Dealer Dan, pictured here with WWE Superstar Mick Foley, has been in internet marketing since 1996. He likes hugs, long walks on the beach, and making money while wearing his jammy jams. For more information, you can read all 
About 4 years ago, I purchased the domain NoDepositSites.com. The No Deposit niche is an extremely competitive one, and I thought that it’d be a great website to make a case study of – basically chronicle everything I do on the website with the hope that it could be a success. I’d also do it 100% by myself to show it can be done. Then it would make for a very interesting read for you guys in the form of a free e-book – going from nothing to a top site in a competitive market.
Unfortunately it didn’t work out. I put a couple of months work into it, but life got in the way. I had an unplanned family vacation followed by a business trip and then an illness plus some personal stuff. I stopped updating the site in September 2012. Looking at the history of the site I decided to try and get it going again with a monthly article beginning in 2014, but I gave up a few months later.
The site wasn’t a success. Traffic trickled in(and still continues to do so) and I made exactly $3567 profit from the site. It seems to pick up an occasional depositor even now – but something like 1 in every 4 months. However looking for that silver lining – a quick glance at analytics shows a couple of potentially money keywords that people aren’t targeting, so if I ever want to get into this market again I can produce a site that will at least get 500+ uniques a month just from that traffic.
While cleaning up my computer today I came across this article and thought I should share it on here. I mean hell I wrote over 12,000 words – might as well publish it. It’s also interesting to see my mindset back then and what’s changed from 4 years ago. A quick glance over this and right away I’m seeing that I was nowhere near aggressive enough with link building, had no social marketing plan and more than anything was just impatient.
Here’s the article:
Prologue:
I’ve written lots of affiliate guides, and mentored many affiliates over the years. However I’m also a big believer of “Do what I do, not what I say” and I’ve always found that is the best learning experience.
Whether it was learning to drive or learning to code, I always prefer being thrown into the “drivers seat”, and having a more interactive experience. I’ve never found you can learn things too well when just being TOLD what to do.
That’s why I decided to write this e-book, chronicling my experiences with building a website. Rather than sit here and say “Do this, now do that” I’ll cover EVERYTHING I do, on a day to day basis. Plus – most of those affiliate guides deal with just building a website – I want to tell you about the journey AFTER the website is complete and live, as THAT is where the real money making techniques come in.
On January 17th, 2012 I purchased the domain https://www.NoDepositSites.com from the Poker Affiliate Listings Marketplace. It was technically an existing website, although there’s really nothing to the website. Some information about it:
– One page website, with 200 words of content.
– Domain initially registered for November 23, 2011.
– No analytic stats upon purchase, although seller stated “About 50 uniques a month.”
– I installed Google Analytics, a stat tracking program. From January 17th, 2012 to July 11th, 2012 the website received just 11 unique visitors. It was generally very poor traffic, with 3 hits for “no deposit sites”, 1 hit for “bankrollmob mobpoints pokerstar freeroll” and 1 hit for “no deposit bonus pokerstrategy 150
Here’s the old design:
In short, it’s basically an absolutely abysmal website. But I plan to change that! Let’s get started on my journey to making this site a success! The phrase “no deposit sites” gets 12,100 global searches according to the Google AdWords Keywords Tool, and there’s plenty of other ways to word that, so there is a lot of potential traffic out there.
JULY 11, 2012:
As you can see, it’s been awhile since I purchased the domain and actually got around to building it. That’s because it’s 2012, and in 2012 you can’t just throw up a five-page mini-site and expect it to rank. You really need to be aiming for quality websites these days – the type of websites that if someone asks “What is the best website for this market?” everyone in the world would link to yours.
So I wanted to wait until I had many existing projects cleared up before starting on this one. And here I am – ready to start NoDepositSites.com!
Now I actually go to my cottage for a week on July 21st. When I am there, I don’t have access to any internet or anything. So I basically have myself a “deadline” date – by the end of July 20th, I need to have the website up and running, ready to share with the world.
Easy as pie.
The first day of building a website is the most important one. I like to accomplish two things on the first day:
(1) Identify The Audience
(2) Broad Overview of the Content
Let’s take those one at a time:
#1: Identify The Audience
You really need to have a general understanding of who your audience is, before building a website. Not only because you want to tailor it to their needs – but you can also plan out any potential budgets or marketing campaigns based on this.
Sometimes you may need to do research or guess-work depending on your site; but in the case of NoDepositSites.com it’s very easy. The market is mainly gamblers, looking to play at online casinos, online poker etc without depositing, and with the chance of winning real money.
It could be because they’re broke, or because they don’t want to invest their own money or because they just don’t trust gambling sites online with their credit card details. The end result however is the potential for commission for these type of visitors is low. Sometimes you can get lucky and that 1 player you send for $10 free at an online casino ends up becoming a whale and losing $10k a month – but those are the exception.
I’m most likely going to get a lot of players who lose the money and move on. There’s going to be a large quantity of traffic required from my end to bring in any commission. Based on that(and because I want to offer you a guide that ANYONE can do) the costs for this website are going to be minimal. I’m going to do practically all of the work myself – something that any of you can do.
The second thing I like to do is:
#2: Broad Overview of the Content
At this stage I don’t want to write out EVERY article I am going to have on the site – that’s bloody boring! I would much rather map out the site in terms of categories and go from there. Based on that, here are the categories/sections of the websites I plan on having built by the July 20th launch date:
– No Deposit Poker Sites
– No Deposit Casino Sites
– No Deposit Bingo Sites
– No Deposit Sportsbook Sites
– No Deposit Blog
– No Deposit Information
– Minimum Deposit Bonuses
Now before I explain each category and offer a general description of what each one will be, I need to explain the value of content.
I like to break my content up into three separate categories. They are Primary Content, Secondary Content, and Additional Monetization Content.
Primary Content: Primary content is the “meat” of my website – the pages that are going to be converting the most. If you ran a roulette website for example, then this content would be articles like “Play Roulette Online”, “Play Roulette for Mac” etc.
Secondary Content: Secondary content is the content that isn’t going to convert visitors right off the bat, but is there more as an informational resource. To use the roulette example again – this would be articles on the history of roulette, or the rules of roulette.
The purpose of this content is twofold: to enhance the user experience, and to attract more visitors via search engines and longtail keywords. It enhances the user experience because it is quality content which will help the user out. It will also prioritize my website as a primary resource on the niche that I am targeting. And it will also attract more visitors usually via long tail keywords, such as “how do you play roulette”, or “what does a roulette table look like”.
Additional Monetization Content: Additional Monetization Content is content which will provide a secondary source of income. As an example – I had a website dedicated to the TV Show Alcatraz (https://www.AlcatrazTVShow.net). The primary source of income on the website is Google Adsense. We write a lot of content, and our income stream comes from people reading the content then clicking the ads within, as served by Google Adsense.
However we have also created additional monetization content – in the case of Alcatraz, it’s a whole merchandise section, where we (1) created our own merchandise and (2) linked to websites that offer merchandise such as Cafepress and Amazon, via affiliate links.
That is what additional monetization content is – content outside your primary source of income, which is still expected to earn income via other means.
Okay, now to quickly explain each category:
No Deposit Poker/Casino/Bingo/Sportsbook Sites: I can group all of those categories together as it is essentially the same thing. It is the primary content – the “meat” of the site.
Each of these categories will list all possible no deposit offers. Probably displayed in a table format, with the basic details then the option to either take advantage of the offer immediately, or read more about the offer(ie: terms and conditions, information about the casino that is offering this no deposit bonus etc.)
