The first time it will take you a bit longer but over time, 5-10 minutes is all you need to register a domain, host it, and get word press installed on it.
Once you’ve done your market research and you know your keywords, or the general niche your website will be in, it’s time to choose a domain name.
I made a video at the start of each section explaining the content. Either watch the video or read the article below depending on your preference!
Domain Selection
The best registrar by far is NameCheap.com. I don’t want to hear about anything else. They never bother you about anything, they are competitive with less than $10 domain names and they give you private registration (WHOIS GUARD) for free which you should enable as soon as you buy your domain. It keeps Google and other people who would like to spy on all your websites from knowing who owns your domain with a WHOIS lookup tool like http://whois.domaintools.com/.
If you are looking for a domain that will help you in search engine optimization (rankings in Google) you should know that the best domain you can have is an Exact Match Keyword. Example, if you found out using a keyword tool searching tool that the keyword [alfredo sauce recipe] has 49000 Exact Match searches per month, and that you want to use this keyword, the exact match domain (EMD) would be alfredosaucerecipe.com, alfredosaucerecipe.net or alfredosaucerecipe.org.
No dashes. No numbers. No .info or other shitty domain extensions. It has to be exactly the keyword, otherwise it will not get any boost from Google.
Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to buy a domain name with good Exact search volume because other internet marketers have bought all of them. If you decide to use a niche in another language than English, which I highly recommend, exact match domains will be available for decent keywords. Don’t worry if it is not available, it will rank normally, 90% of my income from SEO comes from keywords that ARE NOT in my domain. If the EMD is available you have two choices. Either you choose an Exact Match Keyword domain that has a bad volume but that also contains your main keyword. Example: I could choose the keyword [fettuccine alfredo sauce recipe] and buy the domain name fettuccinealfredosaucerecipe.org. It only has 1000 Exact match volume per month but it will rank very easily for the Exact Match Keyword, while keeping the general name of the niche inside.
However, if you are going for a “passion website” or something that you predict will have more then 5 pages/posts or so, I would go with a more brand able name such as the one we chose for this blog (Thelinkback, we did not go for howtomakemoneyonlinerightnow.com which would be ugly/spammy).
Caution: Do not use Trademarks inside of domain names. It is against Adsense ToS and also illegal. You can be sure that once your domain starts ranking, the Trademark company in question will contact your registrar and your registrar will have to transfer the domain to them. Also, I have seen several occurrences of people that had trademark domains in their Adsense account and they had all their websites (even the legit ones) removed from Google’s index forever, and their account banned.
Note: So what if you already have a website and it doesn’t contain the Exact Match Keyword in it? Are you fucked and need to change domain? The answer is no, you should keep your old domain. In the end, age is more important than having your keyword in the domain name. As your site and your pages get older, they get more power and authority in Google’s eyes.
In the end, if you cannot find an Exact Match Keyword domain that is worth it, it doesn’t really matter if your niche is good. You should use something such as alfredosaucerecipeguide.com, alfredosaucerecipeinfo.com, alfredosaucerecipeblog.com, davesalfredosaucerecipe.com, etc. When doing this, find a .com, they are more brandable.
Hosting
The best hosting company is hostgator.com. Their least expensive package is the hatching plan but that only allows you to use them for ONE DOMAIN. So, you should definitely go for a Baby plan which offers unlimited domains/bandwith etc.
Use the coupon PASSINCOMESEO to get $9 off your first month, basically making it free. Or If you want to pay on a longer period such as on a semi annual basis or more you can use GET25REBATE to get 25% off the whole thing.
I’ve been using them for years and never had any problem. The 24/7 support line even helps you install scripts, troubleshoot problems with your website, recover from hacking attempts etc. They are amazing. Both of us use them for all our main websites.
Hostgator costs ~$8 per month. You will have a cpanel and can add as many addon domains, subdomains, users and databases as you want. They also do automatic backups of your sites every week. You can’t really beat that and still have 24/7 support and a trusted company to back it up. I had my websites hacked twice in the past and hostgator customer support was always really quick in setting them back up. As a side note, after your first domain is hosted, future domains you register will be setup under an “addons domain”, here is a link to the guide, it’s VERY simple once you do it once.
Instructions on how to Set up Your Site for Beginners
- Once you paid for your hosting, they should send you your server information by email pretty quickly. You will need to find in that email what your DNS (Domain Name Server) is.
