Lost Ball in High Weeds header image 2

Niche Website Building Update

February 28th, 2008 · 12 Comments

Memo to those 11 that care:

So I’m building Hubpages, Squidoo Lens and Blogger Blogs. If I build a blog I build a corresponding lens and hub. Takes very little time depending on how much I spend on the articles I am populating this mess with. I typically build a niche site that I have PLR content for. I take 1-3 articles and make a lens. 1-3 articles I make a hubpage. The rest (around 30 after I get rid of a few that are utter shit) are used as content for the blog. I post up 3-5 to get the thing going. The rest I do some quick mods and create an RSS2B4 project for posting over the next couple of months. I try to post two, maybe three, a week. I link splogs to the lens and hubs. I link the hubs and lens to the blog. I social bookmark with other time wasters as well directly to the blog. I travel through the promotion hoops and hope to get indexed within a week. Good times.

I started with a goal of doing two a week. I’ve got 10 Blogger blogs across ten different whack niches. I should have 12 but life happens. So far 5 are indexed in Google. Those corresponding lens are also indexed in Google. I keyword sniped the blogger and lens for a specific main keyword. For each of those 5 main keyword phrases the lens is ranked first page in Google. For each of those keyword phrases the blog is ranked second page. The long tail keyword phrases that I write my blog posts on fair better as almost all appear first page in Google.

Four of the five that have not been indexed were all built in the last 8 days. One was built in the first week in February. It is being particularly stubborn but is on a well-known spam niche topic so that may be hindering the movement.

Am I making money? Eff no. As a matter of fact my Adsense earnings sucks ass this month. The no-indexed 5 have not made anything in Adsense because, well I do not have Adsense on them. Just a minimal blog with a lot of words. No ads. No joy.

3 of the indexed 5 have Adsense. 1 has no ads. 1 has only affiliate ads. 2 of the 3 with Adsense have additional affiliate ads. All three with Adsense have made at least something in the last month. One actually makes $1-3 per day. It’s so effed up because of all the blogs I’ve built, that POS is the one I would have voted least likely to succeed. None have made an affiliate sale yet.

Speaking of affiliate sales. I went back and built some more affiliate content sites using Teli’s WPDFI script. I enjoy building those little sites. I pocketed a couple hundo last month using the script with Shareasale datafeeds on a few Wordpress subdomain blogs so I thought I’d crank out a few more. Pretty dumb not to build 10 a month. It’s so freaking easy and I always end up making some money on it. I got it in my head that pumping product and content on the web was bad and everything that I do has to be so perfect and righteous. That isn’t making me money. The shit that I did like build portal sites was what made, and still makes, me money.

And so it goes.

Tags: Weblog

Submit Article: Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumble it!



12 responses so far ↓

  • SWP // Feb 28, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    Brother you either already have or you’re about to turn to the dark side…

    What you’re talking about here is pretty similar to something I’m doing as well…

    This process works best for me when I build it using a pyramid model…

    Pyramid model meaning I have crappy PLR Blogs and free sites along the bottom level…

    Good keyword rich domain names (on my DS) with a mixture of original content and PLR (basically content not good enough to make it to the top level) along the middle level.

    And at the top of course are my money sites in which I sell all loads of stuff… actual hard goods that I pack and ship myself ( I know shudder the thought), I drop-ship stuff, I sell IM related services on another one and some sites are just landing pages with content promoting affiliate network offers from networks like NeverBlueAds, COPEAC, CJ, etc…

    The key for me is all the links are built pointing up meaning the sites at the bottom link up to the middle and top levels and the middle level points to the top.

    None of the links ever point down.

    Outside of this little pyramid I’ve started to work on some Black Hat projects which aren’t going too well at the moment because I’m not a geek programmer (sorry if that offends anyone)

    And I know you don’t want to hear this but at the top level of the pyramid I collect email addresses and write newsletters…

    BTW I used to comment under Dan Cruz and I’m not sure if I’m included in your “11″

  • Splork // Feb 29, 2008 at 7:57 am

    Yep, sounds like my deal too. Links always point from bad to good, never good to bad. And I never link a bad straight to the good. It always has to go through a mediocre first.

