I started dabbling with niche sites in May 2011 and so it seems fitting that I write an update for the year to say how things have gone and most importantly how much I’ve earned in that time, and also how much I’ve spent.

It’s also worth noting that this will be my last income report for a while as I’m going to take a bit of a break from niche sites and won’t be focussing too much on the money made from them. Obviously it’s great to get revenue from the sites but with the constant changes to Google and the web, I really don’t know how my sites are going to fare in the future and I’ve got too much ‘real life’ things to concentrate on. Did I mention I’m selling a house, buying a house, and getting married in the next 3 months?

In the beginning

So I started my first ‘niche site’ in May 2011 and didn’t really know what I was up to but it’s nice to know that the first site has been my biggest earner and earns me a couple of hundred pounds each month. I think that if that site hadn’t been a success then I probably would’ve given up a long time ago but as soon as it started earning a few £s then I was hooked and had to build more and more sites.

I’ve never really been involved with SEO previously, and so I will admit that I did undertake some dodgy linkbuilding activities at first as that was what I saw everyone else doing, and it seemed to work. That’s how Google worked, more links=better ranking. And then a few months down the line my site got penalised by Google and I had to rethink my strategy. I cleaned up, put more focus onto the content, and haven’t had to rely on links. If you get a good EMD (Exact Match Domain) and write good quality content then you should rank well. That’s the way it should work, but it seems that Google is even changing that now, so even completely organic sites are getting punished and one can’t help but think there is some ulterior motive from Google to make more money from paid advertisers. Of course there is as they’re a business like any other, so if you’re in niche sites then be prepared to constantly change your strategy to keep earning.

How I’ve made my sites

I make my sites very cheaply with minimal outgoings. I see some people spending hundreds on outsourcing to put a site together but I’ve done most the work myself. I’ve only used free themes, written most content myself, and manually created links. That’s about it really. The only essential costs have been my hosting which I’ve had for years and the domains. Here’s how is usually plays out when I make an AdSense site:

Finding a niche

1. Brainstorm for an idea. It really is that vague, but I have a think about what people are looking for, and from this I will have a keyword.
2. Go onto Google Keywords Tool. From here I can get numbers for searches per month as well as other suggested keywords linked to my initial keyword and also the average Cost Per Click (CPC). I ideally want a search term above 1000 local searches and with a CPC of at least £0.50.
3. Next is checking for available exact match domains (EMD). I only buy .co.uk or org.uk as I know the market for the UK and they are also cheaper than .coms and more likely to be unregistered.
4. If I find a domain I will then have a look at other sites ranking for that search term. If I think I can break onto the 1st page of Google then I will buy the domain.

Setting up the site

1. I only use WordPress so I get that installed along with the usual set of plugins. XML Sitemaps, Google Analytics, Yoast SEO, etc.
2. Next is the content. I will always set up ‘about’ and ‘contact’ and will also put one page of original content on there. I will either write that myself or sometimes get an article from iWriter.com for only a few dollars.
3. Then I add a free theme and customise it so it has some individuality.
4. Finally I will add AdSense onto the site, usually using the Quick AdSense plugin.

Getting the site to rank

1. The most important thing for this to happen is content and a page of content will start giving you indicators of how the site will rank. Using Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics will show how the site is doing. This will also give you indicators of what future content to produce.
2. It always helps to have a few links back to the site, so I will set up twitter, and use a plugin like Tweet Old Posts to get them automatically on the twitter account. I may also try and answer a few questions on Yahoo Answers. But generally I don’t worry too much about links until I think the site has started ranking and I know it has potential. Link building is the poorest part of my skillset but luckily it looks like Google is reducing the impact links have so that will probably work in my favour.

That’s just a brief outline of what I’ve been doing. Some sites have kick-off straight away, some have taken months to get any traffic, and some are just dead in the water with no chance of ranking.

I have of course got a few affiliate sites but their earnings don’t even compare with AdSense so I won’t go into them.

How much did I earn this month?

I made just over £600 this month and would’ve made more had Google’s ‘Penguin’ update not come into play and disrupted the past weeks earnings but I’m very happy with that total but think it will be a while until I see those figures again. I predict that next month I will be lucky to earn £300 but I’ve had dips like this before and managed to come back. The income breakdown for April was

• AdSense = £567.93
• Amazon = £26.23
• Ebay Partner Network = £6.87
• Total = £601.03 (US$973.80)

The eBay Partner Network (EPN) is new this month and I have a basic RSS feed running on a couple of my sites and I’ll see how this goes. You can read more about EPN here.