- Log into NameCheap.com and go to Manage Domain, click on your domain, then on the left click on Transfer DNS to Webhost. Choose “Use custom DNS” and enter your 2 DNS in the fields. For Hostgator, these should be something like ns1234.hostgator.com and ns1235.hostgator.com. This step links your domain to your hosting account. It can take up to 48 hours to take effect, but it’s usually almost instant since namecheap is very quick.
- Go to http://yourdomain.com/cpanel to access your cpanel. If the DNS hasn’t propagated yet, look at your hosting information email, they provide you with a link to your cpanel that doesn’t require your DNS to be set up.
- Optional: If you are using another domain name than the original one you registered the hosting with, from the cpanel home page, you will need to go to “Addon Domain” and add the domain. Subdomains and passwords are irrelevant, put anything.
- From the cpanel home page, go to Fantastico Deluxe, click on WordPress in the left sidebar, then New Installation, choose your domain and follow the rest of the instructions. Titles and options can be edited later, but put in your keyword as the Title and your slogan or whatever as the description.
WordPress Configuration
The video is a bit long for this section, if you have already used wordpress just read the text information so you can see the specific plugins I use. For others, you might want to watch the video to have a better feel to how things work inside wordpress.
- Go to http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin to access your WordPress admin panel. Go to Setting->Privacy and put it to be viewable by Search Engines if it’s not already like that by default. Go to Settings->Permalinks and change the value to Custom and put %postname% in the field.
- Go to Plugins->Add Plugins. Make a search, install and activate the following plugins:
- SEO Ultimate (Helps with proper SEO of your website, don’t worry too much about all the different features for now)
- Wp-insert if you want some automation in inserting your advertisement.
- Contact Form 7 (All websites need a contact us form.)
- Enable Akismet, it should already be installed. This will help stop comment spam.
- Google XML Sitemap (Creates a sitemap of your website and sends it to Google and other search engines periodically.)
- Easy Privacy Policy (Creates a Privacy Policy page, needed for adsense)
- PuSHPress Just active it, it helps get your stuff indexed faster.
- Statpress for stat tracking, or use google analytics. I usually use statpress first and once I see good traffic I use google analytics (it can take a few minutes to setup, I only do it once there is actual traffic to analyze!)
- Wp-Smushit (automatically reduces your image’s size, faster load times)
That’s it. Your website is set up!
Website Design – Making Your Own WordPress Themes With Artisteer
Don’t use a free theme. They are always badly optimized for Adsense, are too generic or look plain bad, and 1000s of other retards use them. Free themes can also contain hidden spam links or bogus code that will make you drop in rankings. Happened to us before. I just think it’s not worth it, by the way, this especially includes pirated themes.
A lot of pirated themes you find “for free” are actually hacked by the one distributing them to have hidden backlinks to his website, hence why he went to the effort of buying the theme, hacking it and sharing it with everyone “for free”.
If you plan on making more then one website, you’re going to download a program called Artisteer (the Home and Academic version is the one I own and it works just fine). It cost $50 for life. Consider it an investment. It will improve your Adsense clickthrough rate (CTR) so much that you will make your money back as soon as you get some traffic to your site. You will be making a lot of themes and adjustments over the next months and years so get used to it.
Your first theme should take an hour to create. The second one will take 20 minutes or less.
There are four things your theme needs in order to have a good Adsense CTR:
1. White background for the posts and pages (This area is described as “Content” in Artisteer).
2. Font to Arial and font color to #444444 for posts and pages.
3. Link colors to #000080 (dark blue) in posts and pages.
The rest is up to you. Make it look as nice and legit as possible. Professionalism and relevancy is the key. You now have your own unique high CTR Adsense WordPress theme that you can tweak as needed in the future.
Money
You probably will start by using Adsense to make money. Why? Because in the first few weeks or months, when you’re only making a few dollars a day and getting a few hundred visits a day to your website, it’s not gonna be worth it to research and test affiliate products. Let alone create your own product. Some websites will never have enough targeted traffic to actually make it worth it to take off Adsense and put affiliate products. Don’t worry, you can make 1000s of dollars a day with Adsense, and still have a very useful and legit website. Think Ezinearticles.com, About.com, Livestrong.com, etc.
Adsense instructions to make it convert well:
Your Adsense block in the post or page, either using a <div style=”float:left”>ADSENSE CODE</div> (float integrates the content besides the ad) or using a backspace without the content integrated besides the ad. Put one at the top and one at the bottom after the article. The best converter blocks are the biggest squares and the widest rectangles. Put title color to #000080, text to #444444 and url to #c3c3c3. Use the previously mentioned Wp-insert wordpress plugin to insert Adsense inside posts automatically. If you don’t have an Adsense account yet, wait until your design is finished and you are getting 30+ daily visitors before applying.
