[Case Study] Authority Site MFA - The Oxymoron site

Hav3n

Hav3n

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Mar 19, 2010
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Well Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm going to be posting about my latest website that I'm launching.

Couple things -
- I mainly do thin, quick, MFAs
- These MFAs make me consistent money with very little effort every month
- These MFAs would not pass a manual review for the most part
- I've recently had my 2 biggest earners take a hit in the SERPs

- It is time to change up the plan and start working for the future of my business using the money I'm still making from my sinking thin MFA ship

To do this I am going to stick with what I know but I'm going to make it bigger, better, and generally all around with more quality (would pass a manual review is the goal here).


So I'm going to make a bigger, better, and higher quality site that will still ultimately be made for advertizing (not necessarily adsense).

Feel free to follow along. I'm going to be using this thread as a journal and hope to update it about once a week at least.

Start!

First things first I had to pick a niche.

One of my biggest failures in my MFA sites is that they are so narrowly focused really don't have anywhere to grow. Once they rank for their terms... that's it they are done. They really aren't quality enough to expand on and the domain names are so specific it's just not worth the time to go after more terms. I just launch another site to target those terms.

This means that I have to wait for another site to age and build links etc etc etc. Not saying that it can't be done or that I don't do it. It is just a flaw in that type of 'plan'.

So this time with the time and money that I'll be spending I want a niche that is huge but that this site can carve out a little niche in.

I picked the insurance niche. The entire niche.

"OK wow" you're thinking ... "go big or go home."

Well normally I wouldn't go after something as big as this.

That said.... I saw a site on flippa that is going to be my model that was making mid to high $XXX a month with lower quality and not as comprehensive as what I am going for.

Also with insurance I know how to monetize it. There are plenty of offers out there in addition to a high CPC for adsense for a lot of terms.

So do I plan on ranking for 'car insurance'? No, absolutely not.

I'm taking the death by a thousand SERPs approach to this site. I hope to be ranking for 1000s of longtails of which that traffic will then convert on offers and adsense.

That's the plan.... we'll see how it works!


earnings: $0
cost: $0
total: $0
 
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Ok soooo here starts the journal:

Here is what's been done.



Domain -
I bought an expired domain originally regged in '07 for about $20. It's been parked for the last couple years so I don't expect to be getting a huge 'aged domain' bonus but I do hope to gain some benefit from it not being a brand new domain.

We'll see....

Domain is: http://keyword1filler1filler2.com

It is brandable while still containing a nice keyword. I intend to brand it with all the social media outlets etc. I'm not hoping for any EMD benefit but having the keyword in there doesn't hurt.

Platform - Wordpress

Wordpress is a big PITA and a time sink to keep updated... but since we plan on using and updating this site a lot that shouldn't be an issue and it saves us startup time and launch time. I am also using the Thesis theme with a very adsense friendly layout.

Since I do this a lot with my other sites.... its easy.


Update 1 -

Site launched. I've got some filler content on the front page about what the site WILL be about and got the general structure of the site laid out in the form of categories.

I've got a little logo put together that gives the site a more professional feel that will encourage users to stick around a bit more and thus make our site stickier than most MFAs... quality remember? Manual review passable.

Update 2 -

Site has been indexed!

I put the home page up on my SocialAdr account to get it some backlinks dripping in.

My biggest challenge for this site is content. I usually buy some content from whatever your favorite article writing site is and then throw it up on the site and be done with it.

This site will require a constant stream of postings to keep it relevant and loved by the ole G bot.

What does this mean since I hate writing content? It means I am hiring a writer.

I'm lining up a 'Content VA' for about $150/m to write basically nothing but articles for this site. I'll be using them to write content for other sites too but at least until this thing hits about 40 pages of content will be working near exclusively on this site.

And this .... is taking awhile.... sooo still waiting on that VA. Until I get the VA hired and working, the site is just sitting.

Earnings: $0
Costs: -$20
Total: -$20
 
Update:

Finally got the VA situation worked out. Sorta.

I did the quick introductions with the VA and asked her to write me 4 articles on 4 subjects.

2 of the 4 articles were exactly what I asked for. A++. The other 2 articles looked and read like shit. I mean it was worse than spun crap.

Soo... assuming that we can get consistent good quality I think she'll workout. As an added bonus she is a Content/SEO VA so this will be even more hands off than I was hoping.

She'll be able to write the articles, post them, and SEO them. I just have to keep her busy.

She costs $250/m and that is upfront.

As far as the site itself:

Posted the two decent articles to the site and starting to fill out the category silos I've got setup. Other than that ... not much going on here.

I would go ahead and put up adsense but I want to at least have like 7 to 10 articles first.

We're going to be in the red for awhile.....

