Anyone serious about ranking websites both locally and more importantly on a national or global level knows that Google is still giving a lot of authority to inbound links. As such PBNs are just as important and relevant now as ever for passing links that you can control.
In case you’re not sure. Here’s why you should build or buy pbn sites you own.
Lately we’ve been elbows deep in building several groups of PBNs for personal use and we decided to make a case study out of this since we see there are three basic ways to get a PBN up and running.
We’d like to look at the pros, cons and costs of each and hopefully when finished you’ll be able to tell quickly which way to go about this is best for your needs.
Obviously there are endless ways you could go about this, but we’ll look at the three basic ways to get it done.
Important Note: There is no perfect way to build a bulletproof PBN. So don’t look for the magic bullet.
Ultimately there is risk in building any pbn so whether you spend time, money or both, it could all evaporate if the sites get the wrong attention.
Each method of building has pros and cons, but ultimately you should think about the long term value of a solid network of sites as an asset.
Building fast may get your short term results, but will be more expensive in the long run as you may be forced to rebuild some or all of your sites.
Therefore for the best long term strategy a balanced view of cost vs quality is wise so you don’t just end up with a money pit.
Assumptions: If you’re reading this we’re going to assume you’re not looking for insanely powerful sites to build a pbn out of. This is more for the entry level SEO or someone with limited resources building on a budget. You’ll likely be able to find domains with metrics like this (TF/CF 25 DA/PA 20) for the prices mentioned below.
So for this we’ll assume you don’t have hours to spend waiting for domain auctions to end, hours and hours to spend chasing highly valuable domains. If that is you, then exclude the costs provided for purchasing a more readily available domain.
BUILD YOUR OWN PBN (cost $26-82 time 5 hours)
Chances of sites passing manual review: DECENT (hard to keep from leaving a footprint)
Final thoughts
We feel this strategy is a total win if you’re on a tight budget and simply have more time than money. Also if you have a strong desire to learn the process, build a system or want to have complete control over quality then there is not substitute for building your own PBN sites. When we have very critical projects we’ll likely keep these inhouse until we have a team that can build them to spec at a very high level while not exceeding budget.
Resources used for this project
- Our own WordPress, design and writing skills
- Hosting: HostNine.com reseller hosting
- Registrar: Internet.bs
Reasons you might build your own pbn
- You’d like to learn how the process works so doing it yourself will make you very intimate with the process
- Privacy is extremely important to you
- Budget doesn’t permit any outsourcing of any work
- You have all the time in the world because you’re filthy rich already and are madly in love with creating pseudo sites about other peoples interest.
Average out of pocket cost per site: $26-$82.00
- Buy a domain – $7-60 (depending on the seller, FB groups are a great place to save!)
- Domain Registration – $7-10/year
- Hosting – $12/year
- Buy domain, register, set up hosting, install CMS, plugins, social profiles etc – 1 hour x What your labor is worth
- Content – 5-7 articles + standard pages = 3 hours x What your labor is worth
- Making it look pretty – 1 hour x What your labor is worth
Personal time used per site
- 5 Hours (100 site pbn = 500 hours or 3+ months)
Pros
- Excellent control over quality / look / feel / niche
- No need for system
- Lowest out of pocket cost to build
- Lowest risk in sharing credentials, mistakes, privacy
Cons
- Slow and labor intensive
- Burnout and fatigue if building larger networks
- Lack of originality between sites (think footprint)
- This system isn’t scalable so you can only build them as fast as you personally can
- Can’t delegate or sell your business since your business is you and no one can knows exactly what you do
Things you’ll need to do yourself
- Locate domains for sale from a reputable seller
- Research their available domains, choose and purchase
- Register domain with a registrar
- Finding and setting up hosting account
- Point domain at hosting account
- Installing CMS (wordpress, joomla, drupal etc)
- Installing Themes and Plugins
- Creating persona and feel for site
- Gathering and creating branding, logos, colors, images
- Creating content pages, basic pages, contact forms
- Setting up ads (or using fake ads)
- Creating social profiles and adding profile photos, header images
- Publishing content and dripping to social networks
- Keep track of all specifics regarding the domain, content etc in a spreadsheet
Things others can do for you
Not much here. On your own! Though we cannot emphasize enough that if you’re just getting started you really need to play to your strengths, even if you’re on a limited budget. The most important thing to remember here is that the only difference in cost between an amazing PBN site and a worthless one is the real estate upon which it is built. Thats the domain
How to maximize your budget
It takes the same amount of time and effort to build a quality PBN as it does to cut corners and go cheap and end up with a portfolio of weak and worthless sites. That said, if you have to cut corners anywhere, try to spend the best money you have on a domain name that has great metrics. You can always upgrade your hosting later. Try to look for lower cost domain registration or even use lower cost hosting initially until you can justify the extra expense. You can’t simply upgrade your domain down the road.