Caution: Do not fall into the trap of making tons of shitty looking websites like some Internet Marketing gurus recommend. Adsense accounts are manually reviewed every once in a while and people get banned all the time. Don’t be one of them. 5 page websites are OK, 30+ 5 page websites are NOT ok. You can have a few mixed with some big ones but just making small websites will push you towards a google Adsense ban. It’s the same amount of effort to make a shitty website as it is to make a good one. Make it good one. Keep it forever.
Creating Content Relevant to Your Keywords
First off, you want to make sure you have an About and Contact page. Also, since you will use Adsense to monetize your site in the beginning, you will want to add a Privacy Policy page. The plugin Easy Privacy Policy does it for you.
I don’t write articles anymore but I did when I started. If you want to get writers, I recommend you go on Odesk and find some outsources to write for you. If you enjoy your topic and want to write, or if you are creating your own market, feel free to write. High quality content will be rewarded in the future with free backlinks from real people, returning visitors and viral traffic, but good content is, well, good enough for the most part or while testing multiple niches and seeing which ones has the most potential for you to put more of your time in.
You want to make sure the main keyword you are targeting is in the title and URL of your post. You also want it to be in the body of your post a few times. Some people go crazy over keyword density but the truth is I had plenty of keywords rank #1 with a density of only 1% (basically once in the title, maybe twice in the post). If you are targeting other keywords that are similar to the main one in this post, make sure to mention them 1-2 times somewhere in the body of your article.
When possible, link to other articles from your website that are relevant to the article you are currently writing. Link to them using the anchor text you want that page to rank for. For example, in our previous page in our guide, we wanted to rank for SEO keyword research. “SEO keyword research” is our anchor text.
Article length should be anywhere from ~250 to 1000, we usually have articles of around 400-500 words.
Now that your content is posted, time to use a backlinking strategy.
Hello, very nice blog. What is your opinion about domains with dashes? For example I would like to rank “low carb diet”, so which would be better: http://www.lowcarbdietblog.com or http://www.low-carb-diet.com?
From past experience, the only bonus you can get is from having the EXACT match domain so after that you just want to go with a domain that contains your keyword and does not look spammy. IMO, guide fits really well with that theme so I would go with that, but if you really wanted dashes would be ok (I have some of my early websites with dashes, just took them longer to rank than if I have the keyword.com/org/net)
Thank you Alex for your useful opinion, I will try rank with dashes.
Hey Alex,what do you think about sub domains with the main keyword your want to rank for ….isn’t is easy to rank for the sub domain if you don’t have the option to buy the exact match domain?…
..
thanks
No because having the exact match for a subdomain does not really give you the “EMD bonus” that google gives to .com/.org/.net
also, subdomains lose a lot of the trust from the main website, so it’s kinda like starting a new one anyway.
thanks a lot Alex,
btw as for the posts titles…what titles should i use? what keywords should i write about,(LSI keywords?) would be great to see what your telling your workers to write about, I just hired my first Philippine writer , he is writing better then me! its awesome , but what subjects should i tell him to write about?…
one post on the main keyword? all the posts with the main keyword in the title? should it be pure adding value content?…
thanks a lot! really appreciate all your help! just bought my first domain to try this method!
I use titles that usually contain my main keyword. Someties it is only my main keyword and sometimes I add stuff to it. If for example my keyword is “best shirt” maybe I would do something like “best shirt for the summer”.
Cool blog man!! Thanks for the data on Adsense Positioning and Link Colors. That made my day!
Keep it up guys! Adding to favorites.
First off, cool website. cool content. thanks for that.
would you recommend http://www.namecheap.com/ for hosting actually, or just for buying domains there? if i buy a domain at namecheap.com and link it over to my current website(s) at hostgator.com, do i still benefit from the whois guard?
maybe that’s a stupid question, but i’m pretty new to all of this and have to learn the ins and outs.
thanks in advance,
jan
Namecheap has great domain support so I’m sure their hosting is good too even if it’s newer, it did not exist I think when I started my websites. I’m not sure how namecheap is compared to hostgator but they are probably both good hosting companies.
yes you still benefit from whoisguard. Whoisguard is to protect your domain’s privacy, not linked to the host
reading the entire article actually answered my question (i knew it was a stupid one, lol).
but i have another question:
does it make a difference in terms of seo when i buy a .de domain where the host is a US one? since i’m german i want to tackle the german market with german content etc.
or would you actually suggest to buy a .com/net/org domain instead of a .de domain in order to make german websites?
i don’t know how all this shit technically works, it might be irrelevant, i dont know 🙂
thanks again,
jan
Ive never tried country extentions but i know they work well because i see them ranking all them time. I would buy .de as my fourth option for an exact match domain. I would probably own a few .fr domains if they were available buy most of them were taken.
