It’s also worth noting that this will be my last income report for a while as I’m going to take a bit of a break from niche sites and won’t be focussing too much on the money made from them. Obviously it’s great to get revenue from the sites but with the constant changes to Google and the web, I really don’t know how my sites are going to fare in the future and I’ve got too much ‘real life’ things to concentrate on. Did I mention I’m selling a house, buying a house, and getting married in the next 3 months?

In the beginning

So I started my first ‘niche site’ in May 2011 and didn’t really know what I was up to but it’s nice to know that the first site has been my biggest earner and earns me a couple of hundred pounds each month. I think that if that site hadn’t been a success then I probably would’ve given up a long time ago but as soon as it started earning a few £s then I was hooked and had to build more and more sites.

I’ve never really been involved with SEO previously, and so I will admit that I did undertake some dodgy linkbuilding activities at first as that was what I saw everyone else doing, and it seemed to work. That’s how Google worked, more links=better ranking. And then a few months down the line my site got penalised by Google and I had to rethink my strategy. I cleaned up, put more focus onto the content, and haven’t had to rely on links. If you get a good EMD (Exact Match Domain) and write good quality content then you should rank well. That’s the way it should work, but it seems that Google is even changing that now, so even completely organic sites are getting punished and one can’t help but think there is some ulterior motive from Google to make more money from paid advertisers. Of course there is as they’re a business like any other, so if you’re in niche sites then be prepared to constantly change your strategy to keep earning.

How I’ve made my sites

I make my sites very cheaply with minimal outgoings. I see some people spending hundreds on outsourcing to put a site together but I’ve done most the work myself. I’ve only used free themes, written most content myself, and manually created links. That’s about it really. The only essential costs have been my hosting which I’ve had for years and the domains. Here’s how is usually plays out when I make an AdSense site:

Finding a niche

1. Brainstorm for an idea. It really is that vague, but I have a think about what people are looking for, and from this I will have a keyword.
2. Go onto Google Keywords Tool. From here I can get numbers for searches per month as well as other suggested keywords linked to my initial keyword and also the average Cost Per Click (CPC). I ideally want a search term above 1000 local searches and with a CPC of at least £0.50.
3. Next is checking for available exact match domains (EMD). I only buy .co.uk or org.uk as I know the market for the UK and they are also cheaper than .coms and more likely to be unregistered.
4. If I find a domain I will then have a look at other sites ranking for that search term. If I think I can break onto the 1st page of Google then I will buy the domain.

Setting up the site

1. I only use WordPress so I get that installed along with the usual set of plugins. XML Sitemaps, Google Analytics, Yoast SEO, etc.
2. Next is the content. I will always set up ‘about’ and ‘contact’ and will also put one page of original content on there. I will either write that myself or sometimes get an article from iWriter.com for only a few dollars.
3. Then I add a free theme and customise it so it has some individuality.
4. Finally I will add AdSense onto the site, usually using the Quick AdSense plugin.

Getting the site to rank

1. The most important thing for this to happen is content and a page of content will start giving you indicators of how the site will rank. Using Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics will show how the site is doing. This will also give you indicators of what future content to produce.
2. It always helps to have a few links back to the site, so I will set up twitter, and use a plugin like Tweet Old Posts to get them automatically on the twitter account. I may also try and answer a few questions on Yahoo Answers. But generally I don’t worry too much about links until I think the site has started ranking and I know it has potential. Link building is the poorest part of my skillset but luckily it looks like Google is reducing the impact links have so that will probably work in my favour.

That’s just a brief outline of what I’ve been doing. Some sites have kick-off straight away, some have taken months to get any traffic, and some are just dead in the water with no chance of ranking.

I have of course got a few affiliate sites but their earnings don’t even compare with AdSense so I won’t go into them.

How much did I earn this month?

