Over the past month I have created a couple of websites focusing on Amazon Associates as the income generator rather than Google Adsense which I’ve used on my sites so far, and I though I would give you an update on my learnings so far.

Google AdSense

I’ve been using Google AdSense as my main source of revenue since I started buiding niche sites in May 2011 and as you can see from my Income Reports I’ve been doing okay and averaging around £200 ($306) a month with a total income of £1642.32 ($2,559.98) for 2011. Compared to some other internet marketers this isn’t a huge sum but it is certainly something and I think it shows that I can make money from AdSense and can create sites that will get people clicking.

The sites I create often provide a user with information, usually for a service, and visitors will be tempted to find out more from the adverts on my sites. An example could be if I set up a site about ‘dog grooming’, I would explain what it is, how much it costs, etc and then AdSense adverts would also be on the site hopefully featuring dog grooming services near the visitors location. They will click on these links to find out more and I don’t really need to sell the link to that person. They found out enough information from my site and then instead of going back to Google and searching for local dog groomers they will click on the handy links on my site.

What I have noticed is that for an AdSense monetised site to be successful you need to have good traffic as it really is a numbers game. You cannot control what the visitors do once they are on your site and ultimately your revenue depends on the AdSense advertisers for a variety of reasons:

• Cost Per Click (CPC) – Although you will have targeted keywords for your site with a certain average cost-per-click, advertisers budgets do vary and if high payers drop out you will notice this and lower CPC ads will appear on your site. You may still get the same amount of clicks but you will be earning less.
• Click Through Rate (CTR) – You will have created a site with the aim of giving people enough information for them to want to find out more by clicking AdSense adverts on your site. If the adverts are poorly created by the advertisers or don’t give the visitors a call to action  or motivate them then they may not click them. In the worst case there could be no one advertising dog related products and you get zero clicks.

At the end of the day you have virtually no control over the adverts appearing on your site (emphasis on virtually) as this lies with Google and their advertisers and so I would say that you will need to play the percentages to guarantee an income from Google AdSense. Even if you do have a low CPC and low CTR, a higher volume of visitors will mean a higher income. Of course if you choose the right keywords, have a high CPC and nail your CTR then more visitors will mean great income for you.

Amazon Associates

With Amazon Associates I have had to change my strategy for creating websites as the focus is completely different for promoting physical products. When you create an Amazon affiliate site you need to realise that the visitor is probably in a buying mood and if you can get them onto your site then you will be on your way to making a sale.

With an Amazon Associate site you do not get revenue for people simply clicking links. If you get people to the Amazon site via your site then a cookie will be placed on the visitors browser for 24 hours, and if they buy anything from Amazon in that time, then you will get a basic 5% commission of the cost of that product with the commission percentage rising depending on the amount of products sold e.g if you sell 21 items in a month your commission rate goes up to 5.5%.

When I create this type of site I am not really creating a ‘niche site’ with highly researched information but more usually writing product reviews, product comparisons, etc and inserting links all pointing towards the specific product page on Amazon using a personalised affiliate link. I put these links in text like ‘find out more about this product’ leading the visitor to Amazon and hopefully a sale.

With Amazon you have more control over CPC and CTR, although those are not strictly terms applicable with it, and perhaps we should add ‘coversion rate’ into the mix.

• CPC – There is no cost per click with Amazon, but if the site visitor is in a buying mood and I am promoting a high-price item of £100 then my CPC could be 5% of that meaning £5 commission. This is certainly higher than most clicks on AdSense, but obviously it will involve 2 clicks from the user, one from my site to Amazon, and then one to ‘buy’.
• CTR/Conversion Rate- I have found that if I get a visitor to click through to Amazon then my sales conversion on my Affiliate links are at least 10%, meaning 1 in 10 people I send to Amazon will buy something which is pretty good I think and certainly much better than the CTR with AdSense.

My new amazon site has had 112 visits in 3 weeks, and from that I have had 65 affiliate link clicks through to Amazon and have made 9 sales of products totalling £10.66 commission. I’ve not had a huge amount of visitors but I am converting well and the income is much higher than if I had an AdSense site with only 112 visits.

