How KK Ezekiel Earns $18k Per Month From A Troubleshooting-Tech Blog

By admin On Nov 3, 2022

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Today’s guest on the Niche Pursuits podcast is KK Ezekiel. KK has been building blogs and businesses since he was just 17 years old. He was earning $8k per month within a matter of months starting the blog and $30k per month from an agency he created before he was 20 years old.

He doubled down on the blog (a troubleshooting-tech blog) after a Google algorithm update reduced his revenue to around $3k per month. He’s now earning $18k per month and receives around 1.2 million monthly visits.

KK chats to Jared about the process he took to grow the blog from the start. He details updating content and provides the exact process he took to make his content worthy of ranking high in the search engines. Moreover, he highlights the importance of using Google Search Console (GSC) to discover the best content to update and raise your CTR (Click-Through-Rate).

The conversation moves on to keyword research, and KK treats you to in-depth strategies for finding keywords to target. He provides multiple ways to utilize free websites in combination with keyword research tools to find great keywords. You get step-by-step guides on finding keywords on sites like Reddit, YouTube, Quora and more.

With over 1000 articles on his site, it’s no surprise that KK has a team of writers to help with content creation. So, he also shares his system for finding writers, keeping costs low, and filtering out the bad writers.

Links & Resources:

watch the interview:

read the transcription:

Jared: Welcome back to the Niche Pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bauman, and today we are joined by KK Ezekiel, welcome on board kk.

Ezekiel: Hi Jared, how are you?

Jared: I’m doing very, very well. Uh, thank you for joining us. We, we ironed out a few of the technical difficulties here before recording, so I think we’re off to the races.

We’re gonna have a really good interview here. Sounds good. Hey, so I’m really excited to share about, uh, your journey and your website because you have a really awesome success story and I think there’s a lot we’re gonna learn from it today. And I always love when we kind of deep dive one specific website.

I feel like there’s so many questions we get to, to get some answers to. But before we move into that, tell us about yourself, your journey, how you got started, and all this. Like, just let’s get to know you.

Ezekiel: Sounds good. So my name is kk, um, I’m 22, so about, I think about five years ago. So I was 17 in college, so one day it hit me.

I was, I was kind of bored. I was like, I’ve got a lot of, um, free time. Like, let me find something productive to, to do with this. So I go on YouTube, um, I’m searching, you know, how to make money online. Then I come across Jim and Ricky, which I’m sure you are, um, familiar with income, Uh,

Jared: what income school?

Ezekiel: Yeah, exactly. So they’re in the like online website, space, space, uh, SDO space. So that kind of resonated with me, that specific business model. So I was like, Cool, let me start a site. I wasn’t too sure how it was gonna work out. I was just, you know, hoping for, uh, for the best. I’m 17. I don’t really need, need money.

So let me just start this whole like, business thing. Yeah. So I’m, I’m in the trenches for about. Seven, seven months just writing. And the, the hardest part about that is you don’t know how things are gonna work out. Cause obviously with the, a algorithm, it takes about six months for, for things to like kickoff.

So, but until then you, you are kind of just stabbing in the dock. So it was about seven months of like pure, It was like working every day after, after college. Then about five months into it, traffic starts, uh, tick up some like, oh shit, this, like, it actually works that, but this stuff actually works. So I hit about 50 k, 50 k visit, visit a month, which.

Means you can apply for, uh, Meine, which is a mm-hmm. , which is an ad network for anyone who doesn’t, who doesn’t know. So, yeah, so they allow ad ads on your site at about 50 k visits per month. So I apply again in, and I start making about, um, about 10, $10 a day. So 300 a month. So that’s initial off the bat.

Then about

Jared: eight 17 or 18. That’s, I mean, that’s pretty good, you know, like it’s hard to complain about that. I was not making $300 a day, uh, 300 a month, Sorry. I mean, when I was thinking I was 17 .

Ezekiel: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I was, I was quite young, so I was just, I was happy. So, very quickly, about about three months, three months into it, traffic, just, we could say exploded, which means obviously revenue went up.

So, From there went up to about $3,000 a month, a few more months after that. So I’m on about 8,000 per month. So I ride that wave. Um, a Google algorithm update hits, so revenue drops. I’m like, Damn. Okay, so what do we do now? So, obviously when a, when an update, uh, hits, it’s kind of hard to, you don’t know what to change about your website to make it better.

So I’m just clueless for months things are down. I’m like, Let me hold off on this for a while now. Let me just leave this. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it. It’s still making thousands per month, about 3000 a month. I’ll just let it do it sing. So I started another business on the side. So I started an agency for, it was servicing eCommerce brands.

Yeah, so servicing e-commerce brands doing about 50 to 150,000 per month. So we do the advertising for them very quickly. That takes off in about six months. I’m doing uh, 30 grand a month with that. So things are going well. I’m like, I’m chilling.

Jared: Um, now are you, are you in college at this time as well? Are you taking classes?

No. So this,

Ezekiel: so this all happens until I’m about 20. Okay. Okay. So everything I’ve just went through was, um, yeah. So yeah, so the whole algorithm thing, that was about two years into it. Wow. A few months later, I start the agency, so I’m about 20 now. Agency takes off. Uh, run that for a few months. Then some iOS full team update comes out with, uh, Facebook that came out last year makes it harder to get results for the brands.

I was working things, so things drop down slightly. So now I go back to the website, I’m like, um, I do. So my brother is, he also lives with me, so he, he’s kind of been researching this whole thing for a while. Then he’s like, Your website is like, it’s really, it’s really bad. So I’m like, I’m like, Why? He’s like, Your content is very thin, doesn’t provide much value, plus there’s so much keywords out there that you could easily rank for that.

