Well, I guess it about time to post something on my blog. Blogs are supposed to be updated, I suppose.
Well, full time. Not what I expected. I’ve been officially “full time” since October 23 – about 3 weeks. How much have I been getting done…Um I’m embarrassed to say, not that much. Oh, I’ve been pretending to work for a while, but I can honestly say I’ve probably put in 5 days of good work.
Now, part of the problem is that when you go full time, you all the sudden have all this spare time. And the work you put in doesn’t directly affect your earnings, so you are still getting paid for sleeping in all day or doing a superman session at the computer.
I’m getting back on track to my usual 15 hour days though – I did put in a 12 hour day yesterday. I might have needed a couple weeks to recharge. But whatever, even machines break down without a break once in a while. Looks like I should follow a few of Leo’s Internet Marketing Full Timer tips.
The Story of Dorris and Dofus
Today, I wanted to tell you the tale of two internet marketers, Dorris and Dufus. These two new marketers decided they were going to find a path to a full time income by each creating 100 sites. Dorris decided to go after keywords that had barely any competition in off the wall niches while Dufus decided that he had the “cure for cancer” up his sleeve and knew the best “acne treatments”.
After two months of building sites, Dorris finds she’s making 40 dollars a day while Dufus, despite the fact that he has an incredible wealth of knowledge to share about cancer, skin care and Obama loans, is only make a few pennies a day.
Does this sound familiar? If you have been working at this game (and I mean real work) for several months are getting Dufus’s results, I can tell you right now folks, there are probably two things you are doing wrong: you are picking niches that have TOO much competition or/and you are picking the wrong niches
I don’t dispute that going after high paying competitive niches can pay off in the end. BUT, you better be willing to sell your soul to the gods of backlinking for a year or two OR have a powerful personal network to help aid your ranking.
If you don’t, you are going to try ranking your sites very hard for three months, then give up when you find that your 10-year old niece made more money selling lemonade on a Monday than you did with 4 months of Internet Marketing.
It’s possible to make money online QUICKLY (as in a few weeks or months) if you do your keyword research right. Impossible right? You need months of hardcore backlinking to make money, right? Dozens of pages of content? Google holy water blessed by Matt Cutts? Nope, nope, nope, and definitely fucking not.
Let’s talk about something called the .50 a day site. Not a lot of glory, but they can make you consistent money en bulk. Everyone wants a single 3k a month site. I imagine it’s nice. You can call up your dad and say “Gee Dad, I’ve got this cool website that makes me 3k a month. I’m balling. Now I can wear midget thongs and watch Hero reruns all day AND get paid for it.” Good for you and I hope you like Heroes, because I sure don’t.
But you see, golly geez, it actually takes you a lot of god damn work to make a couple thousand dollars a month with a single site. Unless you seriously luck out with your keyword search, you might be looking at thousands of backlinks and 6 months to a year of work.
But our little modest .50 a day sites can make money faster. You see. .50 a day ain’t a lot. But when you times that by 100 or 200, all the sudden you have an income.
I’m not saying this is the only way to make money. But if you want to make money online sooner then later, you need to stop looking at the sky and start looking at the ground.
Now, I’m not saying if you want to pick out 10 paying keywords in competitive niches and play SEO for 6 months or a year that you can’t make oodles of money. You can, and Internet Marketers with a lot of experience (and the networks to back them up) do this. But if you are not a star SEO, an experienced marketer, or some young backlinking hotshot, you’re going to find it’s not that easy to rank those 10 sites for acne, obama loans, and make money online niches.
I’m also not arguing that spending a lot of time on a few authority sites is not the way to go long term. I’d love to have a nice harem of authority sites that earn me thousands of dollars each, but alas, that’s not going to be for a couple years.
You can look at going deep to make money (authority, lots of backlinks) or you can go wide (lots of little sites). Ideally, you want a mix of both. But if you have to choose between the two, I’d say go very fucking wide, build up a full time income, then dig down deep.
I’ve realized that for people to succeed with making money online, they need to see some results. It can be pretty damn rough spending a year working hoping in a pie-in-the-sky sort of way that you will make money. But if you start to see results, you are going to more likely bust your ass even harder, which will help you earn more.
Because no doubt people will be asking for me to write a tutorial on “how to make .50 cents a day with a niche blog”, here are eight points:
1. Get Exact Keyword Domains
2. Don’t be afraid of very low exact searches
3. Don’t trust google keyword tool CPC – it lies big time. .05 cpc could give .50 clicks and $80 could give .05 clicks.
4. Create between 50-100 domains
5. Have 5 posts of targeted, well written, helpful content on each site
6. PICK NICHES THAT OTHER MARKETERS DON’T HIT
7. Use the most god awful ugliest theme you can find
8. Pay pal me $100 – VERY IMPORTANT OTHERWISE YOU WON’T MAKE ANY MONEY!!!
Well, I lied about #8, sorry.
It’s important that you guys pick niches that aren’t the weightloss, health, skincare, dating that every other IM loves to spam. There is money in these niches, yes. But a lot of competition too. Competition, guys, means it’s a lot harder to get your pages RANKING high enough to get traffic. However, you will have to experiment for yourself. But there are a lot of niches out there that don’t have to do with getting rid of bad skin, losing fat in 30 days, finding Obama loans, and guessing the color of Britney’s underwear.
There are millions of untapped niches guys. Many of these are easy to rank for. Which means you get traffic fast and, if the audience is receptive, clicks.
Adsense Sniper Progress
Ok, so how are these snipers doing? Well, I’ve been working on backlinks for the past 3 weeks (cough…i mean for 5 days) and I only have about 1/10 actually backed up.
