Up until I got three of my sites to rank, I thought the hardest part of making money from a niche site was ranking. Not true!

The good news is that if you are close to ranking your site well, that’s awesome. Stick with it! Phase 1 is almost over.

The bad news: you need to make sure that you give your search visitors what they want because those search visitors will leave you with a high bounce rate, low average time on site and $0.00 earned.

I’m about to show you the money I am earning from two of my niche sites. The first one is a very focused affiliate site, about five pages, completely static and reviews a product. Currently it ranks for the product name and “product name review” keywords in the top 10 of Google with very low exact search numbers:

Now let’s take a look at what my broadly targeted .biz domain has earned through Google Adsense. Keep in mind that this its main keyphrase receives close to 8000 exact searches (US) a month. It ranks around #5 in Google and has received about 930 unique visitors in the last month:

Nothing ground breaking. Perhaps you have a niche site or two that is performing just as underwhelmingly as mine are.

How do you determine whether you should give up on your niche site, what the best monetization method is and what your next step should be?

I wholeheartedly believe that if search engine visitors are finding your site, no matter how finicky, if you are not giving them what they came searching for, you won’t make any money.

Where You Should Start

To start with, you need to analyze what type of keyphrase you are selecting. Is it an informational topic? Is it a product specific keyphrase? Here are some examples:

-”internet business ideas”
-”how to get a six pack”
-”playstation 3 review”
-”bookmarking demon review”

As for “internet business ideas”, that’s what I would classify as a “broad” niche site. As in, could it get more specific? Sure. We could break down this keyphrase further down: e-commerce sites, Amazon affiliate sites, your own physical product site, perhaps even freelancing. People are coming using a general keyphrase but expect more specific content from your site! These search visitors could get tired of seeing crappy sites with lots of Google Ads and affiliate offers slapped all over the place. They are here for research purposes (“ideas”).

Not necessarily immediate buyers but could purchase products if you can demonstrate how they can achieve results they want by using them. Best way to impress? Great content. Great lead magnet. You can definitely make money here but you need to do your work and set yourself apart from the competition. Kapeesh?

Making our way to “how to get a six pack”, what a specific topic! It doesn’t ask us how we can get “fit” (fit could mean lose weight or gain muscle). The search visitors are looking very specific information. Since they are in the “mood” to look up something regarding improving their health, it is very possible they would also be up for products that could help them achieve their six pack goal. At this point, though they may be looking for free information, they may be very motivated to achieve those results. You’ll only know by testing and I’m sure there are plenty of affiliate products that could do well.

“playstation 3 review” indicates a great buyer keyphrase. “review” indicates that the search visitors are probably wanting to buy a Playstation 3 but want to check out a review before purchasing. If you present an online savings price (Amazon affiliate), they are likely to buy through your Amazon affiliate link. I know that my buying habits have drastically changed in the last 3-4 years and now I buy 70% of my electronics online. Best way to earn? An honest Playstation 3 review + how much blast it is to have one (increase their yearning to buy one!) + give Amazon affiliate link.

Lastly, we have “bookmarking demon review”. A software product that can be downloaded so you can create social bookmarks right away. Again, this is probably the last step before the search visitors completely make up their minds regarding the software. If you can show them why it’s worth their money, they’ll more than likely buy it from you. How do you help search visitors make up their minds? Show them how the software has helped you gain rankings or traffic + provide obvious affiliate link.

Know the Type of Keyphrase You Are Selecting

If you know the type of keyphrase you are selecting, then you will know how much work you have to put into your site. For instance, choose a specific kephrase (i.e. review), then all you have to do is create a small, 4-5 page review site based around the product.

Select a broad keyphrase and realize that you’ll have to put in a lot more work into the site. A great idea is to break down the main keyphrase into more specific keyphrases. These can end up being categories on your site. You can map content around these specific keyphrases and rank for multiple keyphrases.

Know What Your Search Visitors Want

You would think this would be really obviously but even I have trouble with this. If you have a broad keyphrase, this can become overwhelming as you may feel there is a lot of ground for you to cover.

You not only need to give the search visitors what they came looking for but also intensify their desire to learn more on that topic (if broad keyphrase).

Also, are your search visitors tech savvy? If so, they’ll loathe ads and will be keen to navigate from a site that is littered with ads. It helps greatly to also know who your audience is!

Know How to Monetize Your Niche Site!

You can choose to monetize your niche site in several ways: Google Adsense, Amazon (or another physical product) affiliate, Clickbank products, your own products, affiliate ads, or other types of ads.

Just because you can slap them all on your site doesn’t mean you should.

I believe today’s search visitors are very savvy. If it’s a general informational topics, Google ads may work great. That’s how Pat Flynn monetized his site and to date, has been earning around a $1000 per month from it. His site is about security guard training and these ads worked out well for him.

You need to determine if your site is more suitable for affiliate ads (affiliate links in posts), e-mail list (offer helpful affiliate offers every few weeks), Adsense, etc. Sometimes, it can be hard to determine which one to start with. That’s fine. Test something new every week or so. The only wrong thing you can do is to completely abandon your niche site if you didn’t see results with one monetization method!