I’m not sure why you haven’t kind of gone for them. Like, you should be making a lot more with this site. So I really, I, you know, take a, a deep dive for about a week. I’m like, what have I been doing here? Like, I’ve just, like, I could have made this, the site could have been a lot bigger than it is now, but yeah, I could have, I could have been doing a lot of these past, uh, few months, years, whatever it was.

So a bit, uh, blurry. But yeah, so he kind of tells me, you know, Improve the content, put it in console, look at what it’s ranking for, bump up the word count a bit, uh, make it more, you know, helpful than, you know, this is what you should be writing about. So everything just clicks. I’m like, I must have been blind.

Like, it all makes sense. So I’m like, um, so that, so for, for a few months I was like, let me just update all the content. So at the point, So, so before I went back to the site, I was on about 2, 2 50 visits a month. So in my eyes that’s, it’s a lot, but it’s not a lot at the same time. Uh, which might be weird for some people, but yeah, so that was a bit, yeah, so I was on about 200, uh, visits a month.

I, I go through about 400 post, um, update. All of them word counts go from like 700 to like 1.7 K. Um, not that there needs to be a specific word count, but there was just so much, so much I missed out within those posts that, yeah, that naturally the word count went up. So I, I update all of them. Traffic goes to like 600,000 a month.

So then I realize, Damn, like updating your content is extremely important, especially if you haven’t done it for a very long time, for over a year, reaching two years. So I’m like, Okay, now I’ve updated everything. Let me go and. Kind of write rhyme or content. Uh, I dunno how much I, I’ve actually forgotten your initial question.

I dunno how much I’m rambling on here, but, Well,

Jared: you’re walking us through where we’re at today, which is a fascinating journey. I, I, I really enjoy hearing because I feel like there’s two types of people who find this success online. One follows a path sort of like you, although usually about 20 years later in life, for the record, congratulations, , um, on your success at such a, at such a young age, but following a path where you almost accidentally stumble into that first initial success and then through maybe happenstance or through, um, landing back in it, you learn about what you need to do to take it to the next level, which clearly you kind of landed on media vine without even really knowing what you were doing, it sounds like.

And then over the course of the following years, you, you really learned how to grow it.

Ezekiel: Yeah, exactly that.

Jared: Now, you were about to go into how you started targeting these new keywords, and I’m curious about that. I mean, it sounds like if I were recapping, you basically got your initial website up to around 600,000 page views just from writing your initial content and then going back and updating it.

Is that, is that accurate? Before you kind of started really writing new articles focused on keywords that you had done SEO research for?

Ezekiel: Yeah, so I made sure I had a solid foundation before. I tried writing anything new, so updated about 400 posts. Then got to about 600, uh, visits, 600,000 visits per month from about 200,000.

So yeah, so update and did a lot for the site. Can you

Jared: unpack a little bit more? You, you kind of mentioned a little bit, you went into gsc Google Search Console and I’m, you know, looked up keywords and did some research there. But could you unpack a little bit more about maybe what an average update looked like for an article and so we can kind of learn from that.

I, I, I imagine there’s a lot of people out there that have some old content, whether it’s on a website they’re focused on, or maybe they let kind of die off or they got discouraged from an update. What did you do on a per post type of basis to update these article?

Ezekiel: Yeah. So let me give you like, kind of the secret, not secret, but kind of the source to how I did it.

So I’ll take the url. You want to go into Google Search Console? Yeah. So you go into the, to the section that has all your posts. You guys can figure out, you plug in the url, then you want to look back at three months. Ok. Look at, look back at the data for three months. Um, then you want to click on the impressions tab and you want to sort it from highest to lowest.

So, Impressions tab tells you what impressions the post is getting. Um, so you sort it from highest to lowest then. So the highest impressions that people are searching for that your post comes up. Uh, for in the search times is what you want to make. The title of the post, this is in about 80 to 90% of cases.

So if it just sounds completely off, then it clearly doesn’t make sense. But you’ll notice that what you are getting the highest impressions for is also what if you changed. The title two is what? It’s what will get you the most traffic, cuz that’s what people are searching. So you wanna optimize it for, for that.

So as soon as you do that, you’ll notice that your click through rate goes, goes up. So, so that’s the title now. Yeah. So after you look at the first kind of the highest impressions for the post, you look at everything else it’s ranking for, then you wanna look back at the post and you’ll notice that you are missing a lot of things that you haven’t put in the post, um, that you’ll be seeing in, um, search consoles.

So you look at other times that the Post is getting a lot of impressions for, Then you also add them within, uh, the post itself. So based on how important that kind of search time is, you either make it heading or you sprinkle it throughout the post. So yeah, you just wanna make. The terms that are get, getting the highest impressions are within that post, because that’s really what’s gonna get you the, the, the most traffic.

And obviously when, if you have a bulk of posts, uh, to update, you wanna, you wanna start with the posts that either haven’t been updated in the longest time or the posts that are getting the most traffic. Uh, because you obviously wanna start with the low hanging fruit first. You wanna make sure you are getting your kind of time’s worth.

So don’t update or don’t start to update stuff that isn’t, that doesn’t have potential. Start with the stuff that has potential to get, um, the most traffic. You want to, Yeah. So you wanna repeat this process for all of your posts, not all of them, but the ones that have potential. And over about three months you’ll see that your, um, your click, click through rate on Google search console over the past, when you look at a three months view, um, it will, you’ll see it naturally increase.

So mindless prob probably at about, um, 1%. Um, when I updated everything, it went in about a few months. It went, um, up to about, yeah, 5%, which is a huge Wow. That’s five x. Yeah, a huge increase. I don’t know how accurate that is, but that’s what I can’t remember from memory. But yeah.

