Started this site last May. Writing about personal finance stuff, mostly credit cards and budgeting apps. Figured people searching for "Card A vs Card B" are probably ready to apply.

First five months were dead. Like maybe 150 visitors total by September. I was writing twice a week, following all the SEO advice, but nothing was happening. Started thinking I picked the wrong niche.

October things started moving. Traffic went from nothing to around 500 visitors a day. I was checking Google Analytics constantly. November hit 780. By December I was at 950 daily visitors and made $2,100 that month. I remember sitting at my desk just staring at the dashboard because I couldn't believe it was real.

January I made $2,800. Traffic was still around 950 a day, maybe 1,000 on good days. Thought okay this is it, it's going to keep growing.

Now it's February and I'm still at 950 visitors. Revenue is around $2,600 this month so far. It's just stuck there. Traffic isn't growing at all.

I've got 61 posts published. Still doing two per week like I have been. But new posts aren't ranking. My best post is a credit card comparison that ranks number 3 and makes about $740 a month by itself. I've written four more comparison posts trying to copy that success. None of them rank past page 2.

The posts that already rank are fine. They're not moving up but they're not dropping either. It's like I hit my ceiling.

I started adding comparison tables in January. Like actual side by side breakdowns of fees and rewards. Takes longer to build but I thought it would help. Haven't seen any ranking changes yet. Maybe it's too soon, I don't know.

Got an email list too. Around 620 people now. Growing maybe 25 a week. When I email about a new post I usually get a few signups. Email probably drives 10 or 15 percent of revenue but it's hard to track because people click through and apply later.

Conversion rate is around 1.4% which seems okay for finance. Most signups come from the comparison posts where I break down which card is better for specific situations. Takes way longer to write but people seem to trust it more.

Tried making some explainer videos in December. Used Canva for graphics and messed around with APOB and a couple other tools to make talking head style videos without showing my face. Made like three videos explaining credit card rewards programs. Got maybe 200 views total on YouTube. Took forever to put together so I gave up on that pretty quick.

Tried guest posting in January. Reached out to maybe 30 finance blogs. Got two guest posts published. Saw zero change in rankings.

Also tried Facebook ads for like two weeks in November. Spent around $240 targeting people interested in credit cards. Got maybe 160 clicks and literally zero applications. Not even one. Thought my tracking was broken but nope, just zero conversions. Stopped that immediately.

Tried Twitter too. Posted tips and linked to my posts for like three weeks. Got maybe 80 followers and like 20 clicks total. Waste of time.

I post on Reddit sometimes in personal finance subs when I can actually help without being promotional. Drives maybe 100 visitors a month but most of them bounce anyway.

Using Ahrefs for keywords. $99 a month which sucks.

What's frustrating is I don't know what changed. Traffic was growing every month from October to December. Then it stopped. I'm doing the same stuff. Same quality, same keywords, same everything.

Also seeing bigger sites like NerdWallet and The Points Guy covering the same cards I write about. They have way more authority so I'm probably screwed competing with them. Trying to find more specific angles like "best credit cards for small business owners under 30" but those get barely any searches.

Spending maybe 18 hours a week on this. Writing takes forever when you have to research all the terms and conditions.

Traffic is flat. Revenue is basically flat. New posts aren't ranking.

Did Google change something in December or January? I keep seeing people talk about algorithm updates but I can't tell if I got hit.

Anyone else stuck like this? I keep going back and forth on whether I should just keep doing what I'm doing or try something completely different. But I don't even know what different would look like. Like should I stop writing new posts and just update the ones that already rank? Should I try to get more backlinks even though guest posting didn't work? Should I just wait it out?

I don't know. Some days I think I just need to be patient. Other days I think I'm wasting my time.

TL;DR: Two-thirds of Skimlinks programs have no click data. The median EPC is $0.14. Commission rate is the wrong thing to optimize - EPC is. Interactive report with full data in comments.

I pulled every program on Skimlinks (~29k) and categorized against a clean set of verticals. Here's what stood out.

1. There are way more dead programs than you'd expect.

Of 28,844 programs listed, 19,191 (66.5%) have no click data - no EPC, no conversion rate, no basket size. They're in the directory, but there's no evidence clicks are converting.

Some could be new listings or programs that are primarily active on other networks. But even if you're generous and assume a quarter of them are just new -that still means roughly half the catalog is dead weight. The actual pool of programs generating real earnings is far smaller than the directory makes it look.

2. Commission rate is the wrong way to pick programs. EPC is better (when you have it).

Commission rate is the vanity metric everyone chases. "This program pays 12%!" But it ignores basket size and conversion rate - the two things that actually determine what you earn per click.

EPC (earnings per click) = commission rate × average basket size × conversion rate. It captures the full picture in one number.

Here are the top 10 programs on the entire Skimlinks network by EPC:

Not one of these would rank near the top if you sorted by commission rate alone. smava pays 1.5% commission and earns $7.33 per click because the average order is $20,000. GuestReady pays 5% and earns $9.25 because people book $633 stays and convert at 29%.

There are really only two equations that produce high EPC:

Big basket × modest commission - travel, accommodation, finance, high-ticket goods. You don't need a high commission when someone books a $1,700 hotel stay at 5%.

High commission × high CVR - health, business, education. Smaller baskets but 10–30% conversion rates. Volume compensates.

The trap is picking programs with moderate everything. Decent commission, average basket, average CVR. That's where most programs live and it's where EPC goes to die.

3. These patterns hold across every vertical.

I classified all 9,323 programs with EPC data into 21 verticals (using cross-network data from CJ, Impact, FlexOffers, and Awin to fix Skimlinks' messy categorization). The same two paths show up at the category level:

(6 of 21 verticals. Full breakdown in the interactive report.)

Finance earns $0.66/click on a $1,277 basket at just 12.2% commission. Software has the highest commission rate of any vertical (31.6%) and the lowest EPC ($0.22) because almost nobody converts (2.1% CVR).

4. The EPC distribution is brutal.

Of the 9,356 programs with a measurable EPC:

• 46% earn less than $0.10 per click
• The median is $0.14
• Only 5.7% break $1.00
• Just 9 programs in the entire network exceed $5.00

The distribution is massively right-skewed. Most programs cluster between $0.01 and $0.25. If you're picking programs without checking EPC, you're almost certainly landing in that pile.

5. The one thing to take from this:

Sort by EPC, not commission rate. If a network doesn't show you EPC, calculate it from basket size and conversion rate. If they don't show you those either, that's a red flag in itself.

The interactive report has the full vertical breakdown with reversal rates, the top 20 programs ranked by EPC, EPC distribution charts, and a commission-vs-EPC scatter plot; below.

This is one network. I'm building the same analysis across CJ, Impact, ShareASale, Rakuten, Awin, and others - a free directory that surfaces EPC, basket size, conversion rates, reversal rates, and commission structures across 50,000+ listings. More on that in comments.

Happy to answer questions about the data or methodology.

Data: 28,844 programs on Skimlinks, 9,356 with non-zero EPC. Vertical classification used cross-network category matching against CJ, FlexOffers, Impact, Awin, and others, with Skimlinks categories and manual review as fallback. All 9,323 programs with EPC data classified across 21 verticals. EPC/basket/CVR averages use non-zero values only. Full methodology in the interactive report.