I made just over £600 this month and would’ve made more had Google’s ‘Penguin’ update not come into play and disrupted the past weeks earnings but I’m very happy with that total but think it will be a while until I see those figures again. I predict that next month I will be lucky to earn £300 but I’ve had dips like this before and managed to come back. The income breakdown for April was

• AdSense = £567.93
• Amazon = £26.23
• Ebay Partner Network = £6.87
• Total = £601.03 (US$973.80)

The eBay Partner Network (EPN) is new this month and I have a basic RSS feed running on a couple of my sites and I’ll see how this goes. You can read more about EPN here.

How much did I earn this year?

So from what started as an experiment I’ve managed to make £3772.38 of extra income in one year. That’s just over $6100 for anyone who wants the figure in USD. This is obviously not ‘take home’ as there are expenses and tax to take into account but it will still leave me with a tidy sum for something I consider a hobby.

As you can see I’ve had my dips, built the revenue back up, and I expect to have another dip next month. You can read individual monthly reports here.

Regrets, I’ve had a few

It wouldn’t be a review without some negatives and so I thought I’d put some in here:

• Bought worthless domains – Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away and I’ve bought some domains which have got zero value. Just because a domain is free to register doesn’t mean that you have to buy it! Luckily these only cost me less than £8 each for 2 years registration so it’s not a big loss but I wish I’d took more time thinking about what I would actually use them for rather than buy first, think later.
• Wish I’d got involved in making niche sites a lot earlier – This is a big regret but there is absolutely nothing I can do about this.
• Bought WSOs from Warrior Forums – You know the stuff that promises to let you in on the secret to making thousands. All a load of bull, and even though I only spent about $50 in total on a few offers early on I see it as money wasted. There is no ‘secret’. There are lots of ‘experts’ on there actually make their money just from promoting these offers and not from actually using the product they are promoting.

What now?

As I explained at the start, I’m going to be taking a bit of a break from my niche sites to see how the dust has settled after the latest Google updates, and I’m also moving houses so there is bound to be some time without internet etc, and then I’m also getting married so that will take priority over everything else, as will my super honeymoon in Bali.

My overall plan is to have a bit of a cull and get rid of the dead sites and domains that I don’t want anymore. That will leave me with a handful of sites that have the potential to be a lot bigger and so I will concentrate of them. In the end I want to have websites that I’m proud to show off and ones that I’m happy to put my name against.

This leads onto my big idea for a local listing site. Yeah, I know it’s been done before, but I think I can make something different and earning money will not be the overriding force behind it. Crucially I won’t be relying on Google for the success of the site and am aiming for people to be reaching the site directly. This may take a year to get going but I am looking to create a BIG site with big visitor numbers. Not huge ones but ones where businesses will want to advertise on my site.

It’s been a pretty wordy post so I’ll end it here, but please leave a comment and get in touch with me on Twitter @Adem.

Another record month

Let’s start off a the best part. This month I’ve made £560.34 from Google AdSense and £37.14 from Amazon Associates taking my monthly total for March to £597.48 (US$948)! I was so agonisingly close to the £600 milestone but I can’t really complain can I?

As you can see I’ve been able to increase my earnings again, even though I thought they would plateau and this is due to the creation of a couple more sites and also the improvement of some older sites and every little bit helps. You will also notice that I’ve been doing this ‘hobby’ for almost a year and I think it’s going pretty well if I do say so myself, but I know that the rug could get pulled away at anytime…

Google Update

When Google puts out a new update to their search algorithm then I’ll admit I’m always a little worried about what it’ll do to my rankings. I shouldn’t really be worried I guess as I play by the rules and have been very organic in how I’m creating my sites but when the rules keep changing then I can’t always guarantee that what was fine last month is not fine this month.

Panda 3.4 is the 14th major update in the last 12 months and it seems that these updates haven’t always been great for some websites and this latest updates effect 1.6% of searches. That doesn’t sound like much but Google is BIG and so that means 1.4 billion queries each month.