Here is my last week’s revenue:
As you can see, my earnings have gone up, somewhat. Maybe not dramatically, but I’m breaking 100’s often and sometimes did deep into the next hundred. Average is almost at 100 bucks a day. A full time income right there. Now, in about a month and a half I probably put up an additional 40 sites and I was doing some other things and in the process of quitting my job.The past 3 weeks, I’ve also done almost fuck all, so definetly not as much progress as I could have had put putting 3 weeks of real work into these.
However, I’ve finally started do SEO work on every single one of the snipers. I’m currently at 12 out of 105 (started past week). I’m hoping to god I can be done with the 105 by the end of this month, but I don’t have my hopes that high. It might take a few more weeks after the end of the month. Once I’m done, I’m going back and picking out the top 5-10 sites that I fee can earn 20-60 bucks a day, and will spend a solid month building backlink networks for each site. This should drastically jump up my earnings. We should see a pretty big increase in my earnings as I will only be backlinking these snipers over the next 2 weeks to a month. It may be early to make predictions, but I’d like to see these sites, after I finish the initial backlinking run on all 105, doing about 200 (6k a month) in adsense a day, though I’d LOVE to see 300 a day (9k a month). When I pick out the 5-10 winners and do some real SEO work on them for a month, I may be able to get another 100-200 bucks a day out of the snipers. Now, these are some heavy predictions…200-500 bucks a day from these sites, but based on what I’ve seen, very possible. But, we’ll see how it goes.
After these 105 are done, I’m going to do another 100. I may do 100 ebay snipers before I do another 100 adsense snipers, just to diversify. We’ll see how that goes.
So there we go. Sorry, not an uber long post like you are used to. One of these days, I’m going to come out with a 14k word post just to break Grizzly’s super post record he’s always boasting about 
Some more MMO food for thought. Have a great weekend guys and go make money online.
47 Comments
That’s a pretty sweet outdoor Disco you took a picture of… I’m thinking either Mars or somewhere in Asia…
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admin Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Took it in China’s Sichuan province a few years ago. City was so polluted, but the light show they put up at night boggles the mind.
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Very good advice for a beginner Ben. I have striving to create 100 niches that can bring me at least $10 per month. I think it is easier to create 100s of these then to create a big site that might or might not work.
I have a couple of questions that I hope you can shed some light on:
i) Do you need many backlinks to these sites?
ii) How do you evaluate the competition such that you know you have a chance to rank?
Thanks for always providing such great tips for free. Other might sell these for a quick $37 bucks : )
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FINALLY, the real secret to making money online, now if you would just provide me with your paypal e-mail and other payment information, I will be making millions. MUWHAHA!
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>> 8. Pay pal me $100 – VERY IMPORTANT OTHERWISE YOU WON’T MAKE ANY MONEY
>> Well, I lied about #8, sorry.
Well, darn! And here I thought there was a shortcut to my millions
Anyway, in your experience, which ranks faster for the low competition niche strategy you described above - infobarrel, hubpages or exact match domain names?
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admin Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Hubpages used to rank fast…not any more. IB’s rank good, but CTR is dreadful. I’m all about making your own sites now.
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Calvin Reply:
November 15th, 2009 at 12:43 am
Ah! Thanks, Ben. My experiences tie in with what you said, but because I don’t have the quantity for statistical significance, I thought it was better to confirm with you. So it seems I should start converting my IBs to exact match domain names, then.
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Great posts Ben. I started out doing a lot of research of Grizz’s blog and learning over the past year. I’ve been in the $1 a day club for the past couple of months and I’m finally starting to hit it hard. Your site is very motivational on that front.
I’ve found once your comfortable with your knowledge base, just getting out there and putting up sites teaches you the other part. As long as you keep learning what works well, and trying new things. Look forward to the future updates.
Some people may be shocked with the success you’ve had in such a short period of time. But the amount of volume you do in a week must equal what a lot of people do in a year. I guess if you want it, you just have to go after it.
By the way - you rank no 5 for midget thongs.
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admin Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
You’ve discovered the secret plan to monitize this blog. Build authority for miget thongs then throw up and ebay affiliate store hawking them!
Yep, MMO comes down to work. Anyone that tries to sell you some get rich in 20 days scheme, is outright lying. More accurate is — put in full time hours for 3 months to a year, then take get a full time income — and that’s if you know what you are doing.
But keep it up, we were all in the 1 buck a day club at one time. With enough work and effort, you will be surprised how fast that 1 dollar hits 50 then 100,
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Ben, your posts are really full of the information, but what I found sometimes even better is your sense of humor. Thanks!
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admin Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Thank’s J — I aim to entertain
Best form of teaching I’ve experienced is teaching that’s instructive as well as funny. I learned this from my grade 11 history teacher
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J. Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
you are right, boring teachers are the worst, which is not your case (at all)
anyway, I have a question about this “get-rich-fast” approach: is it worth to link these sites in between each other or should they be as single as possible?
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admin Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 2:24 am
I would say don’t link them together. If you want to you can, but filter the links through some web 2.0 WITHOUT your adsense on. It will help to mask things a bit. I’m not sure how google views a huge network of sites all sharing the same adsense ID. They might devalue the links, though I’m not sure.
lol - there’s actually a PPC ad that comes up when you search for midget thongs!
Nice post. I wouldn’t worry too much about the ‘wasted time’ - you probably just needed a break - you don’t want to burn out.
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admin Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
thanks, yea, the little break was nice. But time to hit the grind again monday!
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Great post as always - this is by far the best MMO website I know
Thanks for the post - would be great if you can help clarify a few Qs:
1. Exact domain name: is it only .com and .net you go for or also .org or/and anything else?
2. How long are in average the posts per sniper site? Do they target all the title keyword? Is any of them also stuffed with related keywords?
3. The idea with no competition is that you will rank immediately. Does it happen for a large no of sites to rank nowhere and make no money, despite going for 0.5 USD/day in no competition area?
4. What is the backlink-ing you started to do for a standard sniper?
Thanks!
