I hate being sent to Google’s penalty box. You know, the sandbox. The one where all FNG websites go. You think you are saving the world with your blog or website, creating some unique content to spray the web with, you check your Google rankings after a couple of weeks and you’re sitting at #23 with a bullet. A week later, with a few more pieces of rewritten junk to post you’re at #5. Adsense is starting to kick in and you’re pocketing $1.17 a day now. Rock the eff on.
After a month, or god help you less, you one day, wake up, and BAM! Your little site that went from zero visitors a day in the beginning to 50 visitors in a few weeks, with a couple first page Google rankings for LTK, is gone. Oh, it might still be indexed but you click through 17 pages of search results for that 5 word keyphrase you targeted and your site is gone. Like it never existed. How sad. Nobody is visiting anymore.
You are in utter despair. What did I do to piss off the Google gods? And this seems to last forever. You keep telling yourself to buck up. Motivate yourself to write content when nobody will have the opportunity to discover it. You blog and ping. You tag. You furl and spurl to no avail. You claim at Technorati. You post comments. You buy ebooks. You spray the web with nonsensical articles . You trade links. You check stats everyday in the beginning thinking it was a mistake. You grieve your loss. Finally acceptance sets in. You ignore the site. You post once a week thinking what’s the point. Stats are an afterthought. Until one day. One glorious day. You are checking some stats and your heart nearly leaps into your throat. Holy Crap! Do you see that!? The site is getting traffic again. It’s like a gusher!
Oh thank you Google. Thank you! I will never speak disparagingly about you again. Oh Google you are truly the greatest!
postscript: The top graph shows a Blogger blog that is still not getting traffic. None. I continue to write content for it hoping it will revive. It’s a very targeted, keyword sniped site. The bottom graph is also a Blogger blog. I have no explanation for it except it was not on the first bazillion pages of listings for weeks then one day it was top 10.
19 responses so far ↓
Frank C // Apr 3, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I thought you had the graph of one of my sites. It did exactly the same thing, nothing, then 300 or so uniques a day.
I think the most important thing is to keep adding new content that targets your main keywords and associated long tails. This seems to help the algorithm decide that you’re a legit site and not a BH come-and-go site.
When the big ‘G’ sends you some traffic with a particular long tail, do another post on the same topic (using the old dual listing trick method). Doing this seemed to pull one of my sites out of the sandbox quickly.
Grizzly // Apr 3, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Welcome to my world…
Love your writing - not many people can post a couple of charts and make it entertaining. You got some talent my friend.
Grizzly // Apr 3, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Oh hey, can you do me a favor? I hate rss feed readers - how about an email subscription? Yes I am a dinosaur.
Splork // Apr 3, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Good tip Frank. Anything to get my site up and out of the abyss.
Splork // Apr 3, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Griz if you are a dinosaur, I’m not certain what that makes me. Primordial ooze? I had to Google WTF an email subscription was. So now you are going to have me set up a Feedburner account AND write some content for your blog. Anything else I can do for you? Glass of tea maybe? How about some coffee? lol
Seriously, though, thanks for the compliment. I wish I could say I knew what I’m doing but I’m just writing whatever comes to mind.
Grizzly // Apr 4, 2008 at 7:01 am
I prefer Iced Tea…
Ann // Apr 4, 2008 at 8:40 am
Hey Splork - remember how I posted on here a while ago and I was bitching about how my one adsense site wasn’t taking off? (Probably not. But anyway.)
So, Google finally let my site out of the sandbox about a month and a half ago and now I’m getting decent traffic again, and I haven’t written an article or updated the site in about two months.
You know what it’s like? A dysfunctional relaitonship. I tell my site “I love you! I will lavish you with attention and write tons of posts and tons of articles with links that point to you!” And the site does nothing. So I say “Screw you, I’m sick of you, I am going to completely ignore you.” And the site comes running after me with tons of visitors and traffic and clicks.
The only lesson I really get from this is that if I create a bunch of sites right now and write some articles on them, then a few months from now I will start seeing traffic and adsense clicks or affiliate sales or whatever.
I think.
Ann // Apr 4, 2008 at 8:42 am
While I’m here, I have a question. There are so many “make money online” ripoff books out there. Books that have the same information that anyone who visits places like the Warrior Forum could find for free.
Are there ANY of these books/products that you recommend?
