Learning the Art of Niche Stalking to Make Money Online with Adsense
I have a business that picks up in the summer then dwindles down in the winter, not sure why because weather has absolutely nothing to do with the work. I’m in front of a computer all day. Anyways I’ve been to the school of the Griz and am a member of the Keyword Academy now so, like any idiot with a little knowledge, I think I know what I’m doing. (keyword = think). It makes sense to me now but the work necessary to accumulate momentum and make money and work from home is pretty heavy… I suppose that’s better than ugly heavy… or pretty ugly (does that make sense?) whatever. I am currently working a bunch of “green” keywords on a handful of sites and beginning to see some progress however, it’s taken me a little over a year and this is my third round of domain names.
Round one – low competition but otherwise useless keywords:
My first attempt at trying to make money online yielded three completely useless domain names and one that actually works. Two of the useless ones are on page one of the SERPs for their main keyword but if I told you what they were you’d laugh. Here I tought I was getting some great domains because they were subjects I thought were cool and I knew there would be no competition… and there wasn’t. They don’t get any traffic either. Pretty cool, top spot at Google, 130 hits a day, public service ads. They have NOTHING to do with ANYTHING closely resembling a product or some type of usefull consumer oriented information. My mom thinks one of them is “nice”. Just so you know, when you get a public service ad that means Google just doesn’t have any ads that match the subject matter of the site. I suppose I could try to target more useful keywords but that would be like writing about baseball on a site titled lefthandedknitting.com.
One is a BANS and it actually does a dollar a day. I like that one and hang on to it just because its a BANS. BANS was an awesome thing, mine has paid for itself several times over.
Round two – highly competitive, consumer oriented but general keywords that have a huge search volume:
My second attempt occurred after the giant coffee cup that is make money online for beginners. Here I got a clue. I’d found a decent source of information with some no-brains-necessary step-by-step instructions as well as a lot of theory on SEO, affiliate marketing, Adsense, lots of snow and golf. But I am a slow learner when it comes to pure intellectual absorption, I need the hands on approach.
This 2nd round yielded about 10 or so new websites of which 3 had a chance to actually make money in a niche market. The other 7 sites were OK but the subject matter was so broad that I didn’t know where to start. My intent was to focus on the long-tails of a fairly wide niche market. I got a bunch of articles up but then realized that these niche markets were just too much for me at the time. One started getting some traffic and I was getting a better idea of how to find related keywords that I was capable of working. Then summer happened and my job became hell again. All my clients just wake up in May and start sending me stuff to do… all at once. One day I’m sleeping till 10 and having an easy day of writing and reading, playing with the dog. Then all of a sudden I’m working 12-14 hours a day and still have clients peeved at me because I can’t do 40 things at once. 39 is my limit. I do catch up on occasion but the in-box doesn’t sleep in the colder months here. Money is nice, but couldn’t they just get together and space out the requests a little better.
I didn’t really put into that last batch of websites what they deserved and so the traffic was just not happening. I do what Griz says and wait until there is around 100 uniques a day before I do Adsense. I also did a little cheating where I used some private label content. I would edit the first paragraph and the last paragraph then post on a site. I also tried Unique Article Wizard articles using the plugin. I now had a site or two with 50+ articles. One of the sites started getting around 120 uniques a day so I put a 366×280 on top there and waited a few days. A funny thing happened though, one of my round one, top of the SERPs sites disappeared. This site had no ads on it, gone. Hmmm, so I took the ad off the PLR site and the next day the round one site was back, position one. Whoa. So I tried it again and the same thing happened. WTF. Pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that the content was not 100% original on either site???? Anyways, I’ll deal with those someday. Right now I’m on round three.
Round three – long tail, low competition, decent volume “green” keywords in the domain name and on the page:
Round three started about four months ago after discovering the Keyword Academy (KWA). Court and Mark are honorable dudes and will show you their method of how to make money online. I discovered some major flaws in my keyword selection process as well as several other aspects of my approach. I’m SURE I would have figured it all out eventually (2050 A.D.) but these guys are real heros in my book. Round three yielded 13 new sites. I’ve got the standard 5 articles, 3 categories, and 25 or so tags. I’ve done Ezines, GoArticles and will get to Bloggers soon. Did some linking via the Grizz exchange page and will start next on the KWA sites. It’s a lot of writing but I think I’m getting a little better as time goes on.
As it turns out, 3 of the round two sites, the real broad subjects, seem to be great candidates for the “super site” technique. I’m toying with the idea of opening one of them to KWA members, just another place for people with sites in the niche to get some links.
So, that’s where I am. I have about 30 domains, 3 of which are completely useless though fun if you like that sort of thing, 3 are a little bit better and at least have consumer related subjects, 7 really broad topics, about 10 pretty good KWA style sites, this one and a few more I just haven’t done much of anything with yet… they’re “aging”.
This is a hell of a lot of work starring at me. Winter is coming but damn, building links, writing content (no more PLR for me), making supporting sites and all the other lovely stuff you have to do to get some momentum rolling is seven winters of work. I think of new stuff I want to do every day but I know I’ll have to invent a third arm or an eight-hours-of-sleep pill to get to it all. And the seasonal opportunities that pop up, you have to be on your toes to be able to leverage that as well.
Outsourcing: Haven’t gone there yet. I hear good things and I hear bad things. I may try it in the near future but will be sure to use Copyspace or Plagiarism Checker on them. I hear Dupe Content is really good.
So, what have I learned about how to make money online with Adsense?
Pick the right keywords and work until your fingers are bloody stubs. Make friends with like minded people. Stay as close to the white side of the gray hat as possible because mama G owns everything now. Pick the right keywords and work until your fingers are bloody stubs. Yes, I said that twice.
Tags: affiliate marketing, content writing, domain names, Internet Marketing, keywords, make money online, marketing, niche, niche market, niche marketing, niches, website
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