No Deposit Blog: This is a combination of secondary content and additional monetization content. Interactivity and User Experience can be the key to any website.
Within the blog, I will provide both text and video recaps of me taking advantage of these no deposit offers – showing how the process works, how long it took to get the bonus, what games I played etc.
This is secondary content because its main aim is to bring visitors back and keep visiting the website(building the brand trust) and additional monetization content because with visitors actually seeing that this isn’t some type of scam, they will be more likely to sign up and participate.
No Deposit Information: Purely secondary content, focusing on information for the visitor. It will deal with topics like “What is A No Deposit Bonus?” And “Why do Casinos Offer A No Deposit Bonus?”.
This section will ideally bring in long tail traffic and while it won’t directly convert – hopefully it encourages the visitor to stick around, check out other pages on the site and convince them to convert.
Minimum Deposit Bonuses: This is additional monetization content. While my visitors may not want to deposit at a casino, the lure of a big bonus could change that.
What if they could deposit just $20 and get $100 in bonus money? For some people, that’s a big enough bonus to get them to change their minds, and try out an online casino.
So that section will deal directly with those types of bonuses, broken up into sub-categories of poker, casino, sports and bingo.
And that’s it for today! I like to let the ideas flow in my mind. Now I have a general idea of what the website is going to be about and who is visiting it, I like to take a day(including sleeping on it) to really let the ideas propagate in my head, in case I stumble upon any other great ideas.
I also find some of the best work you can do is build anticipation. I am anxious to start work on NoDepositSites.com but by forcing myself to wait a day, I will approach tomorrow with a TON of enthusiasm and a stronger work ethic, meaning I will likely accomplish much more.
July 12:
Now you will note I haven’t talked about design yet. At this point, I’m focused more on getting the content up on the site, before worrying about the design. Honestly, with some sites I don’t even use a spiffy design – I stick with the default WordPress theme. The sites I do that for are websites where I don’t know if there is going to be much traffic(or the traffic that I want).
For example – I launched the website RivalCasinoList.com and I used the basic WordPress Theme on it. The reason is that I wasn’t sure if there was money on a site like that, so why waste time, effort and money on a beautiful design if there is no traffic to see it?
Now in this case I KNOW there is traffic, so I WILL be focusing on the design. But not until I have a website that content wise, I’m happy with and ready to share with the world. THEN I will focus on design.
It also will help to have the majority of the content up, because I know what the site will actually contain, and can plan a design around that.
Today I want to get a solid content plan going, then focus on actually writing some content. When I launch a website, I aim to launch with 30-50 articles, with 1 article per day going up for the first month.
This means that when the website launches it is already a solid site worth visiting, and 1 new article a day is giving the search engine bots constant reminders that you are out there, always increasing the quality of your site.
So for my launch date, I aim to have 3 articles in each category. That is 21 separate articles as I have 7 categories. If we include the homepage, and index pages for each category that is 8 additional pages. 29 pages total by July 20.
On top of that, as I am going away for a week I will need 8 additional articles that I will schedule for the week I am away but I will worry about that later.
Now I like to get specific – know exactly what I am going to write over the next couple of days so I don’t lose my focus. So here is a list of specific content I will be writing:
No Deposit Poker Sites:
1. Poker 770 $7.70
2. 888 Poker $8
3. Pokertime $5
No Deposit Casino Sites
1. Casino Titan $7
2. WinPalace $10
3. Pantasia $15 Free
No Deposit Sportsbook Sites
1. Betfair “Free” 20 Bet
2. 5Dimes 50%-70% Bonus
3. Bet365 100% Mobile Bonus
No Deposit Bingo Sites
1. Bingo Gala $10
2. OnlineBingo.com $10
3. BingoPalace.com $10
No Deposit Blog
1. No Deposit Bingo Blog
2. No Deposit Casino Blog
3. No Deposit Poker Blog
No Deposit Information
1. What Is A No Deposit Bonus?
2. How Do No Deposit Bonuses Work?
3. How to Withdraw A No Deposit Bonus
Minimum Deposit Bonuses
1. Loco Panda 400% Deposit Bonus
2. OnlineBingo.com 300% Deposit Bonus
3. Titan Poker 200% Deposit Bonus
To quickly explain the specific no deposit offers I mentioned: I did some quick research on other websites targeted towards the no deposit market. I looked for websites that offered the same no deposit bonus – this meant it was most likely a standard bonus and I wouldn’t have to negotiate for it – just sign up and log into the backend and instantly be promoting it.
By doing this it saves me time – I don’t have to sit around and negotiate or discuss with an affiliate manager for the best deal. I can just get to work on building the site. Plenty of time later to work on exclusive deals.
There is also ZERO No Deposit Sportsbook offers at this time. However I still want to build that section, so I have decided to add minimum deposit offers there in the meantime. This also gives me an additional idea – on pages like the “No Deposit Poker Sites” index page for example, I will also list minimum deposits there.
There’s probably 500% more chance of a minimum deposit player making me money than a no deposit player, so it is smart for me to push that. I’m also going to call that section “Minimum Deposit, Big Bonus” or similar I believe to fully capture what the section is about.
Now it’s time to start writing the content. Some people may prefer to create a structure first. For example, the first paragraph could talk about the no deposit offer. The second and third paragraph could talk about the casino, and the fourth and fifth paragraphs detail the terms and conditions. You can even break it off into different sections. Others prefer a more natural, personal style to the writing.
I have decided to go with a fact-based, reference-like structure for the specific no deposit deals and minimum deposit bonuses, with personalized content for other areas of the site.
So, writing time. I decided to get 2 articles done today – no need to overdo it. The 2 articles I wrote were:
1: Loco Panda 400% Deposit Bonuses (1249 words)
2: OnlineBingo.com $10 Free (993 words)
I chose those two articles because they all require a structure – and what I really want to do is get my structure down early on. So I will write both of those, then let them sit in my head for 24 hours while I decide if there is anything else to add.
I also recommend that you keep the “to do” list of content handy and updated – it helps you keep on top of things, and really makes you feel like you are making progress.
That’s enough for today. A solid start on the site already however, and I aim to have the launch content all wrapped up within the next couple of days, which is half the battle won.
July 13:
Before I list what I did today, I want to write a little bit about the content structure of my no deposit offerings, and why I came up with this structure. Here is the structure for the no deposit and minimum deposit articles:
– Quick summary of bonus, with step by step instructions on how to claim.
– Terms and conditions of bonus.
– Additional bonuses and promotions offered by that brand.
– Countries eligible for bonus.
– Deposit/Withdrawal Methods offered at that brand.
– Review of that brand.
The most important part of these articles is the “quick summary” area. People like to skim, or glance quickly at a page, and this is the section that will be looked at most. So I need to do the hardest sell on here. Also each section utilizes an H2 tag while H1 tag is used for the title of the article. This is basic SEO. If I have any sections within those sections or less important sections on the page, I’ll use H3 tags.
By offering step-by-step instructions, it encourages the visitor to immediately start to follow the steps, without thinking any more about the bonus. It takes their mindset from “What’s this all about then?” to “Oh steps – I better follow these!”. By offering the bonus in a step by step method too, it shows how easy it is to claim the bonus.
