Today we have Nathan Tsang, part of the NoHatDigital team and partner in the business, answering questions on how he’s made over $250k by building and flipping authority sites.
He shares lots of actionable information on adding value to your site, getting your content to go viral, and getting bang for your buck when selling your site.
Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Update 19th August: We’ve had lots of questions about being in iTunes… Our podcast will be live in iTunes within the next few days. Once we’re there, we’d appreciate some 5 star ratings (of course, we love our taco ratings but iTunes doesn’t take those into account, so that you in advance for the iTunes 5 star ratings!)
Resources referred to in the podcast:
Buzzsumo.com – A site for social media/viral content research.
Odork.com – Analysis of 100 million articles that went viral.
Listverse.com – Example of a magazine style site template.
Other resources:
Bufferapp.com – The most popular words in most viral content headlines.
Moz.com – Article on viral content.
Hubspot – Viral content tips list.
Larry says:
Great podcast.
Can you shed light on how to build links for larger authority sites?
Since you have lots of pages, and are using a magazine home page which pages do you link to? Do you choose to focus on a certain set of pages of link more to?
From the looks of it you can’t just do what most are doing with the smaller niche sites where you load up the links to the home page, Hope you can explain.
Thanks.
Paul says:
I really like the content of this one, good stuff. My feedback on the overall podcast is that if you are going to continue to head in this direction, getting on iTunes is key for me so I can just subscribe. Second your audio quality is pretty terrible it sounds like you are in a big room with a laptop microphone or something. Investing in a few good mic’s and a mixer would be money well spent. The audio levels are all over the place, your talking was real quiet then your strange outro music at the end was incredibly loud.
GregNunan says:
Our mic is a high quality mic actually (for ep2 podcast that is). Big room maybe. Thanks for the feedback!
iTunes is a couple days away.
Terry says:
Great podcast, I agree with previous comment, the audio quality could be improved its echoey and is too bassy. Pat Flynn has good advice on his site regarding podcast audio quality.
GregNunan says:
Thanks Terry. Keep in mind we’re recording in Mexico… concrete/brick walls is the issue. We’re trying different locations. The mic we have is high quality. We’ll do the best we can, but figure just putting out the content for now is better than nothing.
GregNunan says:
Thanks Terry. Keep in mind we’re recording in Mexico… concrete/brick walls is the main issue. We’re trying different locations, thinking about sound proofing a room with egg cartons lol. We’ll do the best we can, but figure just putting out the content for now is better than nothing.
Jeff says:
really enjoyed this episode guys. I think the key things for SEO going forward are starting to come out of this (and other) podcasts – mainly, build something that helps people and something that people want to share.
You wont rank on KW stuffing alone anymore, and to keep traffic diversified, you’ll need to get other sources than just google.
Nice work as well nate – sorry about the loss of the quarter mil payday.
Lee says:
Hey guys, Loved this podcast.
I was just curious, how did Nate monetize some of his authority sites before flipping them? he may have mentioned it and I just missed it.
On a completely separate note:
I found the volume of this podcast to be extremely low, and even when I max out the volume on my speakers it’s still very low (-30db), before uploading this file you can simply turn up the gain and normalize it (evens out all the high and low volume parts) in any sound editing program so that it’s a reasonable level (I’m a sound engineer.)
Thanks guys!
Lee
GregNunan says:
Bare with us Lee whilst we move through the newbie stage of running a podcast! Will pass that onto Max who’s doing the podcast editing.
Adsense and CPA offers are the primary monetization method.
Wayne says:
Nate you are a better man than I, how you did not go outside and kick your dog after your site dropped 8k/mo in value I will never know!
Nate Tsang says:
It was actually more than 8k/mo because I had another 5 figure/month site that got hit as well. It’s just part of the game.
Its funny because it was actually a lot more painful the first time I experienced a Google penalty even though the earnings were relatively insignificant. I was making a solid mid 2 figures a day at the time =/.
Alex P says:
Hi Nate, I have been a affiliate of Hayden for almost 2 years now via internships.
What is the best way for me to email you? Just had a few questions I wanted to ask.
Best,
Alex
GregNunan says:
nate ‘at’ nohatdigital.com is the email Alex.
Alex P says:
Thanks Greg!
Aaron says:
Very nice credentials to head up the Webmaster role for No Hat.
“I’ve sold $250,000 in niche sites” == Sick
Congrats on your new role Nathan, I’m sure you’ll be doing awesome helping others through No Hat.
word says:
great podcast, awesome info, have a lot of great ideas now!
p.s. that outro is fvckn annoying, worse than eating tinfoil or nails on a chalk board
GregNunan says:
ah that’s too bad word, we’ve had plenty of positive comments about the outro. Sounds like it’s about as annoying for you as people leaving anonymous comments on blogs is to others.
word says:
maybe one day i’ll be a gangsta aussie like you. hey, at least I didn’t try to spam a link to my site
Tobias says:
First of all I am really happy that you start a podcast! I loved the episodes at nichepursuits.com where we all could pick your brain hayden. Now that you starting your podcasting carreer :-) I will give you a few hints, because I am listening to quite a lot of podcasts and want to take the chance to give you my feedback directly from the start:
1. I love one major in depth topic per episode – maybe mixed with some recurring topics like news, tool tipp/test, best practice or something like this
2. audio quality is not most important but the quality should be on the same level like the content (you have to weight how much you can/want to invest, especially because you record always with a few people…)
3. I LOVE your case studies and best practices, this is where we all could learn so much with your experience/network/throughput of work.. This is your big differenciator and I would love to see that you use it in your podcast
4. Me personally I have no problem to consume 60min podcasts, especially if they are in depth. This type is more like this epic 6000 word blog posts we all want to create
5. I would love if I could consume all of your content via audio (record blog posts to create more podcasts or maybe you call these “audioposts”)
Generally: For me you are a number 1 ressource when it comes to today´s or even tomorrows best SEO and online marketing best practices. With your group of internship you have the possibility to test, analyze and evaluate all the new stuff. Maybe it is an idea to also include all your visitors somehow in your casestudy. E.g. you could start polls or create an survey to collect data what currently works out there for more than your internship group or create new ideas to test that way?
Wish you all the best and thank you!
GregNunan says:
Thank you Tobias. An excellent comment!
peter says:
Great podcast, LOVE the outro… it literally made me laugh
Claire W says:
Lol I love the outro!
Claudia says:
Wow. That’s very impressive Nate. Thanks for sharing this info.