Speaker 1 00:00:09 Are you ready to get serious about building content sites and building a profitable business online. Welcome to the niche website builders podcast. We bring you the latest field, tested tips, tricks and strategies for building a profitable online asset. We interview industry experts, share customer success stories and reveal our own experiences. Working on hundreds of sites to inspire and motivate you to make something happen. Let's do this.
Speaker 0 00:00:41 Hi and welcome to this week's episode of the leash website. Build a podcast and YouTube channel. Uh, this week we've got a great guest, uh, Collibra bent. If you've been in the affiliate marketing space for any time at all, you would have you heard of call. He runs a great YouTube channel where he's literally an open book, shares everything from what he's been up to, to his income reports, uh, both good and bad. Um, this Cintas podcasts, we talk mainly in depth about his megasite project, which is basically a website that he's got aspirations of creating 4 million words over the next four years. He's already at half a million words, and we get into get into the topics and get into the weeds about planning. So how we plan the site execution, you know, how we structured his team, how he's actually managing things and then expectations where he thinks the site will go over the next few years, what he's hoping to do at the end. So, uh, this is great episodes. Uh, hope you learned lots from it. Let's get into it.
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Speaker 0 00:02:49 Hey Carl, thanks for joining me today. How's things I, Adam. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. No, you're welcome. You're welcome. So, um, exciting times for you. I know you've just had just release your income report on your YouTube channel and it's the highest affiliate month you've ever had. Right? So you sold a site and you had a higher month, but just pure affiliate income. This is, that March was the highest month ever, I think.
Speaker 2 00:03:12 Yeah, pretty much so. Yeah, like say I have sold a site before which book took my income report that month, which looked really exciting. Um, but yeah, just purely affiliate income then. Yeah. The March was definitely the biggest one as well, Q1 as well, which was slightly unexpected, you know? So it was amazing to have such a good month in a notoriously quiet kind of a monster. Yeah, really good. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:03:34 And you, you, you talk all about this stuff quite openly. It's quite rare to see your you're basically an open book and you, you talk about this on your YouTube channel or we put the link for the Carl's YouTube channel in the description, but, um, yeah. Kudos to you. Not many people are doing this open about, you know, what they're doing, how much they make in the good points, but also all of the, the bad points, which I think you do a good job doing both.
Speaker 2 00:03:57 Yeah. And I, I wanted, when I started doing YouTube, I, what I wanted to do was make sure that I basically just shared my story. So I never want it to kind of become the guru or a teacher. And I was never going to do tutorials or anything like that. It was basically just me sharing my story. And what I was worried about is where YouTube, you know, nobody kind of wants to say the wrong thing or nobody wants to trip up. And I just thought, you know, what the best way to do that is just be open. Just be honest, you know, I pay my taxes, I have nothing to hide. What's what's the point of not just saying this is what I do and, you know, reveal everything really. Um, so sometimes to a detriment, you know, so I don't reveal every site anymore I did in the beginning, but then I had a couple sites copied. Um, so yeah, so I don't reveal every site now, but I literally, I even showed my PNLs. So I literally show everything.
Speaker 0 00:04:48 Yeah, no, it's, it's really good. Is that command you for that? And also exciting times because you just, well, I say, Jess, I think it was, this, was it December you quit your job. You're high-paying corporate job, which is, which is really cool.
Speaker 2 00:05:00 Pretty good. Yeah. He was, I mean, yeah, I paid in this industry, you know, so, um, yeah, it was nerve wracking, but also excited. I was lucky enough that my boss was, um, actually quite supportive, which I didn't think he would be in the beginning because the job that I had, you work quite hard to kind of climb the corporate ladder. Um, you know, you can kind of, you know, uh, jump the rankings a little bit sometimes. So I I'd really got into this industry from externally, never been in it before it was in the supermarket trade and I'd never worked in a supermarket. And I was kind of seen as an outsider coming in and I quickly climbed the ranks to a supermarket trader, which is kind of like a large department manager, uh, for one of the bigger supermarkets. So I was quite lucky and fortunate to get that position. And then to say to everybody, I'm giving all this up to YouTube and, uh, blogging was just like, you know, it didn't go down well with a lot. People's like, how can you, you know, you've just got one of the best jobs in this, you know, supermarket and you want to give it all up for that. So, yeah, it was, um, yeah, crazy times really, but yeah, so far so good. What did you say?
Speaker 0 00:06:09 What's your friends and family think of this? Because, uh, even my wife, if people ask her what I do, she literally just says he builds websites. It's like, that's all she knows.
Speaker 2 00:06:18 Yeah. I, I, yeah, I still don't think my wife could explain it. Um, in the beginning, just, you know, friends don't have a clue. You just don't, you just don't even go there. You don't, you didn't mention it. Um, the wife was just shattered. She just couldn't understand why I spent so much time, start the computer. What am I doing? And I think it only hits home when I sold the website, my first biggest, biggest website. And literally she walked in and it was such an amazing transaction. It was just, you know, it was done privately with a, you know, a mil buyer of websites or just kind of trusted. And literally it was, you know, I woke up that morning and the deal was dome and I looked at my bank account and there was $26,000 and she kind of walked in the door and just said, I went, you know, that website I've been building. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That website. And I went, there you go. I've just sold it. And I showed her the balancing. She was like, and I think from then she was like, ah, ah, okay, okay. This looks
Speaker 0 00:07:19 I'm on the computer today. Yeah. Feel free to spend all day there now. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:07:22 Telling me more, what's it all about? And then now she's very supportive. Even most of my children are so supportive, especially with YouTube. Um, but also with websites, they love it. They're always showing the friends what I'm building and, um, you know, coming up with ideas, you know, my youngest, son's 13 and he's got so many ideas, you know, that really do this one on, on, you know, customizing BMX is, and also that some really good ideas. Um, so yeah, no really supportive now, but actually explaining what you do even, I don't want to say, you know, if you say affiliate marketer, people think you're kind of above yourself and you know, people in the industry kind of go affiliate marketer. You're not an affiliate marketer. So that's hard to say, I'll say YouTube. I feel ridiculous. Uh, my, my wife definitely laughs if I say a blogger, people think you're kind of like a, a mum blogger, you know, you just write about kids in problems and that's, that's what a blogger is. That's what most people think they are. So yeah, I don't, I just go to my, my friends are, I say I build websites and then they go really. And a girl, and then I divulge a little bit Margo usually to make money from display ads. That's what I say, because if you say affiliate links, they still haven't a clue.
Speaker 0 00:08:39 I remember when, when we were getting married, we had to go to the, like to the registry office and you'll have to have like almost a mini interview between apps like separately. And, um, you know, the lady asked me what I did for a living. And I said, well, you know, I've got a content agency and I run an affiliate pop portfolio of affiliate websites. I do X, Y, Z. And I was explaining to him what affiliate website was and how it makes money. And then they asked Jess that she just said he makes websites. And the woman like was pressing orange, like shut up. She had to come in and she said, your wife doesn't quite know what you do for a living, you know? And I was like, well, yeah, she just thinks I make websites. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:09:17 Whatever you say to anybody, you make websites he's normally always followed up with, can you make me one or you know, of a friend does that. Right. Okay. Yeah. Or are you built a website once you get that, then you're into that rabbit hole of, you know, not quite what I do, but yeah. I'm with you.
Speaker 0 00:09:34 Yeah. Well, well, thanks for joining us today, Carla. I think I'm like one of the main topics that I want to talk about today and I want to probably delve into, to quite some depth is your, your mega site project. I think it's an amazing project. Sounds really exciting. And I think, you know, in the, in the next year or two, it's probably going to make you a fairly wealthy man. I hope anyway. That's, that's easy. Um, so, um, kind of just where are we at at the moment with the, with the mega site? Um, how did you come up with the idea? I know, you know, I've got the statue of where we are, but just, how did you come up with the idea? Why did you want to do this? Um, just give us a bit of background on it on this project first.
Speaker 2 00:10:14 So I think the idea came from how was just looking at websites in general and found one that I thought was, it looked amazing. And it was, I looked at the numbers and it was getting some decent traffic, like 120, 150,000 page views. And I looked, I know it wasn't monetized and I just thought, that's crazy. Why, why? I just couldn't understand the purpose of building a website, getting that much traffic on it and then not doing anything with it. Yeah. So I kind of thought, okay, we'll, you know, I, um, I'd sold a website recently set up a little bit money in the bank. So I thought I'll reach out to them. See if they're wanting to sell it, to be honest, wouldn't have a clue with the value. You know, they could have come back and said a million dollars. I wouldn't have had a clue.