Jared: So let me ask you a question about that, because I feel like, um, well, let me get your opinion.

So you had this, I mean, doing that across foreign articles, that’s a ton of work. Yeah. And I, that’s had to have taken months to do. When you look back on like the 400 or so, do you feel like most of your articles that you were making adjustments to the title was pretty close to what you ended up adjusting it to?

Or meaning like maybe you just had a little bit of the wrong keyword phrasing, but generally speaking you had the right title, or did you find a lot of times that you made fairly dramatic changes to the titles? Which question? Which ended up having a big impact? You know, like, I’m curious.

Ezekiel: Yes. So in most cases the, it wasn’t completely off, but.

It was off to the point that when you change it, you’re gonna note it. I noticed a huge increase, so, So yeah, I’d say it was fairly off, but now I’m so good at knowing what the search time would be. When I look back at data, it’s pretty much, it’s bang on. But yeah, you guys will notice a huge. If you, Yeah, if you’re not kind of, if you haven’t done this before, you’ll notice that you were fairly off, Not completely, but fairly off.

Yeah.

Jared: I will say that when I will go back and maybe look at an article of mine that has dropped, say, used to be one of my higher performing articles, and then, you know, you’ll just notice it kind of slips outta the top 10 for your page and then it’s slipping down. Number 15, I’ll go pop it into like an age ref, and I’ll look at the, like an age re I’ll tell you the, the keyword that’s bringing in the most traffic, and it’s a third party tool.

Google search console’s better by the way. But if you just pop it into age reps, you kinda get an idea for what that number one keyword is. Man, it always blows me away. It’s like, I didn’t target that. That’s not the key word I’m targeting.

Ezekiel: Yeah, sometimes it’s literally ranking. Something completely different then you kind of optimize the post to, to make it relevant to that then.

Yeah. So you all notice that sometimes. So

Jared: I should have asked you this outta the gate, but I wanted to dive in to some of these things and I got stuck on your, your updating content. Tell us where the site is today, anything you’re comfortable sharing, if you’re comfortable sharing generally what niche it’s in, how much you’re earning right now per month, maybe page views, traffic, total number of articles, just to give everyone a framework for where you’ve now taken this site over the course of four years.

Ezekiel: Okay, So right now it’s ma So right now the traffic has gone from about 600,000 per month to 1.1 0.2 million. And that’s been, that’s been, that’s been in. For four to five months of writing new post. So all those new posts has got me to about, um, 1.2 million. And in terms of how much that is making, it’s about, I think 18,000 per month.

So depending on what shoing you will notice that the RPMs might be vastly different. So there at about RPMs are about 18, 17, 16, around there. So it might be low or high depending on what niche you’re in. Um, and yeah, so in terms of what niche, um, the, the site is in, it’s in the, So I’ll keep, it’s in the troubleshooting space.

And in the troubleshooting text space is how much I’ll give. So yeah. So good

Jared: for you. How many articles are you at now with, I mean, you had the, the 400, you updated, I think roughly, and then you’re writing a ton of new content to get that 1.2 million right now. Where, what number of articles are you

Ezekiel: at?

1.3 K. So 1,300. So about a thousand more, a thousand more articles have been written to get, Did you,

Jared: are you writing all these yourself?

Ezekiel: Not me passing it. That that would be impossible. Yeah. was gonna say animal . Yeah, exactly. So we have a, I have like a team of like ly entry level writers, so the cost isn’t high.

I’ve kept the cost to a minimum. Um, so yeah, so the problem with hiring for a low amount is. Obviously writers aren’t as good, but you can compensate and you can kind of offset that with how you brief them. So I make sure the briefs are extremely detailed. I basically do most of the research, uh, and their job is to kind of double check that and obviously write the content.

So that’s kind of, that’s one way to get around, um, paying, you know, extortion of prices, I think anyway for, um, for content, especially in my niche as well. So I understand, uh, you know, other niches like the health niche, it be an expensive, uh, for content, but especially minus, um, yeah, you can definitely, it doesn’t have to cost a huge amount to produce content.

Jared: I’m curious. I wanna come back to how you handled this amount of c content at scale, but just to further round out, you know, kind of what we were just talking about in terms of the numbers, the traffic, the revenue, um, at 1300 posts, like that’s a lot of articles to manage and to keep track of. Like is it that maybe a few of the articles are bringing in a lot of the traffic, or is the traffic pretty spread across a lot of these articles?

I’m just trying to get my mind wrapped around Yeah. How the traffic comes into this, this number of

Ezekiel: articles. Very good question. So in terms of, Okay, so there are about a thousand new posts. Let’s round it up. So you will always find this is, I think this is a rule in general anyway, about 20% of the articles bring in 80% of the traffic.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I’m, I’m sure you see that as well. So that’s not me saying oh, 800 posts or a waste of money because they still, they’re still, Yeah. So as you kind of, kind of, as the like percentage increases, you find that a huge amount of the articles bring in more of the traffic, then you’ll find that some don’t perform particularly as well.

But to check, to check how many posts are bringing in traffic, you can go on. So you can go on Google Analytics, um, go on a day’s view, so like yesterday and at the bottom. Um, and also you can filter out, you can filter out posts that aren’t. Specific amount of traffic. So for yesterday, for example, I could filter out posts that didn’t get at least three people.

So that will tell you, that will get rid of like search searches and bottom stuff. Um, so yeah, so it will tell you, so for example, for me, it tells me 1,200 articles are bringing in traffic, um, which is, which is basically 900 of the 1000. So all of, pretty much all of them are bringing in traffic. But again, you’ll find that about 20% are bringing in the bulk of the traffic and top posts.

