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.

In my last post I told you how I was looking into whether selling domains could be another source of income for me, and after some thinking I don’t think it is. I’m being honest with myself and think I will be sticking to developing niche websites instead as I can add more value to a domain from that.

When you see domains selling for hundreds or thousands then it’s quite easy to think ‘how hard can that be?’ but you would be wrong in assuming that it’s an easy thing to do as your domain has to have some very real pulling power to sell or even get any interest. I’ve come in pretty late in the game and most of the good quality .co.uk or even .org.uk domains have been registered so what I’m left with are domains that just aren’t in high demand or have already been passed-over by other domainers. If I had more money to spend then I could look at buying better domains that are already registered and trying to flip them but this doesn’t interest me as I don’t want money held up in domains not earning me anything and me relying on ‘potential’ future revenue if  I can sell it at a later date.

I started a thread on Acorn Domains for advice on how to sell domains and the feedback echoed the same thing: “There is no trick, you have to own domains that other people covet, and for which they will pay.”

People do not covet my domains but I know that I can make money from them by continuing to develop them as niche sites as when I bought them I did my research into the amount of keyword searches they get and the amount of AdSense CPC then average and so they are still perfectly suited for me to make websites for and hopefully start getting some income from. In the end that means no harm done and I now have a portfolio of 36 domains, all of which I have some potential. Some of these are already earning, and some will be developed in the near future. It’ll certainly keep me busy!

Once the sites are earning money then I there is a chance to sell them and I know they will be more attractive then, but at that stage I will probably rather hold onto them for the continuous revenue rather than a one-off payment.

Do you trade in domains? What’s your biggest sale so far?

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 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.

Once you’ve built a few niche sites and got to know your favourite WordPress plugins you will use them time and time again, and so I thought I would share my favoured plugins with you all. This isn’t an extensive list and there are bound to be ones that I don’t include, but this is just a sample of those that really add value to a site and can make your life easier.

All in One SEO Pack

This does what it says on the tin and offers out-of-the-box search engine optimisation for your WordPress blog. One of the better feature is the ability to override post titles so they are displayed differently in search engines which is great for testing without changing your posts url.

Google Analytics for WordPress

Google Analytics is the daddy of monitoring your sites stats especially since Google is where most of your traffic will be coming from. You will need to set up an Analytics account with Google and then you will be asked to paste some code into your site so that they can track it. Simply enter your analytics code into this plugin to authorise your site and it will start tracking.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to index your site and alert them when you make any changes.

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu

This hasn’t got much to do with SEO and niche sites but it’s the first plugin I install on a new WordPress site as it removes the sidebar menu and provides a horizontal drop down menu instead which helps with navigation in the admin area of your WordPress installation. It really is a must.

Pretty Link Lite

This is a way of shrinking or masking your links which is great for affiliate sites allowing you to display a friendly url as well as being able to track them.

Quick Adsense

This allows you to insert your AdSense code into posts/pages/sidebars with minimal effort. Paste your various advert codes into the plugin and then say where you want them to go. This allows you to experiment with their positions putting ads at the end of posts, the beginning, or even the middle and specifying their alignment so they fit in snugly with your text.

SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2

This increases blog traffic by strengthening on page SEO, increasing the number of indexed pages, and auto converts search terms into post tags so that more of your pages are indexed. This also displays incoming search terms on the footer of your post or on your sidebar which can mean more visits but also helps you with keyword research and perhaps what words you should be looking to optimise or write new content on.

SexyBookmarks (by Shareaholic)

You will have seen this on quite a few blogs (and this one) and it adds an attractive social bookmarking menu to your posts, pages, or homepage. I would click on this far more often than any other bookmarking plugin and you can easily select which social bookmarking links to display.

Strictly Auto Tags

Tagging is a great way to get more pages indexed by search engines and can also increase site traffic but it’s all to easily to forget this and not add any tags to your articles. This plugin will scan your post and add the most relevant and appropriate tags but in a really smart way. Hit ‘publish’ and the tags are automatically added.

Subscribe to Comments Reloaded

This enables people who comment on your site to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries and if you’re running a niche site you want to get as much returning traffic as possible. You can also have this as ‘opt out’ as well as ‘opt in’ so that the box is already ticked when a user comments meaning they are more likely to be subscribed to that comment stream. This may annoy some but it’s easy to either untick or unsubscribe.

