At the beginning of 2020, I wanted to test something very specific.

I had already spent the first 5 years of my professional journey (2014–2019) mastering digital marketing and web development. I had also validated these skills by generating revenue through affiliate marketing and display advertising.

I was earning well. But one thing was missing that I had not built a brand yet.

So, I decided to take one step ahead to build a more value-driven brand in the future, where I could:

• Create an impact on others’ lives
• Use my skills to grow other businesses
• Help others make money by working with me
• Grow my brand and my clients’ brands as well

I wanted to figure out whether I could use my existing skills to:

• Sell digital marketing and web development services to international clients
• Generate revenue through freelancing platforms like Upwork

At the same time, I also wanted to validate a bigger idea:

‘Could I sell services globally on my own?’

If this worked, the plan was to eventually:

• Hire, train and build a team
• Build a service-based global marketing technology company

The Major Skill Gaps I Had

Even after years of technical and marketing experience, I had no prior freelancing experience, so there were many challenges for me, such as:

• How to write proposals that clients would respond to
• How to get client attention and initial replies
• How to communicate confidently and convince clients
• How to negotiate effectively
• How to increase pricing
• How to sell high-ticket services
• How to deliver quality work within agreed timelines
• How to earn genuine 5-star reviews by supporting clients properly

Also, I never believed that I could do one-on-one sales or sell high-ticket services to international clients.

So, I started researching and studying how to sell anything to anyone. I studied the consumer mindset, psychology, sales processes, and everything I thought could help me.

How I Started on Upwork

At the end of 2019, I created and set up my first Upwork account. In 2020, I started setting up my profile and testing project bidding.

Skill level at start

I had 5–6 years of proven digital marketing and web development experience.

I had strong technical and in-depth work experience

Early Challenges

However, I had no freelancing experience, so there were many challenges in this journey, like:

• How to write proposals to clients,
• Getting clients’ attention and replies,
• Communicating confidently, and
• Negotiating with clients.

Capital and Tools

Initially, it does not require much capital to invest in but one must have strong skills sets to deliver the project.

So, I relied mainly on my in-depth skills and experience to solve client problems. I only needed:

• A laptop
• Internet
• Electricity
• Purchase approx. $100 worth of Upwork connects to start bidding

Tools I used:

• Upwork platform and Upwork Time Tracker for hourly tracking
• Skype and Google Meet for client communication
• Loom for sharing quick project updates
• Basecamp and Asana for project management
• Slack/Gmail for communication

Strategy I Followed

I did not approach freelancing with a “make money fast” mindset.

Instead, my focus was:

• Learning how to write proposals that get replies (through A/B testing)
• Creating a compelling profile
• Being honest in communication
• Bidding only on projects I was confident I could deliver
• Starting with lower pricing to deliver initial projects perfectly
• Gradually increasing pricing after successful delivery

I started focusing on Indian clients first to understand how Upwork works as I was comfortable dealing with them.

I wanted to fully understand the platform before approaching international clients, so that I could position myself as an expert, not a beginner.

I aimed to get initial projects without focusing on money. My belief was that if it worked once, I could repeat the process consistently.

Here’s What Happened in Execution Phase

First Revenue

I focused on quality over quantity in proposals. So, I preferred to send

• Fewer but quality proposal
• Highly personalized proposal

Within my first 10 proposals, I received a couple of responses from Indian clients. One client from Mumbai agreed to work with me at a negotiated price.

My priority at that stage was not money. It was understanding the platform.

I delivered my first project worth $60 within a week. That gave me clarity on how the system works.

After that, I shifted focus to clients from Tier 1 countries like the US and Canada.

Turning Point

I continued bidding and interacting with US-based clients. I tested different proposal approaches to understand what worked.

After about a month, I got an interview opportunity from a US-based client for a marketing automation project.

The client asked how I would approach the project and I provided a detailed, technical, and confident response aligned with his goals

This resulted in my first hourly contract at $15/hour.

Major Breakthrough

While working on that project for a couple of months, I continued bidding on other projects

I secured another project from a US client at an increased rate of $25/hour.

At this stage, I started understanding:

• How to win high-ticket projects
• How to communicate effectively
• How to sell services

Thus, these learnings became the most valuable and rewarding skill sets in my journey.

I continued getting more valuable projects, and my hourly rate increased step by step within a year.

Started from $15 → $25 → $35 → $45 → $65 → up to $75/hour within a year.

Overall, I earned more than $12K within a year from Upwork by selling services as a freelancer. That’s a decent income by Indian standards.

Also, I received 5-star ratings (with positive reviews) from most of my clients after project completion, along with a 100% Job Success Score on Upwork.

