Beating Panda with Affiliate Sales, not Adsense

When the Google Panda algorithm changes went into effect in the middle of October, I was already knee-deep in a site redesign for my pets niche site, one that would both improve the aesthetics and usability of the site and move the earnings focus from Adsense clicks to affiliate sales.

I took my inspiration, by the way, from my Wealthy Affiliate University training and the underlying theory that I could better monetize my traffic on the site with sales rather than ad clicks. 

The end result? When Panda slapped my site and took away about 50% of my traffic overnight, my earnings only went down by 20% (comparing this November, first full post-Panda month, to September, the last month before the changes).

Looking at it from another angle, with only 20% more traffic than November of last year, income from the site this November was up more than 35%.

The "traffic" designation in the graph refers to site visits; page views are at least twice that.  Thus September saw over 20,000 site visits and more than 40,000 page views.

Here is the precise breakdown of earnings and traffic by month, using the months before, during and after Panda as well as last November for a more accurate comparison. My site redesign happened Nov. 1, two weeks after the sweeping algorithm changes.

September 2011
20,670 site visits; total earnings: $516.35
Adsense $450.85

Amazon $5.55
Clickbank $59.95

October 2011
15,060 site visits; total earnings: $439.87
Panda strikes on the 15th, cutting traffic in half
Adsense $368.71

Amazon $31.24 (mostly due to a random large purchase)
Clickbank $39.92

November 2011
10,800 site visits; total earnings: $416.70
New site redesign launches on the 1st; traffic still low post-Panda
Adsense $175.76

Amazon $40.88 (virtually all from the two main books I promote)
Clickbank $200.06

compare this to
Nov. 2010
9,030 site visits; total earnings: $300.76
Adsense $258.80

Amazon $1.90
Clickbank  $40.06

The main differences on my site now are that the ads are less prominent than before (though I still have three units per page) and I have more focus on my two main affiliate products --an ebook from Clickbank and a hardcover book via Amazon -- with photos and in-text links.

If you haven't checked out Wealthy Affiliate, definitely do. It's the only online training community I've found enough value in to stay for the long haul and recommend to family, friends and my blog readers.

They're the reason I've been able to stay ahead of the curve through the recent internet upheaval. I gain inspiration and motivation from the other members and valuable tips and insights through the training material, blog posts and forum threads. 

Now, while I certainly am not happy that my traffic is still down so much, and have begun the process of increasing traffic and making the site more pleasing to Google, I'm relieved that my income did not drop off the cliff with the traffic.

What are your recent experiences with online writing and marketing?

Outsourcing Article Writing: Lessons Learned

Is outsourcing the solution to maximizing your productivity and success as an online entrepreneur? If  you have more work than you can manage yourself, and the budget to hire others to do it for you, it might make sense to outsource some aspects of you life or home business in order to focus your own efforts on the most important areas. The key is to discover which aspects you should hire out and which are best done by yourself.

As I mentioned in my post about focusing on one website vs. many, I have more website ideas than time to properly write and manage them all. One approach I've tried is to hire freelance writers and employ article writing services to create original content for me to use on my blog ... to mixed results.

Specifically, I've turned to Textbroker andContent Kingdom, as well as individual private freelance writers, to write articles for which I'd already created keyword-specific titles. These articles were for a variety of my websites (but not this blog, of course).

Mixed Results from Article Services
The article writing services I used were hit-or-miss. I got some great articles from Content Kingdom, and then some really disappointing fluff pieces. Textbroker was largely disappointing at first, even while paying for higher-end pieces. I got a few good articles from them after adding more details to my article request descriptions, but it was still clear to me in most cases that very little research, if any, was done by the author.

There were even some cases of complete inaccuracies I was able to spot at first glance because I am very familiar with the topics of all the blogs and sites I've started -- I do live by the adage to "write what you know." Perhaps precisely because I chose my niches based on a combination of passion and potential profitability, it would take a lot to satisfy my expectations for content on these topics.