Speaker 2 00:10:57 I was hoping, you'd say, yeah, it gives us a grump for it, something, you know what I mean? But you know, probably wasn't ever going to happen, but I thought, you know, you can try. And they were kind enough to reply back and just said, Nope, we're not selling out. And, um, I didn't really know why, but now when I look back, I think what it wore is I think they built this website cause they're a website developer. And I think it's kind of their star ship model is kind of their showcase model. You know, this, this is what we can do. You know, if you want a website building, you know, pay us 30 grand or whatever, we'll build your website that looks like this. I think it's like that. So I realized that we're going to sell it. So then I just thought, well, I'll okay, fine.
Speaker 2 00:11:34 If you don't want to sell it, I'll build my own stuff. Started just putting the idea together of getting in that niche and building the website very similar to what they had. Um, and then when I looked to realize, Oh my goodness, this niche is huge. Um, and then I started to think, is it even possible? And that's, I started then kind of reaching out to people and saying, you know, do you think a broad website works? You know, everybody says don't ever do it. You've got to niche down. And then kind of, you know, maybe a little bit of confidence grew and I thought, well, wait a minute. You've, you've, you know how to build a website? You know, do keyword research. Is there any different on a bigger website? Is it just going to take longer? Is it just going to take more content, more money? You know, and I just thought the process is the same, no matter kind of whether it's a niche website or a mega website, it's just the scale of it's different. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:12:27 Yeah, no, I agree. And it's interesting because these, these big sites that cover the martini sites have almost fallen out of favor there recently, like with the gear hungry updates and stuff. Um, I guess we'll come on to that a little bit for a little bit further into the conversation, but I think it's important to probably build tons of relevance around each of your subtopics. So yes, he's going to be broken down into tons of tons of subtopics, but just making sure that you're not thin across the board and you cover in depth, lots of, you know, lots of content around each one before moving on to the next ones would probably be okay.
Speaker 2 00:13:06 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I always revert back to people say what is kind of a mega website and I always kind of give the analogy of sports and it's not sports by the way. So let's just say it's sports. So I'll use sub topics would be cricket, fishing button intern, you know, that sort of thing. So then each one of those sub topic is then supported with a lot of other content. So they would all point back to the main homepage. And then you, each men category, let's say fishing, for example, um, what all are supporting blog posts or dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of blog posts all around that one niche, it's kind of like a mini niche website in a category, uh, and pretty much all interlinked together, all linking back to that one man article. So the idea is that we get that one, then let's say it's a complete guide to fishing. That's, that's what we're actually going. So if you type in the word fishing and it gets, you know, I don't know, a hundred thousand pages a month, then that's what we're actually targeting to try and rank while the sort of the supporting content is also going to rank as well and bring in probably significantly more overall than natural men in a title. But, um, the actual men, uh, article go for them, Bill's kind of relevancy within that category. So sense. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:14:24 So you're four months into the project. Now you you're about half a million words published. I think you've got about another three, three and a half million words left. Massive.
Speaker 2 00:14:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think the projects overall is about nine months in the merkin. So from purchasing the demand, the first piece of content only went on about four months ago. Um, and that was a debate really. It was a debate of, you know, do I drip feed the content on there and do we, you know, I did a poll on YouTube and I was like, I have a hundred articles, citing draft. Do I hit publish today on a hundred articles? Or, you know, do we drip feed it? You know? And he was really interested and I love sharing, you know, I love doing polls on YouTube, so easy to do them and get some feedback
Speaker 0 00:15:07 And I want to see what is your end up doing?
Speaker 2 00:15:10 Um, are you put on as many as I could in one girl? So I think I got about 75 within a week. It was just literally publish, publish, publish. We're already at a girl. So I think I put about 75 in the first week. And then I think our drip fed five or so out then every day thereafter until, until we'd caught up. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:15:28 Yeah. That makes sense. People always ask us that question clients, do I publish all in one, go, do I, drip feed it? And our methodology was, was what you went for to get it out there times a ranking factor, Google takes time index and find this content. So why not publish it as quickly as you can basically.
Speaker 2 00:15:46 Yeah. A lot of the comments that came back was, um, now Google likes to see consistently drip feeding contents out. And I was kind of saying to people how many there was like, you know, well, you know, you should be doing one or two a day. And I was like, okay, well what about these really big websites? Like CNN news? You know, do you think they publish one article a day, they're dropping hundreds of articles in a 48 hour period, you know? So, um, I don't think Google is going to penalize anybody for, okay, wait a minute. You should publish 50 articles on fishing today, you know, you know, or let's yeah. Let's penalize them or something. So, you know, I have that analogy. We are in this industry, we're in, obviously we were very small players in a big pond and we're thinking on terms of, you know, one or two articles a week, which is what most people are doing, I get it, you know, but when you do step up that next level, you kind of just got to think differently a little bit, you know? Yeah. I think, you know, people think buying in 50 articles on all in one go is very negative, but there are websites out there that do that daily, you know,
Speaker 0 00:16:51 And another question we get asked a lot. So as well as when to publish how quickly is like, um, breakdown between commercial information, all that type of stuff. So I know you've, you've got about 250 posts now and actually worked out roughly from what, what you've put on your YouTube channel. You're above twenty-five percent buyer's guides like commercial about 45% informational and then 30% listicles, which I guess is you could, you could say it's information, right? So you probably 70, 30 split between commercial information or,
Speaker 2 00:17:24 Yeah. So I mean, listicles, I kind of do the analogy like say, so it might be top 10 fishing locations in California, you know, that, that would be a listicle if anybody's wondering what that is, but yeah. I mean, information listicles blog content you can call it will, will increase. I mean, it will become the priority on this. It will end up probably, you know, 85, 90% informational content, the guides on there, again, a really just to, just to fulfill the actual structure. So that silo category it's basically just to also have that other branch that goes off and says, okay, if this is a complete structural silo on fishing, you would expect in there somewhere to mention fishing rods or reels or, you know, so it's not like we're really going after, I'm not really wanting to rank top 10 fishing rods for beginners or something.
Speaker 2 00:18:16 You know what I mean? It's not really that important to me, but if you have the traffic on the website and they are fishing fishermen Fisher women, then you know, why wouldn't you have a few of those articles that are on there that, you know, automatically show up in the content it's silly not to, um, you know, it's not going to be focused on that. Certainly never going to be a focus it's traffic is the focus ad revenue, traffic, um, and even in, in sector that, and then even some courses are available. So, you know, that, that was always a strong focus as well.
Speaker 0 00:18:49 Okay, interesting. So I think there's a lot of our audience would probably love to do a project like this. So I've kind of broken down my next set of questions into four categories. So the first one is planning because a site this size requires some crazy planning execution where we'll talk about like your team and how you set up a couple of other things, which I think are interesting that you're doing, which I've literally no experience of like web stories and Pinterest. And then, um, just some expectations because you've done this you're several months in and you know, what, what are the expectations for the future? So within the planning, um, obviously niche selection for a site of this size was important because it needs to be very expansive. Um, do you have any like tips or how did you approach coming across this, this niche? I know you said you found the site, but like just in general, how would you approach this if you hadn't found that site?
Speaker 2 00:19:42 I mean, if it's normally with a smaller site, I don't worry too much because I can expand the categories and the structure as it grows a little bit, but I knew this one would grow quite rapidly. So I had to make sure that the structure was there in place. First, I did speak to a few people and especially people who are really, really knowledgeable about kind of silos or topical mesh or whatever you want to call it. And their advice straight away was planet planet. Right. Get the structure in place because trust me, if you put three, 400 articles on there, it's going to be a nightmare to try and organize that six months into it. So you need to kind of have it settled. So it's literally publish, press publish and it drops into the right place. And it's done the structure's there. So, like I say, the site is about nine, nine months old, the demand's about nine months old and we spent at least six months of that really, really planning it.
