March was a decent month, adsense still not has increased much but I’ll explain why later in this post. However I’ve also been sacrificing adsense clicks as I try to optimize pages to sell more CPA and affiliate offers.
So,
$2713 from adsense.
$131 Amazon
$80 Infolinks
$60 Random CPA offers together
$198 from clickbank ($88 of which is from AMR sales off this website, thanks!)
$50 Keyword Academy affiliate
$60 Article Ranks
So ~$3300 in total.
I sometimes get asked how much my expenses are so I’ll give approximates in this post
$33 hosting
$200 from backlink networks (TKA, UAW, a few AR credits and some new ones I’ve been trying out)
~$100 writers
$40 in domains (1 renewal, 3 new ones π )
so about $273 in expenses.
So net profit is around $3000.
About some of the sales on this website, I see that most people have been using TKA/AR as backlink networks especially since with AR you can pay on a per usage basis which really works well and makes sense since something like UAW is really expensive early on, it’s not something I would get until 4+ months or when you’re income is at least $100/month. Something I often do is rotate services between the ones that work. I use UAW one month, AR another (unlimited), and a new one after to keep my costs low and it also helps me just focus on one service at a time. I would do the same with TKA but I still use niche refinery a lot for my keyword research so I keep it all the time… My article spinners and me (I still often do TBS myself for titles/ressource box) always put a lot of variations (3 per word… and almost every word has synonyms) so I re-use these articles every month when I go to a new service. So basically the first week of a month I re-dump all the articles from a previous service to a new one, I usually add new titles but I’m not sure if that changes anything…
Looking towards the future…
So my adsense earnings have not really gone up in 2011, and they actually went down in February… Well I was on vacation for 3 weeks and I had theme/internal linking problems but still. I was experiencing massive growth in 2010 every month and 2011 is pretty small growth on a monthly basis. I’ve been thinking of a solution and I think the problem is that I’m in markets/niches that are hard to expand. Basically a lot of my time is spent re-doing backlinks to maintain my #1 because a lot of my best keywords compete with other people doing SEO. Fingerman has a really hands off business (in fact he works only a few hours a week, most of the time he watches me work while watching entire seasons of south park/vampire diaries/jersey shore in the living room) and it’s made me search new niches that I should try.
New niches
So a lot of my time these past 2 weeks has been exactly on that and I found some GREAT new niches to get into. Each of my new 3 domains are all targeting about ~40-50k exact searches a month with CPC of $2-5 and that’s just from the main keywords, inner pages will of course expand into many other keywords related to those niches. I’m not sure if all of those will end up working out but the competition on the first page is pretty easy-medium… I’m aiming top 3 for all of these by the end of 2010.I’m not done on my keyword research for some more websites so I’ll probably register a few new domains in April. Also hiring a VA service (Virtual assisstant) for $200 a month to do my backlinks for me (manage my articles, spin them and submit them to the article networks). Actually, to save $$ he’ll be using some of the pre spinned articles from this post I did a week ago with the $5/month already spinned articles. We’ll see how well that works, right now I want my backlinking to be more hands off free.
How I uncovered them
I’ve been using SEMrush paid version for a lot of this with methods explained in this semrush review post, in fact I’ll probably do a video on this soon to better explain. EDIT: SEMRush video is done.Β I wanted to do it for a few days now but I have a cold (gym is 15 minutes away and I stupidly wear almost nothing every time I go :'( ). I basically check the large article directories (ezine, squidoo, hubpage, ehow etc), see the keywords they rank for and I either start searching for those exact keywords on google to export into niche refinery or sometimes I just get new niche ideas and I dig down deeper. Anyway it was of great help to me because I haven’t done keyword research for new websites in like 5 months and my creative mind was pretty rusty. Fingerman when he decides to work has been enjoying stealing big website’s keywords for his new health project (maybe he’ll link it to it in the future so you guys can see).
My personal To do List
For April is to start building those websites, uncover a few other websites I should start. I would like 5-6 in total, not all are guaranteed to be a success and I should have the time to manage those since my current websites will be pretty much worked on only by my $200 part time VA.
What’s in store for Passive Income SEO
We might be revealing a website I’ve been working on a bit for the past 4 months. It recently got #1 for it’s main keyword and it’s inner pages are also on the first page of google so I think it’s a good example to show people. It’s currently making $2-5 a day off adsense(seperate account π ). Yesterday it got a google dance and it’s now gone from the first page of google but that almost always happened to me when I reach #1 for my first keyword on a new website in the 3-4 month frame so once it’s back for a week + and making stable income I’ll probably reveal it and share what i’ve done (it’s a really simple website that really shows how simple SEO can be…)
Also, should we have a forum? I have 5 people or so ask me this month about a forum. Fingerman tells me he would post on the website if we have a forum because trolling forums is what he does all the time on his iPhone. I guess I’ll add one if there’s interest.
forum would be great…
btw alex were are you going to hire your VA from, i have some experience with those Philippines and its really hard to find someone who is good and that you can trust…
I would definitely love a forum to interact with other people.
I can’t wait to hear about the new website you’re making, and hear about your SEO strategies.
Good job on this blog Alex!
I would be interested in taking part in a forum with you guys and other readers
I’d be interested in a forum. I’ve assimilated a lot of your best practices into my adsense knowledge bank(my head). So I’d love to contribute.
