However, I want to cover some of the lessons learned, and of course where you can get the app right now.

In a nutshell, the Ad Alert iPhone App allows you to check your Google Adsense earnings hands free! It has a very unique feature that no other Google Adsense apps have.  Of course, its like other apps where you can quickly and easily check how much you have earned in Google Adsense for different periods of time.  But the unique feature, is really why most people will be interested in it.

“Look Mom, No Hands!”

Instead of going nuts logging into your Google Adsense account every hour to see if you have made any money, wouldn’t it be nice if your iPhone just told you?  Well, that’s exactly what the Ad Alert app does!

You specify at what amount you want to be notified, and your phone will make a cash register or other sound (that you pick) every time you earn that amount!  So, if you want to get notified every time you earn $10, you’ll hear a “cha-ching” sound (like a cash register) when your total daily earnings hits $10, $20, $30, etc.  You can input any amount you want.

Not only will it free you from checking your earnings constantly, its more fun!  How cool would it be to be sitting with your friends and suddenly your phone goes “cha-ching!”.  Your friends might say, “What was that?!”  You can just tell them, “Oh, I just made some money while I was hanging out with you guys!”

Here’s a Video of the App in Action:

Buy the AdAlert App Right Here!

Lessons Learned

I learned a great deal developing this app.  I will do a more comprehensive post in the future.  But I was primarily reminded of the importance of hiring the right people.  I was able to outsource this project to a team of developers that I hired from Elance.com.  Luckily, I have worked with a number of developers in the past, so I knew what to look for going into the project.

I would say one of the key takeaways is to always communicate as much as possible with potential programmers BEFORE you hire them.  When they submit a bid, ask follow up questions, and overall try to make sure that they understand all the intricacies of the project.  In addition, this will also help you weed out the developers that are not very responsive or may have a difficult time communicating with.

In fact, by doing this I actually prevented a disaster I believe.  This was not my first iPhone app idea.  My first idea was for a drawing game.  However, because I was able to communicate with several developers before actually hiring anyone, I was able to uncover several potential problems and expenses before I ever committed to anything.  By uncovering these issues, I decide to not pursue that project.

In addition, its critical to do as much background checking as you can.  Look at past reviews and projects as much as possible.

Overall, the development went fairly smooth, but that of course is only part of it.  Now that the app is available as of today, I begin the next phase of marketing and managing the app.  I will continue to share the lessons I learn over the coming weeks and months with this new iPhone app.

Bonus for Reviewing My App

I know that many of you are Google Adsense users, and would absolutely love it if you were to check out my app.  So, for those that leave an honest review of the app on the Apple store, I will send you an original guide I’ve written on planning and executing a large authority site.  I’ve done this once with my NichePursuits.com blog. This is a different strategy completely from building small niche sites (which I have covered extensively here).

However, as I’ve recently discussed, and discussed on the Niche Pursuits Facebook page, I am planning to put a lot of time and energy into a new blog in a completely different niche. This will be different then a typical niche site.  I won’t be focused on 1 keyword, but rather focused on building a brand and destination that people will want to come back to again and again, like I have with Niche Pursuits.  This is a big project and may take 6 months to a year before I see a lot of traction, but I’m committing myself.

So, at the outset, I’ve written a 15-page guide that walks through how YOU can build a large destination type site.  I go into the importance of branding and standing out from the crowd.  I also give tips on the importance of keyword research in the entire process, as this is still very important to get traffic from ALL sources.

So, if you want to see how I am going to build a branded site and potentially how you can do the same, I think you will love the guide.

To get the guide:

1. Just buy the Ad Alert App,
2. Leave an positive review in the App Store,
3. and then email me a copy of your review that is visible in the App store.
4. Then I’ll send you the guide.

Buy the App Here!

Overall, its been quite an adventure creating my first iPhone app, and its quite exhilarating to finally see something I create LIVE on the App store!  Over the coming days, I will be sharing how the app does, and other tips I learn throughout the process.