For some of the articles, I spent more time editing, tweaking and adding more information that I would have just writing the article from scratch myself. Spending the extra time and money became a drain, not a boost.

Ultimately, unless I find a freelance writer who has real life experience in my best niches, I've learned that for my top sites I am much better off writing my own content. This is most especially true for sites that have a strong author voice, as both my top sites do.


Outsourcing Other Tasks
Some web writers swear by their virtual assistants, who do all sorts of tasks for them, from paying their bills to performing basic research to setting up new website and adding content as directed.

While I don't think I'm anywhere near needing or being able to justify my own personal assistant,. there are some non-writing business-related tasks that would be best done by someone else.

I'd really like to hire a web designer or graphic artist to help me with several website re-designs and create logos and headers for my sites. I am not capable as a graphic artist and would love to find the right person at the right price (If you have a recommendation, please leave me a comment!)

Should I Outsource my House Cleaning?

My mom, who raised a large family and home-schooled most of her children all the way through high school, has wisely pointed out (practically insisted) that I should hire a housecleaner once a week to do my deep cleaning and other household tasks.

I actually tried this last spring. I found a cleaning service that was "green," and did not use harmful chemicals in the cleaning process, important to me with kids in the house. (Oddly, though, the woman was a smoker and would take smoke breaks. When she came back inside she smelled smoky and it really bothered me. I was pregnant and extra sensitive to smells at the time).

It felt uncomfortable to me to have strangers in the home, and to have another woman cleaning my house while I was not. I was stressed out ahead of time trying to get the house ready for her to clean (can't mop floors with kids toys all over them). Some items were left undone, but I still paid the regular price that was supposed to include everything. Maybe I have issues and need to "let go" a bit, but the additional stress led me to cancel her services after two visits.

This is one area I am going to revisit for potential outsourcing. I first have to get past any feelings of failure if I'm not cleaning my own house to the standard I like it. 

What Should You Outsource?

Your own needs and talents are unique and what might make sense for you to outsource can vary widely based on your home business and family situation.

Tips on Outsourcing:

• Don't force yourself to hire out the tasks you actually enjoy doing.
• Find competent assistants or service providers, even if you have to pay a little more.
• Make a budget and re-evaluate it every couple weeks. If the payof isn't there, reconsider your options. 
• Have a clear idea of how much time or money you will save, or how much you'll be able to increase revenue based on your outsourcing. Make sure it is worth it to you either financially or for your sanity (moms of many, I'm looking at you!).

Have you outsourced or hired others to help you with your business? What were the results? 

Niche Site Profits in May 2011

The numbers are in for my niche website earnings in May. Since I'm working to replace my eHow earnings of about $3,000 a month, I check these stats at the end of every month to see how I'm doing.

Over the past month, I added a few pages to my pets site and a couple posts to my home/ family blog. I added a backlink to my home/ family blog through eZine Articles, but that was at the very end of May.

Here's how my two best-earning websites are doing:

Pets niche site

Adsense   $431.31
Clickbank  $20.02
Amazon    $15.90

Total $467.23

Home/ Family blog
PCo Affiliate $205.08
cj.com      $64.78
Clickbank  $21.24
Adsense   $13.60

Total $304.70

Combined earnings for both sites together was $771.93. In the grand scheme of things, these numbers are not gigantic -- but on the other hand, I'm greatly encouraged by the results as I can see the potential they both have for future earnings as I increase content, improve their look and navigation, and build social network and search engine traffic.


Have you been working on a website or blog? Are you happy with the results so far?

Building a New Website

I'm building a new website in a home cleaning niche. There, that's my confession. I know that building new sites wasn't in my stated plans for recovering residual income post-eHow, but the other day I received an alert that a few domain names I own were up for renewal.