Speaker 2 00:20:36 So building the structure, right? So now it's built with oxygen, which is really cool because it settled, we've kind of blocks and automatic features on it. So now literally we just, um, yeah, if we want a block that links to somewhere else, we just literally click don't it's on the page, it's on every page. Um, if we want to link categories or anything like that, we simply can click a button and say the link, this category to that category. And it does it. So a lot of planning was involved. I might say, it's not something I would do with a normal website. I would just put a basic theme on, you know, home page, you know, about us at the bottom, you know, and literally crack on and just start building your categories out. But this was set out from day one with all the categories in there. So a lot of the categories we haven't covered yet, there's 420 old sub categories. We've not, well, obviously we've probably covered 20%, something like that, but they're all set up and ready to go. So that as soon as we start, it goes in the right place.
Speaker 0 00:21:36 Does that mean that you've got plate pages on the site ready for them or the it's only set up
Speaker 2 00:21:41 Back end? Yeah. So it's set up in the backend already. Yeah. Yeah. So literally all I will do to a writer, I will just say, okay, you are out now on the topic again, I'll use spa's analogy. You are now on the topic of crickets and they will go and each right and knows exactly where to go. They'll work from like a spreadsheet. They'll all just go and just tackle that. And within a couple of weeks we just go, okay, cricket is boxed off.
Speaker 0 00:22:07 Right. That makes sense. Well, you kind of answered my next question was, did you plan this all at once or is it an ongoing thing, but it sounds like it was definitely very front-loaded with planning and you plan it or I guess, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:22:20 Yeah. I knew that the difficulty would be, um, organizing the writers and the content I knew that would probably be harder than anything else. Um, just silly as it seems, just paying the writers, organizing who's wrote what, when the rule who gets paid when just that side of it, I knew would be really difficult. And in fact, I was, I was on a podcast the other day and I said to the presenter there, I kind of just, I knew I would become kind of a manager, so I couldn't be dealing with, you know, Oh, I've got step a menu and I've got a link that menu, I couldn't be dealing with that that had to be done up front. So yeah. So that's why we really took his time. I announced that I was going to do the mega website on YouTube and I felt awful because it was months and months were going by and people go like, where is it? And I was like, I'm still setting it up. And they're like that, she'll use your throw a theme on it, other couple of menus and off you go. And I was like, usually, yeah, but not with this one, you know, this needs a lot more planning, you know, so yeah,
Speaker 0 00:23:21 Yeah. Yeah. What, um, what tools did you use any tools for planning or was this just done in, in good old fashioned spreadsheets?
Speaker 2 00:23:28 Well, the content is in spreadsheets, so I've tried things like click hookup and a sauna and stuff like that. Um, and it was just, yeah, it was just, it was so much, so much more complicated using them that actually they're supposed to improve things. I'm sure that do, but, you know, I just found as we've got a really good spreadsheet system where it's all color coded, uh, all the writers have access to it. My veers have access to it. Um, simple as they've got freedom to go on that they, when they choose a topic that work within a sub category. So let's say, I will say to them tackle cricket this week and they will write the complete guide, which will be, you know, a monster post five, 6,000 monster post. And then they will all start tackling. Some writers will do product guides, some will do the information, some will do the listicles.
Speaker 2 00:24:17 So they all know what they're doing, but they will basically all go to the tub of cricket and they will choose whatever they're assigned to do, turn it yellow. Um, then when they've done that, it goes to orange, kind of, you know, to Amber to let me know the donor Arjun pawn check out or the VAs do, I should say, I do very little math, the VSL go in there and do it all there when they're happy, I just sign it off. And I, I'm the one who literally pressures, publish. And then I go back to the spreadsheet and turn them all green and we not to be like, Oh, and then when, when that entail line on the spreadsheet is all green, we know that category is covered and move on.
Speaker 0 00:24:52 It's very satisfying for you. And I guess seeing all those greens
Speaker 2 00:24:54 Is yeah, well, pressed in publishes is always satisfying. Know, I still don't know any better failure than where yeah. When you really, really happy with it, you checked out when you hit publish. It doesn't matter whether it's your first article or your thousand. It doesn't matter. He in publishes is brilliant. I love that.
Speaker 0 00:25:10 How did you approach the keyword selection for a site of this size? Did you just treat each silo is literally the same approach you would take for a smaller affiliate site? Or did you have another approach for this
Speaker 2 00:25:21 Now? Pretty much, pretty much the same. Uh, I said choosing natural subcategories was a given because, you know, I literally typed the keyword in there for the bar, the overall broad topic. And it just, you know, I think it was Wikipedia that you threw out. So they go up that your characters are like, Oh, that's easy. Okay. Um, a couple of were duplicated. So if you had fishing, let's say you go for fishing, you know, would have fishing, fly fishing, uh, sea fishing, deep sea fishing. So obviously you had to delete a few there. Um, but yeah, so that side of it picking the main sub keywords was pretty easy. And then it was a case of just treating it like any, have a website go for low competition keywords in that topic that people said to me in a few comments, there's a bit of a gentleman on YouTube is doing a very similar project.
Speaker 2 00:26:13 And he's, his was a re a race to get a thousand articles. That was his kind of, um, case study. And everybody says, you know, it's never going to work. You just throw in any content on there. You just try to publish as much content, a million million words or a thousand articles, but we're not, we're doing the same low competition keyword research within that topic. So there's just because it's larger and scale doesn't mean to say, we've not put the same amount of effort in the keyword research. Um, so there's no reason why they can't rank just like the world, you know, any other niche, really? How do you,
Speaker 0 00:26:49 How do you think your, your mini silos are gonna compare to a site, the specifically targeting an actual niche? So for example, you've probably got like 20,000 words covering, like maybe fishing, for example, as, as for an example, whereas, you know, you can build a fishing website that covers fly fishing, course fishing, cat fishing. I'd probably write a hundreds of thousands of words just on the topic of fishing. Like, how do you fall? How do you foresee you competing with, you know, your, your silo competing with a site that goes so much in depth like that?
Speaker 2 00:27:23 Yeah. I mean, it's a really good point. I do think a smaller niche website in fishy would do better. Actually. I think, I think within the, you know, overall topic, I think they would, um, maybe out rankers, they will maybe have a better authority within that. Sub-niche I still, you know, I'm a big advocate of, you know, niche down websites really, really work. There's no question about that. But the thing is with a website that's kind of this size, then it's kind of quantity. It's kind of, uh, you know, the John Deisha is, you know, theory of, you know, put as much content as you can and it all adds up. Uh, and in fact, I did a live stream recently where it was talking about this topic off the back of John's emails is fantastic emails he sends out. And he was saying on the same on there, that if you look at the majority of content that's doing well on ranking on your website, you'll only have maybe 10 articles that are doing really, really well, bringing in thousands of page views a month.
Speaker 2 00:28:22 And in fact, I have on my website on one of my websites, my pet website, I've only about 15 that bring in all the 2000 each per month. The rest are all made up of kind of two and 300 views a month. So the idea is that that adds up, you know, if you've got 4,000 articles on a website and each one's bringing in two or 300 page views a month, do the muffs. That is a huge site. Yeah. So I'm not looking to run number one for every one of these blog posts, they certainly will. So, you know, if we write a hundred blog posts on fishing, they're not all going to rank number one, you know, but if overall they bring in, let's say the silo fishing, you know, Howes hundred articles, you know, if that brings in 20, 30,000 page views a month, then that silo, that sub category has worked. That's fine. Yeah. You know, just, just rinse and repeat with all the other ones.
Speaker 0 00:29:21 Yeah. Yeah. When you've got 400 silos each bringing in that kind of traffic, it's a, it's a big, it's a big, it's a, it's a large number.
Speaker 2 00:29:28 Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. This, you know, this, this, if my original video on this, where I think it's called think big it's in my playlist, I set the whole kind of strategy out for it. I always said from day one, this is a four year, you know what I mean? So, you know, I, I don't expect, you know, to publish 400 silos, we're talking years, but I want this to be a four or five-year project. If at the end of four or five years, you know, the site's worth, you know, four or $500,000, then I've achieved my target, you know? But, um, yeah, he's certainly a big project, but I don't want to, people kind of get scared off by it and anything, I'm not, I haven't got all the money in the world. I'm only investing what I'm making. So, you know, people say to me, can anybody do this? Yeah. You just possibly have a longer timeframe on it, you know, but you know, it's, it's not going to get done, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day or kind of thing. It's going to be a very long project with this.