If you have any questions or comments, I would love to answer them below.

Many of you are already familiar with Pat’s story, but this podcast interview certainly covers more than just his background and what he’s up to right now.  I was able to dig a little deeper into his thoughts about his niche site strategies and some of the recent Google updates.

One of the things that I have always been impressed about with Pat is his ability to build a brand and a loyal following.  After all, someone who is able to garner over 21,000 fans on Facebook is doing something right!  Throughout the interview, Pat gives lots of tips about marketing and branding.

A big part of Pat’s brand is building trust, being completely open, and always willing to share whats working for him and what’s not.  His answers during this podcast are no different.

Some of the topics that we covered included Pat’s background and how he built GreenExamAcademy.com and SmartPassiveIncome.com. Then I was able to dig a little deeper on Pat’s thoughts on niche sites and why he thinks having 10 niches sites is better than 1.

I was also very excited to pick Pat’s brain on iPhone apps.  So, I was able to get some details on both the good and the bad of building iPhone apps.  Can you believe that he owns 27 iPhone apps right now!  I didn’t realize he had so many.  I loved some of the tips that he was able to give on owning and managing an iPhone app business.

As you all know, I am releasing my own iPhone app in just a few days – so he gave me some realistic advice as well as sharing some inspirational stories of iPhone app success.

Also, why does Pat keep a shoebox next to his desk?  You’ll have to listen to find out!

Finally we covered some of the ambitions that Pat has over the next 5 years of so.

Specifically, here are some of the sites that we discussed:

• SmartPassiveIncome.com
• GreenExamAcademy.com
• NicheSiteDuel.com
• Elance.com
• PatonFacebook.com

Overall, Pat covered so many great tid-bits about building a solid brand for yourself and your business that its tough to highlight them all here in the re-cap.  If nothing else, if you are able to listen and not only apply what Pat says specifically about building a brand, but also pay attention to what he is doing in his business; you will be able to pick up some exceptional guidance on taking your own business to the next level.

Enjoy the show!

Also, if you enjoy this show (and others), please take a second to leave a review on the NichePursuits Podcast page on iTunes (you need to view in iTunes to do so).

Please leave your thoughts, questions, or comments below, Pat and I would love to know what you think!

Listen to the Podcast Below

This is a guest post by Nate at IMfuse. I think he offers some great advice on some of the more motivational aspects of being to becoming self-employed full-time.  As a caveat, obvsiouly being self-employed full-time is not for everyone.  However, these are certainly some great points that can help many of you stay motivated.

I’d be willing to guess that anyone reading Spencer’s blog who is actively engaged in building niche sites outside of the time commitments of a “real job” has aspirations of developing that part-time work into a full-time reality. Most of us begin this journey because of the vision and hope associated with developing a successful online business that has the power to change some part of our lives through increasing our income, providing us with location independence, or freeing us from trading an hour for a wage through passive income.

I feel very fortunate to have been able to scale up my sites to a full-time income and I’ve been able to walk away from holding a “real job”. As with most internet marketers who make the leap, there have been successes and failures, challenges and rewards. Running your own business isn’t for everyone. There are inherent risks in any type of business and as Spencer has mentioned several times before here at Niche Pursuits, building niche and authority sites is no different. However, if you do want to eventually take the plunge and can accept the risks, I wanted to share what I feel are the top three challenges for aspiring full-time internet marketers and how you can begin to tear down those walls.

Challenge #1: There Isn’t Enough Time

For anyone wanting to scale their sites up to a full-time income, the single biggest challenge is time. Perhaps you have a demanding day job, friends, family, children, and a host of other commitments. How do you find the time to put in the effort to take your sites from earning a few extra bucks a month to providing enough to cover the bills? In my experience, building and growing a business, even on the internet, is most often anything but “passive”. If you want to keep growing and earning more revenue each month, you’re going to need to be effective with the time that you do have to work on your sites.