The downside to all this is that SEO is harder for these tyes of sites than a niche Adsense site as you are producing less unique content and there is more competition so you have do work harder to differentiate your site from large shopping sites who are also selling these products. Focus on one type of item for your site and then don’t just stick to reviews, but also include  things like Top 10 lists, which will mean at least 10 affiliate links, and product comparisons e.g Xbox versus PS3 where you can create more content for your site, more keywords, more backlinks, etc which is all good for SEO. Don’t be content with just copying product reviews from Amazon as this will rank you nowhere and don’t waste money on plugins that will promise a fully-populated affiliate site as they will do nothing unless you have original content.

Conclusion – which is best?

I believe there is no right or wrong choice between Google AdSense and Amazon Associates as it all depends on the type of site you are creating. Are you providing information and a service or are you promoting a physical product?

• Information/Service – Monetise your site using AdSense and as long as you can get enough visitors and have done your research you will earn money. With AdSense you need visitors but do not need to sell to the visitor and so you can put an advert on any page and you will probably get some clicks. More visitors means more revenue though and a poorly researched niche will mean only earning pennies.
• Physical Product – If you are creating a site promoting a physical product then you will need to rank highly in the SERPS, but you can earn more per visitor depending on the products you are promoting and you will need fewer visitors to make a sale as they are already in the buying mood.

I would also add that keyword research for an affiliate site is easier than for a niche site as you can select a product you want to sell e.g ‘hairdryers’, put it into Google Keywords Tool, and then find out related searches and try and get a domain from that, where as for niche sites you have to come up with the initial topic first which is one of the hardest parts.

The best thing you can do is utilise both AdSense and Amazon and create a variety of different sites so you have a diverse income stream. This revenue is not cast in stone and many people have been affected by only focusing on one method. AdSense users have had their accounts blocked (for a variety of reasons) and US users have had their Amazon Associate accounts blocked due to state tax laws, and in both in both cases income dropped to zero. If you can spread yourself out you may still get hit but these actions, but you can lessen the blow by having other income streams.

In this article I will show you one simple settings change you can make on your AdSense account which could increase your AdSense earnings on your niche sites.

When conducting research for my niche sites I will look for keywords with a certain number of searches and a reasonably good cost-per-click value for the AdSense ads I will be placing on the site (I use the free Google Keyword Tool for this) and once I’ve found what I like I will built a site around those keywords.

How AdSense is meant to work for niche sites

These are niche and very specific sites so the people who visit my sites are not randomly surfing but actually searching for information on the niche I’m covering and as such I’m hoping that once they’re on my site they may decide to click on an AdSense advert which will be relevant to the niche and earn me some money.

That’s the way it’s supposed to work, and that’s what I love about AdSense. If I’m searching for ‘cheap laptops’ then you can be sure that AdSense will display adverts for laptops, but this isn’t always the case as AdSense is a little smarter than that and has knowledge of all the other sites you have been visiting so if you visit my niche site on ‘cheap laptops’ you may actually be served with adverts that are completely irrelevant. An example is that when I use my computer after my fiance has then I will find my searches are littered with AdSense adverts for ‘shoes’ instead of those for ‘cheap laptops’ because Google uses Interest-Based advertising as well as Contextual advertising to determine what adverts to show me.

Why I turned off Interest-based Ads

To me it makes perfect sense to turn off interest-based advertising and only use contextual advertising on my niche sites as the whole method of choosing keywords based on visitor numbers and Cost-per-Click (CPC) and then creating a relevant website relies on that website serving ads related to that niche and the keywords I chose. It makes sense doesn’t it?

By looking at my Performance Reports>Targeting Types I can see that one of my sites does earn some money from interest-based ads but the majority of my sites earn nothing from interest-based and all their money from contextual, but the fact is that Google is still placing the interest-based ads on my site which means I am losing out on potential clicks to contextual ads which are not being shown.

The one benefit of interest-based ads to note is that the average CPC is often slightly higher than that of contextual ads but the CTR is half of what it is for contextual ads, so they are getting far less clicks which means the higher CPC counts for nothing.