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admin Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
1 com/.net/.org.
2 400-800 words — more the better
3 of course…each niche is depends. But what I can assure you though is that if you decide to target the “best acne treatments”, you won’t be seeing your site anywhere on the front page for months (and lots of backlinks)
4 whatever I feel I need. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. There is no template I apply here. But with these type of sites, you really have to build the backlink network yourself, cause other people don’t want to give you links.
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Alexander Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 3:08 am
And how many articles do you use per adsense sniper?
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I am currently doing something like this. Static html sites are quite quick to set up for this, and at the same time quite easy to make ugly. Although I am not focusing on adsense since many of my keywords so far don’t have much ads for adsense, so I am mixing up with eBay and Amazon - which ever has better products to sell for the keyword. I did keyword research on monday, tuesday I started building the sites, and today I should have 20 up and running. The goal is to keep this rate up for a while and see where it goes - I am quite confident that I could be doing even more because I am still lazying around every now and then.
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Ben,
Great post again
Maybe I overlooked something, but when did you put these 105 adsense sites up. Last month or months back.
Thanks
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admin Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
I started working on them about August, though I only really started to bust my ass say september
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Hi Ben,
I was wondering what your aim is with the niche sites. Is page 1 enough or are you only targeting niches with PR0-2 on top? I presume you are not targeting loan and health niches at all?
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admin Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I try and aim for niches that aren’t full of other Im’ers. Believe it or not, there are quite a few of them out there. You will find it much easier to rank when you are not in the “big” money niches. You might not make a fortune with each site, but there’s enough there to squeeze out something each day.
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Dave Starr Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 4:40 am
Excellent advice as always, Ben. You are so right to talk to people about staying away from the MMO, acne, weight loss and such mud holes. You know grizz, who so many say they leran from, likely don’t pay attention to the clues he drops. Example, go see how many times he has mentioned the key word “oil filters’ in numerous posts. How could that make money? If it doesn’t leap to mind, go back and start reading nearer his first post.
Things that people have to buy, buy regularly, buy in quantity, etc. are what is needed. A guy with three hundred trucks to maintain and a boss hounding him to save money is going to search seriously for cheaper oil filters. With his credit card already out of his wallet.
Don’t follow the lemming herd.
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jessie Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 7:31 am
Stay away from MMO? Hell I have 3 MMO sites and am thinking about starting a 4th.
admin Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Yes. People get sucked into the whole, health, weightloss, make money, and other niches that all marketers seem to target. There is a lot of money there, but it’s HARD to get ranked because of that. Great it you have a 5 year old authority site with thousands of backlinks and posts. Not so good for everyone ELSE. You still can squeeze in these markets and make money, but it’s definetely easier to go after off-the-wall niches that people don’t think to target. The might not be as “much” money (though you might be surprised with some of the gold mines you can turn up unexpectedly), but you can at least see some tangible results sooner than later.
I’ve really found to make money online, you have to think a bit different than conventional wisdom and EXPERIMENT, EXPERIMENT, and EXPERIMENT. I’ve learned the most from my own trails and failures.
nice to hear from you. Hope you are enjoying the lovely tropics. I tell you, with 2 weeks straight of cold rain in vancouver, I’m wishing I was there!
Greta info Ben, as always. A few questions though
1. What’s the monthly searches you are looking at to decide if it a niche worth entering?
2. Do you target general keywords, or more product specific keywords?
Thanks in Advance
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admin Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
A mix of both peter. Anywhere from a couple hundred and up, but this can change. I do general keywords, but product type words can work. However, the best way to figure it out is to do it youself.
The best way to learn Peter, is to do. I’ve noticed that everyone here in the online community always wants a 1-10 instructional set on how to make money with a certain methodology. I’ve been refusing to give something like that out because the best way for you guys to learn is to get the basics done and get out there and DO stuff. When you set up sites and experiment, you will learn way more than I or anyone else trying to hold your can can teach you.
Cheers
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Hey Ben,
I’m glad you took a break. I find it helps concentration (though it’s easy to rationalize the need for rest too!).
Are you counting the hubpages and infobarrels as part of income or is this all for the self-hosted sites? Also do you vary the number of pages of each self-hosted site and do you stick in images or things other than text (or is that just a time waster)?
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admin Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
No no, this is just the income from my 105 sniper sites i started creating a couple months ago. Hubpage income, infobarrel income, and my other site income wasn’t listed.
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Are you reading my mind? Just this week I’ve been considering that maybe I’ve picked the wrong niches and need to re-evaluate.
I’ve been thinking about selling my dud sites next year and give someone with more experience a chance.
M
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admin Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
I’m actually considering putting my failed Clickbank sites up on flippa to see what I can get as an experiement. I have about 20 of them and I’ve made 1 sale in like 4 months. I’m in the process of putting adsense on all of them to see if they can at least pay me back for the domains lol. If nothing happens there in a month, I’ll do a 20 sites for sale on flippa experiment and see how much we can get.
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Broke Reply:
November 14th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
I’ve become really fond of highly specific, targeted product keywords lately, which fits right in with what you’re saying. I find a lot of them don’t get high exact searches but they’re so awesome because one click can pretty much fulfill the $0.50. It’s especially interesting to bid on Clickbank product keywords then plug your landing page.
Speaking of Clickbank… Wow, one sale in 4 months, that’s gotta suck. How much traffic do they get? If they’re ranked like your other sites then you’d probably be able to sell them for a fair bit.
Also, no one likes ”Heroes”. Not even ”Heroes”.
That’s enough outta me, great post as usual, even though it was like 1/10 the normal size, lol.
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Broke Reply:
November 15th, 2009 at 11:04 am
It’s especially interesting to write on Clickbank product keywords, not bid on Clickbank product keywords.
how do you stay organized man? i’d love to know.