Why All of This is Important

Chances are, you are reading this because your niche site isn’t earning you money (or not as much money as you’d like). There is probably a mismatch between what your search visitors are looking for, what you are providing and how you are providing it.

Make sure to go through the following checklist to review your money making plan:

__Do I have a broad or specific keyphrase?
__What do my search visitors want?
__Is my information quality and engaging to the visitor?
__What is the best way to monetize my niche site?

The answers to these questions are crucial and will determine the fate of your niche site. I had been testing Google Adsense on my .biz domain but I have to go with my gut feeling and create an e-mail list for the site. In order for that to happen, I have to offer an amazing lead magnet as these visitors are straight from the search engine and I only have a few seconds to catch their attention.

I can only do that with great content. How about you?

Which Keyphrase Should You Target?

That entirely depends on how much work you want to put into your site. Understand your keyphrase before you settle on one! As you can see, specific keyphrases lend to little guesswork as to what your visitors want from your site. As for broad keyphrases, there is a lot more work to do but the potential of earnings could be much larger in the long run!

How about your niche site? What do you need to do to earn decent money from your niche site? Lastly, in your experience, what type of sites have been most successful in earning you a good income?

When looking around for relevant information on how to rank a website for its keywords, there is entirely so much information out there that it’s hard to get started. Not to mention, the information can be contradictory and as soon as you think you have it all down, you discover a whole new set of guidelines to be followed before you launch your new site.

So who do you listen to? Which path do you take?! Should I listen to the guru who makes $100k a month or $400k a month?!!

Today, I’m about to share with you details regarding my exact match .biz domain. I first mentioned this site when I announced my involvement in a niche site duel. This is a site that I have managed to rank in eight months but the road has been so full of uncertainty that finally getting it to where I want it seems like a grand accomplishment.

Now I know that I can do anything I want, it’s only a matter of “figuring things out” by being persistent and testing. But before we get all wishy washy, let’s dig into the background and read about how you can do the same thing I have done.

Why I Chose a .biz Domain

Talk to the pros and they will guide you to acquire an exact match domain whenever possible. However, there is another common practice in search engine optimization that persists acquiring a .com, .net or .org is way, way better than any other top level domain and that you will have a much easier time ranking your site for a specific keyword.

In case you can’t find an exact match domain, it is suggested to generate a keyphrase that contains the keyword in it. For example, if “dogtraining” .com, .net and .org are already registered, you can opt for “dogtrainingmadeeasy.com” or “dogtrainingexperts.com”.

Instead of going down this route, I chose to stick to an exact match domain. In my case, only the .biz domain was available. Since I’m all about experimentation, I opted for the exactmatchdomain.biz and launched my site.

The Journey to Ranking This Domain

There are many words I could use to complete this sentence. I was able to rank the .us domain I bought along with this domain (in a totally unrelated niche) within three months. This one? More like seven months full of uncertainty and wondering what I was doing wrong.

Using Blog Blueprint, I was able to rank my .biz domain in the top 300 of Google. But there were cycles when it would drop out of the 1000 Google search results, then come back again.

What’s a girl to do when Google insists on dancing the lambada when all she wants is take a corner seat?

My next course of action involved a couple of link wheels [which I detail in my free, no opt-in report]. This brought the site in the top 30 of Google.

Almost there but not quite! How frustrating!

After that, it was a random creation of pyramids (involving web 2.0 posts, forum profiles, and more) and direct social bookmarking. This only helped it to rank in the top 16-20 of Google.

If ranking a site in the top 10 of Google search results seems like pulling teeth, it most definitely can be especially in competitive niches. I won’t sugarcoat this! That’s why there’s a whole profession based on search engine optimization and marketing.

But I knew I was heading in the right direction…

In a matter of a few lines, I’ve shown you the progress this .biz domain made from ranking in top 1000 to top 20. However, that alone took close to six months.

In those six months, I could have easily given up on this domain (I do remember whimpering like a hurt puppy on five different occassions) and stopped building backlinks for it. Instead, I decided to outsource the link building and to keep creating content for this stubborn domain.

I’m glad to reveal that thanks to my persistence with more backlinking efforts, this domain now sits very pretty in Google.

What Do the Numbers Reveal?

The Google Keyword Tool is fun to start off keyword research with and gives good overall information that you can use as a starting point:

Because I believe in researching further than the obvious factors you see here, I used Market Samurai to give me more information before I selected this keyphrase and niche:

The number of searches is only 8100 because I changed the project settings to show the number of searches conducted within the United States only (world-wide searches is over 10,000 per month).

SEOT shows the number of clicks a site would receive if it ranked #1 for this keyphrase. In this example, a site ranking #1 for the main keyphrase should expect around 3,402 visitors in one month out of the 8100 queries.

The numbers all here seem pretty daunting and to be honest, the top 10 competition only made the keyphrase seem daunting:

RDD and RDP are two new data fields that Market Samurai just added but if you look at the BLP column, you can see that anywhere from hundreds to thousands (113,000+) backlinks point to the ranked pages.

Yikes!

Looking at it now, it still seems a bit intimidating.