The terms and conditions of the bonus are something that I will have to keep an eye on. It’s good to have that on there – however some of these bonuses aren’t as good as they first appear, and once you get to the terms and conditions it may turn off some people. While I feel I should always write the T&C, I will be using a program called Clicktale to study how my users actually browse on the site. If I see them visit the site, start to read the terms and conditions of the bonus then get turned off, I know that I will have to push that section down the page.
The rest of the content is generally a mix of secondary promotional content and resourceful content. Listing what countries are eligible for the bonus or the deposit and withdrawal methods is unlikely to get me many additional sales – but it is helpful for the user, and thus expands the quality of the page. Sections like the “Review” and “Additional Bonuses” is content written purely to sell the user, if they aren’t yet sold on it.
Today I wrote 3 articles. Using a structure for the content is so much easier because I KNOW what I have to write for each section. I never have to think about what I need to write – it writes itself.
The content I wrote today:
1. Poker 770 No Deposit Bonus (893 words)
2. 888 Poker No Deposit Bonus (971 words)
3. Casino Titan No Deposit Bonus (1030 words)
July 14:
Today I want to talk a little bit about the “no deposit sportsbook” section of the website. As I mentioned, there are absolutely ZERO no deposit sportsbooks out there as I write this. Some people may think that I should just ditch that section altogether – but if anything the opposite is the case, and I should be pushing it even MORE.
You see – without any no deposit sportsbooks, that offers very little competition because other sites won’t write about it. They can’t write about it – there’s no specials or promotions going! Yet there is still people searching and looking for no deposit sportsbooks.
With little competition in that range, it means I have a far better chance at ranking high for the primary keywords. And even though I’m not giving the visitor what they want – I’m giving them alternative options. Sure you can’t bet at a sportsbook for free – but you can get a big bonus with a little deposit at THIS sportsbook. Or hey you can’t bet on the NFL for free, but how about playing poker for free instead?
If you went into a cellphone shop to buy a Samsung Galaxy S III and they didn’t have any – would they just tell you to leave? Of course not – they’d try and sell you alternatives. The same rules apply here.
The content I wrote today:
1. Pokertime No Deposit Bonus (768 words)
2. Bingo Gala No Deposit Bonus (704 words)
3. Bingo Palace No Deposit Bonus (739 words)
As I mentioned, I LOVE to do lists because it’s a great way to measure progress. Here is my current content to do list:
1. Winpalace No Deposit Bonus
2. Pantasia No Deposit Bonus
3. Betfair “Free” 20 Bet
4. 5Dimes 50%-70% Bonus
5. Bet365 100% Mobile Bonus
6. No Deposit Bingo Blog
7. No Deposit Casino Blog
8. No Deposit Poker Blog
9. What Is A No Deposit Bonus?
10. How Do No Deposit Bonuses Work?
11. How To Withdraw A No Deposit Bonus?
12. OnlineBingo.com 300% Bonus
13. Titan Poker 200% Bonus
I’ve now went from 21 articles down to 13 in just a couple of days. It feels great – and with the structure set for a lot of those articles, I know I can wipe the majority out in no time at all.
July 15:
Today I want to talk a little bit about the future of the website, and possible additions and how this affects the design.
You should always have a vague idea of where your website will be in a year. That way, you can plan ahead. For example, there are scratch card websites out there that offer no deposit options. Also skill game websites and rummy websites. Also those “Free Time” or “One Hour” casino offers(which I haven’t decided how I will handle yet).
Then there’s additions to the site like a mailing list, that I also need to consider.
You need to think about these things, so you can plan the design and structure of your website accordingly. For example if I built the design around the current 7 categories, and had a navigation bar that width wise JUST fitted all 7 categories – what would I do if I wanted to add an 8th and 9th category?
I’ve made that mistake many times in the past. When it comes to the design phase, ALWAYS look at where your website will be a year from now.
No articles today.
July 16:
One thing you always need to think about is duplicating your key content. People think duplicating content means just writing it twice, or using a “spinner” program that basically runs through your article, compares it to a thesaurus and changes words as necessary but that’s not the case.
For example – every article I write about a no deposit casino bonus. I could create a slots section on the website, and write about those bonuses – it’s the exact same no deposit bonus, except I am writing it about a smaller niche like slots, than the larger casino niche.
Just because it’s the same offer, doesn’t mean it has to be a carbon copy of the other article. I can re-write it and present it in a whole different manner. At the core, it’s the exact same article but as written, it is completely different.
This can really help to expand your website size, and also help you get extra mileage out of those “money” articles.
Just one article today due to time constraints:
1. Pantasia Casino No Deposit Bonus (733 words)
July 19:
With my going to the cottage on July 21st, I have had to focus on a few other things prior to me leaving. Due to that, I had to put the content writing of NoDepositSites.com on the back-burner for the last few days.
Unfortunately due to time constraints, I am going to have to make some changes in regard to my plans for the website. I have decided to hold off on the blog entries for now – they will take a lot of time, because I need to play the no deposit bonus out, write about it, record a video of it and then edit the video.
I may also have to drop the amount of planned content I was going to be adding in the week I am away. I will see where I am at tomorrow.
I wanted to get all the content written today, so tomorrow I can start with a “clean slate” in terms of building the site.
Todays content:
1. What Is A No Deposit Bonus? (698 words)
2. How To Withdraw a No Deposit Bonus (617 words)
3. How Do No Deposit Bonuses Work? (510 words)
4. Titan Poker Minimum Deposit Bonus (717 words)
5. OnlineBingo.com Minimum Deposit Bonus (550 words)
6. NoDepositSites.com Relaunched (486 words)
7. Our Top 3 No Deposit Bonuses in July
8. 2 Big No Deposit Bonuses Coming in August (380 words)
I need to wait to hear back from AffActive(the affiliate group behind WinPalace Casino) as apparently their no deposit bonus is no longer widely available – so I have contacted them about hopefully getting it set up for my account.
I also decided not to build the sportsbook minimum deposit bonus section until I return. I need to think that one over as it is going to be made up purely of actual bonuses, so I may need to do something different there.
To counter that and still launch with enough content, I am adding a news section to the website. As you can see above, I wrote 3 articles(the last 3). News sections can be great to keep your website fresh because they are easy to write articles.
July 20:
I heard back from WinPalace but it’s going to take a few days to get it all set up so I will not be listing their no deposit bonus at the moment.
Today is website building day! I’m going to be listing everything I do in the process of launching the site, so you understand what is required.
Install WordPress:
Without a shadow of a doubt, WordPress is the best content management system. It is very simple to use, incredibly powerful and has a fantastic community.
I will be sticking with the default WordPress theme until I return. It’s a very solid theme, coded well and is sufficient for what I want to do – which is just get the content up, and basically get the site kicking again.
Add The Content/Create The Structure:
All the content I have written, I needed to add to the site. First things first though – come up with a decent structure. I’m going to use categories like: /poker/ etc, so URLs will be:
https://www.nodepositesites.com/casino/casino-titan-no-deposit-bonus.php
etc.
