Fat Stacks Blog - a Podcast About Blogging and Email Newsletters

Sponsored by Ezoic.

Fat Stacks forum member reported the following:

In 2 years:

• Published 400 posts
• Hit 11,000 DAILY visitors (that’s 330,000/mo.)
• Earning $7,830 per month
• Gunning for $10K/mo. In May

Think about that.

Out of thin air a full time income with a niche site in 2 years.

• That’s one article every 1.5 days
• 4.5 articles per week
• 825 monthly visitors per article
• EPMV: $22.36
• They wrote 95% of the content
• Former link builder
• Focused on content.
• Inbound links from 150 domains (naturally)
• Longest article: 4,553
• Shortest: 520 words
• Ads: $4,189 / Affiliate: $3,641

The Trajectory

• Published 200 posts before site earned $500/mo.
• Published 300 posts (in 1st ten months) before site earned $1,000/mo.
• 100 more articles + 14 mos. = $7,830
• Content + Time = Exponential Growth

Takeaways:

• Publish lots of good content
• Be patient

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Brought to you by Ezoic.

Show Notes:

DISCLAIMER
I’m not claiming that the 6 things I’ll discuss nobody else does.
My point is what I do is not discussed much in blogging circles.
Plus, when you combine all the 6 together, it creates a unique approach

1. Unique Pinterest Strategy

• I used to do what other bloggers suggested when it came to Pinterest.
• I got nowhere.
• In 2020 I decided to take matters into my own hands and come up with my own strategy that works with the new Pinterest algo.
• It worked.  I went from 74K Pinterest visitors per month to 300,000 in a couple months.  It’s still growing.
• Never have I grown free traffic so fast.

2. Go for keywords other sites won’t touch

• Low search volume
• Low or no ROI (on the face of it)
• Avoid going toe-to-toe

How do I find low competition keywords?

• I use 11 methods.
• I show you every method in the Fat Stacks Long Tail Deep Dive course.
• Go to fatstacksblog.com/courses-training

3. Ditched Affiliate Marketing

• Okay, I still do it, but it’s gravy (not my focus)
• Most bloggers only talk about affiliate marketing because their only site is a site about “how to blog” which is ideal for affiliate marketing.  They don’t own other sites so they don’t know anything about display ads.
• That created an opportunity for niche sites AND Fat Stacks

4. Ditch the list

• Everyone says build an email list.
• I did for 2 niche sites.
• I say ditch the lists unless you can print money from them.
• Making money from lists in many niches is not easy and it sure ain’t plentiful.
• Is your time better spent doing other things?

5. No link building

• As more and more Google updates crash sites, the more I’m thrilled I don’t build links… including guest posts.
• Guest posts for the most part are lousy link building practices.
• Short term gain for long term pain.
• That’s my 2 cents’ worth. 
• I prefer publishing content that attracts links au natural.

6. Finance an op-ed

• I pay a writer very good rates to pen an op-ed column in a niche where op-ed columns don’t exist.
• It’s snarky, funny, informative. 
• Visitors like it.
• It elevates the site.
• Yes, it can be done in any niche.

What’s the one thing that makes the biggest difference?

• That’s easy.  Long tail, low competition keywords.  
• Why?
• That strategy drives over 1 million monthly visitors from Google search.
• That cannot be beat!!!
• Learn more at fatstacksblog.com/courses-training

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Sponsored by Ezoic.

Should you publish all content now or drip-feed content?

• Short answer: Publish it all NOW
• Long answer: It depends

When to drip feed?

• Drip feed when you have a readership; as in people who read your site regularly.
• Why?
• They like you but they don’t like you so much they want to read 50 articles all at once.
• You’ll get more bang for your buck drip-feeding it out.

Otherwise… release ALL the hounds

• Other than having a regular readership, there’s no sane reason to drip feed.
• Unpublished content earns NOTHING.
• Would you drip feed invoices to people who owe you money?
• Of course you wouldn’t.

But, but what about Google and fresh content?

• Doesn’t Google prefer fresh content?
• The whole fresh content thing is overblown IMO. It makes no sense.
• Google wants to rank GOOD content.
• Fresh does not mean good.

Hypothetical Time

• You are launching a new site.  You have 200 articles planned out.
• You can either drip feed or sledgehammer the Web with all 200.
• What do you do?
• I would publish all 200 as fast as humanly possible.
• But but what about fresh content?

After the 200

• If you drip feed the 200, what then?
• If nothing, no more fresh content.
• Might as well publish the 200 all at once.
• You either plan on publishing content indefinitely or you don’t.
• Fresh content argument makes no sense.

One and done

• Another benefit of publishing everything as fast as possible is you can interlink everything all at once.
• One and done!

Unpublished content earns NOTHING

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Sponsored by Ezoic.

