Welcome to the end of week 2 Project Phoenix followers. We are now at the mid point of the month long experiment to revive an 8 year old site.
If you follow me on Twitter you know I plan to reveal the niche the site is in this week. So keep reading to find out.
Before that though, lets dive into the review of the stats for this week.
The stats spreadsheet has been updated with the latest numbers which can be found here. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wbxif8m4Qb2vKHI5huDDLGGtGWaQKpWfVinmPusU8Lw/edit#gid=0
I’m not going to make you go look at a Google sheet though unless you want to (you should though it has more information), instead, here are the numbers for this week.
- Sessions : 589
- Page views : 750
- Revenue : $2.31
- Pinterest views : 50,400
- Facebook reach : 47,734
- Facebook Followers : 487
We are a little over half way through the month and the numbers are still looking good.
Let’s go over the wins and challenges for the week.
First the challenges.
Traffic has slowed a bit this week compared to the first part of September, but I’m not worried. 20+ years of running websites has taught me that there are always peaks and valleys and to stay focused on the big picture.
My focus on Facebook has drifted a bit as well. The beginning of the week started strong but I lost focus about mid week and haven’t gained it back yet. As such I haven’t posted as much as I should have on Facebook and my spending is way under budget at this point. I have only spent $90 of the $170 I should have so far.
It’s not all bad though, lets look at the wins.
This week was about focusing on content, and I was able to really focus on this.
My goal was to create 8 new articles this month. So far I have 3 of the 8 created (which is a little ahead of schedule), and I have also started updating old articles, which wasn’t even on the plan.
I’ve really got back into the groove of posting on Pinterest as well. I’m nearly 2/3’s of the way towards this month’s goal of 150 pins posted to Pinterest.
My biggest struggle this week has been other priorities though.
In addition to Project Phoenix, I have 4 other active websites I manage on a day to day basis.
When I started this project I made a commitment to myself that it would not interfere with the running of those other sites.
In order to do this, I only work on Project Phoenix after all of my work for my other projects is completed for the day.
That often means that I don’t get to Project Phoenix work until the evening. Being a morning person, this often means my energy is drained and I get easily distracted.
Luckily Project Phoenix is a fun project, so I don’t have to fight to hard to refocus and find some time to work on it.
Ok enough already, tell us your Niche.
Fine you, have been patient enough reading my ramblings, time to reveal my Niche.
The Project Phoenix niche is ….
Wait! I haven’t gone through my content creation process yet.
Just kidding, niche first, then you can read about my content creation process.
The niche for the Project Phoenix website is ….. Pop Culture!
Did anyone guess it?
It’s a fun niche to be in. I really enjoy creating the content for it which is probably why I am doing so well with the content goal for this month.
So how do I go about creating my content for the site?
Well it’s no real secret sauce. It’s pretty much the same way as everyone always describes in blogs, videos, tweets etc.
Here is a simple breakdown of the steps I take.
Step 1 : Keyword Research
My software of choice for keyword research is Semrush. I have the Guru plan which fills my needs for all of my projects past, present and future.
I start by searching for a broad keyword in the Keyword Magic Tool.
This will return thousands of keywords. From there I narrow it down.
I will filter all the keywords to only show information keywords. As the site is monetized by display ads, I don’t want to compete against ecommerce keywords.
I then narrow it down even more by filtering down the keyword difficulty between 0 and 15.
As this is a small site still in Google’s eyes, I want to start by ranking for easy keywords first and them move up later on.
That gives me a more manageable list of keywords. I then browse through the keywords looking for 2 things. Keywords that fit my niche (there will still be a lot of junk), and keywords that I would be interested to write about.
Step 2 : Content Research
Most of the time, I can’t just sit down and write about the keyword I have chosen to focus on.
I have to research the content so that I can create the article.
I start by searching the web to find related pages.
I will read the pages and take high level notes (these are important, you will find out why in the next step).
I also look for pictures I can use. Be very careful about copyright with this step. Don’t just take any image, know what you are doing.
Step 3 : Content Creation
This step has changed a little bit since I first started the site 8 years ago.
Why? Well AI of course!
I’ve said it before, I’m not a writer, I’m a coder. I suck at writing articles and to be honest, I find it a little bit boring.
Enter AI! My Hero!
Now before you unsubscribe or start spamming me on Twitter/X about content quality etc. Hear me out.
Remember the notes I took earlier in step 2? These are my content blue print.
I don’t just tell AI to write me an article about a subject. I tell AI to write an article about a subject using my notes. I tell it the structure I want, the SEO keywords to target, but most importantly I give it the notes and facts for the content it should be creating.
And honestly it does a really good job. It sticks to the facts I gave it and writes the content making me look like I actually passed my English exams in school.
Step 4 : Editing
Editing is the easy step.
As I already told AI what to write and how to write it, all I have to do it stick the output into Grammarly Pro and make any changes it suggests.
It’s another tool that makes me look like a writing genius and doesn’t criticize me for all the spelling mistakes it has to correct (there were 3 in just this sentence it just fixed).
And that’s it. Stick it into WordPress, add the images and hit publish (or schedule).
Sounds easy right? Well it is, but it still takes a lot of time. Each article is between 2 to 4 hours of work still. But the time is worth it. These articles live for years and over time should pay off at a very high hourly rate.
That’s it for this week. As always I will be tweeting/posting other snippets of updates throughout the week on X/Twitter so make sure you follow me there (@aoakudotcom).
Look for another update email next week where I’ll give another update on the stats and I will also go into depth a bit more about the monetization of the site both current and future.