How 3.4 affected me

Nada. Which is pretty good I think. Actually I think it’s helped my sites as it’s removed lower quality competition. I did see my main Amazon Affiliate site (the one that actually earns me money) drop completely off the rankings from #2 in the SERPS but I’ve managed to make a few changes and get back up to #4. How did I do that?

• Improved Content – I combined and rewrote several articles.
• Improved Theme – I had been using Chris Guthrie’s Azon Theme but felt that a change to a more original theme not used by 1000s of others might help.
• Added Graphic Logo – Previously the site had a plain text logo, but with Google’s focus on ‘brands’ I made my own graphic logo.

All in all these changes Google is making are improving sites and site content but I still get the feeling that they are still favouring the big name companies which doesn’t always mean the best content websites are #1 and I think we all know that people will always find new ways to get around the rankings system.

Local Listings Authority Site

I’m earning money from small niche sites but I would also like to make a website that I feel proud of and that has genuine return visitors who comment, share, and get real value from it, and so I’ve start work on a new listings site for the town I work in.

I’m aiming to make a site that Google will love, and visitors will love. I want to create a ‘brand’ and I think this site will achieve this (hopefully) but know that it will take a long time to get anything back from this. I’ve already written a couple of articles but want to get lots more content on there before going public with it.

Watch this space for more updates…

What am I doing with the money?

The first thing I’ve been doing for the last couple of months is putting half my earnings into a savings account. I will be paying tax on all my earnings although I’m not sure yet how much it will be, so putting half away will cover me for that and also the previous months where I didn’t save anything. I’m not sure how much tax I will have to pay but know that saving 50% will more than cover it and hopefully avoid any surprises and leave me with some savings at the end.

As for the rest of the money I’m earning, I’m enjoying life and not worrying too much and spending it. On my recent break I was able to pay for the majority of it with the remainder of my earnings and not have to worry about not having enough money in the bank. What’s the point of earning extra money if I can’t spend it?

When you see domains selling for hundreds or thousands then it’s quite easy to think ‘how hard can that be?’ but you would be wrong in assuming that it’s an easy thing to do as your domain has to have some very real pulling power to sell or even get any interest. I’ve come in pretty late in the game and most of the good quality .co.uk or even .org.uk domains have been registered so what I’m left with are domains that just aren’t in high demand or have already been passed-over by other domainers. If I had more money to spend then I could look at buying better domains that are already registered and trying to flip them but this doesn’t interest me as I don’t want money held up in domains not earning me anything and me relying on ‘potential’ future revenue if  I can sell it at a later date.

I started a thread on Acorn Domains for advice on how to sell domains and the feedback echoed the same thing: “There is no trick, you have to own domains that other people covet, and for which they will pay.”

People do not covet my domains but I know that I can make money from them by continuing to develop them as niche sites as when I bought them I did my research into the amount of keyword searches they get and the amount of AdSense CPC then average and so they are still perfectly suited for me to make websites for and hopefully start getting some income from. In the end that means no harm done and I now have a portfolio of 36 domains, all of which I have some potential. Some of these are already earning, and some will be developed in the near future. It’ll certainly keep me busy!

Once the sites are earning money then I there is a chance to sell them and I know they will be more attractive then, but at that stage I will probably rather hold onto them for the continuous revenue rather than a one-off payment.

Do you trade in domains? What’s your biggest sale so far?

1. Sell niche sites.

2. Sell domains

I know there are other ways too but these are the ones I’ve been thinking about. I’ve discounted selling websites though for the moment as I wouldn’t want to sell a site that was earning me money on a monthly basis as I’d rather have a continuous stream rather than one lump sum. I would obviously consider selling a site that wasn’t making money but then again who would buy that? I have seen sites for sale on Flippa with zero income and rankings but these are ones that are churned out and I wouldn’t bother with them.

This gets me onto the second option of selling domains and it is something that I would like to get into. I have been buying quite a few domains, some of which I have built sites for, some of which I will build sites in the future, and some of which are just good domains that I think could have value to someone else.

