So, to get the ball rolling these are the criteria I have used to find a good niche for this challenge..

1. There are at least 10 advertisers on adwords for the main keywords associated with my niche.
2. The top 10 of Google for the main keywords in the niche are not all made up of big players like amazon, microsoft, wikipedia etc.. (I don’t mind a couple of them just not all of them)
3. There is a search volume for these keywords of above 15,000 per month on exact match.
4. There is an abundance of active forums, newsgroups, social media sites, videos etc associated with the niche.
5. It is an interesting subject that can potentially be newsworthy.
6. It has to be something I am interested in, even if just a little bit or something that I can get interested in.

With this criteria in place, where do I start the whole process?

1. Brainstorm as many subjects as possible that I am interested in, or maybe just remotely interested in and list them down.
2. Keyword research to nail down the high search volume niches.
3. If the niche is quite broad I will dig down to check out the subniches.
4. Shortlist the best niches.
5. Research forums and other social sites to see how active people are in these niches.
6. Looking for plenty of posts and a lot of new ones.
7. Check out the competition in Google’s top 10 for each of the niches to see if I can take them on.
8. Check out the level of adwords advertisers in each niche and how much the average bid is for the main keywords.
9. Make a decision on one.

An Example…
For the sake of this example I will pretend that I am interested in sleep (not literally) and after a bit of digging I decided to research “sleep apnea” as a niche to see if its a good one.

First of all “sleep” gets an exact search volume of 368,000 per month and “sleep apnea” gets a very healthy 135,000 searches per month so it passes that test.

The next step is to see if there are any active forums etc in that niche. I googled the following term “sleep apnea” + forum and immediately I find apneasupport.org/forum-1.html which is extremely active. Hmmm.. looks good so far. While looking I will do a quick snapshot to see if there are some recurring problems or topics on the forum but that is as far as it goes so far. I can see with sleep apnea that there is, so that is another tick.

I will repeat the search to find videos, web 2.0 sites, newsgroups etc. and then log the URL’s onto a spreadsheet.

I will then go to google or better still fire up market samurai to look at the top 10 on Google for the phrase “sleep apnea”.. Oh dear, the competition is big, in fact to big for me to take on easily. Time to dig down deeper or also cast my net wider into sleep. After a bit more research I find “sleep aids” which passes all the previous tests but also has a top 10 in Google that I reckon I can take on. There are some big players in there but also some that can be beaten I am sure.

After a quick check on CPC and number of advertisers then “sleep aids” pretty much ticks all the boxes!

** This is purely an example of the approach I am taking, I have not decided on “sleep aids” as a niche **

“Big deal, I can do that already!” You might be saying, but here is the twist..

I will not…

1. Use any form of article marketing to get backlinks.
2. Do any form of blog commenting of any kind.
3. Contact any web publishers asking for backlinks or exchanges.
4. Use any linking schemes or backlink scripts of any kind.
5. Use any blackhat techniques whatsoever.

In fact, this is going to be the extremist form of white hat promotion of a brand new site that anyone could imagine, it will be so white hat that Matt Cutts will be very proud of me!

I will be…

1. Writing unique content for my site.
2. Using video on my site.
3. Using audio on my site.
4. Using link bait in the form of giveaways on my site.
5. Ensure that every piece of content on my site will be about creating a buzz in the niche I choose!
6. Publicizing the content on my site using forums, newsgroups, press releases.
7. Getting all my on page SEO spot on.. (Internal linking structure, usabilty pages, META stuff etc..)

Before anybody asks, there is absolutely no way that I will give out the URL of the site to anyone for the obvious reasons. In fact everything will be done with brand new hosting, pen names etc.. It will be untraceable for the super sleuths out there

I will be detailing every step I take here in this thread though and going into more detail on my 100 bucks challenge blog.

Here is a list of initial steps that I will be taking..

1. Locate a good, competitive niche.
2. Buy a brand new domain and new hosting for it.
3. Sign up to as many niche relevant forums, newsgroups, web 2.0 groups as possible (facebook, twitter etc).
4. Start posting regularly to those forums to build up a reputation.
5. Research the niche inside and out to determine biggest problems, anxieties, tips in fact everything that makes people crazy in that niche.
6. Create all forms of content around the buzzy topics.
7. Get analytics, webmaster tools etc all set up.
8. Submit to a few highly respected directories like DMOZ and Yahoo.
8. Start promoting my site in a non-spammy way on all the forums etc..
9. Write and release press releases.
10. Build a mailing list.
11. Try as many viral methods as possible.
12. Wash, rinse and repeat..

This is purely about letting the content on my site go viral and attain backlinks the natural way. This is about doing things the way Google would really approve of! As things start to develop then I am sure the plan will have to evolve and I am prepared for that.

My next post will be about the niche research that I will conduct.. Stay tuned! In that post I will detail how competitive the niche’s main keywords are and the criteria I used to find it.

I hope that all the other Google centres follow suit soon and it ranks in the Google top 10 everywhere again.