The Solution:

The most critical element of my success in going from part-time to full-time was effective management of my time. I worked a little on my business every day of the week while I was making that transition. But it wasn’t working on my business every day that made the difference. It was knowing exactly what I was going to do each time I sat down at my computer.

I laid out a schedule for each week prior to the beginning of that week. For each day of the week, I had a set of specific action steps to take. In the early days, it was broken down into “types” of actions, for example, writing content, link building, keyword research for new sites, etc. By grouping these types of actions together, I was much more effective. If I sat down to write content for site A, it was much more efficient to also write content for site B once I was in that “creative” frame of mind than to start building links for site A.

Know exactly WHEN you are going to sit down and work on your sites and exactly WHAT you are going to do. The schedule kept me on track. It held me accountable. Instead of watching TV in the evenings, the schedule told me I had a “job” to get to. Of course, you have to have some time for fun or you’ll burn out on it, but schedule in what you know you can handle and then hold yourself accountable for those time slots.

Additionally, never include activities like checking email and reading your favorite internet marketing blogs during this scheduled time. I used to start my niche site working sessions with a quick email and Twitter check and would burn an hour before realizing it. There are far too many tasks like this that can be done on a mobile device at other times throughout the day to litter your action time with them.

Challenge #2: Doing It All and Not Running a Business

One of the biggest mistakes I see beginning and part-time internet marketers making is not treating their activities as a business. When we see our internet marketing activities as a “hobby” that may or may not pay off down the line, we lack the serious belief and focus required to truly feel that the sacrifice now will be worth it later on. In order to go from “dabbling” to full-time, you need to commit to treating your niche sites as a business. I’m not saying that you need to run out and file for an LLC, I’m referring simply to a state of mind.

The Solution:

This creates a range of potential complications that can prolong the journey from part-time to full-time, but the area where it impacts that process the most is in not re-investing in the “business”. Now, I’m a proponent of executing most of the activities associated with building, ranking, and monetizing your first couple of niche sites on your own so that you can learn the fundamentals of the process. However, once you’re ranking and earning through your first few sites, the most efficient and effective way to scale up your income is to keep creating new sites. And if you want enough sites to provide a full-time income, you will reach a point where you simply cannot create all the content and build all the links.

I got comfortable early on with taking a portion (sometimes up to 50%, but even now up to 25%) of my earnings and re-investing them into content and link building for new and existing sites. Learn how to effectively outsource on a small scale with some test projects and over time, you’ll learn the ropes well enough to apply it to most of the activities required to run your sites.

Challenge #3: Lack of Confidence and Knowledge

The biggest hang up I had when I was debating whether or not I should make the leap to full-time was always doubting whether or not I had gained the necessary skills to become successful. The internet marketing industry changes rapidly. Google makes algorithm changes and we spend hours trying to find a guru who can make sense of the latest chaos. It causes us to doubt our instincts and the foundation of knowledge we’ve built. This constant doubting can keep us prolonging the journey indefinitely.

The Solution:

Throughout my time in internet marketing, the most important lesson I’ve learned is that the only constant is change. The internet is an incredibly dynamic landscape where information is created and then shared worldwide in seconds. It very much goes against the grain of traditional professions like accounting or law where the old standards evolve over years and decades. Face it: you’re never going to know everything there is to know about this industry. And you know what? No one else does either. We’re always trying to evaluate the changes happening around the internet at any given time and all we can do is inform ourselves and set aside time for professional development each week.

For the last year and a half, I have dedicated Friday afternoons to catching up on trends and news in internet marketing and thinking about how that might affect my business. But I don’t dwell on it. For the most part, I keep doing what I’m doing and modify that with a tweak here or there, making one measurable change at a time.

Regarding confidence, again, running your own business isn’t for everyone. However, the one realization I had that gave me the push I needed was that nothing is permanent. Even in the most stable corporate environments, there are no guarantees that our job will be there tomorrow. Make peace with the unknown and you’ll develop much more confidence both in your day job and in building your own business.