How much did I earn this year?

So from what started as an experiment I’ve managed to make £3772.38 of extra income in one year. That’s just over $6100 for anyone who wants the figure in USD. This is obviously not ‘take home’ as there are expenses and tax to take into account but it will still leave me with a tidy sum for something I consider a hobby.

As you can see I’ve had my dips, built the revenue back up, and I expect to have another dip next month. You can read individual monthly reports here.

Regrets, I’ve had a few

It wouldn’t be a review without some negatives and so I thought I’d put some in here:

• Bought worthless domains – Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away and I’ve bought some domains which have got zero value. Just because a domain is free to register doesn’t mean that you have to buy it! Luckily these only cost me less than £8 each for 2 years registration so it’s not a big loss but I wish I’d took more time thinking about what I would actually use them for rather than buy first, think later.
• Wish I’d got involved in making niche sites a lot earlier – This is a big regret but there is absolutely nothing I can do about this.
• Bought WSOs from Warrior Forums – You know the stuff that promises to let you in on the secret to making thousands. All a load of bull, and even though I only spent about $50 in total on a few offers early on I see it as money wasted. There is no ‘secret’. There are lots of ‘experts’ on there actually make their money just from promoting these offers and not from actually using the product they are promoting.

What now?

As I explained at the start, I’m going to be taking a bit of a break from my niche sites to see how the dust has settled after the latest Google updates, and I’m also moving houses so there is bound to be some time without internet etc, and then I’m also getting married so that will take priority over everything else, as will my super honeymoon in Bali.

My overall plan is to have a bit of a cull and get rid of the dead sites and domains that I don’t want anymore. That will leave me with a handful of sites that have the potential to be a lot bigger and so I will concentrate of them. In the end I want to have websites that I’m proud to show off and ones that I’m happy to put my name against.

This leads onto my big idea for a local listing site. Yeah, I know it’s been done before, but I think I can make something different and earning money will not be the overriding force behind it. Crucially I won’t be relying on Google for the success of the site and am aiming for people to be reaching the site directly. This may take a year to get going but I am looking to create a BIG site with big visitor numbers. Not huge ones but ones where businesses will want to advertise on my site.

It’s been a pretty wordy post so I’ll end it here, but please leave a comment and get in touch with me on Twitter @Adem.

I usually have my Income Report out on the first of the month but I’ve been away on a short break and arrived back today so here we go:

Another record month

Let’s start off a the best part. This month I’ve made £560.34 from Google AdSense and £37.14 from Amazon Associates taking my monthly total for March to £597.48 (US$948)! I was so agonisingly close to the £600 milestone but I can’t really complain can I?

As you can see I’ve been able to increase my earnings again, even though I thought they would plateau and this is due to the creation of a couple more sites and also the improvement of some older sites and every little bit helps. You will also notice that I’ve been doing this ‘hobby’ for almost a year and I think it’s going pretty well if I do say so myself, but I know that the rug could get pulled away at anytime…

Google Update

When Google puts out a new update to their search algorithm then I’ll admit I’m always a little worried about what it’ll do to my rankings. I shouldn’t really be worried I guess as I play by the rules and have been very organic in how I’m creating my sites but when the rules keep changing then I can’t always guarantee that what was fine last month is not fine this month.

Panda 3.4 is the 14th major update in the last 12 months and it seems that these updates haven’t always been great for some websites and this latest updates effect 1.6% of searches. That doesn’t sound like much but Google is BIG and so that means 1.4 billion queries each month.

How 3.4 affected me

Nada. Which is pretty good I think. Actually I think it’s helped my sites as it’s removed lower quality competition. I did see my main Amazon Affiliate site (the one that actually earns me money) drop completely off the rankings from #2 in the SERPS but I’ve managed to make a few changes and get back up to #4. How did I do that?

• Improved Content – I combined and rewrote several articles.
• Improved Theme – I had been using Chris Guthrie’s Azon Theme but felt that a change to a more original theme not used by 1000s of others might help.
• Added Graphic Logo – Previously the site had a plain text logo, but with Google’s focus on ‘brands’ I made my own graphic logo.