Updates: Building your own PBN
2015-01-30: 5 PBNs Complete!
We’ve completed our 5 sites with everything done in house. It wasn’t terrible doing this work, but definitely took us out of product for a couple days. Between the two of us we were able to throw together what we consider to be quality PBN sites. This is what you would expect from doing them yourself. Again, you need to prioritize as this project was for sure a distraction to other projects.
Here’s how the numbers stacked up avg over 5 sites:
- Days to complete from start to finish: 3 days
- Buy domain: 15 min – $0 as we scraped them ourselves
- Register domain: 5 min – $9/year
- Set up hosting, point domain, install wordpress: 10 min – $12/year
- Install custom theme, plugins: 30 min – $0
- Build 3 generic pages (about, contact, advertise etc), 3 500 word articles, create social acct (only one): 3 Hours – $0
- Making it pretty with logo, branding, images: 1 hour – $0 (free logo)
- Total time per site: 5 hours
- Total cost per site: $21 / year
OUTSOURCE SOME OF THE PBN WORK
Chances of sites passing manual review: Good (sites have more personality, diversity, less footprints)
Final thoughts
Working with VA’s is a blast when you have a powerful team. They have a lot of creativity and personality which makes your projects take on those elements. The cost was amazing which was a pleasant surprise. Surely we had a bit of beginners luck in not having an major issues. Using good management practices like MainWP helped relieve some of the anxiety. If you’re outsourcing your PBN work this plugin is a must have. We plan to white label it for client sites also. Great stuff! Overall this is a great method of getting PBNs done if you want to develop a team and want to test people for skill, communication, speed etc. For a one time project this isn’t worth the hassle. It’s a ton of logistics for minimal gains.
Resources used for this project:
- oDesk contractors with WordPress, design and writing skills
- Hosting: HostNine.com reseller hosting
- Registrar: NameSilo.com
Reasons you might outsource some of your pbn:
- Save time over doing everything yourself
- Build a system that can be scaled over time
- Helps you develop relationships with VA’s who can eventually grow with you to do more things (even become a manager!)
- Need more volume immediately than you can handle on your own
- Get more personality, diversity in your portfolio to prevent footprints
- Retain some control, management, input into content, design, look, feel etc.
Average out of pocket cost per site: $39-$105.00
- Buy a domain – $7-60 (depending on the seller, FB groups are a great place to save!)
- Domain Registration – $7-10/year
- Hosting – $12/year
- Buy domain, register, set up hosting, installing CMS, aim domain at host – 15 min x What your labor is worth
- Communicating with VA and answering questions 30 min x What your labor is worth
- Installing plugins, creating social profiles – 30 min x VA Hourly Rate ($3-5/hr)
- Gathering branding, logos, images, color schemes etc 1 hour X VA Hourly Rate ($3-5/hr)
- Creative content: 5-7 articles = 2 hours x VA Hourly Rate ($3-5/hr)
- Standard content: 30 min x What your labor is worth
- Making it look pretty – 1 hour x VA Hourly Rate ($3-5/hr)
Personal time used per site
- 1.75 hours (100 site pbn = 175 hours or 1 LONG month)
Pros
- Faster build time means larger networks go quicker
- Still have some control over quality, can have some management presence, decision making, input
- If you have a lot of domains, getting them built faster means faster indexing, shorter time to get links placed
- Less personal time needed freeing time up for other profitable activities or life/work balance
- Creating jobs for others
- Developing a scalable system to grow beyond yourself as your business grows
- Saves money. Your labor is often worth more in terms of cost than a VA simply because of cost of living etc.