I would also highly recommend engaging with other aspiring or current full-time internet marketers through a private community or mastermind group. I was fortunate enough to be part of a great four-person mastermind group early on in my journey and having the opportunity to exchange ideas and share concerns was vital in reducing the time it took me to go full-time.

The road to “full-time” isn’t easy. But if you’re willing to make the necessary sacrifices, put in the time, and commit to continual professional development, you can increase your odds of success. I can tell you that in the long run, it’s all worth it.

Nate is a full-time internet marketer with both niche and authority sites. He is a member of team imFuse, a site dedicated to providing actionable information for niche and authority site builders. You can subscribe to the imFuse newsletter and get the first three videos from their premium Niche Site Video Training Series for free!

I want to cover some of these thoughts and findings in detail and overall address the issue of building niche sites after the Google Penguin update.

How Are My Sites Doing?

I am like many other people out there, some of my sites were hit pretty hard, but others were not.  Here is an example of one of my sites that was hit by the Penguin update.  You will notice that it was receiving between 130 and 150 visits a day, but once Penguin hit, the traffic went down to around 80 to 100 visitors a day.

On the flip-side, I also had many sites that were unaffected.  For example this site as you can see from the analytics below has been totally flat before, during, and after the Penguin update…no effect whatsoever.

Overall, the Penguin update hurt!  I didn’t like it at all.  However, it has given me a chance to step back and take a look at what may have caused some of my site to get hit, while others were not.  For those of you who were on the webinar I did last week, I gave you an early scoop on some of my findings.  If not, here’s what I’ve discovered.

Penguin was primarily targeting sites that were using too much keyword anchor text or were linking for less than relevant sources.  At least these were 2 of the bigger parts of the updates.

By contrast, the Panda update was targeting sites that had poorly written content or had very short/thin articles.  This is why article directories or wiki type sites like Mahalo.com and others were hit so hard.  The Panda update had nothing to do with targeting “small” niche sites, but targeted both large and small sites that had either short articles or poorly written content.  Both big and small sites were affected equally.

This is also true of the Penguin update.  Big sites were hit just as hard as small sites.  Again, this update had nothing to do with targeting small niche sites and everything to do with targeting link building practices.

Link Building Strategies Targeted by Penguin

So, for example if you were targeting the keyword “best laptop computers” and 100% of the anchor text that you used to link to your site was “best laptop computers”, then your site was likely penalized heavily by the Penguin update.  This didn’t matter if your content was amazing or if you site was extremely large; if you used this kind of link building practice, then you site was “Penguinized”.

The second type of link building strategy that was targeted by Penguin was linking from non-relevant content.  Matt Cutts, gave an example of this here. Notice in that image, that the links are using anchor text that is not relevant or doesn’t make sense to the article itself.  I have to confess that I have done something similar – although not as blatant.  Usually if I wanted to link from a less than relevant article, I would do so in the author box at the end.

So, essentially this is why some of my sites were hit by Penguin and others were not.  My sites that were built a couple of years ago for example all used a high percentage (75 to 90%) of the anchor text was the keyword I was targeting.  These sites were Penguinized.  However, other sites that did not use as much keyword anchor text were not.  Others are finding the same thing to be true.

How to Build Links Post Penguin

Some are saying that as long as you use under 50% keyword anchor text, then you will be fine.  I would personally be even more cautious than that.  In the future, I am going to try and and keep my keyword anchor text below 30%.  The other 70% may just be the site name, generic words (like read more, and click here), or secondary or unrelated keywords.

Overall, I’m not ready to write a full blog post on a link building strategy that everyone should follow, but a lot of the principles that I outlined in my previous backlinking post will remain the same.  Pat Flynn has also done a good job of that. The difference will be linking from more relevant content, using keyword anchor text less, and finding higher quality sources to link from.