You know, up until recently there was one post spring in, uh, 5,000 people a day. So it can get kind of ridiculous. But yeah, you’ll notice only, uh, a small percentage of bringing in most of the traffic. Yep.

Jared: That’s normal. That’s normal. Yeah. That’s, uh, that’s how these things go. I was curious cuz that’s kind of how it goes at a hundred articles, that’s kind of how it goes at 500 articles.

Exactly. Yeah. I was like, that’s kinda how it goes at 1300 articles. Yeah,

Ezekiel: exactly. Well,

Jared: let’s talk about how you found this number of keywords to go after. I’m curious about your keyword research process, if you don’t mind sharing. And a lot of this is pretty new. You were saying most of these new articles are fairly new.

So maybe we’ll walk us through how you find these keywords, how you figure out which ones to write, which ones not to write, and then, then maybe how you share, um, uh, writing instructions for your, for your writers.

Ezekiel: Yeah, so I’ll say in terms of seo, this is probably the, this is the most like important kind of thing you have to get right?

Like, if you don’t get this right, you. Successes is not gonna, it’s not gonna happen. So in terms of what to write now, in terms of, so you need to gauge how much traffic each post, uh, or each keyword is gonna bring in. So I aim for nothing less than 30 people per day, which is a thousand visits per month per post.

So you wanna set, first of all, you wanna set how much traffic you actually want. So I think 30 people per day, one k uh, visits per month per key word is what, uh, you should be going for. A bit less is ok. Um, now in terms of now, so when you choose a keyword, you want to actually make sure you can actually rank for that keyword, because if you can’t rank for it, You are gonna waste money or time on the article.

So, um, no. So to to check if you can actually rank for it. You want to check your, This is kind of, well this is how I, I check for it. So you want to check your domain authority, I don’t know what AHF calls it, but they have a free tool that allows you to check your, I think, domain rank. So, Right. Uh,

Jared: rating, domain

Ezekiel: rating.

Yeah, domain rating. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, so you check your domain rating. Mine’s, Mine’s about around 30. Um, yeah, so once you’ve got your domain rating, you. You now. Um, so you know what your, you know, what your capabilities are in terms of how you can rank now when it comes to key words, there, there are few ways to, to find them.

So you’ve got forums, places like Cora and Reddit. You’ve also got YouTube, other sites as well. Then you’ve got your keyword tools like Sam Rush, which is what I use and ahs. Um, so those are kind of the, the five ways to look for search times. So I’ll run through each of the five ways, uh, briefly. Perfect.

Um, yeah, so how you find. What to write. So, So first one was Cora. Now, okay, so I’ll do it. So you wanna also have a keyword tool in place for this. So this is for Cora and Reddit. So you get cora.com, you plug it into, um, so you go into organic research section in SCM Rush. I think you can kind of translate what I’m saying for AHS as well.

But yeah, so you go into the organic research section, you plug in cora.com, then you have these filters. Um, That allows you, So first you can, you can set the keyword difficulty. So what is gonna do is gonna, is gonna, you know, uncover all the URL’s, Quora dot com’s ranking for, so you filter this out for keyword difficulty.

Now depending on your domain, um, rating you. You changed the difficulty based on that. So for example, example, mine’s about 30. So I aim for keywords no more than if I’m trying to make it easy for myself. I keep the domain rank, This is specifically for Sam Mush. I keep the domain like below 25. Mm-hmm. . And that will, and this isn’t a solid way to gauge how hard it is to rank, uh, because of a few reasons, such as, let’s say Apple, an apple.com forum is also ranking where Quora’s ranking, but you can beat the forum.

But just because it’s apple.com, the keyword difficulty will, will be sky high, Right? Which isn’t true. So you also wanna double check things. Don’t. Like, you do not want to rely on the keyword, uh, difficulty things. So it gives you a general idea. So this

Jared: is like an a, a filter to get rid of some of the, the, the toughest stuff, Yeah.

Is the toughest stuff. But just because you now have your list doesn’t mean you just target every one of these. Now you, you need to do

Ezekiel: more . Exactly. You, you have to do more. Yeah. So keep it, I keep it below 25. If your domain rank is a lot less, keep it below 20 or 15. If it’s higher, um, you obviously you move it up a bit, but the lower it is, the easier it will be to rank in general cases, then to double check it as well.

So once you’ve filtered it out for how, so it’s removed all the harder keywords. Now, um, Samus also allows you to add, um, key words that you want. That you want to filter as well. So let, I, I had a pet website and I wanted to talk about, um, dogs, for example. I’ll make it, I’ll make sure the times it brings the keywords or URLs it brings back is solely about dogs, um, or cats.

Or let’s say you are writing about TVs, you filter it specifically, you just write tv. So it should only include URLs or search funds with the keyword tv. If you want to go more specific, you can say, um, Samsung, for example. Um, yeah. So you do this now, it will bring back everything that includes the words, you know, dog and it will have removed all the hard stuff to rank for.

Now you’ve got a bunch of key words Now, Cora actually lets you see how many views each kind of answer within that specific question has got. Oh, yeah, it’s a good point. Yeah. So, so yeah. So what you want to do is you only look at, Yeah, so you click the URL for all the URLs, URLs, it’s given back and you, you now wanna analyze each URL to see, you know, should I write for this?

So you go on the first url, you, you wanna make sure that, that kind of key words that that forum is ranking for, or that specific URL is ranking for, has had, has averaged about 30 visits or. 1000 visits per month, 30 visits per day, 1000 visits per month. Um, so let’s say, so Coral will give you the year of, of when the answer for that question was written.

