It’s probably just me but things seem to be shifting. It seems that techniques that used to work, say 6 months ago, require a lot more effort. Perhaps that is because some of what I do are basically gimmicks to collect bored clicks. They were simple and easy and I would make a few bucks through affiliate sales or Ebay. Now Ebay is difficult. People just aren’t buying shit like they were, say a year ago. At least the consumer goods I was promoting.
I built quite a stable of Blogger blogs and filled them with PLR articles. That was a good model for getting ranked in Yahoo and collecting Adsense. Until recently. I’ve had many of my Blogger blogs get smacked down The percentage decrease in my Analytics is rather vicious. And none of those blogs get any attention from Google. It’s kind of a bummer and made me slow down building any more. I mean, why spend the time rewriting and promoting a Blogger blog when both Google and Yahoo are going to ignore them. I’m sure if I made the effort to get even more backlinks then good things can happen, but good grief at some point you just have to wonder what’s the point.
So after all these vacillations I continue to come full circle and stare straight into the one thing that continues to work: A niche site with at least 15 pages of original material using keywords that can be found easily in the search engines on a self-hosted .com domain. Out of every 5 I build, 3 are going to do absolutely nothing, 1 will be mediocre with a 50/50 chance of surviving and 1 will make enough money to pay off the purchase of domains for the other 4 and still turn a decent dime.
I have been doing this shit for about 5 years in earnest now. I’ve tried all the bullshit and more. The only thing that has been a consistent winner is niche sites with original articles. I’ve tried to fight it. I try to circumvent the program by taking easier ways out. Less expensive means. I have tried to speed things up by making Google think my site is more than it is by implementing a backlinks assault.
I am impatient and am riddled with attention deficit with this racket. Mostly it bores me. If I can manage to build a niche site, without wanting to try something else half way through, it’s a miracle. It’s not that I don’t know what I need to be doing, it’s that doing it sucks ass.
I’m always amazed hearing from folks who build sites and within 2 days they are making $30 from Adsense. The typical folks we all read have major successes in ways that I have never had. I think it’s one reason why I cannot stay motivated. The sites that are making a few dollars a day in Adsense are those that I built over 6 months ago. Frankly they are sites that I pretty much left for dead thinking that nothing good would come from them. Only now they are being found with some obscure keyword in the search engines.
I want riches now. That’s why it is easy to get distracted and chase the bullshittery. The easy and cheap. Sure I’ve gotten lucky sometimes and ridden cheap and easy to glory. But it doesn’t sustain. It’s why I’m worried about Hubpages. I’ve been building Hubpages and surprisingly they are paying out a little bit. I’m getting cautiously excited about maybe generating $500/month one day. But will that sustain? Probably no.
As much as I hate building these niche sites, they are the only ones that I never have to worry about. Sure, like I mentioned, most won’t work out all that good. But maybe that is the way it goes. I mean, how many items in a store are huge hits? A few maybe? How many flop? The vast majority? So you hope the hits far outweigh the flops. That’s just investing. Maybe I’m the only one trying to wrangle this mediocrity. Seems like the other pundits we read have success no matter what they do. Or maybe I’m the only one saying that failure is part of this crap. Maybe I’m the only one that experiences both success and failure. I dunno.
What I do know is that putting in the effort to write some articles and build a little niche site, sooner or later tends to work and keep on working. With resignation I am going to simply focus my efforts on the tangible and leave the bullshittery alone. The black and gray hat stuff might continue to work but damn if it is not harder than simply writing, posting and getting links.
The people who multitask the most are the ones who are worst at it. That’s the surprising conclusion of researchers at Stanford University, who found multitaskers are more easily distracted and less able to ignore irrelevant information than people who do less multitasking.
Interesting, no?
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I have been coming to a similar conclusion. except that I am wondering about taking it even further. Build those niche sites, but if you get one that works, go bigger with it. Just work on one authority site and slowly build it big. Use the success of the niche to help decide what subject area to build the authority site on. Then have additional “niche” sites related to the original successful niche site but have them on the same domain instead of a bunch of different sites. then in theory they are helping each other to be something more than they would be separately. so if everyone put the same time and energy that they currently do into chasing this and that and just put it all into one or 2 main sites, would they be better off ultimately, and have something of value?
