Diversifying From Paid Traffic - and My SEO Story (10)
I've recently come across several posts/PMs asking the same question (and even one member who asked when we met during AWA):
How to hedge volatility in this business?
How to turn affiliate campaigns into long-term assets?
So I thought I'd write a post with my thoughts.
My Early SEO Days
As many of you know, I had my online marketing start in SEO.
SEO was crazy-easy back when I started doing it. Basically all you had to do was build some web pages with the right keywords somewhere on them.
I was even auto-generating 100's of thousands of pages with scraped/spun content to make money from Adsense - all I did was feed giant lists of keywords into a software.
Then came the EMD (exact-match domain) era. I registered a bunch of domains with the exact keywords in them, did some link spamming, and that was all that was required to get traffic from google.
At one time, I must have owned most of the link-spamming software that was available. Bought a desktop with lots of processors and RAM to run those software. It was fun, and easy.
Then the google animals came - first Panda, then Penguin. (They used to be some of my favorite black-and-white animals - up until that point.) And there were other, more minor updates as well.
Eventually: EMDs no longer worked. Link-spamming no longer worked. Sites that had been bringing in money month after month for many months, kept decreasing in revenue.
My income nearly dropped to zero. That was when I knew I needed to learn new ways to get things going again.
SEO Success Post-Google-Updates
I started reading blogs and taking courses. One of them was the One Man Gang, aka OMG (https://omgmachines.com/). I attended their webinar, and read some reviews.
It sounded like they knew what they were doing, so I signed up to one of their courses.
Not going too much into details - after all I'm not an affiliate promoting them.
Long story short, I ended up buying quite a few of their courses because they worked.
Their trainer/teacher Greg Morrison had a TON of websites generating money, so every time there was any sort of algorithm change, he was able to see patterns of what was still working and what had stopped working.
And he would keep all his students up to date on these changes, so we could all adapt to new algo changes. It wasn't just "here's your course - best of luck you're on your own".
They keep in touch with you via multiple channels, including FB groups where students can mingle and ask questions and get answers from each other and the trainer.
I can definitely say that the knowledge I gained from OMG courses were at least partly responsible for my subsequent success in SEO (post main google algo updates).
One of my sites was making very good money from Adsense when I had the time to maintain it - it made mid 5-figures in Adsense earnings in its best month.
(Not going to post screenshots because that's not my thing - as most of you know by now. And I'm not selling you anything.)
STM and Paid Traffic
Anyway - sometime after that, I came across STM, and paid traffic was the shiny object that got my attention.
I was kind of bored with SEO and the fact that it sometimes took weeks/months to see results. In contrast, paid traffic could yield almost instant results so I was hooked.
I joined STM in February 2014. Paid traffic was still a relatively easy game. I had a lot of fun.
Paid traffic isn't going anywhere anytime soon - it will co-exist with the internet far into the future. As long as there are visitors surfing the net, there will be traffic available to be bought.
Paid traffic has the potential to gives fast profits, and can be scaled quickly for massive profits.
But it also has one drawback:
When the campaign is over, profits drop back to zero.
(That is, unless you collect emails to build a list - but I digress.)
Back to SEO - Going Full-Circle
So nowadays I'm reconsidering SEO again - because SEO sites can become long-term assets that I can grow. Profit margins are relatively high (traffic is free!) and money is relatively stable compared to paid traffic campaigns.
What I'll be aiming to do in the next while, is use paid traffic to make money that can be invested into SEO sites.
But isn't it just free traffic? What would the investment be for?
SEO sites require time and effort to set up, and same goes for link-building. Plus you need to create good content on a regular basis.
If you're focused on running paid traffic, you'd probably want to outsource most of these SEO tasks - thus the investment.
Better yet - and this is what I'm doing now - build ecommerce sites, and drive paid traffic while applying SEO at the same time.
Plus reinvest profits into building more links.
That way, we get the best of both worlds.
So that when we get older, and can no longer stand the "excitement" of checking stats every day, we can live off of these assets comfortably - or sell them and retire.
Just thought I'd share my thoughts with all of you, because I know many of you are concerned about the lack of longevity of paid traffic campaigns.
I truly believe Paid Traffic + Free Traffic to be the ultimate solution.
How to Get Started
If you want to get started in SEO - I can only recommend OMG, because that's what has worked best for me in the past, out of all the SEO courses I've bought.
In fact, their trainer, Greg Morrison, joined STM last year, and has written a very good SEO tutorial here:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...nking-Tutorial
That should be enough to get you started.