- Can sell your business since you’re primarily a manager and can transfer managerial roles to a new owner
- More originality to sites especially if you use two or more VA’s as each will have their own flavor which means less footprints lowering risk of manual reviews
Cons
Things you’ll need to do yourself:
- Locate domains for sale from a reputable seller
- Research their available domains, choose and purchase
- Register domain with a registrar
- Finding and setting up hosting account
- Point domain at hosting account
- Installing CMS (wordpress, joomla, drupal etc)
- Installing Themes and Plugins
- Creating persona and feel for site
- Gathering and creating branding, logos, colors, images
- Creating content pages, basic pages, contact forms
- Setting up ads (or using fake ads)
- Creating social profiles and adding profile photos, header images
- Publishing content and dripping to social networks
- Keep track of all specifics regarding the domain, content etc in a spreadsheet
Updates
2015-02-03: All PBN’s complete!
Awesome! I must say after we got things back on track (see comments below about setting deadlines) that the final product of our VA’s was above expectations. They each took a bit of nudging to get the projects completed in a timely manner, but each was responsive and wrapped things up quickly.
This process was definitely time consuming up front as we learned how much information to give, had to install a few plugins to manage the sites like this one form MainWP which gave us confidence in handing over sites to unknown people.
Overall the quality was much higher than we expected. Let’s quantify that. We noticed that the VA’s did a lot more research for the articles and actually created high quality unique content to our surprise. We shouldn’t be surprised as we hired the most fluent folks we could. This was a pleasant surprise nonetheless. They had no problem building out fake ads, using sidebar widgets, getting custom logos and building out the legal pages we requested.
The work was more than good enough for a modest quality PBN. These wouldn’t pass for a full on website, but for blogs, no problem. Our total cost for each site was under $30. This puts us in a weird spot as you’ll notice that the cost for the PBNs we bought were a hair less than this at $27/each, but those included just one article and these VA’s were able to produce 5 full articles for just $3 more each.
We have since put those VA’s to work on even more sites. Surely we have had a bit of luck in this process as we’ve all heard the many horror stores around hiring VA’s. Additionally we hope that by building stronger relationships with our team we can expand their roles with us and this will ultimately help us scale our business quickly and offer more services!
2015-02-01: 2 PBNs complete, 1 at 80%
We’re a week into this project and it’s been pretty bumpy. At first we had to go find a team of people to hire. This involved posting jobs on Elance and oDesk which wasn’t too time consuming, but the flood of applicants to wade through wasn’t fun. So many people use stock responses so it can be tedious trying to select people with actual skills and a desire to produce.
We finally settled on 3 different people who had good responses, fluent spelling and grammar. We hired them right away. We wanted to hire an array so we had something to compare too. Not as a talent contest, but to have a benchmark. This was wise as we definitely have seen some shine and others lag behind.
The pre-work to do this for a new team is daunting to say the least. We definitely went overboard at first, trying to give too much direction which invariably will net you a bunch of dependent contractors who can’t think for themselves. So we pulled it back a bit toward the end giving much more discretion to the VA to create things that inspired them. This allows their talents to show and makes it much easier to decide who to keep working with while not creating more work for yourself.
The time involved for us to get through the job posting, screening, hiring and doing pre-work was a hair under 5 hours. We can see that once we got our system down and through the learning curve on our end we could repeat this process in 1-2 hours. However the systems we did put into place early has helped us manage the project much better than we initially thought.