It’s all a bit speculative but with UK domains costing around £7 for a 2 year period it’s not a massive outlay or gamble and gives me 2 years to sell them on before renewing them. If they don’t sell then I will see about monetising them myself.

So taking a leap into the unknown I put my first domain up for sale fittedwardrobe.org.uk

I’ve seen some domains listed which have absolutely no value whatsoever so when I bought this domain I did the research as if I was going to build a site on this domain myself.

“Fitted Wardrobe” gets 1,000 exact UK searches a month and has a average CPC of £2.12 for Google AdSense so there is definitely some worth in the domain.

The domain is listed on DomainLore, a site specialising in .uk domains and has a starting price of £50 which is the standard starting price for sales on the site.

A 10% deposit is required to sell on DomainLore, so in this case £5, but if the domain sells then this is refunded. It’s a great way of doing business as it means only valuable/sell-able domains are listed as it’s not worth advertising rubbish domains.

I’m interested to see if this gets any interest as it’s my first auction but let me know what you think of it in the comments below. Let me know if you sell domains and how do you appraise how much value it has.

How did I do this?

This month I earned £490.67 from AdSense and only £10.62 from Amazon and that was a result of me deciding where best to spend my time. Whilst the majority of my earnings are from AdSense then it makes business sense to keep my focus on that and try and build on it rather than using my time trying to force a new income stream whilst I haven’t reached my potential with AdSense.

I’ve found it harder to rank for Amazon affiliate sites and even have one site that Google just doesn’t want to index so in a way my hand was forced and I decided to work on my current sites and see what I could do to improve a couple of them. I did also create a new AdSense site and also purchased around 10 new domains to work on in the next few months.

A nice £6,000 pay rise

£500 is a great amount to be earning ‘on the side’ and if this were a regular income then it would effectively mean a £6,000 payrise for me! You wouldn’t turn that down would you? Of course there is tax to come from that but I’m lucky in that my only expenses are my hosting (£16 a month) and buying domains (£7 for 2 years). I write the majority of my own content and spend perhaps £10 a month on content writing and create any backlinks myself or using Fiverr ($10 a month).

I’m only looking up now and fingers crossed I can make further improvements to my income reports.

Can a theme improve ranking?

As I mentioned earlier I looked at ways to improve some of my sites and one of these is a 6 month old site which was earning around £2 a month and using the CTR Theme. I know this site has a bit more potential so I thought I would experiment and give it a new theme. This meant a refresh and also sorting out the menu structure slightly, but didn’t involve any new content. This was simply about site design and structure which is something not always taken into consideration with SEO. Here’s what happened over the month:

This led to the site earning £11.23 last month. The above graph is from Google Webmaster Tools and shows search queries on Google for keywords to my site. As you can see from the graph, visits aren’t amazing (about 16 a day) but my site is ranking higher and with a bit more work and improving the content I am hoping to see further improvements.

Of course this could be down to a Google algorithm change but I doubt it as I installed the new theme on 13th February and the change was almost instant. Take from this what you will but I will certainly be focusing a little more on site design and menu structure from now on rather than just content and links and perhaps this could rejuvenate some of your older sites?

The Future

I am constantly being told that AdSense is unstable and shouldn’t be taken for granted and whilst I agree with this I think it can apply to any income, even your 9-5 salaried job, and so whilst I’m looking to branch out I mustn’t neglect what is providing the majority of my offline income. The future then is more AdSense sites but perhaps it’s time to start working on something ‘bigger’, perhaps a community site, which is something that Google is favouring. What are your tips on this? What do I need to do?

Why do I share my earnings?

I personally enjoy finding out how others are doing with their niche sites, and so why not share how I’m doing? Perhaps if this was my full-time income and a full-time business then I may be a bit more reserved about sharing these details but for the moment there’s no harm. I also like to think that visitors to this site enjoy reading about those who earn a very modest income as well as those who are earning tens of thousands each month.

How much did I earn?