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admin Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 2:26 am
I’m trying to ask myself that the same question! When you do this all day, it just stays with you. As for the sites, I keep track of them all on statcounter and an excel spreadsheet.
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I was wondering about low competition:I have been doing some keyword research with MS. I find some niches mainly product niches that are dominated by amazon, newegg, walmart etc they rank with poor seo (zero backlinks or zero “targeted” anchor text) but have high PR! do you think my exact domain names can beat them easily?
what would you suggest as ok daily traffic?
Thanks
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admin Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 2:25 am
PR is not that important — and it’s becoming even less important these days than before. Long ass amazon product listings don’t have any backlinks. With a targeted sniper and backlinks, you can beat them. How long can vary, but in time, you should be able to beat them out. I can’t say it will be easy, but it won’t be THAT hard.
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hi ben,
thanks for the info …how much are you making from all your income streams?
I think creating many sites is the way to go it seems
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Aye mate, glad to read about your progress… Seeing results is def. what keeps me pluggin away… Self-hosted sites kick major ass!
Based on personal experience, I notice that when I’m working another job or involved in school, I’m waaaay more motivated to use my extra time productively to work hard on IM. When I’ve got a ton of free time, my productivity drops, and I get sidetracked easier… Thanks for sharing your advice and Leo’s tips!
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admin Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 2:21 am
Thanks drew. Yea it’s nice to see progress, keeps you going
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Ben - Glad to hear you’re getting into the groove now that you’ve left the JOB. You made the right choice. After losing my job several years ago I turned to MMO as my income source…it took me at least a year to see substantial earnings from Google, and now I see even nicer earnings..it just takes work, work and more work as you keep telling here.
I’m just curious if you dislike the Amazon Associates program for a certain reason? Haven’t heard you give it much mention in your plans. I’ve enjoyed excellent results with it, especially now that Christmas is approaching. My EPN $$$ on the other hand has tanked since their new quality pricing strategy. I’m thinking maybe you just haven’t had time to set up Amazon sites with all your other work, but I’d highly recommend them before EPN!
Wish you the best of luck on all these endeavors and your self-employment!
(PS: I enjoy Heroes, but haven’t gotten into midget thongs yet)
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admin Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Thanks! I love IM. The flexible hours just rock and no boss is gold.
No, I definitely have not forgotten about Amazon. I do have one website that brings in about 300-500 a month from amazon affiliate sales, and I’m plotting to throw out 100-200 amazon sniper sites in a couple months. I’ve just got to finish these 300 adsense ones, and 200 ebay ones, first lol.
I’m considering dropping everything to try and cash in on the christmas rush though. I’ll be doing an experiment with thin affiliate ebay sites in a couple days — going to see if i can spam out 100 of these in time for christmas.
Cheers
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I agree that slow considered site building is a good way to go and I promote the idea on my own blog. However, there is a slight caveat…
My biggest success to date came from being the first with a highly competitive new product, I got a solid community site up and running which ensured 1000s of people keep coming back. This means I had a lot of people willing to make links for me, and a potential market to sell to. The forum generated its own content and kept people coming back again and again.
The site took no more work than normal to set up, actually, it took less work in some respects. The key to success was simply -> timing! Over a year later and the site is growing!
So by all means go for many super small niches, at least you know you will get somewhere. But always keep an eye out for a new opportunity! Don’t underestimate the power of being there first!
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1. Can I ask you seriously about #7? Was that a joke or are you serious? Isn’t a better design just going to convert better?
2. What does Google think about these niche sites, even if they have well-written content on them?
You are, apparently, the Man.
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admin Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
No Cork. It’s a well established fact that the better looking the site, the LESS conversions you will have. For adsense and for affiliate selling, the plainer (and even more ugly site) you have, the more money you will make. Obviously, you need to make sure your ads or affiliate links stand out from the rest of the ugly site so that people’s attention are drawn to those. You don’t want someone to spend time on your site. You want to them to click on something.
If you are trying to attract advertizers though, then yes, conventional logic is that your site should be pretty. You will get LESS conversions, but you will at least get advertizers who want to advertize with you. Ugly sites can scare them away.
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Thanks for sharing again Ben (as always!).
I’ve actually been trying to do pretty much what you described as far as sniper adsense sites with low competition keywords and exact match domains after having gone the “Dufus” direction at first with very, VERY little success. I’ve had a few $4-5 days lately, so I’m happy.
Question for you though about this strategy:
Lets say I find “Green motorcycle helmets” as the low comp KW and I get the domain. You mentioned doing a 5 post/article site. Would you find some way to stretch ‘green motorcycle helmets’ into 5 posts, or would you try to make the other posts with similar main keywords like… ‘kids motorcycle helmets’, ‘green bicycle helmets’, ‘motorcycle helmet laws’, etc? And do you pick those KWs based on competition too, or are you less picky as long as they support your main keyword? I guess where I get confused is, would it make sense to have a post about ‘bicycle helmets for kids’ on a site that has the domain ‘GreenMotorcycleHelmets.com’?
Thanks again Ben. Glad you were able to re-charge and also glad to know that you really are human and the kind of pace you set can’t (shouldn’t) be able to be maintained forever!
Peace,
K
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admin Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
The idea is to target different sub long tails. If you are looking at “red oil filters”, then you can certainly get “green oil filters”, “cheap red oil filters”, “best red oil filters,” etc. the 5 posts is just a target — it’s not set in stone. If you want to write 10 posts, go for it. The more posts you have, the less spammy the site looks and the more content you have = better.
You just want to target topics related to the main keyword that get traffic.
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Ben,
You should have just made another $20 off me from Human Rewriter. That’s $40 so far from me. You are welcome!
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admin Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Thanks Jessie. Won’t ever say no to an affiliate sale
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Ben,
I just switched from static HTML sites to wordpress and I don’t know if my lack of rankings for my keyword has to do with not examining my competition more closely or if it has to do with the fact that my first entry (which is also the main keyword) is a blog post and not posted as a static page on the site.