My Challenge: Lots of Small Niche Sites vs. 1 Large Site

I suppose now is as good a time as any to let you know about my plans.  Even though some of my niche sites were hit by Penguin, not all of them were, and many of them are still earning quit well, despite the loss of my Adsense account. I have been using several Adsense Alternatives, and although its not as much as Google adsense, its still a very nice income.

Now that the dust has settled a bit from the Penguin update, I plan to start building more small niche sites.  There is still money to be made here, and I’m more than happy to collect some of it.

However, on the other hand, I have been thinking a lot about focusing some time and energy into 1 large site that I write all the content myself and put some real “Spencer love” into; like I do for NichePursuits.com.  Especially as I see the success that Fraser Cain has had with his site.  He made some very good points in the recent podcast interview I did with him here.

So, do I spend my time building lots of small sites or focusing on one large amazing site?

For the next 6 months, I am going to do both.  I work at this full-time, so I have the ability to do that.

For my small niche sites, I will outsource everything and spend perhaps an hour a day building up my portfolio of sites.

For my one large site, I will write all the content, promote it myself, and put some real love and care into it.  I will probably spend 2 hours each day focusing on this one site. Eventually I would like to create my own products for this sites and build real active community there.

The linkbuilding for this large site will all be done through “natural” methods.  In other words, I won’t be doing any manual link building; 100% white hat SEO.

Overall, that’s the plan.  I will build lots of small niche sites and 1 large site over the next 6 months and report back how it going along the way.  I don’t know what to expect as far as earnings from either project, but I think it will be interesting either way.

In conclusion, just because you may have been Penguinized, doesn’t mean that SEO is dead.  Small niche sites are ranking just as well as large sites.  Penguin and Panda could care less if you had a large or a small site; they only cared about the quality and length of your articles, and your link building methods.  Perhaps its just time to re-adjust your strategy slightly.  That’s what I’m doing.

Your Thoughts

Overall, I’ve laid out why some sites were hit by Penguin and why some were not.  In addition, I provided some basic guidance for how I will be building sites down the road.  I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject!  What do you think of my challenge to build several small sites and 1 large site?  What plans do you have for building niche sites after the Penguin update?

If you are not familiar with his story, Benny created an iPhone app called Photo 365 that quickly turned into a big success for him.  How big?  Well, its was so big that Apple featured it as an App of the week, and on the podcast Benny shared that his highest earning day during that peak period was $2,927.44!  Can you imagine watching your earnings grow like that all day?  I would love to check my earnings one day and see it nearly hit $3,000 for the day!

In addition, during this podcast interview Benny shares the exclusive information of how much the app has made to date in total.  He has not shared this anywhere else…including his own blog!

In this interview, Benny shares his story how he went from not really knowing what to do in college to eventually working in his family restaurant, where he has been for a little over 10 years.  Then about a year ago he heard how Pat Flynn was able to outsource nearly every aspect of his iPhone App business.  This inspired Benny to take some action..after all, he could outsource the programming!

He read the book: How to Create iPhone Apps without Programming Experience (I’ve read this book myself and its a good one) to get some basic education, and then began the process of creating an iPhone app.

So, he took action, thought of a great idea, and then executed that plan.  He launched his Photo 365 iPhone App in August of 2011.  To say the least, its been a big success for him.  So much so, that he is already near the end of creating 2 additional iPhone apps that he plans to launch very soon.

I absolutely LOVE stories like this!  Benny had a “normal” job of working in his family’s restaurant, but was still able to create something that is now bringing him a decent income even now.  He goes into more details about how much the app is making him right now.