Speaker 0 00:30:26 Yes. A hundred percent. So you built up the, you did all this forward planning and I, and I can definitely see why it would take so long. Now, when you talk about each subcategory being like a mini site, and basically you have to do a keyword research for over four hundreds, many sites. Do you use any tools for that? Like, um, when you go, what do you go to keyword research tool at the moment
Speaker 2 00:30:47 I've been, I've been using keyword chef at the moment, quite a lot. Um, friend of mine, Ben who's developed it. I think it's a really good tool because it's really, it's kind of a tool made for bloggers. It simplifies it. And I talked about that again, in another video about this, you know, that tools like <inaudible> rafts and SEMrush, they are amazing. They, you know, they can, if you know how to really dial into them, they can give you those little golden nuggets, but the real expensive. Um, but for me, that wasn't much the problem. It was, they're so complicated to use. There's so many functions and features on there that I get lost in. I spend all day trying to click the right things to give you that golden keyword. I just wanted something where I just typed in, you know, fishing. Give me, give me some ideas, because I'll be honest with my site that, you know, we want look competition keywords.
Speaker 2 00:31:39 We really do. But I think there will be a time where it gets to a certain size and a certain level where you can kind of make up your own keywords. If that makes sense. You know, um, I read somebody the other day that I think he's sort of like 65 or 70% of all search in Google, a brand new searches never, ever searched before. And who ranks for those? Well, it's the people who are writing the content that really kind of the titles don't make sense. You know? Uh, I'll try to think of some, some examples last night or, you know, really the car off the top of my head, but you know, you can start writing, you know, if you want to do fishing, you know, example, and it's complete guy to fish it, you can really change up that title and put something really random and, and you might still rank for fishing.
Speaker 2 00:32:22 Cause you've got that huge authority within Fisher that sites like, you know, like CNN news and the spruce and stuff like that. And that's where you, when you look at some of their articles, you think how the heck is that article ranking with that title? Yeah. Um, but the doom, you know, because have relevancy and a lot of authority. So I use keyword chef a lot and I just use the alphabet soup method, good old fashioned hunting around, look at a competition, looking at competitors, you know, um, it's, you know, it might be frowned upon, but you know, you have to look at who's doing well in the industry because they are your examples. They're your competitors. That's who you're chasing. You'd be mad not to look at what they're ranking for. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:33:06 Yes. Yeah. I know we spoke a little bit about this off air, but we're having some issues where we, uh, we're ranking for one of our clients or competitor, and they're not happy about the fact that we've essentially got after a very similar set of keywords. Um, yeah, no, there's nothing wrong with that. People do it every day. The contents unique it's I would argue about to quality content. Um, but yeah, it's,
Speaker 2 00:33:31 It's the basis of our business. Let's be fair. You know, if you're building a niche website in any topic, then you know, you're going to be going after similar keywords to something at somebody else. There's no doubt about it. You know, as long as you're not copying it, like for like, you know, I've had that happen to me, you know, uh, two sites purely copied, copied, and pasted, um, I think income skill audit done to them. And I was speaking to Ricky when that happened and they was really, really clever and caught them out. Did you, did you hear about that example, what they did? So basically every time they published a piece of content and I hope we get this right. When ever they published a piece of content, someone copied somebody copied and pasted the article, put it on their website and then back dated the date on it.
Speaker 2 00:34:16 So it looked like they was the original, so they were really sneaky, but the copied it word for word image, for image, and it looked like they were literally just copying and pasting without even checking or reading it. So Ricky insert it aligned in the middle that says, uh, in, in a, in a big paragraph of text saying, this article has been copied from income skill. We have nicked it or something, you know, we've stolen it. And the guy just copied and pasted it onto their website. So obviously then they replied it to Google and Google solver. This belongs to a new what you were doing. Yeah. Really clever income skill to do that. I never thought of that, but my websites that were copied would just literally just reported them and they, I never really heard anything. They just got taken down. So
Speaker 0 00:35:02 Yeah, the sites and stuff that do that. Right. I see that. I see it in battling profiles all the time where content is being copy and paste, it looks like it'd be or screen, there's more formatting. It's these sites of horrible. And I don't really know where to get out of here. Like yeah,
Speaker 2 00:35:17 You can usually tell when it's blocked paragraphs. So if you see block paragraphs, so you might look at a 2000 word article and it might only have four paragraphs then, you know, that's usually being done like in that method. Yeah. If it's nicely spaced out and formatted formatting is the giveaway. If somebody spent a lot of time formatting and putting the right hedge two and page had is on it usually no it's is pretty good. But yeah, it's a giveaway when I see that block content, usually I'm like, Ooh, okay.
Speaker 0 00:35:45 Makes sense. So you, you use keyword share. If you do a bit of elbow work with, uh, the alphabet soup method and stuff, do you use any clustering tools then to cluster them together and all they're quite a hot topic right now? Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:35:59 Yeah, no, I was on a, I was on a live stream. I think it was Adrian over hustle of Ester boss did a live stream. I think it was, was it Cupich Cupid? What's it called? Cupid, that's it. And I looked at that and um, yeah, I was, I was right at the mix then of building it and uh, I did look and I did, um, I did a bit of playing around with it, but I don't think I had enough kind of content and keyword structure to put in their fruit to be relevant. So maybe something I will look into now, but fingers crossed. I think it's laid out now in a way that I should be okay anywhere. And you just got to make sure that you're interlinking now is still, is still good and relevant. So it's a question. I mean, I'm no expert in silos, just me and I, you know, I'm still learning every day.
Speaker 2 00:36:45 You know, I got a lot of advice from somebody who is really good in the industry, has his own tool and products around kind of clustering. And, um, I've got some advice from him right at the very start. So I hope that I think I figured out how it should be and it's, it shouldn't be more complicated than what it is, you know, things, you know, people think this is a big mystery. It literally just, you know, it's a category it's that all we're doing is creating lots of categories that are nicely linked and relevant. That's all we do. And it's no genius thing I've come up with, you know? So, um, I think the relevancy just keeping it all as tightly packed into that one silo as possible. I think that's, that's the main thing.
Speaker 0 00:37:27 Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I would, we, we use it, we use keyword cupids, um, to group together essentially to cluster together keywords where typically they're very low search volume. Um, it may not warrant a page on their own, but if we can group them together with others so much, we welcome that kind of stuff. But, um, yeah, if you, if you go in after stuff with a little bit higher search volume, it's clear, it needs its on page. You can do this stuff manually. Right. And she's a bit of brain power and figure it out.
Speaker 2 00:37:55 Yeah. I mean, I, I don't know, you know, if the site gets the pie waste even larger, you know, probably we'll have to use some sort of tool then there, but you know, SU because there will be some articles that overlap. I'm getting it at the moment where I do look at it and I think, do you know what that could actually fit into that silo structure and will Google see that? And then, you know, my goodness will it link that silo structure to that one when I don't want them, you know? So there is that list. All we can do is your S you know, just, just do your very best and that's all you can do and hope you keep it. I just want to keep it sensible. I think that's what are simple, but sensible, even though it's a huge sale, it will be, um, it doesn't need to be, you just keep it simple, you know, if it's relevant for that silo goes in that silo, if it's relevant to link to that post, then it links up perse, you know? So, um, yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. You know, it's a large site, but still keep it simple. Really don't, over-complicate it, it's not, you know, whenever you mentioned to somebody silo, it's like, Oh, I gotta tell us your formula and stuff. And he's like, it's just, it's simple. Just treat it as kind of like a mini website. Just look at it as a, you know, as a mini category, that's all you gotta do. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:39:04 Yeah. Agreed. So that's the planning section covered then. So appreciate you sharing kind of how you plan this out. Um, the next part I want to talk about is the execution, because you mentioned, you know, the planning did take a long time, but the part you were most worried about was actually the execution style. So let's start with the, the big one content creation. Like how have you structured that as your own team? Are you outsourcing? Like, how does that work?
Speaker 2 00:39:29 So luckily like said, I've been doing this now going on four years now thing three and a half years close to four. So I built up a team slowly, um, or over a period of like say three years, people will say, how would you, let me say, you know, people say, how do you find really good writers? And I just say, you got to kiss a lot of frogs. You just simply have, you just got to try as many as you come. And I must've tried 50 writers, you know, to window that down to seven, you know what I mean? Yeah. And, and how about some really good writers in the past and you lose them for some reason, you know, you know, I've had some writers that, you know, um, have just left because they've got full-time jobs are some writers that have had children, you know, can't spend the time doing it, some inconsiderate writers that like, you know, got married and things like that.