You may want to check your own reports before disabling interest-based ads, and please realise that this setting will come into effect for your whole AdSense account and therefore all the ads no matter what sites they are on.

To opt out of interest-based ads do the following:

1. Sign in to your AdSense account.
2. Visit the Allow & block ads tab.
3. In the sidebar, choose Advanced settings.
4. Click the checkbox next to the Interest-Based Ads Preference so that it reads “Ads based on user interest categories are not allowed to show.”

By doing this and opting out you will decrease the number of ads competing to appear on your website and so if you’ve picked a niche with very few advertisers then you may decrease your potential earnings and few ads will be shown. This is a possibility but if you’ve done your research correctly then you should be fine.

Monitoring the changes

I think it’s important to keep an eye on your earnings along with clicks and pageviews to ensure that your sites are not effected by this change, but it’s easy enough to opt back in if you are adversely effected by only showing contextual ads. I only made this change yesterday but will let this run for at least the rest of the month to see what effect it has but I have a firm believe that it can only be beneficial and should increase my earnings and the number of clicks.

Could this one change earn you more money?

Welcome to my November 2011 income report!

I’m not a super blogger yet and definitely not making a living from my niche sites but I am doing my best to make money in my spare time, after doing a full day’s work, and hoping that each month’s income brings me closer to being able to earn a decent income online. I know some people will look at these reports and think that my earnings are peanuts but I know others who appreciate seeing these reports as they show what an average Joe is earning and that’s it’s not all about getting rich quick.

What happened in November

After a poor October I stepped up a gear putting more effort into my current niche sites and made some big steps towards my aim to have 10 sites up and running by New Year. In fact I can reveal that I have 9 sites now which is pretty cool and I’m already seeing the benefits of having more sites. As I mentioned in my last post a couple of these might be duds and a couple have very little content at the moment, but that’s to be expected, but more sites means more chances at being a success.

A couple of these sites are affiliate sites, providing reviews and affiliate links to products available on Amazon, and this is an effort to diversify my income away from solely Google AdSense. This is an important lesson for everyone. Just as you shouldn’t rely on just one site for your income, you shouldn’t rely on just one income stream, as you can leave yourself vulnerable. What is Google went bust? Okay that’s unlikely but what if your AdSense account was deactivated? It sometimes doesn’t take much to fall foul of Google’s rules, so look at other ways to monetise your sites.

I think that getting these affiliate sites to rank and start earning will be a lot harder than with traditional niche sites, but it’s another experiment and I’m enjoying learning new things. I will also be using social media to promote these sites so there will be less reliance on search engines and more reliance on other means of promotion including guest posts.

The Numbers

In previous reports I’ve given a site by site breakdown detailing how much each of my sites have earned but now that I’m increasing the number of sites it’s not really feasible to keep doing this. Another factor is that I don’t really want to focus on individual sites anymore but rather on what the grand total income is and how far away I am from my goal of making a decent living online.

Last month was my lowest full earning month earning £87.26 (US$139.06) and saw a definite drop from my peak earning months, but I’m happy to say I’ve bumped my earnings back up thanks to improvements to a couple of my sites which has resulted in a better CTR (Click Through Rate) as well as  a new site that started earning immediately.

November 2011 Income = £149.29 (US$234.25)

It’s definitely a move back in the right direction and I’m hoping that in a few months I’ll be back to what I was earning in the summer months.

Plans for December

I’m going to be mainly concentrating on my affiliate sites this month as well as keeping my other sites ticking along. I suppose that’s pretty obvious stuff, but I’m also planning to put together a spreadsheet of my sites so I can keep better track of them and how they are performing. At the moment I just have it all in my head which was fine when I had one or two sites but now I’m getting more I really should keep a record of earnings, links, rankings, etc taking a little bit of the guesswork out of my work. Do any of you use spreadsheets like this?