Challenges I Faced in Freelancing Journey

My freelancing experiment was rewarding for not easy at all. There were following challenges as well:

1). Time Zone Impact: I had to stay awake at night for meetings and work. This affected my sleep cycle and health.

2). Pipeline Instability: While working on projects, I had less time to bid. This created uncertainty in income.

3). Constant Client Pressure: After completing a project, I had to find new clients again. This caused mental pressure.

4). Platform Costs: Upwork charged around 20% commission at that time. This reduced actual earnings. Although the platform fee is now reduced to 10%.

5). Competition: There is a strong global competition in most common niche. So, picking a service niche is crucial for every freelancer.

Conclusion: Why This Matters

This experience helped me validate something important:

• Technical skills alone are not enough
• Sales, communication, and positioning directly impact outcomes
• Freelancing is not just about doing work, it is about consistently acquiring work

It also helped me test whether I could sell services globally on my own.

This was not just a successful experiment, but the learnings from the journey also became the foundation for a bigger challenge for me: setting up my own marketing technology company with a larger vision and operating with a team instead of working individually as a freelancer.

By July 2017, I decided to diversify my income streams by building digital assets instead of relying only on affiliate and CPA offers.

Why I Tested Display Advertising

This time, I planned to test one of my websites using display advertising.

It is one of the most common monetization methods used by website owners.

Display ad networks act as a bridge between advertisers and website owners. Advertisers bid for placements, and website owners earn based on impressions and clicks.

I chose Google AdSense as my starting point because of its strong market presence and wide adoption.

Google provides multiple ad formats for both desktop and mobile devices. It also offers strong earning potential in competitive niches where advertisers are willing to bid higher.

However, while researching, I found mixed results.

Some website owners were generating decent revenue through display ads, while others were not.

My Testing Plan

To test this properly, I created a structured execution plan.

Research Phase

• Niche research and selection
• Competitor analysis
• Keyword research

Website Setup Phase

• New website setup
• Content creation
• On-page and off-page SEO implementation

AdSense Approval Process

After setting up the website and ensuring it complied with Google AdSense policies, I submitted it for approval.

Once approved, I moved to the next phase.

Traffic Generation Strategy

To generate traffic, I focused on multiple channels:

• SEO
• Social media
• YouTube
• Forums

The goal was to build consistent traffic from different sources.

Ad Optimization and Testing

Once traffic started coming in, I began testing ad placements.

I manually experimented with different ad positions to understand:

• Which placements generated higher CTR
• Which placements resulted in better CPC

Based on the data, I continuously optimized placements to improve performance.

Revenue Growth

Gradually, the website started generating revenue.

The earnings improved over time as traffic increased and ad placements were optimized.

You can see the month-by-month earnings breakdown below.

July 2017 Earnings: $24.89

August 2017 Earnings: $178.11

September 2017 Earnings: $190.31

October 2017 Earnings: $350.92

November 2017 Earnings: $681.88

December 2017 Earning: $1,004.22

January 2018 Earning: $1,805.89

February 2018 Earning: $1,807.29

March 2018 Earning: $1,891.52

April 2018 Earning: $1,349.63

May 2018 Earning: $1,191.22

June 2018 Earning: $1,387.83

July 2018 Earning: $747.62

Overall Revenue Summary:

So, this is my month-by-month revenue breakdown from my website through Google AdSense.

Overall, I made more than $12K in a one-year period from July 2017 to July 2018.

You can also refer to this attached screenshot from Google AdSense to verify this statement from the Google Payment Center.

Key Takeaways from This Display Advertising Experiment

Following are some insights that I learned from this monetization experiment using display advertising:

• Display advertising depends heavily on traffic quality and volume
• Ad placement has a direct impact on CTR and overall earnings
• Not all niches perform equally in display advertising
• Continuous testing is required to improve performance
• Revenue growth is gradual, not immediate

Conclusion:

If you are planning to monetize a website using display advertising, then yes, this can be a good option if executed correctly.

However, the results depend on niche selection, traffic quality, and ongoing optimization strategies.

This model works differently compared to affiliate marketing, where revenue is tied to conversions rather than impressions and clicks.

But combining both affiliate marketing and display advertising can be a much more rewarding setup for monetizing a website.

I wanted to understand how online traffic could actually turn into real income.

Between 2013 and 2014, I spent nearly a year deeply researching digital marketing. During that time, I studied different strategies such as SEO, content marketing, website monetization, and online traffic generation.

However, everything I had learned was still theoretical.

I needed a real environment where I could test these strategies.

Why did I choose CPA & Affiliate Marketing in the beginning?

At that stage, I had no revenue and limited resources.

Building a product or launching a service would have required significant time, investment, and operational effort. I wanted a model where I could focus purely on learning and executing digital marketing strategies.