And let’s say was it says, One year ago, and it says 12,000 views. That will in most cases will let you know that, you know, it’s receiving about a thousand views per month. If it’s two years ago that the answer’s written, written, it will, it will say, you, you want to look for 24,000 visits a month. Cause that’s about one, uh, thousand per year.

So the more recent the answer was, the kind of more accurate that that data will be. So if it’s about four years ago and it’s still spitting back about, um, I think is it 36,000 visits, which. No. 48,048. Yep. Yeah, yeah. Which will be about one cas per month. I’ll be a bit wary of it because I don’t know if that, if a bulk of those views were years ago or Right.

Three years ago or something. Yeah. Yeah. But the other views on, the other answers for that specific, uh, URL will also help you judge how accurate, uh, it’s so you wouldn’t understand much from what I’m saying. You actually have to go on Quora and you’ll see this. That’s cool.

Jared: It’s almost like getting to sneak peek at their analytics.

You know, the way, you don’t get to see it over every month, but you get an idea for what Quora articles are actually getting eyeballs, which is kind of the gold nugget of keyword word research. If you could just understand which ones actually get eyeballs, it, you’d be much further ahead. That’s, that’s really cool.

Hadn’t thought,

hadn’t

Ezekiel: never thought about, Thank you mania. Exactly. Should I go into the others?

Jared: Oh, please. Okay. So yeah, we got, we got four more to go here. We’ve already got a gold nugget. We got four more to go.

Ezekiel: Okay. Yeah. So that was for cora.com. Now, to do, to do this for Reddit, you do the same thing with the filters and the exact thing you want it to your, your URLs force.

For example, dogs and keyword difficulty below 25. So you do all of that for, for Reddit, it doesn’t tell you how many views it’s got. It tells you how many comments it’s received. So the more recent the answer or the question was asked, the more accurate it’ll be. So if you are seeing this specific question was.

Answered or asked about three months ago, and there’s about 60 comments. You know for sure that if you write that keyword, you are gonna get traffic. So what I now, there isn’t, it’s, it’s a slightly more harder, but to make sure that you are kind of accurate every time you want to go for very recent. So within about, uh, within about a year, uh, you can do more, but, okay, so you can, it doesn’t really matter how old the question is, it matters how recent the comments or the replies were for that question.

So if you are seeing something as three years old, but there’s loads of comments that are like, oh, seven days ago, a month ago, you know, it, it’s still getting traffic. So you just wanna look for several recent comments. On that, uh, question and that will tell you it’s getting traffic. So that’s for Reddit.

Now, for other websites, uh, you just want to go, go to a website in your niche. Similar. Dr. Domain rated, you plug in, I dunno, some people might not find this ethical, but this is business. So you plug in theirs to sand mush or hfs, you look at all the, um, things they’re ranking for, um, then obviously that you can, you know, steal some of their keywords.

I think everyone, everyone does this to each other. So yeah, if

Jared: you are completely, it wouldn’t be the first to have suggested something

Ezekiel: like that. So, I, I, yeah, exactly. I hope not. Um, and the others I said were YouTube. Now, sometimes when you search something, uh, in Google, uh, one of the results is a YouTube.

So if you can see Song has made a YouTube with a YouTube video with the exact kind of keywords, Then you check how many views that YouTube video has gotten and you, you wanna make sure, again, the average is about one K per month. Um, then to make sure that’s, um, if the video’s older than you are a bit more spec skeptical, you look at, you check form recent comments, right?

Like red. So yeah, that’s, that’s how it goes with, that’s how I do keywords research. And so I hope that was helpful. I

Jared: think it’s really interesting how you combine with, you know, I mean you went through Quora, you went through Reddit, you went through YouTube. You’re combining the views, which are. And we don’t see public views on websites Exactly.

But we do see public views on these sites. And you’re combining that with comments, which it’s more rare nowadays to see comments on blogs or other articles or websites. But you’re doing keyword research, you’re finding the keywords, but then you’re validating them even further by seeing a, are they getting enough visits over time to substantiate writing it?

And B, are they getting enough comments to where it wasn’t just a social media pop or something like that. It really is more longstanding. And even though it’s written maybe a little while ago, it’s still ranking and getting comments cuz it’s dead. It’s real. Exactly. Fascinating. There’s some really good stuff.

Um, anything else you’re doing when it comes to, you mentioned I think number four and number five was other websites and then keyword tools. Um, anything kinda unique there or, or is that a little bit more a plug and play?

Ezekiel: Um, yeah, so Oh yeah, so other websites, Um, yeah, so if you see, if you search the term and you’ve.

And you click on a result for another website in your niche. Uh, again, you just check for, uh, recent comments. So, like you’ve said, it’s more rare that people comment on, uh, broad personal days, but it’s another way to, you know, know for sure. Thus something is getting traffic. And again, the more recent and the more comments there are, the chances are, uh, it’s getting quite a bit of traffic.

Um, and what was the second thing you said?

Jared: Keyword tools. I mean, you’ve been talking about Sim Rush.

Ezekiel: Um, Oh yeah. So that wasn’t one of them. That was just how to use few tools for stuff rather core. Yeah.

Jared: Yeah. And so basically, I guess now I wanna, I wanna know, I’m, I, I figure you probably end up with a lot of keywords once you kind of really dive down.

This, this rabbit hole or rabbit I trailer, rabbit hole. I never know if it’s a trailer. The euphemism. Oh. Um, anyways, , you get a ton of keywords. How do you pick which ones to write? How do you pick which ones to go after? Do you, is there any sorting or are you basically just putting ’em all on a list? If it meets these criteria of, of what we just talked about, then you’ll get to it at some point.

You’re gonna, you’re gonna write that piece of content at some point.

