It's been a while - Happy New Year! I wanted to get in touch with an update on my website plans for 2024!

Sneak preview - I'm experimenting...a LOT!

I've had a steady flow of new subscribers over the past 2-3 months. If you're new here, you signed up via the ConvertKit Creator Network or my Twitter (ain't calling it X)! And you can view past issues of this newsletter. Also check out the top tools I use!

Now, onto the latest news and my plans for this New Year (I am loving that Spring is just about here too - that was a long January, right?!).

Early last month I decided I was going to focus on just two areas this year:

1. Growing my aged domain sites
2. Building and having fun with rank and rent sites!

Today, I'll talk about 1) above. Early next week, I'll share an update on 2) and how rank and rent is going so far!

My two HCU-hit sites & two aged domains

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And of course, they are right. Let me show you two screenshots to prove it.

These graphs will also show how in a post-HCU world where we are all scrambling to adapt (if we haven't already left the game - I hope you haven't), authority is king.

With the surge in AI-content where anyone can spin up a 1000 article site for pennies, how else do Google figure out who gets to rank (aside from promoting Reddit, Quora and big brands, of course).

Here are two of my sites which got hit by the updates:

Ouchies no.1...

In fairness, this one had ZERO EEAT and was a 99% low competition topics where I could easily outrank Reddit and Quora.

My process was simple - find lots of juicy, easy keywords on Keyword Chef, get the articles up, barely look at the content (I have a full-time gig, after all), publish and rank!

Now, Reddit and Quora outrank me (us!). It worked until it didn't.

My sites stats for this one:

Traffic before: 55-60K visits/month

Traffic now: 12-15K visits/month

Revenue: $100-$200/month (covers a week's shopping!).

Ouchies no.2...

This one was in decline for some time, but it does still make some nice affiliate commissions from one high-ticket programme in particular...so I still have hopes for it!

My Aged Domains

In contrast, here are two sites I built on aged domains. I picked up the first one in 2021 and the second at the end of 2022.

The first domain dates from 2009 and the other from 1999!!

Tip: I purchased the 1999 domain from Ivan at Serp.domains (have a browse and enter code NEW05 at checkout for 5% off).

Aged domain no.1:

Aged domain no.2:

My plan with these sites is very straightforward and as you can see, it looks to be working.

Both sites have some very strong links, and for the one you see directly above with the big spike, that is down to acquiring some very high authority links around October last year.

It also helps that the aged domain the first screenshot used to the website of an actual, honest to goodness brick and mortar store in New York City! So clearly Google loves the domain.

But above all, I've spent a lot of money and a LOT of time on niche sites over the past couple of years. If it's too costly or takes too much time to test, I ain't doing it. My approach is test cheap, and fail or succeed fast.

How do I approach content production for these sites?

In line with my current philosophy, my process is seamless, simple, and scalable:

1. I identify topics I want to rank for with research on Google or using a fantastic tool called RankIQ which shows me topics I can rank for via their keyword library (all keywords are hand-picked by the team and are categorised from average to ultra-fast in terms of predicted ranking speed).
2. I also use RankIQ to identify the optimal content length for my article - it will assess page 1 and give you an average count.
3. I then head to Koala (where I have around a million credits remaining from my last purchase - they are going fast!), and have it create a single article (I review the outline first), or I go BULK MODE!
4. Koala will also auto-publish to my website - all I have to do is hit publish! (I LOVE that feature - such a massive time-saver!).
5. Finally, I use Tag Parrot for indexing and to check on index status (they have a nice feature where they monitor your sitemap for new post and auto-index them!). Tag Parrot will also soon show me how many impressions my new posts are accruing.

And that's it! Instead of spending a small fortune on content and a lot of time on managing the whole process, it is streamlined and doesn't take much time at all.

OK, that's it for now. I covered a lot there, so if you have any questions - hit reply! What else would you like to know?

Chat next week about rank and rent (are you curious about this model?!) - and the best of luck with your sites!

Anton

By the way...how are your sites doing? I'd love to hear what you're working on (really), so drop me a quick line.

Disclaimer: this email contains affiliate links, so I may be paid a small commission if you purchase through them. I only ever promote products I use myself and which help grow my sites. Thank you for supporting this free content.

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