    Free sites/splogs > Squidoo/Hubpages > Legit site

    Seems like a lot of effort but I’m just not going to point a bunch of crappy links to sites I have hosted myself. Squidoo/Hubpages are perfect for that. The traffic creates lensrank which creates pagerank. Then I can pass it along to my main sites. Plus I’m starting to make a few bucks more each month with Squidoo. And those lens are very easy to build.

    And BTW collecting emails is the path to riches in this game. I gotta find some time to write some newsletters and do the same.

  • Darren // Feb 29, 2008 at 8:08 am

    Hey Splork,

    Sounds like you are getting desperate and falling into the trap of quantity over quality. Don’t get me wrong, I have the same sites you do that I spent forever screwing with the content to make it great only to to get piss for clicks.

    I think you have the concept, long tail, blog, XSitePro, etc…I think the real secret sauce is the cost of the clicks.

    For example, I think I was part of the same group you are in at PLRPro, I had a niche pack that now rocks for traffic from December(built with 5 pages in xsitepro) very keyword specific, and I get a ton of clicks….but my earnings suck!

    Yesterday I got 10 clicks on 30 visits and made ……..wait for it…….23 cents! In fact that reason I dropped PLRPro was because mooks like me voted on the topic, which kind of makes sense in keeping us interested in the product, but not on revenue.

    So, I have (since the 1st of the year) turned my sites to a very profitable industry, building a site around 1 2-4 word keyword with content I get created at rentacoder or from Orwell. If I get it from rentacoder, I will often find people with great writing skills that will do 10 articles for $25-$30! All original content. I go over the articles make sure they are cool, use them as pages on the site.

    I use a great little program called WordFlood to help me change it around, then I submit 10 articles to iSnare, then I will do another 10 re-writes and submit to ezinearticles.com

    I will find some affiliates to include, build a blog, set up a google alert on the keywords I want, then post comments to my blog about the alert or just do 2-3 sentences about the alert then a link to it.

    Now, as the sites grow, even 1 or 2 clicks are worth $2-$4 bucks. Seems to be working.

    It just seems that Google and the rest of the engines are going to catch on to this false linking stuff at some point and then it’s all going to be for shit.

    I have seen google smack around squidoo, blogs, link farms, etc… but I have never heard them penalize a well optimized, for human consumption site. Just one man’s opinion.

    Darren

    P.S. I do 4 of these a month, sometimes 5. I guess online marketing is like snowflakes…they are all different. Unless we fall for the latest “this will make you a billionaire by Thursday” BS launch. Speaking of which, isn’t Filsame due for another launch soon? Better check my junk mail.

  • Splork // Feb 29, 2008 at 9:58 am

    Not desperate at all. You sound like you are doing exactly what I do. Keyword sniping. As far as links go I doubt my main sites will ever be penalized because I have Hubpages or Squidoo linking to them. I mean if they dislike Squidoo so much then why do I have PR3-1 lenses? But the key is to drive traffic to the lens. That creates lensrank which ranks the lens higher, which gives it a higher pagerank in Google, I assume. I have a tool that I can use to build hundreds of backlinks to the lens and hubpages, on different IPs in a few minutes.

    Plus links are links. Generally. If you have links pointing to your site from numerous different IPs then you are good to go. Even if they are junk, G wouldn’t penalize you. How many crap sites have links pointing to sites like Boingboing and Engadget? Those sites don’t suffer PR for it. That said, I wouldn’t link 1000 Blogger blog sites to my main site or a Squidoo lens for that matter. I don’t even have a link farm. None of my splogs knows any of the other splogs exist. I’m just trying to build a pyramid of linking to build up my niche sites.

