Adsense has recovered. Ebay has tanked. It was the inverse during Christmas. The bored people are now back at work clicking. Of course they are tapped out until next payday so they aren’t buying anything either. The joys of Internet marketing.
Ebay was a surprise. I made some good money listing crap. I am going to make sure I am prepared for next Christmas to really take advantage of people’s need to spend.
I signed up for GoDaddy’s auction site. I’m done starting from scratch with domains. You can buy decent aged domains with a bit of traffic or a smidgen of Pagerank, for what it’s worth, for as little as $5. I’d sooner pay an extra $20 for a domain that is already indexed than wait 6 months for Google to decide if they like my new one.
Things are getting harder in this business. It’s still simple enough: Good keyword choices, write some original shit and get backlinks. But simply playing this game may or may not make you a winner. I’ve done plenty of that and have plenty of failed sites. Plenty of money makers too. I bloviated a while back about creating a few authority sites. Focus. Blah, blah, blah.
Here is what I learned in a short while: You can’t make a site an authority site. It has to evolve into one. More specifically it is very, very difficult to start a new domain and make it an authority. Therefore you really are back blasting the web with website pellets. At least I am. You have to find the one site that works then make it something more than a niche-crap site. Until then keep posting, linking and building. Fun it isn’t?
There are people that can take one idea and make a helluva exciting money maker website. Maybe their thing is teaching the ukulele. Their site is everything you need to know about the thing. Cool. I haven’t found it for me.
I think I am also going to build Squidoo lens. I got a list email from Tiffany Dow and she was talking about her 52-week challenge. A lens a week until Christmas. I used her blueprint and spewed out a tasty looking lens on a $50 board game in about an hour and a half, backlinks included. I have a couple of hours I can spend each week to diversify. I’m pretty lazy and overlook the earnings my current lens make each month. I should have never stopped building. At worst I’ll have 52 lenses that I can use for backlinks. Maybe a couple will actually make some money.
But back to this shit being hard. I really think that if all you do is keyword research, write and get backlinks, all by yourself, you are in a huge disadvantage. As much as it it sucks you need help. The average person in this shit needs help. You have to invest in this to get a head start. To get ahead. Like aged domains. Or buying articles. Buying software to help you build sites. Or join services like Article Marketing Automation. Find a service you trust. Whether it’s Affilorama, or Blog Success or PLRPro or any the other 4,728 IM subscription sites. You need help and support. Encouragement. New ideas. Use their system. Stick to it. I hardly did but I see why that was stupid now.
I no longer find it a bad idea to pay for a membership. Obviously it has to be useful. But these days shit is happening too fast. There is way too much competition. I’ve been a member of Affilorama and PLRPro since day one. Each have gone through or are undergoing changes but I’ve found their services useful. The tools within the membership are what keeps me competitive, ala AMA.
I reckon I’ll have some that disagree. We have been conditioned to do this for free. No one wants to pay for shit. You can start at the bottom and do fine…eventually. I’ve come from the bottom. I would never do that again. Never. I would sooner drag a lawn mower around the neighborhood after work than flog these sites across the web. That’s why I refuse to deal with new domains anymore. I don’t want to start at the bottom. And I also recognize that I’m going to have to spend some money to get the tools I need to build sites and be competitive. I know the people making money are doing it. With few exceptions, the dude making 5 figures a month is not sitting there building a blog a month while getting some backlinks from a Hubpage and Blogger blog.
The new year offers an excuse to sort of start over. Or get a fresh start. My fresh start is to do more with Amazon and Ebay. I’ve spent the last couple of years flogging niche information sites for Adsense riches. That is some tough shit. The competition is astounding. Keyword research is very important. Building and maintaining the sites are boring and exhausting. But I found that selling real shit is working nicely. Even with the relatively poor commissions from Amazon.
It’s funny that people assume that building sites for Adsense is easy. Man it’s not. It’s not that building Amazon and Ebay sites are necessarily easier, it’s just that if someone is bothering to come to your Parcheesi board game site then chances are they want to buy the damn thing. If nothing else you are going to lock in that delicious cookie. If someone clicks over to your toe acne information site they are looking to read shit. Maybe you can entice them to click an Adsense ad if your information is particularly useless. Maybe not. Takes a lot of work to get a good click through rate with Adsense.
Adsense drives me crazy. I can take a template and get 25% CTR on the ads on one site and use it on another and get less than 1%. There is no consistency for me. Not that Ebay or Amazon is any more consistent I guess. Some products I can sell. Others I cannot. But it feels less like a hassle with Amazon or Ebay. I mean, I find a bestseller, do some rudimentary keyword search and build a site. Get a couple of backlinks, write an article for AMA and announce it via Twitter to my followers. If I can find a good used domain, great. If not maybe I simply do a Squidoo lens. Either is fine. Adsense is ugly and requires a lot of testing IMO.