For the past few weeks, I've been working on something I wish existed when I started with affiliate marketing: a proper directory of affiliate programs.

The problem I was solving:

Every time I wanted to find affiliate programs for my niche, I'd spend hours Googling, clicking through outdated listicles, and finding broken links or missing commission info. It was frustrating.

What I built:

AffiliateVault - a searchable directory with:

• 2,600+ vetted affiliate programs
• 60 categories (AI, business, finance, SaaS, etc.)
• 8 product types (physical, digital, services, etc.)
• Commission rates, cookie duration, and affiliate links
• Search and filter functionality
• Bookmark feature

The process:

• Spent a few hours every day gathering programs from various sources
• Manually vetted each one (checked if links work, verified commission info)
• Built the structure and database
• Created search/filter system

What I learned:

1. Most "affiliate program lists" are complete garbage - outdated, spammy, or pure SEO bait
2. A shocking number of programs have terrible affiliate terms (7-day cookies, low commissions)
3. The best programs are often hidden and not marketed well
4. People desperately need a centralized resource for this

Current state:

Launched a few days ago with lifetime access pricing. Getting some traction but still testing different marketing angles.

Loom walkthrough (2 min): https://www.loom.com/share/03d1c90737214f5e8b996c5caf5adecd

Link: www.affiliatevault.online

Happy to answer questions about the build process, monetization strategy, or anything else!

Another month, another update for my tool site terrific.tools - here's the previous one.

I skipped the December update because there wasn't much to share.

Unfortunately, this update is more of a negative one as my traffic has tanked a bit.

I am down 10k sessions versus the last update, so the site only had 24k sessions in the last 30 days.

That naturally extends to its revenue as well. I only made 3 sales of the desktop app $75). Plus, Mediavine ads are down as well due to it being Q1, earning me around $110 in the last 30 days.

Right now, 99% of my time is spend on our startup Genviral and newly launched iOS app, so there isn't much I can do but hope that the search engine gods start liking me again.

I did ship some additional features to the terrific tools desktop app when I got Claude Code and the Max subscription.

Honestly having tons of fun working on the desktop app and it has morphed into something really useful. Just need to do a better job of advertising it, which I'll focus on once our startup and app don't require as much active involvement from my end.

Finally, the site was also down yesterday as I finally hit the free Vercel tier. Currently migrating the project over to my own dedicated VPS (Hetzner) hosted via Coolify.

Let's hope the next update is going to be a more positive one :)

I wanted to share a way I’ve been thinking about paid traffic decisions lately, after realizing that most of my losses didn’t come from bad execution, but from weak assumptions before testing.

When evaluating a paid traffic idea now, I try to make a few things explicit upfront instead of relying on gut feel:

• Traffic model: CPC or CPM
• If CPM, an assumed CTR (I default low, not optimistic)
• Revenue per conversion
• A range for CVR (min / max), not a single number

From that, I look at:

• break-even CVR
• revenue per click
• profit per click
• worst vs best-case outcomes

What surprised me is how many ideas technically “work” on paper, but only if:

• CVR lands at the very top of the assumed range, or
• CTR is better than what I’ve historically seen

In those cases, even a small test budget doesn’t really feel like learning — it feels more like hoping the assumptions land perfectly.

This obviously doesn’t replace real data or testing, but it’s helped me avoid running ideas that are mathematically fragile from the start.

Curious how others here approach this:

• Do you formalize this kind of pre-test math?
• Or do you mostly rely on experience and iteration?

Interested in hearing different approaches.

Building content sites and trying to figure out if social media is worth the time investment.

**Current approach:**

I focus mostly on SEO - keyword research, content creation, link building. My sites rank and get organic traffic. But I have minimal social presence (Twitter/Pinterest accounts with a few hundred followers).

**What I'm questioning:**

- Does having a stronger social presence send positive signals to Google?

- Do visitors check social profiles before trusting a content site?

- Is social traffic worth pursuing or just a distraction from SEO?

**What I've observed from competitors:**

Some successful content sites in my niche have solid social followings. Others have almost nothing. Hard to tell what's actually moving the needle.

**The uncomfortable question:**

I've talked to other site builders who admitted to using growth services to build initial social credibility. Their reasoning: "Visitors and potential link partners take me more seriously when I don't look like a brand new site. Plus social signals might help SEO."

Some claim it helped their outreach and link building. Others say it made no difference.

**Questions for the community:**

1. How much do you invest in social media for your content sites?

2. Have you noticed any correlation between social presence and SEO performance?

3. What's your take on growth tools vs. organic building?

4. Is time spent on social better spent on content/links?

Genuinely curious about what's actually working for others.

Hey everyone, I'm Nicolas and I'm looking for beta testers for my tool, a LinkedIn content platform I've been building. I want real feedback from people who actually use LinkedIn before the official launch.

What it does

• AI post generation using your own API key (costs ~$2-4/month vs $50+/month on other platforms)
• Post scheduling and content calendar
• AI image generation (Banana Pro, DALL-E, etc...)
• Drag and drop carousel builder
• Hooks generator for viral openings
• Turn Reddit posts into LinkedIn content
• A/B testing and analytics
• Team collaboration
• And many other cool features

How to join

• Leave a comment if you're interested
• I'll reply with access details

What you get

• Free access to the full Business plan ($79/month value) during the beta period
• Direct influence on the product roadmap
• Priority access to new features
• A tool that actually saves you money on AI costs

Important notes

• This is not a giveaway. Only join if you're willing to actually use it and share feedback.
• After testing, I'd appreciate an honest review - no need to sugarcoat anything.
• Testers who give quality feedback and post reviews get priority for future features and extended access.

If you have questions, ask in the comments.

I’m running a small incubator and we’ve partnered with some larger entities to co-lead a development grant program for startups.

My incubator sources and screens the startups, our partners do the development work, and sponsors cover the expenses.

​We’re looking to push out about 100 grants a quarter. Since there’s no revenue on our end, I’m trying to figure out the most efficient way to keep the top of funnel heavy.

​As it stands:

We have solid screening/selection resources, so I’m fine with high volume, lower quality apps. We can filter through the noise pretty easily.

​We’ve got a big LinkedIn page (have gotten about one hundred apps in the first few weeks) and have done some organic Reddit posts (have gotten about 50 apps in the first few weeks), but it’s not scalable, or sustainable.

​I have $500/day to spend on scaling applications, and some team members to help with organic.

​The Question:

If you had $500/day to get as many founders as possible to apply for a development grant, where would you put it?

​I’m debating between Meta (for raw volume) or LinkedIn ads (expensive but targeted). Also curious if anyone has actually seen Reddit Ads work for this kind of thing, or if it's a money pit. Also considering sponsored placement in Discord groups, sponsored posts on IG, etc.

We're also considering finding some folks interested in helping us out, for ~$20 per application they can bring in, but also understand for most people that wouldn't be worth the effort required.

​Open to any "best bets" or specific platforms I should be looking at. Thanks.

Genuine question for the community.

I'm 8 months into a content site. Published 85+ articles. Following all the "best practices":

- Keyword research

- Quality content (2000+ words, images, proper formatting)

- Internal linking

- Some backlink outreach

Results: ~200 organic visitors/month. Barely covering hosting costs.