Create Affiliate Links:
Obviously, I need to go in the backend for affiliate programs and create affiliate links. However I also like to create browser-friendly redirects. So that a URL like this:
https://track.acf-webmaster.com/poker770/en/?member=dealerdan&profile=en
Becomes:
https://www.nodepositsites.com/go/poker770.php
To do that, there are many options. If you’re wondering WHY you should redirect affiliate links or HOW to do it, please see this article: https://www.affiliatebible.com/general-seo/why-you-should-redirect-affiliate-links.php
For this method, I am using the .htaccess file redirect which means my .htaccess looks something like this:
Redirect 301 /go/888-poker.php https://888poker.com/?sr=1586228&flag=0000
Redirect 301 /go/poker770.php https://track.acf-webmaster.com/poker770/en/?member=dealerdan&profile=en
Redirect 301 /go/casino-titan.php https://www.casinotitan.im/aiddownload.php?affid=69957
Create A robots.txt:
A robots.txt tells the search engine bots what to index on your site, what not to index, or what links to follow. While this isn’t REQUIRED – I would recommend it. There are multiple theories – such as Google not liking too many affiliate links, or just not leaking link juice to affiliate sites that don’t need it. Either way – there’s no reason to tell the search engines to follow through to your affiliate links, so we want to set them as no-follow.
To do that we just create a robots.txt file which we upload to the root folder, and it includes this text:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /go/
SITEMAP: https://www.nodepositsites.com/sitemap.xml
What that also does, is make it easy for the search engines to find your sitemap. Below I will mention the sitemaps, and what WordPress plugin to use.
Update The Content:
This is basically a case of just updating the content to add in all the links – whether to other articles on the site referenced within the articles or to affiliate programs.
Write Category Page Content:
If someone visits https://www.nodepositsites.com/poker/ they need to be able to see a list of articles WITHIN that directory. I will most likely go with a table when I return. In the meantime I linked to any articles within that category, and wrote some text.
Write The Homepage Text:
On the homepage I always like to write static content. The reason for that is it helps in regards to defining your site both for the user and for the search engines. It’s important to write solid content here that is easily readable, because this is often the first selling point to your visitors.
WordPress Modifications:
I basically just created a sidebar with a list of areas around the site for easy navigation.
I also installed the Google XML Sitemaps plugin which generates a sitemap for my site, and which I can submit to Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Centre etc. These are good for letting the search engines know what content you have on your site, and when it is updated or added to.
Theme Modifications:
I made a few theme modifications. While I will not be using this theme for long, I still removed a few things like the comments etc – basically never have anything on your site that you don’t deem necessary. The default WordPress theme comes with a rotating slideshow on the homepage for example. I ditched that as well.
Install Google Analytics:
You can install ANY stat program really, but Analytics is an incredible program and very powerful. I would recommend going for Analytics anytime. Plus if you have a quality site, then the more Google knows about it, the better!
Submit To Webmaster Tools:
Submitted the site to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools. This lets the search engines know we are alive!
I also submitted a few articles that will be going up during the week.
That’s it for me – I am off to my cottage for a week. Here is how the site currently looks:
As you can see – INCREDIBLY barebones. It’s basically just black text on a white background but that’s okay – it’s basically a very simplified version of the site which I am happy to have while I work out all the kinks.
July 23:
Unfortunately, my mother-in-law died today. Coincidentally, on the same day as my 10 year anniversary with my wife. Sad times as you can imagine and I won’t be working on the site for a bit.
July 30:
Well I’m sort of getting back to work after the tragedy of my mother-in-law. Rest in peace Izzy, you were an amazing person. I actually remember years ago when I first started dating her daughter; I introduced her to online bingo no deposit sites. That was one of the first times where we actually really “bonded” over something. Funny coincidence.
With August almost upon us, I plan on a lot of work on the site. Unfortunately due to time constraints and then my mother-in-law passing, the site isn’t really where I hoped it would be at the moment. Here are the stats:
Content: 17 articles.
Unique Visitors: 12
Pages / Visit: 3.2
Keywords(Clicks): poker770(5), bingo no deposit(5).
Keywords(Avg Rankings): no deposit poker(66), bingo no deposit(4.4), no deposit bingo sites(17), no deposit bonus poker(3.6),
(Stat data taken July 20th-July 30th)
As expected, nothing to really write home about at the moment.
Hopefully by the end of August we’ll see a change in that. I plan on focusing big time on content early on in August, then upgrading the design too. More on that over the next few days.
July 31:
Operation: Write More Content began today. I want to focus right now on building the website up content wise, with a lot of current content and then content set up to post over the next month as well.
I was able to work with quite a few online casinos and set up some great exclusive no deposit bonuses. For anyone who is wondering – this didn’t take hours of negotiations. In most cases it just took one e-mail correspondence requesting it, and I got a reply with it all set up. In some instances this is because of who I am and that I’m making money with that property already – but there were some properties I had never worked with before, who were happy to offer a no deposit bonus.
Here is what I wrote:
• WinPalace Casino $20 No Deposit Bonus (762 words)
• Virtual City Casino $50 No Deposit Bonus(783 words)
• Slots Jackpot Casino $100 No Deposit Bonus (652 words)
• Golden Cherry Casino $10 No Deposit Bonus (568 words)
I also added all that content immediately. At some point I will start to phase it out over a few days, but right now I really want to bulk up the site.
You see – life as an affiliate isn’t glamorous. At least not in the beginning. After you start making money, you can spend your time on beaches and driving Ferraris while outsourcing all this type of work or hiring employees, but in the beginning stages you’ll be doing the majority of the core work yourself.
Working goal-orientated is also a good idea. It’s nice to have an aim, or direction. In this case, mine is simple. I’m not aiming at this stage to make a million dollars overnight. My aim is to offer the best no deposit bonus website on the internet.
To do that I need to offer the most no deposit bonuses, the BEST no deposit bonuses, and also offer a wide variety of information on each bonus to assist the user experience.
I believe that is doable, and the best way to achieve that goal is by simply writing the most content I can.
August 1:
August is finally here, and I’m hoping for a good month for No Deposit Sites. At this point I am not too concerned about income – just focusing on increasing the quality of the website.
One trick to content writing is to make it as monotonous and robotic as possible – which is why I created the template. Just because it’s monotonous/robotic doesn’t mean the content will be boring – it just means it is a lot easier to write. You stick to the very same formula, and you’re able to just blast through the content without really having to think.
When it comes to writing content, there are two methods I like to use.
(1) I like to schedule about 3 hours of uninterrupted time just to write content when it comes to a new site after I have a set template. If the content is flowing and the motivation is there, I can just race through it all.
(2) If I have a lot of articles to write – say 20 articles – I’ll break it up. The number “20” is a scary number, and I want to feel like I am making headway. So I’ll write 2 articles, then take a break to go for a walk, workout, watch a TV show – whatever. Breaking it up into segments feels a lot more progressive, and it can be a lot easier to write knowing that your goal is just 2 articles.
I did the former today. Here is what I wrote:
1. Prestige Casino $1500 Free Spins No Deposit Bonus (779 words)
2. Joyland Casino $25 No Deposit Bonus (777 words)
3. High Noon Casino $60 No Deposit Bonus (564 words)
4. (News) Casino Luck 12 Free Spins Olympics Promo (216 words)
5. Vegas Red Casino $10 No Deposit Bonus (732 words)
6. Nostalgia Casino High Percentage Deposit Bonus (581 words)
7. Gaming Club Casino 30 Free Spins Bonus (772 words)
8. Mayan Fortune Casino $14 No Deposit Bonus(572 words)
9. 888 Casino 365 Free Spins Bonus (666 words)
10. Casino770 $25 No Deposit Bonus (512 words)
11. Classy Coin $25 No Deposit Bonus (546 words)
I’ve also made some changes on the site. Rather than go for “Minimum Deposit” I’ve instead changed it to “High Percentage”. So previous minimum deposit bonuses are now known as high percentage bonuses. I feel that is a lot more self-explanatory for the user, allows me to promote them by percentage, and is just a lot more positive sounding.