Hi, what are the font sizes of your posts and adsense?
I just use the 100% font size from artisteer and the default font size from adsense
Hei Frenchboy thank you for all information !
I have one question , how many posts you put per page ? or do you use static page on your blogs??
Thanks!
What are your opinions on .co domains. Do they have the same problem as the other domains.
They are like .info, they rank as well but do not expect and EMD bonus like the top 3 get. I currently have 2 .co and I do not experience a massive EMD bonus like I used to do. Gotta admit they are way more expensive than the previous EMD keywords for domains I created a year ago though… They are ranking well though, about #15-30 for their main keywords.
Hey Alex, got a few more questions:
1. We do multiple websites -> host that hosts unlimited websites resubmitt with the same details that I used before ( my name,website etc etc.? ), just with another gmail account?
pps: have fun in your vacation ( I can only dream of getting to miami ) , also bitc*es are from cm to cm in miami as I’ve heard , so good luck banging everything :))
We use the hostgator/bluehost shared account, I usually create a new [email protected] email for all of them that redirects to my main email accounts.
I think that this article in particular has GREAT tips… but got a question…
why in the adsense blocks you guys are using 08000 that is a kind of black… is giving you better CTR than blue??? i just want to know why did you go for this color and why you didnt go for any other one. Thanks
It should be dark blue if you use 08000
I think that you guys had a little mistake there, because is giving me a black color… i was playing with that value and then i saw that 00080 is giving me a dark blue, and actually im going to use that value with a new site that im creating! See ya.
Oh I see, yup he did make an error and #000080 is what you want to be using, I’ll make the correction!
Fingerman, are you sure AdSense hates trademarked domains? I know that i can get a C&D letter, but it is not AdSense that get it. Why would they care?
I actually remember XFactor advicing to grow XFactor sites. He said that few pages are good for start. You told that he changed his own websites to make them legit before he got caught.
Can you elaborate on that?
It’s not adsense obviously that doe snot like it, it’s the legal trouble you can get in… And as for your second question… exactly.. xfactor change his small page websites into more legit authorities that probably had a better looking theme
You mean he changed it as soon as he discovered his method is flawed?
Fingerman wrote in his post above:
“The best hosting company is Bluehost.com. They are owned by HostGator.com”
This is not true. EIG owns Bluehost.
Hmm you may be right, I don’t remember where we had seen that but I corrected it in the post.
Hi, can i ask few more questions?
when you start a new niche site, how much articles do you publish for a new site?
do you add any new content to site during first month? only doing few backlinks during this period, right?
As i understand, for every article you want to publish actually you buy 2 articles – one to publish on your blog and the second one to submit to article directories to make backlinks to newly published article on your blog , right? or it isn’t a good idea to add backlinks to new article right after publishing?
thanks
I usually put 1 up as I start my website and add more over the upcoming weeks, ideally you would put like 5 articles within 2 weeks but I manage a lot of websites now and I usually reach 5 articles by the end of a second month on a new website (I have about 6 or so websites that are under 4 months that I’m developing right now).
And yes, that’s something I often do – I get 2 articles done for a keyword, one posted on my website and the other at an article directory that needs a unique content. I don’t do this for every article on a website, but I like to do it for the first 3 to make sure things are all indexed and I have some anchor text for the keywords I want to rank, sometimes I rank really quick for some words, but that’s very rare.
and is it a good idea to start with buying aged domain with keyword inside.. 2..5 years old then buying totally new domain?
If you can find aged domains, yup. I have about 3 I’m developing for future monetisation and a few for backling testing. I haven’t seen a big bonus as I was hoping for by using aged domains but they are certainly at least as good as normal ones, ideally you want one that has already been indexed in google.
In terms of the no trademarked domain names:
would a name like http://www.mcdonaldsnutrition.com be a fraction of the rules? If “mcdonalds nutrition” is my keyword, how would I fix this domain name?