Before I reveal how well this particular .biz domain is ranking, first I want to share with you 7 guidelines that I was suppose to follow but failed to:

Mistake 1: Choosing a .biz domain

I lightly touched on this earlier. Most internet marketers drill the importance of registering a .com, .net or .org. While I’m all for this, it’s getting harder and harder to find exact match domains especially with these TLDs. Perhaps a .com would have started ranking in the first three months, perhaps not. I went with a .biz domain nevertheless! And I don’t regret it

Mistake 2: Choosing a Non-Competitive Niche

Oopsies! While the on-page factors for the top 10 competition don’t look bad at all, the sheer number of backlinks to the ranking pages seem a tad high (7/10 sites have over a thousand backlinks…). It does come down to the quality of those backlinks but still…

Apparently, this didn’t deter me when it was suppose to.

Mistake 3: Create a Niche Site with Decent Number of Pages

This isn’t something I’m necessarily proud of but since this site is still in the works, it gives me a huge goal to look forward to accomplishing.

Thanks to the Panda update, the safest practice now is to create an authority site. Some people think that having an authority site is akin to having a site with a huge number of pages. Not true but I digress.

This .biz domain contains the typical five pages: “Home”, “About”, “Resources”, “Contact”… and a not-so-typical page.

As I add more posts, I will also add two more pages titled “Start Here” and “What to Expect”. But as you can see, I have no more than four pages set up currently.

Mistake 4: Create a Good Number of Posts When Launching

The more original content on your site, the more you are helping and engaging your readers (helps with engagement and conversions later). The better and more relevant your content, the more Google likey.

This is why it’s quite important to launch a niche site with 5-7 detailed posts that answer your readers questions & helps them. The more Google likes, the better the site’s ranking. It’s not a 100% of the ranking algorithm but it’s a big part of it. Stop cutting corners here and either dedicate your own time to great content or hire someone to do it!

I launched the site with five articles in the queue publishing every 2-3 days. This gave me enough time to add images where relevant, edit content if needed and to use the proper tags/keywords.

I believe I started off with okay but should have provided more quality content instead of posting content for content’s sake!

Mistake 5: Use a Good Theme

I have been using an old, free theme for a couple of my niche sites and I’m paying the price now with conversions. Spend some money on a good theme that you can master and use over and over later, saving you time and money in the long run.

I believe this is costing me conversions but this can only be verified with a better theme and some testing. My current theme makes it hard to distinguish links from regular text and is super bland.

Mistake 6: Use a Graphic Header

Apparently not a necessity since I have been doing without one. But the lack of a nice graphic logo/header does add to my .biz domain looking super dull and boring. A good graphic header should add to the appeal factor of the site and could sway the readers to stay on the site a few seconds (or minutes) more.

Mistake 7: Create Backlinks Consistently

This is kind of bs. You should do this moreso for the sake of keeping up with your work, not the search engines. If you think about any big site, does it gain two backlinks a day every day? No!

There are always some posts and pages that do well throughout the month and some that don’t. I have been outsourcing backlinks and I know sometimes they are created right away and sometimes in small bursts over the time period of 2-3 days (or sometimes a month long campaign).

Mix it up, kids!

What Should You Take Away From All of This?

I didn’t take hours to compose this post for my own vain pleasures (okay, maybe a little!) But in all seriousness, you should know that hard work pays off. As you can see, I didn’t follow the general guidelines but I did more than okay, as evidenced by this sexy little image:

Scroogle shows the ranking to be #5 instead of #4 like Google. Not bad at all, right?

Whether you decide to give into laziness or your mind that is full of doubt or you choose to push past all that is entirely upto you. Ranking my .biz domain has taught me a lot of valuable lessons as has ranking the site that I never thought I’d be able to (details in my other free ebook).

Of course, I’m not saying that if you can follow the guidelines, not to. Even if you don’t follow them, as long as you work hard consistently, you can still get there. It may be a bit harder and require more work and time but rest assured, you’ll be glad you did.

What’s Next for my .biz Domain?

Improvements of all kinds. I seriously think that there is a lot of potential of earning a good income with this site. However to get there, I have a lot of work to do.

What’s next for my .biz domain is better, more engaging content which should help with e-mail list conversions. Even though I am receiving decent traffic, my lead magnet obviously sucks since people aren’t signing up:

Furthermore, I really want to improve the bounce rate and average time on this site:

Obviously this is a niche site and the main source of visitors is people searching on Google. I think by simply posting content that is engaging could help with email list conversions. You bet I’ll be working my tail off to come up with three lengthy posts and a whole new lead magnet.

Currently I’m running a survey on the site to determine and analyze what these web searchers are looking for. Integrating this into my content will be key for me to make any money from this niche site.

What challenges are you facing with your niche site? Is it creating content, building backlinks or conversions?

That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Let’s talk:

Everyone loves saving money including you. Perhaps you have a niche or affiliate site that you really need to rank well in order to earn extra cash. Maybe you have been laid off, trying to make extra part-time or full-time money with your online ventures. But it’s not all that easy, is it?

The time it requires to create a site, the content for it, conduct on-page optimization and then, finally, launching a serious backlinking campaign.

It all seems a bit too much sometimes, doesn’t it? To top it all off, just the effort it takes to create backlinks is draining.

