“Success is the long-term repetition of a single action. If you don't quit, that's success.”
I thought about that statement and realized that, by that definition, I’ve achieved success.😀
I’ve been working with websites since high school. Back then, I read an article in Igromania magazine about how to set up a website and connect a database.
I created a forum dedicated to the band Mnogotochie and started building it up. I was basically the forum admin. It brought in zero money; it was purely for fun when we met up, drank, and went to concerts of that very band)))
Later, I took orders for content formatting on websites, essentially working as a regular content manager.
Then I learned about SEO and promotion. I started ranking client websites.
Then came Sapa and my first satellite sites, which I’ve essentially been dealing with to this day, surviving various waves of bans, penalty filters, and so on. Ups and downs. Eventually, these satellite sites (PBNs) helped me launch and grow English-language/international websites. One thing transforms into another somehow. Black hat into white hat. I posted the case study on 15k monthly traffic here.
You can also order backlinks from them here and see how I build them now. A lot has changed since those days, but the main thing is that the sites have come to look much more like regular, decent websites. And the more authentic they look, the better.
Next, I moved into lead generation and started generating leads for construction and real estate. I even personally traveled to sell plots and houses in the Moscow Suburbs. Carports, fences — that kind of niche.
I can’t say that dealing with clients annoyed or burdened me. It was pretty okay overall. Occasional offline work, so to speak)
Then came the era of copypaste doorway sites for Yandex. I was getting around 500k-600k daily traffic from school kids. I wrote about this in an article. Earnings were 50 RUB per 1k views. That came out to about 25k-30k RUB a day (around $10k per month, give or take).
The era of Puzat-style content sites didn’t pass me by either, but for some reason they didn’t really work out for me and gave low returns. I was making them poorly)
Then I moved into international/English e-commerce affiliate sites and ran my first tests in 2018.
Later, translated doorway sites started delivering results alongside white-hat English websites. I consider Oleg Dumka the father of translated doorways. He gave a push to many webmasters, and a ton of people made money from them. Oleg, my personal thanks to you! Right now he runs this chat.
After that, I manipulated behavioral factors (PF) for Yandex and managed to earn pretty well. At that time, PF was generating solid income, and I moved from Russia to France.
I was also an affiliate marketer / media buyer — driving traffic from myTarget to offers and running push traffic to gambling. Push traffic ran at a loss initially, but RevShare covered it nicely over time. That’s the key with push traffic on RevShare: first you run at a loss, then over the long haul you turn a profit.
What I have now:
- Satellites / PBNs — earning through contextual ads and affiliate offers
- White-hat affiliate sites targeted at physical products in the US
- Domain sales
- Link selling
- A bit of gambling affiliate sites
- This channel, which brings in a bit from ads, but most importantly, networking with top industry figures. That’s the main value I discovered for myself.
That’s my story)
Honestly, I can’t say I’ve achieved ultimate success — I don’t feel that way at all — but if success is long-term repetition of the same action, then it definitely fits) Different avenues, but all within one field: making money online.