CPA and affiliate marketing seemed like the most practical way to start because I could focus on generating traffic and conversions without needing to create my own product.

So I decided to build a niche-based website and use it as a testing ground.

My Initial Belief

I strongly believed that digital marketing had massive potential to generate income online.

But I also understood one important thing.

Digital marketing cannot be mastered through theory alone. It requires real experimentation.

To learn it properly, I needed a real website, real traffic, and real monetization methods. Only then could I simulate real business conditions and apply the strategies I had studied the hard way.

The Experiment Setup

The experiment started in 2014 with a niche-based website project.

My Skill Level at the Start

By the time I started the project, I had already learned several foundational digital marketing skills, including:

• Website development
• Basic server management
• Identifying low-competition and high-potential niches
• Keyword research and search intent analysis
• Content creation
• On-page and off-page SEO implementation
• Social media promotion strategies

Although I had learned these concepts, I had not yet tested them extensively in a real project.

Capital Invested

The initial investment was minimal and mainly covered basic infrastructure such as:

• Domain purchase
• Web hosting server
• Internet and basic operational expenses

The focus was not on heavy spending but on execution and learning.

Tools Used

To execute this project effectively, I relied on several digital marketing tools.

For research and strategy planning:

• Google Keyword Planner
• Ahrefs
• SEMrush

These tools helped identify potential niches, analyze keyword difficulty, study competitors, and plan an SEO strategy.

For performance tracking and analytics:

• Google Analytics
• Google Tag Manager
• Google Search Console
• Keyword ranking tracking tools

These platforms helped monitor traffic growth, search performance, and conversion activity.

For on-page SEO analysis:

• Screaming Frog

This tool helped analyze on-site SEO issues and create an execution plan to improve website performance and optimization.

My Initial Strategy

The strategy was relatively straightforward.

First, identify a niche that had strong monetization potential. Then focus on long-tail keywords with lower competition to gain initial visibility.

Once the website started gaining traction, the plan was to target larger search-volume keywords and expand the traffic sources.

Traffic generation efforts included:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social media promotion
• YouTube content
• Online forums and communities

The goal was to gradually increase targeted traffic and improve conversion opportunities.

Expected Outcome

The primary objective of this experiment was simple.

First, validate whether the niche and monetization model could generate conversions.

Once the initial conversions were achieved, the plan was to scale the traffic using multiple marketing channels and expand the revenue potential.

Turning Point: My First Revenue

After implementing SEO strategies, a few pages on the website started getting impressions and clicks from search engines like Google and Bing.

However, for the first three months, there were no conversions.

Then one day something unexpected happened.

I received a notification from an affiliate network confirming that a conversion had been recorded.

That single conversion felt incredibly rewarding.

It validated my idea and confirmed that my years of research and experimentation were moving in the right direction.

Once the first conversion validated the model, my confidence increased significantly.

I started focusing more aggressively on scaling traffic and improving the website’s reach.

As traffic grew, conversions also started increasing.

Within a short time, the revenue became meaningful enough to justify the time and effort I had invested.

Major Breakthrough

The real breakthrough came when I began expanding beyond a single affiliate network.

I joined multiple affiliate platforms and started experimenting with different offers.

At the same time, I invested more time in learning additional digital marketing channels, especially paid media strategies.

This included studying and testing:

• Pop advertising networks
• Mobile marketing channels
• Native advertising platforms
• Search engine marketing (SEM)
• Social media advertising

Through this process, my understanding of online marketing expanded significantly and helped me develop deeper expertise in digital traffic generation and monetization.

Earnings Proofs

Below is some screenshots from my CPA and affiliate network dashboard showing actual payouts I received during this experiment.

Earning Report from CPA & Affiliate Network 1

Earning Report from CPA & Affiliate Network 2

Earning Report from CPA & Affiliate Network 3

This experience proved that CPA and affiliate marketing can work, but only when backed by the right strategy, experimentation, and persistence.

It was not just about earning money, but about learning how real digital marketing works.

That curiosity pushed me to start learning and experimenting on my own.

From Tech Curiosity to Web Development

In 2014, I began learning web development. Coming from a tech background, it felt easier to start there.

I built a few initial websites for practice.

But I quickly hit a wall.

Questions kept coming up:

• How will people reach these sites?
• How can I earn from them?

Building something was not the real challenge.

Getting the right audience and turning that attention into revenue was the real problem to solve.

That was my first important realization.

Why Building a Website Was Not Enough

I understood that building a product or service does not automatically lead to income.

A business makes money only when:

• The right audience finds it
• Their problem is addressed
• There is a clear conversion path

This shifted my focus from development to distribution.

I needed to learn digital marketing. But to practice marketing, I needed something to promote.

Why I Started with CPA and Affiliate Marketing

To avoid spending time creating products from scratch, I chose CPA and affiliate marketing.