That’s why I have created this report for you. A report that shows you how I have successfully taken several of my niche sites from not ranking in the top 1000 of Google to ranking in the top 5-20.

And guess what? You can do it too. You can have your cake and eat it too. By the time this post goes live, I’ll have launched 2-3 new sites and will have quite a few sites in the top ten of Google.

My free report will show you how a lot of details; my favourite connections and how to get your work done whether you have $5, $20 or a $100 to spend.

The report is completely free. The only thing I want is for it to be used well by you and others like you and me who are trying to accomplish the same thing.

Truth be told, my 29th birthday just passed. I felt like sharing a free report with you all full of details that have helped me up until this point. I’m freely asking you to share this free, no opt-in resource with your friends. All you need to do is click the following button, edit the message if needed and share. Here you go:

After you’re done reading, please come back here and share your honest opinion in the comments section.

As always, much thanks for the support!

Actually, I have something that I know can help you tremendously. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve put together a report that details how I have managed to rank half of my sites in top ten of Google search results and the other half in top twenty of Google.

There is no way that I could have done research for multiple keywords and keyphrases, analyze my top ten competition, launch all these websites, create fleshed out content for each and THEN actively continue to backlink for 7+ sites.

That’s a crap ton of work.

Not to mention the time and investment it takes to learn a tool, it can become really overwhelming.

My report will show you how I’ve used sourcing to accomplish hundreds of dollars worth of work within a reasonable budget. In fact, it doesn’t matter if you have a super low budget. $10-$20 will get you hundreds of backlinks without eating any of your time.

I will happily argue that without the art of sourcing and working with people who are good at what they do, many of you will end up giving up on ranking your niche and affiliate sites. I know because I’ve almost done so on several occasions.

Mainly due to the fact that you have to create backlinks of all sorts and in many cases, a lot of backlinks. After using Bookmarking Demon and having less than stellar results, I’ve finally decided to leave this kind of work for people who do it for a living.

The report will be absolutely free with one exception: a tweet or Facebook share will be asked of you. Also, I will think you are incredibly awesome if you share this post with other people so they can grab the free report next.

The report is finished and is eagerly waiting to be downloaded to all hell in two days (Sunday/Monday).

Until then, thank you My Fellow Warriors!

This one is a hard lesson to learn but I’m glad I’m at the point where I can look back at the way I have handled things, analyze what hasn’t been working and finally applying the new changes. And I’m talking about going back to the blackboard with colored chalk in hand, lots of arrows going in every direction

For a year, I have documented everything I have done with my niche sites and even EIP in my free ebook, To The Moon & Back. At this point, however, I could write a whole new edition of the same ebook (or maybe a Part II?)

Why Not Planning Ahead of Time Is a Recipe for Disaster

Actually, for more than a year, I have written posts sporadically. I even wrote a couple of guest posts that did relatively well for a new blogger. While doing all this, I ignored my niche and affiliate sites the first six months.

Bad move but not an intentional one. Many people who start with search engine optimization don’t know how to go about doing so; a lot of time feels like “wasted time” but dig deep enough and you’ll realize you were just paying the dues. In all my so-called failures, I think great things will come forth (I’ve got it all mapped out!)

What’s Been Bothering Me

When I wrote, it was never intentional. I had really broad goals.

When I created niche sites, I had really broad goals.

When I created my auto-responder messages, they had a purpose with broad goals.

So in case this isn’t lost on anyone, here it is:

That’s changed now. I’m measuring the results for every action I take for EIP and everything around it.

Anything that I’ve written here has been genuine and all that I’ve experienced. It’s been a blast. I will continue to do so but let me share something with you.

Things Need to Change

While free information can be awesome, it can also be paralyzing for both the author and the reader. It’s been amazing to share all I’ve accomplished on here but it has also been a time drain for me.

Creating niche sites, writing good content for them, an auto-responder series, on-page and off-page optimization… takes a lot of time.

I have been dividing my time between EIP content and my niche sites and a lot of times, it becomes overwhelming.

For you readers, you read my updates and a very few of you probably implement any of the advice. That’s alright: it’s free advice. Sometimes free advice doesn’t hold much value. More like ‘Good to know, will get to it at some point’. More on this another time!

With that said, let’s take a look at what I’ve been able to accomplish.

In February, I started a month long challenge in which I was suppose to improve my rankings for each keyword. Here is how the keyword rankings were faring then:

In particular, there was a .biz domain that was having a damn hard time ranking even after doing some serious backlinking. If you look above, it was only indexed in Google and ranked #177 in broad search. Boo-hoo.

Let’s take a look at how they’re doing now in June:

Each line here represents a new keyword per niche/affiliate site. The one that’s ranking #8 for its main keyphrase? Well, remember how I wrote about that site I couldn’t rank and deemed it as a failure in my free ebook? Oh you don’t? Well, now’s a good time. That site now ranks #8 but for it to generate any decent income, it absolutely needs to rank in top three of Google.

Next up is the keyword ranking at #9. Scroogle actually shows this site ranking around #16 (page two). This is the same .biz domain that I mentioned having trouble ranking. Now it’s sitting pretty at #16. To move it to page one, I am working on a few guest posts and we will see what impact that has on its search engine rankings. What an absolute tease!