To my chagrin, one of those domains had nothing on it -- not even a basic html frame, no blog, nothing, and I'd owned it for 11 months. I decided to renew, even though it's just a .info domain, but only after committing to myself that I would actually use it for a website before it hit the 12 month mark. And to that end, I've spent the past week making this new site. Here's what it looks like in terms of structure, content and money-making model.

Website Format: Static Site
The cleaning niche I picked isn't particularly conducive to a blogging format, and I find that websites that won't be frequently updated or commented on do best in a static  format, so I picked a simple html template and customized it with niche-specific cleaning photos.

Website Content: Outsourcing
I wrote one page and outsourced seven articles from Textbroker. While I've used Textbroker several times in the past month, this was my best set of articles from them thus far. I chose level 4 and was very specific in my request instructions. The writers did well -- I had to make only minor edits to the articles before adding the content to my site pages. All told, I spent $60.77 on the content.

Website Monetization: Adsense & Amazon
The income model for this site is simple: Google Adsense units along the two side columns and in-article text links to Amazon products. I've also used Amazon product photos to illustrate the content and these link to their Amazon product pages as well. As far as earning potential, I don't expect this to be a huge money-maker, as it is a narrow niche and the products are inexpensive ($5-$100, with most under $30).

However, there isn't much competition there either. I'll set $100/month as my goal for monthly earnings for this little site, and hope to hit that within a year.

I'll definitely post updates on the website as it begins to earn money (here's hoping!) and I add more content. For the record, I put the first page up on May 17. No backlinks yet, but the first page was crawled and indexed by Google a few days ago, which means at least the search engine giant knows it exists.

Are you working on a website, new or old? How is it doing?

Niche Site Profits April 2011

 With the eHow WCP closed for good and taking with it the backbone of what was a full-time passive residual income from writing, I've been working harder than ever on my own properties to rebuild my monthly residuals. I recently shared my residual income without eHow. In April, I focused efforts on two of my own sites to begin rebuilding monthly cash flow. I'll share their income reports below.

Facebook Fan Page
In April, I added some backlinks and set up a Facebook page for my pets site.  The Facebook page has 15 fans and I've posted links to articles on my site there, receiving a few comments and a sprinkling of visitors. With the Google changes, social media is increasingly important for traffic and rankings.

Outsourcing Content
While the pets site was previously written entirely by me, and is on a topic with which I am very familiar and work with in real life on a daily basis, I decided to hire a freelance writer to help me add more articles to it in May. The writer has personal experience in this niche as well, and I'm confident I'll see quality work from him. I'll update on that front next month.

Pets Website Earnings
Income for this niche hit its peak in March, as was the case in 2010 and 2009, and will wind slowly down from here, with the fall months typically the lowest-earning.

Adsense      $557.74
Clickbank   $220.18
Amazon        $16.44

April total   $794.36

(-$10.33 compared to March 2011)

Family Niche Blog Income
Just the other day, I lamented to my husband that my newer niche blog on a family-related topic was only earning about $10 a month from Adsense, whereas the pets site at the same age was making $80-$100 a month from ad clicks and affiliate commissions. It wasn't until I listed and tallied all its income sources that I realized it's actually doing very well.

Started last August, it's less than nine months old and has just 15 blog posts and four pages. I discovered this niche from one of my eHow articles that did exceptionally well (it earned over $3,000 in revenue share and more than $1,500 in affiliate commissions in 3.5 years).

Family niche blog income sources in April 2011:

cj.com       $29.75
RA sales    $21.82
Clickbank  $21.24 
Amazon     $17.06
Adsense      $9.82

Total         $99.69

Thus my total earnings from these two sites in April was $894.05 -- to me, a very encouraging number. I have over a dozen domain names, most sitting unloved with just a few pages or posts apiece (or in some cases, nothing), but by focusing my efforts on one or two sites at a time, I hope to bring them all up to at least the $100/month mark by next year and keep growing from there.

•  Check out my Tools & Training resource page for links to the products and services I use and recommend. If you haven't made your own profitable website yet, everything you need to get started is right there.