We’ll do a writeup on how to use the MainWP plugin soon which gives you full management control over your properties from a single dashboard keeping risk low and management simple.
One great take away from this project is to set deadlines. This creates urgency in completing the project so you’re not always checking if it’s complete which just wastes time and energy.
We did have some issues with a couple contractors having intermittent internet problems so be ready for these delays as not everyone has reliable access. We’re willing to tolerate those things and give the contractor the benefit of the doubt, but it’s wise to keep an eye on these things so they don’t escalate into long drawn out projects.
Here’s how the numbers are stacking up with 2 sites complete and 1 at 80%:
- Current projec t length: 7+ days
- Buy domain: 15 min – $0 as we scraped them ourselves
- Register domain: 5 min – $9/year
- Set up hosting, point domain, install wordpress: 10 min – $12/year
- Post job, screen applications and hire a team: 2 hours – $0
- Buy MainWP plugin, build out site templates, personas – 3 hours – $29
- Time to manage/check in on VA work: 15/day = 2 hours
- VA tasks and expenses – Under $30/site
- Install custom theme, plugins
- Build 3 generic pages (about, contact, advertise etc)
- 3 500 word articles
- Making it pretty with logo, branding, images
- Total time per site: 2.5 hours (this could be marked reduced from here on out. We expect 30 min or less)
- Total cost per site: $21/year + 30/site + fractional cost of MainWP (unlimited sites) = $51/site
BUY PBN NETWORK ALREADY DONE
Chances of sites passing manual review: BEST (Sites have most diversity, originality, character, least footprints)
Final thoughts
Having an entire set of PBNs done for you is like getting a heading out to the pool and having someone serve you cold drinks while giving you a footrub. Can’t say enough good things about how easy this way. Fast too! If we needed a lot of work done in a hurry or if my schedule was just too full, I’d go this route in an instant. PBNFox was a great communicator, delivered on time and didn’t leave anything out. It doesn’t get much better than that. This path is better for larger projects, if you’re already highly leveraged or if you simply don’t want to take the time to learn to build PBNs or deal with hiring VA’s. It’s a clear win. Plan on spending some money and still needing to do a bit of work to the sites to get some depth to them. Of course you can always pay more to have that done too.
Resources used for this project:
- PBNFOx and we chose their 5 PBN setup
- Hosting: HostNine.com reseller hosting
- Registrar: NameSilo.com
Reasons you might buy PBN networks already done:
- You need a network, small or large, built FAST, like in 2-3 days for 5-10 orders
- Build a system that can be scaled over time
- Focus more on client needs than on web work
- Want to save money over buying links at a high price and retain control over the links
- Get more personality, diversity in your portfolio to prevent footprints
Average out of pocket cost per site: $92-$122.00
- Domain cost – $30-60 (provided by seller, no control over domain)
- Domain Registration – $7-10/year (not provided by seller)
- Hosting – $15/year (provided by seller, no control over hosting company)
- Register domain – 5 min each x What your labor is worth
- Skype call communicating needs and answering questions 30 min per batch x What your labor is worth
- Installing plugins, creating social profiles – Included in service
- Gathering branding, logos, images, color schemes etc Included in service
- Creative content: 5-7 articles = Included in service
- Standard content: 3 pages (about, contact, privacy) Included in service
- Making it look pretty – Included in service
- Checking over site and ensuring quality control – 15 min / site x What your labor is worth
- Communicating problems, getting them corrected – 15 min / site x What your labor is worth
Personal time used per site
- 30 min (100 site pbn = 50 hours or 1 LONG work week)
Pros
- Fastest time to a large network of sites built. If using sites for a customer project, this can be critical
- Can be powerful when needing to launch jack or obtain critical rankings quickly
- If you have a lot of domains, getting them built faster means faster indexing, shorter time to get links placed
- Least amount of personal time needed freeing time up for other profitable activities or life/work balance
- Creating jobs for others
- As long as there are PBN services you are infinitely scalable and can outsource all your work and focus on client acquisition, building a team, sales etc.