Alex thanks for all the helpful and useful posts! making a forum would be a good idea
forum would be awesome but make it simple, having 10+ areas is annoying, a nice niche forum would be great for just asking quesitons nad getting them answered
Lol, guess a lot of people enjoy forums. Ok I added it at http://thelinkback.com/forum/. Also have a menu link at the top now :). Let me know if you guys have any problems/suggestions, I’ll probably post stuff there too soon once I’m less busy with my new websites ( I really want to get them all up before I do anything else so they start aging…)
forum this bitch up, need more fingerman in my life
Hey Alex,
What’s your take on using images for a google adsense website? I want to use images to help with on-site seo mainly, but I’ve been reading that using any copyrighted content on your site is a violation of the Adsense TOS. Sure I could go buy some royalty free photos, but I don’t have the budget for that right now and most stock photos I’ve seen are not related to my niche what so ever. I thought about grabbing some niche related images from google search and putting a disclaimer at the bottom of my site in my footer that mentions that the images are not copyrighted to me and that they were found on the internet through searches so they should be thought as ‘public domain’ and if a copyright holder has a problem, they can e-mail me and they immediately will be taken down.Thoughts?
Images that have no apparent copyright and are all over google search (you see it a ton of times on the first page) I simply use. Sometimes if I use a graph or otherwise any image that looks like it could be from a website or something that the website owner obviously custom made for his website I add a disclaimer of taken from x website. I figure if the owner has a problem with it he will contact me but at any rate I’m giving him a backlink for now…
Hey, what sup Alex and Fingerman. Damn, I been really hesitant to talk you guys. Anyway, I love the sense of humor of Fingerman, real dope shit. He just say it like I’m making money, fuck it, enjoying life and whatnot lol. Alex, man I admire your work. The things you put out to help people, I wished I knew sooner about this as I’m 18. Been scammed so many fucking times… But, oh well. Life’s a bitch ain’t it? But yeah, I learned a lot from blackhatting shit haha. I’m Asian haha. Hopefully, I can get the fuck out of the bay area though by the time I’m 21… Shit, getting tired of school and all… Dueces.
“Itβs currently making $2-5 a day off adsense(seperate account)”
Alex is that your secondary AdSense account? Did you make it for your LLC or for your relative?
Have you heard of company Righthaven? They acquire copyright of somebody’s content and in case you have that content on your website they merely sue you without warning. I suggest you read this:
http://righthavenvictims.blogspot.com/
I asked someone that does not do IM to apply for an adsense account, in exchange he gets to keep the $ :). Read part of it, this article on wired was better able to explain to me what they do.
I’d love to read an article about outsourcing tips. Any plans for that in the future?
I guess there are multiple levels of outsourcing…
Content production (original or spun/rewritten)
Content distribution
And maybe later in the game having people do the preliminary research of finding keywords and setting up websites for you, basically go totally hands off.
I’m about to hire someone or a few people on odesk soon to write articles for me since I would love to learn how I can avoid writing articles, or at least have a lot of help generating content. So any advice on selecting someone on odesk, a good job description to throw up, how to budget for them, what sort of rates I should expect to pay, etc would be cool.
I see some hints scattered throughout your guide and some stuff at TKA but one place with even a loose guide would be awesome.
Thanks man!
Hmm I always figured outsourcing was easy for me but I do see this question asked around (here and most IM forums) so I’ll keep it in mind, hopefully I can get it done in April.
Hi Alex,
I was wondering where to start with regards to IM. Specifically finding a niche . I am not largely concerned regarding coding and web design, Seo etc. as that can be done quickly just by searching the internet as you go along. This post was a minor help but can you tell me how can one go about finding a good niche. One with some possibility of profit.
There is a lot of content on Keyword research but not on the step that precedes KR that is Niche finding.
Thanks,
Blake.
Well it’s because niche finding can happen anywhere, it’s just a matter of going off a general keyword like health, plastic casts, vitamin water (my second best performing site niche was found off searching vitamin water after seeing an add on it), acne or any sickness/condition you can think of etc. Start by searching things that interest you and then take note of ideas as they come to mind as you do your stuff during the day. You can also search magazines and amazon for help (magazines in store or the front page of magazines on amazon).
Ey alex very nice post, i’m seeing that you are doing pretty well with your earnings…
One thing that im seeing in one of my sites is that im getting Smart Priced! i was getting very good RPM ratios, but then this dropped since april, i dont know if you have experimented this? and if you have a solution also.
Marco
If you are smart priced you should be earning WAY less, sometimes you just earn less because the advertisers change or drop. I have started making a lot on weekends because for some reason I probably have a few advertisers that feel their customers are best reached on weekends which is when I get high ecpms that are almost double what I get during the week (the traffic is lower because it’s the weekend but the ads pay way more).
Yeah actually my earnings dropped a lot! i can tell that is because of smart pricing. I was earning about 25 per day, now if im doing good 10…
I’m trying to search for a solution here, maybe with your experience you can help me out.
Hi Alex
Excellent earning. I have a couple website that ranked at the first page of Google but none of my visitor click my adsense, could you reveal your strategy to make people interest to click it?
I already change the title similar to my font color but still doesn’t. I hope I can get suggestion from the expert like you
Cheers
Rian
It might be your niche that’s bad. It’s not because you have ads that people will click on them. Also, I saw someone do an adsense website on the “world war 2” in another language because he saw it had high search volume. I doubt people will click on the ads you might have on a website like that. Also, you might simply not have had enough visitors to your site yet since you said you are on the first page and not #1… As you go up in rankings people tend to click ads more too.
My keyword is about hair loss. My opinion the keyword is seem to offering some dollar per day, I think there is no problem with keyword just wrong with placing of my adsense.
Thanks Alex for your reply
Cheers
Rian
Hmm ya that should be a good keyword unless you are targeting something like free hair loss remedies or home remedies for hair loss… Anyway, in out guide we mention what works best for us and it’s the 336*280 or so rectangle at the top left of our article with content around it.