The way you phrase things can really make a difference.
AUGUST 2:
I just want to note that after all the above content, we now have 33 total articles on the site – plus all the index and category pages. I think that is a solid “beginning” amount, and now I am going to be switching to writing content daily.
Just to reiterate – adding one article per day is something I have always found works well. It lets Google know that you are constantly updating your site and keeping the content “fresh” which means the content is relevant.
On top of that, it also teaches the search engine bots to keep coming back often – because there’ll always be new content for them. And if you can do that, then you can get immediate indexing – which can be very important when it comes to time limited promotions.
The daily content will start tomorrow, and I’ll also cover a few other things.
AUGUST 3:
Today is “get the website a nice design” day.
This isn’t a necessary step and it’s a step I often skip when it comes to a website – which is installing a beautiful, custom-designed theme, and spending hours getting it configured.
Especially for new affiliates – this is a step I would recommend you skip. You see – sometimes websites just don’t take off. I should know – I once spent $20,000 on the launch of a website(covering marketing, content and design) and in 6 months the site only got about 50 visitors, despite it being a top quality website.
The last thing you want to do is spend a lot of time on design – which really doesn’t impact your website that much in the search engines. I’ve mentioned it before – but build a no-frills website first, focus on the qualify of that – and then when you are getting in a lot of traffic, start to focus more on the design aspect. Because as you go along, you will discover all these new additions you may need for the website, and if they aren’t planned out in the original design then it’s a lot more work.
Of course – I’m contradicting that here. But that’s because I KNOW this traffic, and I KNOW there is money in it. So I KNOW that a solid design is going to help with conversions.
And when I say I KNOW – I mean I actually KNOW this based on previous websites I have ran, and articles I put up about no deposit bonuses that have made me money. There is no guess work here.
Now I won’t go on too much about the design aspect of the site – but it’s basically a few step process.
First of all, pick a theme that you like(if you don’t get one custom-designed.) There are tons of free themes out there, and also tons of premium themes that are great. In this instance, I am using an old theme that I had designed for me for another website. With a few modifications it will work wonders – it’s been great for conversions.
Once that’s done, I basically break the design into X phases. In this case it’s 3.
(1) Homepage: I need to modify the homepage. This includes the general layout, adding the header image and updating any navigation bars, creating pretty icons and CTA buttons – that sort of thing.
(2) Inner Pages – Categories: I need to design the inner pages such as “No Deposit Poker Sites”. That category page will list all the no deposit poker bonuses, so I need to design that – a design which I will use for every category listing on the site.
(3) Inner Pages – Bonuses: I also need to design the money pages – these are the pages like “Poker770 No Deposit Bonus” etc.
That may sound simple but it’s a lengthy process. It will most likely take a couple of days to complete.
Now there’s one important step I do during ANY website build. I leave the computer, sit alone in a room with cigarettes and a big pot of tea – and just plan things out on a notepad. I do this for content mapping, for design mapping, for everything.
I of course, did this here. Here are the images from my notepad which I scanned:
AUGUST 5:
The website design is now done. Here are 3 examples of the pages on NoDepositSites.com:
As you can see, the site is looking a lot better. I still have a lot of content to write however. I need to write content for every category page. I’m focusing on that right now, and then I will break down various elements of the design and explain them.
Today I wrote:
• Index Page Content: 626 Words)
• No Deposit Poker Sites: (526 Words)
• No Deposit Casino Sites: (479 Words)
• No Deposit Bingo Sites: (429 Words)
• Casino Free Spins (436 Words)
More content tomorrow.
AUGUST 6:
We got our first depositor today! This was a big surprise, but obviously well appreciated! It’s great if you get a little morale boost like that so early on.
Someone searched for the following keyword:
:”classycoin casino no deposit bonus”
Found NoDepositSites and signed up to take advantage of the no deposit bonus. They lost the bonus but ended up depositing $50 and losing that! We’re on 35% revenue share so that’s $17.50 we just made.
Great start! I really wasn’t expecting anything this early so that was a nice surprise.
More content writing today – I finished off all the category sections:
• Microgaming No Deposit Bonuses(523 words)
• Apple/Mac No Deposit Bonuses(409 words)
• American No Deposit Bonuses(483 words)
• Keno No Deposit Bonuses(403 words)
• Windows OS No Deposit Bonuses(459 words)
• Slots No Deposit Bonuses(346 words)
• Scratch Card No Deposit Bonuses(416 words)
• United Kingdom No Deposit Bonuses(357 words)
• High Percentage Bingo Bonuses(412 words)
• High Percentage Casino Bonuses(537 words)
• High Percentage Poker Bonuses(459 words)
Whew. I’m all burnt out today from content writing. My fingers are on fire! Now I remember why I outsource so much of my content writing haha.
AUGUST 7:
Over the next couple of days, I’m going to let the website “settle”. If you change a website too much, the search engines can react badly to it. At least, that’s the theory of a lot of SEO gurus. I don’t know if I believe it – but I see no harm in letting the site sit until around August 10th, then start adding in more content.
So over the next couple of days I’m going to explain the design, elements of the design, areas of the website, and why I did certain things.
Today, let’s talk about the overall design of the site and the homepage design.
First, I went with a very simple design of a left sidebar, and then the content on the right. There is also a navigation toolbar at the top of the site. This is an extremely standard design, which the audience is instantly going to be familiar with. The last thing you want the audience to do is have to stop and think, and figure out how your site works. Lay it out for them as simple as possible.
Now even though it’s a very standard design, it still looks good. It gives off a very authorative and official tone to it. Adding in graphics can help accomplish that, such as the icons on the sidebar. They spice everything up, and show that effort has been put into the site to make it look good. It also helps users in terms of recognition of a section, as many prefer images over text. Text also can all blend together, so using the icons stops that from happening.
The sidebar generally links to all the “money” pages within the site. These pages are either aimed to convert the user, or lead the user into conversion via another page. One thing I have did is focus on directing visitors to my inner pages. I could make the “High Noon Casino” link go directly to High Noon Casino for example. But I would much rather send them to my page ABOUT the High Noon Casino deposit bonus, and have them convert from there.
You see – Google doesn’t like affiliate sites. The reason for that is there are so many affiliate sites thrown up which don’t aim to provide a valuable resource for the user. They’re only on the internet to make money. So what you want to do, is convince Google that you ARE a valuable resource.
If a user visits a page and immediately leaves it(whether it’s to try another site or following through an affiliate link), it gives the impression that this ISN’T a valuable website. Ideally you want the user to spend a little time on the website, go through a few pages, and decrease the bounce rate.
On top of this – some no deposit bonuses are confusing. I’d much rather people read my steps on how to claim each no deposit bonus prior to claiming it, because my steps are basically designed “for dummies”, and this will only increase the conversions.
On the homepage, I’ve written some search engine friendly content that is also user friendly. I welcome the user to the site, and introduce myself as Dealer Dan. I briefly explain who I am, then explain WHY they need to know this – because it means I can get the best possible deals for the user.
It really helps to do things like this – give the visitor a reason to visit your site and trust your site over others. Don’t do any hyperbole crap like “best no deposit bonus site” or anything like that. These days that turns the user off.
Using personal experience, or interacting with the user in a personal manner always helps. If you’re looking for a Pokerstars review for example – seeing an article that starts with “I’ve played over 50,000 hands at Pokerstars, am a Supernova VIP level player and played at Pokerstars for 5 years, so I know a lot about the poker room” is an example of this. That’s giving the user a REASON to trust the writer immediately.