Speaker 2 00:40:18 I mean, you know how we consider it. Yeah, exactly. So, but yeah, you get good writers, you lose them and then you try and find more. I have a lot of writers, people that reach out to me now. So, you know, the income skill thing was great. Got me kind of known. I got instantly a lot of emails, Joel and Joel met. Right. Fear. And I still get probably one email a day from a writer. Uh, and I do test a lot of them. I've just hired a new writer called Joey. Um, yeah. And he just reached out to me and said, we give me a shot. And I was like, okay, there's three articles. Write them. Uh, I will pay you. Don't worry. Even if the rubbish I'll, I'll pay you in a, let's see how you do it. And the came back and they were fantastic. It's like, you know, do you have any work? I was like, I'll just add you to the team. And you work your way through the spreadsheet. Um, yeah,
Speaker 0 00:41:08 These all need to be English because Cole are the, where are they based?
Speaker 2 00:41:11 Th the widespread to be honest, but they are, yeah, pretty much native speaking, English, speaking writers, but they are widespread, you know, I've got, um, I've got a couple in the UK. I've got one, I think one in Canada, I think a couple in the us. Uh, and I think I've got one in the Philippines. I don't exactly know where she lives, but, um, I think she is native English speaker, I think maybe she had moved there. So, um, but I have tried over the diff difficulty with getting right as, uh, uh, like non-English speaking right. Is the mere right. Really good and interesting content each just what the struggle to do is, um, get the, kind of the grammar and the spelling, correct for the country that you're targeting. So, you know, I have, um, three V years overall across like my portfolios. And that's the number one thing that correcting all the time is the grammar.
Speaker 2 00:42:07 So things I, you know, in the U S in the UK, we'll say, tap, you know, I need to run the tap for 10 minutes. And it's the faucet in the, you know, in Americas, things like that, you know, I say rubbish all the time and they'll say it's garbage, you know, all right. Okay. Uh, take the rubbish out. Let's take the trash out. So, and spell it. So Cola is the one that gets me all the time, because obviously color is mentioned all the time. And, you know, um, when, as a unit and one doesn't, you know, so it's things like that. So there may be right where the interest interesting on point SEO focused content, but the grounding and the speller spelling doesn't meet the targeted countries. So that's the biggest problem we have not actually finding the writers, not actually getting good content from them. It's that?
Speaker 0 00:42:53 So I'm assuming when, when you, like, you just got awarded a Joey now, um, how do you go about like training them and bringing them up to speed with your current process? Because obviously if you've got a team you've got a specific way of thinking of things, how are you, um, how are you handling that coaching and teaching aspect?
Speaker 2 00:43:10 Probably doing it, definitely doing it the wrong way. So I went, but I, yeah, I have learned so much of kind of, you know, managing a team. Um, yeah, I've always, I've always been a manager in my, my day job. I've always been a manager or assistant manager or something like that, right. From the age of about 19. So I've always had that hands-on management skills, but the person has always been in front of me, you know, so now they're on the end of an email or, you know, on the camera. So that's more difficult. So I've had to learn. And I basically just did it manually, which you know, was an absolute pain. So every time we got a writer involved, just telling them how we work from this spreadsheet, where the article should go, um, have three kind of main, um, places on the website to put the content.
Speaker 2 00:43:56 So posts, product guides, et cetera, and getting them to post the article in the right thing is just, it was a nightmare. So I've learnt a lot. I wish I'd have done kind of training video. I wish I did on maybe, you know, five videos on a little playlist that is private only to them that I can say, okay, you're going to write for us, you know, watch these videos. And just in a five minute video, you know, here's the spreadsheet, this is what we do. This is what clear market. This is what clear Mickey when he's done. And that would have been so much easy cause every right. Cause I've tested quite a few more. But just to test, if you writer as been a two week process of emailing buckers and folders, right. Write this article, put it in there, then emailing, but no, you've put it in the wrong place and you want to head in and you're amped up, you know? So yeah, that was, I wish I'd learned and done some kind of training video that would have been so much easier.
Speaker 0 00:44:55 Yeah, no, a hundred percent, especially if you scared it up. Um, there's some great programs out there as well, which you can use to organize your training material. A tree and fall is a really good one. Um, it just allows you to, you know, create a board about content creation and break it down into many tasks. So the first one, this is what we do first click on the next one. Like that's, that's, that's really good.
Speaker 2 00:45:18 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've, I've, I know there's kind of some plugins on WordPress that you can use to build courses. So that, that was possibly be something that I'd do next time is install that and actually build kind of a mini course, just, just for writers, you know, so, you know, hi, welcome. I'm Karl, this is the website we're working on. The first thing you should do is, you know, just kind of do an inbuilt training costs, but for my, for my writers, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. It'd be so much easier. So lesson learned next time, I'll ask them next megasite project. I don't think it will. Uh, yeah. Who knows? Never say never, but yeah, this one's going to have my attention for a number of years, for sure.
Speaker 0 00:46:00 So, so creating that amount of content, you've got the content team. I mean, you kind of mentioned that the struggles of finding good writers, but once you've found them, you bring them on board and it sounds like they tend to stay with you for a long time. I guess the next, um, the next, uh, problem to solve or bottleneck is applauding. Like you've got all this content. How did you get it on the, on the site so quick? And I'm assuming that's another team. Do you outsource any of that? Or they
Speaker 2 00:46:26 So that the writers have access direct access to, to WordPress. So they go straight into the backend and they can publish, they don't publish it, they upload it into draft. And then what they'll do is they'll go back to a spreadsheet. So basically the process is the spreadsheets there. I've done the keyword research, which I do per topic per category. So like, say as an analogy, let's say we do fishing. So I will create all the keywords in that. So it might be 70 keywords, 70 articles, and then I will inform them all, hi, you start in the 1st of June, we're tackling fishing. And then each person knows to go in there and they will select the article that they want. They will turn it yellow and then they'll start writing or they will put it on the website, into draft when that's done, they turn it orange on the spreadsheet.
Speaker 2 00:47:15 So then my veers can check in there every day. And then they see us got an orange. Okay. They go in and they do all the formatting added internal links, external links, images, et cetera. And then when that's done, they will let me know. Hi Kyle, a lot of, um, content on there is ready. I will check it off. And when I'm happy, press publish, I then go on the spreadsheet, turn it green when that entire category is green, we not to move on. So they evolve very, very good at putting in the content directly onto the website. And they're pretty good at formatting. It, I think that's still the biggest issue. I'm very finicky about, you know, I like space where the header is on the knee fit and I like each image to, you know, have a description showing and you know, so I'm very picky with stuff like that.
Speaker 2 00:48:02 Well, my years are as well, particularly one of them, she's amazing. She's like so detailed. She'd like, you know, you just press publish on that. And it, hasn't got a 20 pixel space in between the wild. And uh, so it's fantastic to do that. You know, that, that, that level of detail is great. It's what you pay them for at the end of the day. Um, but yeah, the content is uploaded on there and, uh, it's pretty, pretty automated. We've now got a really good rhythm. I said, the hardest thing is proofreading them all and checking the do get, I said, the VA's are Hey to proofread them, format them correctly. You know, so, but it's still the biggest bulk of the work of the work, because no matter how well you train a writer, they just literally want to put that content on that and get off and write some else. You know, it's all about the living. So, um, they're not bothered about spacing and you know it, do you,
Speaker 0 00:48:53 Do you just build that, um, cost into what you paid on per word? Well, I guess that's one question, but are these people are on salaries? Like, are they working full-time for you or are you paying and still on a per word or per article basis? How does that, how does that work
Speaker 2 00:49:09 Right as a paid per word? So it's 3 cents a word on my writers are on the same, same level. Um, I've tried cheaper writers, I've tried more expensive writers. I ordered two articles yesterday outsourcing to, you know, a content company and I chose that highest level writers. So we talking 11 or 12 cents of word, uh, ridiculous. I'm like $160 for a very short article. And it was, I just wanted to test them and it was no better than the, my 3 cents writers. So, um, you get very good level of writer for 3 cents. I think it's a fair price to pair. Some of my writers are, you know, publishing two or three articles a day. So that's like a hundred, a hundred dollars maybe more per day that there are, you know, they're happy to work four or five days a week. It's a, full-time living for them.