During the course of our interview, here are some of the things we discussed:

• Outsourcing iPhone Apps on Elance.com
• Photo365 iPhone App
• How Photo365 became App of the week
• How he made $2,927.44 in 1 day
• How much Photo365 has made to date (exclusive information here!)
• The “dark side” of owning an iPhone app
• How to Market an iPhone App
• Benny Hsu’s blog: Getbusylivingblog.com
• The importance of simplicity

Overall, I really enjoyed the interview with Benny and found it highly motivational.  In addition, I was able to ask some questions about my own iPhone App: Ad Alert, which I will be launching in 2 weeks.  So, I was able to get some great pointers, but the information he provided can be applied to any iPhone app out there.

So, if you are considering creating an iPhone app, you definitely will want to listen to this interview.  In addition, I would love to hear any comments or questions that you might have below.

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider leaving a review on iTunes right here!  More reviews helps Apple know whether or not I have a good podcast and will eventually help more people find it.  Thanks for considering.

Listen to the Podcast Here:

This has been a long time coming as most of you are probably aware, so it feels GREAT to finally have it completed! As I have revealed before, this is an iPhone app that allows you to check your Google Adsense earnings quickly and easily.  In addition it has a unique feature that incorporates sounds (via push notifications) that I hadn’t revealed up to this point.  Well, now you can see exactly what the app does on the Ad Alert App website here!  I have a cheesy video of myself up there and everything…you don’t want to miss that!

My iPhone App Timeline:

I also want to review with you the steps that I have taken to lead up to the app getting complete.  Here’s a quick time-line of everything I have done.

• March 2011 – Created NichePursuits.com in order to try business ideas outside of small niche sites
• April 25th, 2011 – Allowed readers to vote on which new niche business idea I should pursue.
• May 2nd, 2011 – Voting Results are in – the iPhone App business is the winner!
• June 23rd 2011 – I decide on the iPhone App I’m going to build.
• November 17th, 2011 – I decide on a different iPhone app to build (a drawing game) and post a job on Elance.com to hire a programmer.
• November 26th, 2011 – After looking at how expensive the bids are on Elance, I decide to scrap the drawing game iPhone app idea and build the Google Adsense iPhone App.
• December 13th, 2011 – Got bids on Elance.com for the Adsense iPhone app idea and decide to hire one of the programmers.
• February 16th, 2012 – First Version of the iPhone App is ready for testing!
• March 23rd, 2012 – Final Version of the iPhone App is essentially done.
• April 6th, 2012 - Start the application process to the Apple Developer program.
• April 25th, 2012 – Realize that Apple is VERY slow about approving users for the Developer program, so apply to the Personal developer program and get approved on the same day.
• May 4th, 2012 – Submit the App to Apple for Approval.
• May 11th, 2012 – Apple approves my App for sale!  The app is called AdAlert: Google Adsense App
• May 28th, 2012 (in the future) – App will be released for sale on the Apple App Store.

As you can see, its been a very long process.  I originally started thinking about building an iPhone app just a little over a year ago.  However, with the fact that I have been working on other parts of my business and that I changed App ideas about half way through, it took much longer than it needed to.

I really didn’t start working on the current Ad Alert App idea until December of last year; so its been about 6 months in the making.  However, I could have completed this project much quicker if I had been focused a bit more on it and knew some of the “ropes” a bit better.

Overall, I am very happy with the way the app has turned out, and I’m excited to finally get it up for sale in a couple of weeks!

Again, if you want to see exactly what my new iPhone app does, you can check out the demo video I created at AdAlertApp.com right now. 

I would love to hear your thoughts, comments, or questions that you might have on the project of mine.

Specifically, we covered how to do keyword research and analyze the competitors in Google.  In the process of discussing the Penguin update, I also went over my new strategy for building sites.  I will most certainly still be building small niche sites, but I also plan on focusing on 1 larger site that I hope to have for many years to come.   Anyway, if you didn’t catch the webinar, we covered some GREAT content!

You can catch a replay of the webinar on this page here: Watch the Webinar Replay

The webinar itself went a little long – nearly an hour and a half!  That was due to the amount of content that we covered, and we spent a lot of time answering questions as well.

