless courses with little to no value. They would refuse to pay affiliate marketers by not recognizing any leads or conversions they bring.

On the other hand, there are legitimate experts in various industries selling online courses and mentorship programs. This makes it harder for affiliate marketers to distinguish between legitimate businesses and scammers.

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How to Identify This Scam:

These scammers usually have no track record of their supposed expertise. Their testimonials would sound phony and unverifiable. They would use pushy tactics to make sales, and most of their followers on social media profiles would be bot accounts.

6. Phishing Scams

Phishing scamsPhishing scams

Another way scammers target affiliate marketers is by using phishing tactics to steal sensitive information.

They create fake websites or emails that appear to be from legitimate affiliate programs, tricking affiliates into providing login credentials or personal information.

Besides fake websites and emails, scammers may also target affiliate marketers on social media websites and messaging apps. They may use brand images of popular affiliate platforms to deceive victims into believing that they are talking to an official account.

How to Identify This Scam:

Ensure that you are visiting a legitimate website. If you are unsure, then close your browser window and try to reach the actual website manually. Any email account asking you to visit a website should be sifted through. Don’t provide any login information to any fake website.

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Common Affiliate Marketing Scams Targeting Businesses

If you are a business running an affiliate program to generate more sales, then you may be targeted by scammers in a number of ways.

Here are some of those common scams to look out for:

1. Fraudulent Transactions

Transaction fraudTransaction fraud

Scammers may target a business by generating fake sales using stolen credit cards, dummy payment accounts, and other fraudulent techniques.

Once a sale is generated, they are qualified for commission. However, your business may pay a refund or chargeback on the fake transaction.

More sophisticated scammers may even attempt to manipulate your conversion tracking data to credit them for more sales.

How to Identify This Scam:

The easiest way to detect this scam is by monitoring your refund and chargeback requests. However, this could be due to customers being genuinely unsatisfied with their purchase.

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You can look for patterns to detect fraudulent activities causing higher refunds. Compare the refund rates of suspected affiliates with other affiliates to detect suspicious activity.

2. Cookie Stuffing

This is a sophisticated affiliate marketing scam targeting businesses that run an affiliate program.

Here is how it works, the scammers use phishing tactics, malware, and popups to install cookies with their affiliate tracking IDs on unsuspecting users. After that, when users visit the website and make a purchase, these marketers earn a commission.

These cookies are often set never to expire unless a user deletes all cookies in their browser. The user would have never interacted with the affiliates’ content and wouldn’t even be referred by their URL.

How to Identify This Scam:

This sort of scam is harder to identify. However, depending on your affiliate management program, it may automatically detect fraudulent activities. You also need to monitor your conversions in Google Analytics to find suspicious URLs and activities.

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Many affiliate programs only allow marketers to send traffic from a pre-approved list of websites, and any conversions not originating from their approved websites are discredited.

3. Google Ad Keyword Hijacking

Google Ad HijackingGoogle Ad Hijacking

Another problematic affiliate scam that affects businesses is Google Ad Keyword Hijacking.

Basically, the scammers sign up for an affiliate program and run Google ads on brand keywords or keywords where your business may already be advertising.

This increases your cost to bid on those keywords, and you end up paying additional commission to a source of traffic that you could have acquired yourself by running the ads.

An even more problematic situation arises when these scammers first redirect the users to their websites before sending them to yours. This makes it harder for you to detect fraudulent activity for a longer period of time.

How to Identify This Scam:

Monitor your top keywords for PPC ads on Google. The easiest way to do this is by using a search marketing tool like Semrush.

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Another way to identify this scam is to monitor your website traffic and look for unusually high-traffic sources. You can also carefully monitor affiliate activity to look out for unusually high conversions, sudden jumps in referral traffic, and other signs of suspicious activity.

4. Fake Leads

Fake leads can be a problematic affiliate scam for businesses paying affiliate marketers to bring in leads.

Scammers can generate fake leads using sophisticated techniques like stolen user data, unverified leads bought from third-party sources, or simply paying someone to create fake user accounts.

More sophisticated scammers may even send bot traffic from their legitimate-looking websites. These bots then fill in forms with fake user data to submit a lead.

How to Identify This Scam:

One way to thwart fake leads is by requiring customers to double opt-in. Another way to detect quality leads is by reaching out to customers.

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If more leads appear to be non-existent, you can dig deeper and find the affiliate accounts sending those leads.

Look for your affiliate reports to find patterns like a website sending a specific number of leads per day could be a sign of fake leads.

5. Click Frauds

Businesses running pay-per-click affiliate programs are vulnerable to click fraud. Scammers can use a wide variety of techniques to generate fake clicks and traffic.

Some of these techniques use automated bots to click on links. These bots may use IP spoofing and appear as legitimate traffic in your analytics or affiliate marketing reports.

Other scammers may use click farms, where scammers pay pennies to click farms where actual humans click on links as part of their job. These click farms may use hacked computers worldwide to generate those clicks.

How to Identify This Scam:

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Monitoring your Google Analytics reports can help you look for signs of click fraud. You can look for suspicious traffic sources, traffic coming from random places, low conversion rates than the industry average.

Keep track of IP addresses to look for signs of click fraud. Your affiliate management software may also provide tools to detect and prevent click fraud.

6. URL Hijacking

Another common scam targeting businesses is when an affiliate partner registers similar domain names or misspelled URLs.

For instance, if a business’s website is a stargardeningtools.com, the scammers may register stargardiningtools.com or similar domains.

This scam is also called domain squatting. It can be easily tracked by looking at referral domains in Google Analytics. However, some of these affiliates may set up dubious redirects to ensure that the squatted domain doesn’t appear as a referral domain.

How to Identify This Scam:

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You can track most such tactics by regularly monitoring the referral domains in Google Analytics. Also looking for traffic sources that look suspicious can be helpful. Sometimes, these traffic sources may not have any content promoting your products and services.

Avoiding Affiliate Marketing Scams Tips and Tricks

Following are some handy tips that will help you avoid common affiliate marketing scams both as a marketer and as a business.

1. Join Reputable Affiliate Platforms

Join the top affiliate networks and platforms to work with top businesses, best products, and legitimate affiliate marketers.

Platforms like ShareASale, Impact, and Amazon offer a large number of products and businesses to promote. They also help businesses partner up with the best marketers, handle payouts, and prevent fraud.

However, these programs cost money and may reduce the profitability of your business.

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Luckily, there are platforms like AffiliateWP. It is the best affiliate tracking and management software that runs on top of WordPress.

AffiliateWP comes with easy affiliate management, advanced fraud detection, easy payouts, and no middleman fees.

Another excellent alternative is EasyAffiliate. Similar to AffiliateWP, it runs on top of WordPress and allows you to manage and run your own affiliate program.

2. Monitor Your Website Traffic

Whether you are an affiliate marketer or an affiliate manager, monitoring your website traffic regularly helps you detect and prevent fraud and scams.

The easiest way to do this is by installing MonsterInsights. It is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and helps you easily track your website traffic.

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MonsterInsightsMonsterInsights

MonsterInsights has features like eCommerce tracking, conversion tracking, outbound link tracking, and more. Plus, it helps you easily see where your traffic is coming from and what those users do while visiting your site.

3. Use Better Link Management Tools

As an affiliate marketer, you will need tools to manage all your affiliate links easily. This helps you insert links easily and increase your earnings, but it will also help you track link performance and detect your clicks.

This is where ThirstyAffiliates comes in. It is the best affiliate link management tool for WordPress and allows you to easily manage and track all your affiliate links.

ThirstyAffiliatesThirstyAffiliates

ThristyAffiliates helps you detect broken affiliate links, track link clicks, set up redirects, and cloak affiliate links.

Another excellent alternative is PrettyLinks. It is a link management tool for WordPress. It allows you to shorten affiliate links, cloak links, manage all your links, and easily insert them in your website.

Pretty Links Pro WebsitePretty Links Pro Website

For more on this topic, see our complete affiliate marketing guide for beginners.

Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Affiliate Marketing Scams

The following are some of the most commonly asked questions about affiliate marketing scams by our users.

1. Is affiliate marketing risky?

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Affiliate marketing is just as risky as other type of marketing strategies. Due to the increasing number of fraudulent activities and scams, it may give an impression of being risky. However, most of these affiliate marketing scams can be easily avoided. Affiliate marketing still provides excellent opportunities for publishers to make money online and businesses to promote their products and services.

2. Is affiliate marketing similar to pyramid schemes?

No, affiliate marketing is not similar to pyramid schemes. Unlike pyramid schemes, affiliate programs are free to join, and affiliate marketers are paid to bring in customers. However, some pyramid schemes may present themselves as an affiliate program in order to appear legitimate.

3. Is it possible to avoid affiliate marketing scams altogether?

Yes, it is possible to avoid affiliate marketing scams by joining reputable affiliate platforms and carefully selecting affiliate marketers, products, and businesses that you work with.

We hope this article helps you avoid common affiliate marketing scams. You may also want to explore these low online business ideas or take a look at these additional ways to make money online.

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If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.



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How Creators Make Money Is Changing

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In 2021, we reported on a survey that measured creators’ top sources of revenue. At that time, sponsorships with advertisers took the top spot by …

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The Ultimate Guide to Succeeding Alone in Business in 2024

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The Ultimate Guide to Succeeding Alone in Business in 2024

What is a solopreneur? And how do you become one?

Well, in this post, we’re diving into the world of solopreneurship to help you get started.

You’ll learn:

  • The difference between a solopreneur and an entrepreneur
  • Pros and cons of solopreneurship
  • A step-by-step guide to becoming a solopreneur
  • Plus, solopreneur business ideas you can start today.

Let’s get started.

What is a Solopreneur?

A solopreneur is a person who starts a business by themself, without a partner, and the need for hiring employees.

What is a Solopreneur?

Merriam-Webster defines it as:

One who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise without the help of a partner : a solo entrepreneur.

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They typically bootstrap their business using their own money and manage all aspects of the business needs to make a profit.

This might involve sales, marketing, product development, managing finances, and customer satisfaction.

Solopreneur vs Entrepreneur

Now, you might be asking, “What’s the difference between a solopreneur and an entrepreneur?”

Solopreneur vs EntrepreneurSolopreneur vs Entrepreneur

Here are the key distinctions between the two. Knowing these can also help you choose which one to pursue.

Purpose

A solopreneur and an entrepreneur have slightly different intentions when launching a business. The solopreneur starts a business so they can work for themselves, make extra money, and work on something they’re passionate about.

Solopreneurs often start a side hustle while working a regular job, hoping their business will take over their salary.

The entrepreneur generally starts a business for growth, scalability, and profit. They may also be driven by having an impact on a market.

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Entrepreneurs might start as solopreneurs in the beginning but with an aim to expand. They may also have an exit strategy in mind from the very beginning, whereas solopreneurs rarely start to sell the business.

Management

Solopreneurs don’t hire employees as they aim to manage all aspects of the business themselves. But, they might hire a freelancer, independent contractor, or virtual assistant for specific daily tasks.

The solopreneur doesn’t usually seek investments either, as their startups are self-funded.

Entrepreneurs will build a team of employees and seek investments so they can expand the business quickly.

Most entrepreneurs don’t want to be working in the business but rather focus on their vision and creative direction.

Focus

The focus of a solopreneur is primarily to create a lifestyle business. They might also want to achieve financial independence and work on things they love.

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Many solopreneurs are simply driven by their interests. For example, an artist might want to spend more time painting, so they research ways to monetize their work.

When their art business makes more money than their job, they can leave and focus on painting full-time. They’ve turned their hobby into a business.

Whereas the entrepreneur might have a passion for growth, innovation, impact, or for business itself. The businesses they start can be varied, and they don’t necessarily have to be passionate about their niche.

Pros and Cons of Solopreneurship

Like any venture, business model, or career choice, there are advantages and disadvantages.

Here’s what you need to know when becoming a solopreneur.

