“If I make money by ranking number one, why not just bid on the keyword?” That simple question saved Niels Zee’s affiliate business. 💡
At the Chiang Mai SEO conference, where he was speaking for the third year, I sat down with Niels Zee for Inside Hustler’s Brain. His biggest site lost 95% of its SEO traffic, so he moved to Google Ads and once made about $92,000 profit in a month. 🎙️
We covered his landing page playbook, his agency with Matt Diggity, AI, and the mindset habits he lives by. 🔥
📊 In this episode, we unpacked:
- 📉 From helpful content hit to Google Ads
- 💰 The $92K month and why paid traffic feels safer
- 🤝 How AffRamp with Matt Diggity started
- 🛠️ 4 tips for high-converting ad landing pages
- 🤖 ChatGPT traffic and staying optimistic
- 🧘 Gut feeling, frequencies and burning the paper
- 💸 Money as freedom
🎥 Watch the full episode:
📉 From Helpful Content Hit to Google Ads
Chiang Mai is Niels’s permanent home, and he loves hosting 800 of the best SEOs there. 🏡
His team started Google Ads about three years ago, before the update. Then the first helpful content update cut their biggest site’s SEO traffic by 50%, and a year later about 95% was gone. “Even the best content still got hit.” 📉
So he stopped doing SEO: “I don’t see a good ROI from this, especially if they can just take it away from you.” 🚫
The logic came from his growth hacking background: track everything. If a page earns 50 cents per visitor in commissions, bidding 25 cents per click is probably profitable. Most people don’t have good tracking set up. 📊
💰 The $92K Month and Why Paid Traffic Feels Safer
His best month: about $112,000 net revenue, minus around $20,000 in salaries, for roughly $92,000 profit. 💵
SEO affiliates have already done 80% of the work: the pages, the proven keywords, the right intent, and often better deals. Improve conversion rates a bit and Google Ads can be profitable. 🎯
It also feels better because “we’re paying Google, so our incentives are aligned.” Free traffic was never Google’s business. 🤝
I shared that after my own sites got hit, we moved into Google Ads and Facebook Ads, bidding on keywords we already knew were profitable from SEO. For a similar pivot story, read Jay Yap on adapting at Leadspring. 🔗
🤝 How AffRamp With Matt Diggity Started
Niels knew Matt Diggity from the Chiang Mai community. Since most SEO affiliates were wiped out by the helpful content update, he pitched an idea: he’d brand an offer, find affiliate sites, a good agency would run their ads, and they’d split profits 50/50. Did Matt know a good agency? “Oh yeah, my agency.” 💡
The agency team saw his numbers and called them “really solid.” Then came the realization that they could also use Matt’s authority and email list. “The perfect triangle”: the agency’s ads expertise, Niels’s secret sauce, and Matt’s audience. 🔺
The result is AffRamp, which now has clients booked for the next four months, onboarded one by one. 📅
On keywords: brands usually don’t allow bidding on their brand terms. Some allow “brand + review.” Generic terms like “best SEO tools” work well. ✅
🛠️ 4 Tips for High-Converting Ad Landing Pages
For SEO you need intros, entities and information gain. For Google Ads, “none of that. You’ve got to go straight to the answer,” with three or four products above the fold. His tips for turning SEO pages into ad pages:
- ✂️ Skip the intro. “I reviewed 27 products. These are the best, period.”