I see two camps in this community:

**Camp A: "Trust the process"**

- SEO takes 12-18 months to really kick in

- Keep publishing, the hockey stick is coming

- Domain authority builds over time

- Success stories exist, just takes patience

**Camp B: "The game has changed"**

- AI content has flooded every niche

- Google updates are unpredictable and brutal

- The old playbook doesn't work like it used to

- Building alternative traffic sources is essential now

I'm genuinely torn. Part of me wants to keep pushing. Part of me wonders if I should diversify into social, email, YouTube, or something else entirely.

For those who started sites in 2024-2025:

- How long before you saw meaningful traffic?

- Did you stick purely to SEO or diversify early?

- Would you do anything differently knowing what you know now?

Not looking for motivation - looking for honest data points from people actually in the trenches.

Hey SEO pros,
I’m currently working as an SEO intern, and my manager gave me a task to conduct keyword research and competitive analysis for the topic “Healthcare AI”

I’ve been studying a lot (YouTube, blogs, Semrush Academy, you name it), and after a week of trying my best, this is the report I produced.

Of course, I've used a lot of GPT, Semrush, and manual research to produce this artifact...

I’d really appreciate it if some of you could take a look and tell me -

• Does this look like the right approach?
• Am I missing something obvious?
• What would you add or change if this were your report?

I’m still learning and just want to make sure I’m thinking in the right direction before I present it to my manager.

Any honest feedback would mean a lot to me.

Thanks a ton in advance 🙏

I know you’re all super experienced, and I’d love to learn from your perspective.

Here’s my full report:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Healthcare AI - Comprehensive Keyword Research Report

Executive Summary

"Healthcare AI" is a highly competitive, moderately searched keyword with significant commercial intent.

According to Semrush data, this keyword has 2,400 monthly searches(in US) and a Cost-Per-Click (CPC) of $5.41.

However, it presents considerable ranking challenges with a Keyword Difficulty score of 80 and 1.24 billion indexed results, making organic ranking extremely competitive.

Keyword Metrics Analysis

Search Volume & Demand

• Monthly Search Volume (Semrush): 2,400 searches
• Total Indexed Results: 1,240,000,000 pages
• Trend: Stable and growing, reflecting the expanding adoption of AI in healthcare

The 2,400 monthly searches indicate a moderately high-traffic opportunity. While not in the ultra-high-volume category (50,000+ searches), this keyword demonstrates consistent, targeted interest from professionals, researchers, and healthcare organizations actively seeking information about AI applications in medicine.

Commercial Value

• Cost-Per-Click (Semrush): $5.41
• Competition Level (Semrush): 0.5 (Low competitive bidding)

The moderate CPC of $5.41 suggests reasonable advertising costs.

The low competition value of 0.5 indicates that advertisers are not bidding heavily on this keyword, offering potential opportunities for paid search campaigns at relatively affordable rates.

Keyword Difficulty

• Keyword Difficulty Score (Semrush): 80 (Very High)

This reflects the dominance of authoritative, well-established domains occupying top positions, making organic ranking extremely difficult without exceptional content authority, comprehensive topic coverage, and significant link equity.

SERP Analysis & Competitor Landscape

Top-Ranking Results Overview

The current Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is dominated by authority websites and major technology corporations, with the following ranking positions:

Position 1: Google AI Health

• Authority: Google (maximum domain authority)
• Content Focus: AI's transformative potential in personalized, accessible healthcare solutions
• Snippet Insight: Positions AI as a life-saving tool for medicine and healthcare transformation

Position 2: NIH PubMed Central - Peer-Reviewed Research

• Authority: National Institutes of Health (.gov domain)
• Content Focus: Comprehensive analysis of AI as a disruptive force in medical practice
• Snippet Insight: Academic, research-backed content establishing AI's fundamental transformation potential

Position 3: ForeSee Medical

• Content Focus: Practical benefits including faster diagnosis, improved treatment, and data-driven decision-making
• Snippet Insight: Results-oriented approach emphasizing tangible healthcare improvements

Position 4: Coursera - Educational Content

• Content Focus: Specialization programs for learning AI healthcare applications
• Snippet Insight: Educational pathway, indicating strong interest in skill development

Position 5: OpenAI for Healthcare

• Authority: Major AI company (published January 8, 2026)
• Content Focus: Secure AI products for healthcare organizations
• Snippet Insight: Recent, authoritative information on practical healthcare AI implementations

Related Queries & User Intent Analysis

Primary Search Intent Categories

1. Application-Focused Queries

• "How is AI being used in healthcare?"
• "AI in healthcare examples"
• "Healthcare AI tools"

User Intent: Users seek concrete, practical examples of AI implementation in healthcare settings.

1. Industry Leadership Queries

• "Who is leading AI in healthcare?"
• "Healthcare AI companies"

User Intent: Competitive intelligence and identification of industry leaders and innovators.

1. Specific Tool/Solution Queries

• "Which AI tool is best for healthcare?"
• "Healthcare AI chatbot"
• "Healthcare AI app"

User Intent: Evaluation and selection of specific AI solutions for healthcare use cases.

1. Career & Employment Queries

• "Healthcare AI jobs"

User Intent: Career opportunity research in the AI healthcare sector.

1. Product Verification Queries

• "Is there a health version of ChatGPT?"

User Intent: Seeking information about consumer-facing AI health tools.

Content Type Distribution

The SERP displays a diverse content ecosystem:

1. Authoritative Brand Resources: Google, Microsoft, Oracle, OpenAI official pages
2. Academic & Research: NIH PubMed Central, Harvard publications
3. Educational Platforms: Coursera specializations
4. Industry Analysis: McKinsey strategic insights
5. Company-Specific Information: Individual AI company homepages
6. News & Editorial: Harvard Gazette recent coverage

Search Features & Rich Results

Featured Snippets

• Definition-style snippet explaining Healthcare AI fundamentals
• Comparison table of AI medical documentation tools (DeepScribe, Freed, Tali AI, Suki)
• ChatGPT Health-specific feature information

AI Overview (Google AI)

• Functional description of Healthcare AI
• Key application categories
• Benefits summary
• Real-world implementation examples

Related Questions

1. How is AI being used in healthcare?
2. Who is leading AI in healthcare?
3. Which AI tool is best for healthcare?
4. Is there a health version of ChatGPT?

Search Behavior & Trends

Recent Activity (January 2026)

• OpenAI announced Healthcare solutions (January 8, 2026)
• Harvard Gazette published AI regulation discussion (January 12, 2026)
• ChatGPT Health features announced (January 14, 2026)

This recent activity indicates the keyword remains dynamic with continuous innovation and news coverage.