Are you ranking your keywords with no problems as a blog or are you creating static pages on the blog?
Also, what are you doing for initial back linking on your sniper sites?
Thanks!
Sara
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matt2257 Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Hey Sara,
If you just switched to wordpress, you should find that the big G will like your site better now.
G looks for fresh content, and they tend to like blogs because they usually get fresh content more than a static html page.
You can also create a nice little relevent conentration of keywords with use of categories, tags,, and a good interlinking structure, all related to your keywords.
Add in some backlinks from other sources, and you can do quite nicely.
If you are not ranking now, it may be because of high competition, or sand box, or just time.
I have some sites that I created with only one super long 1000+ word post that is very keyword targeted and it gets good traffic.
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Phillip Reply:
November 18th, 2009 at 12:31 am
I’ll have to disagree with this one. Worpress is in no way the “favourite of Google”, and you will not gain any advantages from it compared to a HTML only site. Actually a SEOed HTML site is most likely to have less clutter sn shit for the search engines to get mixed up with.
What comes to the “fresh content” you will only get help from it for a short time, and even with wordpress you will have to be updating - writing new posts - frequently to get the benefit.
With small niche sites wordpress is very heavy and resource taking option. Alone the install is going to take a huge amount of server discspace and are slower to load for for the visitor.
To maintain security you will have to be updating constantly - both wordpress and the plugins. And if you are looking for passive income then set and forget is always better - sure you will have to do more to update the site, but it is merely copy+paste work that has to be done.
Sure for sites that you are updateng frequently and plan to build large, using a bloggin platform like wordpress is great. But if you plan to build static sites - like most of the people are doing with their niche sites - then why waste the resources and use wordpress.
Even so you should not stick with one thing, and diversifying your portfolio is benefitial in the end. So a mixture of different CMS-sites and static HTML depending on the goals of the site is what we should aim for.
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MoneyMakingBastard Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 3:13 am
Why you should choose Wordpress over HTML?
Wordpress is way easier to handle: Update content, add content, making a nice looking website.
In the time you build a HTML website, I am able to produce 10 wordpress websites.
You dont need to be a HTML PHP magician to make websites with Wordpress.
Wordpress has many SEO optimized plug ins, just install them and let them do the work for you. Sure an HTML site can be optimized but many people dont have the know how.
A little updating of plugins now and than is worthe all the advantages for me
Phil Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
That’s pretty much true, at least the “Update content, add content, making a nice looking website.”
Don’t know about you but I try to make money online and because of that. making nice looking websites is not one of my goals. I build about 4-5 HTML sites a day - in four to five hours ( this includes writing the content so basically the HTML part takes about ten minutes or less. I don’t write the templates - I find one off the internet and strip it - not like you do a new theme for each wordpress blog from scratch.). I’d like to see you put out 50 sites with content per day
When it comes to having to update a thousand blogs every few months when they find another hole in the wordpress security - I would have to say that I’d like to spend my time otherwise.
Even so - wordpress is great for blogging (adding content frequently) and my previous reply was not intended to mock wordpress, but to point out the fact that Google can’t be favor of wordpress sites over static HTML right from the start.
Hello fellow Ben!
I have a question: at the risk of sounding like an idiot incapable of understanding obvious terms like ‘exact’ and ‘match’, when you say ‘exact match’ domain, does this mean ONLY the KW should be the domain itself or can it be KW+extra word?
Example:
KW is guerrilla fruit.
Does ‘bestguerrillafruit.com’ mean exact match or only guerrillafruit.com?
Cuz damn if it aint hard for me to find an exact match domain on all my KW’s I’m targeting…!!
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admin Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Exact is the keyword itself you are targeting with nothing extra. If you are looking for a niche and there are no exacts, that’s a good sign that the niche already has a lot of competition (not always, but usually).
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Yup, If you are brand new there is no other way to start (if SEO is your bag).
When I first started I was going after sites in somewhat competitive niches but with less then 200 backlinks. That first 50 sites I did make money but they are probably still 6 months away from being on page one.
Most of those sites are support sites also but its still frustrating how long it is taking.
When I make micro sites now I don’t mess with it if there are 50 backlinks (legit links) on the entire page one. I want to rank for that keyword on page one immediately.
The keyword can have as few as 800 exacts a month and be worth it.
Its all about keyword selection and optimizing the CTR.
If the KW is targeted properly and the site is fnugly enough you should be able to get CTR’s at 30% sometimes higher.
The only way you learn this is to build sites and test. or send 100.00 to Ben
Besides the obvious competitive niches stay away from hobby niches and fun stuff. There are thousands of pages of failures in those niches.
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Dave Starr gets it.
It took me a while, maybe a year before it hit me. I was probably told 20 x’s what to do and didn’t listen. but, but nonono.. “My how to find a DUI attorney site” is going to kill it…lulz
Funny thing is my number one project is a site that sells something. From day one that site has been my 1st priority and makes almost all the money.
But my passive income sites we about stupid shit. Talk about not seeing the forrest through the trees, jeez
Not everything works, it really is Trial and error. Trial and error, Trial and Error.
Get it?
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Hi Ben,
Just wondering if you have experimented / seen any difference with using a hyphen in exact match domains. The school seems to be out as to whether this makes a difference, but it opens up more chance of finding a domain (though as you rightly say if it is available it indicates lower competition).
i.e. blue-widgets.com v blueqwidgets.com
just a thought.
Love the site and appreciate your insights.
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I don’t know if it’s just me but ezines seem to be worthless. And now they only allow 3 words in the anchor text!
What sort of backlink work do you do? I read on forums about “link wheels” and “mini nets” and was wondering if linking strategy had to get the elaborate.