Tweet old post

When running a niche site you will probably set up a twitter account for it too but it’s not always easy to keep this updated so why not use this plugin to keep your twitter stream (and your followers) populated with links back to articles on your site? You can specify the age of posts, exclude categories, add additional text, add hashtags based on the tags on your post, and lots more. Then just set the intervals you would like to publish your tweets at.

Half of August has already gone and yet again I haven’t been putting the effort into my niche sites and so I know that unless something drastic happens then I won’t be reaching the targets set by last month’s total income of £351.85 which is a shame. I suppose after the little work I did on them last month I believed I could leave them again and they would still be earning the same revenue but alas that isn’t the case.

My Google Analytics stats show that visitor numbers haven’t dropped that much but it can’t help that I’ve done nothing and so this evening I’ve been creating backlinks and have decided to go through my content and see if I can spruce it up a bit and improve the SEO on the site. I’ve also chosen a new niche site and will hopefully get that going later this week. Niche site P is my major earner but I think it is going to be hard to just make another site that earns me £340 a month as evidenced by Niche Site F which only earnt me £8.33 last month, but if I can get a few more sites earning even £10 a month then they will pay for themselves and every little bit counts in my pursuit of passive income.

I’ve only been creating the sites since May and so there’s plenty more experimenting to do and who know what extra factors count towards visitors and earnings? Once thing for sure is that when the weather is hot and sunny I earn less money so could I see an increase once summer is over?

I’m happy to be writing this report for June as my niche website has been running for a complete month having only started in mid May and so last month’s income report only provided a partial picture.

It’s been a really exciting month and I had hoped to be reporting back with news of a new niche site but in the end I had enough to do with niche site P and couldn’t commit to properly creating a new one but as you will see from the results below it didn’t really matter. I had an amazing month!

What did I do?

Most of the hard work was done on the site in May but I still managed to write 10 very short pages of content which kept Google happy and increased the amount of keywords for visitors to find. Apart from that is was just a matter of letting people find the site and hopefully click on the AdSense.

Amount of Visits

Visits have increased and have reached a steady level which I expect them to remain at for the immediate future. In doing my research into the niche I know how many searches there are per month for my keyword so I’m not expecting this to suddenly increase, but in adding more content I’m increasing the chances of visitors through other keywords and searches, but let’s be honest, I’m not going to get thousands of searches a day for my site as there simply aren’t that amount of people looking for what is my niche. I am happy to say though that I am ranking at #5 on Google for my keyword which is great news.

You will notice a rather large jump in traffic around 6th June and this was because I managed to get a free AdWords voucher for which I was able to buy some PPC (Pay Per Click) adverts to promote my site. These would’ve appeared as AdSense adverts on other people’s sites and did manage to attract people to my site. This was artificial traffic and not something I intend to do in the future, but it was nice to increase the hits and also increase my AdSense revenue for that period.

All the other stats have gone up too though with Pages/Visit going up from 4.31 last month to 4.65 this month and the average time on the site went up from 5:00mins to 5:12mins. All this shows that the content is still relevant and useful and had lead to a drop in the bounce rate from 35.14% down to 31.52 this month.

Revenue

So here’s the juicy bit. In the month of June I made £237.74 from niche site P! An absolutely amazing figure that I could never have dreamed of. I was hoping to break the £100 barrier and ended up smashing it! This shows I’ve chosen my niche well both in regards to getting visitors through good quality content but also attracting well paying adverts my readers want to click.

I am so so happy with these figures and if I was able to replicate this every month then it would make a real impact on my finances. In the chart below you can see the big peak from the AdWords campaign. I won’t have that for July so we’ll see what effect that has, but if I average £7.65 a day then I will reach that total next month so that’s what I need to aim for.

What Now?

Six weeks still isn’t conclusive evidence that the traffic and income will remain at these levels so I will be monitoring the stats and doing what I can to keep them at this level. This will include some more content, although only maybe 3 articles, and also getting more backlinks. July is looking to be a very busy month for me with Stag weekends, weddings, etc and so I’ll have to see how much I can commit to the site. If I can get anywhere near the income of June then I’ll be very happy.

Finally

I wanted to say a big thank you to Ryan at Covering the Rent who gave a lot of advice and inspiration towards getting the niche site to succeed. If you want to get into niche sites then visit his website and read through all the posts.