Do you have a niche site or blog? How is it doing? If not, what's stopping you from moving forward?

Pets Niche Website Profit Report

In my last post about niche website earnings, I promised to update with March's data once the month closed. As I noted, this particular site tends to see its highest earnings in February through May, with its lowest months in the fall and winter.

In the slow months, I didn't ignore my site. I added a few new pages, created some backlinks and started a Facebook page that links to the site and has generated some conversation on topics of interest to this type of pet owner.  But in March I was busy on other projects, so this is true passive/ residual  income.

It's interesting to see how much the site's traffic and income has grown in the past 12 months -- for contrast, my pets niche site made only $202.81 from Adsense in March 2010; this March it made almost triple that in ad revenue with a healthy $200+ in affiliate commissions as well.

Pets Niche Site Earnings in March 2011

• Google Adsense:                                                       $586.24
• Clickbank ebook sales commissions                          $199.03
• Amazon book product sales commissions                    $19.42

Total                                                                   $804.69 (+$351 over Feb.)

Traffic stats for March : Just over 24,000 visits counting for nearly 68,000 page views.

I'm still working on implementing the improvements I mentioned previously (new website design being paramount), and this week will add Facebook "Like" buttons on my pages to increase social network traffic to the site. With Google's recent algorithm changes, social links seemed to have gained importance. I'm already pleased to see people "liked" the Facebook page I made and socializing on the page. It's a more fun way to bring traffic to the site than just writing content articles, for sure.

If you haven't started a niche site and want recommendations for getting started, check out my new Tools & Training resource page. In a nutshell, that's what I've used to educate myself and build a site that earns. 

Are you working on a niche site? What are your goals for it?

Niche Website Profit Report

Profitable Pets?

My pets-themed niche website, which I started just over two years ago, is doing very well so far. It always picks up in the spring and summer months and slows down considerably in the winter. March earnings are outpacing last month, so I'll be sure to report on it again in April. But I thought I would share my income sources for the site in case it would be helpful to anyone working on niche sites for residual income.

Pets Niche Site Earnings in February 2011

• Google Adsense:                                                            $373.11
• Clickbank ebook sales commissions                               $60.09
• Amazon book & product sales commissions                   $20.10

Total                                                                                         $453.30

When I say "pets theme," I'm being intentionally vague as to the exact niche. It's a site on a specific type or breed of pet, and my url is a three-word well-searched keyword phrase in that niche. Currently, I have 22 content pages (articles with unique urls) published on the site.

Encouraged by my pet site's success thus far, I've made it one of my top priorities for this spring. I'd love to have it earning $1,000 a month this time next year. To that end, I have some work to do.

Niche Site Plans and Goals

• Site redesign: I built this site on a free template back when I was brand new to website creation. Seriously, the site is not pretty, and its template is a bit bulky and problematic to work with. Whether I buy a quality template or hire a designer to create me something practical and attractive, this is one of my top priorities for the site. 
• More content: Its earnings are impressive for having a couple dozen pages, so adding more content both to improve my readers' experience and to add income possibilities is a no-brainier.
• Forum posting: I have a profile on a niche-specific forum and need to increase my posting there to drive traffic and create backlinks to my site.
• Social media interaction: Adding a Facebook Like button is one thing I'm hoping to implement and currently researching. 

Are you building residual income through niche sites, or planning to start? What are you working on this week?

Too Many Niches

Do you have too many niches?

Are you spreading yourself too thin over numerous topics and trying to manage several websites and blogs?

I know I am. I have a pets website, a toys website, a cooking website, several craft/hobby sites, a nutrition site, and several blogs, on top of hundreds of individual content articles. The best of my niche sites is earning $350+ a month, but I have not had time to add to it in weeks.

An insight that really hit home for me during my Wealthy Affiliate course yesterday was the instruction to not diversify until you have exhausted a niche.

One single keyword can earn you $1,000 a day.