I have a great feeling about the income potential from my .biz domain. It’s definitely a niche where people are hungry for information. It receives over 10,000+ global exact matches a month.

Which means that if I can get it to page one for its main keyphrase, holy crap! This site could potentially generate a nice income but before I get too far ahead of myself, I’ll just wait and see.

As for the sites that are on page one, they receive less than 4k searches a month so they really need to end up in top three search results for anything fun to happen with them.

As always, I’ll be working on getting them up there.

Last Few Word Before You Go

In hopes of generating a good discussion, let me ask you this: would you be interested in purchasing a resource from the point of view of someone who has managed to rank sites despite not doing everything perfectly?

Whenever I come across any typical “make money online” resource, sure, I get the steps to ranking sites but it’s always so… generic. Or non-personal. Or shit, everything’s just suppose to work out so easily.

As if! (Damn, I went totally ‘Clueless’ there!)

If I was to ever offer a resource (whether it’s an ebook or membership site is not of great importance as of now), I would shed light on the struggles of finding the “right” niche, how you can rank well in the search engines despite any challenges you come across and include a couple of case studies that would be generating decent incomes for me.

Of course, I’d love to also start a niche site or two and show live examples and any seo hiccups along the way (challenges are so exciting!)

One thing that’s always put me off is how most courses glance over any troubling issues and how to circumnavigate them.

As if the competition online isn’t worse than ever…

Anyway, so let’s talk. What are you gripes with any current niche site/how to make money online courses you have purchased and what would you like to see? No, wait, what would you absolutely love to see?

Of course you can leave me comments or even shoot me an e-mail.

Today is Tuesday…. which can be so drab, boring, don’t you agree? I’m glad you do. For a nice change, I thought it would be worthwhile to start this week on a positive note.

Since I don’t have a set schedule, I find myself working on and off during the day, throughout the week and the weekend. It sure doesn’t help that the search engines can take days, more like weeks and months to move the sites up when in that time, the emotional stress can take a toll on you. After all, I’m not setting up these sites for fun. In the long run, I want them to provide a nice chunk of my bread and butter.

Today I thought I would share with you one of my small victories, hopefully on my way to bigger things as well as share a few tips that I use (not so perfectly) that help me keep moving when I feel distressed:

#1. Shift Your Focus On Another Project

This is entirely true: focusing a 100% on just one website and its ranking position will cause a lot of stress for you. The reason for this is that when you usually put a lot of time and effort into something, you’ll see its progress; you’ll see something take shape.

That doesn’t happen right away with search engines. It CAN but it’s very rare. When you create 200-300 backlinks and don’t see any shift in Google’s ranking for your website, you begin to think that your work was useless. It’s an ugly little cycle that can really bring you down.

Now I have learned to keep creating backlinks in the background through Fiverr and shifting my focus on a new project for a few days. This involves thorough keyword research which can take a few hours (spread throughout a few days as you should be considering various niches), finding keyword rich domain names, and finally, launching a new niche site with a couple of articles. This can take your mind off of your current project for 2-6 days, depending on how you work on it. In fact, finding a new niche site and product can result in a nice high!

#2. Re-Evaluate Your Old Plan & Come Up With a New One

It’s hard to look at your plans and come to the conclusion that some angles of it aren’t working as you had hoped. Instead of this throwing you off, relieve your distress by drawing up a leaner, meaner, better plan.

The only way you will feel better is if you come up with a plan. This will pump you full of new energy. I have had to do this every 2-3 months in the last year and every time I refine my plans or come up with new ones, the progress is great.

#3. Savour Small Victories

It’s easy for me to come down on myself after working on my niche sites for a few months now and not seeing the money I want and need to roll in. However, everything I have done so far is resulting in small returns starting to roll in. What can this possibly mean?

That something is FINALLY kicking in. That I’m on the right path. Realizing your small victories can give newfound energy and the much-needed hope to keep investing the time and effort in your projects.

#4. Take a Break (At Least a 24 Hour One!)

Despite all my suggestions, sometimes, you need an old-fashioned break. You can hit up your pool, have fun with your friends, go to the movies–just get out of your head!

You gotta keep things fresh. We often forget to do that when we’re stuck in a situation and think about the same things over and over. Thor, anyone?

#5. Work Smart, Not Just Hard

Learn from your past mistakes. If you are having success with a strategy you’ve tested, then do more of that. It’s that simple.

I Know What You’re Thinking…

This seems like generic advice, right? It may be but it’s advice that works! For instance, I decided to look at the results of my search engine optimization results and can really say that my niche sites are in much better position than they were two months ago.

If you want to learn more details about my mistakes you can avoid with creating online niche sites, you can download and read my free ebook, To the Moon & Back.

In fact, here is a small victory I thought I would share with you all:

To think this came from what I deemed as a “failed” affiliate site effort from a year ago. A $100 won’t pay all my bills but it gives me the signal that my efforts are finally paying off… not to mention, this affiliate site has great potential.

Here’s to dominating affiliate marketing… a $100 at a time!

I won’t start with “the money is in the list” (technically I just did…) because one, you have heard that over and over and two, the list is composed of actual people. And lastly, the focus is on auto-responders and creating an effective auto-responder series.