This month has been a great month and I’ve been able to diversify my income with earnings from Amazon Associates, the affiliate scheme run by Amazon. AdSense has yet again been my main earner and it’s great to see those sites I created 9 months ago coming into their own with very little work from myself for the past couple of months. I have seen some of the smaller sites tail off though and I will need to put more work into them if I want to get them earning again.

As you can see I’m almost back to my August peak for AdSense income and I think the Panda update in September did me a favour by clarifying my way of creating sites. I’ve been focusing on producing good content and have also done minimal backlinking, so my sites are very much focusing on organic SEO. Perhaps this has effected some of my smaller sites, but I’m happy with it that way.

When you add the Amazon income of £42.92 to the £387.32 from AdSense then my grand total for the month is £430.24 ($676.77) which is my highest total yet! Looking at the graph below you can see that I’ve gradually emerged from my massive dip and hopefully this will continue, but I know I’ve still got more work to do and really need to get some more profitable sites up and running to up this income as I’m probably at income saturation for several sites. I’m too well aware though that another Google update could come along and hurt my earnings and so don’t take anything for granted. So the name of the game is diversifying my income streams.

Focusing on affiliates over AdSense

I’ve enjoyed making AdSense sites but have been focusing on affiliate sites using Amazon Associates and Affiliate Window. I’ve mentioned previously how the sites I make for these are slightly different from AdSense monetised ones and so it took a little effort to get my head around that, but I think I’m on the right track. People who get onto my affiliate sites are already in the mood to buy so if I can get them onto Amazon via my affiliate links then I can earn a 5% cut of whatever they buy which if done right is much more than I would’ve got for an AdSense click. I am well aware that the bulk of my earnings are still from AdSense and there are still sites that work better with AdSense so perhaps I should shift some of my focus back.

One thing I did learn is that there is always smallprint, and Amazon.co.uk referral fees are capped at £7 per item and so it’s not worth marketing products over £140. A friend of mine bought 4 expensive speakers for a total of £1100 through one of my sites I’d been showing him, and instead of getting £55 commission I got £28, which is still good but not as great as I was expecting but perhaps I’m just being picky. Obviously I won’t be having this ‘extra income’ again and so I will be pushing to get more organic Amazon income next month.

The good thing I’ve noticed about affiliate sites is that even with less traffic I can still get sales as visitors are in the ‘buying mood’, where as if the sites were using AdSense I would expect far less clicks and income, so think about how you monetise your sites and what would work best. Some of my sites have solely AdSense, some have solely Amazon, and I’ve even been able to put some Amazon affiliate links on my sites that were already doing well with AdSense. Just because you’re doing well with AdSense doesn’t mean you can’t do even better by shifting some focus onto affiliate marketing.

Is this passive income?

‘Passive Income’ is used a lot for those who run PPC/Affiliate websites and after 9 months of this I can definitely confirm that it is not passive, and to say so takes away a lot of the hard work we do. It definitely takes work to do the following:

• Keyword Research
• Creating websites
• Creating content
• Ranking
• Selling

All these take time and effort and for someone like me who has a day job too this means working on evenings, weekends, etc.

The only thing remotely passive is getting clicks and sales. I love waking up in the morning and seeing that people have been clicking away or buying through my affiliate links and seeing that money come in doesn’t seem to equate with the work I’ve previously put in. Obviously if I wasn’t making anything then I would be a bit narked but money is trickling through and I suppose I can see that some of my sites are moving towards that ‘passive’ status where all the hard work has been done and they are on auto pilot. They are still getting good clicks and as the domains age that will hopefully get better. OK, so I do need to keep and eye on the sites but I have a couple that I can leave alone now so I can focus on newer sites.

I guess that means that some of my income in passively earned but only after lots of hard work if that makes any sense.

How have you done this month? Please leave a comment and let me know as I love hearing how others are getting on.