Speaker 2 00:50:00 So yeah, I think it's a fair price to pay. And I think the quality we get is really good. So, but they are, yeah, they're self-employed so they just invoice me. So we assign everything on a Monday. If it's a big topic we're covering, then we do like a two week period. So if we're covering fishing, then that might be two week periods. So the right everything, they come, when it's all done, they all invoice me the second Monday. So before 10 days later, I get the invoice for their work. And then I pay them, uh, either PayPal or direct buck by transfer depending on where they live. Um, and then we move on to the next category or the, a paired, a set fee. It's kind of, you know, this is what I expect from you each week and what they expect from you warrants this amount of money, uh, some get paid more, some get paid less. So there's three veers on there.
Speaker 0 00:50:53 That makes sense. I think that's was a good way to structure him. Um, so they're applaud. So the, the content uploads, the, the VA's then formatted, I'm assuming that this kind of scale, you must have everything templated. I'm assuming, um, like you've got your three core types of articles. I'm assuming each three are templated pretty well. The list,
Speaker 2 00:51:15 The calls are pretty much a set formula. There's no kind of template for it, but it's literally, this is how I expect it to look. And the product reviews are pretty much yet. They are more or less templated eats, eats pretty much the products at the top, as soon as they land on it. Cause, you know, if somebody typed the 10 best fishing rods, they want to see 10 best fishing rods. So they see the product first. And then it's a lot of helpful information after that they are still a good two or 3000 word, long sell. They are, you know, pretty decent product reviews and they are formatted in template variables that are not, is kind of just the supporting blogs. So the supporting blogs can say around fishing, they just, they are just random because you can't do a template for that because you know, each kind of blog there be different. It might some might a bullet points. Some might have tables, some might just be 800 words, you know? Um, so there's no follow up for them. They're just totally at wealth. Just, you know, write it, put it on there and let's have a look, you know, sometimes the VA's will have bullet points where the writers haven't, they will split a paragraph off into bullet points. Sometimes it's just perfectly fine just to hit publish on pretty much straight away.
Speaker 0 00:52:28 That makes sense. Okay. Um, the other part I want to touch on is, um, to do with execution is publishing this amount of content. We talked about publishing all at once or like drip feeding out, but I'm assuming you must have to be doing something fancy ish at least, or at least the best practices in terms of site structure. Um, a brand new website crawl budget with Google is probably quite low. Like all this content going out, you need to get it indexed quick. Um, how are you doing anything? Or what are you doing, I guess is the question to make sure that Google comes and it calls a site and the most efficient way. Um, everything's, everything's picked up quickly, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:53:08 I think the, I think the, the thing we do when he's not trying to cover this broad niche, all in one go, so we're not going to have to fall in 23 subcategories all in one go. I think we focus in on one sub category before we move on to the next one. So if we're doing like say fishing, then make sure that category is, is, is finished. It's all interlinked. Um, it's all within that correct silo structure kind of thing. So Google on indeed really needs them to come and crawl one or two of those articles and hopefully the interlinking so good that it will then start to rank and you can see. Yeah, I can see, I can see, I use search robot to track some of the keywords and you can see as soon as one of them pops into there that I know usually within a day or two later here come the rest and then they all start popping up and appear in.
Speaker 2 00:53:57 So, um, it is going to be, you know, there's still, I mean at the minute, like say 250 300 articles, whatever it is on there, there is still only around. I think it's about 40 or 50 in the top 100 now it's not, it scares me to death. When you look at that, cause you see, you know, fault out a 300, but you got to remember that's in the top 100, you know, cert robot does the top 100. So all of the may be index off should be, but there might be out of the top 100. So there might be positioned three of hundreds of that. So it is the tool that I love, but I also, I've got to stop looking at it because it panics you to death. You know, you got four months in, there's only 40 out of 300, but then you got rid of my ah, in the top 100.
Speaker 2 00:54:42 Okay. Um, so yeah, so I, you know, keep track of it like that, but just in interlinking it and hoping that once Google picks up on one of those blog posts or related posts, it should intellect, backers that crawl in it. I used to we've oversized, we've all done it, you know, try and false index each page and you know, and then Google obviously switched that functionality often there for some time. Uh, and then when it came back on, everybody hits it, which I had the false index. And then I don't, I don't bother now. I don't, I just leave it and it texts as long as it tacks. Um, if, for instance, a particular sub category wasn't index, then it's not something I've done now. Then I may, for some buckling site in the future to try and say, you know, you know, okay, you haven't found yet found the page on my site, but here it is, it's linked on this site and you know, awfully then it'll track it back from there, but it's not something I'm doing at the minute.
Speaker 2 00:55:37 It's not something I intend to do. You know, certainly, certainly not for the next year. You know, I mean, I'm not going to worry or even, you know, touch it for a year, just give it some natural time. You know, this, the whole Google sandbox thing in, uh, again, I did another poll on YouTube the other day and I said, you know, does the Google sandbox number one exists, uh, number to text five to six months, number three, tech six to nine months on them before tech longer. And I think it's up to about 70% of the minute of all ticked longer, uh, submitted orange and volts on it. So, you know, people's opinion vary, but you know, I'm not certainly not going to even worry about it for a year after 12 months. You know, if I look at my cert robot then, and you know, we, haven't got a heck of a lot more than 40 in the top hundred that are pumped. Yeah. Yeah. Then I'm panicked.
Speaker 0 00:56:28 How are you, um, how are you handling like a menu structure and, and things like that with so many sub categories, how was, how was the menu work in just as a curiosity, without giving
Speaker 2 00:56:40 The Nisha where there are a couple of menu structures you can do. So let's say for instance, outdoors, indoors, uh, yeah. I can't think of any analogies about giving it away, but yeah, it could be like that. So I think, I think like if you give the analogy of sports, you could maybe say, um, you could say water sports. Yeah. Grasper, you know, like grass, you know, so it's, you know, it's football cricket, so a few manufactures like that on there. So when you land on the actual home page, you see, uh, about nine different boxes and each one will have the actual broad, very broad niche in there. And then you click that and you go to the main guide.
Speaker 0 00:57:24 So is the, is that set up, uh, like on the back end as categories, you've got an overarching category of grasp board and then you've got sub categories of football crickets, and then you've got sub posts which sits in those categories. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:57:38 Pretty much. Yeah. And it's you move up to oxygen, it's all built to the point where it's all kind of automatically does that. So ultimately links into the right category when you put a tag on it. So we put the tag on it and as soon as it sees that target mills that it's within that category.
Speaker 0 00:57:52 Okay. And then like the homepage would link out to the overarching like grass sports category. And then that page would then link out to all of the sports within,
Speaker 2 00:58:02 If you look at the homepage and then let's say you've got nine of those bigger categories, they then link to the main, so 423 sub niches and then all your relevant content below that for each niche.
Speaker 0 00:58:17 That makes sense. Are you using custom category pages for those? Are you still relying on like standard WordPress, whatever the theme,
Speaker 2 00:58:24 It's your standard WordPress using oxygen. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing. There's no theme on there. It's just, yeah. It's just,
Speaker 0 00:58:30 Yeah. Nice. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. I love, I love to hear about these different ways of doing things.
Speaker 2 00:58:39 So the most least technical person in the world, you'll, you'll figure that out when you watch any of my videos. Um, yeah. I, you know, I rely on people that I am friends fill over it, you know, spider web.co.uk being a wealth of support and information buying. Yeah. I am no expert by no means, like I said, when I thought about doing silo structures, well, actually I didn't think about doing them. I was just, it was a conversation I had about a website that I sold and I said to this gentleman, I'm thinking about doing this. And he said, you know how your categories are? You silos just said questions. You've just asked me and how we're going to interlink them and how are you going to say them? And I kind of just went, I don't know. And they just girls, we need to think about it.
Speaker 2 00:59:23 And I was like, yeah, how would you recommend that they do it? And he just said, do it like this. And you know, I will seek advice from everybody. I may have got it wrong. We don't know time will tell. It could be, you know, could be like, Oh my God, Adam, this is, you know, I got it totally wrong. Who knows? But, um, I think you've just got to go on advice and do the best you can, you know? So I would, I do this kind of format and structure on a smaller mini website niche with that. No, I wouldn't. You know, I'd just say, you know, just, you just do the usual clean theme on their simple menu structure off you go, you know? So, um, yeah. I'm not an expert on a bar thing has crossed, I think with it help and advice I've got from everybody and looking at other websites, looking at how other big websites do do this.