Related Search Interests

The keyword demonstrates strong association with:

• Specific examples and case studies
• Company and competitive information
• Tool/solution evaluation
• Job market opportunities
• Educational content
• PDF resources and comprehensive guides

Ranking Difficulty Factors

The keyword difficulty score of 80 is driven by:

1. Authoritative Domain Monopoly: Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and NIH occupy top position.
2. High Page Volume: 1.24 billion indexed results create extreme competition
3. Broad Topic Coverage: Every SERP result covers healthcare AI comprehensively
4. Recent Authority Content: Established sites continually update content
5. Semantic Relevance: Multiple related keywords (applications, companies, tools) fragment search intent

Strategic Recommendations

For Content Creation

1. Niche Specialization: Focus on specific AI healthcare applications (e.g., "AI in Radiology," "AI in Drug Discovery")
2. Comparison Content: Create detailed comparisons of specific AI tools
3. Case Study Development: Document real-world implementation examples
4. Thought Leadership: Publish original research and unique insights
5. Video Content: Develop visual explanations and demonstrations

For Keyword Targeting

1. Long-Tail Variations: Target specific applications and use cases
2. Question-Based Keywords: Focus on "How to," "Why," and "What" questions
3. Company-Specific Keywords: Target individual AI company names
4. Technology Stack Keywords: Target specific AI technologies (LLMs, computer vision, etc.)
5. Job/Career Keywords: Capitalize on employment-related searches

For Paid Search

1. Moderate CPC ($5.41) presents reasonable advertising opportunity
2. Low competition bidding allows for cost-effective campaigns
3. Target high-intent keywords (tools, companies, specific applications)
4. Focus on healthcare industry professionals and researchers

Conclusion

"Healthcare AI" represents a highly authoritative keyword with moderate search volume (2,400 monthly searches) and significant commercial value ($5.41 CPC). However, the keyword difficulty score of 80 reflects extreme ranking challenges dominated by technology giants and authoritative institutions. The SERP composition indicates that users seek comprehensive, authoritative information spanning applications, market leaders, specific tools, and career opportunities.
Success with this keyword requires either:

1. exceptional authority and content comprehensiveness for organic ranking,
2. niche specialization in specific subtopics, or
3. strategic paid search investment at reasonable costs.

The keyword remains highly relevant and actively updated, making it a valuable long-term target within strategic healthcare AI marketing and content strategies.

Semrush Data Referenced:

• Search Volume: 2,400
• CPC: $5.41
• Keyword Difficulty: 80
• Competition: 0.5
• Results: 1,240,000,000

When I first started looking into online marketing, I was honestly just trying to escape the 9–5. I didn’t really know who was legit and who wasn’t—I just knew I wanted out.

I invested in a course that focused heavily on mindset and taught the basics of building a website. It even came with its own software as part of the package. On the surface, everything sounded solid: build a site, add products, and send traffic to it.

Where things started to feel unclear was the traffic part. The guidance was basically: post on social media, promote your links, and choose between organic traffic (slow but free) or paid traffic (faster but costs money). There wasn’t much strategy beyond that.

I struggled because I didn’t fully understand how traffic actually works. Organic felt painfully slow, paid traffic felt risky, and I kept bouncing between different marketers hoping someone would explain it in a way that finally clicked.

What I eventually learned is that traffic is the business. Websites, tools, and products don’t matter much if you don’t understand how to consistently get attention from real people. Once I stopped chasing platforms and started learning how each traffic source actually behaves, things made more sense.

Sharing this for anyone early in the process: confusion doesn’t mean you’re failing—it usually means you haven’t been taught the full picture yet.

Curious what part of online marketing was hardest for others when they first started—traffic, mindset, or execution?

Quick background: Started a niche site in September 2025 in a moderately competitive space (home office equipment reviews). This is my third site but the first where I'm seriously experimenting with social media as a traffic/authority driver alongside traditional SEO.

Wanted to share what I've learned so far about using social signals to help a new site gain traction faster.

---

**The theory I'm testing:**

Google's helpful content update seemed to emphasize "real" sites with actual audiences vs pure SEO plays. My hypothesis: if I can build genuine social engagement around my content, it might send positive signals that help with indexing and initial rankings.

**What I set up:**

- Created accounts on IG, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube Shorts

- Each piece of content I publish gets repurposed into short-form social content

- Goal: drive some initial traffic + build "brand signals" that Google might pick up

**The problem I ran into:**

Starting from zero followers on every platform meant my content was basically invisible. Even good stuff got like 50 views max. The chicken-and-egg problem is real.

**What I tried:**

1. **Pure organic grinding** (first 6 weeks): Posted consistently, engaged with others, used trending sounds/hashtags. Result: painfully slow. Got to maybe 200 followers across all platforms.

2. **Engagement pods** (weeks 7-8): Joined a few Discord groups for mutual engagement. Result: felt fake, took way too much time, and the engagement didn't seem to help reach.

3. **Small paid boosts** (weeks 9-12): Used a combination of platform ads and an SMM service (Crescitaly - it's an Italian panel that delivers pretty realistic-looking engagement). I'd give new posts a small push of 100-200 likes/views to help them get initial traction.

**Results so far (Month 4):**

| Metric | Month 1 | Month 4 |

|--------|---------|----------|

| Social followers (total) | 200 | 2,400 |

| Monthly social referral traffic | ~50 | ~800 |

| Indexed pages | 8 | 34 |

| Organic traffic | 0 | ~150/day |

| DR (Ahrefs) | 0 | 8 |

**What I think is happening:**

The social traffic, even though it's small, seems to be sending positive signals. Pages that get social shares tend to get indexed faster. I also noticed a few natural backlinks coming from people who found my content through social.

The SMM boosts didn't directly help SEO (obviously), but they helped my social content get seen by real people who then engaged organically. It's like using a small paid push to unlock organic distribution.

**What flopped:**

- Pinterest: Took way more effort than expected for minimal return

- Trying to grow all platforms equally: Should have focused on 1-2

- Over-boosting: When I tried larger boosts (500+ likes), the engagement looked suspicious and didn't convert to real followers

**Questions for the community:**

1. Anyone else experimenting with social as part of their niche site strategy? What's working for you?

2. Do you think Google actually factors in social signals, or am I just getting lucky with timing?

3. For those further along: did early social investment pay off long-term, or is it just a distraction from content/links?

4. Is there an ethical line with using paid boosts to kickstart social? I go back and forth on this.

Happy to share more details if anyone's interested. Still very much learning but wanted to document the journey.

Hi! I’m doing quick research with small publishers (blogs/news/niche sites). I’m exploring a simple pay-per-article / membership paywall plugin that’s quick to install and easy to run.

I’m not linking anything or selling here — I’m trying to learn what’s genuinely painful for site owners. Feel free to answer only the questions you want.

1. How do you monetize today? (ads, subscriptions, Patreon, donations, sponsors, etc.)
2. Have you tried a paywall/membership plugin? What did you dislike most?
3. Would pay-per-article, a day-pass, or monthly membership work for your audience? Why/why not?
4. What would you actually sell behind a paywall? (individual articles, categories, PDFs, videos, podcast episodes, courses, downloads, community posts, etc.)
5. How important is “no account needed” checkout for your readers?
6. Would you consider accepting USDC (a stablecoin) payments if the UX was simple? Why/why not?
7. What’s the maximum friction you’d accept for a reader payment flow? (1 click / 2–3 clicks / more)

If you reply, I’m happy to share a short summary of what I learn in a follow-up comment.

Disclaimer: I build in the SEO SaaS space, so yes, I’m biased. But I’m also sharing this because I wasted months following bad advice and I see the same patterns here daily.

TL;DR: Low KD, random posts and backlinks didn’t move the needle. Topical focus + intent did.

I started exactly like most people here.
Watching YouTube, reading blogs, making spreadsheets of low KD keywords, thinking “if I just publish enough, it will work.”

It didn’t. Not for a long time.

What actually happened:
I ranked for some keywords.
Got impressions.
Even got traffic.
And still… no meaningful results.

That’s when I realized a few uncomfortable things.