This decision was practical.

• No product development required
• Ready-to-promote offers
• Immediate opportunity to test marketing strategies

I applied to several US-based CPA and affiliate networks. After getting approved, I had access to multiple offers.

I selected a few, built niche websites around them, and started experimenting. This became my testing ground.

Mastering Organic Marketing Over 3 to 4 Years

From an investment perspective, I started with organic channels.

I focused on:

• SEO
• Social media promotion
• YouTube organic marketing

Over the next 3 to 4 years, I kept implementing and refining these strategies.

I generated significant traffic across channels and earned strong revenue through organic inbound marketing.

That revenue was enough to validate my learning process.

This phase gave me depth. Not just theory, but execution-level understanding.

Learning Without Mentors

I did not have a mentor.
No structured training.
No direct guidance.

I learned by:

• Researching blogs from digital marketing experts
• Watching videos
• Reading books
• Testing everything myself

Then adjusting.

Over time, I developed intuition about what to try next. That came only from repeated execution.

Expanding into Paid Performance Marketing

Once I built confidence with organic channels, I moved into paid marketing.

I experimented with:

• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads
• YouTube Ads
• Native Ads
• POP Ads
• Mobile traffic channels

This was the next level.

Organic channels gave me foundation. Paid channels forced precision.

Between 2014 and 2019, I spent five years moving from web development basics to full performance marketing capability.

That was a significant time investment.

What I gained:

• Deep execution-level understanding
• Cross-channel experience
• Ability to adjust strategies independently

What it cost:

• Five years of trial and error
• Slow progress in early stages
• Learning everything the hard way

There were no shortcuts in this phase.

Lessons from Learning the Hard Way

1. Building a product is not enough. Distribution matters more.
2. Marketing skill requires execution, not just reading.
3. Organic channels build patience and depth.
4. Paid channels demand clarity and precision.
5. Self-learning works, but it is time intensive.

I kept pushing myself to go beyond my current limits. That internal pressure helped me grow faster over time.

Why This Matters

If you are starting in digital marketing, it is easy to underestimate the execution gap.

Understanding theory is one layer. Generating traffic and revenue consistently is another.

My journey from 2013 to 2019 was not linear, but it gave me a complete foundation across organic and paid performance marketing.

That foundation still defines how I approach digital marketing today, both in scaling my own ventures and in driving measurable growth for clients.

So, here in this post, I am sharing a similar experience related to validating a SaaS based project idea using SEO. Particularly, how we used SEO as a cornerstone to test and validate our SaaS base project idea, not just effectively, but also economically.

The Challenge:

Our journey began with an ambitious SaaS project idea. Like many startups, we were constrained by resources, particularly time and budget.

In traditional methods of idea validation, like extensive market research and paid advertising campaigns, were beyond our current means. So we needed a cost-effective, yet reliable method to test the waters.

That’s when SEO entered the picture.

The SEO Strategy:

Our solution? – Leverage the power of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Instead of allocating resources to expensive ad campaigns, we focused on creating high-quality, relevant content that resonated with our target audience.

The goal was clear – increase organic visibility and attract potential users to our site.

Why SEO?

The choice of SEO was not random. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a technique used to increase a website’s visibility on search engines like Google.

Though it’s a long game that requires consistent effort and content generation, but the results can be immensely rewarding.

We knew if our content could rank well on search engines, it would not only drive organic traffic but also serve as a litmus test for our project’s potential.

Good rankings and traffic would indicate a market interest, validating our idea with minimal financial investment.

Content Creation and SEO Efforts:

Our team started by creating high-quality, relevant content around our SaaS product niche.

We focused on keywords that our potential customers were likely to use. This was not guesswork; thorough keyword research gave us insight into the queries and problems our target audience was trying to solve.

We consistently published articles, blogs, and guides, all tailored to address the needs and questions of our potential users.

We also optimized our website’s technical SEO to ensure a seamless user experience.

Surprising SEO Results

The results didn’t come overnight, but they were worth the wait. Within a few months, our website started to climb up the search engine ranks.

(Note: I would like to mention here that our agency i.e. ROI Valley is a proven SEO agency that has dedicated team of SEO experts who knows all the ins & outs of SEO.)

Here I’m sharing a screenshot from search console so that you get some idea. This shows clearly how impressions performed within first 3 months of validation phase:

Organic traffic to our site increased significantly, which was a positive indicator, but the real moment of validation came when we started generating leads.

These weren’t just any leads; they were qualified and genuinely interested in our product.

As these leads converted into sales, it became clear: our project idea wasn’t just good on paper; it had real-world appeal.