Splork, I agree with funny pictures up there. He is all about the bigger site and focusing effort that is where I just took off. Click on my name and read the actual numbers, etc.
Basically, I can add 40 new posts to my main money site (which is 3 years old and has 500 articles and is a PR3), and add links from ezine and Infobarrels, and this will increase monthly income by $150. Said work takes 30 to 40 hours to complete. That is fast, fast, fast. But it is taking advantage of some level of domain age and authority.
I did this like less than 2 months ago, and bam! Fast results.
So, I am gonna do it again. Only about 4 times as much work though in 30 days, because I know it produces. Shooting for a thousand per month by the end of the year…..
Yea, one way or another you gotta create a lot of content. Or have it created. Either spread it deep. Or spread it wide. Either way you’re in for a large amount of work.
I disagree with the large site idea. What if the Big G decides they do not like your one big site and all your big income goes away.
Splork, I have come to the same conclusion as you. Working the smaller niche sites is the way to go.
EBay, Squidoo, Hubpages and all this other stuff is always changing their rules and trying to screw us one way or the other.
Grizz has had great success with the make money online blog, but I can almost bet that the bulk of his time is spent on niche sites with less search volume. He can’t just be attacking large traffic sites.
I’ve been doing more or less what Funny Pictures has been doing (only in my neck of the woods).
Mainly because, like you, I am fed up to the back teeth with throwing too much s**t at the wall just to see what sticks.
I’ve been building 10 page SE sites and slowly adding pages until they reach 15-20 (so google see’s ‘new content’) and then finding which one makes the grade and building on that.
Like you, I get too easily distracted/bored with the repetition of it all.
But when I stick with it, it does seem to be working (knock on wood).
There again, I have quite a few totally crap blogs out there which are top of the serps for their terms and making bank.
But I’m just so sick and tired of buiding any more like that. And I really do think that with the google shake up, they won’t last much longer anyhow.
It comes, it goes, it comes back again. This game is a constant battle against a constantly changing rule-set. It sucks but its a case of adapt or die.
I’ve been hammering away at this crap for 3 year myself and I have to agree with you that the legit, original niche sites are the ones with staying power. But even they are occasional (and not so occasional) victims of the whims of the SE gods.
Whatever, it beats working your guts out for some asshole boss to make some company rich while they pay you peanuts.
I believe also that better and bigger sites are the key. We’re talking about quantity, again, but quantity with quality. Hubpages and similiar similiar sites, they only rank better because of the millions of backlinks, because of the domain age, and because of google trust (resulting from the two other factors that i described).
It’s possible to create a successful authority site in any niche, you just need millions of links, domain age, and reasonable quality content.
I’m doing the experience on a competitive niche, building 5-10 articles a day. I’ve 100 articles now, the domain is new, and i’m slowing seeing the domain climbing the rankings.
Hi Splork,
I’ve been away for a minute and have come back to see the big squeeze Mr. ebay is puttin’ on everyones middle.
And as far as the color or your hat whether white, black or other, doing business online via IM will always be a matter of hunting down your daily meal. (apologies to my vegetarian friends)
No good meal just sits around and waits to be THE one caught in the cross hairs.
Endless strategy and chasing seems to be the rule and not the exception in building an income online regardless of the method.
It’s a jungle out there…
Small sites earning you $2 a day means $56 a month, ligit blogs btw.
you know u making two of these a week…
in a year u have 100 blogs making you $56 a week
i say dont aim for crazy big keywords, aim for ones wear you can shit on the competion, and not give too much of a fuck about it once you have gotten a decent amount of links, this way u dont have 100 sites that need regular maintanance.
Google is too unstable to have one major site, if u get slapped u risk losing your fucking house..
dont put all ur eggs in one basket! small niches, i know its stressful but really, build it up!
Amen, brother. I think we’re on similar paths. After trying loads of quickie, gimmicky ways to get cash flow, I’m now resigned to doing it the hard way…write original, decent quality articles on a small (~30 articles) site, get people on a list, promote affiliate ebooks. Then when any turn hot, create my own product to replace the affiliate offer. I just went through the videos for Adam Short’s NPC 2.0 and that’s my model now. Maybe with a little bit of Affiloblueprint thrown into the mix, too.