Splork // Apr 4, 2008 at 9:39 am
Hey Ann. Yea just keep building. I’ve learned that it makes no sense to sit around waiting for the website to recover. It usually always does and in the meantime you could have 5,10,15 more sites.
As far as ebooks. Stay away. I recommend Teli’s ebook and that is about all. If you get to the point where you want to build affiliate sites her WP guide is pretty good. But honestly pull up a chair and go read BloggerUnleashed, CourtneyTuttle, OpTempo and Griz’s Make Money blog. They are linked on the side there. They give the best info for nothing. They just want to help and teach. There is no reason to buy any ebook as long as they are still around. They may suggest some tools to purchase but it’s only those that they use to speed things up. They don’t pimp a lot of stuff. Griz and Vic likes Keyword and SEO Elite. Vic likes Bookmarking Demon and BANS. He recommended the Squidoo ebook but I differed in my opinion about that one. I didn’t care much for it. Vic recommends a Directory and Article submitter too. That’s about it. But don’t rush out and buy anything until you read the posts and watch Vic’s vlog.
Reddiance // Apr 4, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Anne: if you want a good ebook, take a look at a FREE one at johnchow.com. Just subscribe to his newsletter to get it. Worth it!
Splork // Apr 4, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I can’t comment on the John Chow book as I haven’t read it and until recently didn’t really know who this person is, but Griz says on his blog:
“I have long had issues with people who build up trust and then use that trust to take advantage of others. This niche is full of such people. Some are outright blatant about using the trust their readers have in them in order to take their money. Yes - John Chow is the king of this breed. He provides little value but is entertaining and this seems to be enough to fool his readership into trusting him.”
Seems everybody has differing opinions. But free is definitely good. Though in my opinion you’ll get all you need from the four horsemen for free.
Grizzly // Apr 4, 2008 at 5:22 pm
The big problem I have with most of the “Free” ebooks out there is that they are full of affiliate links and have one purpose - as Splork says - to pimp products and these products are mostly crap.
Alright where’s the Tea and ahem… email subscription!!!!!
Splork // Apr 4, 2008 at 7:52 pm
See top right. Your email is served.
Grizzly // Apr 5, 2008 at 9:57 am
You are a Gent.
I like the personalized invite - nice touch!
Ann // Apr 5, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Hey guys, thank you! You are so right about the free ebooks, Grizz. There was one I read recently where a woman posted on a certain forum, said she was making some magic amount of money bum marketing a couple of hours a day, and offered to tell everyone how to do it in her free ebook. And you guessed it, the free ebook was so stuffed full of affiliate links you could choke on them. Every single page had - 1.) information you could find anywhere (find a hungry market, find a clickbank product with good gravity that sells to the hungry market; 2.) Affiliate links every few sentences.
So THERE’S a moneymaking scheme. Go on internet marketing forums and claim you are making a ton of money but you will generously tell everyone how for FREE because you just want to help, by gosh; then write a useless ebook with regurgitated information and stuff it full of affiliate links.
Offgrid // Apr 5, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Very interesting discussion here. I am learning. I am learning. I tried the HubPage thing - lost an article since I am running Safari. - I’ll try again later with Firefox. I am enjoying Blogger for now - about 500 hits a day - Entrecard and Google Search. Some Entrecarders stick - some don’t. But I’ve noticed Ad revenue go from $2 up to $6 a day….so almost $200/month. It’s a start.
Hammiesink // Apr 7, 2008 at 7:45 am
Ann,
Splork didn’t mention this one, but Dr Andy of ezseonews.com offers a FREE ebook called “Creating Fat Affiliate Sites” or something like this. It’s exhaustive, but it focuses on websites rather than blogs, unlike the “four Horsemen” that Splork talks about.
Pretty good, though. Highly recommended you print the entire thing and read…
Splork // Apr 7, 2008 at 9:00 am
Yep it’s a good one. He knows his stuff. Seems like I paid for that at one time…or something like it from him. Kinda pathetic. I have so many ebooks lying around that I cannot remember which ones might still have value.
Ann // Apr 7, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Thank you, Hammiesink! I will check it out.
Someone just gave me a free look at another ebook involving niches - I’ll be nice and not name it - but if I’d paid for it, I’d be p.o’d. Again, same advice I’ve seen on forums. Good advice, but available for free and certainly not the guaranteed income stream that it claimed to be.
Leave a Comment