Archive for February, 2009
February 27th, 2009 | 
Author: After just checking on my stats I noticed a few visitors arriving from google for a few of my main target keywords like “european cruises”. After getting a bit excited about this I checked on google and sure enough my blog has been indexed in google for my main keywords at last. Although it is indexed it is still very low in the rankings for those keywords but that is what usually happens.
I love it when stuff like this happens because it is almost like google finally agrees that your site is worthy of a place in it’s indexes for the prime keywords for that niche however low in the rankings that the site may be.
My job now is to keep going with the backlinking strategy of getting quality inbound links using my target keywords as anchor text. Traffic was up again yesterday and today looks like it is going to rise a bit more again. I won’t see real massive increases in traffic until I get onto page 1 of google for those keyword phrases I am targeting though..
So realistically to get to my $100 a day target from this blog by now I should be at least up to $50 a day and seeing around 1000 visitors a day also.. Unfortunately I am falling short of that by some margin, I could blame the recession, global warming or make a million other excuses but I won’t, this cruise market is a tough one to crack. I am not going to back down or bottle it or anything like that though, I am more determined than ever to get to my target!
Now the good news is that I have seen a slow increase in traffic over the past few days and this has been reflected in my adsense income. I am now hovering around 15% of my target income a day. It fluctuates wildly, some days its a lot more and some days a lot less but averages around 15%.
I am still waiting for the rest of my articles to get written and then I will post and promote like a madman over the next few weeks and then just hope that the mighty google see fit to rank me highly for all the big juicy keywords that I am targeting. They will do it eventually but whether they will do it before the end of this challenge, who knows?
I get a lot of comments and emails from various people asking why I have chosen to concentrate on Adsense with this challenge when I could probably make more money using the affiliate model instead.
Whilst it is definitely true to say that a lot of money can be made using the afilliate model, it is not true to say that it is a better model to use all the time over Adsense or even other ad networks come to that and here is why..
The thing is with Adsense is that it is all about getting targeted visitors looking at your content and it is NOT about trying to presell them with a big hyped up sales pitch. The beauty of Adsense is that you can actually write some decent, honest and informative content, you needn’t concern yourself with getting the sale at the end of it, your icome is very passive, you just need the click. The rewards when done properly are great with Adsense and that is why I choose to use this model.
Having said all that, I also use the affiliate model an awful lot and have made just as much income if not more from doing it. I don’t prefer one method over the other, it is all part of an income machine that will hopefully keep churning out the bucks! The main point I always make is “don’t put all your golden eggs in 1 basket”.. Diversify and earn an income from as many sources as possible and you will survive in this business. Adsense is a great model for both beginners and experienced Internet marketers and this is why it should become part of your arsenal.
Traffic is slowly getting better again after last weeks dip but I still need some massive improvements over the coming few weeks. Thankfully, I am starting to see some great CPC on some clicks and CTR has improved slightly which has boosted my income from the blog. I am still hovering between 5 and 15% of my target income.
Which begs the question, can I still reach my target income for the blog by March 31st? I am ever hopeful but I really am in the hands of the great google as to whether I get the rankings for my target keywords or not. currently I am not ranking for them and until I do, I won’t see the massive increases in traffic I need. Most of the search engine traffic is for long tail variations of my target keywords. Yahoo and MSN are also starting to send me more traffic as well now and I am also seeing a slight increase in traffic from ezine articles.
I am starting to post more articles now as I get them back from my freelance writer. The interesting thing now is that I have a much better idea from my stats of which articles are performing better so I tend to use those as ideas for new articles targeting similar keyword phrases in the hope that they will catch on as well.
Onward and upward and I really hope that I start to get some good traffic over the coming week from my main keyword targets..
Over the past few days I have been busy building up links to individual posts that are performing the best with regard to adsense. In other words, I checked my google analytics account to see which posts were visited the most and started a backlink campaign using my target keywords for those particular articles as the anchor text. I am careful not to use the same anchor text, I use a variety of keywords to avoid it looking unnatural.