I would never build any domain that contains a trademarked name, but that entirely depends on you. If McDonald really wanted they might contact you and ask them to put it down. You can do it, maybe McDonald (in this example) will never care but really an EMD is not that big of an advantage in the great scheme of thing, in my case the keywords targeted by my domain make less than 5% of my income.
Thanks for the insight. So generally when you market other keywords in your sites, are they more large scale keywords like “calories” “acne” etc. or are they still somewhat low key, like that one example you gave of the keyword that ranked less than 1000 searches per month but still makes you 1-3 dollars a day?
I usually try to get a “general” sounding keyword about a niche as my domain name and keyword I want to target with it. For my additional pages around that general keyword I go more specific.
and I guess my last question would be, I am looking at 2 very similar keywords ….one has 2900 monthly global searches at a 0.50 CPC while the second one that has 1900 searches has a CPC of 0.83 …should I be looking at the CPC or the total # of searches as the more important factor here? And what one would you ultimately use?
I would probably target both but the one I target in my URL/title/domain name would be the one with the least competition in this case… Ideally it’s 2.9k searches.
Hi
Just bought hosting from bluehost and i notice its a shared hosting package.
I have heard that these rank less effectivly compared to dedicted IP address.
What is your view on this
Many Thanks
Completely untrue, a dedicated IP only has minor advantages such as (usually) faster speed. Me and Dave both use shared accounts. It would not make sense for google to favor a website with a dedicated IP anyway.
Thanks that will save me some money
Just something I was wondering, whenever I initially search my keyword with the google tool under broad it gives me the exact keyword with something like 368,000 searches per month. However when I refine it to only “exact” that’s when I get the 2900 searches per month. Any reason why? Both appear in the listings exactly the same.
Hi guys
You might want to be careful using All in one Adsense and YPN. A friend of mine told me that there is a snippet of code within the plugin that automatically serves the creators Adsense account every 5 or so page views. So he effectively scrapes some of your revenue.
There is more detail here:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/all-in-one-adsense-and-ypn-is-not-free
I liked that plugin a lot, but there is no way I’m sharing my revenue with this thief!
If anyone has recommendations on any better, free options that would be appreciated.
Ya I heard about that elsewhere too, if I remember correctly you can disable that in the options but I cannot say if it really disables all of it (depends how honest the creator is I suppose)
You have to manually edit the plugin code in the editor tool. It’s a bit of a hassle but the plugin itself is still better than any others. I’ve edited the code manually and set things to 0 so there is no way anything is going into his pocket now… Still a pain.
has g’s content farm shake up effected your sites in anyway
I did not see a day to day change however I feel some of my inner page rankings are on roller coasters currently. Some days I have made $110+ this month (like 3 days ago) and others like today (well it’s saturday, always the lowest day) I’m at like $60 with 3/4 of the day gone by.
Fingerman/Dave did not see much of a change at all in his income. He’s pretty much making fun of me for even considering that it might affect me.
Thanks Alex
Hi Alex,
I’m currently working on 10 sites using the method that you have outlined here. Before I go steaming ahead with them I just want to make sure that I’m going about it the right way?..
I do my research using Amazon for niche ideas, & Keyword Niche Refinery for picking out winners in each niche.
I then group the keywords together and try and find one of them to use as the exact match domain for each of the niches.
Buy domain>set up WP>install plug ins>do a artisan theme
Then I get a 400-500+ word article written on oDesk for each keyword.
QUESTIONS
Although the articles are unique and kind of relevant to the KW, the english isn’t that good to put it bluntly I would defiantly just click off the site if I started reading any crap like this – is that a problem for what we’re trying to do here?.
Once I get my articles back from oDesk do I:
Post them all up on my WP blogs in one go, do the internal linking and then move onto backlinking?…
Post each article as a separate page?…
Have them set up to post weekly?…
Or is it a case of posting up the main KW, spend some time backlinking that, then move onto the next KW , backlink that and so on?
Or something else?
Many thanks,
Adam
article quality – Well, back when I hired people that would write for me cheaply I would edit them and make them much better. If you have poor content in the long term you’ll most likely get a google penalty or ban eventually (this could be after a year though).
It’s my belief you have to put effort in your articles but for now you could leave them as is with some internal linking and change them after you are on page 2 and better of google (very easy if you have an EMD for an amazon product KW)
When I first started I would do pages. Nowadays since I had to use categories and convert some of my big websites from pages to post so I can sort them with categories for the readers I just always use posts. Ultimately it changes nothing, I was making money with pages and nowadays with posts… Rankings never seem to have been influenced by that.