So yeah – I write a bunch of content. I also link to the news section and news articles within the site, and also all the relevant sections within the site. A large part of this is just writing quality content to please the search engines.
That really covers everything about the overall design. It’s a simple, but slick design which usually converts very well.
AUGUST 8:
Our first depositor at Classy Coin is still at it – He’s now deposited $184 and lost $147 of that, giving us $51.71 earnings. That’s a very good sign that he has did multiple deposits. You will find a lot of players deposit once and never again. Anyone who deposits a few times is likely going to continue to deposit and play for awhile.
Today I want to discuss all the category pages, and the category page design.
You’ll notice that along with “No Deposit Poker Sites” etc we also have “No Deposit Keno Bonuses”, “No Deposit Windows Bonuses” etc. This is general SEO – adding content that users are most likely going to search for. Sometimes you don’t know if they will be searching it – but you just have to throw it out there and see what sticks.
It’s all about taking a niche, and ripping it apart to find multiple niche within. I can go even further if I wanted. Look at this hierarchy:
– No Deposit Sites
——-No Deposit Casino Sites
—————No Deposit Keno Sites
————————–No Deposit Keno Microgaming Casino Sites
etc. This is one(of many) things that I find many affiliates fail at. They can’t look beyond a broad niche to see what else there is. You have to explore a niche, and sometimes you can discover gold. Maybe I won’t discover gold here – but you have to keep trying, and then anything that doesn’t work out you can make a note of, for the future.
Now sometimes you CAN get an idea of how popular a phrase is. You use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool and can sometimes get an idea from there. But I rarely trust that tool to be quite honest with you. I do use it for some aspects of affiliate marketing(I’ll mention that soon) but I wouldn’t put full trust in its numbers.
Now according to the keyword tool, “no deposit bingo sites” gets 9900 monthly searches. In comparison, “no deposit keno” gets just 110 searches a month.
Now some people may look at that and think “110? That’s it?”. But that’s actually a good thing. The three main reasons:
(1) The lack of traffic makes it more likely that I will have little to zero competition, which means my chances of ranking are higher.
(2) 110 visitors per month, assuming I rank #1, is still a good amount of traffic. Remember – I wrote just ONE PAGE. If 20 minutes of work gets me 110 visitors every month then that is AWESOME.
(3) This is targeted, direct traffic. They’re looking specifically for ‘no deposit keno sites” and I’m giving it to them. Conversions here should be INCREDIBLY easy.
What’s great is this is just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s an example: I run another Keno site(https://www.play-keno-online.com). There’s one phrase that gets me about 20 visitors a month to that site based on one article I put up. Yet that specific keyword made me $12,000 in 2011. I was able to build a website dedicated to that keyword, and even though the traffic is low – the conversions are high, and the deposits are big.
If for example, this “no deposit keno” keyword makes me a lot of money, I could go out tomorrow and look for domains based on that keyphrase, and increase my earnings.
Hopefully you understand why I’m going after those sort of keywords. I’ve also created pages for Windows users, Mac users, Microgaming Casino etc – if all this works out, I’ll expand that further.
The category design homepage should be self-explanatory. It’s a lot of text both for the user and the search engine and to help focus on long-tail keywords, and a table with a list of the bonuses.
On the table I provide any information I feel the user needs at a glance, and then links to the inner pages explaining in more detail about the no deposit bonus, and how to claim it. The links are both text links(best for SEO) and buttons(best for the user).
AUGUST 9:
I installed the WordPress “Breadcrumbs NavXT” Plugin today. Breadcrumbs are a navigation that shows the visitors path to their current location. For example, if the visitor is on the “High Noon Casino No Deposit Page”, it will list it like so:
NoDepositSites.com > No Deposit Casino Sites > High Noon Casino No Deposit Bonus
It’s a way to help both users and search engines navigate their way around the site.
Todays topic is the individual no deposit site articles. Then tomorrow we’re going to get back to adding content and doing more work on the site.
At the top of each no deposit bonus page, I provide the logo of the casino, as well as some basic information. I then offer two CTA buttons – which are “Download” and “Visit Their Site”. Adding the logo and basic info just helps make it look more “official” – sort of like a fact sheet.
The two CTA buttons however – this is all about giving a CHOICE call to action. In theory, you take the visitors thought process away from “Should I click this link?” to “What link should I click?”. It’s also hopeful for some users who actually WOULD want to download the casino right away.
I then, after a brief introduction, list the steps to claim the no deposit bonus in a graphical table that really stands out. The reason for that again is thought process. You’re taking away the thoughts “Should I go for this bonus?” or “what do I need to do?” and getting them to DO IT. “Oh, just follow these 4 steps? Simple enough”.
I then offer 3 more choice call to action buttons below. I then provide information on the casino, and where I add in additional selling(such as more deposit bonuses or the review), I include a text link to claim the no deposit bonus.
You ideally always want to put links where people are likely to click. Don’t ever rely on people scrolling back up. You’d be surprised how many people would rather use Google Toolbar to search for the casino site, than actually scroll back up.
AUGUST 10:
We got our second real money player today! He came to the site via an undefined search term(Google sometimes won’t let you see what keywords people use to visit your site) and landed on the homepage. After browsing the site, he went and signed up at WinPalace Casino to take advantage of the no deposit bonus there, and ended up depositing $150!
He’s not the only player who has signed up – but he is the second depositor we have had. Don’t worry – at the end of every month I will provide a thorough list, with pictures of the reports, so you can see the amount of click-thrus, signups and depositors we’ve actually had.
Back to writing today. I plan on adding one article per day to the site for the rest of the month. Todays articles:
• Maple Casino No Deposit Bonus(844 words)
• Casino Del Rio No Deposit Bonus(948 words)
• Paddy Power Casino No Deposit Bonus(838 words)
• (News) Best No Deposit Casino Bonuses for August 2012 (481 words)
• (News) Top 3 No Deposit Bingo Bonuses for August 2012 (403 words)
• (News) August 2012 Best No Deposit Poker Bonus (400 words)
I don’t add all of these at once. I have scheduled them out over the next few days, with one per day as I mentioned. Right now I have articles scheduled up until August 15th.
Also a quick note about those news articles on the best no deposit bonuses – there are so many out of date websites out there these days, or Google returning outdated websites and data, that people will often search with the current month and year in them. Those articles are intended to capture that audience.
I added an .ico file today, also known as a favicon. This is a simple little image that shows up beside the URL in the address bar, and when you bookmark the site the icon shows up there. This is one of those “Why not?” things. It takes just a minute to create and will help your website stand out amidst a users bookmarks. If a user bookmarks 10 no deposit sites and mine is one of the only ones that has a favicon, it increases the chances of the user clicking on it at any given time.
AUGUST 11:
Something interesting seems to be happening with the site. It could be bad for the site – but good for you guys as you get to see being a webmaster isn’t all roses – and bad stuff happens.
I’m going to let things sit for a couple of days.
AUGUST 12:
Today I want to talk briefly about the implementation of the mailing list. I added a mailing list “widget” to the top left of the website in the sidebar. It instructs users to insert their e-mail address so they can get all the latest no deposit bonuses in their e-mail.
Software wise – I am just using Feedburner. What this basically does is check the website for any new posts, and when there are some it will e-mail the new post each day to the people who registered on the mailing list.