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Hi Ben,
For exact match domains have you ever used hyphens in the domain name and does it effect SEO?
Say for example I’m going for the keyword “blue midget thongs” but bluemidgetthongs.com is unavailable (cuz you already registered it…come on don’t lie!) would blue-midget-thongs.com also work just as well in the SERPS?
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admin Reply:
November 29th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
I have not done exensive testing there. These days, I avoid hyphen domains because they look spammy. But I do have a few that do rank. If there is one hyphen involved, the domain may be ok, but more than two, and it begins to look really spammy.
But with backlinks, you can rank just fine with hyphen domains.
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Geoff Reply:
December 1st, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Thanks Ben, really appreciated your reply. Cheers.
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arshumum Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 6:31 am
Yeah i agree, with Ben - if you have many hyphens in your domain, it would look spammy, it means that you might won’t rank with that site without any link building (in some cases).
But, if your site is old enough(1 to 2 yrs) and Google started calling you as an authority site, than you will end up ranking for most of the long-sub tail keywords.
Somewhere i have read that, Matcutt is trying to trow domains which has many hyphens domains from their search result or making those domain as non-authority sites.
But, they can’t do that right away in the algo, because german speaking domains use to have many hyphens, so they can’t do that straight away, it will be a big brainstorming hack for them….I gues
Hi Ben,
If I would make 100 snipers, what would be the main reason why I would not make as much as you do? Taking in account I would not aim at acne/loans/MMO stuff?
Greetz, Alex
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admin Reply:
November 29th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Probably because I’m just cooler
It’s all about the niche and how high you rank. One guy find a niche that is more responsive to clicks/sales and is easier to rank and makes more money than someone who doesn’t have a niche like that.
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Hi Ben,
Just had a quick question about building sites focused around low competition keywords. You mentioned in earlier posts that you don’t suggest using BLS, UAW, LinkVana or other link networks on a money site since it could hurt their rankings or worse, get them deindexed if someone reports you.
But honestly, what are the chances of this happening if you’re dealing with an ultra low competition phrase like… “old fashioned gumball machine” which maybe gets at most 1,000+ monthly searches? (I haven’t checked btw) I guess the only reason I ask is because I’m already on my 25th micro niche site and I’m earning about $20/day on adsense already but it would be rather time consuming to build support blogs for each.
So do you think I can use Backlink Solutions or something else to get anchored backlink towards the micro niched sites that make $1/day without worrying too much about getting slammed?
Hann
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admin Reply:
November 29th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Hann, you can use backlink networks on micro sites to help them rank. You probably should be ok, but there is always that element of risk. Some people do it, some people don’t.
Can you rank with Unique Article Wizard, AMA, and BS on your micro sites? Yea, definitely. Just depends on the level of risk you want to take.
But a lot of people do and are still fine.
Ben
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Personally, I would rather spend a year or two working on that “acne” site instead of working on something like “the best natural home remedies for acne”. Maybe it’s just me, but I just prefer having one site to manage to hundreds of different sites, no matter how long results take to show. (Besides, if you want instant results there are many better ways than niche sites.)
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admin Reply:
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:47 am
Different strokes for different folks Rajaie. I don’t argue that having an authority site is not the best way to go — with the way google is moving in regards to search algorithms and the way listings are starting to be displayed (if you have an authority site at #1, you can take up half the search engine page with all the sub listings the allow you now), there is a lot of advantages to having an authority site. But but but,
it takes time — sometimes a lot of time and more time than a lot of people are willing to commit to. Can you spend 1-2 years working on a site about a topic you can nothing about while making no money? Most people won’t or can’t. There is also the problem is that one authority site you spent 2 years on gets dropped from the SERPS or loses it’s ranking. I personally know a few guys who were pulling in 7-10k a month with a single site. And that was the only site that made them their full time internet marketing income. Then the site suddenly gets knocked back to page two. Income = gone. Pretty risky. With a lot of sites spread around on different hosting accounts and adsense accounts, it’s safer.
Mini sites can make you money muuuuuch faster, but the downside is that they require a lot of focus and work.
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Rajaie Reply:
December 4th, 2009 at 3:22 am
Well, that’s true, your site could disappear from from the first page/position any day and you would lose all your income. But there are always risks in making money online (and even offline businesses). If you do PPC, Google might ban your AdWords account, if you have hundreds of mini sites, Google might ban your AdSense account. If you…..you get the point.
It’s like you said, you shouldn’t focus on ONE way to make money, instead you should have lots of sources of income to be safe.
I’ve got a question, when you talk about “authority” sites, do you mean sites like wikihow.com, ehow.com, about.com that can dominate anything they write about, or do you mean sites like Griz’s makemoneyforbeginners site which are niche specific?
Thanks!
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This site is just awesome, tons of useful advice. But how do you go about getting backlinks, its the hard part for me. I can churn out lots of sites, write a lot of content. But don’t know where to get the backlinks.
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admin Reply:
December 12th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Read some of my old posts about backlinks. You might also want to visit grizzly’s niche support section on his blog as well.
The best backlinks are going to take work and effort on your part to get. Write content worth linking to, approach quality sites for link exchanges. Once you get a strong network together, you can have leverage for better link exchanges. There are also various link bait strategies.
If you have a lot of shitty mini sites, you are going to have to build those backlinks yourself. I’d say look at using Unique Article Wizard (have a link on my sidebar), Backlink Solutions, AMA, and others to get some quick backlinks.
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I kinda agree with you, making money quickly is possible, but creating a bunch of websites quickly, that’s a whole different story.
IMers who plan to copy what you’ve done are going to have to live with spelling mistakes, crappy content, and just focus on quantity. For me I’d prefer to have more of a plan.
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admin Reply:
December 12th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Different strokes for different folks. It’s the same mountain, just different paths.