Google AdSense

I’ve been using Google AdSense as my main source of revenue since I started buiding niche sites in May 2011 and as you can see from my Income Reports I’ve been doing okay and averaging around £200 ($306) a month with a total income of £1642.32 ($2,559.98) for 2011. Compared to some other internet marketers this isn’t a huge sum but it is certainly something and I think it shows that I can make money from AdSense and can create sites that will get people clicking.

The sites I create often provide a user with information, usually for a service, and visitors will be tempted to find out more from the adverts on my sites. An example could be if I set up a site about ‘dog grooming’, I would explain what it is, how much it costs, etc and then AdSense adverts would also be on the site hopefully featuring dog grooming services near the visitors location. They will click on these links to find out more and I don’t really need to sell the link to that person. They found out enough information from my site and then instead of going back to Google and searching for local dog groomers they will click on the handy links on my site.

What I have noticed is that for an AdSense monetised site to be successful you need to have good traffic as it really is a numbers game. You cannot control what the visitors do once they are on your site and ultimately your revenue depends on the AdSense advertisers for a variety of reasons:

• Cost Per Click (CPC) – Although you will have targeted keywords for your site with a certain average cost-per-click, advertisers budgets do vary and if high payers drop out you will notice this and lower CPC ads will appear on your site. You may still get the same amount of clicks but you will be earning less.
• Click Through Rate (CTR) – You will have created a site with the aim of giving people enough information for them to want to find out more by clicking AdSense adverts on your site. If the adverts are poorly created by the advertisers or don’t give the visitors a call to action  or motivate them then they may not click them. In the worst case there could be no one advertising dog related products and you get zero clicks.

At the end of the day you have virtually no control over the adverts appearing on your site (emphasis on virtually) as this lies with Google and their advertisers and so I would say that you will need to play the percentages to guarantee an income from Google AdSense. Even if you do have a low CPC and low CTR, a higher volume of visitors will mean a higher income. Of course if you choose the right keywords, have a high CPC and nail your CTR then more visitors will mean great income for you.

Amazon Associates

With Amazon Associates I have had to change my strategy for creating websites as the focus is completely different for promoting physical products. When you create an Amazon affiliate site you need to realise that the visitor is probably in a buying mood and if you can get them onto your site then you will be on your way to making a sale.

With an Amazon Associate site you do not get revenue for people simply clicking links. If you get people to the Amazon site via your site then a cookie will be placed on the visitors browser for 24 hours, and if they buy anything from Amazon in that time, then you will get a basic 5% commission of the cost of that product with the commission percentage rising depending on the amount of products sold e.g if you sell 21 items in a month your commission rate goes up to 5.5%.

When I create this type of site I am not really creating a ‘niche site’ with highly researched information but more usually writing product reviews, product comparisons, etc and inserting links all pointing towards the specific product page on Amazon using a personalised affiliate link. I put these links in text like ‘find out more about this product’ leading the visitor to Amazon and hopefully a sale.

With Amazon you have more control over CPC and CTR, although those are not strictly terms applicable with it, and perhaps we should add ‘coversion rate’ into the mix.

• CPC – There is no cost per click with Amazon, but if the site visitor is in a buying mood and I am promoting a high-price item of £100 then my CPC could be 5% of that meaning £5 commission. This is certainly higher than most clicks on AdSense, but obviously it will involve 2 clicks from the user, one from my site to Amazon, and then one to ‘buy’.
• CTR/Conversion Rate- I have found that if I get a visitor to click through to Amazon then my sales conversion on my Affiliate links are at least 10%, meaning 1 in 10 people I send to Amazon will buy something which is pretty good I think and certainly much better than the CTR with AdSense.

My new amazon site has had 112 visits in 3 weeks, and from that I have had 65 affiliate link clicks through to Amazon and have made 9 sales of products totalling £10.66 commission. I’ve not had a huge amount of visitors but I am converting well and the income is much higher than if I had an AdSense site with only 112 visits.