All in all these changes Google is making are improving sites and site content but I still get the feeling that they are still favouring the big name companies which doesn’t always mean the best content websites are #1 and I think we all know that people will always find new ways to get around the rankings system.

Local Listings Authority Site

I’m earning money from small niche sites but I would also like to make a website that I feel proud of and that has genuine return visitors who comment, share, and get real value from it, and so I’ve start work on a new listings site for the town I work in.

I’m aiming to make a site that Google will love, and visitors will love. I want to create a ‘brand’ and I think this site will achieve this (hopefully) but know that it will take a long time to get anything back from this. I’ve already written a couple of articles but want to get lots more content on there before going public with it.

Watch this space for more updates…

What am I doing with the money?

The first thing I’ve been doing for the last couple of months is putting half my earnings into a savings account. I will be paying tax on all my earnings although I’m not sure yet how much it will be, so putting half away will cover me for that and also the previous months where I didn’t save anything. I’m not sure how much tax I will have to pay but know that saving 50% will more than cover it and hopefully avoid any surprises and leave me with some savings at the end.

As for the rest of the money I’m earning, I’m enjoying life and not worrying too much and spending it. On my recent break I was able to pay for the majority of it with the remainder of my earnings and not have to worry about not having enough money in the bank. What’s the point of earning extra money if I can’t spend it?

I’m happy to say that last month I managed to achieve one of my aims for 2012 by earning £500 in one month, and to be exact I can report that I earned £501.29 in February from my online niche sites which is just under US$800. When I wrote my aims at the beginning of January I was just about recovering from a Google slap and had earned just over £200 in December and so £500 seemed a long way away but just a couple of months into the year and I’ve done it.

How did I do this?

This month I earned £490.67 from AdSense and only £10.62 from Amazon and that was a result of me deciding where best to spend my time. Whilst the majority of my earnings are from AdSense then it makes business sense to keep my focus on that and try and build on it rather than using my time trying to force a new income stream whilst I haven’t reached my potential with AdSense.

I’ve found it harder to rank for Amazon affiliate sites and even have one site that Google just doesn’t want to index so in a way my hand was forced and I decided to work on my current sites and see what I could do to improve a couple of them. I did also create a new AdSense site and also purchased around 10 new domains to work on in the next few months.

A nice £6,000 pay rise

£500 is a great amount to be earning ‘on the side’ and if this were a regular income then it would effectively mean a £6,000 payrise for me! You wouldn’t turn that down would you? Of course there is tax to come from that but I’m lucky in that my only expenses are my hosting (£16 a month) and buying domains (£7 for 2 years). I write the majority of my own content and spend perhaps £10 a month on content writing and create any backlinks myself or using Fiverr ($10 a month).

I’m only looking up now and fingers crossed I can make further improvements to my income reports.

Can a theme improve ranking?

As I mentioned earlier I looked at ways to improve some of my sites and one of these is a 6 month old site which was earning around £2 a month and using the CTR Theme. I know this site has a bit more potential so I thought I would experiment and give it a new theme. This meant a refresh and also sorting out the menu structure slightly, but didn’t involve any new content. This was simply about site design and structure which is something not always taken into consideration with SEO. Here’s what happened over the month:

This led to the site earning £11.23 last month. The above graph is from Google Webmaster Tools and shows search queries on Google for keywords to my site. As you can see from the graph, visits aren’t amazing (about 16 a day) but my site is ranking higher and with a bit more work and improving the content I am hoping to see further improvements.

Of course this could be down to a Google algorithm change but I doubt it as I installed the new theme on 13th February and the change was almost instant. Take from this what you will but I will certainly be focusing a little more on site design and menu structure from now on rather than just content and links and perhaps this could rejuvenate some of your older sites?

The Future

I am constantly being told that AdSense is unstable and shouldn’t be taken for granted and whilst I agree with this I think it can apply to any income, even your 9-5 salaried job, and so whilst I’m looking to branch out I mustn’t neglect what is providing the majority of my offline income. The future then is more AdSense sites but perhaps it’s time to start working on something ‘bigger’, perhaps a community site, which is something that Google is favouring. What are your tips on this? What do I need to do?

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.