So far I haven’t seen any more progress over the past week with regard to traffic and also my adsense income has dropped back a bit. This is not abnormal and under normal circumstances I would turn a blind eye as this is just a normal part of building a site. You got to take the ups with the downs.. Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of time with this challenge which has left me feeling a bit frustrated. Oh well, I just got to ride this out and keep doing what I know works!
I am still waiting for my new batch of articles to be written and then I will get to work posting them for my massive blitz over the next month. Anyway here are my latest traffic stats.
It is not often that I get excited about keyword tools but I have to make an exception with Micro niche finder from James J Jones. It is currently at version 4 and I purchased it recently and already have seen 2 updates so it is definitely a product built to last.
Anyway, I have created a video for you to see how I use it to uncover great adsense and affiliate niches. The video only touches on the functionality and I don’t even begin to show you how good it is at finding affiliate products to promote, google trends, LSI keywords e.t.c.. Take a look below and as a special gift to you I have included a link to a spreadsheet I compiled in 15 minutes containing category keywords and article keywords for the niche I uncover in the video. For anyone that uses these keywords, they will probably be able to create an adsense site capable of earning between $5 – $20 a day quite comfortably. This is just one tiny niche uncovered by micro niche finder so don’t worry there are thousands out there for you to find.
To download the list of keywords that I uncovered from using micro niche finder then please click the following link. Free Research Download!
To briefly explain, the spreadsheet contains the main theme, 5 categories/silos and the main keywords to use in your articles. Obviously you may need to create some better titles but just make sure you use those keyword phrases in those titles. If you need help with creating profit pulling wordpress blogs then check out my guide.
Click here to find out more about Micro Niche Finder.. 
When building your site that you want to use adsense on, the process revolves around getting highly ranked in the search engines for your target keywords. The reason being that you will get more visitors and more visitors equals more adsense clicks equals more income.. Fine, but it doesn’t end there.
A few years back, google in their wisdom decided to give advertisers the opportunity to regulate how much they want to bid for ads on the content network which had a massive effect on how much income adsense publishers suddenly made. Instead of $1 per click they were getting 5 cents per click. This lead to the spate of adsense is dead theories that circulated around the IM community.
Since then, google have evolved their content network mechanism for advertisers to the point now where they have massive flexibility as to where they can place their adverts on adsense sites. An advertiser can now bid on any page that has adsense on and either pay per 1000 impressions or per click. This is where it gets interesting for us adsense publishers.
The system that most advertisers are having great success with is to find the top adsense sites for their keywords and locate the actual page that is ranked highly and place an adwords ad directly on that page. Why is this good for us? Well, when we get our sites ranking highly for certain keywords they become very hot targets for advertisers who do placement targeting. When they become hot targets you will start to see massive increases in earnings per click.
This is why it is better to find the pages that are doing well on your site and get as many good backlinks using your target keywords as anchor text. So long as you have done your on page SEO right and understood how to create a good site for adsense then you will eventually hit the top spots for the best keywords. When than happens, you will see the both edges of the sword, high amounts of visitors and top advertisers placing ads on your site.
Right so adsense has been running for just over a week now on my blog and I have spent that week testing various placements, colour schemes and ad formats. Max banner ads has helped with this immensley in conjunction with using adsense channels on each new adsense block I use. By rotating through the blocks in max banner ads I can give each ad block a fair crack of the whip.
After a week, I can finally reveal the results of which adsense blocks I will be using.
- A Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600) in the left hand sidebar.
- A Large Rectangle (336 x 280) above the first post.
- A search box in the right hand sidebar.
- A (160x90_4) Link Unit below the search box in the right hand sidebar.
- A Banner (468 x 60) at the bottom of the page.
The colour scheme I have chosen is a mixture of blending and contrast where the background blends with the background of my blog (same colour) and the text is the same colour as text on my page with no border. However, the headline text is red which is contrast to any other text on my blog.
The best peforming blocks are the large rectangle followed by the skyscraper which had almost double the CTR of any other block. I also noticed a big increase in CTR when I changed the headline text from dark blue to the red you see now. The least peforming ad is the banner ad at the bottom of the post. I am debating whether to keep it in or not. I have now reached the CTR I was hoping for but the CPC is a lot lower than I was initially hoping for, maybe advertizers in the cruise market are making cutbacks in the present economic climate.