Plans for the future

Yesterday in the UK we had union strikes about pensions, changes to working conditions, and the increase in the age of statutory retirement, which coupled along with inflation, low wages, etc means that the future isn’t very bright for a lot of us. It’s my 31st birthday on Saturday and at the current rate I will probably have another 40 years of working before I can retire and get a state pension which will probably be very little indeed. I’ve known for a while that I will need to make my own plans for the future, and save for a very rainy day, and that is why I’m even more determined to do my best to earn any extra income I can and at the moment that is from these niche sites and the endless possibility they provide. I can dream can’t I?

When I started creating niche sites in May of this year, barely 6 months ago, I had no strategy and when I had success with my very first site which earned me £384.83 ($602) in one month I thought I was onto a winner. If I created more sites like that then I would be rich! Alas that wasn’t to be the case and the site took a big rankings drop after a Google update, and I realised that I was going to have to put a lot more work in if I was to succeed.

The need to diversify

I failed because I depended on one site and one method of income generation, and all the reading I have since made have told me the need to diversify to ensure that I’m less effected my any bumps and slip-ups that come along the way. Pro bloggers like Spencer Haws freely admit to having hundreds of sites, and building up to 30 new sites a month, which is only possible by hiring VA’s (Virtual Assistants), so I’m not going to be making that many sites but I’m still aiming to have at least 10 sites up and running by the New Year.

Why do some sites fail?

The fact is that not all of these sites will be successes, some will hopefully do well, some will do okay, and some will earn absolutely no money at all. There are plenty of external factors that effect the success of a site so that in some cases no matter how much effort you put your site will sometimes be a failure. Some of these include:

• Poor Keyword – If you didn’t research properly then you could be doomed for failure from the start building a site that no one has any interest in.
• Low Advertiser Bids – If you rely on AdSense then your site will only earn money if advertisers are paying and bidding on the keyword you are promoting. If a good paying advertisers drops out of the AdWords scheme then you could see your profits drop.
• Google Ranking – The truth is that initially you will rely on Google for 99% of your traffic. If Google doesn’t like your site then you are doomed.
• Competition – You may aim for #1 but that isn’t always a possibility. If you are in a competitive niche then ranking on the 5th page of Google isn’t going to get you many visitors.

Most of these come down to the initial keyword research you put into your chosen niche and so I find this the hardest part to do and the success of your site will depend on this. Don’t be too afraid of making mistakes though as this is still more of an art than a science.

Knowing when to quit

I got some good advice from Thomas Sinfield in a comment on my post 1 site or 10 sites? Decisions to be made:

What I tend to do is do the research on a heap of niches, pick a couple and work on them:

1. if I get average results I leave them to settle and focus on new sites
2. if they produce good results I keep working on them while starting new sites
3. if they produce great results I make them a focus and limit my time on new sites.

Not all sites are going to be big hits, even if they seem to all have similar research info. By building many small sites, it allows you to test 10 niches and see which ones naturally take off.

You can then either sell off the smaller sites, or keep them as littler earners.

It’s good advice and this is where knowing when to quit comes in. Once you’ve got some sites set up then it’s usually just a case of waiting to see how how they fare in terms of traffic and AdSense earnings. Your site may starting earning in weeks or it could take months to get off the ground and get indexed, but sometimes a site will do nothing and you should realise that it’s not worth putting any further effort into it and just leave it.

I have a couple of sites like this and they are usually a case of where I’ve rushed in and chosen the wrong niche. I will put those down to experience and not add anything more to them. The sites are still there though and who knows, I may get the odd click from the sites. A typical UK domain only costs £3 a year so it’s a small gamble, and worth the risk as you could stumble upon a great niche. By having many sites you can limit your exposure to this as hopefully the more sites you have the more chance you have of creating profitable ones. Obviously you will also create more duds, but knowing when to quit them will save you time and effort, and allow you to focus on your profitable sites.

Creating new sites quickly

Once you’ve done your keyword research it’s pretty easy to buy a domain, point it to your server, and install wordpress, but what then? Obviously you need content and initially I will start with one one article on the front page, along with a contact page, about page, and a privacy policy page. I think one article is enough to start getting visitors and get indexed. When you have time then you can add more content but it’s not worth spending too much time on other articles on a site that might not have any potential. Obviously there are arguments for having more content at launch but this is the way I do it, adding more content if I think the site is going somewhere.