The Power of SEO in Project Validation

Our experience validates the power of SEO in the early stages of a startup. Here’s why we believe SEO can be an effective tool for project validation:

1. Cost-Effective:

Unlike paid advertising, SEO primarily requires time and effort. For startups on a tight budget, it’s a feasible option.

2. Market Insights:

SEO helps you understand what your potential customers are looking for, providing valuable insights into market needs.

3. Long-Term Benefits:

The benefits of SEO extend beyond initial validation. It’s a long-term strategy that continues to drive traffic and leads over time.

4. Builds Credibility:

Ranking high on search engines enhances your brand’s credibility, a crucial factor for startups.

5. Direct Feedback Loop:

The kind of queries that lead users to your site can provide direct feedback on your product or service.

These are just a few points, but you can read the article published on this blog, where I have covered top benefits of SEO for businesses.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, our experience with using SEO to validate our SaaS project idea was good. It demonstrated that sometimes the best resources you have are ingenuity and a willingness to put in consistent effort.

For fellow startups and business owners, considering SEO as a tool for project validation can be a game-changer. It’s not just about saving costs; it’s about smartly investing your resources where they can provide the most significant results.

As we continue our journey, we’re more committed than ever to leveraging SEO, not just for validation, but as a whole ongoing marketing strategy.

And to those, who are going to begin their startup journey, remember: sometimes, the best validation comes from organic growth and real-world interactions, which SEO proficiently facilitates.

They were using primarily SMM (Social Media Marketing) as lead generation method for their business.

Client: “Adarsh, we are having a meeting with business partners, and we are discussing on expanding the lead generation channel. Do you think – should we invest in SEO?”

Me: “Yeah, absolutely! Why not?”

Client: “I understand but I am unable to explain my business partners – why should we invest in SEO as we are generating good number of qualified leads using social media?”

Then I prepared a quick presentation with solid points to help my client. That presentation really helped their stakeholders to understand the benefits of SEO and why they should invest in SEO.

If you are a business owner and want to grow your business, then this article will definitely help you or stakeholders of your business to understand the importance of SEO.

Though most people think SEO is free but that’s not whole truth as it requires time investment and efforts both to get results from SEO.

But yeah, SEO does provide higher ROI (return on investment) for businesses in comparison to PPC advertising.

In this post, I am going to share the benefits of SEO for your business. After reading this, you will be able to decide whether you should invest in SEO or not.

So, let’s start!

1. SEO Builds Higher Brand Visibility

We all know that there is huge number of users on search engines searching for the information. Users keep researching the required information using multiple search queries.

So if you optimize your website according to the recommendation provided by the search engines, you have higher probability that you can get major traction of such traffic to your site as well.

That’s how SEO helps you to achieve higher brand visibility.

2. SEO Increases High-Quality Organic Traffic to Your Website

Search engines are one of the most important organic traffic channels that you can’t afford to miss.

In simple terms, organic channels means that you are not required to pay even a single cent to get the traffic to your website.

You build such sources of organic traffic channels gradually by investing required efforts over a period of time. Similarly search engine optimization (SEO) takes time due to high quality content creation process.

But once you’ve got everything setup correctly from SEO part, you increase your chances to get high quality traffic to your website that converts well.

3. SEO Reduces Bounce Rate & Improves User Engagement

As a website owner you would always like to get higher user engagement on your website. Isn’t it?

So, when a user comes to your site from search engine and if the user leaves your site instantly due to any reason. This is an indication that user is not engaging with your site.

In SEO process, we use analytical tools e.g. Google Analytics to track the bounce rate of website. Such analytical data helps us to identify the issues for each site pages. Now we can pay attention to such pages and fix the issues0.

Thus, when we implement SEO on the site, we also focus to make more engaging website with lesser bounce rate.

4. SEO Focuses on Mobile Friendly & Responsive Website Design

Mobile friendly & responsive website are beneficial for our site visitors. Because visitors might use any kind of device while visiting your website such as mobile, tablet or desktop.

Search engines algorithms helps such responsive websites to ranks better because they care for their site visitors.

So in SEO, we focus in implementing your website to be mobile friendly and responsive, that is good for your site visitors as well.

5. SEO Focuses on Improving Website Loading Speed

Would you like to wait? You’ll say no… Right?

Similarly, nobody else would like if your website takes very long to load. Website loading speed is one of key parameter for your site visitors. This might result as your business revenue losses.

One study conducted by amazon in 2006, says that a delay of 100ms in page load time cost them in 1% loss in revenue. You can read about this study here.

So, search engines also prefer to give higher ranking to fast loading websites.

Overall, website loading speed matters a lot for 3 main reasons i.e. the user experience, revenue and ranking in SERP (search engine result pages).

This is another benefit that we get when we implement SEO on our site.