Even though I was hoping for more income at this stage of the challenge, I am around 10% of the way to reaching my income goals for this blog but with the click costs a lot lower I am hoping they will either pick up or I can attract more traffic.
As for traffic, it is doing okay but I need to start seeing some huge increases over the coming weeks to get on target, in fact I would like to see 1000 visitors by the end of February. I saw a big upsurge in the middle of last week up to the weekend and then it fell back a bit again but the trend is still up.
To reach my targets, I need to step up the article posting and promotion. I am getting a whole load of articles written and I am starting to write more myself as well. I am also looking into adding RSS feeds for more fresh content and also introducing a reviews section for visitors to post their reviews on cruises they have taken. All this takes time to drum up a buzz for though and I fear I may not see the benfits of this before the end of the challenge.
Overall, I am happy that the blog is making an income at last, but the magnitude of the challenge is starting to hit me now. I really have to step this up now in both content and promotion. I have plenty of ideas for new articles, so I am not worried about running out of content ideas. Stay tuned, I will update soon.
First of all I just want to say thank you very much to everyone who contributed answers to the questions I asked about my potential membership site. The feedback I received was amazing and has inspired me to create something that will be tailor made to exactly meet your aspirations to reach your income goals.
Here is an outline about what the membership site will be about..
Membership Goal:-
To get every member earning $100+ a day income from adsense.
What The Membership Will Be About:-
It will include detailed instructions on what steps are needed. These will be tailored to the level of experience and expertise each member has. In other words, no matter whether you are a newbie or experienced you will get your own plan of action to reach $100 a day in adsense.
It won’t JUST be a set of pdf’s, tutorials and videos to let you get on with but it will be an interactive plan of action.
I want this membership to be very different to anything else out there and as such, it will require that members follow the plan and they will have tasks that have to be achieved each week. (tough love).. They will be reasonable tasks suited to your lifestyle, experience and free time.
I will probably introduce some sort of team structure as well so that members can interact online and keep each other motivated.
Adsense is the main focus of the membership but it is important to diversify income into other areas like affiliate marketing and info product creation. This will probably be structured as add on modules. Once again it will be tailored to members experience and expertise.
This is just the bare bones of what the membership will be about and it is up to me now to put the flesh on those bones and structure it properly. There will also be many benefits like monthly downloads of WP themes, niche research, content for starters. I will also look at creating useful tools, plugins and services for the membership. If you have any ideas about what you would like to see from the membership then please let me know.
As for the price of the membership, I haven’t decided yet but it will be affordable and will certainly be worth the money you invest initially. The whole point of the membership is to get everyone earning $100 a day and more, its not just an aspiration, it is the ACTUAL PURPOSE of the membership. It won’t be for the faint hearted, it is for people who are willing to work hard and not just learn. The mentality will be more like a bootcamp than a school but I promise it will be fun also.. If you are willing to put in the graft, you will reach your income goals!
Adsense is finally running on my blog and I have started experimenting with just 3 blocks and search block as well. I have 1 block in the left sidebar, 1 at the top of the 1st post and another at the bottom of the post. The search block is in the right hand sidebar near the top.
In compliance with googles Adsense TOS I can’t divulge actual figures about the adsense but I can say in these early days that I am seeing some reasonable income considering the amount of traffic and am on track with regard to CTR and CPC.
Over the coming days I will experiment with different types of adsense, placements and colour schemes and will continue to monitor using channels. My cash cow guides contain a lot more detail about how to use channels, testing and setting up adsense for maximum income if you are interested. My task is to try and squeeze as much income from my adsense placements as possible without resorting to silly gimmicks or making the site look ugly.
As for traffic, after seeing a dip in traffic over the past few days I saw a bit of a surge today as more posts are getting indexed and ranked higher.
I suspect over the coming days that I should see this trend in higher traffic increase more. I have also made a more accurate asessment based on my current income figures that I will now need approximately 400 articles to reach my $100 a day goal. All of this is perfectly doable and although it will be a lot of work, it will be worth it.