I’ve written about awesome plugins for niche sites but I haven’t spoken about themes/templates for your site and the fact this there are thousands of themes out there and sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. I’ve installed themes before and spent hours editing the CSS and html only to have no visitors to appreciate the work that’s gone into it!

What I needed was a theme I could use for all my sites that was simple to install, simple to customise, and AdSense ready and I recently came across a premium WordPress theme called CTR Theme. I don’t normally pay for themes but this promised so much that I took the plunge and for $67 (£42+VAT in the UK) I bought it and have been very happy indeed.

The CTR Theme features it’s own admin panel where you can change designs (4 different styles included), change colour schemes, add all your AdSense codes, etc and it literally takes 5 minutes to get this sorted and have your niche site online. Also as it has an unlimited site licence you can use it on ALL your sites. Oh and changing the colour scheme on the admin also changes the colour of the AdSense ads so no need to change the ads on your AdSense account!

One of the smartest features of the theme is that it features ad randomisation, meaning every time a visitor comes to your site the AdSense adverts change location which can help reduce “ad blindness” and improve your click-through rate (CTR).

I think it’s best to mention that the links to the CTR Theme are affiliate links but this isn’t me trying to push the product as it’s genuinely something I use on my sites and recommend. It also comes with a 60 day money back guarantee so if you’re not happy then you can get your money back.

Here’s a video that runs through the features of the theme and shows how easy it is to install it on your sites:

Quicker setup = More sites

If it takes less time to make a site then it means you can make more and as discussed earlier I believe this is the best solution to making money and reducing your risk to fluctuations. I will continue to make niche sites in this way and if they show signs of potential then it’s time to develop them and try and make more money!

I’ll start off with saying that I haven’t been very productive during October and it’s been my poorest month so far on my niche website journey. This was partly due the fact that Site P felt the full brunt of last month’s Google -60 Penalty and the site is basically dead in the water now. I put in a reconsideration request but that was turned down, and then to make matters worse Google have banned AdSense on that site so it is making no money now.

What did I do wrong?

The site I created wasn’t scraped or copied and did provide a lot of useful content, but as my first ever niche site I now know I went about making it the wrong way. My main error was focusing on one target keyword and that was my downfall. I optimised my content for this one term, most of my backlinks used this main term, and basically Google didn’t like it. It worked fine in the short term but then they got me and the site is worthless with virtually zero chance of getting it anywhere useful in the rankings.

I have not given up totally on the niche though and have decided to create a new site on the same topic but go about it the right way. I’ve chosen a new domain as I didn’t want to risk any negative backlinks to the site, and I’ve started to write the content from scratch. I did an amazing amount of research into the topic so it seems a waste to let it go completely especially as I know its potential but annoyingly someone else has also spotted this niche and created a similar site with similar content. It’s not a clone but a lot of the articles,wording, and structure is very similar to my site so I’m a little peeved but alas it’s all fair game and I can’t really say anything.

The Numbers

I added Site P2 and Site E to the table last month but I haven’t done much with them and already have the feeling that they perhaps aren’t the best niches to be in and that I was maybe a bit hasty in getting the domains without doing as much research as I could. I’ll still do some work on them though and see what happens.

The Positives

From the above table you can see that all my other sites made increases, and I’m especially happy with Site F as last months figure included a £16.85 click which artificially boosted the figures. If I get another good month like this then I will see about optimising the site and seeing if there is further room for improvement.

Site C is in the same boat too, and took a big jump in profits. Not massive but enough to show that there is scope for improving that site too and that it’s worth sticking to.

Affiliate Income – an alternative to AdSense?

I did have a surprise last week when I looked at an old Clickbank account I had and found I’d earned over $30 from a long forgotten site I made at the beginning of the year which shows there is money to be made from affiliate sites and perhaps I should investigate further into affiliate schemes which would help diversify my income streams.

I have started work on a new site though that will be based around affiliate products and I will primarily be using the Amazon Affiliates scheme for this as opposed to Clickbank.  I’m quite looking forward to this as I will be learning more and be approaching things in a different way as I will be relying on my content to sell the products rather than adverts.