Using a mailing list for a website is very important. One of the biggest reasons is it means you don’t have to rely on your rankings anymore. You see – a website is only as good as its rankings. If you’re ranking #1 for “play online poker” then you’re going to be killing it. But if you lose that ranking position it’s seriously going to hurt your website.
If one day Google decides it doesn’t like your site and you drop in the rankings dramatically – you’d be forced to call it a day. But this is where the mailing list can save you.
With the mailing list, you have a direct audience who you know what they want, so it’s very easy to promote to them. I’m able to send e-mails to people who want no deposit bonuses – offering them no deposit bonuses! No matter how bad my rankings tank, I’ll always be able to do that. That’s why so many people focus on mailing lists – it’s got such long-term potential.
Now on my pages currently it’s a very non-intrusive, small link in the sidebar. If I have pages that receive lots of traffic but don’t convert – such as “What is A No Deposit Bonus?” – I can UP the marketing on that page for the mailing list via videos, pop-unders etc. So that I am not wasting that traffic at all.
Mailing lists are extremely important, and can really help you out. For example, I have a VIP bonus mailing list from another website. When I get an exclusive bonus set up I send it out to that mailing list and I know that I am guaranteed 25-50 real money players within 24 hours.
Affiliate income is something where you can’t guarantee the long-term revenue; but mailing lists help counteract that.
AUGUST 13:
Houston, we have a problem.
A severe problem, which could potentially really hurt all potential revenue and traffic.
And that’s a GOOD thing.
You see – when I started this e-book, I wanted to explore the trials and tribulations of being a webmaster. I wanted you to see that with hard work and a lot of effort you COULD make money online. But then we got very lucky with 2 real money players so early, and I was getting concerned that everything was going to go just too good, and the tagline of the book would have to be “From $ to $50,000 in 3 months”.
Thankfully, that’s not going to happen.
Before I explain the problem – I need to provide a bit of backstory.
In the summer of 2009, I purchased the domain CasinoSignupBonus.org. It’s not a great domain by any means, but it was one of those domains that came just at the right time for me. I was in the mood to build a casino bonus site, and so I made this my #1 priority.
Within 2 months, I honestly believe I had created one of the best online casino bonus sites out there. With over $12,000 in development costs(content, coding, design, backlinks) this was an amazing website which catered to so many players. We’d conducted surveys and everything – I can honestly say that this was one of the best casino bonus websites online.
And it tanked.
It tanked big time, not ranking well even for a day or two. Sometimes, that happens to a new site. It’s the “Google Sandbox” Effect, where a website needs a few months to start ranking. It’s basically Googles way of filtering out thin affiliate sites, and the “casino bonus” target field is ripe for those.
So that was okay. I understood that, and I continued to work on the site and build it in quality. By early 2012, we had over 300 quality posts on the website, and quite a lot of top backlinks. Like we’re talking on-topic PR7 backlinks etc.
The site still wasn’t getting traffic.
Over the next year, I would try EVERYTHING to get the site to bounce back. Here are a few things I did:
– Paid various SEO consultants then followed their advice.
– Updated all my content to make every page amazing in terms of quality/quantity.
– Paid someone over $1,000 to get the site to 100/100 in terms of PageSpeed, as well as make the website 100% W3C Complaint.
– Fixed any broken links. Optimized every image.
– Switched servers.
– Filed a reinclusion request via Google.
And you know what? There was more. Oh so much more that my mind has blocked out as it was such a horror show. We did absolutely everything and yet nothing worked. The site would get 3-4 hits a month for random phrases, and that was it.
We did everything.
Except change the design.
The reason I didn’t change the design was because the design CONVERTED. I’d get 3-4 hits a month and 1 of those players would always sign up and deposit! I kept saying that the first month without a depositor I would ditch the design – but it continued to, and still continues to, bring in that 1 new player per month.
That design, is the exact same one we are using for NoDepositSites.com.
And what’s happened to NoDepositSites.com? Exactly what happened to CasinoSignupBonus.org. Traffic has dropped. Sorry, not dropped: 100% completely disappeared.
Here is search engine traffic over the last few days:
August 7th: 11 visits.
August 8th: 7 visits.
August 9th: 12 visits.
August 10th: 0 visits.
August 11th: 0 visits.
August 12th: 0 visits.
That’s not good. We’re getting 0 traffic now, even though we have absolutely more content. Worse is our rankings. I remember when I would search the phrase “Casino Signup Bonus”. Our website wouldn’t rank until page 6. Even then, it wasn’t the homepage that was ranking – it was a random internal page.
If I search “no deposit sites” guess what? On page 7 we have 3 results. All internal articles. No homepage.
Yet if I search “site:nodepositsites.com” all of our pages are indexed.
This is not good.
Now at this point, I am not saying it is the design. It could be a case of, as I mentioned previously, all the changes affecting our rankings temporarily. Once Google gets a handle on all the website changes we have implemented, things could work themselves out.
But so far, everything points to the design. I’ve never experienced the “complete loss in rankings due to a design change” issue – and I’ve did a lot more than change a design. I’ve changed a domain 3x in the course of a month, had 301 redirects from Domain A to Domain B then to Domain C, and never seen an issue like this.
So, what is the master solution that a super affiliate like me has for an issue like this?
Patience.
Patience is the secret weapon, that hilariously most affiliates don’t have. They’d be up in arms over this, changing design, freaking out, acquiring backlinks, changing their content, changing all of their SEO, wondering if pages are overoptimized or underoptimized, and doing a million other things.
But it’s all about patience.
Right now, I’m going to leave things the way they are. I’m going to continue to update the website with quality content as per nomal. I’m also going to begin acquiring backlinks, as I had planned.
I’ve also changed the web design of CasinoSignupBonus.org to the basic WordPress 2011 Theme.
I’ll now give things at least a week, and see if things change. If we start to rank and get traffic again then everything is great. If CSB starts to rank and get traffic, then I know it’s the design and will have to look into that.
The only thing I am going to do differently is in regard to design elements – I wanted to do a few additional design changes to the site, like implement geo-targeting. At this point I shall be holding off on that in case I have to change the whole website design.
Patience. It really is one of the most important attributes an affiliate webmaster can have.
AUGUST 14:
Still absolutely zero traffic, and no rankings.
AUGUST 15:
Well, things look to be going better today. It looks like the loss in rankings etc was nothing to do with the actual theme, and instead just a temporary change due to all of the changes we made on the site.
We received 10 unique hits from search engines today, so it’s nice to “bounce back” and hopefully it continues.
Later in the day(after we were getting traffic, so it wasn’t a factor) I wrote an article for my website AffiliateBible.com and wrote about this book, also giving us our first backlink to No Deposit Sites.
When you are getting yourself links, if you have control over the anchor text you need to make sure it looks natural. One common strategy in 2008-2009(which worked) was to use the anchor text that you wanted your site to rank for.
So if I wanted to rank for “no deposit poker” I would get about 20-30 links ALL with the link title “no deposit poker”. However that’s something that doesn’t fly these days – and is more likely to earn yourself a penalty.
What you generally need to do is mix the anchor texts up, and make them look natural. So anchor texts would be the title of the site, even the URL of the site, and sometimes just “click here” etc. Natural looking links.
You can of course add in a couple of links with the keywords you are targeting, but always make sure it’s relevant to the actual page you are linking to. For example, if I was going to get a link for “no deposit poker” or ‘no deposit poker sites” I would NOT link to the homepage – I would link directly to the no deposit poker sites section of the site.
Why?
Because it’s only natural.