The downside to all this is that SEO is harder for these tyes of sites than a niche Adsense site as you are producing less unique content and there is more competition so you have do work harder to differentiate your site from large shopping sites who are also selling these products. Focus on one type of item for your site and then don’t just stick to reviews, but also include  things like Top 10 lists, which will mean at least 10 affiliate links, and product comparisons e.g Xbox versus PS3 where you can create more content for your site, more keywords, more backlinks, etc which is all good for SEO. Don’t be content with just copying product reviews from Amazon as this will rank you nowhere and don’t waste money on plugins that will promise a fully-populated affiliate site as they will do nothing unless you have original content.

Conclusion – which is best?

I believe there is no right or wrong choice between Google AdSense and Amazon Associates as it all depends on the type of site you are creating. Are you providing information and a service or are you promoting a physical product?

• Information/Service – Monetise your site using AdSense and as long as you can get enough visitors and have done your research you will earn money. With AdSense you need visitors but do not need to sell to the visitor and so you can put an advert on any page and you will probably get some clicks. More visitors means more revenue though and a poorly researched niche will mean only earning pennies.
• Physical Product – If you are creating a site promoting a physical product then you will need to rank highly in the SERPS, but you can earn more per visitor depending on the products you are promoting and you will need fewer visitors to make a sale as they are already in the buying mood.

I would also add that keyword research for an affiliate site is easier than for a niche site as you can select a product you want to sell e.g ‘hairdryers’, put it into Google Keywords Tool, and then find out related searches and try and get a domain from that, where as for niche sites you have to come up with the initial topic first which is one of the hardest parts.

The best thing you can do is utilise both AdSense and Amazon and create a variety of different sites so you have a diverse income stream. This revenue is not cast in stone and many people have been affected by only focusing on one method. AdSense users have had their accounts blocked (for a variety of reasons) and US users have had their Amazon Associate accounts blocked due to state tax laws, and in both in both cases income dropped to zero. If you can spread yourself out you may still get hit but these actions, but you can lessen the blow by having other income streams.

Most of my niche sites monetised through AdSense are promoting services etc and so moving onto sites that promote a physical product has been a change and initially I didn’t quite get it. My AdSense sites don’t require me to be a salesman. I write content, insert my Ad code and Google does the rest, but with Amazon products I need to promote the products well enough for people to not only click on the link but also make a purchase.

I’m happy to say that I made my first sale yesterday and will be receiving 5% of a £42.99 product which works out as £2.15 income. It’s not a massive amount but it’s still nice to know that someone out there appreciated my recommendation and bought that item and hopefully once I build up traffic I will get more sales. With more sales also comes a better percentage too.

As I mentioned earlier I found the transition from AdSense sites to Amazon sites quite hard and have made a couple of dud sites where my lack of focus and understanding of affiliate sales meant they haven’t succeeded, but I decided to purchase Chris Guthrie’s Niche Profit Course over the Christmas break to try and remedy that and I believe it was a great decision. I’ve read Chris’ blog for quite a while now so I know how successful he has been and was happy to make this investment.

Niche Profit Course provides step-by-step instructions in video format modules so you can build your own site from scratch.

I’ve been reporting on my income reports every month so I’ll continue this with a short report below and then move onto 2011 as a whole.

December Income Report

I’ll admit that December wasn’t a very productive month for me with regards to working on my AdSense sites but I’m happy to say that it didn’t effect them and my earnings grew again this month to £208.55 ($324.97) up from £149.29 ($234.25) in November. I did however spend more time on Amazon affiliate sites with a view to diversifying my income but earnings from these remain at virtually zero as I’ve found I need to put more effort as it’s not as simple as relying on clicks as I need to get visitors to actually want to buy a physical product. To remedy this I have enrolled in Chris Guthrie’s Niche Profit Course and found it a really useful way of focusing on what’s important and it also came with the free bonus Azon Theme and that is well worth the money on it’s own as it’s especially tailored to making Amazon affilaite sites. If you don’t want to pay for the course then download the free Beginners Guide. I’m 100% confident I will make money using Amazon and I believe it will be worth the effort in the long run as another alternative to AdSense.