- 🔘 Bigger, clearer, higher-contrast CTAs like “Check price at [brand]”. People have 50 tabs open, so make the next step obvious
- 🏷️ Discount codes, ideally using your brand name (e.g., SleepWisdom10 for Emma Mattress), plus an expiry note with today’s date via a Today’s Date WordPress plugin shortcode for urgency, which gave him a 10–15% conversion uplift
- ⭐ Social proof near the CTA, such as customer counts
🤖 ChatGPT Traffic and Staying Optimistic
Niels doesn’t think ChatGPT traffic is significant yet. He has even seen it send less traffic in recent months. For it to replace Google, it would have to compound every single month. 📊
Google has 20 years of crawling data to judge quality, while ChatGPT is just starting, so old spam tactics like repeating “we’re the best” on 50 pages can still fool it. 🕸️
He’s curious about ChatGPT ads and expects affiliate consolidation, where the biggest players get the best deals. 🔮
His mindset: “The fact that we worry about it already means we’re way ahead of the curve.” The rest of the world moves slowly. Uncertain doesn’t mean bad. Keep learning. 🌱
For a different view on AI search, read Liam Quirk on the new rules of ChatGPT SEO. 🔗
🧘 Gut Feeling, Frequencies and Burning the Paper
His regret: ignoring his gut with a co-founder and an investor he didn’t even like. It led to a “nasty divorce,” negotiating payouts and wasted time. Many people start with a co-founder who has the same skills, or because they’re afraid to start alone. “If the energy is good, the rest will follow.” ⚡
He believes in frequencies: love, joy and gratitude are high, while fear, shame and anger are low. If you can’t be alone with yourself, your cup isn’t full. Stress puts your body in fight or flight, and you make bad decisions. 🧠
His daily practices:
- ☀️ Sunlight, meditation and writing down what you’re grateful for every morning
- 📝 Write anger down: is it real, or a projection of something you don’t accept in yourself?
- 🔥 Write down shameful memories, feel them until they’re gone, and ceremoniously burn the paper
Best advice: at 12, being bullied, he read The Secret and learned to expect people to be nice. “What you give is what you get.” 😊
💸 Money as Freedom
Ask people their FIRE number and many say figures they couldn’t even spend. A goal that far away creates a scarcity mindset. 💭
Instead, work out your real monthly costs (rent, groceries, helping parents), then the amount that would cover them at about 10% a year. That number is often 10 times lower. “Money is freedom.” 🗝️
Other answers:
- 👴 One person to bring back: his grandpa, so his future kids could meet him
- 🎓 Long-term dream: a conference for young people in Chiang Mai showing entrepreneurship as a career path
- 💪 Hero: Arnold Schwarzenegger, for reinventing himself from bodybuilder to actor to governor
Find Niels on LinkedIn, at nielszee.com (a newsletter on Google Ads for affiliates), and at AffRamp. For more on agency partnerships, read Alexander Ljubinkovic on building an SEO agency. 🔗
📝 Key Takeaways From the Niels Zee Interview
- 📊 Track earnings per visitor, then bid below it
- 🎯 SEO affiliates already have 80% of what Google Ads needs
- ✂️ Ad landing pages: skip the intro and lead with the top products
- 🏷️ Branded discount codes, date-stamped urgency and social proof lift conversions
- 🧠 Trust your gut on co-founders and investors
- 🗝️ Calculate a realistic FIRE number, because money is freedom
❓ FAQs About Niels Zee
Who is Niels Zee?
Niels Zee is an affiliate marketer based in Chiang Mai who moved his portfolio from SEO to Google Ads after the helpful content update and co-runs AffRamp with Matt Diggity’s agency.
How much did Niels Zee make with Google Ads?
His best month was about $112,000 net revenue, and around $92,000 profit after roughly $20,000 in salaries.
How do you make an affiliate landing page convert for Google Ads?
Skip the intro, show 3–4 products above the fold, use bigger and clearer CTAs, add branded discount codes with a dated expiry, and put social proof near the CTA.
Does Niels Zee think ChatGPT will replace Google?
He’s not sure. ChatGPT sends little traffic so far, and Google has 20 years of data to judge quality.
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- How Kevin Meng Built a 7-Figure Business With SEO and Copywriting? 🤑
- How Charles Floate Making 7 Figures With Affiliate Marketing (Parasite SEO Explained)
Got an SEO affiliate site that lost traffic? Share this with someone who still has pages that could convert. 💬
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Jitendra Vaswani is a well-known expert in SEO and AI-driven digital marketing. He has spoken at international events and founded Digiexe, a digital marketing agency, and AffiliateBooster, WordPress plugin designed specifically for affiliate marketers. With over 10 years of experience, Jitendra has helped many businesses succeed online. His bestselling book, Inside A Hustler’s Brain: In Pursuit of Financial Freedom, with over 20,000 copies sold globally, underscores his influence and commitment to empowering digital marketers.