6. SEO Builds Brand Authority

In SEO, you create lots of high-quality content related to your business or niche to make your audience aware of your brand and put it on your website.

This way your audience feels good when they find helpful information on your website regarding their search queries. And such audience become the loyal audience of your brand. They start referring your brand to other people.

Thus, SEO helps you build brand authority by providing them highly valuable content and making a good impression among your customer’s minds.

7. SEO Builds Brand Credibility & Trust

You know – it is a general perception among online users that the sites with higher ranking on search engine are credible and can be trusted.

That’s why conversion rate from SEO traffic remains higher in most cases as compared to conversion rate from paid traffic sources.

So, SEO helps you build brand credibility and trust among your target customers.

8. SEO Decreases Your Advertising Costs

As explained earlier, SEO is an organic traffic channel that does not require you to pay anything. Though SEO is long-term process and requires high value content and consistent efforts.

But once you start getting traffic from SEO you generate leads/sales for free consistently and helps your business to grow.

Even if you compare it with paid advertising channels, SEO is very cost-effective. Hence SEO helps you decrease advertising costs.

9. SEO Produces Highest ROI in Long Run

Though SEO require high quality content, time & efforts etc. You may consider doing it yourself if you know how to implement SEO on your website or you can hire an SEO specialist to do it for you.

So, there could be the service charges by SEO specialist, that are certainly an expense.

But in the long run SEO might be the highest ROI proving channel because you don’t have to pay anything once you start getting SEO traffic as it is free. You get the point?

Thus, in the long run, SEO becomes high ROI generating channel for online brands.

10. SEO Generates High Quality Leads

In SEO, we target the high intent keywords to optimize the content on our website. Such high intent keywords are high quality in terms of lead generation and converts well for brands.

Thus, SEO helps us to generate high quality leads/sales for our business.

11. SEO is More Cost-Effective Than PPC

In PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing channels, for example – Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Marketing (SMM), we pay on CPC (cost per click) Or CPM (cost per mile) basis. This means we will have to pay to continuously to bring the traffic to our website.

In case of SEO, you just invest your time & efforts to get traffic (also fee of the SEO services).

But you do not need to pay any expense to get traffic from SEO like PPC model.

This is one of the major benefits of SEO that attracts business owners to invest in SEO.

12. SEO Keeps You Ahead of Your Competitors in Search Engine

You always aim to target your competitors in SEO process. You try to do everything possible to get higher ranking than your competitors.

For this we do competitors analysis to understand their content, on-page and off-page SEO strategies,

We build SEO strategy for own brand accordingly as per the competition. And if we follow appropriate SEO strategies consistently then we can certainly beat the competition.

Thus, in SEO process, we always focus on what you can do better in content creation or in SEO implementation to beat your competitors in search engine, which I guess, is highly beneficial for your brand.

13. Long-Term Sustainability for Your Business

In online marketing, this is the fact that the longer you keep getting quality traffic to your website, the more sustainable your business will be.

You know SEO is a time taking process but as soon as you start getting the traffic and keep doing good work in SEO then traffic is consistent.

In most of SEO results, we have observed that maybe you don’t see much growth in traffic for few months or year but if you keep implementing good SEO practices on your website, then the traffic grows exponentially and consistently.

So, SEO is one of the important & sustainable way to grow your brand online for longer term.

14. SEO Promotes Your Website All Time 24X7

Your website is like a salesman of your business that works for growing your business. But your website does not need to go door to door to reach your customers and sell your products or services.

If you have got your website ranked on search engine using SEO techniques, then you keep getting your customers to reach to your virtual salesman i.e. your website.

So, SEO helps you promote your business all time 24X7. This is like making money while you are sleeping.

15. SEO Helps to Improve Your Other Marketing Channels As Well

Suppose you are running any social media marketing campaign via Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads, or you are running email marketing campaigns etc., then your customer research about your brand on search engine to know more information about your brand.

Suppose you don’t rank for your brand name or related search query then you’ll almost loose such customers.

This is how SEO supports and coordinates very well with all of your other marketing channels for example – social media, email, sms and influencer marketing campaigns etc.

Because this is obvious that if somebody read your brand name somewhere, then users will possibly search on search engine too to get more information about your brand.

16. SEO Helps You Track & Measure Organic Traffic Growth

In the SEO process, we use tools like Google Search Console & Google Analytics etc. to know how our SEO strategies are performing on search engine.

This helps us to understand what is working and what is not. So tracking is essential to measure traffic growth.

These SEO tracking reports helps us to set a clear goal and KPIs (key performance indicator) to measure and compare the SEO progress.

17. SEO Helps You Take Data-Driven Decisions

Tools like Google Search Console & Google Analytics provide us different wide range of data regarding the impact of our SEO work on our website.