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Ben,
Your site is chock full of information. Love it.
However, am still wondering how people get different adsense accounts.
I guess I have to keep building, don’t have enough money sites yet.
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admin Reply:
December 12th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
You need to have a corporation created tied to a brand new business bank account. You can have a personal account, but the other account can’t be in your name. Either get relatives, or if you don’t want to deal with the headache of having to go through someone else, look at creating an LLC and using that to create a business bank account. Then you can apply for another adsense account with that new identity. Make sure you use different IP’s to sign up and don’t check your adsense on the same ip’s as your personal account. You can have LLC and a personal account on same IP, yea, but if one get’s banned, you could be risking the other cause there is a strong connection between the two.
I live in canada though, so I can’t tell you the exact process of creating a US LLC.
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Hyphens in domain names: I would like to know WHY domains with hyphens in them are considered spammy.
To me, hyphens in names make the desired keywords unambiguous.
E.g., “iwishitwas”: Are you going after “wish” or “shit”?
Unless someone can give me an AUTHORITATIVE link to an EXACT quote by Matt Cutts confirming that, I will continue to consider the “hyphens = spam” as an old-wives’ tale.
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I think I am going to stick with super-sites and even go for the competitive ones. I have saved a chunk of income and have no problem backlinking the crap out of a mobile site.
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Hey Ben,
When making an adsense account using a business llc, is it okay if the business address is the same as my personal adsense address? Thanks.
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admin Reply:
December 13th, 2009 at 11:41 am
absolutely not. You definetely don’t want to have the same addresses. What happens if your personal account gets banned? Google knows right away the business account is owned by the same person. No, it’s better to use a family’s address or get a PO box or something.
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Thanks for yet another great post there Ben. I’m new here just reading around and trying a few things out got a couple of sniper sites pulling in a few visitors a day nothing special but its a start.
Just wanted to comment quickly to say i have heard it said somewhere you can get someone’s real address through a PO box all you have to do is ask and they will tell you, part of some open business law I think so if google were really looking to find out for some reason they might be able to track you even through a PO box. I haven’t got any proof of this but am certain i have read it somewhere could be worth noting down for anyone really trying to cover their tracks.
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Hey Ben,
Just had a quick question. Since you live in China, do you have to constantly use a proxy to get around the firewall? From my understanding, a few sites are restricted from within China like wordpress.com, blogger.com, youtube, etc.
I know you mentioned that you use some of the above free blog hosts to build support networks. I’m planning on moving to China in a few months indefinitely and would love to know your thoughts on how you get around these internet restrictions. If it’s a private matter, could you please send me an email? Thanks!
Hann
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Google Reply:
December 15th, 2009 at 1:12 am
I think he lives in Canada, not China.
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admin Reply:
December 15th, 2009 at 9:01 am
yep, canadian….eh.
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admin Reply:
December 15th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Hann, i’ve been to china on trips and the internet connection can be pretty spotty at times for sure. That firewall thing is a pain in the ass.
You might try hidemyass.com. There are some firefox plugins I believe that you can insta select a proxy when browsing. For sure, you are going to need to use a proxy. If you are willing to pay more, you can buy VP tunneling proxy which will give you really fast proxy speeds, but cost you (100 USD a month maybe?).
I have not tried the IM life in China — I will be going for a trip to tibet in a couple months, I hope, and I could give you more information about IMing while behind the firewall. The previous trips had me just checking my email and cnn.
Another source for some answers is workingnomad.com forums I believe. Some of those guys, i think, are doing IM from china and could give you a more specific answer.
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Hann Reply:
December 15th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Hi Ben,
Oops it just seemed like you were traveling throughout China at first. Thanks for the suggestions though. I’ve never heard of VP tunneling before so I’ll definitely look into it. Btw, just wanted to let you know that I’m finally starting to make some headway with building adsense sites that earn $0.50 - $1.0 a day.
One quote that really struck me that you said is this one: “But if you want to make money online sooner then later, you need to stop looking at the sky and start looking at the ground.” I’ve always been dreading building the mini micro niched sites but you know what, they earn money.
I’ve really started putting to heart a lot of the things I’ve read from your site and Grizzly’s site in the last few months and currently have about 50+ sites earning around $30+/day. So just wanted to say thanks again for all the help!
Hann
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admin Reply:
December 21st, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Good stuff Hann. Glad to see you finding some success! Keep it up and let me know how your experience in China pan’s out. I may be doing something similar in the future.
You have been naughty AND nice. Lieing to people for some old fashion marketing is naughty, but sharing with others is nice!
Any chance old santa can get an update to bring in the new year?
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admin Reply:
December 25th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Indeed. I’ve been pretty naughty — more so than nice. I’d better post before the new years if I want to get some santa loving
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MC Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Good to see you’re still around Ben…we were becoming worried you had been kidnapped by an angry gang of hairy midgets in thongs! Happy New Year to you!
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Your blog posts are out of this world awesome to say the least. You have inspired me more than you will ever know. I have around 20 sites going now and not even a dollar a day. I’ve been figuring out some of my problems as I go..
1. I was using “.info” domains with hyphens to seperate keywords. 2 problems there that are now fixed. What do you think about the two ideas?
2. I’ve moved to “.com” domains to be safest. I’m going the subdomain method for sites in niches. I’m sure you use different domains for each site BUT .. 100 sites = 1,000 $$ a year in domains.. please tell me what you do here? Or atleast comment?
3. I’ve heard that having unique subpages “About Us, Contact Us, Sitemap, etc” for each site helps it to rank.. is this true for you? and do you use this method?
**Your a huge inspiration to me and I hope to someday quit my job and go huge with online marketing.. I’ve had my head in books for the past 2 years and am literally obsessed. I’d have better luck quiting heroine.. if I was a user. ANYWAYS, your input is greatly appreciated and this site is bookmarked and awaiting updates from you.