    Here’s what I think:
    I build quality sites with my own original content.
    I build lens and hubpages with mostly re-written PLR.
    I submit the quality sites links to directories, post very relevant comments to other blogs, ask for link trades, social bookmark and point authority site links like Squidoo to them as well. All very legit.
    For Squidoo I social bookmark. I also find relevant blogs and lens to post comments to. Very legit.
    I build splogs and websites on parasite hosting sites solely for the purpose of pointing links to Squidoo. They take no time to build. They are filled with niche related junk. They are for link building and the odd bit of traffic. All on different IPs. None interlinked. None have Adsense or point to a site that I have Adsense included.

    Now I know that some readers here frown on that activity. But unless you are doing PPC you need the search engines or social sites like Squidoo to provide traffic. Links=popularity. Popularity=money.

    How many use Article Underground or PLRPro or Backlink Solutions blog network to announce your sites? They all use numerous blogs on different IPs to accomplish the same thing. The game is about links or PPC. I’m building links.

  • Scott // Feb 29, 2008 at 4:22 pm

    Hey Splork,
    I have a datafeed script that works with shareasale, but I imagine it’s not quite as versatile as Teli’s.

    I bought it two years ago and made two “test” sites on subdomains. After few months I decided that they just looked spammy. Just a product where blog content should be, and not even a whole “store.” So I took one down and left the other. About a year later(with no updates) I found over $80 in my bank account because somebody found it and bought over $800 worth of yoga mats.

    Anyway, how do you make a couple hundred a month with one of these? Do you promote it, or do you just use the best WP optimization that makes google come crawling?

    By the way, what do you use to hide the url in the status bar on mouseover?

    Thanks,
    Scott

  • Splork // Feb 29, 2008 at 4:46 pm

    Pure luck. Some months I make $30. Some a couple of hundred. I haven’t built one in quite a few months so what I do make is from sites that have been up for 6-18 months in some cases. Pure blog and ping. It is probably the definition of lazy affiliate marketing.

    I use a javascript to hide the url in the status bar on all those datafeed affiliate sites.
    “Hide status bar msg II script- by javascriptkit.com”

  • The Wholesale Products Guy // Feb 29, 2008 at 10:33 pm

    “I got it in my head that pumping product and content on the web was bad and everything that I do has to be so perfect and righteous.

    That isn’t making me money. The shit that I did like build portal sites was what made, and still makes, me money.”

    I am still in that state of mind. Hopefully, at some point, I can get on with making money without trying to be perfect about it..

    Great Blog..

    Robert C..

  • Isabella Murphy // Mar 3, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    Hey, Splork…it’s about keeping as many dollars in your pocket as possible…I’m doing more stuff on the PPC side, but it’s my services (copywriting, content gen, video tutorials / press releases) that has kept the landlord in a serious state of Zen, if you know what I mean.

    It’s a hard hustle, but it’s your hustle. I believe that 100%. We still don’t see eye to eye on that PLR thing, as I’m too much of a writer and too damn stubborn to purchase the packs.

    I will keep you updated on my site flipping if you keep us updated on the site building. And hopefully I’m part of the 11 now. :)

  • April // Mar 5, 2008 at 4:54 am

    I think I’m going to see about getting some datafeeds. Just got to decide which one to buy. I see Neil Shearing is launching something and going on about making nearly $4,000 of sales. All very nice but the amount deposited into his bank account is considerably less!

  • Zenzele // Mar 5, 2008 at 10:48 am

    Yep, today Neil Shearing is dropping a WP datafeed plugin to much fanfare. I had gotten Teli’s demo script a few weeks back to try out. Would be interested to learn how the two compare. Anyone checked out Shearing’s offering?

  • April // Mar 5, 2008 at 2:40 pm

    I ended up getting Teli’s script. The Shearing launch just went on and on about the benefits as if the reader has never heard of a datafeed before. I need a lot more specific info before I buy such as the ability to drip feed the products over time and how it actually works.

  • Splork // Mar 5, 2008 at 7:35 pm

    Hey April. I think you made a good choice. Teli is working on a new version from what I understand too.

Leave a Comment