Overall, we spent the second half revealing a couple of really cool new features of the theme.  In particular, the theme will allow you to automatically blend in your Google Adsense ads to match the colors of the theme!  So, no matter what color you change your theme to, your ads will change colors right along with it.  And of course, we still give you 3 ad variations to test from; so one can match your theme colors, and the other 2 can be different colors. This will allow you to truly pick out a winning ad.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know that the webinar replay is available in case you missed it.

Check out the Webinar Replay here.

Fraser is the owner of UniverseToday.com, which he started back in 1999.  As revealed in the podcast, the site now receives up to 4 million visitors a month!  He goes into detail how he built the site from scratch, where the idea came from, and how successful it is today.

I also asked a lot of questions about search engine optimization for that site.  If any of you are familiar with Fraser, you will know that he does absolutely NO back linking to his site…yet he receives most of his traffic from the search engines!  How is this possible?  Well, you will have to listen to the podcast to find out.

Fraser’s methods of dealing with the search engines, is something that anyone who is trying to build a business that gets traffic from Google should be paying attention to. In particular, we discussed some of the events related to the Penguin updates. How should you be building sites after the Penguin updates? We cover this in detail.

In addition, we discussed the advantages of owning a product based business (where you sell your own products) vs. an information based business.

Here are some the items of sites that we mentioned:

• UniverseToday.com
• Google Penguin Update
• KeywordStrategy.org
• Keyword Strategy Podcast
• Kickstarter.com
• Product vs. Information websites
• Myth of passive income
• Connect with Fraser on Google+

Warning! This podcast is very motivational and will make you want to go out and create something great!  I think the strategies that Fraser shares for building a real business are quite valuable and will be applicable for many years to come.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on the podcast below.

You can subscribe or leave feedback on iTunes right here.

Listen to the Podcast!

However, I wanted to get some of his history and what he is up to now.  So, how does someone go from dragon boat racing to owning an SEO services company?  Well, you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out – its an intriguing journey!

We discuss some of his early business ventures while he was attending University and then move onto how he now employees a full-time staff helping out a number of corporate and other clients with their Search Engine Optimization efforts.

In addition, we discuss how Youtube Marketing is turning into a big part of his business.  I found this to be particularly interesting.

Overall, here are some of the items or sites that we discussed:

TyroneShum.com

SEO services business

OutsourcingLive.com

Niche Site Duel

Youtube Marketing

As usual, I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts or comments on the show!  You can subscribe in iTunes right here.  Also, if you like what you hear, you can leave a rating on the show…thanks!

Listen to the Podcast:

As a result of loosing my Google Adsense account, I have been scrambling trying to find some good Adsense alternatives.  Its only been a short while since then, but I wanted to share what I have found that’s working so far, and what some of my plans are down the road for my small niche sites.

First, just to remind everyone how my sites were performing, I want to re-state that I made over $125k last year from Google Adsense. You can watch my 2011 year in review video here.  All of that Google Adsense income came from my niche sites.

On top of that, I obviously made some additional income from sales of Long Tail Pro, and a token amount from affiliate sales on NichePursuits.com. However, since I only started selling the full-version of Long Tail Pro in October of last year, the largest portion of my income was from Google Adsense.

So, it hurt pretty bad to lose that source of income.

However, I have moved on!  I now have alternative ad networks running on all of my niche sites, and they are all at least bringing in some income!  Whereas a couple of weeks ago, they weren’t bringing in anything.

How My Sites are Performing?

So, how are my sites performing with the alternatives to Adsense?  Well, the truth is that I haven’t found anything yet that pays quite as well as Adsense for a General ad network, but I am at least happy to have some revenue back.

Right now, my sites are probably bringing in only 1/3 of what they were bringing in a month ago.

Yes, its not that great BUT I still have A LOT of testing to do and I think I should still be able to bring the income up quite a bit.