AUGUST 16:
I have also now started getting a few more links to the site. They are very simple ones right now – links on my Facebook, Google+ and Twitter pages. I’ve also added the site to the “Portfolio” section on DealerDan.com. I’ve also linked my Google+ page in the footer of the site. What this means is that the picture of me from Google+ will show up beside all articles in the search results, which helps make the link stand out amidst all others on the page.
As I said yesterday – natural links are the ones you want. In this case – if I build a website, wouldn’t it be NATURAL for me to link to it on my Twitter, my Facebook, my Portfolio etc? Whenever you are trying to get links, always make sure they are natural links.
For example – one common method to getting backlinks is writing blog posts for other websites. An unnatural backlink would be in the middle of an article, mentioning “no deposit sites” and linking to my website. A more natural backlink would be in the introduction, or in the footer.
Intro when writing for an SEO blog example:
“I’ve also been working on my website No Deposit Sites, where I have been implementing a lot of these marketing strategies, and I wanted to share them with you.”
Intro for footer for a generic article site:
“This article was submitted by https://www.NoDepositSites.com”
Both natural.
I wrote the following content today:
– Paddy Power Casino No Deposit Bonus Added (371 words)
– Blackjack Ballroom Casino No Deposit Bonus (988 words)
AUGUST 17:
We just set up an unplanned family vacation leaving today.
This is a great example of why it’s important to pre-write content. You just never know when something is going to come up. It could be a vacation, it could be an illness – it could be anything.
Now I’m away from August 17th-August 26th, with no way to update the website.
Is that going to hurt the website? Possibly, but the chances are low. My main issue is that I’m trying to teach the search engine bots to visit regularly as there is always updated content and they’re going to come for 9 days and see nothing. That’s not great – but the chances of this really hurting the website are low.
But this certainly doesn’t HELP No Deposit Sites.
You see – the more content that is added to the website, the better it becomes. It becomes better as a resource for users first of all – because the more information, content and bonuses we offer, the better it is for the user.
The more content that is there will increase the traffic too. You’ll be getting longtail keywords, specific brand name keywords etc – a lot of our traffic right now is based on brand names. For example here is some of the keywords thus far:
– 888 no deposit poker sofort bonus
– joyland casino max withdrawal 1500
– casino770 no deposit
– classy coin no deposit bonus 2012 august
As you can see, a lot is relying on brand names. Therefore we need to focus on more and more brand names – as many as possible really. So the more articles we add – the more traffic we will get.
And the more content you have, the more traffic you have, will usually always relate directly to your earnings.
So when launching ANY site always try and have as much content pre-written as possible. I have one website for example that currently has content written up to 2014!
See you in 9 days!
August 26:
Whew, I’m back but not for long. I’m off on a business trip on August 28th for a week, so I won’t be working on the site again until around September 6th.
When I return, I will provide with a wide variety of statistics ranging from traffic to signups and income.
Today though I just want to focus on writing content to go up while I am away. I have written the following content:
– 777 Dragon Casino No Deposit Bonus (573 words)
– Ladbrokes Casino No Deposit Bonus (681 words)
– Platinum Play Casino No Deposit Bonus (680 words)
– Superior Casino No Deposit Bonus (631 words)
That’s it until I am back. There are a lot of things we will be doing on the site in September, including focusing on increasing the backlinks.
September 25:
Yikes, where does the time go?
Unfortunately after my trip to Europe I got stricken down with food poisoning. I then had a lot of things going on outside of work.
Thankfully, it’s something I can afford to do. All of my sites are self-run; I have content writers who write all the content and add it themselves. Getting to that place in your affiliate marketing career is huge – it means you can go away for a weekend or for a week without worrying about your websites.
Yep all my websites ran smoothly – except one.
NoDepositSites.com.
No new content, no backlinks for a month and traffic has suffered big time. I’m not sure if the reason for it is due to new content – it really shouldn’t be. There is still a lot of great content on there. But traffic has dropped drastically. August 16th we hit a high of 45 visitors then dropped to an average of 5-6 visitos per day. September has been 0-2 visitors per day.
Not good.
Now this is the stage where a lot of people will panic. I talked about the theme problems before and part of me is worried that would be the problem. But I’m not going to worry about that at this time.
First and foremost go with the 2 standards in affiliate marketing. (1) Quality Content and (2) Quality Backlinks. If things don’t change after that, then we need to go back and really look at what the problem could be.
I’ll be back tomorrow with content, backlinks etc. I’m going to save the August analysis until October 1st so we can analyze both August and September.
September 26:
Okay so as I said there are really two things you can effectively do when your website isn’t doing well – make it better. Does this work? Not always, but it’s the best start. So today I’m going to be writing one article AND getting one link to the site.
Casino Luck 10 Free Spins on “Beach” – Expires September 30, 2012 (236 words)
September 29th:
I created the first video blog for the site testing out the Casino Luck 10 Free Spins feature. I messed it up actually haha – the audio was way off. But oh well. I also wrote a text blog about it which was 352 words and uploaded it all to YouTube as well as added the blog to my site.
The very first thing I did with the Youtube video was in the direction add the URL.
YouTube links are “no-follow” but honestly there is nothing wrong with no-follow links. People think “no-follow” means that there are worthless – but ask anyone who has backlinks from Wikipedia how worthless they are.
Some Miscellaneous Notes:
The following notes don’t have dates on them unfortunately and I’m not sure where they fit in. Probably around mid-August
Today’s the day that the pre-written content runs out, so I’ve written the following content for the next couple of days:
I also gave us our first backlink, which is on one of my own websites. The website is https://www.play-keno-online.com and I wrote an article about Keno Deposit Bonuses, linking to our Keno No Deposit Bonuses section.
Lots of people are scared to link to their websites from their own websites – but as long as you do it in a relevant manner, there’s really no issues with it.
I added a link to the site on https://www.multi-card-keno.com today. Same deal – just talking about no deposit keno bonuses, and linking to the keno section.
Today I would like to analyze a few of the keywords that visitors have came to NoDepositSites.com from, and also how they interacted with the site. This is a MUST for anyone working on a site. Always look at your keywords. This can help for so many reasons. ie:
(1) If one keyword is making you lots of money, then you can bump up the SEO on that keyword, and rank as well as possible.
(2) It really helps to get to know and understand your visitor, and better convert them.
(3) It can also give you additional content ideas.
I gave us a link today on my website https://www.OnlinePokerReviews.ca. Similar to the others – for this one, I linked to the Canada No Deposit Bonuses section.
I ran Xenu on NoDepositSites.com today.
I also checked Google Webmaster Tools for 404s.
FUTURE THINGS TO DO:
– ADWORDS KEYWORD TOOL – ADDITIONAL CONTENT
– W3C COMPLIANT/PAGESPEED
– GEO-TARGETING
– TALK ABOUT LINK BUILDING STRATEGY
– POST STATS ANALYZE MORE KEYWORDS
– UPDATE QUALITY OF CURRENT CONTENT
REVENUE JET ISSUE WHERE IT TAKES A FEW MONTHS TO CLEAR
– NO DEPOSIT BLOGS
April 26th, 2016 Conclusion:
Well if you stuck with it through all 12,000 words then good for you. Hopefully you learned something. While the site itself didn’t work out I thoroughly enjoyed writing that log and it was fun going through and re-reading it.
Hopefully it will help you out with websites you build in the future.
This article was written on April 26, 2016 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.
If you need to contact Graeme, please see his Contact Page. If you are an affiliate manager wanting promoted please see this page.