I usually order my articles so I don’t have them all at the same time for a specific website but since you have them all you could just post it all. Backlink KW’s related to your EMD first but diversify your anchor text ideally.
Alex when you did the change from pages to posts, what you need to do so it wont heart your rankings?
I have some sites with pages and i want to expand those sites, but the main keywords i target are on pages…what you do to not reindex in google the page/pots again as if it new article?
google does not differentiate between them, when I switch pages –> post I saw no difference in rankings. I used a plugin to do that btw. I think it was called p2p converter or something like that.
thanks a lot man i’ll check it out!
btw Alex dont you think there is advantage to pages if they appear to be on the main site sidebar?
probably, but a lot of my current money making websites use old themes from artisteer that did not have the easy to add menu under your header. I only modified my #1 website to manually insert a menu in there. I might do it for some newer Websites, or just put categories in there… not sure.
What do you put in the sidebar? The categories? Anyway would be great to see some expended video about artisteer and places of adsense ads!
Categories or pages, sometimes I put one of those in the menu if my theme has it (my older websites do not and I do not feel like changing the theme).
damn sorry by sidebar i meant menu under the header…still just categories/pages etc?
ya
hey, do you guys use wordpress for creating proper websites, not just blogs?
ive been creating webpages via dreamweaver with some standard templates.
any downsides to using wordpress?
thanks guys.
We use wordpress for everything.
alright, a quick question (and probably stupid looking) coz im new to wp and i cant seem to figure this out. im using artisteer to create my own wordpress themes. but how do I actually edit the content (text) of these themes. is there a program you use?
thanks
ok cool alex thanks.
oh, and say youve created a ‘review product’ webpage to make some affiliate sales, would you also have adwords on that page?… or would you want to delete the opportunity that people would click an adwords ad so there is more chance they will click through to the affiliate page?
are there any times you would not use adwords on a webpage? e.g. sales page of a product you’ve created.?
Thanks again man!!
I do not use adwords simply because that’s another ball game were I would have to test conversions/CTR of my ads to keep costs low etc. Eventually I kinda want to but not for now, my time is better spent elsewhere. I’m thinking about maybe using it on a high converting page that I can test using SEO traffic.
Oops, i meant to say ‘adsense’. do you use adsense on all of your pages?… and if not, why not?
Sorry for the confusion! =)
Nah, I took adsense off the pages were I’m targeting clickbank products. It’s a test but for now no adsense while this review pages start ranking.
Hi guys. I wish I read this post before I purchased my Website theme. Everybody on the web was raving about WOOTHEMES so I had already purchased it. Now I read above that you recommend Artisteer. Will that theme really do better for me with my ADSENSE than a Wootheme? Thanks much! Love your website guys!!!!!
Well with adsense you want themes that give you proper CTR, sometimes the better looking theme is not the best solution for adsense. Either way, worry about that once you get traffic that you can actually worry about CTR and other things.
Great set of articles. Definitely something I want to explore sooner rather than later (read not 9pm on a Friday night)
I’d love to see an example of a site that you’ve built to get a better feeling of exactly what you’re telling us to do.
In time we’ll probably provide an example website, we just can’t provide our current websites since they are linked to all our other ones by many ways (ip, adsense, analytics etc) and they make up 99% of our income so keeping them hidden is in our best interest. We’re building new websites that are separate from our current big money earners and once they start making decent money we’ll give a case study example.
Hey alex, I just got a *flash, with so many websites, do you use 1 google analytics and webmasters account or do you make a separate one for each of your websites???
have a nice day
My adsense websites all have the same analytics/webmasters, they are all linked by adsense ID anyway. My newer sites that may or may not have adsense are so far not on analytics/webmasters, if I do decide to add adsense I’ll add those to the group.
Hi Alex,
On your Microniche Adsense sites, do you open the comment section box?
Ya, though it can get annoying to filer out all the spam trackbacks that have been coming as of late. But I get legit comments every now and then and it’s great.
Hi guys
Great site and great info! One question I have on strategy:
If I set up say 40 niche sites and then followed your strategy from start to finish… you’re saying within a 2-3 months I’ll start to see earnings grow (as traffic/ranking does). Do you think by say month 3 with 40 sites I could make a quarter on each a day… or much more?
Also, you mentioned paying attention to your bigger money makers more (more content etc.) and spending a smaller amount of time on the little sites… so with 40, if I notice 10 are starting to really take off, I focus the majority of my attention on those OR stop working on the little sites altogether?