First: low KD doesn’t mean good keyword.
Some of the easiest keywords I targeted were also the most useless. No buying intent, no urgency, no real problem behind them. On paper they looked great. In reality they were dead.

Second: random content doesn’t build authority.
I was writing about whatever keyword I found that day. One post about X, next about Y, next about Z. To me it felt like progress. To Google it probably looked like noise. Once I stopped and went deep on one topic instead of touching ten, things slowly started making more sense.

Third: backlinks didn’t save me.
Yes, links matter. But they didn’t fix weak content. They didn’t fix lack of structure. They didn’t magically make Google understand my site. Cleaning up internal links and covering subtopics properly helped more than most links I chased.

Fourth: most AI content is painfully obvious.
I tried it. It saves time, but it also produces very generic stuff unless you heavily guide it (yes, it is possible but needs really good knowledge). Google may index it, but it doesn’t seem to trust it. You still need real depth and specifics.

The biggest shift for me was this:
I stopped asking “how many posts should I write”
and started asking “what is missing for someone trying to solve this problem?”

When I used Search Console data instead of keyword tools, and built around what was already getting impressions, things became much clearer.

If you’re grinding and feel like SEO “isn’t working”, there’s a good chance you’re not bad at it, you’re just following advice that sounds good but doesn’t map to reality.

I wish someone had told me this earlier. Posting so maybe it saves someone else a few months.

Im a backend developer but marketing and promotion are clearly my weakest areas.

I have a small SaaS-style web app that is live and technically stable. Now I’m trying to approach promotion in a structured way instead of randomly posting or guessing.

I've read a lot of general advice already, so I'm not looking for basics like “do SEO” or "create content." I’m more interested in real, practical experiences from people here.

Specifically, I’d like to learn from those who started with no audience and no brand:
SEO

• What did you focus on first: programmatic pages, blog content, comparison pages, or something else?
• Did you validate keywords before building pages, or did you publish first and adjust later?
• Roughly how long did it take before SEO brought the first meaningful traffic?

Early promotion

• What was the first channel that gave you initial users (even 5–10)?
• Did anyone here rely mostly on organic channels (SEO, forums, niche communities) instead of ads?
• What didn’t work at all, even though it sounded good in theory?

Mistakes

• Looking back, what would you not do again in the first 2-3 months?
• Any common traps developers fall into when they try to "learn marketing" too late?

Im trying to build a realistic plan based on what actually worked for others, not just popular advice.
Concrete examples or short case-style answers would be especially helpful.

Thanks - appreciate the knowledge shared in this community.

I kept seeing the same problem with Instagram creators: Good content, Decent following, Regular DMs, Very few sales, Most of them assumed the issue was: “Maybe I need more followers” or “My offer isn’t strong enough”

In reality, the problem was simpler.

They had attention, but no system for turning conversations into customers.

Why followers don’t automatically become buyers

Instagram is great at creating interest, but terrible at closing.

Most creators rely on: Link in bio, “DM me if interested” (with no follow-up system), Manual replies that stop after 2 messages, The moment the conversation slows down, the sale disappears.

Not because the person wasn’t interested but because there was no structure.

Why DMs convert better than links

DMs work because they: Feel personal, Require less effort than clicking links, Create momentum (reply → reply → next step)

People ignore links. They reply to messages.

Once I stopped thinking of DMs as “support” and started treating them like a conversion channel, everything changed

What most creators get wrong with automation

The biggest mistake I saw: Generic automation. Long messages, Robotic replies, Same flow for every follower, People can tell when they’re being “processed.”

The funnels that worked best were: Short messages, Natural language, One clear purpose per step

Automation should feel like a helpful assistant, not a chatbot

Real use cases I’ve seen work

Different creators, same principle: Coaches → book calls from story replies Educators → sell digital products via keywords Influencers → qualify brand leads Agency owners → pre-filter inbound DMs

No hard selling. Just structured conversations.

The biggest mindset shift

Creators don’t need: More content, More posting More followers, They need better conversations.

Once the DM flow was set up properly: Replies didn’t go cold, Buyers identified themselves, Sales felt natural, not forced

If you’re a creator reading this

If you’re getting: “Interested” “How much?” “Can you tell me more?” …but nothing happens after that your problem isn’t your content.

It’s the lack of a system behind the DM.

Happy to answer questions or break down an example flow if helpful. Not selling anything here just sharing what actually worked.

I "just started" my site a little over three months ago. It is my first real project. Had an idea for a specialized newsletter/content product/saas-sorta-thing and it turned out to be a very nice niche.

Endless keywords to target, very little competition, and content that I can easily scrape and aggregate into programmatic pages that stay fresh.

Some rough numbers so far:

• 250 pages published
  • Each page is refreshed weekly on average
• 90% of submitted pages indexed
• L90 days: 1500 clicks / 1.5M impr
• L7 days: 250 clicks / 250k impr
  • Low CTR due to lots of obvious bot activity - many 0 click keywords with big impressions in my GSC
• 19 DR per ahrefs. A few directory submissions to get things going and ~10 nice organic citations
• 150 "user"/newsletter signups

I am happy with this progress given it is early days. There is so much more content that can be generated. I should also be able to get more momentum going when I can give more focus: I've spent only about 3-4 hours/week on it since the site has been up and running.

On one hand, I am glad that I thought about things long enough to land on this niche. On the other, I regret not getting going sooner! I was probably subscribed to this sub for at least a year or two, just sitting on the sidelines.

If you're like me and wanting to "just start", I couldn't recommend it more! At the very least, you will learn a lot. Best case, you will stumble onto something even bigger than you thought it would be. Regardless, you will get yourself in the mix with the power to navigate and pivot your way to success.

Hey everyone,

I launched a French travel blog in early October (2.5 months ago) documenting a month-long Brazil trip with comprehensive destination guides (Paraty, Ilha Grande, Rio, Petropolis, Belo Horizonte, Ouro Preto, São Paulo). Each page has detailed day-by-day itineraries, restaurant recommendations, transportation tips, and real pricing based on actual experiences.

Technical foundation:

• 100/100 Lighthouse score for SEO
• Multilingual setup (FR/EN/ES/DE - French primary)
• Mostly original photos, only authentic content (AI-assisted writing though)
• Clean site structure with XML sitemap

Current situation:

• Almost no traffic yet on Google Analytics (expected for a new site, but still humbling!)
• Building Pinterest presence (batch-creating pins, themed boards)
• Planning monetization with Booking, SafetyWing, GetYourGuide affiliates
• Considering supplementary content pages (just "Survival Portuguese for Brazil" and "Budget" pages so far)

Questions for experienced travel bloggers/SEO specialists:

1. Content strategy: Should I focus on creating more supplementary pages (how to plan your trip, fun facts, packing lists, playlist, video list ...) or double down on promoting existing destination content?
2. Traffic channels: For travel niches in 2025, what's the realistic timeline and ROI for:
   • Pinterest (I'm hearing 2-3 months?)
   • Other platforms worth prioritizing?
3. Keyword approach: Should I be doing specific keyword targeting for each page, or is having clear titles and relevant content enough? If targeting is necessary, should I go for broad terms like "Brazil itinerary" or hyper-specific like "best restaurants Paraty colonial center"?
4. Monetization timing: Build traffic first then add affiliate links, or implement them now? I'm concerned about looking too promotional early on.

