And no, this post will not talk about occasionally accepting sponsored posts on your website. Nor accepting to edit your content to include a link to a specific website, every now and then.
Although I find that perfectly legitimate, what I actually want to write about in this post is how I built websites that ONLY make money selling guest posts and niche edits.
And should you do the same?
And if you should, can you? How much money would you earn? How to do it?
Now, if I was a big time name in the SEO and online business industry (I am not...yet!), I'd expect this post to receive a ton of backlash (it still may).
It's because there's a certain percentage of people in SEO who only try to approach SEO by fully committing to and trusting Google's guidelines.
And since buying and selling backlinks is a no-no, building websites only to sell links is even a bigger NO-NO.
And while I don't judge them for their approach (I understand and approve it), Google has shown that:
- They are not (yet!) capable of ranking content they tell us to create (just check the SERPs, if you don't trust me).
- Their actions don't match their words and they have a propaganda they've been pushing on all of us.
- Links are an absolutely necessary factor to rank high, and in so many niches, outside of buying links, you have no other options to build quality backlinks.
Does that mean we should destroy the Internet?
No, not at all. It's Google's job to rank and promote quality websites, and it's on us to create such websites.
But what constitutes quality and worthy website is one long debate that no one person can answer in a single sentence.
My personal belief is that all content creation on the Internet is money-driven. Nobody really does it out of the goodness of their heart, no matter what they say.
Same goes for Google. They are in it for the revenue, and they are not going to care who gets caught in the crosshairs as long as they line up their pockets.
That doesn't mean they necessarily have bad intentions, and that they are out to get you.
I, personally, produce content knowingly trying to create a win-win scenario, both for myself and the other side and I want to believe that most other do it.
Again, not because of some goodness or anything, but because it makes sense for the business long-term.
Okay, enough of that philosophy talk, what is this all about??
Fine, let's get to the point!
For anyone who has been following me knows that, over the past few years, I built (and sold) websites that have generated significant (often 6-figures annually) revenue from selling guest posts.
Because this method of revenue generation is frowned upon, you will not find many people talking about it openly on social media, or anywhere else for that matter.
The main talk is usually around building niche websites monetized through affiliate marketing, selling your own products or bombarding users with display ads.
And while I have built and profited from such websites, I found they ofen:
- Are ineffective
- Take too long to develop
- Don't have as strong of an ROI
- Have too much competition
- Take too much time to manage
- and are very hard to scale without hiring a large team
Somewhere around 2019 I begun realizing all of those things and during the COVID era, I completely switched to a different revenue model for the websites I was building.
I started building websites that are primed for selling backlinks in the form of guest posts and niche edits (charging anywhere between $50 and $500 for a link, depending on the website) and I've made a small fortune from it.
Wait wait wait... What are you talking about? Who buys links? How does that work?
To fully understand the rationale behind buying and selling links, you will need to brush up on the basics of SEO and link building.
We don't really have time for a crash course on SEO, but I'll try to give you a quick sum-up (if you know anything about SEO, feel free to skip this part):
Internet is a network of content and links. We search for something, get results, go to a website, read content, and very likely, get onto another page of content from that one through some random link placed on it.
Being that Internet is all content and links, we know that these 2 are critical then. They are the building blocks, and likely the biggest difference makers in how websites rank.
To rank highly on Google, you need:
- Quality content.
- Quality and "worthy" websites linking to your content (this is what we call "backlinks" in SEO)
- A bunch of other important, but less important, factors I don't want to be talking about now because this post ain't about how to do SEO right.
Now, you can figure out the content part on your own. You know, write some good shit and all that.
But getting quality websites to link to you... That's a whole other beast. In some niches, you can get very creative and launch PR campaigns that can generate hundreds of links.
In most other niches, that's not possible, and you will have to resort to purchasing backlinks from other websites.
People who build websites, SEOs, marketing agencies, link builders... they are always in need of backlinks, whether towards their own web properties or their clients'.
And they often have no other choice than to go out and purchase them from websites that sell these.
This is where we come in!
Being an SEO specialist who focused heavily on link building and PR campaigns between 2015 and 2019, I had a first row seat to the big industry changes that were happening around link building.
Over a very short period of time, people went from not spending any money on acquiring links through guest posting and other link building methods (like broken link building or skyscraper technique), to almost exclusively having to pay for such placements.
That opened up an avenue for smart (tooting my own horn here) SEOs and website operators to start charging money to link to other websites.
And since I didn't own any properties at that moment, I've decided to start building some specifically to try and make money this way.
And guess what?