In the last week, not only have I been working on the EIP auto responder series but also on auto responders for three of my other niche sites. In doing this, I realized that other people with niche sites may have questions about how to get started with an auto-responder series to keep your e-mail list interested and earn money in the process.

Why You Should Bother With an Auto Responder Series

At this point, I have a few different types of sites including niche sites and product-focused sites. If you have a product-focused site, your intent is probably to get visitors to click on your affiliate link and earn some money.

However, if you have a niche site, then it can be hard to pin-point what exactly your visitors may be looking for. If you have a skin care website, perhaps your visitors arrived at your site looking for skin care tips or a specific product or two.

Whatever the reason, in the case of broad niche sites, it is better to get your visitors to subscribe to your e-mail list. This way, you can share with them your best tips and suggest products that are really helpful. Another advantage of having an e-mail list and an engaging auto responder series here is that you will (hopefully) be able to make more than one product sale from people on the list.

Otherwise, any visitors that land on your niche site will otherwise be a hit or miss (either they’ll buy something once or never see your site again).

Even though I have small, small lists (oh-so-close to being in top 5-10 in Google, it hurts!!!), it makes sense to create auto responder messages that will engage my subscribers.

With great, targeted content, not only will the people on your list benefit (good, honest product reviews, tips, case studies, etc.) you can also benefit by making affiliate sales (or even selling your own products if you have any) which is why we’re doing all this to be honest.

Crafting the Perfect Auto Responder Messages

One of the biggest hurdles I have faced is wondering what content to include, when it is appropriate to include affiliate links (every time isn’t the right answer!) and if the content is helpful to the subscriber to begin with.

It’s important to note that these considerations have also weighed on me so heavily that I have delayed creating these messages for months. If this is new territory for you, know that you can edit along the way but it is crucial for you to start.

The important thing is to offer value to your subscribers. How can you do this? You can start by jotting down what your subscribers would be interested in or you can survey/poll them.

I plan on surveying at least one of my niche site subscribers to focus in on their needs. For this auto responder series, I wanted to save myself some time and already have a platform of ideas to extend from. I ended up purchasing PLR articles for under $10. The package contains 500 word plus articles and contains seven articles; most importantly, the articles are well-written.

First I edited and reviewed the articles. Next, I researched what affiliate products I wanted to promote that could help the people on my list and which auto responder message they would be suited for.

Sounds like science right? Remember not only your needs first (monetary), but also help your readers; psychology + science + art = win-win for all.

As basic as this all sounds, I find that getting started is often the hardest part. Getting started can feel completely overwhelming and if you feel this way, there is nothing wrong with outsourcing the work or buying and refining PLR articles as long as they suit the niche topics well.

As people on my list go through the auto responder series, thanks to Aweber, I can view the number clicks for each (affiliate) link, conduct A/B testing and tweak anything as new people join the message cycle. If you nail this well, potentially, your auto-responder series (coupled with your ranked niche site) can bring you income on autopilot.

Additional Stuffs…

If you have never experimented with e-mail lists or auto-responders (especially with a niche site that is ranking well!), then you can check out Aweber and see if it’s a good fit for you. So far, it has been easy to use with plenty of report options.

This is meant as an update for where I am with my niche sites and how I plan on monetizing them. Whether you have more tips to share or have questions, please feel free to connect with me in the comments section below.

P.S. See the Facebook button? I’d very much like my ‘Like’ asap

I am really excited to bring you today’s post because “dominating the rankings” isn’t as easy as powerful as it sounds. Dominating the rankings sounds so mighty but when testing new backlinking strategies and not seeing your website rankings budge, doubt creeps in and brings you down. A lot of people quit due to not seeing results.

Theories are great; they will get you excited. But testing those theories and proving them right or wrong is what separates you from the pack.

So what do you do when you have done all that you think you have done concerning your backlinking campaign? When you have tested forum profiles, social bookmarking, article directories and web 2.0 platforms and aren’t sure about what your next step should be, what should be your next step?

Welcome to the awesomeness of…

Link Wheels!

A few weeks ago, while checking out some gigs on Fiverr, I came across a very interesting gig. This gig offered a link wheel consisting of five spun articles on five web 2.0 platforms with each article pointing to the next one in line as well as my link (that I would be providing).

On top of that, each article would be socially bookmarked five times. “Not bad!” I thought. Hey, for five bucks, what else can you ask for? Then I took a look at his reviews. Majority were positive but one bad review stood out. Leaning towards the cautionary side, I passed up the gig.

…Until I came across Tristan (from Blogging Bookshelf’s) post, Can a $5 SEO Job Really Bring You More Search Traffic?

After reading the results that Tristan had, I returned to the gig and ordered two gigs from the same provider, for two different URLs.

Before we delve any deeper into this madness, let’s return to the basics for those who need it.

What Is a Link Wheel?

Think of a wheel. Now think of a link. Lastly, think about links that are connected in a wheel.

Now a slightly longer explanation: Let’s say you are about to construct a 5 Link Link Wheel on web 2.0 properties. What you would do is create five articles, post them on 5 different web 2.0 properties. Within each article, you will have one link pointing to the next web 2.0 property and one to your website/URL.