Essentially within a couple of days of being banned from Adsense, I went straight over to Kontera and Infolinks (where I already had an approved account) and started placing these contextual links on my sites.  I put Kontera code on about half my sites and Infolinks on the other half of my sites.  This was really done as a stop-gap.  I wanted to start bringing in something as quickly as possible.  Now I am starting to get more creative at looking at alternatives.

In addition on a few of my sites I also tested out Chitika ads, Vibrant Media, GumGum, and SkimLinks. Here is how those ad networks stack up against each other on an eCPM basis.  This tells me how much I am making per 1000 views on my sites.

• Infolinks eCPM: $10.41
• Kontera eCPM: $6.37
• Chitika eCPM: $1.94
• Vibrant Media: Does not report on an eCPM basis (but I wasn’t impressed with the earnings).
• GumGum eCPM: $0.44

A quick word about GumGum: this is an image overlay advertising network.  So, this is space that usually does not have any advertising – so this is something that can very easily be added to any other existing in-content advertising that you have.

So, overall Infolinks appears to be the highest paying in-content ad network at this point.  I am going to be moving more and more of my sites over to Infolinks to gain some of this additional revenue.  Overall, they are very simple to implement and use.  The only downside it that you need to get each one of your sites approved.  However, I submitted about 100 sites and they were all approved (minus a couple) within about 24 hours.  So, it wasn’t too bad.

Media.net and SkimLinks

I actually applied to Media.net right away, because I heard so many good things.  However, I have yet to get my account approved.  I waited 10 days (because they say it can take a week for approval), then I emailed them.  They immediately responded and said my application had been denied because my site did not meet the qualifications.  Get this – I applied with NichePursuits.com!  I’m not sure what they are looking for, but I think this is a pretty good site!

However, they did say I could reapply using a different site.  So, I did that a few days ago and still haven’t heard a response.  So, I’m still hopeful to try Media.net out, but they are not real quick at approving my application!

I also have tried SkimLinks out on just one of my sites.  I’m impressed!  Its very easy to implement, like Adsense, and relevant words are automatically turned into affiliate links for various products, services, or information.  Its a pretty cool product.  The best part is that it looks like I made a couple of sales!

Obviously, SkimLinks is not going to be the highest paying way to monetize most sites, but I think it could be a GREAT additional source for many sites.  In fact, you could easily use both Google Adsense (or other networks ) and SkimLinks on the same site to maximize the earning potential.

If you are interested in testing out SkimLinks, check it out here.

Future Plans After Google Adsense

Now, I do also want to state that I have spoken with a couple of different CPA networks, and most of my sites just do not seem to be a good fit.  I do have some coupon sites that would work well, but these are very small sites that don’t get much traffic, so overall its not real helpful.

CPA offers tend to perform well for very targeted or specific offers.  Many of my sites are more general and informational, which works great with Google Adsense or other contextual ad networks, but not for specific affiliate or CPA offers.

However, I do still plan on exploring the CPA/Affiliate route to see if I can find a good fit for some of my sites.

Overall, in the future I hope to get approved to Media.net and to test out other networks as well (I’ve applied at a couple others). Unfortunately, I don’t know that its feasible that I will get my income back to where it was with Google Adsense because Google advertisers just pay so much compared to these other networks.  However, I am hopeful to gain a good portion of that income back.  I am going to get the income back from my existing sites as much as possible and may try to sell a few off.

Long term I am looking long and hard at the new sites that I am creating.  Do I want to continue to build lots of small niche sites?  Or do I want to focus on creating a few high quality long term sites?  Or do I want to create some unique products that can help people and then create interesting websites around those products?  These are some of the things that I have to consider as I build my business for the future.  I have not built any new sites in the past few weeks, so I’m taking some time to think things through.  I will be discussing some of the topics in detail over the coming weeks.

Your Thoughts

I would love to hear your thoughts on my review of a few Adsense alternatives.  Do you have other suggestions that I should be trying out?  I look forward to your input!