If you are earning $50 a week from one of your sites, the temptation might be to make another site on another topic and get that one earning $50 a week too. But stop right there -- what if you wrote more articles, promoted more products more successfully, and started a subscriber list on that SAME topic, all connected to your website? What if you added more backlinks, started a PPC (pay per click) campaign and drove as much targeted traffic as possible to your site and subscriber list?

What if you could really earn $1,000 a day from one keyword or set of keywords? Would you really need ten niche sites and a half-dozen blogs on a variety of topics?

The problem with over-diversifying is that you lose the ability to focus well on one particular niche.

This realization has been a light-bulb-moment for me. Starting today, for the rest of the summer, I am going to try to focus 90% of my efforts on one specific niche as I work through the Wealthy Affiliate training. My goal is to be earning $1,000 a month from that one particular site, which I began building over a year ago, by the end of this August.

Are you over-diversifying without maximizing your potential in a specific niche? Have you considered just working on one site for a couple months, giving it your complete focus, and measuring the results?

Wealthy Affiliate: Day 5 -- hey, this is fun!

It's day five, lesson three for me at Wealthy Affiliate University and I am having so much fun! Yes, I'm following the course and it's "work," but honestly, I am really excited to get out of bed at 5 am so I can get started on it each morning. And now I sneak in some work time after the kids are in bed, and sometimes during their nap/quiet time, just to explore the WA resources further or work on my tasks that go with each lesson.

Being part of the WA community, even for just these few days, has gotten me out of my rut and excited about my niche sites again. There is so much I've been overlooking, by moving on to other niches before I've even tapped a fraction of the potential already there. I finally have a focus when it comes to niche internet marketing; the blueprints to make my online work truly successful... and enjoyable once again.

I think it's easy to get into a rut, or become discouraged, when your focus is unclear or you're trying to do too many things at once without a set plan. If this is the case for you, like it has been for me for a few months, consider joining me at WA. So far, it's the best investment I've made all year. And unlike stocks, I expect it to be a profitable one.

So here's to having fun and working at the same time -- what a concept!

New Niche Site in Progress

I'm working on getting a new niche website online, inspired in part by the progress of a pets-themed niche site I started last December. You can read my niche site profit report about that site; in short, I have about a dozen content pages online and it earns around $65 a month. I've added a couple more pages to it recently and monthly earning should increase as those pages are indexed and start to show up in searches.

But anyway, the site I am working on today is on a personal finance topic with a narrow focus. The keyword phrase I use for the URL gets about 176 searches a day and there isn't much competition. I bought the domain and host the site through Hostgator. My strategy has been to go for small niches and win with those. I expect I could get the #1 Google placement for that specific search, as well as several others closely related, within a few months (or maybe less).

The site is built on an HTML static site template, which I broke down and bought for $62 from this template site -- one of the best I've found. The template came with an index page and five versions of secondary pages, and works great in my free html editor (Kompozer). I've bought some very frustrating, hard-to-customize templates in the past from a "bargain" site and I really wasted my money. I also don't like using free templates anymore (my pets site is built on one) because the quality has not been as good and they have links to the template creators which can not be removed.

In addition to Google Adsense, I will include niche affiliate marketing of products on the site. Inspired by the One-Week Marketing course I bought (and blogged about here), I'm including a Clickbank product as part of that monetization model.

Since this personal-finance-related topic gets more searches and ads pay better than the ones for my pets site, I think it will soon earn more per month than the pets site. One of my goals is to get 10 mini niche content sites earning $100 each a month, to add another $1,000 a month to my long-term residual income.

And I should reach that goal by this time next year, while also keeping up with eHow and my blogs ... not to mention the kids ... here's hoping!

Have you had success with a niche content site? I'd love to hear about it!

Free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide from Google

Another WAHM pointed me to this excellent resource on SEO from Google, which came out in November 2008. (And who better to learn from when it comes to SEO?!) The Google picture above is also from November; it was the Veterans' Day search illustration.