Sounds confusing until you take a look in picture form:

[Note: As you can see, this link wheel image was made with LOVE].

This is an image of a link wheel similar to what the Fiverr gig offered. SB stands for social bookmark and the grey arrow shows where each link is pointing to.

This is a simple example of a link wheel. Much more complex link wheels exist with many tiers; how far you want to go with it is up to you. Just don’t get lost in the shuffle.

Why Does Google Love Link Wheels?

Link wheels are much loved by Google because each main link (web 2.0 property like Squidoo, article directories, or Wikis) pointing to your site represent an authority site pointing at you.

When you social bookmark your backlinks (or add any other layer on top of the first set pointing to your main site), this increases the authority of that site. The second layer passes on more link juice love to the first layer… and well, you end up with a LOT of link juice love pointing to your main site.

Another way to think about it: pretend that five people loved your latest post so now five different sites are linking to your new post. Now suppose that those five different sites are loved by other people and are being linked to by a nice number of people. In the end, Google (and other search engines) see your post being linked to by other powerful sites. These are like giant votes on steroid for your site, hurling your site through the rankings. [Note: Of course, this depends on how big your link wheel is, how well it is constructed and how competitive your keyphrase is!]

Do Link Wheels Work?

If done right, link wheels can help with your website rankings. The first link wheel that I ordered from Fiverr didn’t deliver; without going into too much detail, make sure that your link wheel is connected properly.

The link wheel that I ordered, thanks to Tristan, resulted in one of my posts ranking around #20-#25 for a search term that receives 1300 searches globally. Considering it wasn’t ranking at all before, this is great progress. Another link wheel on a completely different resulted in reigning in my site in the top 20 of Google.

With that said, the Fiverr gig that I used resulted in completely spun articles which are unreadable and incoherent. I am now testing other link wheel gigs that will hopefully result in decent content that will serve its purpose. In my opinion, the junk content used for my link wheel exists out there not harming anyone so I don’t have a problem with it. However, if you do, you can choose to provide your own articles to your satisfaction.

The results have been astounding; keep in mind, no other backlinks were created other than the link wheels. At this point, I can choose to either build more link wheels or blast more backlinks at each of the existing tiers within the link wheel. I will probably opt for another set of link wheels.

Again, what I have presented to you is a basic link wheel but one that resulted in decent results for a search term with a low number of searches. No doubt a more complex link wheel could do wonders for a more competitive search term.

Do You Have Any Experience with Link Wheels?

Your turn… have you constructed any link wheels for your websites/blogs? Have they been effective in ranking your sites? Reading about my success with link wheels, are you ready to try one for yourself?

A couple of days ago, I discovered a slew of happy accidents (keep your mind out of the gutter!) surrounding my two main keyphrases (for one website). The first site I ever created and gave up on 4 months later is now consistently ranking anywhere from #4-#6 for two small keywords; one receives a 1000 searches a month and the other 480. With such low number of searches, I thought this site wouldn’t earn me any money at all.

Last month, it earned $50. This month (still nine days left) it has earned me $28 but I expect it to reach $50 again. It definitely won’t make me rich but it’s a nice surprise to see some change rolling in from somewhere I didn’t expect.

So back to those happy (innocent) accidents. I realized that for broader keyphrase terms, terms I never seriously aimed for, the site is already ranking. Let’s paint a pretty picture.

Here’s Ze Pretty Picture

Let’s take a look at the big picture:

As already established, I ranked for the top two keywords. The beauty of the rest of the keywords is that I already rank for them in the top 100:

The only keyword that doesn’t rank so far in any search engine is the one that receives 40,000 global searches a month. But I’m still excited because accidentally, I have discovered something.

Spill It Already…

Alright, so long ago (more like a year ago), I wondered if I could rank a high competition keyword if I ranked a lower competition keyword… which contained the higher competition keyword plus extra word or two (in other words, a variation of the original keyphrase). Sounds confusing so here is an example:

-Keyphrase A: chicken recipes (suppose this gets 40,000 searches)
-Keyphrase B: awesome and delicious chicken recipes (suppose this receives 15,000 searches)
-Keyphrase C: delicious chicken recipes (3000 searches)

Let’s say you intend on ranking your site for the first keyword, chicken recipes. Since this keyphrase is surrounded by competition, you can try ranking your website for the second keyphrase with less competition.

What we have here, essentially, is the perfect keyword pyramid. We could start much easier by trying to rank for the third keyword which has the lowest competition and build our way up.

As you go up in the keyphrase hierarchy, every other keyphrase falls neatly under it. If you start ranking for keyphrases B & C, the theory is you will have a much easier time ranking keyphrase A.

How My Keyphrase Grouping Looks Like

Here is how the ideal keyphrases should be ordered so you can have an easier time with the big kahuna:

[Note: Subset may not be the proper terminology here. As long as the keyphrase contains the 'big kahuna' keyphrase within it, it's all good!].

This doesn’t mean that you can’t focus on two another variation. Upon checking on my rankings and analyzing the data, here is how “my super ugly keyphrase grouping” looks like:

In fact, Glen from Viperchill explains how he manages to rank for keyphrases with great competition in Bulletproof SEO Strategy.