Earnings: $0
Costs: -$270
Total: -$270
 
Won't let me edit but I also put the two new posts in my SocialAdr account so that bookmarks will start dripping to those posts.
 
posting to sub to thread. I think anyone can take away something from any case study. thanks
 
Hav3n said:
I can't out the exact source of my VA as they have limited spots and it's like a headhunting service for VAs

But i can tell you I was also looking at these sites:

Hire Filipinos - Find Online Workers in the Philippines | EasyOutsource
and
Hire the best Filipino employees and virtual assistants the Philippines has to offer! (Membership cost.. bleh)
Click to expand...

Filipinos are nice and hard working people but I haven't really found one that could write to the required level I needed. Good luck bro
 
Subscribed. I'm in the process of doing the same thing. Thanks for the links, hopefully I can find a good writer on one of those sites.
 
Update:

Well i think the VA is going to work out.

I asked why were two of the articles were crap (in not so many words ... see below).

And she basically said that she didn't want to disappoint me with not getting them finished and so she rushed them.

So we should have that corrected now.

Important that if you're planning on hiring a VA(s) i recommend this article.

Tips for Employers on How to Work with Filipinos | EasyOutsource Blog

Basically, in every email you write or chat session you have you need to remain cognizant that:

1) This is not this persons primary language
2) They have no visual/facial/audio clues to read from you to determine the tone that the email/chat was written in.

You know how you can piss off people from a quickly written email/status? Because they read it how they wanted to read it and not how you meant it?

Write instructions to avoid this all the time.


So be very nice. Very explanatory. Assume nothing. And provide encouragement.


Yesterday, I assigned her 5 750+ word articles to complete at her own pace and she completed 2 of them again.


The first one was great. The second one had some things to correct.
So i think she is still a little spotty on content that she rushes.


Doing the math...

Assuming that I bought all this content from textbroker.com
At between 2 and 3 star quality (which is what I feel she's writing)
Each article would cost me $10 to $12 dollars

(0.12 or 0.14 X 750 = $10 or $12)

2 Articles per day for 5 days a week 4 weeks a month? Around 40 articles a month.

What does that mean?

Assuming I only have her write articles she costs $250/m for 40 articles
Textbroker.com would cost me around $480/m to $400/m for 40 articles

Does this mean to go and rush out and hire a VA?

Maybe.

Does your project require a CONSTANT stream of content?
Is your project going to last longer than a month or two?
Do you have the patience to interview and wade through a sea of shit to maybe find a gem?

If I only needed 1 update a week for my website it would be cheaper for me to use textbroker 1 once a week. Total cost would be $40/m or $48/m

Anyways....

Hopefully, she'll be able to run SEO tools in the background while she writes too.

Also, hopefully, she'll be able to pump out 'web2.0 quality' articles at a faster pace too.

Remember that the articles she's writing right now are going directly on our project website.

Website:
Posted the 2 articles to the site after making the corrections to the second one (About 10min of editing).

So far the Onsite SEO of the content is pretty poor as well.

My interlinking is near non-existent and I'm not making very good use of <h> tags.

I also don't have images yet.

At this point I am really trying to build up some content to interlink TOO before I worry about it too much.

I will schedule a day in about 2 weeks to go back and interlink and onsite SEO audit the site.


Also, I added the site to Google Analytics (authority site remember?)




SEO Update:
Added those 2 new articles to my SocialAdr account.

Other than that I haven't done anything SEO wise to the site because SEO is a marathon and not a race and I want this site to have a some-what natural link profile.
 
Doing the math the price is better than Textbroker but I find it hard to believe that she can't write more than two articles per day. Then again it is insurance so there would be some research involved. I would imagine it would take an native English writer about 1-1.5 hours to write 750 words (including research) so maybe 2-3 hours for her? I would hope you can get 3 articles per day from her and maybe even 4-5 after she gets better.
 
I thought I'd do a quick update here.

So far there have been no major changes.

I did finally put the main keywords into SEScout.com. I'm not ranking for anything yet except for 'domain.com' and 'domain phrase'

This is fine because I'm still adding content to the site and google is still indexing it within a day or so.

Google indexing the content is what I am really going for right now anyways.

I think the site is now about 1 week old? I don't want to slam a bunch of links at it like i normally for MFAs. Slow and steady wins this race.

SocialAdr hasn't been very forth coming with the links as I'd like so I paused all the other bookmarks I had in the account so that I can get some attention to this site, and so the other sites don't burn up my daily allotment before anyone bookmarks this new site.

Other than that I am still sorta struggling with the VA. I mean the quality is 'Okay' but I just think the subject matter is challenging.

I have the same problems with all the content I order. Maybe I'm just too much of a perfectionist.