- Can mean the difference between landing large client projects and not, so can be a huge profit center even at the high cost
- Can sell your business you’re only a manager and can transfer managerial roles to a new owner
- Largest originality of sites as most providers have a very unique profile and can work hard to make sites VERY unique. which further reduces footprints lowering risk of manual reviews
Cons
- Least amount of management input and control over look, feel, quality, decision making
- Highest cost to build increasing your risk for loss as network is still vulnerable to deindexing and manual reviews
- Trusting that the seller is reputable and will resolve problems with domains not indexing, security issues with plugins used, duplicate content problems, copyright issues with stolen content
Things you’ll need to do yourself:
- Locate a reputable PBN seller (we’ll be listing our favorites in our ToolBox)
- Register domain(s) with a registrar
- Point domain at hosting account
- Suggest or delegate persona and feel for site
- Communicating with seller problems, questions concerns and issues
- Keep track of all specifics regarding the domain, content etc in a spreadsheet
Updates
2015-02-02: PBNFox completed all PBNs on time and did a fantastic job!
I was a bit nervous as mentioned below as the work hadn’t started up until just two days ago, but out of nowhere Nemanja and his team got these sites whipped into shape! They look AMAZING as well. Everything we asked for was provided. Custom logos, social integration, twitter feeds, custom themes, legal pages, fake widget and footer ads and a nice 750 word article that was niche relevant.
Overall the sites were better than expected in many ways, but one thing that I did notice was a slight footprint across the five sites in the form of the social integration looking very similar. I’m happy to report that I mentioned this concern to Nemanja and he was very receptive to suggestions on how to improve the service and said he was already working on creating more diversity for future projects.
At the price point of PBNFox service we had a hard time creating more value for the dollar, but as you see our VA’s pulled slightly ahead in those areas. What is of note that here is that I literally sent over ONE set of credentials to Nemanja where he could access our dashboard and I didn’t touch a thing after that. This took me 3 minutes to set up.
Now I did do all the pre-work such as finding domains, setting up hosting etc, so I honestly had about 15 minutes total into each site. That’s incredibly efficient if you compare that to the 5 hours we invested in each of our sites we hand built.
Some positives to share about PBNFox is that the communication was clear, product was delivered on time, issues were received positively and overall the experience was great. For the value we feel this service is a must have in our personal portfolio. We look forward to building our team of VA’s and perhaps we can teach them skills that go beyond PBN building and then use PBNFox for this service.
2015-02-01: PBNFox is hard at work. Expecting delivery soon!
We took a bit long to get the information over to the contractor as we had delays getting domains set up and hosting installed. They were patient while we got things sorted on our end which was nice. We chose to do this work ourselves to try to keep the comparison fair, though you could go full out and have them thoroughly done for you albeit at a much higher investment.
The contractor has had information for 3 days and out of nowhere this morning our sites transformed from faceless wordperss installs to shiney PBN sites full of life! Their website says that orders of 5-10 sites are delivered in 3-5 days typically so we’ll keep an eye on their results! It appears they are right on time with delivery, but we’ll hold judgement until everything is finalized.
A positive word about PBNFox. They had offered us a discount for being a member of an SEO group. We forgot about that offer when we purchased their service and Nemanja reminded me. That level of honesty in the digital space is hard to find. So I want to thank him for honoring that promise and giving me a reason to write about this positive experience!
Conclusion
As you can see there are endless options for getting your pbn network built. We hope this helps you better decide if you should build your own, outsource some of it or just offshore the whole thing.
What has worked for you? Do you have a favorite VA, domain seller or a PBN seller that you recommend? Mention them and any other thoughts in the comments below!
Update
DigitalPointStudios whom we wrote about earlier is now PBNFox. The owner has increased their service offering and taking their business to a new level. Give them a shout if you’re thinking about a PBN setup in the near future.
Remember, keep it simple.