The upshot of this is that both traffic and Adsense income have dropped back down to between $30 to $40 a day from this blog. During the dance I noticed I am getting a lot more traffic from keywords that it previously didn’t rank for and a lot more long tails as well. This has kind of balanced up the blow of losing all the traffic from the “european cruises” keyword a bit.

Thankfully I am still seeing some great CPC on the blog. I had one click last week of over $4 which was pretty amazing really and my average CPC is around $1 but it does change from day to day.

1. I have had a number of clicks over the $2 mark today, which is quite exeptional. There must be some big advertisers who are doing placements on my blog now.
2. A big increase in traffic due to reaching page 1 of Google for the keyword phrase European Cruises in the USA and the top of the 2nd page in the UK.
3. Other keywords from various other articles on the blog are rising to the top of Google at last.

Will my blog stay up on page 1 for that phrase now? I really, really don’t know. Earlier this week, it dropped down to page 7 on Google for that phrase so I never take anything for granted with Google. I am sure eventually it will settle onto page 1..

Anyway, watch this space!

EDIT: I just noticed a lot of traffic coming from Germany and checked on German Google and noticed it is in the top 5!

When I checked on Google, I have noticed that the blog has risen from the depths up to the top 30 which is great. I am hoping and expecting that I will see it on page 1 soon and start to hit the sort of income I was hoping for initially when I began this challenge. The blog isnt on page 1 yet, but the traffic coming from those keywords is not bad considering, which is quite exciting. Here is a screenshot of my analytics for just the keyword phrase “European Cruises” on Google alone.

As you can see, it is not earth shattering yet but when I get to page 1, I should see traffic of around 65 visits per day for that exact phrase alone. Please remember that this is my stat purely for the exact keyword phrase “European Cruises” and doesn’t include any of the broader phrases that also contain the same keywords like “cheap european cruises” etc…

If you are a customer then you should have received an email with details of where to download the report. If you have not received the email and you are a customer then please contact me through support AT cashcowguidetoadsense.com and give me your email address used at purchase and the date of purchase also and I will email you the report.

So how much am I earning in Adsense of the back of my European cruise blog? Well, it is now averaging $20 a day which is well short of my target for the 3 months. I am experiencing some very mixed feelings regarding this challenge, on the one hand I am feeling slightly angry and sad that I never reached the target but on the other hand I feel greatly appreciative to everyone of you that has shown me how inspired you have been from following my challenge. I can’t begin to express how humble I feel to you all for all the great support and interest you have shown.

When I began the challenge, I thought it might get a bit of interest and a few people following it but I am completely and utterly staggered at how popular it all became. A lot of you have asked what is going to happen when the challenge finally finishes? Rest assured, the challenge may be over but my quest to reach $100 a day from this 1 blog continues until I get there. I will pursue it in a much more relaxed fashion of course and it now gives me a chance to catch up on all the other projects that I have placed on the backburner.

For all those people that have purchased my “Cash Cow Guide to Adsense Wealth” and all future customers of the guide, I will shortly write an additional report that details the challenge and where it went well and where it failed. Also all customers will receive updates to the cash cow guide when I write it.

So the challenge failed to reach $100 a day in 3 months which like I say, is hugely disappointing but it is averaging $20 a day virtually on auto pilot now. That is $608 a month or $7300 a year, that is money that I wasn’t earning before the challenge began. The income from this 1 blog currently would pay for an average mortgage.. I just want to point out the power of building sites in the manner that I have described. YOU have the power to achieve this and more, trust me, you CAN do it and you WILL.

I am speculating but it is something I notice with all my adsense sites, the CPC usually starts lower than what I would hope to expect for the niche but gradually improves as the site begins to age. It could be that smart pricing applies to all new sites and they have to earn the trust from google by converting regularly for the advertisers before they start giving you the better paying ads.. Anyway, I am now seeing above average CPC which is having a positive effect on my adsense income, I am now regularly hitting 20% of my target. Here are my latest AWstats for the blog, the slight downturn in traffic for the 13th and 14th was due to some server problems again..

The promotion keeps going and it is starting to show in the rankings for my main keywords.. Interestingly my main keyword phrase “European Cruises” is seeing my blog indexed around position 60 now in the US listings which is a big rise in rankings from below 300 a couple of weeks ago. It is still to low in the rankings to see any real traffic yet but at least it is going in the right direction and I am hopeful it will make the first page soon. However, in the UK listings it is still indexed between 350 and 400 for some reason.

I am also starting to get some link requests which is always a sure sign that other webmasters are starting to view my blog as a bit of an authority and I am not talking about the normal spammy type requests but genuine requests from relevant sites, one of which even offered money to place a context link in one of my articles back to their site.

This graph shows an overview of the amount of visitors ranging from early February through to today. As you can see this demonstrates the slow but steady rate at which my visitor count is rising.

The screenshot above shows various visitor statistics relating to average page views, time on site, etc..

As for my adsense income from the blog, well I am still averaging around 15% of my target still per day and some days seeing more and some days less.

It is becoming clear that I probably won’t make a hundred bucks a day by March 31st but I hope that the growth rate of my visitors above demonstrates to you that one day I will be earning that. All I have to do is ensure that the growth rate continues.