Either way with about 10minutes of editing most of the content is 'website ready'

So I'll be sticking with her for now.

Income: $0
Expense: -$270
Total: -$270
 
TylerDurden said:
Doing the math the price is better than Textbroker but I find it hard to believe that she can't write more than two articles per day. Then again it is insurance so there would be some research involved. I would imagine it would take an native English writer about 1-1.5 hours to write 750 words (including research) so maybe 2-3 hours for her? I would hope you can get 3 articles per day from her and maybe even 4-5 after she gets better.
Click to expand...

I am 100% with you on this... we'll see.
 
Another quick update:

Jeez. Ok first off it seems like I've been working on this project for like 2 months now but really it has only been just over 2 weeks.

Internet time is different from real world time i guess.


Anyways...

Site update:

The site has been alive 15 days and I've got 12 posts. It's a good start.

I'd obviously like to have double that but I think my VA has only been writing for the site 8 actual (work) days.

With the writer problems/issues that has slowed the content some but I am starting to feel that she is starting to 'get it'.
It is afterall pretty hard to write a 750 word article about 'auto insurance' without a specific goal in mind even as a native speaker.

Now I am giving her more narrow keywords to write for an I think that is why I'm seeing better articles.

If i wasn't so lazy and/of have other things to do a better solution would be for me to write the first 2500+ words for each silo or branch of insurance and then let her knock out the keyword specific ones.

Or... remembering that time=money and money=time... you're always trading one for the other -

...outsource those big general topic articles to a native speaker at 4 or 5 star quality @ textbroker or someone here in BST

For now though I think the general information articles we've got are fine. After all I don't think I'll get a lot of traffic to such general articles when there is so much information out there from older, better, more authorative sources.

Always keep in mind where you can get your SEO wins. Trying to page 1 for the term 'insurance' out of the gate is futile and stupid.

These articles are a good place for interlinking though. They will be the oldest posts on the site and they have lots of content to drop links in. I am going to try to treat these general articles like they are on wikipedia and link any relevant keywords.

Basically if i see a keyword that is relevant to another part of my site... its getting linked.


As part of my VA writing more narrow posts/articles I am finally getting into the type of articles that I think I'll be monetizing.

I've already looked at the CPA networks I am a part of and pulled all their insurance offers. I made a big spreadsheet with the payout and insurance type and EPC and network earnings, if he has creatives already, etc, etc, etc.

When it comes times to monetize I'll just look at that spreadsheet, double check that the offer is still live and then drop my aff link in the post.

I've also just started to look at CJ.com these are less CPA and more CPS. I'll have to do split testing on all of this ....... but i've NEVER had any luck with CJ.com

Any tips on monetizing insurance is welcome btw.

Another note: I'll not be using naked aff links. Not because I think google penalizes a site that uses them... but because I think users like URLs that make sense to them better... and why take the risk on a penalty when there are good plugins out there.

I'll be using pretty link lite. I've used it on small scale (cloaking only 1 or 2 links) and liked it but this will be the first time I'll really be using it to manage a lot of different offers and links.

We'll see how that goes.


SEO:

I've still been adding all the published articles to SocialAdr. Not really anything impressive. Seeing as how I am on the lowest tier subscription for SocialAdr every article I add further dilutes the drip links to my site.

Still not ready to kick off a link building campaign to my site yet though. I'd like for it to be at least 1 month old (maybe 2) and getting a little 'natural' SERP traffic on it's own - with longtails.

Site:domain.com shows Google has indexed 21 pages so far which i think is every single page that doesn't have a noindex on it (thats including privacy policy etc)

So we're doing great on indexation rates. Site structure will be key to this. I've got a silo set up for each type of insurance in the form of WP categories. And with the thesis theme each category page is just links to the posts.

I'll have to edit this in the future to include at least a snippet of the post because right now they pages aren't very user friendly nor do they have a lot of content on them.... I'll do that after this post I guess.


And....... thats it for now.

Feedback welcome. It's in the newbie section for a reason. We can all learn all the time.

Coming up on 1 month with the VA in 2 weeks... but for now:

Earnings: $0
Expense: -$270
Total: -$270
 
I am super excited about this journal wherein you're working with a single site and a single VA who manages the site.

I operate a web development business and have writers working right through my office. My main business is converting unused domains for clients into good quality minisites. I do work with static sites, but my main course of work has always been through wordpress. Now since orders are peaking and most of my inhouse writers are busy, I figured I'd go the VA way, mainly because I operate out of a not-so-big office.

I never thought about posting a journal, but I am into something similar since the last two months. The only difference between you and me is that I am currently doing this with three websites and single VA.

Not meaning to threadjack or anything, but I'd love to share my experience. Would you mind if I did that?
 
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