Next Month?

As Site P will be registering a big fat ZERO in earnings in then I fully expect November to be my worst month of earnings and hopefully that should signal rock bottom with the only way up from there and to be honest that’s quite a good thing as I am able to start from scratch. Fingers crossed that’s the case

I am still in a quandry as to whether I should focus on one large authority niche site or 10 smaller niche sites, and my viewpoint seems to change everyday. There are pros and cons to both and as I’m less than 6 months into my niche site adventure I have plenty of experimenting left to do.

The Pros & Cons

With a single authority site I can focus my efforts into one subject including articles, SEO, promotion, etc and this should mean larger traffic and more revenue, but, and there always is a but, if the site is a failure then I have put all my eggs in one basket and I have zero income from 100% effort. But the possibility of large profits are there if I succeed.

10 smaller sites, which I’ve mentioned as my aim before, means diversifaction, with sites spread over a wide variety of niches. These sites will have less content, take less time to manage, but still include the same amount of effort into SEO. The benefit is that whilst each site will earn a smaller amount of revenue, if some are failures, or have a rankings drop, then I still have some revenue and still have the successful sites to focus on. Less content and smaller niches mean that I will have less traffic and less keywords to link back to though. Profits will be smaller but the more sites I hav, the more I could earn.

Is it all about the money?

Do I want to create sites just to earn money, with content written solely for the aim of getting clicks, or do I want to write websites that people will actually find useful?

If I’m being true to myself then money is secondary to creating useful sites and I think I’ve got some important decisions to be made. I hate crappy websites, with poor navigation, and loaded with adverts so why am I creating them? A lot of blogs say this is the way to go, but I’ve seen a lot of great looking and useful niche sites that are making money without making massive compromises. Security Guard Training HQ by Pat Flynn from the Smart Passive Income blog is a great example of how to create a successful niche site and if you read his blog you will get a lot of useful information about how he created the Security Guard Training site. The site looks professional and I would trust virtually everything I read on it. This is how all my sites should be.

The Solution?

The best compromise is trying to make ALL your sites authority sites, with great design, and useful content. This will mean going back to basics for me and going through all my niche sites and deciding which ones warrant the most attention and perhaps starting from scratch. Google will be providing the majority of the search engine traffic so it’s wise to read into the Google Webmaster Guidelines which are split into Design and Content guidelines, Technical guidelines, and Quality guidelines. If you can follow all these rules then you should be on the way to having a site that not only your readers love, but that Google also loves, and more content, means more keywords being indexed, and means the chance for more visitors and more revenue. If there is any justice (and you’ve picked the right niche) then a useful site will succeed.

Let’s start from the beginning

So it’s back to the start for me, and let’s see if we can get back to the kind of earnings I was making before I got distracted and lost my way. To answer the question in the title of the blog, I will have 10 sites, but I will treat them all as if they were the only site I had.

Google AdSense is the main source of revenue on my niche sites and when you’re looking at CTR (Click Through Rates), number of clicks, page views, CPC (Cost per Click), etc it’s pretty easy to become obsessed with the statistics and what your final earnings for the month will be. If you’ve read my monthly income reports then you will know I am obsessed and you will also know that I’ve seen a massive drop in my AdSense earnings over the past month.

Look to the positives

The fact is that I do not depend on my niche site earnings, I already have a 9-5 job, and any extra money is a bonus, so I should be happy with any revenue that comes from these sites. In August I earnt £398.93 and the majority of that went into my savings, but this month I am well behind and will be happy to get to £100. One Hundred Pounds. Only. £100 isn’t actually too bad when you sit back and think about it, and I guess my views have been tainted slightly by my early success. If someone came and gave you £100 each month you’d be pretty happy I bet, or if someone bought you a sandwich and crisps for your lunch every day you’d be chuffed, so I really should start looking on the positives.