Ezekiel: Yeah, ex. So, um, yeah, so every day I’ll do exactly what I’ve just said and I’ll find about 10 to 15 of these keywords. Then, um, I’ll give it to the writers. So, yeah, it’s a, if you, if you, if you know you’re not gonna be doing that many posts, you wanna look for posts that have, you wanna do what I’ve said and you wanna look for posts that have the most traffic.

So I said one k per day minimum, because, um, that’s quite, that’s quite easy to find. That’s cuz I’m doing this at scale. But if you only wanna write about 102 onto post, I’ll say, um, aim for about two 2000. 3000 visits a month. So you’ll find so many keywords that this will be, uh, possible. So I don’t know if this is mining specifically.

If you are in another niche, you may find this harder because in my niche things yeah, things are slightly different. But yeah. So if you’re doing a few articles, you wanna, you wanna main aim for more traffic per month, per post.

Jared: Great. Makes total sense. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody’s sure. Uh, take these strategies and apply them to whatever, you know, it’s gonna be niche to, uh, specific.

It’s gonna be specific on how many articles you wanna write, what your production capabilities are. Uh, Alright. Speaking of production capabilities, so you’re outsourcing a lot of this content, um, it sounds like either all of it or the bulk of it. What’s your process like? How do you prepare your writers and how do you maintain, you know, your quality standards across, across these writers?

Because you teased a bit earlier like, Hey, I’m not hiring. You know, I’m not hiring these really high end professional writers, not paying top dollar. So clearly you have some structures in place or some way of making sure that you’re getting good quality content back.

Ezekiel: Yeah. Okay. So I’ll go through the whole higher end process, how to keep the cost alone and make sure the quality is store high.

Um, yeah, so personally I use indeeds.com to find writers. So I put up a job post. Um, I outline the things. I make sure the outline’s easy to read. I mention the things they’ll need to do. I’ll say I need one article. So I’m looking for people who can output a lot signed. I say you’re gonna do one article per day.

If you don’t have to write down the articles, you can say one per week, but I say one article per day, this is how much you’re being paid for it. Um, you don’t need much experience at all, but you’ll have to do, um, a trial whether you want that to be paid or not. That’s up to you. And whether they’re fine with it, um, then, uh, I think you have to, you have to pay a price to upload that.

Job. Ads, I think minimum is five or $10 per day. Um, so you let that run in about two days. You’ll receive in about three, four days, you’ll receive about a hundred applicants, or that’s what I receive anyway. Um, then from there, you wanna, you wanna now filter. Kind of the good and the people who just hide for the sake of it, or just people who wouldn’t be that great.

Um, so you say hi, can you do I keep the trial very low, so I ask for something very small, say, Can you do a hundred and a hundred words trial? So I’m just trying to figure out one, are they actually just gonna do it? Is is, you know, a lot of don’t, so you’d be surprised. Um, I wanna see their writing style and if it fits in with what I’m looking for and the heading of the.

Of the trial is a question. So it’s, it’s something like, can a, you know, can a dog eat chocolate, for example? Um, then you, so you’re like, this is the kind of dog eat chocolate, 150 words. Uh, answer the question, please. Uh, keep it straight to the point. Uh, cuz I wanna see if they can also listen to instructions as well.

So I’m like, keep it straight to the point. Make sure you actually answer the question. Um, so, so a lot of people will reply back with the, either the art. Yeah. So they’ll reply back with the article. A lot of people, uh, you’d be surprised to actually do it. Um, so, so you, so now you want to filter out the good from the bad.

So you’ll notice that some actually answer the question, which is what you are looking for. So they’ll be like, Yes. Or no, dogs cannot eat chocolate. Um, if they do eat excess amount of chocolate, uh, they could become ill. Um, this is why they, they’ve actually answered, like, if you are reading that as a user, you are, you’ll be happy.

Some, they, they’ll give you an intro, Oh, this article is about dogs and chocolate, blah, blah. Like you’ve only got 150 words. And intro is like, is the last thing you should be doing. Um, some don’t from answer the question, they’ll just be like, um, like, uh, it’s historically been known that chocolate is not, uh, good for dogs, blah, blah, which is okay, but you, you kind of want what’s.

Optimum for the user. So the user is gonna be most happy with no, a dog cannot eat chocolate. Cause you want to get your answer quick. So this is just general. I know there’s more to it, but I only gave these guys about hundred words, so they need to get to the point. So from there you can see that tone style, you know, you know what you are happy with.

So you filtered, so you filtered the, the good, not good, but they’re easy to work with. Writers from the, you are gonna have a lot of heading writers. Then from there and like, um, I use trello.com, uh, as my kind of, as my man management tool. That’s why I give them, uh, the. The topics to, right? So I plug into topics in a, in the assignment column, then they drag it into the to do column.

Then when they done, they drag it to the done column, attach the, the article. Then I have someone that publishes it onto the site. So that’s the whole process. Um, now for when you hire someone, you, you want to use a, a, um, plagiarism software, uh, either Gram Grammarly Premium or a Copyscape Premium, I think.

Um, so you want to check, um, You wanna check that they’re not plagiarizing. So every week or so, or every 15 days, you want to check at least one article to make sure, okay, they’re not, they’re, they’re sticking to the rules here. They’re not trying to look for, it’s, you are not paying these guys. Well, if you are trying to keep the cost low, you’re gonna find a lot of people try and, you know, to try and make it easier for themselves to make up for that.

Um, I think even when you pay a premium, you are still gonna experience this. So, yeah, you wanna make sure they’re not, uh, plagiarizing. You also want to check the SOS to make sure that they’re keeping things original, that they’re not just kind of spinning stuff. Um, And if you found that a writer’s done that, you’re like, you, you first of obviously, you let them know it’s not allowed.