Show notes:

• Just because you can make money doing something doesn’t mean you should.
• And no, I’m not talking about robbing banks.
• I’m talking about being able to make it legitimately but choosing not to.
• I choose to leave money on the table every day.
• Most good businesses do.

Here are some examples of how I leave money on the table

1. Sometimes I don’t drop in affiliate links (GASP!)

• Conserve energy
• Not terribly lucrative
• MY FOCUS: Publishing content

2. I display fewer ads than I could

• Diminishing returns
• Visitors are people
• I want people to return

3. I send non-promotional emails

• I send out a good number of emails that promote nothing. This email is one example. This goes against the ABC of marketing which is ALWAYS BE CLOSING.
• I figure it doesn’t hurt sending out non-promotional content. More importantly, I like writing it.

4. I don’t publish spammy reviews

• I could leverage the authority of several niche sites and rank lousy product reviews that could make some money, but I prefer not to. 
• Don’t get me wrong, I do publish product reviews across my sites, but only when I like the product and it’s a good fit for the site.

5. I gave up a large email newsletter for a niche site

• I had built up a sizeable number of subscribers for two niche sites that made money, but it wasn’t enough to justify the time it took to manage it. 
• Again, that time and more importantly, energy, is better spent focusing on publishing content.

6. I don’t sell links

• Risky
• Too bad because very high profit/time ratio
• Instant cash
• BUT, Google doesn’t like it and it’s easy to discover

7. I don’t sell sponsored posts

• Hustle work
• I loathe hustling for deals
• The endless email thread
• It’s ALWAYS more work than you think

8. I don’t sell services

• It’s hustle work
• Telephone calls, meetings, emails, customer service… not for me
• That’s why I do what I do

9. I don’t translate all my content into multiple languages

• Jon, why don’t you translate your millions of words of content? Surely that would be a lot of traffic.
• Yes, it would but talk about a job I wouldn’t want to do.
• Ad revenue still low - not worth it for me IMO

Notice a trend?

Anything that veers from my main business model, I don’t pursue even if it means leaving money on the table.

I’ve fallen for the lure of “easy” money in the past but I’ve learned it doesn’t pay. Sticking to the game plan pays and the game plan is publishing as much great content as I can.
Whatever your game plan is, stick to it.

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Sponsored by Ezoic.

“You don’t have time to think up there. If you think, you’re dead.”
Maverick in Top Gun
Applies to online publishing
Hyperbole? Yes but still fits
It’s too easy to overthink and over-complicate everything in this business.
Miss the forest from the trees.

Examples:

1. Getting bogged down for hours or days with some finicky design tweak we want that nobody will notice and will make no impact on revenue is missing the forest from the trees.
2. Agonizing over whether a Q and A should be added to an existing article or create a new article is again missing the forest from the trees.
3. “Reading and learning” while has its place is too often a distraction under the guise of “getting things done.”

Cost me BIG time

• Lost out on publishing 1,000+ articles
• Wasted time on design tweaks, indecision, etc.
• Days can go by on this stuff
• Don’t let it happen to you

When in doubt...

• When in doubt, write an article. Or order one. Or do both.
• Instead of spinning your wheels overthinking and doing nothing, focus on publishing good content that targets low competition keywords.
• That’s it.
• If you do nothing else day in and day out, that’s okay because that’s what works.

This earns the money

• My cutesy design tweaks that I’ve wasted days on over the years doesn’t generate the $40K per month. It earns nothing.
• It’s the 4,500 published articles that earn the money.
• The only difference between a new site and a site that makes a $1 million per year from ads is a lot of good content ranking for tens of thousands of keywords.

Do this:

• Find low competition keywords
• Write and publish great content about those keywords.
• Rinse and repeat until you cash out.

Don’t be idle

• Factories don’t make money sitting idle. They make money pushing out widgets.
• It’s the same with a content-centric business. It makes money pushing out content. Let your ads do their thing. That’s the beauty of ads.
• The more you publish the more those ads fire. It’s the perfect business model IMO.
• If you think, you’re dead.

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Sponsored by Ezoic

White Label Product Numbers

• Gross sales: $2,542
• COGS: $3.82
• Amazon’s cut: 30% = $757.30
• Profit: $1,125
• My 50% take: $562
• Future plans: rolling out 3 more products within weeks.

Strong Pinterest Growth

• 75,000 monthly visitors to 270,000+ monthly visitors (as of May 13, 2020)

Disclaimer

• All income report figures do NOT include any revenue or expenses for Fatstacksblog.com.
• It’s incomprehensible to me why I would include income from the very site that talks about this stuff.
• The POINT of income reports is to demonstrate that niche sites can be a good business.  
• The POINT is NOT to show how much a site that teaches this stuff can make… otherwise you might as well just start a site like this.

