So as I said in my last post I won’t be putting up income reports anymore mainly because I don’t want the money to be the overall focus of my sites. I do know how to make money online, I think I’ve proved it over the past year, but I am looking to change the way I make money. I could carry on churning out AdSense sites which earn well but I know there is no long term plan in those and that every site has a finite lifetime.
My sites didn’t really get hit that much by the recent Google updates and I only saw a 20% drop in revenue for last month, so I could carry on as before but I am now looking to focus on fewer sites but put more effort into them.
Moving away from AdSense
AdSense is where I’ve earn the bulk of my money, but I don’t see this as a long term revenue stream, and as such I’m looking into more direct revenue streams and building this into the sites I currently own and which are currently ranking very well. I have sites that are #1 or #2 for their main keywords which I believe can be earning far more money than they currently do with AdSense, and so I will either be looking to get money from direct advertisers or from affiliate products and services.
With AdSense my average CPC (Cost per Click) is around £0.40 and the best way to get visitors to click on these is to make your site as poorly constructed as possible with minimal content so the visitor feel inclined to click on these links to find the information they are looking for. That is the crux of it and that doesn’t really make for a good site or really make me proud of the site or my work at all. I want a site I can happily promote and if I can point people towards products they actually want then great as it will mean I also get a better share of the profit too!
I still also want to make a site that doesn’t rely too much on organic traffic and which I can promote as a brand but I know this will take more time than I currently have so that’s on the backburner and will come back to life when I know I have a solid plan.
E-Commerce
I bought the ShopperPress theme last week which is an e-commerce WordPress theme that looks very professional and allows me to sell affiliate products or even real physical products if I wished (that’s another story). I managed to get this at a discounted cost of just over £30 which I though was worth a go and I’ve been very happy with it. If you use this affiliate link then you can get it for £30.66 rather than the usual £51.10.
The rewards for selling affiliate products are much higher and it is in my interests to write great content so that the visitor is won over to buy the products I am promoting. This better content should also allow my site to rank better too.
That’s it for now
That’s the end of my mini update but should keep you up to date where I am. Please let me know how things are going with you in the comments or on .
Adem Do you know anything about the classifieds theme? I dont want to buy it and find I cant run Adsense on it , when I click on your link above and buy I assume you get a commission.even if I dont buy shopperpress. The reason I am looking at free ads is I have experience in that field. I hope your wedding goes fine and have a good time , I wont expect a reply till the wedding and honeymoon are over All the best. Don
Hi Don, I did reply to this last week but I lost it when I clicked ‘submit’. Very annoying indeed so had to wait until I could get around to replying again.
I don’t know anything about the Classifieds Theme although here is an affiliate link to it if you’re interested in buying it and you can use the code CUSTOMERPRESS to get money off which brings the price down to £35.
I would stress that there are free alternatives available too and a simple Google will bring these up. Good luck with your classifieds website and let me know when you get it off the ground.