If they do it, this is your lost warning. If they do it again, you find someone else. Cause if you’ve said it once and they’re still doing it, uh, they’re still gonna, uh, you know, continue doing it. So yeah. So that’s how you make sure, um, nothing kind of goes wrong. And in times of the brief, I give them the kind of word count I’m looking for.

So that will change the pending on the topic. Then you want to give them each heading or Yeah. Each heading that you want in the article. Well, this is what I do. Then in brackets, you kind of, if it’s something they wouldn’t, um, kind of know about or, you know, there’s not, you know, that you are an expert. In that and they’re not gonna find the answer anyway in brackets.

You kind of tell them what to talk about. Cuz in mining specifically, I know a lot of things that, um, you are not gonna find on Google. So in brackets I just tell them, Make sure you say this. Uh, then that’s their brief done. So it makes it a lot easier for them. It’s a way to keep the price low and yeah, that’s kind of the whole process.

I love

Jared: the tips you shared in hiring. Uh, frankly, that’s really nice because I mean, in reality you don’t need a thousand word test article to get a sense for if they Absolutely not. In many ways, you’re right. Like if you give someone a thousand word article as a test, they could actually answer the question, but still waffle in the intro.

Yeah. And still make a mess of the rest of it. And you, you don’t get as much of a sense for it. But when you give them, Hey, you got a hundred words, give me your best . Like, I love that you know, you. You can tell right away when someone’s gonna waste 40 words of the hundred on, uh, you know, some waffling, opening sentence, something like that.

Yeah. When you’re preparing briefs, like a lot of that made sense. Are you, are you, you talk about plagiarism checking. Are you checking all the articles just in terms of the content before they go live? Or are they going straight to a publisher and then you kind of double check work maybe after it’s gone live?

You’re kind of just circling back on some writers here and.

Ezekiel: Okay, so when I was uploading content from the Don Dun column in cello, so when I was uploading that, when I was doing it, which is about a few weeks ago, I would read through the article, uh, very quickly to make sure. I’m actually happy with it.

In most cases, I am, If I see something’s not quite right, I drag it back into the doing, doing column. I message the writer on Slack, which is a messaging platform specifically for business. I’m like, Hey, change this up. They’ll do it quickly. They’ll drag it back, then I’ll re-upload it, um, make a custom image using Canvas, then publish it so I make sure the article is right, is completely checked before I hit, uh, publish.

Okay.

Jared: Yeah. Good. Yeah, I mean, again, you’re, you’re managing a lot of content at scale, so it’s, it’s very interesting to see, uh, like the processes that you have in place, and I think a lot of people can learn from that, even if they aren’t Yeah. If they’re looking to just bring on their first writer or something.

Mm. Yeah. Uh, let’s talk a little bit. It sounds like you’re an, you’re writing a lot of articles that are maybe, you know, answering specific questions, uh, where somebody, Yeah, like, like they’re kind of this, Hey, I have this problem. You, you mentioned troubleshooting. I have this problem that I need an answer to.

Um, how are you building out the articles once you answer the question, especially if you’re instructing your writers to be as direct and helpful as you are, you probably get through that answer pretty quickly. What does the rest of an article look like in that scenario?

Ezekiel: Okay. Yeah, that’s a good question because you’ll find that for, so let’s say it’s a specific question.

You are like, uh, this is, this only takes about 300 words. Yeah. I’m never gonna rank, like, what else do I say Whilst keeping it extremely relevant. So I’m actually giving the user what they want. So the first kind of heading you want, so let’s say it’s a brief question, like from dogs. Eat chocolate. Eat chocolate, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You start with that as the first heading, you actually answer the question straight away. Um, then from there you can the next heading. So rather than trying to figure it out yourself, you wanna search that question into Google then, and the people also ask questions and people also asked section, you’ll see similar questions that people have asked around that specific, um, Question.

Then if it’s relevant, you add that as a heading. Um, you can also look at the bottom where I think it’s related searches that Google provides. Again, if those are relevant, add that to the article. So that’s if you don’t wanna do, um, much thinking, but specifically, specifically for the canned dogs, eat chocolate.

How I would do it is, can dogs eat chocolate? Answer the question. Um, what will happen if my dog eats chocolate? You explain everything that will happen. You provide subheadings for the specific things that will happen. You can go a little bit more in depth there. Then you can say, What is it in chocolate that is bad for my dog?

Then you obviously explain what it is in chocolate that’s bagged for your dog. Then next thing I’ll say is my dog. I accidentally gave my dog chocolate. What do I do? Um, then you explain everything they should do if they actually gave their dog chocolate. Um, Then, yeah. Another thing could be my date. My dog ate chocolate, but he’s fine.

You can be like, Oh, sometimes nothing happens to them. Blah, blah. So yeah, so off the bat, that’s kind of how you go about structuring, structuring an answer that could have been extremely simple. That’s how you take something that could have been 200, 300 words to 2000 plus words. And obviously words, as Google have said, isn’t a ranking factor.

I don’t know how much, uh, you know, Chief of that is, could be, could, uh, could not be. But obviously the more in depth, uh, you go, typically the more the user will be happy with the content and the more, yeah, the more you fulfill, uh, within what the user’s actually looking for. So, yeah. So the more in depth something is, the better it should do in most cases.

Yeah.

Jared: You have either written that specific article before or written it or you’re really good. You clearly spend a lot of time in keyword word research in brief. Yeah. Just rattled off what sounds like a really good article.

Ezekiel: Yeah, I’ve done that. I’ve done this. So I do this about 10 times a day, so that was quite easy for me.

Jared: Yeah, man, you must eat, drink, and sleep, this stuff cuz that just rattled right off the tongue really

Ezekiel: well. Yeah. Thank you .