We can interpret this data logically and take data-driven decisions to grow our business, for example – which search keywords are performing well and generating high ROI for our business.

Thus, SEO helps us take data-driven decisions for scaling our business.

18. SEO Helps You Generate More Content Ideas

When you explore Google Search Console keyword performance report, you’ll find more search keywords that are related to your target keywords.

Using this keyword impressions report, you get lots of new keyword where you are getting impressions. You can utilize these keywords report to know the search volume of such new keywords in Google Keyword Planner.

This way, Search Console helps you understand your customers search queries and create more contents based on such searches.

So such SEO process helps you generate new content ideas utilizing SEO keyword report.

19. SEO Can Be Helpful to Validate Project Ideas for Startups

This tip can be really helpful specially for startups or any business who wants to validate any business idea.

Yeah, recently we launched a SAAS based application. But our team didn’t have much time to validate this new SAAS project idea as they were busy on other projects.

And we also didn’t not want to spend any amount in paid advertising without validating this idea first. We just wanted to validate whether this idea will be genuinely helpful for the target users or not.

So, we tried different approach for testing this idea. Guess what?

Yeah, we used SEO approach to validate the new idea. After few months, we started getting traffic and leads. Few of them actually purchased the memberships plan of that SAAS project.

That idea really worked out without much time or money investment, just required some of team effort in creating good articles and SEO work.

Overall, this process helped me to validate my project idea because traffic from search engine who are specifically searching for something, converts better.

And if you can satisfy your customer this way with your solution, then certainly you can scale your project idea using any marketing channel.

PS 1: I hope that now you’ve understood major benefits of SEO for scaling your business. Now if you’re convinced then you can start planning how you can take advantage from SEO and grow your business online.

PS 2: I tried my best to convert most important SEO benefit, but if you think I missed any point or if you have any feedback or question then you can reply in comment section below.

If you are using root user to install the Virtualmin control panel, then it is recommended to create a new a user with sudo access to install Virtualmin due to security reasons.

If you are not sure how to create a new user on ubuntu server and assign sudo access to this user, you can read this article to know how to create new user on ubuntu and grant sudo access.

Let’s begin – update the packages first

Sudo apt update

Installing Virtualmin On Ubuntu Server

The easiest way to get the install script onto your server, is to login to your server and use wget or curl.

wget https://software.virtualmin.com/gpl/scripts/virtualmin-install.sh

Run the Install Script and Configure Virtualmin:

Execute the downloaded install script using a command like the following:

sudo sh virtualmin-install.sh

After a few minutes, your system should have everything it needs to provide a full-featured virtual web hosting environment!

Now login to Virtualmin by browsing to port 10000 on the address of your server using the HTTPS protocol.

Ignore the SSL certificate validation error (the SSL certificate is a self-signed one after initial installation but can be replaced with a valid certificate after initial configuration is complete).

Follow the steps in the post-install wizard to setup Virtualmin to suit your environment and needs. Virtualmin will check the configuration of the system and validate some server settings to ensure your system is ready for service.

Click Create Virtual Server to start making your first website in Virtualmin!

#1. Installing Apache and allowing it through the firewall

We can use following steps:

Step 1:

sudo apt update

After the command ask to your password … then you enter your password.

Step 2:

sudo apt install apache2

Let’s allow Apache through the firewall using the following command

Step 3:

sudo ufw allow in “Apache Full”

If we want to check status, then use this command

Step 4:

sudo ufw status

You can now go to the server URL (IP Address) and the apache2 default page will be displayed on the Screen.

Step 5:

You can go to the Firewall.

Enter the URL is

localhost

#2. Installing MySQL on Ubuntu:

We can run the command to install the MySQL is:

We can use following steps:

Step 1:

       sudo apt install mysql-server -y

After installation is completed, then you can run the command for entering the mysql is:

Step 2:

       sudo mysql

If you want to exit from the mysql then enter the command is:

Step 3:

       exit

#3. Installing PHP on Ubuntu:

We can run the command to install the PHP is:

Step 1:

     sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql -y

If we want to check the version of PHP, then we can enter the command is:

Step 2:

     php -v

If we want to change any content from the any file, then we can use the:

Step 3:

     sudo nano filename

Installation is complete for the LAMP.

#4. Installing phpMyAdmin

Step 1:

     sudo apt install phpmyadmin php-mbstring php-zip php-gd php-json php-curl

Configuring MySQL to use a password

Step 2:

     sudo mysql -u root -p

If we not set the password on MySQL then, we automatic enter the MySQL using this command.

      sudo mysql

After this command we create a user by using this command:

Step 3:

 CREATE USER 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH caching_sha2_password BY 'password123';

If our user create is successfully then, we can use this command for grant all privileges to the username:

Step 4:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'username'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;

And all the process are completed then, we can exit with using by this command is:

Step 5:

exit

Check the installation:

sudo service apache2 restart

Note: If all the process are completed, and we get the issue for login page, then we can change the php version from the configuration file.