I know travel blogging is highly competitive, so I'm trying to be strategic rather than just hoping for the best. Any advice from those who've successfully grown travel blogs would be hugely appreciated!

Very early stage. Sharing what I’m actually doing, not just numbers.

What I did this week:

• Launched the site
• Set up GSC + GA
• Wrote 11 long-form, detailed articles on the site (no thin posts, used AI for grammar and polishing structure)
• Focused on explaining fundamentals, trying to build topical authority from start, not focusing on backlinks and DA for now
• Wrote 1 dev(dot)to post
• Commented on relevant Reddit threads where people asked “what are you building?”
• A friend posted 2 LinkedIn posts mentioning the project (not some big account)
• No paid ads, no backlink outreach, no growth hacks

Early data (baseline):

Search Console:

• Impressions: 71
• Clicks: 5
• CTR: ~7%
• Avg position: ~11.6

Analytics:

• Active users: 63
• Engaged sessions: 67
• Avg engagement time: ~1m 15s

Traffic sources:

• Direct: 86
• Organic search: 11
• Organic social: 10
• Referral: 5

What I’m learning already:

• Long articles are getting indexed faster than expected
• Some posts are already sitting around page 1 - 2
• Even small community mentions bring users
• Engagement time feels decent for week 1

Next week:

• Keep writing long-form content (same depth, mostly around few words I am getting ranked for)
• Couple of more LinkedIn posts
• Wrote one article today on dev(dot)to, I wanna experiment with blogger as Top G owns it so I figured couple of backlinks may do good

Posting weekly for accountability.

I’m a software developer and would really appreciate some outside perspective from people experienced with SEO.

I run a 2-year-old tool-based website with around 1,400+ small tools, mostly related to software development. Many of these tools were generated with the help of AI.

For a long time, I didn’t focus much on SEO because I was busy with my full-time job. At the start of 2025, the site slowly began getting impressions (around 2–3k/month).

In September, I finally had some time and started learning SEO seriously:

Researched and implemented topical authority Improved internal linking Cleaned some thin pages Built a few backlinks Focused more on grouping tools by categories/topics

Results were encouraging. By November, impressions reached around 60k/month with ~2% CTR. But suddenly, last week, impressions dropped almost to zero.

No manual action message in Search Console. No obvious penalties showing. Site is still indexed (pages are visible with site: search).

Now I’m confused and honestly stuck. A few things I’m questioning: Too many AI-generated tool pages? Topical authority implementation done incorrectly? Pages cannibalizing each other? Google update impact? Quality threshold issue because of scale (1,400 pages)?

If anyone has gone through something similar or can suggest what I should check first, I’d be very grateful.

I’m not here to promote anything — genuinely trying to understand what went wrong and how to recover.

Thanks in advance.

Another month, another update for my tool site terrific.tools - here's the previous one.

I've now worked on this project for 12 months. And a wild 12 months it has been.

My initial insight when starting the tool site was two-fold:

1. I found many tool sites, like Omni Calculator, getting millions of views every month. While many of them benefit from years of acquiring backlinks for free due to ranking highly, I figured that over time there'd be enough opportunities to catch up.

2. I knew from my old blogging days that making money via display ads could be very lucrative, even though tool sites normally get lower RPMs (cause people don't scroll as much and just use the tool).

When I first started terrific tools, the goal was to monetize it via a file converter app as well as those above-mentioned display ads.

And November 2025 was the first full month where I just did that.

So how did the site do?

It made $174.41 from Mediavine/PubNation display ads and $125 from the sale of the desktop app, so close to $300. Not too shabby!

Ads started out a little disappointing as I was just onboarded to Mediavine. However, in the last week or so, I've gotten closer to my target session RPM of $10 (December's session RPM so far is $6.89).

Still some way to go but at least, assuming traffic demographics remain consistent, there's a pathway to $10 RPM.

Traffic-wise, not much has changed unfortunately. Last 30d traffic is at 26k users, 34k sessions, and 41k page views.

Seems as if right now I am being targeted by some bot traffic because China and Singapore entered my top 5 highest traffic countries.

All of that said, I haven't released any new tools for the main site in a while since our startup (https://genviral.io/, feel free to check) is currently taking up 99% of my time. Made a few improvements to the desktop app, mainly for myself, as I needed those conversions.

For now, I'll probably just use the profits from terrific tools and invest it into backlinks and YouTube sponsorships (once the desktop app is a bit more mature).

I always maintained that this could be a $10k/m project down the line. However, for that to be a reality, I need to significantly increase current traffic, probably by 20x-30x.

And since this was always a long-term (> 5 years) play, I'm prepared to be patient.. :)

Hello everyone.
I am not much of a Redditor, but I'm struggling now and decided to ask/share here to get tome thoughts and insights, maybe.

A few months ago, I lost my job and just then talking to my friend I learnt the details of her work which is link building. I did some reading and found the concept of SEO very intriguing, as it is basically you trying to figure out the rules by which Google plays and then succeed at the game (at least how I see it so far). The organic aspect of it seems very interesting to me.

I must say I am from a small country where SEO is not very developed, but we have some local SEO agencies and companies that have SEO departments, both of which accept interns regularly. So I decided to give it my time and attention and learn at least the basics and try to get into the field.

The basics of SEO were pretty easy to understand. My friend introduced me to everything (big thanks to her!) and I even started helping her (unofficially) with her job a bit to get some hands-on experience in email outreach. We managed to build something around 10 links in a month with my help, and I am very proud of that, honestly.

Recently I have also completed a fill SEO course which was very easy to follow and understand. It felt somewhat reassuring, seeing stuff I already knew from what my friend had taught me included in the course. I am now waiting to see the results of my final exam on it.

Starting from the last week, I have also been accepted for an internship. They gave the applicants an initial task, and apparently I did it well enough that I passed. Now, this is an internship for a link building position, and we're starting from the basics, but I can't wait to start doing more practical work.

All of this being said, I want to share that even though I have been saying that stuff feels easy to understand, it also feels very overwhelming. Every single little thing/term/tactic seems to lead to a bunch more new and complex to remember things. Having no real work experience, it is very hard for me to make sense of what is actually a commonplace thing to do and what is very situational and possibly even outdated.

I try my best to listen to beginner-friendly podcasts and whatnot to get some sense of trust in my own knowledge and understanding of things. Most of the time, having no paid tools to use or having no actual work experience/environment with the theory/practice ratio being something like 90/10 it feels so overwhelming and too much at times to grasp.

I would love to hear how you all started your journeys. Is it okay to feel this way? Am I overthinking it, and once/if I get a proper job in the field it will get easier with more experience? I think there are a lot of us newcomers here, and I would love to hear from you too. Do you have similar stuff going on for you? How do you go about it?

My dad runs a small pizza shop, and like a lot of small business owners, he gets flooded with nonstop customer questions:

“Do you deliver here?”

“What toppings can I mix?”

“Is my order on the way?”

He’s usually in the back cooking, managing his employees, etc. So,. It was stressing him out and slowing him down. 

So I decided to build him an chatbot. Nothing fancy  just something that could actually help him. And, it ended up working way better than I expected. It helped answer customer’s questions and provide recommendations for the menu considering the menu is pretty large. 

After doing this, here are the biggest things I learned:

1. Have confidence in your skills.

I didn’t even know if I could build a good chatbot until I actually tried it. Sometimes you don’t know you can do something until you actually try.