Speaker 2 01:00:09 I mean, I've been doing some research last couple of days and I've found some websites that are just crazily broad. And I mean, you, you know, you, you're talking, you know, it's got gardening and then it's got <inaudible> and then it's got hair care. And then it's got pet in the menu structure and I'd like 10 different broad niches in the manufacture. And I thought, how is this even working? And then you look at the data, it's getting 3 million page views a month and it's like crazy. These working, you know, it works. So however they have set that up to the structured. It is fascinating because they are doing it in such a clear where that Google is seeing. Okay. So you've got health and beauty here and you've got sports here. Um, but I could clearly see how they fall into their own categories, you know? Yeah. And it still works even though it's on one overall domain.
Speaker 0 01:01:05 Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. This question, I think is a, is an interesting one because we, from our client base in a way we have people who want to be totally hands on and involved in everything. And then we have people who literally don't want to do. They don't want to be hands on at all. How hands-on are you in this project? And do you think it's possible to execute a project like this, or even on a smaller scale, but be almost totally hands off aside from the planning and just managing like light touch management points.
Speaker 2 01:01:33 I think, I think financially, if you could afford it, you could totally hands off it without the doubt. Yeah. I could leave it now to, if let's say I go where for two weeks, you know, I know it will still run pop content will still get published. I would just have to give that permission for the VAs to say, I say, listen, when you're happy with it, I trust you just hit publish. Don't worry about it. I mean, I do at the minute, I keep saying to him, you know, just, are you happy with it yet? You know, that English and that, you know, grammar and stuff, his father at the mine, that's why I hired them. It's like, you know, what am I checking for here? You know what? I have a look, you know, you've got internal LinkedIn, take yourself out to the Linux outlet.
Speaker 2 01:02:14 I'm just like, you know, you know, just hit publish, you know? And, uh, so I'm still in process where I have to hit that publish. And I think it's just because of the responsibility there, like, you know, I don't want to cause the, no, this kind of silo structures and subcategories and stuff that they don't want to interlink anything that's wrong. So I think they're just a bit worried about that. And I'm like, if you make a mistake, we can, we can fix it. Don't worry. So I would like to be more hands off with it. But, um, yeah, at this stage, it's too, it's too early, you know, I mean, if it's earning 10,000 a month for something I will, you know, I would pair them more and say, I'm really coming out in the loop with this, you know, I want to move on, you know, I'll, you know, I've got more projects on, got more things in the pipeline, you know, it's, it's timing.
Speaker 2 01:02:59 You're only limited since doing this full timer. I promised myself, I would only work by eight 30, till five 30, you know, but last night I finished, you know, and my wife's like, I thought you was just going to do eight 30 to five 30. And, uh, uh, um, because I see it as a business that the more effort you put in the more times I hit publish, the more times I assign jobs out, the more times I do this, the more money I heard it was that when you hit publish, it's kind of like money in the bunk. And if you said to somebody, yeah, you press publish on the article and it's going to earn you a hundred dollars in the next 12 months. It's like going to the bank of a hundred dollars. And if I said to you, right, don't every time I give you a hundred dollars, you got to run to the bank and put it in. You would do wouldn't you, you know? So he's like, I just want to hit publish, publish, publish, you know, like say you, you know, you have to be, take your time. You have to get it right. So it's not, I'm not throwing any rubbish on there. It is all as good as it can be, but I'm always eager to stay here and keep pressing, publish, and getting the work done.
Speaker 0 01:04:04 It's all about working, working. Leader's quite interesting, quite funny story that, um, my wife, uh, my wife runs a cake business at the moment. She bakes cupcakes and brownies. And, um, we were chatting on the weekend. I said like, you're white, she loves doing it. But you know, she's very busy doing it. And she's a bit stressed out sometimes when she's got so many orders, I'm like, well, why are you, why are you doing it for if it stresses you out? Like take a step back. Yeah. Which is why I only started this because you know, you were working late every night on the computer, on the laptop, in front of the TV. And, you know, I was just watching the TV on my own. So I thought I was going to start this. And it made me reflect. I was thinking, yeah, that's actually probably too, like, even though we, you know, self-employed and live in the living, the dream of being web publishers and stuff, probably I probably work twice as many hours as I did when I worked a full-time job. It's crazy.
Speaker 2 01:04:54 I absolutely get it. Time management now is one of the biggest focuses for me. I've had a few people on YouTube say, can you do some like kind of day in your life? And you know, how you manage things, how you do it, you know? Um, I mean, I I've, you know, my portfolios, I've only got, I've got 10 websites, you know, I've seven writers, three veers, 10 websites. I know a lady that has, I think it's 43 websites and she has 16 writers. Um, you will know her she's in one of the groups that we're both in together. And, you know, she's at about eight 70, $80,000 a month. And I think, how do you money? 60 writers and 43 websites. And she just says, it's quite easy. I only work like eight till five on the night and have weekends off and she's got it. So right. Uh, I I'm dying to pick her brains and Gusto, like tell him your secrets. How do you do that? Uh, I mean, I don't think I ever want to get 43 websites, but you know, I'll take the 80,000 a month earning for sure.
Speaker 2 01:05:51 Yeah, definitely. But yeah, it says you've got in managing your time is, is so important. Is that burnout in a, trying to avoid that burnout. And I think I've been forced into it the minute, because again, yeah, my wife's just don't put her on business last week. Um, and it means she's going out of the house every day now. So I now have to, you know, um, you know, look after the kids, I've got a, you know, I've got to look out for the kids now and I've got cooked tea. If I, I don't know if you saw my first live stream, it was a bit of a panic after, after I'd been on the live stream. The only time I could get almost about three o'clock live stream, I thought I'll do an hour. And then the children will be home. And I consult y'all and it got to like half was fine.
Speaker 2 01:06:29 I was still in the live stream and kids were appearing and I was like, Oh, is he ready? He's T ready. And I'm like, Oh, I've got to cook tea. I was like, Oh no, you know, so I now have to plug in, but they're the, you know, in the school holidays, I have to break off at dinner time cause they're going to want feed in and I have to kind of get finished and wrapped up now for about four o'clock because, you know, I've got my tea and do the household duties, the washing and stuff. So, you know, I think time management for me now is going to become more and more important. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 01:06:59 I mean, me and Mark are going through the same thing with, uh, with our business. Obviously we got a fairly large team and, um, w we're gonna be trying something soon where we both pretend to take a week off, um, and just see how the business runs without us. We've been putting lots of systems and processes in place, but you don't truly realize, you know, what will happen until you both literally just say, right, well, I'm going to step back for a week treat as if we're on holidays. We're still be there, but treat us as if we're on holidays where we're in the jungle, we don't have our phone, like, figure it out. What you gonna do?
Speaker 2 01:07:32 Well, you can do. I mean, like I say, I mean, I trust my writers, you know, never, I haven't changed anything. I don't think I've sent an article back in forever. Um, so, you know, cause it'd be writing for me for three years now. So, um, I, I don't have any worries like that. And I don't, my VA is know exactly what they're doing. So I think I am at the point where I come at the time off, I'm still at that point where this is now a full-time living. So I have to get a certain amount of income coming in. And I, um, and I think quit my job until I was really above my income threshold. I knew I had a safety net. I knew I had a bit of a buffer and, but I'm always worried. You're always pushing to get that little bit, you know, um, you know, I've had a pretty month in March and now I'm thinking I just need to get over that, you know, that much.
Speaker 2 01:08:19 So you're always thinking about that, pushing that extra mile. But yeah, I definitely need to take time out. I mean, we've been in lockdown now for so long, you know, you probably don't have a keen golfer and your golf course would be short. Um, well Wales is one of my number one destination. We go there twice a year. We play some courses there and you know, I I've said to myself this next few weeks, I am taking time off, you know? So yeah. Well, the reason that we, you know, I asked you to do this call. So, so early is because, you know, I have a tee time booked for five o'clock, so I am going out and play it. And I think you have to reward yourself. I, you know, I've not spent anything on myself of said that to the wife the other day, I said, I might get some new golf clubs.