Don’t discount Squidoo. They are cleaning up the spam. Bing and Yahoo likes them. Google is coming back around. People stay in the Squidoo network. And you can make an eye-pleasing, easy to build, extremely targeted, free site. I’ll be happy if no one that reads this wants anything to do with Squidoo. I hope my 6 readers roll their eyes and say “I’ll take the Adsense clicks”.
And it makes me sad but people buy products from Crapbank. One simple link on a simple site or lens can net you $20. I’ll take it.
I have done less with Adsense in the last 6 months than I have in the 4 years or so. Sure those niche info-crap sites still get an Adsense click but I’m working more for Ebay than Google these days. I’m feeling pretty good about building sites for Amazon and Ebay.
When it comes to IM I’ve decided that I can’t be focused. It works for me. I have to bounce from one thing to another. I have goals and I typically stick to them but I don’t get there in a straight line. I can almost guarantee I’ll build 52 lens this year. But in about 2 weeks I’ll get bored with it and find something else to do. Then I’ll circle back around to it in a few months. If you are trying to follow me, you will be disappointed and annoyed.
I made some good money last year despite it all. I think I bought one software program all year which I still like: Answer Analyst. I bought new hosting by Hostgator. And I spent $33 a month for Keyword Academy. I spend $9 for Nichebot which is useful. I got a free years PLRPro from winning a contest, as well as being a lifetime member of Affilorama. So my expenses were few.
Long post. Just a dude doing a thing on the web making some money and blogging about the experience. Just more mental vomit really.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I liked this article, probably because on the IM tip, I think I’m probably very similar to you – Not being able to focus on any ONE thing for too long. Keep up the work and maybe give me some tips whenever I start focusing on IM stuff again. (#):)
“The average person in this shit needs help. You have to invest in this to get a head start.”
Never a truer word spoken.
Like you, I started out with free.
But then I realised what those who made loads of bucks were really doing…
Yup. You really have no choice unless you can be the genius behind Twitter or YouTube. You have to spend and invest and find some help.
For example, I may not like NB2, and the guberu marketing, but that doesn’t mean someone else can’t use it for the service and support and make some cash. Going it alone without support or services is tough going IMO. You just have to find the right tool, whether that is software, services or memberships. The competition is too fierce not to.
The thing is if you are going to create an authority site of any merit it will take investment. If you don’t have the big/great idea, you are left with building many niche type sites. You will need time and resources to build these.
But what constitutes good money? Say you, hypothetically, were in a position that starting today you could work on sites 40 hours a week for the next year. Say you start from scratch, and do not take advantage of any of your existing sites. Given you knowledge, and that you would start right off with aged domains and some paid software helpers, how much do you think you could be earning at the end of the year? Just a wild guesstimate?
Depends on the motivation. If I hammered 40 hours+ a week, I would expect, like I do now, to make $10/day+ per site. Your hypothetical scenario is really no different for me now.
I would simply prefer to have fewer sites making, say $100/day. That is not working for me yet. If I had the time then maybe that could be more of a reality. As it is it’s easier for me to scatter shot numerous websites full of mostly crap to reach my goal. Knowing that 50% will get de-indexed or not work is the price I pay for the remainder meeting my goal of play money.
I have just started three sites from scratch and it is hard as hell but this is something I love doing and I will continue in order to have success. I hate to quit and I hate quitters. I need to make a certain amount of money online and this is not a choice matter but a necessity.
On to the free discussion, I do pay for somethings like the keyword academy but, there are things that can be found for free online so, do not get caught in the unnecessarily spending trap.
I’ve just started doing this like Reesa above, and trying to get ranked on google is proving a challenge, as is getting backlinks. What;s the best way to get backlinks?
Build your own sites just for backlinks, and if so how many sites to you need? or do you go looking for sites to post comments, Which works best?
awesome posting i totally agree with you it is not a bad idea to pay for a membership.
Val I post comments, post to Twitter, build blogs on Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, build Squidoo lens, Hubpages, write articles for Article Marketing Automation and Ezines, add links to directories…I do it all. And I do a lot of it.
yeah im in the same boat as you splork, i get bored with doing the same thing over and over which is maybe the reason I havent kept a job over a year…literally.
i work at one job for 6 months and love it, but then i usually learned everything i could and i get bored, i have yet to find a job that excites me for more than 6 months (except IM: of course im not doing this 8 hours a day, mon-fri, 8am-4pm, in the same place, in the same desk, with the same ppl!)
thats what i like about this stuff, i can try different things, work anywhere, at anytime…i find i get most of my work done between 9pm and 3am, go figure-is that why i suck at real jobs? hmmm.
About adsense-totally agree, it’s not easy but you do have to be patient, and i guess for ppl like us that’s hard to do-hence the buying preowned domains and extra tools to speed up the process of everything we do. HEY, how bout just buying websites straight up that are already making $100 a month?—i’ll take 50 of those and sit on my ass –wouldnt that be quicker? lol.