Solopreneurship Pros

  1. The introverts dream. Solopreneurship can be very appealing to introverts or those who like working alone.
  2. Total autonomy. You have complete control over business decisions, projects you work on, and the people you serve.
  3. Flexibility. It provides total freedom regarding the hours you work and your location.
  4. Low startup costs. Many solopreneurs can start with a social media account and free marketing tools like Substack.
  5. Passive income. There’s a lot of potential to earn passive income as a solopreneur. Here are some passive income ideas to look into.

Solopreneurship Cons

  1. Workload. Many roles are required to be a successful solopreneur. These include marketing, sales, accounting, and client satisfaction.
  2. Inconsistent income. Revenue can be slow and inconsistent in the beginning.
  3. Isolation. Running a business alone can get pretty lonely sometimes, even for introverts.
  4. Work-life imbalance. It can be hard to switch between work and play, especially when working from home.
  5. Financial responsibility. Financial management can be quite daunting for some people and may lead to failed startups when not managed well.

How to Become a Solopreneur

Here are 9 steps you can take to make the solopreneur journey a breeze.

1. Evaluate Your Skills

Solopreneurship is all about monetizing a skill or what you know. So, the first step is to know what you’re good at.

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This is harder than it seems because what we’re good at often comes naturally to us. Therefore, we don’t recognize our own talents.

It could be fixing your diet, graphic design, writing a novel, or dealing with stress.

Start by documenting your life and answering these questions:

  • What are you passionate about that you’ll never get bored with?
  • Have you achieved anything significant that came easy to you?
  • What do you spend the most money on?
  • What do your friends come to you for advice about?

Spend some time journalling or brainstorming things that come to you. Just try to keep it simple.

You don’t have to be an expert to be your own boss. Only a desire to help others who are a few steps behind you.

If you’re really stuck, you can choose one of the easiest online businesses to start to get you going.

2. Set Financial Goals

Next up is knowing how much income you want to make.

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Solopreneur financial goalsSolopreneur financial goals

Do you want to make a little extra on the side? Or do you want to replace your salary?

There’s no limit to how much you can make when starting an online business as a solopreneur.

But it’s still important to set business goals. Doing so will help you make better decisions and even choose a business model or product to sell.

You’ll want to establish short-term and long-term financial goals. That way, you’ll stay motivated and maintain focus.

3. Choose a Business Model

Your business model is how you deliver your products or services. Establishing one will give you clarity on the direction you can take.

It will also reveal how you’ll generate income, establish risk, and how you might scale if you want to.

We’ll take a deeper dive at specific business ideas later, but these are the main business models to choose from.

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  1. Service-based. Things like freelance writing or web design services.
  2. Content creator. Teaching through YouTube, blogs, or online courses.
  3. Coaching. Helping people achieve personal or professional goals.
  4. eCommerce. Selling physical or digital products.
  5. Developer. Launching web or mobile apps.

4. Identify Your Ideal Market

So you have an idea of what you’ll be offering and the business model to deliver it.

But now you need to find an audience who needs it. Skip this step, and you could sell something no one needs.

Market research validates what you have to sell and will help you clarify your offer.

It involves understanding the pain points of your target audience and crafting a compelling solution.

Here are some popular ways to perform market research today:

  1. Forums and communities: Join and engage in niche forums or communities like Facebook groups. Use Google to find these forums or the search feature on Facebook.
  2. Social media: Monitor conversations on social media sites like Twitter and Reddit. Search for niche-related tags to find the right people.
  3. Competitor analysis: Research your competitors to see what pain points they focus on. Analyze the copy on their website and social media channels to gather insights into your audience.
  4. Keyword research: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMRush to find out what your niche is searching for. This will help you understand what their needs and goals are.
  5. Start a community: Launch a free Facebook Group or community platform like Skool to get to know your audience on a deeper level.

Niching down will always help you find a more passionate audience, so try not to go too broad. You can also read our posts on the best niche markets to get some ideas.

5. Create a Business Plan

According to a study published in Small Business Economics, people who create a business plan are 152% more likely to launch their business .

Develop a business planDevelop a business plan

Another study revealed that companies that plan grow 30% faster than those that don’t plan.