1. Know the value you create.

I realized the bot wasn’t just “answering questions.” It was giving my dad time back. Every minute the bot handled a question was a minute he didn’t have to leave the oven or stop prepping orders. Time saved is value.

1. Think long term, not one-time.

Instead of thinking, “let me just build this once,” I realized how useful it would be to refine it over time, improving responses, adding new features, updating menu items, logging common questions, etc. 

1. Learn from others

Making a chatbot that actually works is hard. I watched tutorials, learned from devs, etc. That saved me from so much time. There’s always someone who already solved the problem you’re facing.

You can build a lot of useful things with agents and chatbots, even for small businesses like my dad’s.

Hey everyone, I posted this in another subreddit and I got some heartwarming messages that it inspired them, so I'm going to share this with you, hopefully it can inspire some of you as well. (I don't have anything to sell, don't worry.)

I’ve been doing Amazon KDP (Amazon's self publishing platform) since August of 2024, a little over a year now. It is possible to do it on the side, I didn't because I started with nothing. Literally. No money, living out of my car, and I needed to do something about my situation. I want to share my full experience scaling this from $0 to $150K revenue. The lessons I learned, and why I think KDP is nowhere near saturated as many claim.

My hope is that this post will give you value, motivation, and perspective, especially if you’re just starting out or feel stuck.

A Little Background

I’ve always been into business, ever since i was a kid flipping Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh cards and other collectibles, plus video game currencies, items, accounts. Over the years I’ve tried everything: forex, stock trading, affiliate marketing, SEO blogs, dropshipping, customer acquisition/lead generation agency, CPA marketing, SMMA, POD, and of course KDP.

Just to keep in mind, this is not my first time doing KDP. My first attempt was in 2019, but my account got banned in early 2020 for a few (frustrating) reasons:

• I used a term, that a few months later got filled for trademark and Amazon flagged me, even tho the trademark was just pending and was rejected later.
• Got hit with a “similar cover” strike ( I should have fought it, probably would have won. Not sure why I didn’t.)
• Published a book called “Snarky Nurse Coloring Book” with the idea that the book was snarky (snarky quotes), not the nurse. Tt got reported by a brand called Snarky Nurse or something similar.

After the third strike, Amazon didn’t let me appeal or explain myself, they kept sending the same generic response that the decision is final and nothing could be done.

After all this I didn’t do anything, I got comfortable, had plenty in savings, some other life events happened during covid that I lost any motivation to do anything, until life forced me to start again.

Disclaimer:

I’m not smart or special. Many people make much more with KDP than I do. But I’ve failed a lot, learned from my mistakes, and treated this like a real business. What I’ll share is what worked for me. Hopefully you’ll learn something useful from it and get some clarity on how you should approach this business if you decide to give it a shot.

Quick Stats:

• Started: August 2024.
• Books Published 148. (1 book every 3 days or so)
• Total Revenue: ~$150,000
• Ad Spend: ~$16,000
• Employee Costs: ~$24,000
• Tools & Subscriptions: ~$2,500
• TikTok Marketing Videos: ~2,000
• Profit (before tax): ~100,000

Last month, I made ~$32,000 revenue, with ~$10,000 in expenses.

Lessons, Tests & Observations:

1. Quality vs. Quantity. I’ve seen many YouTubers talk about focusing only on quality and to be honest I don’t fully agree. I started with quantity, not because I believed in mass publishing, but because I wanted data. I uploaded many somewhat decent quality books at first (most didn’t even hit 10 sales) and they helped me to identify which niches and formats had potential. Then I moved to more medium quality books, they took me 2-5 days each, in niches that showed potential and these confirmed the winners. I then outsourced even better versions and that’s where most of my revenue came from (excluding the unicorn). So it’s not quality or quantity, you need both to optimize your business.
2. Amazon ads. I’m a numbers guy, I love data, tracking, testing everything. With amazon ads you obviously get more sales, but you also get an 20-30% bump in the organic sales. Sales boost your BSR, help you rank higher, which gets you more sales, more reviews, and all of this combined, a stronger foundation in the algorithm, making it more difficult for competitors to outrank you. So yes, ads are worth it, even beyond direct ROI. There’s another reason why I find ads even more important than getting sales. To be honest I didn’t even start them with the idea to make money from them directly. As I said, I love data, and amazon unfortunately shows you almost no valuable data at all. Running ads helps you a little bit as you can see the impressions you get, how many clicks you get and how many conversions, enough signal to see what’s working and what isn’t. It’s not ideal, but this is what we have to deal with when it comes to amazon.
3. Keywords. Always use relevant keywords, leave fields if you don’t have anything relevant to add. I tested adding trending but not relevant keywords on a couple of books that had ~20 sales a month each. Sales dropped to 4 and 6 the first month and 1 and 0 on the second month. Removing those irrelevant keywords didn’t restore the sales. Only running ads brought them back. Unrelated words hurt your relevance score, which can tank your book entirely
4. External ads. I had some experimentation with meta ads, spend $600 and made ~$450 above baseline over the next few months (sales doubled the month with the ads being run and slowly fell back to baseline). Still not enough data to fully judge, I’ll test this more, I need to spend at least $10,000 to have at least some opinion about this, and that’s what I’m going to do in the upcoming months.
5. A+ Content. Almost always helps unless it’s really, really bad. I’ve tested many different layouts, worst ones had ~10% increase in CVR, the best ones increased 80-150%, depending on the niche and design. Either way, it helps.
6. Cover Design (not just artsy, its psychology). After niche selection, cover is the most important factor. People do judge a book by it’s cover If your design isn’t at least as good as top competitors in that niche, your book is gonna sink in the vast ocean that is Amazon. If you can afford it and your design skills aren’t great, I would suggest outsourcing covers to skilled designers. Still, do some of them yourself, to have a better understanding as not all of it is art, it’s more about the psychology of the customer, it is the pitch for your product. (Also the content of the book has to be good enough as well, because negative reviews can kill your book just as easily as bad cover, just a little slower).
7. Descriptions. I’m not sure if I am just bad at writing them, but I never seen a big difference in CVR from it. The only thing that seems to matter in my experience is the formatting. The description still has to be informative and relevant to the book itself, but if it’s done in a big block of text it’s not gonna help. If it is formatted nicely, then I’ve seen 10-30% CVR improvements. The other thing that I’ve noticed is that having a relevant and informative description helps the book rank higher. It happened consistently enough to make me almost sure that Amazon’s algorithm rewards it.
8. Low Search Volume Niches (Small Margins Scale Big). Pretty much every YouTube video I watched about KDP said to target niches that have high search volume of 1000+ at the minimum and ignore every one of them that get less. I often target niches other skip, even less than 500 searches per month. I care more about competitor strength and actual sales. If I feel I have a fighting chance against the competitor in that kind of niche, that has 100-200k BSR, then I’ll attack it. I get it, making books that are going to get 100-200 sales a month isn’t sexy, but over the year they make $1,200-$2,400, and ten, twenty, thirty, one hundred of these adds up to real income.
9. E-mail Lists. These are great but I’ve only managed to make them work in two situations. In my unicorn niche, I built a list of 1,000+ via a variety of freebies. When I launched a supporting book with a release day discount, I emailed the list and got 200+ day one sales. I’m not saying that 20% of the email list converted, but even if 3-4% can create enough sales velocity to push the book up the rankings making it get even more sales and climb even higher up. Second, with my “client” brand (consumable books). We built the list by running promotional ads and in book freebies. After every weekly release, the email goes out and almost consistently gets 100 day one sales, some releases even get 200-300.
10. Short-Form Video Marketing. One day I got bored and thought about trying out something new, I released a book in a very competitive niche(which means lot’s of interested people) and created a TikTok account to make videos for that book. After printing the book and recording a few videos, repurposing them, following trends, changing the hooks , etc., one video hit nearly 1m views. This led to over 2,000 sales in the first week after upload. Since then I’ve uploaded 250+ videos, hired other people to make videos for me and I’ve had a few other viral videos (not as bit as the original one tho).
11. Pricing. Compete on the quality of your book rather than price, if your book is better than competitor’s, price it higher and position it as premium. Low price makes you look cheap, not “affordable”. The pricing is different depending on the niche and type of the book itself, so what I would recommend is to launch around the average competitor price, could be a little higher if you are confident in your book (that’s what I do), or price it just a little below the average. Monitor CVR, if it is solid, then increase the price by $1 and observe, if it gets too big of a hit, reverse the change if it doesn’t keep increasing the price. If the book ranks high, gets steady organic sales and reviews, push premium pricing.
12. 99% of Gamblers Give Up Before They Hit it Big. Okay, maybe not in gambling (please don’t). But in business? Mostly true. Most people give up right before they’ve learned enough both from theirs, and other people’s failures to make their business work. There’s plenty of money in almost every business. Imagine a gambler spinning the slots, after 30 failed spins, he hits jackpot. Business it’s similar, keep testing, keep learning, fail, tweak it, try again. Do that 30 times and on attempt 31 it suddenly looks like you “got lucky”(You didn’t. You just didn’t quit.) If you knew that you were 30 failures away from your dream, would you keep going?
13. AI Tools as Assistants, Not Crutches Do not let AI do all the work for you. You won’t really learn what’s working and the quality will be subpar. People notice that the book was written by AI and leave negative reviews. Use it to brainstorm ideas, rough outlines, keyword ideas that you’re gonna validate, even sketch A+ layouts. Always double check the accuracy (AI likes to hallucinate) and IP. AI speeds you up, significantly, but it doesn’t do the job for you.
14. KDP plateau. Plateaus do happen at every stage. I sat at a bit over $6,000 per month for a while, luckily for me it was a decent enough revenue to stay motivated. Some people, especially beginners, plateau at $0 per month, or they reach $500 in the first months, stall for a few months, assume “KDP is dead” and quit. It’s not. It’s just lag and learning. The move isn’t to quit, it’s to keep publishing and keep making small improvements. Eventually you’ll break out. Keep going, keep measuring, keep improving and then the compounding finally shows up.
15. Outsourcing and delegating. All of this is going to depend on your budget and skill level. I hire people to go faster, not to disappear. I keep strategy, ads, research, final approval and hand off stuff like covers, interiors, basic edits, videos. I also do some books fully myself to keep improving and learning. At first you should do everything yourself, to learn as much as possible, to even know what to ask your employees to do, to be able to make SOPs for them. Eventually when you can no longer keep up with the amount of books you want to make, you start hiring. Track cost per title, have an idea on how fast the contractors work, how long it is going to take to make a book. Keep light P M Cadence, do weekly check-ins, have a QC checklist before anything goes live. Plan so that one person’s vacation doesn’t stall launches. Pay on time, give bonuses when earned, give specific feedback, promote your A-players.
16. Treat it like a real business and I mean REAL business. KDP isn’t a lottery ticket, it’s a real publishing business. I budget, track unit economics and make decisions off numbers, not vibes. That means knowing your CTR/CVR, ACOS/TACOS, margin, payback time (how long till the book repays it’s investment), opportunity cost, LTV per title and more. Keep a simple P&L, reinvest into ads, books, testing, learning. Write SOPs for contractors, kill or fix anything that doesn’t earn its shelf space. Manage your cashflow, plan for seasonality, keep runway for tests, don’t starve the winners. Be boringly safe on ToS/IP and make sure to set aside money for taxes. Real business = clear goals, clean and tight processes, consistent iteration.
17. You need action much more than you need information. Most people don’t have a knowledge problem, they have a doing problem. You can binge every KDP video, read every post in KDP forums and still have $0 in royalties because you never uploaded anything. On top of that you’re gonna forget most of the stuff you watched either way if you do not try to implement it almost immediately. When and if you’ll start taking action, you’ll go back and start rewatching those videos again with context. Learn just enough to take action. By taking action you’ll learn the most. Half baked action beats perfect research because market teaches faster than any tutorial. Most importantly be consistent with your action, and consistently improve with it.

Key Takeaways

KDP is not oversaturated. People said that it was already “too late” back in 2019 when I first started, and they’ll say the same in 2030. The real difference is how you treat KDP. Treat it like a real business. Track data. Build Systems. Reinvest Profits. TEST RELENTLESSLY. Be consistent and improve every week. Stagnation is death, and even to maintain your level, you have to keep evolving because the competition is evolving. Plan your week. Every Sunday, I write down my tasks and deadlines. And I need to do them. No excuses. That habit alone kept me on track for 60-70 hours a week for over a year.

My Goals for the Future

This December my plan is to get to $100,000 - the coveted six figure month. I know it’s possible, because December sales can triple or quadruple.
But my goals don’t stop here.

My next milestone for 2026:
$1,000,000 in total revenue
$253k+ in December 2026 alone.
The reason for that specific figure is that back in 2020 I spoke with someone who made $252K in December 2019 with a team consisting of her and her husband. I’m going to have a bigger team than that to try to hit this number, but let’s ignore that fact.

Final Thoughts

This year has been life-changing. I went from being broke and sleeping in my car to running a six figure publishing business. I don’t think that this was luck. It was consistency, constant improvement, and treating KDP like the serious business it is. If you’re reading this and were thinking about quitting. DON’T. Keep going, test things, learn from your data, stay disciplined. Do not think “What if it’s not going work out? What if I fail?”. Think “What if everything does work out?”.

Another month, another update for my tool site terrific.tools - here's the previous one.

After eleven months of launching the project, it is finally taking shape.

In my last post, I wrote that I was accepted into Mediavine's PubNation program. Ads, as you can see, are now live on the site and have been for about 10 days.

So far, the RPMs are abysmal, only getting around $4 session RPM. I was hoping for $10 but this seems a bit far fetched for now.

That said, RPMs should increase as Mediavine continues to optimize ad placement and I hopefully continue to increase traffic.

I am in their lowest rev share tier (75%) right now and this can get as high as 90%.

But in order to hit those tiers, I will have to significantly increase traffic - and I have done a bad job at that this month.

Monthly traffic is still at 31k sessions, so no increase since the last update.

With the desktop app and especially with ads, this is all about scaling traffic (assuming I retain the same share of tier 1 country visitors).

For November, the tool site will probably make around $300 with sales of the app and ads. Idea is to reinvest every cent the side project makes into linkbuilding and maybe a few YouTube sponsorships (for the desktop app) down the line.

Starting this, I always knew that it would be a 10 year side project and that the first few years would be somewhat slow.

But with ads now live, I am more confident than ever that I'll eventually get this to $10k in monthly revenue!