This is only the beginning

I’m only 5 months into this ‘project’ and can hardly say that I’ve put all my effort into it or that I spend every spare minute writing articles or creating backlinks, but it is working, I’m doing something right, and I’m earning money. The amount of money I can earn depends on several things:

• The amount of sites I have – Currently I’ve got 3 sites (not including this one) that are earning me money, with another couple hopefully ready to earn some money shortly. My aim is to have 10 sites up by the New Year and more sites, means more potential revenue. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket as I’m sure some of these sites won’t be amazing successes.
• How they are created – I have managed to streamline how long it takes me to create a site, such as knowing which plugins to use (see 11 Awesome WordPress Plugins For Your Niche Sites), and where best to place AdSense adverts, so I can get a website online much quicker than in the beginning.
• How good the content is -I feel that I am now better equipped at writing articles and content and taking into consideration not only the reader but also how search engines view pages and what they are looking out for.
• How good a niche is – No niche is the same as another and you can go for BIG ones where the potential is huge but will require more work or you can go for smaller ones which are slow burners and earn you a small amount each month but require less work but are more dependable. I am opting for the latter.

These are just a few factors but it gives me the feeling that I can only improve with my sites and should be able to maintain my earnings at the very least, and should probably be able to increase my revenue due to the fact that more sites=more potential. There will be plenty of ups and downs so if you’re having a bad month don’t dwell on it too much as there are sure to be plenty more good months just around the corner if you put the work in.

A good start but then…

At the start of the month I thought I was heading for a bumper niche site payday with my main site bringing in almost £100 in the first 3 5 days. ‘Woo Hoo’ I thought but then something bad happened and I was punished by Google with the site getting a ‘minus 60 penalty’. I wasn’t sure what had happened but after doing some research it looks like my backlinking and site structure had come under scrutiny from Google and I had contravened their website guidelines policy. At the end of the day it’s pretty hard to pinpoint it to one specific thing but I believe it was because I built up too many backlinks too quickly, used the same keyword for most of my links, and also commented on some poor quality blogs.

The majority of my backlinks came from commenting on blogs, some of which were just a bit spammy, I’ll admit to that, so I know that was wrong but it’s interesting how Google works this out. If I were a competitor then I could spend some time spamming comments with my competitors details and hopefully see if Google would apply a penalty to them.

Tricky times but it’s all a learning curve and has influenced my link-building policy for the future. I am only commenting on blogs that are relevant to the niche I’m in, and yet again only useful comments that add some quality. The other thing is not to focus too much on keywords for backlinks and instead think about how a novice would write. They wouldn’t jam in keywords and instead it would all be a lot looser and more organic. Lessons learnt then and as usual I’m taking this a month at a time.

So now onto the numbers:

As you can see my overall income has taken quite a knock but that was always the risk with having one major earner so I’m not going to focus on that and instead focus on the positives of getting my other nice sites rolling.

Site F has seen a big jump in earnings which was partially helped by a £16.85 click late in the month (someone clearly isn’t using AdWords that effieciently) but even without that it was a good rise and I’m very happy with that.

Site C also saw a few clicks and started bringing in revenue and the aim as always is to increase this amount much like I have done with Site F. This means I now have 3 niche sites earning me money and we’re on the way to spreading the revenue and leaving me at less risk of suffering the same fate as this month.

I have submitted Site P for a reconsideration request from Google but I have read stories of it taking years to get back up the rankings so I fully expect my earnings to drop next month too.

Aims for the future

So I’ve got three sites earning revenue and as you can see from the above table I’m creating Site P2 and Site E, which if you’re good at maths, will bring me up to five sites  (excluding my blog). The route I will be going down is to create many sites each earning a small percentage of my overall revenue, and ideally I would like to have ten sites up and running and earning money by the New Year.

The thing to remember is that all this revenue is extra to my usual 9-5 job and for the moment if I make no money or suffer a drop in my AdSense income then I am not greatly effected (apart from my pride) but if I can succeed and keep building more sites then this could be something that would require more of my time in exchange for the income it brings.

In a couple of days I will be publishing my September Income Report and you will be able to see how I was effected by the rankings drop for my main niche site. It looks like it may take a very long time, and lots of effort to correct the problems with the site, and time is something I have had very little of recently. If you Google ‘minus 60 penalty’ then you will understand what has happened to the site, but life is about learning and so I’ve not been too down about it and know what to do and what not to do in the future.