In theory, it sounds fun. When you make it happen, it all just makes sense!

How Should You Go About Doing This?

Very carefully. All kidding aside, if you already have a website that’s ranking for a keyword or two, do some keyword research and see if you can target additional keywords. If there is a keyword that you think is ‘out of the realm’, then break it down into smaller keyphrases that contain the big kahuna.

If you are starting out, then try to find keyword variations that can help you rank for a huge keyword, way down the road, perhaps a good year or so. In the meantime, you can rank all your other keyphrases!

It’s Friday so it’s the perfect time to form a more coherent and beneficial keyphrase strategy like this one… so get right to it. Let me know what you think about this keyphrase domination strategy or if you have a keyword strategy that’s even better. Would you like to see the progress of this set of keyphrases?

On February 28th, I gave you A Peek Sneak Peak at My Old & New Niche Sites & My Monthly Rankings Challenge. The idea was to get all of my seven properties to majorly improve their rankings. If I don’t rank them, I don’t see the money. And if I don’t see the money, bad, bad things happen!

Around the 12th day, I posted my first update: My One Month Website Rankings Challenge Update (Dance Google… Dance!). Everything looks great there, right?

I had weeks where I would noticed great gains and then a trying week where my progress seemed all for nothing. Such is the nature of search engine optimization and ranking your sites in major search engines. So you want to know how well I did?

How Well DID You Do?

Wait, junior grasshopper! Let’s re-visit a few things here. First, let me remind you that the number of searches for each keyword ranges anywhere from 1000-8000:

Apparently, I was wrong. They range from 480-12,000 searches per month. While the 12,000 search keyword is something I forgot about, the 480 one is somewhat of a tragedy (Google updated its numbers last year; they were quite inflated before the adjustment).

I have thoroughly experimented with forum profile backlinks, social bookmarking, Squidoo, small link wheels, Blog Blueprint backlinks, and very little of article marketing.

The three types of backlinks that have blown my mind so far are forum profile backlinks, small link wheels and backlinks from Blog Blueprint. A combination of all three has been quite powerful.

Keep in mind, however, that I didn’t blast my sites with hundreds of forum profile backlinks (or any kind). Rather, I have created them randomly in small bursts throughout the weeks. The only thing I have been consistent with has been Blog Blueprint (even then, I fell off the BB bandwagon for 4 days).

The only warning I have is to use forum profiles cautiously. You don’t want to be too greedy; the last thing you need is your website filtered by the search engines. I tend to order 50-75 backlinks (do-follow and high PR if possible or a good mix of all!) of any type at a time.

I have also blasted links at my Squidoo lenses that already point to my niche sites (just as I have done with my Ezine Articles previously). I still can’t conclude whether this has helped too much but spreading out the types of backlinks you have is great. In fact, that’s the key: create various types of backlinks! Like a rainbow of backlinks… that’s good, right?

Let’s Get To the Rankings NOW!

Okay, okay! In my first update, I showed you this little picture:

After only 10 days, I saw a slight improvement in rankings. A month and a half later, here are what the rankings look like:

What you see underlined in blue, I am super ecstatic about! These were websites that were stubbornly stuck on page 2 of Google or not ranking in Google’s top 1000 (the last two underlined in blue) ever since their launch!

The positions underlined in orange? Two things: one, Market Samurai isn’t presenting the necessarily best or accurate rankings for those positions (SEScout shows them hanging at the same positions). Two, these keywords were sadly ignored.

[Note: In fact, Scroogle and SEScout show even better rankings for all keywords than shown here. It would take too much time to show you using these tools as well].

Clearly, my backlinking strategies are working and it is awesome to see improvements in rankings finally. There are days and weeks when the rankings don’t budge–AT ALL and you are left wondering if all that work has been in vain.

Learn and keep moving!

What’s Next?

My focus is also shifting from my own experiments to seeking clients who can benefit from my SEO (and related) skills. This is a completely new territory for me but I’m excited as it gives me a chance to help other businesses in direct trade for pay (allowing me to continue with my experiments).

As for that question, the one involving if I’m earning any money, the honest (and humbling) answer is no. I have earned very little and surprising from the site that is ranking for two keywords (1000 searches, 480 searches).

I suspect that my other keywords will fair well. The one keyword that receives 3600 searches a month? I really need it to rank in the top 2 to get decent traffic and focus on its third keyword (which is sitting pretty under a 100 and also receives around 3600 searches). The one keyword that receives 12,000 searches a month? I am quite excited about that as well–a keyword where people are looking for ideas. That’s all I will say for now.

Hopefully, I won’t have to pull my Nikes out of my mouth later.

One thing I am sad to report is that I probably won’t be able to stick to my goal of creating 4 new sites this month. In fact, I will be lucky to create two new ones with decent content. I am still fleshing out the content for the new site I created in March. Lastly, I need to create e-mail list content (auto-responders) for my soon-to-be-ranking niche sites as I think that approach will work best for two of my broach niches. Exciting times ahead!

So what do you think? How many niche sites do you have and how are they ranking? What main backlinking strategies do you use or do you tend to spray your niche sites with huge bursts of general backlinks?