April Income Report: Revenue

• Niche Site 1 Revenue: $38,152
• Niche Site 2 Revenue: $5,348
• Niche Site 3 Revenue: $1,103
• Niche Site 4 Revenue: $650
• Niche Site 5 Revenue: $20
• Niche Site 6 Revenue: $40
• Niche Site 7 Revenue: $106Total Revenue all 7 sites: $45,798 (March: $45,548)

Expenses
TOTAL: $8,316
Significant expenses:

• VAs: $4,874
• Hosting (Kinsta): $1,833
• Shutterstock: $400
• Others: Ahrefs, OptinMonster, Cloudflare, Amazon AWS, Canva, Nitropack, Tailwind, etc.

NET INCOME (Before content): $37,103

Content Investment in April
TOTAL: $10,256

• WriterAccess: $8,000
• In-House writers: $1,096
• Content Strategist: $1,160

Net Income after content: $26,847

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Sponsored by Ezoic.

Show Notes:

Friend and fellow publisher sent me this:
I found a topic in Google Search Console for one of my posts so I decided to produce an article on it.
AHREFS says the Keyword Difficulty is 0 and the Search Volume 30.
They report traffic on the site as 2.4 over the last 30 days.
Published on Feb. 20, 2020
So far the organic in the last 30 days is 2,690 organic visitors

Overview of My Small Site (that’s chugging along)
Date domain registered: September 2016
Total # articles published: 39
Date first article published: Nov. 19, 2018
Date last article published: March 9, 2020
DA: 16 / DR (Ahrefs): 2.9
# of Referring Domains:  28 (all natural)

Traffic last 30 days (Apr. 2020): 12,423 Users
Yesterday (Apr. 29, 2020): 542 Users

Strategy
Fairly broad niche
Content quality:  Mid-grade
Long tail keywords
Long form content (listicles - nothing to write home about)
Monetized with display ads (Ezoic)
EPMV: $6.02 (I need to improve placements - quickly slammed them up)

Takeaways
DA not the be-all and end-all
Long tail, low (or no) reported search volume can actually result in very good traffic.
Other sites will link to you in time if content decent.
It doesn’t take tons of powerful links to get traffic.

The simple secret to growing traffic...
In high school there was this guy who was tough. Liked brawling.
He joined the wrestling team which I was part of.
We became friends.  Turns out he’s a super nice guy with a fearsome reputation.
He did brawl his fair-share.  Seemed to like it. Always won.
Not that I was a brawler, but I asked what was the secret to winning in brawls.
His advice: “Never stop swinging.”

Applied to blogging and niche sites:
Never stop publishing... good content

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Sponsored by Ezoic.

Show Notes:

Detailed video showing you the 4-steps I go through when choosing a niche, picking a domain name and launching a niche content site.

Show Notes:

Concept: Go Broad, Dig Deep
Plan for expansion
Name your site and get domain that gives you WIGGLE room (and lots of it)
- Automobiles is broad (GOOD).  Domain autobuddy.com (GOOD)
- Minivans is narrow (BAD).  Domain: minivancentral.com (BAD)
Why?
Give yourself options. With Autobuddy.com you can focus on minivans with options to expand. With minivancentral.com you’re stuck with minivans.

Step 1: Choose a Vertical
With this approach, there really aren’t that many niches.  Here’s a list:
Tech
Vehicles/Transportation
Sports
Home
Beauty
Travel
News
Business / Money
Health / Fitness
Relationships
Self Improvement
Entertainment
Food
Fashion
Science
History
Religion
Pets
Hobbies
Politics
Law
Parenting
Philosophy
Writing

Exceptions (there are always exceptions)
Hobbies are the exception

Revenue potential & strategy consideration
Do you prefer affiliate marketing, display ads or both? 
This will narrow down your options.

Revenue per 1,000 visitors consideration
Revenue is dictated by revenue per ad impression/click and traffic.
Some niches pay very little for ad impressions but potential traffic is ridiculously high.
Some niches are the opposite.
Many fall somewhere in between.

Your ability to “knock it out of the park”
Can you cover the vertical well? Better than other sites?
Can you establish credibility and authority?
If you plan on hiring writers, can you hire writers with the ability to knock it out of the park.
For example, I enter topics because I find writers who can knock it out of the park.

Step 2: Plant a few trees, but dig deep
Once you settle on a vertical and have a domain name, it’s time to publish content.
My approach is to “plant a few trees, but dig deep”.
What this means is I choose a few topics within the vertical and publish a cluster/series on those topics.

Why cover multiple topics out of the gates?
I like hitting multiple topics because I never know what Google will favor.  It’s an attempt to see what “sticks”.
What I’ve noticed over the years is that in time, Google will favor one or two topics on your site above others. 
This is the data you want. 
Once you see a topic outperforming, cover that topic extensively including going after more competitive topics/terms.