July's income spread

10 Sites by 2012?
So for the moment the focus is on extending the number of sites I have and I think that this may be the best way to increase my monthly income. I touched on the point before that I had all of my eggs in one basket and that I needed to spread my dependence over more sites. The fact is that any site can take a hit from Google in their rankings for a variety of reasons, so don’t leave yourself vulnerable. I currently have 3 niche sites earning money and by the end of the year I would like to have 10 sites up and running with each contributing to my AdSense earnings.

More domains

I bought a new domain this month but have yet to add any content to it so at the moment it’s just sitting their waiting for me to do something with it. I personally don’t think it’s amazingly hard to find new niche site topics but you have to ask yourself whether you can add anything new to that area and whether you have the time to get the site to rank. There are plenty of tools out there for keyword research and stats, and if you think there is an opening then just buy the domain. That’s the simple part and only costs a few quid. The hardest part is writing new quality content, but from then on it’s just a case of waiting for the visitors to start coming and clicking.

I only started working with ‘niche sites’ in mid-May so this is only my 4th income report (see May, June, July) so it’s still early days and there is still a lot of experimenting to do to see what success I can make from this. What has dawned on me is that I’ve been very lucky with my first niche site I made and the money it has brought in (ranking #1 in Google for it’s keyphrase), and conversely with other sites I’m working on it shows that it’s not as easy replicating that success.

The Numbers

Almost £400 income for August! It didn’t look like that was going to happen based on figures for the first half of  the month and I posted ‘Niche Site Update‘ on 14th August explaining just as much. Look at the graph below and you will see what I mean:

I got back to creating some new backlinks, installed a couple of new plugins and that was it really. Were these contributing factors or just a fluke? I’m not too sure but something happened and I’m happy it did because I’m able to post another great income report here. The plugins I installed were:

• Strictly Auto Tags - This automatically adds relevant tags to your post when you publish it.
• SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2 - This can add incoming search terms to your sidebar or specific pages which helps with SEO and longtail keywords.
  

Another Good Month

The £398.93 ($645.29) earned this month has made me very happy but I’m going to be incredibly busy with my actual job this month so it will be a real test of the sites as to whether I can keep that up and post an increase for the September Income Report. The way I look at it is that I’ve earnt over £1000 from my sites in less than 4 months and if I didn’t earn anymore then it was great fun whilst it lasted.

The Future

Site ‘P’ is doing as good as ever and I’m sure there is scope for improvement, but I’m happy site ‘F’ has shown a small improvement and broken the £10 barrier. It can do better but it is in a competitive niche and I will have to do something special to stick out but it has already paid for its domain purchase so everything else onwards is profit. If I can make 10 sites like it then that’s another £100 extra income a month, and I have heard of some people having hundreds of smaller sites each earning a small percentage of a big profit. I’ve added site ‘C’ to my ‘portfolio’ now and the aim for this month is to get some income from it even if that’s just pennies. It will be a start and give me something to improve on.

A Word of Warning

I had a bit of a frightful moment last weekend when I got an email regarding site ‘P’ and thought I may have to take it offline for trademark infringement which not only got me crapping my pants but also wondering what I would do without my main income stream. The email was fairly vague but was from an official person involved with the subject of my niche and said they had a few points to discuss.

Old readers of this blog will know that I was threatened with legal action in 2009 for an anonymous comment on this blog and was on the end of some heavy-handed emails which have left me a little cautious and pessimistic about the Internet and the law. I replied to the email and I’m happy to say all I had to do was remove a logo and the situation was resolved. The person even gave me some advice on the site and pointed me towards someone within the company who could give me more information. Bonus!

The lesson learnt is not to think the worse, but to also be careful of copyright and trademark infringement when creating sites. If you get big then someone will come knocking. Some will be nice like the people I dealt with this week but others with dish out legal threats and get you to close your site down. I know @payt had some letters last week and had to remove his main earner so be careful out there.

How did you do this month?

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