Today, we are sharing an interesting interview with Kirill Naumov, an internet entrepreneur who had the opportunity to sit down with Oleg Shestakov. Kirill shared his inspiring success story, recounting his journey of creating profitable review sites that not only attracted search traffic but also cleverly redirected it to profitable affiliate programs.
He shared his incredible journey of creating multiple review sites in different languages by translating content from popular English review sites. The financial success he achieved through this method was remarkable. And that's just the tip of the iceberg! There's so much more to his story that you definitely won't want to miss out on.
Getting Started
Let's go back to the beginning. In the 7th grade, Kirill took his first step into website creation. He decided to make his own resource on the free Ucoz hosting, dedicated to his clan in Lineage II. Unfortunately, the site didn't gain any popularity, and his attempts at creating other simple sites on different topics also failed to attract traffic from search engines. As a result, Kirill gave up on this venture for a year.
Fast forward a year later, Kirill found himself drawn back to website creation. His computer science teacher taught his class the basics of HTML and CSS, and Kirill quickly mastered these skills. In fact, he became so proficient that he even helped his classmates with their assignments. It was during this time that Kirill earned his first experience of making money from websites. However, it would take several years of practice in various fields before he achieved significant income.
Kirill recalls a notable experience during his school project in computer science. He designed a website based on the popular game Angry Birds in 2011-2012. To his surprise, visitors started coming to his site through Russian-language searches.
Building on this success, he decided to create an English version of the site with the domain name including the keyword "angry birds." This experiment proved successful, attracting traffic from English-speaking countries. Kirill cleverly employed a trick with social lockers, where users had to repost the content to unlock it. This tactic significantly boosted the site's traffic.
Kirill monetized the site through Google AdSense and earned a monthly income of $221. However, a few months later, his success hit a roadblock when he received a complaint from the copyright owner of Angry Birds. They demanded that he relinquish the domain name, bringing an end to Kirill's first commercially successful site.
Selling Refurbished Chinese iPhones
Kirill's next thing was selling refurbished iPhones from China. He set up a bunch of simple landing pages using this free website builder and actually made some sales. He was raking in about $11 - $16 for each sale, which was pretty sweet. But, you know, this gig didn't stick around for long 'cause Kirill ended up going to university, and man, that turned out to be quite a challenge for him.
Getting Hired by a SEO Agency with no Experience
Realizing that going to university wasn't the right fit for him and his recent website for international visitors didn't succeed, Kirill decided to start looking for a job. Surprisingly, he got hired by an internet marketing agency as a search engine optimizer, even though he had little knowledge of SEO. The agency owner didn't know much about search promotion either, and since they didn't have an SEO specialist, they immediately hired Kirill. They paid him $100 per site every month.
While working at the agency, Kirill took on additional responsibilities related to contextual advertising and promotion on Vkontakte and Facebook, despite having no prior experience in those areas. He had to learn about promotion in Direct, AdWords, and social media on the job while juggling more projects. Unfortunately, he made a few mistakes along the way and eventually lost his job.
Determined to avoid returning to his hometown of Barnaul, Kirill posted his SEO resume on Headhunter, hoping to find a job in his field. However, he couldn't find any suitable positions. Instead, he ended up becoming an intern on a team that focused on mobile installs. Little did he know that this would be the beginning of his journey into the world of affiliate marketing.
After three months, Kirill had the opportunity to meet the leader of another affiliate team at a gathering in St. Petersburg. They were impressed by Kirill's expertise in the commodity niche and expressed interest in working with him. Kirill joined their team and immediately started achieving positive results. He directed traffic from his multilingual sites into a profitable affiliate program in the nutra vertical. His strategy of registering new domains, using WordPress sites, and translating content earned him a monthly income of $1 800. In fact, in January 2018, he even earned $7, 700!
Kirill had a good run for a few months, things were going well. But then, his monthly income from the network of sites started to decline gradually. It kept going down until it eventually hit zero after a year. It was a tough period for Kirill, and he had to go back to working for someone else. He joined a team of affiliates who redirected traffic from Google to financial affiliate programs. After a few months, he managed to create his own team, and they were doing well for a couple more months. However, another setback came his way.
By pure chance, Kirill stumbled upon a method of redirecting traffic from commodity sites to a binary options offer that had a 40% RevShare. And let me tell you, it brought him fantastic results. He was able to pay off his car loan and even had some extra money for personal expenses. This success carried on for six months until he faced another decline in income.
How to Create a Website that Attracts Visitors
Today, Kirill Naumov once again found success in his life thanks to an affiliate marketing network of review sites he launched a few months ago. At Oleg's request, Kirill shared the algorithm he uses to create such sites. It's actually quite simple:
- Find a product that already has an affiliate program. Ideally, the affiliate program should be available not only in English-speaking markets but also in Europe and Asia. It may require some searching, but it will be worth it in the long run.
- Purchase a domain in the .com zone and hosting, and set up a WordPress website with a lightweight theme that won't slow down the site's loading speed. You can use a free theme if needed, as long as it doesn't affect the site's performance.
- Install a multilingual plugin on the website. Kirill recommends using WPML. Create a separate language version for each geographic region, such as Spain, Germany, and Japan. Each version can be implemented either as a subdomain or within a folder.
- Hire copywriters to write high-quality product reviews that include all the relevant characteristics. After receiving the content for each language version, Kirill simply translates the reviews using Google Translate and submits all the versions to Google Webmaster and Bing for indexing.
- If you want to use synonymous content in different languages while filling out the site, it can still be effective. Kirill suggests using WordAI, a tool for generating synonymous content. He shares an example of how he purchased a subscription, generated a synonymous translation, and uploaded it to the site without any editing or links, and it performed well, ranking high and generating profit.
According to Kirill, websites on newly registered domains start ranking well in search results within the second month, even without purchasing backlinks, which he prefers to avoid. The rankings continue to improve over the next couple of months.
Kirill mentions that all seven of his new domain sites have traffic and generate profit, although each site attracts a different number of visitors and has varying income levels.
Options for Purchasing Expired Domains
Kirill admits that he isn't an expert in analyzing expired domains. When he bought several domains in the .co.uk zone, he simply chose the first listing he found on the Search engines forum, contacted the seller, and selected domains with links from reputable websites from the provided list. He also checked web.archive.org to ensure that the previous site on the domain didn't have any questionable content.
He emphasizes that whether a dropped domain is indexed or not doesn't matter. Both indexed and non-indexed domains have equal chances of ranking high. Kirill also avoids choosing domains with names that are unrelated to the future site's topic. For example, a finance-related website shouldn't be hosted on a domain that contains words related to cars or health. He also avoids domains in the .eu zone, as they require EU documents for registration.
Skills Needed to Succeed
If you want to replicate Kirill's success to some extent, you'll need a basic set of skills that most affiliate marketers possess today:
- Basic knowledge of HTML and CSS.
- Ability to quickly search for information on specific topics (data mining skills).
- Basic understanding of domain management (buying, changing NS servers) and hosting.
- Optional: Familiarity with the ZennoPoster program, which can automate routine tasks and processes.
- Basic understanding of search engine optimization (SEO).
Conclusion
At the end of the interview, Kirill advised people who, like him, want to earn money through review websites, not to hesitate to get involved in this field, even if they lack understanding. He also suggests dedicating time to experimenting with different strategies on the websites.