Step 3: Plant more trees (topics)
While carpet bombing the winning topics within the vertical, continue publishing small clusters targeting more topics.
Over time, some topics you cover will outperform. Again, those are what you focus on.
Rinse and repeat.

Step 4: Build authority for exponential growth
Traffic drives traffic.
Good things happen when you get traffic, even a little bit.  When you get traffic, you will attract links.
Links build authority which ranks more topics and keywords.
It’s a self-fueling cycle.
But always focus your efforts on topics that work!  Let Google tell you what to publish.

Example:  Tech Site
Bad domain: Sheetshq.com (as in Google Sheets)
Good domain: Techtitan.com (broad - can reasonably cover anything tech-related).
Initial cluster topics to try (I’m thinking of moving from Apple ecosystem to Google):
- Google sheets tutorials
- Google Pixel phone H

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Sponsored by Ezoic

Show Notes:

1. AdInserter Plugin
What does it do?
It manages display ad placement sitewide.
Actually, you can insert anything sitewide with it including shortcodes.
Cost: Free with premium version.

2. Elementor Pro
What does it do?
Creates nice-looking content. It’s a page builder.
I only use it for custom archive pages (tag and category pages) and landing pages.
You can bolt custom archive pages to the archive URLs (i.e. /tag/your-tag-name
Cost: Free with premium version.

3. OptinMonster
What does it do?
Provides opt in forms for your site to build an email list.
It’s costly, but it works flawlessly
Every type of form imaginable:  Welcome mat, exit pop, regular pop, ribbons, sidebar, in-content, bottom, etc.
Total placement control.
TIP: If not building an email list, the exit pop is a great way to send visitors to other content.

4. Grow by Mediavine
What does it do?
Displays share buttons on your site.
Very easy to use. Formerly Social Pug. Now owned by Mediavine. You do not need to be in the Mediavine network to use it.
Plenty of display options including Pinterest hover button.
Simple, free and it works.
Free and paid versions.

5. AMZImage
What does it do?
Inserts Amazon product images in your post via Amazon API.
Can insert fairly large product images.
Automatically linked to the product with your affiliate link.
Add captions to the images (if you want).
Very fast and easy to use.
Free and paid versions.

6. Mammoth Docx. Converter
What does it do?
Imports Docx. into WordPress visual editor and strips out all the bad code while retaining formatting in the document.
It’s free.
Huge time-saver.
NOTE: you’ll need to rename the images because they end up with generic file name and will be the same across all posts which is a nightmare.

7. Q2W3 Fixed Widget
What does it do?
Makes it super easy to create a sticky widget (aka floating or fixed).
Great for creating a sticky sidebar ad.
NOTE: Do not do this with AdSense ads. You must use an ad network like Ezoic.
Free

8. Shortpixel Image Optimizer
What does it do?
Optimizes your images as you upload them into WordPress.
Can bulk optimize existing images.
Optional: Convert to WebP format.
Huge time saver and speeds up the loading time for images.
You pay for the number of images you optimize. It’s very reasonably priced.

9. Table of Contents Plus
What does it do?
Creates a clickable table of contents.
Place via automatic placement or via shortcode [toc]
Can customize the design.
Free

10. Thirsty Affiliates
What does it do?
Creates affiliate links so you can control the affiliate link code sitewide.
Huge time-saver.
Example: If you promote X product and then X product changes its affiliate code on you, instead of changing the code in 20 blogs posts, you simply change it once in the Thirsty Affiliates dashboard.

11. ManageWP
What does it do?
Automatically updates plugins, themes and WP version.
You can schedule the updates - I schedule it for once per week.
It’s free.  However, there are paid options such as daily updates.

12. Yoast SEO
What does it do?
Makes it possible to customize your page SEO title and meta description.
Schema Markup for your site and articles.
Sitemap.
Control whether archive pages are indexed or not indexed in Google.
Cost: Free with paid upgrade ver

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Sponsored by Ezoic.

Show Notes:

When I started niche sites online...

• I listened to the wrong advice
• Many bloggers (in the “how to blog” space) said “AdSense is NOT worth it.
• I failed to realize there’s a huge difference between “B2B” and “B2C” sites.
• Fortunately, I eventually saw the light.

My Results from Niche Sites for March 2020

Ads

• $36,680
• 81%

Affiliate Marketing

• $8,868
• 19%

Note: Does not include    Fat Stacks revenue

Ads vs. Affiliate Marketing

Overall, I prefer display ads over affiliate marketing.  However, each have their pros and cons.

Exceptions
=> B2B sites (ex. Fatstacksblog.com)
=> Lead gen sites
=> Cost per action sites: ex. Credit card promotions
=> Others?

Can you do both?
=> Yes, both is a very a good monetization strategy.
=> I do both on most sites.
=> I focus on display ads, but when appropriate, include affiliate links.
=> Long term: build up domain authority to make ranking buyer intent easier.

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