It turned out to be a major success.
Now, instead of continuing to brag about my accomplishments, I have a few confessions to make:
- It was a shot in the dark, and I had no idea this would turn out to be the biggest revenue I'd earn from any of my own projects.
- I got very lucky. I kept getting hit with exactly what I needed exactly when I needed it.
- I "failed" to scale this operation. At most, I owned 6 websites who were making money on a daily basis, and I chose against scaling that to dozens of websites doing exactly the same thing. Why? Earning 6 figures a year for 90 minutes of daily work was my "4-hour workweek" moment. I don't regret it, because I remain to be a huge proponent of lifestyle-first work. However, I met folks who own 20-30 of such websites, and what I earned in my best months, they earn in their worst days.
- I've had a solid drop in 2023. I stopped working on any updates of these websites aside from regularly publishing link placements. I even went out and sold 2 websites, and used those profits to invest in another venture that ended up failing.
These websites still make a very decent income - in December of 2023 they made over $10,000 with less than 20h of work invested, and I am happy with those numbers.
These websites have been severely neglected for quite some time, and the fact they still make money is quite astonishing.
I am still looking to get earnings back over $10,000/month consistently, because I know that with a little bit of love, these websites could easily hit significantly higher figures.
Should you try to replicate what I did?
I don't see why not. There are people in SEO who would consider this to be a black hat method, but I have no problem with painting outside of the lines.
Even when I do such things, I stay transparent and honest saying exactly what my approach was. Some people will always judge you, but again, we are all in this game for the money.
Can you replicate what I did?
With a little bit of SEO know-how, you definitely could.
In fact, the reason why I am writing this post is because I have decided to share everything that I learned in this business, and teach others on how to replicate my levels of success and beyond.
Yes, I've decided to make an offer.
This offer will be available in a following format:
I never thought of myself as someone who would ever end up selling info products. I even argued against doing it for nearly 2 years.
Course sellers tend to get a bad rep, and a lot of courses you end up buying turn out to be a huge miss with information that could be found elsewhere for free.
The reason I changed my mind and decided I'd release this information to the public is because:
- I want to test out building and selling an info product. I am in a possession of a ton of unique information that could potentially be a source of a good income for many people. It's a ton of information that isn't readily available anywhere else, but come from my own 4-year journey.
- I got seriously pissed of at the shit Google and OpenAI have been doing this past year. They are on a mission to destroy content publishers, niche site owners and in the process of doing that, they often do shady shit. So if they are truly after not promoting quality content, I have zero issues with squeezing as much money from them.
This product will not only give you all of the necessary information to build these websites, but it also gives you an exclusive list of link buyers who are purchasing links on my websites on a regular basis.
You could take this product and build a couple of these websites in a 2-3 months, and start earning $1,000+/month.
Is this product necessary for your success?
Hell, no! This method is quite simple and straightforward (it's why I priced the product so low), and you could go out and figure it all out by yourself fairly quickly.
My playbook would definitely help you cut some corners, and the list of buyers in itself is worth a ton of money.
These people have brought me hundreds of thousands in revenue, and if you have a website or decide to build one, you will not be starting from scratch with no buyers (just email these people and start collecting dollaritos!)
How much money can you earn by building websites that sell link placements?
Without trying to oversell this method, I honestly and truly believe the method is quite limitless, especially if you leverage the modern AI tools.
As a solo owner focused on doing this for a couple of hours a day, you can easily have 10k/months from 2-3 well-built websites for this venture.
If you want to experience higher earnings... well, you'd need more financial, time and management resources, but this could be scaled well beyond $100k/month with only a handful of employees.
During my years of milking this revenue model, I've met several people in this line of business.
Many were completely satisfied staying around $10k/month and managing only a couple of websites.
But I've met this one dude from Arizona who has taken this to an extreme. He has a list of 50 websites where he sells links and his highest months are over 300k in revenue.
Not all of it's profit, of course, but I know for a fact he retains above 75% of it.
Keep in mind that through scaling, the quality of each website will likely go down as well.
More websites to manage means each website will get less love overtime, unless you have a team you can dedicate to updating content and doing basic SEO practices every month.
But how much you are going to scale is up to you.
Just know that as long as you can keep publishing and building new websites, you can keep increasing your revenue, because the demand is huge and very much unfulfilled at this moment.
People are in dire need of quality backlinks, and they have no problems shelling out money for them.
It's on you to develop the websites, and sell them the link placements.
Are you ready to dive in?
If you are immediately ready to dive deep into all of the information and start building these websites, you can access it here: