The Interview

1. Where do you live?

Liverpool, UK

2. When did you start creating content?

Around 6 years ago.

3. Are you a full-time Creator?

Yes, It’ll be two years at the start of September 2022.

4. What was the “Click” that made you decide you can make full-time money online?

When my first site made its first £100 in a month (about 6 months in) I knew it was possible to do this full time and that became my dream.

5. How many niche sites have you created?

8

6. How many are you still running now?

6

7. Have you sold any sites or online businesses? And what was the ROI like?

I bought a site on Flippa a few years ago, simply because it was cheap ($350) and had a few decent articles in my niche that were ranking and driving traffic.

I moved all the articles over to my site, redirected them and then a year later sold the site for $700 despite it having fewer articles and getting half the traffic. Was a nice little flip.

I plan to sell some of my older neglected sites but always get cold feet and haven’t done it yet.

8. How many sites or online businesses have failed or not gotten going?

2 – when I first started out as had a site about asian footwear and another one about chalk, unsuprisngly neither of these worked out as they were too niche and, more importantly, of no real interest to me.

9. How much are you earning each month?

• $5,001 – $10,000

10. What are your current streams of revenue?

• Affiliate Sales
• Display Ads

11. What are your Top 3 on-page SEO strategies?

1. I like to make information as easy to digest as possible.

For example, if you’ve got a paragraph that mentions some data such as how heavy something is, then chuck a quick comparison table in there. This immediately breaks the content up, makes it more interesting and may help you win a snippet.

2. Use line breaks – loads of them!

I used to publish all my content with two or three sentences per paragraph, this looked fine on desktop but on mobile two or three sentences is a huge wall of text. I use a line break after every full stop to make content more readable and to help improve ad revenue.

3. Use the conclusion well.

The conclusion of an article is another chance to win the featured snippet, so use it to craft a concise and clear summary of the key action points within the article.

12. What’s the biggest issue(s) that you’re facing today?

Working out how best to use my time and which sites to focus on. Sometimes I wish I just had one site…though with the recent core update I’m glad I have a few as things are more likely to balance out.

13. What tool(s) do you rely on the most?

• Ahrefs
• Google Search Console
• Keyword Everywhere

14. What has been the biggest mistake you made?

Focusing exclusively too much on links in the early days. When I first started out I spent a lot of time and money chasing links that, looking back, were low quality and added no value to my site. Focusing exclusively on content for at least the first year would’ve probably sped things up quite significantly.

15. What has been the best decision you’ve made?

To put ads on my sites. For the first 3 years of my content publishing journey, I avoided ads like the plague and focused exclusively on affiliate sales. This was because I was worried about slowing my site down and losing rankings.

Eventually, I decided to give them a go just to try them out – my income quickly doubled and made it possible for me to do this full time.

16. What’s one thing that you felt accelerated your journey the most?

As I’ve mentioned…giving ads a go doubled my income. I’m still trying to diversify my income now too, I’ve tried things such as setting up BAT rewards, using affiliate chatbots and I’m working on my first ebook at the moment too.

17. What’s your 12 month goal?

One of my newer sites has just hit $200/month – I’d love for that to be at $1,000/month within 12 months…need to get publishing!

18. How do you stay up to date on SEO, affiliate marketing, display ad, and other news?

• Twitter
• SERoundtable
• YouTube (rarely these days though)
• An SEO Whatsapp Group

19. What do you eat or drink for fuel to keep going?

I eat wraps all the time; quick, easy, nutritious and healthy..though that depends on what you put in them – typically ham, cucumber and tomato for me.

20. Where can people follow you?

• Twitter: @dan__richardson
• Blog: danrich.co 
• YouTube

BONUS: Anything else you’d like to share that can help others?

Consistency is king when it comes to building an income from niche sites, keep at it!