So you can follow this quick guide to add a new user in your ubuntu server and grant sudo access so that you can run any command like authorized sudo user.

Step 1: Switch to root user

sudo su

Step 2: Create a new user on Ubuntu

Create a new user using following command and provide required information or you can choose press ENTER button to use default information for Full Name, Room Number, Work Phone, Home Phone & Other etc.

(Example: let’s assume we want to create a new user named “adarsh”. You can choose whatever username you prefer)

adduser adarsh

Now in order to switch to newly created user, you can enter following command.

In my case new user created is adarsh, so I will use it. You need to modify this according to the new user that you created for yourself.

su adarsh

Now if you run any command with sudo for example like following command, you get an error like – “User is not in sudoers file.”

sudo apt-get update

That means we need to give sudo access to this newly created user to run any command with sudo privileges.

Step 3: Grant sudo access to the new user account

Before granting sudo access to new user, we need to switch to root user first. So enter following command

sudo su

Now run in order to edit the sudoers file, run following command

sudo visudo

Sudoer file will be opened. Now go to the section in this file that says – “Allow members of group sudo to execute any command”.

Here after the line %sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Write the same line just after it, and then replace the “sudo” word with your new user.

In my case, it is adarsh. So my new file looks something like below.

Now save and exit from this file by pressing CTRL+X and confirming onscreen instructions.

That’s it. Now the newly created user has been added in the sudoers file.

To confirm it, switch to the new user account using following command

sudo adarsh

They try again this update command like following

 sudo apt-get update

Now you’ll see no error shows like before and by providing the password of new user you can run any command with sudo access.

Thanks for reading this article… have a good day!

#1. Installing Nginx on Ubuntu and allowing it through the firewall

We can use following steps:

Step 1: Update the packages first

Enter the command on the terminal:

      sudo apt update

After the command ask to your password … then you enter your password and then use this command is:

Step 2: Command for Installing Nginx:

      sudo apt install Nginx

Step 3: Allow Nginx through the firewall

      sudo ufw app list

      sudo ufw allow in ‘Nginx Full’

If we want to check status, then use this command:

Step 4: Check Firewall Status

      sudo ufw status

You can now go to the server URL (IP Address) and the Nginx default page will be displayed on the Screen.

Step 5: Check the default page on localhost

Go to the browser and type ‘http://your_domain_or_IP/localhost’ in your URL bar.

      localhost

#2. Installing MySQL on Ubuntu

We can run the command to install the MySQL is:

Step 1: Install MySQL

      sudo apt install mysql-server -y

After installation is completed, then you can run the command for entering the mysql is:

Step 2: Enter in MySQL

      sudo mysql

If you want to exit from the MySQL then enter the command is:

Step 3: Exit from MySQL

      exit

#3. Installing PHP on Ubuntu

We can run the command to install the PHP is:

Step 1: Install PHP

      sudo apt install php-fpm php-mysql

If we want to check the version of PHP, then we can enter the command is:

Step 2: Check the PHP version

      php -v

If you want to host a PHP website, you will have to copy your files to:

Step 3: Upload website files to following path

      cd /var/www/html

Step 4: Nginx website configuration file location

      sudo nano /etc/nginx/site-available/default

If we want to change any content from the any file, then we can use the:

Step 5: Updating Nginx website configuration file

      sudo nano filename

Installation is complete for the LEMP.

#4. Installing phpMyAdmin

      sudo apt install phpmyadmin php-mbstring php-zip php-gd php-json php-curl

#5. Configuring MySQL to use a password

Step 1: Check the MySQL user password status

If we set the password on MySQL then we can use this command:

      sudo mysql -u root -p

If we not set the password on MySQL then, we automatic enter the MySQL using this command:

      sudo mysql

After this command we create a user by using this command:

Step 2: Create a new user for MySQL database

      CREATE USER 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITHcaching_sha2_password BY 'password123';

If our user create is successfully then, we can use this command for grant all privileges to the username:

Step 3: Grant access to database to this new user

      GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'username'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;

And all the process are completed then, we can exit with using by this command is:

Step 4: Exit MySQL

      exit

Step 5: Login with new username & password that you set

Go to the browser and type ‘http://your_domain_or_IP/phpmyadmin’ in your URL bar. You will see an option to log into your PHPMyAdmin console.

      localhost

#6. Create a symlink

      sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /var/www/html/phpMyAdmin

Check the installation:

      sudo service nginx restart

Note: If all the process are completed, and we get the issue for login page, then we can change the php version from the configuration file.