Speaker 2 01:08:58 He spend it on golf. Cause I learned, you know, I spent three years building this portfolio or I think I can now treat myself to some 400 pound golf clubs, you know? Um, yeah. He's, he's, he's he's yeah. He's telling management and also that quality of life, because like you said, I got into this not to be stressed, not to be worried, you know, to have time off and, and to a degree I can't do it. Don't get me wrong, not well, not monitored or anything. I can't, if I go, do you know what tomorrow? I just don't want to do, I can do that. Yeah. My income will change, you know? Um, so you know, you definitely have to take that time out for yourself for your mental health and cause we all, we all still stress. I, I, I think I stress now more than I did in my other job because I knew I had paycheck London, you know, I knew money would love them, my bank every, every month, but now I don't have that luxury, you know, comes in from all over the place. And you know, that's been a learning curve, definitely I've been self-employed before. So I knew all about currency. And so I knew it would be a bit of an issue. I didn't actually realize how much of an issue it would be. You've got income coming in in dollars, Canadian dollars pounds, you know, convert some it's pear pals submits your bank. So that side of it has been a lot more stressful than I thought, you know, organizing, you know,
Speaker 0 01:10:17 Oh, we could, we could probably talk for another hour call on there.
Speaker 0 01:10:25 We are coming up on an hour here and they, there are a couple of things I wanted to cover off, um, just before we kind of wrap up. But, um, I think we'd probably run a little bit over time. So I guess the one thing I want to just finish off is, um, is just expectations for this mega site. We've kind of covered it from start to finish. Now, what do you think the future is for the site? Uh, I saw that in your recent update, you kind of looked back on like your original video and stuff and things look like they're still on track. Where do you hope this will be in a six, 12, 18 months?
Speaker 2 01:10:57 Yeah, I think when I look back on that original video, some of the expectations on there was pretty much spot on. I mean there wasn't all the realistic, um, I think it was, I think it was the early days. So I think I expected by month six to nine to be earning maybe $500, you know? Well, you know, to, and that sort of mommy in this niche, then it's probably going to be 10,000 page views a month, something like that. So, and I think it's one 69 might still be in the sandbox. So you might not be getting hardly anything then. So I think the early expectations was probably, um, too, too adventurous, but I think some of the latter ones certainly year three and four, but I put a psychic value of like 300,000 on it, something like that. I think that's definitely doable.
Speaker 2 01:11:40 You know, I mean I've sites that I've put nowhere near as much effort into the setup and functionality of it as I have with this one. And they're like a hundred thousand dollars sites so already. So I don't think the, my expectation for four years selling it and flipping it or whatever was wrong. I think that, I think they're going to be, I'm going to think I'm going to hit those targets. I think the expectation of putting the content on there, um, kind of, you know, a million words per year. Uh that's, that's definitely be realized. I don't think I've any, I don't think I sort of set those goals too high. I think he's
Speaker 0 01:12:16 Just you're ahead of schedule. If anything, I think keeps traffic
Speaker 2 01:12:19 And earnings in the first, let's say third year. So if anybody looks at that video and sees that they might go, you know, that's, that's totally crazy. I think I put that end of year one, I'd be making a couple of grand or something like that. So I think that might be unrealistic, but you've got to remember as well, nine months ago, it was a lot easier to get content out. The sandbox, get content moving was easy to get traffic it's certainly got harder the last nine months. So I think if I could go back I'd revise things like a four year spreadsheet kind of thing. I think I would revise year one. I think I'd redo that. Yeah.
Speaker 0 01:12:54 Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Almost just shift everything over to the, to the right six to nine months, basically kind of a sandbox. And then from another six to nine months, we probably spot on, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 2 01:13:06 Well we were talking earlier. I kind of now tell people when people say to me, you know, when, when I met my first thousand dollars, I'll when will I get my first 10,000 pages? And I just say to people now just forget about year one. Just, just literally don't worry about it. Um, you know, give it 12 months and then start assessing from there because it from zero to 12 months now it's so sporadic it's you have websites that do incredibly well. You have websites that, you know, that don't, um, I know Chris from the Safari, I know that he did two case studies where I had two websites and it was trying to rank them to a thousand dollars each see which one could get there, the quickest. And one of them in like 12 months now has not got a single view. It, you just eat, it's got like 80 articles on that and he just will not rank for anything no matter what he does.
Speaker 2 01:13:52 So that can always happen. So I think for the first 12 months you can't judge anything really. You just got to sit back and just, just keep doing what you're doing. Um, like I say, I often look at the analytics and I think, Oh, I'm going to slow down the publishing on this mega website. You know, it's not looking great. And then you just think, no stick with it, just stick with it, have the confidence in what you're doing and just keep going for certainly for 12 months. And then I will then I'll reassess it for sure. I mean, if you get to 12 months and you we've got no traffic where I might be on the new year of a podcast, so, you know, I got out of that, was there a right failure to come on a buddy's mega website? I can see the thumbnail now look at your failure. I'm sure that's not that happen. You're looking at a video if it does anyway.
Speaker 0 01:14:40 Cool. Well, no, that that's, that's pretty much everything I wanted to cover today. Carl, you've been a great guest and I really appreciate you sharing everything. I think there's been some really good insights for people. Um, some, some thoughts from, to go away and think about if they wanted to start either a mega project or even a smaller project. Um, yeah. So yeah, we really appreciate you sharing that. Appreciate it. Obviously you've got your YouTube channel, which we'll link to in the, in the show notes, but is there anywhere else that people can reach out and, uh, and get in touch with
Speaker 2 01:15:09 Yeah. Discard. So I do have a discord group. The link is in most of my YouTube videos, or you can just go to <inaudible> dot com. Um, everything's on there. I am doing a website giveaway. I'm currently doing a project where it's a case study. I'm building a website in a crazy niche. Um, I did a poll and said, right, I'm going to build a website. I'm going to build it for a year and I'm going to give it away. It could be worth $10,000. Who knows I'm going to give it away. I said, pick a niche. And I did four sensible niches. Then I did a wild niche of lifestyle hacks. So literally just, you know, 10 ways to clean a bathroom without any chemicals, just lifestyle hats. And I thought nobody's going to choose that either. You know, because you know, um, sure enough, yeah.
Speaker 2 01:15:55 Something like 90% of the volts chills that will, and everybody was like, I want to push you to see what you can do. So I was like, okay, well, wait a minute. Don't forget. You're going to win this website. So you, you want it to be a success. So I'm building that website hour about three or four months into that now. And I'm going to give that away. And again, that is over on Cal robin.com. It's free to enter. You don't have to do anything, just follow along on the journey and whatever that website is in a year, somebody said to me once is worth $10,000. I like I'll give it away. It's going to get given away. It could be over a hundred dollars. So that'll get your hopes, whatever it is,
Speaker 0 01:16:32 Accepting bribes cards.
Speaker 2 01:16:35 I do, I do drink a lot of tea. So you know, some sense of Yorkshire teabags my way you're in your own. Um, so yeah, Cal robin.com head of <inaudible>. The little icon in the menu says give away, it's free to enter. People could go over there and have a girl. Did you just need to sign up to my newsletter basically? So I can pick a winner. I couldn't think of a way of picking a winner. So I was like, if you sign up to my newsletter, I can do a random generator that can pick your name out so they don't have to do anything. And you get updated. It's interesting. Um, some of the articles in lifestyle, hats around kid, uh it's it's it's all right. You know, it's four months in and it's getting a little bit of traffic, so it, but it looks cool.
Speaker 2 01:17:15 The website looks really, really good. If you do want to check it out, I say head
[email protected] and join it and have a look. The domains that I revealed it in my first live stream. So, um, everybody now knows what it is. They can head off and see it and take a look at it. It's a pretty cool dog now. And it's an execution to go over and check it out. Yeah, absolutely. Like say free twins. Just have a girl. Yep. Awesome. No, that's great call. I really appreciate it. Really appreciate your time and yeah. Good luck with the mega site and I'm sure we'll have you back on in a, you know, a, another 12 months to give us an update on where you're at. Yeah. Charlotte. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. It's been lovely chatting with you. It's been great. Let's call it. Cheers.
Speaker 3 01:17:54 Thanks again for tuning in. And I hope you enjoyed the show. If you're listening to the podcast version of this episode, please subscribe on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts, please rate and review. As this will allow us to grow our audience and create more shows like this one. If you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe to the channel and click on the bell to be the first, to know about any new episodes that we release until the next episode. Goodbye.