Jared: Um, yeah, let me transition a little bit as we, as we kind of start to wrap up, like. What, uh, what do you have planned for this site going forward? And, um, uh, you know, like, what’s next for this, this site, maybe over the course of the next year or so.

Ezekiel: Okay, so next, over the course of the next year now. Yeah, So this might sound crazy, but I’m, I’m just trying to take it into the millions. I don’t know how may happen, may not, I don’t know how, um, easy it is to. In this landscape, especially with updates. Um, another issue I’m coming across is finding actual keywords themselves.

I’m still finding them, but once you’ve kind of, once you’ve hit a specific point, you are like, Okay, now it takes slightly more longer to look for key words and yeah, you, you struggle a bit more. I still think I can do it, but yes. So the aim is to follow the same process, write more articles, um, take the traffic into the millions.

I’m hoping maybe in the next year I hit about 3 million. We could look back in a year. I’ve completely flopped this. It may have happened, I’ll never know. But, uh, based on what I’ve done, I will just follow the same thing and hope I can scale. Um, That much. So, yeah, so the goal is to take it into the millions.

Um, yeah, so, and of course generate a lot more revenue, uh, hopefully minimum about 50,000 per month. Hopefully end goal is a hundred thousand per month plus. Um, yeah, I can’t predict the future, but I can control what I’m doing together. So, yeah. So, and another thing making it harder is, uh, Google’s regular updates.

So, uh, I think updates, Yeah, I, I think it’s a waste of time going or being scared about updates because I think eventually they will hit everyone. Um, so what I found over the last five, four years I’ve been doing this is some up, some updates you get hit some days, your traffic randomly just goes up for no reason.

Google has just blessed you some updates, it brings your traffic up, some updates, it brings them down. But you should kind of always be ranking where if you look back over a few years, you should, it should kind of average out and you should be ranking where. You should be ranking based on your domain rating, how well you’ve chosen, uh, things or topics to write about.

And if you are actually following Google’s guide guidelines. So if you are doing all of that, you will still get hit in most cases. Um, not in most cases. Most people you do SEO will get hit at some point, but at other points you’ll also be rewarded. Just make sure you are following the guidelines. Um, and yeah, that’s all you can kind control.

Jared: You’ve been all in on this one website it sounds like. Uh, and you’ve managed to avoid something that so many other website builders, whether by design or kind of by accident slip into, which is starting other websites. And again, I’m not saying that in a negative way. Mm-hmm. , um, sometimes that’s the strategy for some people, whereas.

Others prefer to stay focused on one site. Would you ever continue to run this website and then start another one? Or do you want to stay 100% focused on this project until you know, until you change your mind about it?

Ezekiel: Yeah. I finally you say that, So I actually ha I started a new site. This was, Yeah, so this is while I was updating the content, I was like, let me just start a new site, see if I can kind of replicate this process.

Um, got to about, and it’s still at about about 35,000 visits per month. Mm-hmm. in a different niche. Um, but yeah, still makes about, uh, 700 a month. I haven’t touched that site in about a year. Yeah. But I, I would say I, not that I regret ma making it, but if, if you’ve got one site, That can be scaled. There is literally no point making a new one if obviously your sole aim is making money.

If you’ve got one site that has its proof of concept, follow the steps I’ve kind of taken to grow it or just focus on that side because if you can’t make it work, uh, so let’s say the site’s not doing well. If you can’t make it work for that one, chances are you are not gonna make it work for another.

And also, if you’ve got a site that’s working well, you have history there, you have your domain is strong, you, you are meant to catalyze on the opportunity you like, it is easier for you to continue on that site than to start a fresh. On a, you know, new website that’s gonna take one year plus to start making money.

It’s, uh, I wouldn’t, Yeah, I mean, people have their reasons for doing it, but in terms of how I see, in terms of how I see it, if you have a maxed out site, like actually maxed out site site, You’re, it’s kind of a waste That’s of time to make a new one if you’re So aims income is my take on it. Yeah.

Jared: Well, clearly you’re reaping the, the, the rewards from, from your focus.

I mean, Yeah. Uh, that’s funny. You had actually started one last year, .

Ezekiel: Yeah. I didn’t know that. It was about, it was about two ye uh, yeah, it was. I can’t even, It was about two years ago. Yeah.

Jared: Well, it’s great. It’s still earning money, you know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You’ve clearly doubled down on this and, and reaped the rewards from it.

Um, man, what a wonderful deep dive. You know, we only talked about a couple of topics in the hour, but you really went so in depth on ’em. Uh, I took a bunch of notes. Keyword research, uh, content updating, uh, hiring. Um, and, and a bunch of other things, but certainly those things that, that really stuck out on, on my notes.

Thank you so much for coming on board, man. What a, what a treat it was to have you, uh, congratulations on your success. Um, thank you, uh, again, uh, just, you got the world in front of you, man. I’m so excited for you. Where can people follow along with what you’re doing and, and, you know, get in touch if they want.

Ezekiel: Um, you, Yeah, just follow me on Twitter. So, uh, um, you can link my Twitter below. Um, yeah, just follow me on there, ask any questions. And that’s pretty much it. I’ll

Jared: put it in the show notes just in case people are listening and have a great memory. It’s at KK 6 7 4 3. Yeah, so we’ll, um, well, we’ll leave it there.

Thank you so much, kk. It was a treat. I’m, uh, really excited for your success. Thanks for sharing so many details behind how you got there, and uh, man, I hope for so much more for your coming forward.

Ezekiel: Thank you very much, man. It was a pleasure doing this, uh, interview with you.

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How KK Ezekiel Earns $18k Per Month From A Troubleshooting-Tech Blog

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