The downfall when planning is that many solopreneurs can get caught up in all the details. However, it doesn’t have to take weeks or months or need to be perfect.

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What’s important is getting the fundamentals down on paper.

This notion template is a great place to start, or this Udemy course for a more comprehensive and guided approach.

6. Launch Your Brand

Now, you’ll want to define the identity of your brand. This includes the name, logo, and messaging to attract the right people to your business.

The easiest route is to use your name and start your business as a personal brand.

But if you intend on scaling your business or selling it as an entrepreneur, you might want to start a professional brand instead.

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Either way, start by brainstorming ideas and checking for domain availability and social media handles.

You might want to register your business legally at this point, too.

If you have design skills, a simple logo might be sufficient enough. You can also hire a designer on Upwork to design your logo and brand identity professionally.

Lastly, you’ll need to tailor your brand messaging to resonate with your audience. A great book on this subject is Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller.

7. Establish an Online Presence

The next step to solopreneur success is forming a coherent online presence. These will be the places where you market yourself, publish content, and deliver your offerings.

Here are a few things you’ll need to set up:

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  1. A website: You can build a simple site using WordPress or Shopify if you sell products.
  2. Social media channels: Sign up and claim your social media handles on the main sites. These include Facebook, X, Instagram, Pinterest, Medium, and YouTube.
  3. Email list: Use ConvertKit or a newsletter service like Substack to start building an email list. The earlier you start this, the better.
  4. Blog: If you like writing, you can also start to publish articles that attract organic visitors through search engines.

You don’t have to be active on all these channels at once. Just set them up so no one else takes your username, then choose a channel your audience uses most.

As a solopreneur, it’s possible to grow your business by sticking to one channel.

8. Develop a Digital Marketing Strategy

Marketing is how you’ll raise awareness of the problems your niche experiences and how you can help solve them.

Solopreneur marketing strategySolopreneur marketing strategy

To do this effectively, you need a strategy.

You’ll want to decide which platform to spend most of your time on. As a solopreneur, there’s only you, so trying to juggle multiple channels will spread you thin.

The strategy is to publish content at each level of the funnel.

Using the AIDA formula is a good place to start:

A: Grab the audience’s Attention with well-crafted headlines
I: Create Interest by communicating pain points. This will help grow followers or subscribers.
D: Create Desire by emphasizing the desired state for potential customers.
A: Provide a call to Action to drive conversions and sales.

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You can check out the 1-Page Marketing Plan for this. It will help you define a comprehensive marketing strategy on a single page.

9. Never Stop Learning

Lastly, you’ll make your journey so much easier when you become a continuous learner and adopt a success mindset.

You can read the best audiobooks for business, take Udemy courses, or even join an online community.

Some great books for solopreneurs include The Lean Startup, Company of One, and Alex Hormozi’s books.

Solopreneur Business Ideas

There are tons of different types of businesses you can start as a solopreneur.

Choosing one will depend on your skills, passions, available resources, and market needs.

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Here’s a quick look at some one-person business ideas to give you some inspiration:

  • App developer: Creating mobile or web apps like habit trackers or even games.
  • Blogger: Publishing content on Medium, Quora, Twitter, or a WordPress blog.
  • Paid newsletter subscription: Sharing your insights and knowledge through a platform like Substack or Beehiiv.
  • Copywriter: Offering copywriting as a freelancer on Upwork on your website.
  • Digital products: Sell your knowledge in the form of digital products on Gumroad or Systeme.
  • eCommerce: Sell physical products through Amazon FBA, Etsy, or a Shopify store.
  • YouTuber: Share your knowledge and monetize with YouTube affiliate marketing and ads.
  • Start a community: Create a Skool community and charge a monthly subscription.

Solopreneur in Conclusion

Becoming a solopreneur has many advantages when starting a business. Unlike entrepreneurship, you get to work alone, choose your hours, and only work on things you love.

Don’t expect things to go perfectly, though. Achieving success in any business venture takes time and dedication.

If you want to connect with others on their solopreneur journey, consider joining the Niche Pursuits Community. You’ll get access to weekly calls from successful bloggers, YouTubers, and 7- and 8-figure digital business owners.



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