I may only have one niche site running at the moment but I am providing an income report to track how the site is doing and most importantly how I am doing with Adsense revenue.

Background

I bought the domain for niche site P on 10th May and started writing my content with the view to add more content every few days but the site was basically ‘ready’ to receive visitors after a days work. I knew it would take a while to get indexed by Google but it was only a few days until I started getting some hits.

Amount of Visits

I’m happy to say that the number of visitors has been steadily increasing and as I add more content and get more backlinks this should improve.

As you can see it traffic has been increasing (big dip on the Bank Holiday Weekend) and it’s great to see that the visitors are spending on average 5 minutes on the site and reading 4.3 pages a visit meaning that my content is useful and it increases the chances of them clicking on an Adsense advert. Please note that I am using Google Analytics for these stats and have excluded my IP from the stats so that these figures are an honest representation and don’t include me!

Revenue

My revenue is completely dependant on visitors clicking on the Adsense adverts which are positioned on every page. It is important to have good content so the the adverts are specific to the visitors and so they will be more inclined to click on them.

So £23.13 earned in just under 3 weeks may not sound great but there were a lot of quiet days in the beginning and I expect this to increase next month (hopefully) as I have been adding more and more content and my site has also improved with it’s keyword ranking so Google should be sending more visitors my way.

What now?

The site has lots of content now but I will ad a few more pages over the next month to keep things ticking along. The main focus is on backlinks and trying to get some linkjuice from Google. The main idea is that the more links you get to your site from external sites, the higher Google will rank you in their search engines and sometimes you have to do a bit of work to get this to happen.

I will continue to minitor the site daily but I will also investigate setting up another niche site so that I can possibly increase my revenue. £23 a month (actually 2 weeks) is not very much but if I can do the same with another site then profit obviously doubles.

I will give you another update at the end of June to let you know how the site it doing.

I’ve been experimenting with niche sites and the whole idea of passive income through Google Adsense. Lost yet? Basically you need to find an area where there is not much info but plenty of demand, then create a website, monetise it (through adsense), and then watch the money roll in…

That’s the idea anyway but the hardest part is finding an area to focus on that hasn’t already been written about and that doesn’t already have high rankings in Google., If you do find an area though then you have to create a website, create good content, establish links and authority, and then work to get more visitors to your site and boost your ranking in search engines. If you can get to #1 for your keywords, and get lots of visitors, then by association a percentage of them will click on your Adsense banners and earn you money.

It sounds oh so simple doesn’t it? So far I’ve made my site, written lots of content, and am already getting visitors and clicks, but now I need to focus on increasing the authority of my site.

At some stage I’ll let you know what the site is and hopefully by that time it will be established enough to earn me some sort of income (passively) and I can let you know what the figures are like.

To truly earn larger amounts via Adsense you either need a mega-huge site, or need to have many smaller sites running at the same time and collectively earning you revenue. At this point I have only focused on the one site but am now researching more areas to add to my Adsense portfolio.

Hope you’re all fine and dandy

Since I gave this blog a bit of a spruce up I’ve been looking at ways to increase visitor numbers so that more people get a chance to see this wonderful website (ahem). I’ve looked at plug-ins, SEO, formatting of posts, keywords, social media, and many other hints and tips that are offered when you go googling for “How to get more visitors on your blog“.

The fact of the matter is that there is only one sure way of getting people to visit and read your blog:

Content is King

If you write interesting and informative articles that people actually want to read and know about then they will come. Google will do it’s job and send people your way, and if you’re lucky others may Stumpleupon it or Digg it. The truth is that a lot of what I write here is personal to me and will not interest anyone else. That is a fact and for that reason I will never have a ‘popular’ blog. I have written some interesting and useful articles before, and these do continue to get hits but these are one-off visitors and not the type who will subscribe to read the remainder of my posts.

Here are my top 3 visited posts:

• Euroferries service between Ramsgate and Boulogne
• How to degauss a TV
• Best Fancy Dress Ever

The solution for me would be to stop writing about myself and only write about subjects that may be of interest to others but I won’t be doing that for two reasons:

1. I don’t have many interesting things to write about
2. This blog is about me, and has been my online diary since May 2004. I like to sometimes through the archives and seeing what I’ve been up to.

I think this all means that I shouldn’t really be concentrating on getting more visitors and should just continue what I’ve been doing. If it happens, it happens.