Shouldn’t I up my game on the smaller ones to get them to where the front runners are?
thanks in advance!
Britta
Well 40 sites is quite a lot, if you can pull it off within 3 months hats off to you but I think it’s best to do 5-10 at most. If some take off more than the other than put more focus on that one, it’s most likely because that niche has more potential and is easier to rank for so you should put more focus on it for a few weeks see if it keeps on increasing.
thanks so much for your reply. i guess 40 was a little too crazy. I’ll start with 10 and see how that goes. thank you so much for the great advice all around.
Hi
I have a website set up and now im making articles for my keywords. Several keywords are very similar like
blue candy recipe
blue candy recipe(s)
recipe of blue candy
recipes for blue candy
my question is do I write articles for each keyword even though it differs by a letter sometimes?
cuz each keyword has a different adsense potential amount
No, combine them. Especially the first 2 and second 2. I would personally all combine them together (all 4) but you should at the very minimum only do 2 articles.
So if I combine them i will still rank for each keyword?
blue candy recipe
will cover all four basically?
thanks for the help!!!
One would be in the title but make sure you mention them all 1-2 times in your article.
Great site you have here, I found you from the WF.
I’ve been building out some niche sites for the purpose of making money thru Adsense. Yes, high volume/low comp is a great way to start but do you also consider what is a “buying” keyword versus an “informational” keyword? I think for some sites I’ve pigeon-holed myself into more informational-type keywords, for example, “pollen allergy”. Do you think those type of sites can still be successful with Adsense if they reach page 1? Thanks.
Trent
Ya, I did a lot of information type keywords in the past… I’m moving towards buyer keywords that have more competition now…
Hey Guys, Great site! Lots of info to take in. I have a couple of questions for you:
1. Im just starting my first site and would like to pick a niche with very little competition just to get my feet wet and try to get ranked in the top 3 ofnGoogle. Ive been looking for exact match keywords. So far Ive found a few but they only get 1500-2000 monthy searches. Do you think it is realistic to still find exact match keywords with 5000-10000 searches or am I just wasting my time?
2. What are your thoughts on domain names with a tv show in the title? I saw one site sold on one of the auction sites for a few thousand dollars with the domain name http://www.spartacusseason2.com. All he did was a bunch of reviews on the episodes and had ebay links to buy the dvds (among other ads). Seems like a easy way to make a few bucks, but is it permitted.
Thanks for all the info!
1. Ya it happens, but it’s very rare. I found one 4 months ago (that I registered) but I don’t really depend on it now anyway. Well I found others but really, not all exact matches at 5k+ are worth it. It still takes some of my time to build up a website and build backlinks.
2. I think if the TV show wanted they could sue you, but the chances of that are very low, especially when you consider that he’s making them sales off his website (well, maybe not off eBay… but if you did amazon definitely…). So ya, actually it might be a good idea I would definitely give it a shot if that’s something you want to try. If you can do it about a show you enjoy it would be even easier for you to enjoy doing the content/managing the website.
ArticleDashboard is out of service I think. I submitted two articles a month back and they are still under review !
Maybe, maybe not, they always take a LONG time for me to accept articles… Months… I think as long as 2-3 months sometimes so they might still get accepted.
Hey Alex, I just bought my first domain name (through your link). I found what seems to be a pretty decent niche and got an EMD with 5500 monthly searches. Unfortunately the .com and .net were gone so I went with .org. Is there a big disadvantage with the .org compared to the other 2? Hopefully by following your guide I will make the first page of google shorlty. Another question. I didnt buy the SSL certificate because I wasnt sure if I needed it or not. Its just an information site and I plan to make money with adsense and possibly some affiliate marketing. When would I need this certificate?
Thank you!
Ya, .org is definitely good. My first website was an EMD with a .org :). Sadly, it revealed itself to have 900 exact searchers by month once the google keyword tool became more accurate in late 2010 (you guys are lucky in some ways, reduces your chance of finding a bad niche by a lot…).
SSL certificate is useless for adsense, it’s more for ecommerce websites because to apply for it I think you need special things like a dedicated IP for hosting and similar things for the customers protection (from what I understoof of it when I did my own small research on the topic).
Thanks for buying it from our link 🙂
Hi Alex,
Just putting together my first site using wordpress and artisteer. Just wondering where you get pictures for your websites since there aren’t many in artisteer- unless I’m looking in the wrong place?
Thanks!!
You can import pictures to it, most of my headers are made with imported pictures that fit the theme of my website.