2011 Income Report

From something which started out as an experiment I think I’ve done quite well in my first 8 months and I believe I’ve learned quite a lot from keyword research to backlinking strategies. I’ve also earned a bit of money along the way too. I have earned this from making websites which target specific low competition keywords I’ve researched where I believe I can make a website which will not only provide useful information but which will also entice visitors to click on the adverts provided by Google AdSense.

I struck it lucky in my first few months and made an amazing start and couldn’t quite believe the success I was having but pride comes before a fall and the September/October Panda updates hit me hard and made me realise that I needed to improve the quality of my content and my backlinks as the methods I’d used were great for the short term, writing lots of content (but poor quality) and creating lots of links (but only focusing on one keyword), but these were not great for the long term with regards to the updates to Google’s algorithm. October was my lowest point with only £87.26 in earnings but the changes I’ve made as well as adding more sites to my portfolio have turned things around and it’s looks like I’m on my way back up (fingers crossed).

So in 8 months my earning from my niche sites have totalled £1642.32 or $2,559.98 which is great as this has all been earned in my spare time as I already work a 9-5 job and so this is on top of my salary and works out at an average of £200 extra earnings each month. It’s worth noting that this figure doesn’t include any of my outgoings such as hosting, domain purchases, etc and most importantly tax, which I will have to pay next January for the current financial year I am in, so for a true figure I should probably take a third off of these earnings to get a realistic bankable ‘profit’. I know some people don’t declare their online earnings but I am an honest fellow and hope that I can earn a lot more through my niche sites.

Roundup of sites I’ve built

The types of site I’ve built all come down to the keyword research I’ve put in at the beginning and what I’m aiming for. Some keywords have massive potential with a large amount of searches and a high cost-per-click (CPC), whilst others have fewer searches but less competition and I like to try and mix it up and have some variety with the sites I choose. I’m at a stage now where I have 3 different types of sites:

1. Sites that virtually manage themselves and have good regular earnings (30%)
   
2. Sites that need further development but have potential (45%)
3. Sites that are dormant with no traffic (25%)

Choosing which niche to target is not an exact science and you cannot expect to have a 100% success rate, and I would say that I’m happy with the percentages above which are rough estimates. I have bought some domains which have a good potential but I will admit that I have bought some on a whim which were very poor choices with minimal research, but the saving grace is that I usually only buy .uk extensions which cost less than £3 a year so these are quite cheap mistakes and with all my domain purchases they are low risk gambles.

I have been guilty of starting work on new new sites before I’ve finished working on the previous site, and I think that has been a downfall this year as I believe some of the type-2 sites with potential could have made me some money with a little bit more work, but they are not wasted as I can go back to them anytime and improve them. Most of them currently use the CTR Theme which is easy to install and configure with AdSense and although they have very little content, they are online, getting a few clicks, and will someday move up to type-1 sites.

Overall though I’m glad that I have sites that are now making money with very little effort as this was the aim at the start of the year when I first heard the phrase ‘passive income’.

Aims for 2012

It’s always nice to have targets so here’s what I would like to achieve in 2012:

• Earn £500 in a month – This will mean more than doubling my income but is definitely achievable and is something that I would ideally like to exceed!
• Put 100% effort into each site I make – I am guilty of moving onto a new sites before I’ve finished the current one I’m working on, so my aim is to finish the job I started.
• Earn £100 a month in Amazon affiliate fees. I currently earn zero from this scheme but I’m making new sites and would like to reach this level to make it worthwhile.
• Start saving my income – I’ve mentioned that I will need to pay my taxes at the end of the year so I need to start saving at least 30% of the payments I receive and put it in a separate bank account.

How did you do?

I know quite a few people who are following the same journey as me so how did you do and what are your aims for 2012?

Speak soon