Also: I was just checking my email a couple of days back, and apparently OMG is doing a big promo of some sort this week - which was what reminded me to write this post in the first place.
Let me warn you: Their courses aren't cheap, but I think they have payment plans where you can pay in installments, and their methods work.
Greg's tutorial on STM should be enough to get you started, but their paid courses are a lot more comprehensive, and go into a lot more detail.
But even if you don't end up buying anything, I would encourage you to check them out:
https://omgmachines.com/
In particular, download their "Replicability Roadmap" (direct download, no opt-in required), which lists the 3 types of businesses you can capitalize on.
Also download their 110-page ebook written by Mike Long (again, direct download) - it's one of the most inspiring book of success stories I've seen. Even if you don't end up doing SEO, it opens your eyes to what's possible.
And when you see so many people succeeding, you'll start to believe you can do it too - and we ALL have it in us to succeed. It's just a matter of changing your perspective and mentality. And this ebook may just do it for you (sort of like reading the stories in our "Success Stories" subforum).
On the homepage it looks like they'll be posting more "bonus reveals" as the week progresses. The bonus reveal for today is a webinar. I've signed up for that to check it out.
Those of you that have been on STM for a while, know that I almost never recommend anything. I've had so many networks offer me referral fees for recommending them but I've always said no. Every, single, time. I would rather recommend something for free just because I feel it would be useful to people.
So - just a genuine recommendation. No affiliate links anywhere. Hope this will help someone!
Amy
What an awesome story Amy. And now it all comes full circle and you schooled me on a bunch of paid traffic stuff 
Here's what I can say about SEO for those interested...
The days of auto-generating thousands of pages of content and spamming with tools like GSA & scrapebox are over for the most part. Back then it was quick tricks for quick money, rinse and repeat. Lots of penalties and changing things...SEO back then was actually much more like some forms of paid traffic. A site ranks, makes money for a little, gets penalized, restart.
Now, things are much different.
SEO is "harder". Which is a great thing for certain types of people.
Because SEO is "harder" now, so many people left the space, and it's really wide open.
But what most people don't get is SEO is actually EASIER these days in some ways...if you have patience and you know what works.
If you have patience and do SEO the right way, you can make a whole lot of money. It's an 80 billion dollar a year industry that a lot of people abandoned.
Although it's not quick any more, it's more LONG TERM when done correctly.
For example one of my affiliate sites has been doing $10,000+ per month on complete auto pilot for almost 3 years now. I invested just a few thousand dollars into the site.
I have TONS of sites that have been ranking for YEARS, with nothing put into them over the last couple years. This includes multiple web sites that I did "over the shoulder" series for OMG Machines members for to give them confidence by being able to see me rank sites from start to finish step by step. All of them are still just sitting at the top of the search engines. The most recent one (still slowly building) get an estimated $16,000 a month in traffic...with a few thousand dollar investment (again, with every step on camera, showing exactly what I did and why).
Like Amy said, there is a mini guide I wrote in the SEO section, which will give you a really good idea of what's working today. And of course anyone looking to join us can checkout our full program.
SEO definitely isn't for everyone...again you have to have patience. You're not going to put up a website and rank within a month anymore. It can take some time.
But the up side is it lasts a lot longer now. Much less volatile.
Hope that helps you make a decision whether SEO is something you want to look more into or not!
And thank you so much for the kind words Amy, you've taught me a ton!
Good luck miss! Hope you can share some cases soon...
For example one of my affiliate sites has been doing $10,000+ per month on complete auto pilot for almost 3 years now. I invested just a few thousand dollars into the site.
I have TONS of sites that have been ranking for YEARS, with nothing put into them over the last couple years. This includes multiple web sites that I did "over the shoulder" series for OMG Machines members for to give them confidence by being able to see me rank sites from start to finish step by step. All of them are still just sitting at the top of the search engines. The most recent one (still slowly building) get an estimated $16,000 a month in traffic...with a few thousand dollar investment (again, with every step on camera, showing exactly what I did and why).
I know some of the bigger affiliates would scoff at 10k/month, as so many are doing that and more in a day - but at the same time, every paid traffic campaign will come to an end, whereas SEO, when done correctly, can bring in many years of close to autopilot profits.
Paid and free traffic each has its pros and cons - they're like yin and yang, which, when combined, can be better than choosing one or the other.
Having a bunch of good SEO sites bringing in money like clockwork will certainly balance out the volatility of paid traffic campaigns. When paid traffic camps are raking in money, we can focus on milking them for a load of fast money with the comfort of knowing the SEO sites aren't going to die from neglect in a matter of weeks.