Thanks for the reply. Can you just steal pictures from any site? If not, are there any picture sites you would recommend?
Thanks again!
Well this is where you have to use your judgement, you can use google image search but you might get in trouble with some pictures. Ideally always try to find pictures that are shared on flicker that the owner specifics can be shared or go to sites like http://sxc.hu/ which offer free pictures.
I can’t find a lot of those plugins… They don’t show up in the search.
Hello.
It just camed in my mind… What style of websites do you do ? Is it blog type where you have a 900 px layout, stretched on all screen layout or how ?
What options do you use for your layout ?
Have a nice and productive day
ya I often use the 900px layout and blog type.
Hey so what do you guys think about buying large databases of PLR articles from sites like freelancer.com. They’re very cheap 9$ for 10,000 articles
You get what you pay for, in that case articles that are used all over the web.
Hey guys,
When adding content, should we do so gradually, or all at once? I have a site plan all laid out, including the necessary content, and I was planning on just dropping it all at once. I’ve read here and there, though, that adding content gradually can be beneficial, as Google likes sites that are regularly updated. I just registered the domain yesterday. Any thoughts?
I usually do it slowly but it probably does not change anything wether you stop updating it now or a month from now.
Okay. Thanks!
hey i got artisteer but it seems like there’s not many options for layouts or themes or anything in fact… like only a few options in each section, is there some sort of add on theme pack i have to download or do i gotta make do with what’s there?
Theirs some addons but I never used them. You can upload custom pictures for your headers and stuff.
Does it look bad to google when they see all these sites with the same Artisteer picture?
is it better to use images from other sources
It’s not a “does it look bad for google”, but a common sense in their viewpoint of “if this guy has 50 websites, all using the same theme, how much does he really care about having those websites provide value to his visitors?”
Not particularly the same guy.
What i meant is reusing Artisteer pictures, les say there’s a few thousands of people (probably more) using artisteer + many use the same theme + these are probably already public domain pictures available on google image.
Public domain pictures in general in fact, that was my question
no, the pictures don’t matter, besides theirs multiple theme layouts such as 1 side bar, 2 sidebars etc. Different colors too.
Hey alex, you still use the adsense all in one YPN plugin for adsense ?
I saw a post of yours saying that you manually insert it.
Or it’s just me ? so you still use that plugin or manually insert the code ?
Or recommend another plugin for adsense ?
manually insert. But I’ve been trying out wp-insert to automatically put some adsense code in my text, not sure if I’ll keep it that way yet.
And the 2nd question would be to put the adsense code to the left and to it’s right side to have the content going down ?
Basically to integrate the adsense block into the content at the beginning centered left ?
yes
Hey alex, I made 10 websites 1 month ago and they are climbing up in the serps
I’m estimating at least 30 $ a day when I reach the 1-5 positions
If you need help with anything from testing backlink services or something new, I can offer you some of my time because you motivated me to start with these.
From where I am, 35 $/ day are enough to leave your job and go full time Internet marketing
I have a few more questions if you don’t mind:
1.Curious how do you organize your adsense account : you create a separate channel for each website ? ( I guess only text )
2.Atm a big chunk of my websites are with 5 content pages ( what should I do ? wait to see if they make money and when I get to a top position if they are making, I will add more content and If they are not making enough should I flip them )?
3. My ctr is quite low atm, ranging from 2-5 %, any new tips to improve your CTR ( quick tips in artisteer building ( how should we try to make our theme, quick tips ) )
4. I use the quick adsense plugin atm on all my websites but I wonder why did you swiched to manual insertion of the adsense blocks ?
Have a productive day !
1. At first I was using url tracking for all the my websites and inner pages. Nowadays this got long and you can only track 200 URL’s in adsense so I only track by domain name. In google analytics I have the adsense money per search term so I use that for more info.
2. 5 Content pages can be fine, just make sure the website looks decent and not something people land on and are like “oh shit wtf is this spam”. That’s when you get banned, not necessarily because you do not have hundreds of pages of content… I never flipped my websites, even if they do not make money but that’s my opinion. When they don’t make money which means under $30 a month for me, I just don’t feel the money I’ll get was worth the time I put into it.
3. That’s highly niche dependent. One of my niche has 2% and I keep trying variations and 2% was the highest I ever got. I’ll make a post on artisteer soon enough, just really busy these days with managing VA’s and new ideas I have.
4. I never switched to manual, I just always did manual. Sometimes some adsense plugins apparently can steal some of your impressions. Not sure if that one is in that list.