Heyyy,

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It’s been a while, and this is on me for being inconsistent – I’ve been immersed in trying to recover my sites, and in building Lasso. (Also, for any would-be affiliates, we upped the commission rate to 30% if you want to promote.)

No excuses, though; there’s a reason my newsletter isn’t as widely heralded on Twitter, etc, as others’ are – I barely send them, so nobody remembers I have one, or that it's good. Adulation must be earned, after all.

(Even though when I do send one it’s always absolute fukkin’ FLAMES. 🔥 )

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The truth is that a few of our largest sites don’t have much Google traffic left to lose (thankfully, we’re so big on Bing).

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And despite that, we’re still making good (low-to-mid-5-figs profit) money. The WORST NIGHTMARE situation really came true, and we’re still here, churning along 🙏.

(...I knew there was a reason I tattooed stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius on my ribs… I guess the mind-numbing 7-hours of pain were worth it in the end.)

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It’s far from ideal, but it can’t really get much worse unless Bing radically changes. Still fucking stressful though. I hate feeling like I’m losing.

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Now, getting to the point...

(I know I have some readers from the bigger media conglomerates, but the vast majority of my audience are everyday SEOs and site builders, so this is mostly aimed at them. If you're part of a larger affiliate empire, this might not be very helpful...)

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Now Google has inflicted this trauma on the business and on me (and perhaps you?), the urge is to adapt – and avoid such future trauma happening again…

…As a result, non-organic traffic sources are the flavour of the month. No SEO influencers are pushing to double down on organic for your niche sites in 2024 😅

This is still difficult though: to push on other traffic sources, you have to reduce focus on organic – thus reducing chances of recovering. Managing all of these systems is more difficult -- especially to a high performance standard.
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We’re working on a few traffic sources, and they’re beginning to show some results.
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One we started just over a week ago, and now is up to 100 clicks per day. The goal is 250 clicks per day to each of our sites by the end of the month, for just over 1K clicks per day total across the portfolio.

These are high-ticket affiliate clicks – they’re often worth $1+ each. This isn’t your display ad $30 RPM nonsense.

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**Before we get more into this – I have a small project I’m looking for a dev for.

It’s to create a small tool that I want to be able to use internally. But who knows, maybe others would want it too and would pay for it…

If you have good technical skills, have used the DataForSEO API before, and this sounds interesting to you – reply to this email with your level of interest, availability, and any other relevant info.***

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So, before we get into it, a warning: this is probably the hardest way to drive traffic from the non-SEO sources.

You are more likely to have long-term success if you build strategies for consistent and high-quality publishing on:

• Facebook
• Pinterest
• Flipboard
• YouTube

…Than from this source of traffic.

Especially if you're a larger brand with social media managers or VAs that can support constant FB and Pinterest posting.

But, if you're short on budget and have time, this strategy will earn you the highest ROI on each hour of your time.

I’m seeing the first embers of success with this, and want to blitzscale it.

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ReddRanking

In the HCU that destroyed so many sites, the biggest winners?

1. Manufacturers of the products in their niches
2. Huge media conglomerates + parasites
3. Quora
4. Linkedin Pulse
5. Reddit 👀

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Reddit, with huge gains, now ranks for a huge number of affiliate keywords.

So, in theory, if you can land top comments, you can get a lot of high buyer-intent clicks.

We’re testing this at the moment, and have driven 100 clicks per day to one of our sites within a week of starting posting.

It’s actually really great, because most Reddit mods aren’t SEOs.

They’re moderating posts that were published THAT DAY. Not the ones posted 9 months ago that suddenly get 2K organic traffic per month on Ahrefs. So most aren’t checking those to remove your affiliate links.

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You can even post your article rather than a straight affiliate link, putting a barrier between the affiliate link and the thread, which is even less likely to get you in trouble – as long as you post it feigning to be a normal user recommending this resource to solve the reader’s problem.

Mods can’t see your IP, though it’s still wise to shield it with proxies. (Reddit admins can, I believe.)

There are also vendors to buy aged Reddit accounts, buy proxies, and buy upvotes. Then as Jason recommends, you can run them all through Adspower to manage all your proxies.

​Jason’s video is the best resource on this, so go there if you want to know more.

I use his system – so there’s no point in me explaining it in depth. It’s his. So check his video out, give him your views, and subscribe to his YouTube.

Even with all this shielding, you should still take action to prevent being spotted as a shill for your affiliate site.

...Post other peoples’ YT videos and other peoples’ helpful content, engage in the subreddits with helpful advice, and generally throw people off the scent. I’m aiming for 10:1 helpful to self-promo ratio, even on aged accounts.

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I don’t think this will last that long. Hence, I still recommend building a more solid brand on FB, YouTube, Pinterest, etc, with more stable algorithms.

(Though, it’s still not your traffic! And algos can change at any time – as we’ve seen with Google!)

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I think this will get far more competitive very soon, and if it gets abused and the quality of Reddit posts declines, Reddit may change the algorithm to spot these posts better, or Google could reduce Reddit’s organic visibility (IMO, it’s here to stay though). Quora is still absolute shite, though, and needs purging from the SERPs pronto.

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But, I’ve had fast results from Reddit, and given the barriers to entry with investing in all the proxies, aged accounts, upvotes, etc, most people will choose not to do this, lessening the competition – at least in the short-term.

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But, there's a limit to the number of ranking articles - and the CTR is low.

For example, I rank top with a clear CTA to click my article for an affiliate term with 1.7K search traffic on Ahrefs, and this only drives 8-9 clicks per day.

So you need scale and dozens of top comments...but without getting caught.

There's limited inventory, and I can't see it driving any single-niche website more than 2-3K clicks a day for any serious amount of time.

So if you want to drive 50K+ clicks per day, Facebook, Pinterest, or focusing on Google Discover content is much more likely to work.

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And Pinteresting

We’re also scaling Pinterest at the moment. I recommend PinGenerator to anyone looking to grow on Pinterest – it’s so great for quickly putting pins together. My team use it daily.

I haven’t really started on Facebook yet – though it’s on my list.

We’re more focusing on building our email systems throughout our sites to have a 2-3 per week cadence, and have the SOPs built so it’s fairly quick and cheap to put each email together yet still high quality. And I don’t need to write and check them myself which is nice.

But really, there’s no right answer on traffic sources to target. It’s niche-specific, brand-specific, and how-fucking-bad-are-you-hit-by-the-HCU-and-desperately-need-some-traffic-and-revenue-from-SOMEWHERE-ANYWHERE-specific.

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We all have finite time… and we’re all making educated gambles on how to spend that time to maximise our traffic and earnings. Really, that's all we can do...

I’m still doing my all to have the best content and grow the best, most omnipresent brands out there. Give Google NO CHOICE but to rank us top again.

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But it's never wise to close your eyes, and refuse to see the writing on the wall.

Diversification is required, even perhaps also a pre-requisite to recovering. By being a multichannel, real brand, we’re likely closer to what Google wants to rank, versus a bog-standard, zero-social-presence niche site.

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Good luck with your Redditting, Facebooking, Pinteresting, Quora-ing, Etsy-ing, Newsbreak-ing, Twitter-ing, YouTube-ing, or however you’re scaling traffic this year. 🫡

Until next time,

Jamie I.F. 🔥

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