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admin Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Thanks chris. Just work hard, keep on at it and you will make money, for sure.
1. .info is a bad idea because they don’t rank well, at all. I know if you throw enough trusted backlinks at them, they do. But for out-of-the-box ranking, no. Only use .org,.net,.com
2. You don’t get the exact bonus for a subdomain I believe. You can go with subdomains for niche sites, but I would really reconsider this. For one, what happens if your main domain gets slapped? goodbye 100 niche sites in one go. And second, you can rank a hell of a lot faster by putting up individual sites (self hosted). It’s an investment, but it’s not going to break the bank. I’m not saying you can’t make the subdomain method work, but it’s going to be a lot slower and it’s less safe (you expose your entire niches to everyone too).
3. I don’t know about ranking you higher, but it could help and it makes your site more legit. Do it — I do.
Keep it up. I will be posting tomorrow sometime.
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chris weber Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
-Your most likely right with the sub-domain idea and thanks for the advice, SERIOUSLY.
1. The hardest thing for me to understand is how “you/someone” uses different keywords integrated into their wordpress blog posts separately.. and I’m sure your integrating 5-10 different same niche keywords on one site.. which knocks out a bunch of keywords in one domain.
2. The way I have been making a little bit of money is like the one page site with 3-5 posts and one keyword…here is an example that isn’t quite done yet but.. please.. criticize the hell out of it if you must.
3. I have the money for domains but I just want to make sure I’m optimizing for them correctly before I go and buy seperate domains ya know.. Thank you so much.
4. I do understand the competition portion so don’t mind that on this site.. services pay so well on clicks I’ve found but I’m moving to products for good now.
-p.s. do you think you could remove the site url once youve taken a look. I don’t want people whois looking me up and mass clicking to ban me. Thanks.
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chris weber Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Well, I was trying to fall asleep when I realized, I kind of jumped the gun on you critiquing my site so I just want to say sorry and I realize you are a very busy man and time is your money maker so don’t feel obligated. But I would give anything for your input man, and it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanx Again!
admin Reply:
December 31st, 2009 at 2:27 am
You can just use a regular site and create different posts targetting different long tails. Once you have a post, you send as many backlinks as you can to each of those post pages, not to the domain. In time those posts will, if you have enough backlinks, rank for the terms.
As far as your site, it’s not optimized for adsense. You should have a big honking ad right under the main title of each post. I’d also aim to have longer posts — all around 400-500 words.
chris weber Reply:
December 31st, 2009 at 11:38 am
I’m going to bug you with one last question sir and that is it I promise.
1. Do you wait tell you have backlinks pointing to the posts to list “5 keywords” for the post..? Or do you list one and wait tell you rank for it, then move to the next and then list it..
So basically do you list all keywords you want to rank for right away in your keyword tags or do you list one at a time and wait to rank then add to your keyword tag list?
HALLELEJAH! thats spelt wrong but I’m too lazy to look it up.
Your a genius and I’m going to be hitting these new methods so hard right about.. now.
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Me Again. You may have to file a restraining order in a week or so just so you know in advance
- F that other question! I have a better one. When creating domains do you shoot for your main keyword you want to rank for with the most hits or do you shoot for multiple keywords in one domain somewhat mixed together to make sense.. I’m gonna pull my hair out with this one! I wanna ditch the sub-domain idea like you said.
For Example:
My keywords are: “seo is fun, seo is addicting, seo is cool”
domain: http://www.seoisfunaddictingcool.com
OR
http://www.seoisfun.com **because its the highest visited and thats what you shoot for..
-this seems like an easy answer for me to combine them into one and knock out 4 birds with one stone BUT I have been very wrong before.
I beg of you! please help me. I’m strung out on Monster energy drinks and may go crazy.
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admin Reply:
December 31st, 2009 at 5:06 pm
One strategy is to start out with a super long tail that contains the root keyword you ultimately want to rank for even though the search results might not have a lot of exact searches. It’s easier to build up ranking for a long tail than a short tail. Once you build authority for the longtail, it’s easier to target the shorter tail.
The other option is to use a short tail (seoisfun) and SEO that.
You have to keep in mind what people are looking for in terms of search. If you have a site that people might type in, then you are going to want to have a shorter tail. My site for example is horrible for type in because it’s so long. I get a couple dozen googles searches a day just for “make money online seo ben / make money online for seo” for people just trying to find my site because they can’t remember the type in.
With the choice between two, I tend to go for the shorter because it’s easier on the eyes — especially if i’m trying to build an authority site or a large site of some sort. If I’m creating a mini site, i’ll often get the long tail domain.
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Great read, and I don’t usually say that to just anyone. That was really a good read.
I think it’s time I work on the AdSense angle for a bit. I have something else pulling for me now and it’s time to get that diversification I’ve been looking for. Fickle shit this affiliate business…
This one post confirmed many things I’m doing now, so thanks for sharing it.
Have a great new year! You’ll be hearing from me again.
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Hi Ben, it’s nice to know we will have a new post tomorrow. I am looking forward to read it.
By the way, do you have any experience with using “micro niche finder”? Is the result more accurate compare to google’s keyword tool?
Bob
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Hi Ben,
Thanks for your G-reat post. I am here after reading
“How to Make Money Online Quickly” on the side bar.
Though I am no so new to IM but I must say I am new
to earning money online. Actually, recently our company
closed due to post recession effect and I am jobless since
3 months because of age factor.
I read your different posts where you have put your great efforts. You are really great and real internet marketer.
That is why I am here for real help from you. You can
put the answere here in comment or mail me separately.
“How can I start making min. $15 a day within a month with
little investments, if any b’cos of shortage of money”.
Hope, you will mail me the strategy which will produce result
WITHOUT FAIL (only $15 a day within a month to run my family).
Thanks
[Reply]
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