And when that batch of paid traffic camps come to an end, we can sit back and take a breather before starting the next craziness - knowing the SEO sites will help cover the bills.
Truly the best of both worlds.
Amy
What a great background story Amy!
Didn't know you are an old SEO spammer, hahaha! </endofjoke>
Remind me my own SEO related beginnings...
SEO is where I started as well, I was scraping yellow pages (company catalogs) and republishing them under my CMS (and later WordPress).
Backlinks were basically not required as there were thousand of smaller and bigger companies that never did any SEO, so I instantly ranked somewhere in the top 10 for most of them.
Simple concept and easy money.
I used Google AdSense which back then was the most common way to monetise sites.
People still found the company they needed, and company owners even sometimes asked me that their information needs to be updated which I mostly did.
I also let people comment their experience with companies.
So there was even organic content being created.
However, 31st October, 2013 came.
I was on boat at a Halloween party somewhere on Koh Samui island when I got email from Google that 15 of my sites were penalised.
That was the time that I decided I need to find something else (that time I first discovered STM and paid traffic)
BTW I still own some viral autoblogs, that I built while I was doing BH FB and they are getting good amount of search and social traffic.
Just a week ago one post there got viral and I got like 20k visits from it in 1 day
End of story.
Wish you all the best with SEO!
I also started a 100% pure white hat review site couple months ago, with legit content and everything.
But it's so slooow game.
Glad to hear more on your background Amy!
Is emailing covered at all in the OMG material?
Personally I don't think I could ever go back to churning out sites and content. I got burnt out hard on SEO, trying to 'go wide' so to speak.
If I was starting again, it would definitely be geared towards utilizing content to get users to opt-in to an email list, go through an auto-responder sequence, etc. Seems like way more money to be made that way if done right than the usual SEO site approach of ad revenue and affiliate links.
Excited to see how things go for you and what's changed in that space.
Interesting discussion.
I also came to paid traffic from an SEO background (I've been involved for 10+ years with SEO), and that's how I've actually made most of my money online.
I think the problem with SEO is that these days getting "quality" links is pretty time consuming.
Before you could just turn on some software and spam things to the top.
However these days you need more quality links, and besides creating content, you need to promote the content via social media etc. to get a real solid backlink profile.
So it really becomes a time consuming task, especially if you're targeting difficult keywords.
It's great if you can get it going. I have some sites that still earn me passive income that I haven't worked on in years. However to get to this point in took a lot of work to build a solid backlink profile.
Just a week ago one post there got viral and I got like 20k visits from it in 1 day
End of story.
Wish you all the best with SEO!
I also started a 100% pure white hat review site couple months ago, with legit content and everything.
It would be amazing if you could write a post to share more details on how you set up some of these sites!
Personally I don't think I could ever go back to churning out sites and content. I got burnt out hard on SEO, trying to 'go wide' so to speak.
If I was starting again, it would definitely be geared towards utilizing content to get users to opt-in to an email list, go through an auto-responder sequence, etc. Seems like way more money to be made that way if done right than the usual SEO site approach of ad revenue and affiliate links.
Excited to see how things go for you and what's changed in that space.
Thanks for your input Kelly!
Before you could just turn on some software and spam things to the top.
However these days you need more quality links, and besides creating content, you need to promote the content via social media etc. to get a real solid backlink profile.
So it really becomes a time consuming task, especially if you're targeting difficult keywords.
It's great if you can get it going. I have some sites that still earn me passive income that I haven't worked on in years. However to get to this point in took a lot of work to build a solid backlink profile.
And it really helps if the site is focused on helping the audience first and foremost - that way some sites will just link to you naturally. And it would make requesting for backlinks a lot easier.
Greg's the authority on how to generate quality backlinks. Maybe he'll chime in.
@GregMorrison if you please?Amy
I'm also in the camp of maybe not revisitng SEO for long term assets.
I just think Google always keeps moving the goal post, and I don't know if I'm willing to invest a lot of time and capital into SEO to have everything destroyed if Google farts.
I guess to each's own.
So regarding quality links, I spent over a year working and testing with 30 different providers and narrowed it down to a few...and spent months training them on how to do linking the way we teach in OMG.
So we now have all of those resources available in our members area.
Also, you can see it working in action with multiple example sites I show, including PrecisionMoldRemoval.com which is the over the shoulder series for 2018\2019 where every step of the way is shown on camera (this site gets an estimated $16,000 worth of traffic a month).
And actually, I think SEO is more stable than ever as far as long term. I very rarely deal with penalties these days.
Take a little more work, but most of my sites have been sticking for years without touching them!
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