The 22-page ebook is titled Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide and I uploaded it to my WriterGig eJunkie Shop where you can grab a copy for free of course.

I'm still working my way through it, but it is a very thorough manual for new webmasters as well as a great refresher for those of us who already have niche websites.

In addition to information on making each page of your site Google-friendly through appropriate use of meta tags and on-page content, there is a section with great tips on promoting your site and building traffic and links, as well as a section with Google Webmaster resources links.

I hope it's helpful -- let me know what you think.

How to Make Money with a Website

Figuring out how to make money with a website is a learning process, one that has certainly been simplified by the plethora of informative guides, blog posts and articles available online for free. One of the best resources I've seen recently is the How to Build Passive Income with Article Sites Series by Lindsay at Writing for Your Wealth. If you're new to creating niche sites, or want to take your earnings to a higher level, pay attention to Lindsay's advice. She knows what she's talking about -- she earns over $100,000 in Adsense a year.

I have several sites online making money and several domains that I plan to bring online this year. My non-Blogger sites consist (so far) of the following:

• A nutrition site created with SiteBuild It! in December 2007
• A home and garden site & Wordpress blog started in June 2008
• A pets site created in December 2008
• A mini-site for my eHow eBook
• Several other domains with one page or none, needing attention

For all except the nutrition site, I use HostGator hosting and can have unlimited domains under that account, paying about $15 to register each one and then $10/ month to host them all. I decided to go this route rather than purchase multiple SBI sites because, under my one membership, I have access to all the tools and can use the Brainstorming tools, keyword information, forums and networking/ link building aspects for any of my sites. Also, I am not expecting to make a large amount of money from the sites right away, so HostGator was more affordable than SBI! for multiple small sites. The education I received at SBI! was invaluable and I continue to use those resources on my SBI site as well as in my other website ventures.

My pets site, whose link I will share sometime later when the site is more complete, has 9 pages and has been indexed by Google. I have earned just over $10 in Adsense and $4 in Amazon referrals since I published the first page in mid December.

I'm doing this site partially as a case study, to see how well it will earn and whether it is a better method than writing for content sites with better page ranks. I also want to diversify my income.

Some quick stats on the site:

• Domain name is a three-word search term.
• The topic has low search engine traffic and low cost Adsense ads.
• Competition for the keywords isn't bad.
  

I'll be interested to see how it earns as I add more pages and do a little site promotion. As always, I'll post updates.

Do you make money with your website or a blog? I'd love to hear how it's going.

Photo by Eylem Culculoglu

Site Build It 2-for-1 Holiday Sale

My niche sites are a small but growing part of my residual income streams. My fist site, one on health and nutrition, I built with Site Build It! last Decmeber and January. The step-by-step guide was a crash course in web content writing and SEO, providing me the skills to build my pages as well as write profitable content articles for eHow and other sites.

My experience with Site Build It! is a large part of the reason I have been able to build residual income online--the knowledge I gained was well worth the subscription cost, and then some.

If you are interested in building a niche website, and don't know where to start ... you need Site Build It!

If you are already a webmaster, but you've seen lackluster results with your sites ... you need Site Build It!

Now is the best time to buy SBI!, as there is a Buy One, Get One Free sale in progress that ends December 25 -- take advantage of this special if you have any plans to create profitable niche websites in the coming year. There is a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you aren't satisfied, your price will be refunded ... but chances are, you will love the incredible wealth of resources provided by SBI! and become one of their many success stories.

In addition to eHow, Bukisa, my eHow ebook and my blog, I will be increasing my residual income in 2009 by building up my Site Build It! website and creating another 2-4 niche websites.

I think diversification is key to maximizing your profits online -- so if you are currently working for clients or writing for content sites but don't have your own, consider brainstorming a niche topic and starting your own site as a way to write for yourself as you build your online income.

Best of luck in all your endeavors, and have a very happy holiday season!