This morning I had a great coaching session with Sara – a Keyword Crash Course member living in Israel. We reviewed one of her sites and talked about her keywords, etc; it was a good talk and Sara is excited about her sites.
Sara also had some questions – her questions are always well thought out – so well thought out that they sometimes border on over-analyzing. Now I don’t blame her in the least for being analytical; I tend to over-analyze a lot of the time and working with Court has helped me get over that (ha – apparently Court is now my therapist). So after discussing some of her questions I said this to Sara:
“You know Sara, reckless action trumps perfect understanding in this business – every time.”
And she said “Really? Well, that’s great to know.”
Wait – she didn’t know that? If Sara didn’t know that then it’s my fault for never having said it before. Well, I’m saying it now (again):
In the business of setting up niche sites with the goal of drawing traffic from Google and monetizing that traffic with affiliate programs and/or Google Adsense – reckless action trumps perfect understanding EVERY TIME.
Last week we had the Ultimate Link Building Webinar, and after that I had some exciting coaching sessions with our students, and for some reason I just got really excited about what we do – so I hauled off and set up five new sites. Well, not completely new – I had these domains that are aged nicely but I haven’t ever done anything with them. The point is I did some keyword research (nothing too detailed or careful – I found some keywords I thought would do well and I set sites up for them), created some posts, built some author resource boxes to use for link building with Unique Article Wizard, set up some supporting mini blogs on blogger.com…and away I went.
You know what? It was a blast! I got up early and worked on my sites; I neglected posting on The Keyword Academy because I was working on my sites; I hardly watched TV last week because I was working on my new sites…it was just a great time. Digging into a new project and thinking about adding some passive income over the next few months…just a great time.
So here’s the deal – I want you to have as much fun this week as I had last week. I want you to set up five sites in the next five days. Skip some TV; skip a meal or two – plant some seeds you’ll be harvesting in a few months.
Court has already laid out the process, so you have no excuses:
1. Choosing a Topic for a Website
2. Choosing a Topic for a Website Part 2 – Analyzing Your Competition
3. How to Choose a Domain for Your Niche Website
4. How to Set Up a Niche Website – Introducing PlaceYourKeywordHere.com
5. How to Create Content for Your Niche Website
6. How to Get Your Site Indexed by Google
And there it is. I dare anybody to get five sites to that point by next Tuesday. In fact – I dare anybody to get ONE NEW SITE through all the steps outlined by Court in those lessons. Sure you’ll have questions along the way…but remember this is the week where you’re going to stop analyzing and take reckless action.
I’m going to let you all in on a goal I set for myself this past week. I’m giving myself a six month deadline to add an extra $5,000 per month to my income through the five sites I just set up. I don’t care who you are – an extra five grand a month is a healthy chunk. I’ll be accountable to all of you to make that happen. Who knows – I may fail miserably. I just happen to know that lots of failure in the right direction leads to success…so if I fail – who cares? It’s time to get reckless.
I guess some people might like some updates along the way, although I’m not sure what I’d say in them…
Day 94. Spirits are high. Built links till my eyes went blurry and consumed enough Coke Zero to kill a Rhino. Will check in again Monday.
Now everybody get to work. Start a new site…start a few new sites. While the rest of the world is whining about recessions and depressions, you’re going to be building passive income.
Get after it,
Mark
Wow,
I guess since the challenge was just issued the 10 sites I set up last week don’t count. There’s not much to them, on-page optimization and a post in each, still need more articles and back links from EZA, but I felt good cranking them out.
Buddy
Buddy if you set up five more on top of those ten, you get the gold star for the day, and oh yeah – lots of income too. Nice work!
Love the challenge, and the lesson to take away from it all. Even if you don’t make it to 5k (we’re all certain you will), even a fraction of that will be awesome.
I wish I could convey that to the whole world Will – if we all just achieved a small fraction of the crazy goals we set we’d all be wealthier, skinnier, happier…the list goes on.
Thanks for dropping by as always.
I actually make goal lists and it really is rewarding to go back and be able to tick things off. I have never gotten completely through a single goal list, but the list definitely helps to recognize the improvement because sometimes you don’t feel you’ve accomplished anything. Those goal sheets and checking items off of them are both visually and personally satisfying!
Great idea. I’ve just launched a new site about an hour ago and bought two new domains that I am going to develop (along with two old domains that I just haven’t gotten around to do anything about).
/Mikael
Great post! It’s very timely for me as I’ve literally just setup 5 new niche sites in the last couple of days and am about to start link building. These are my first sites following Courts methods, and if I reached $5000 a month with them in 6 months I’d be ecstatic.
Good luck with your goal!
I began to build sites on January 29th.
Today, exactly 20 days later, I will finish putting up my 30th site.
Now I’m in the process of filling those 30 sites with a few more posts apiece, then will shift to promoting them through articles on UAW.
Keep in mind that the majority of these sites have 1-2 posts right now, and only one single backlink.
My Adsense earnings have gone from zero to averaging $1 a day. 8 of the first 20 sites are in the top 200 for their keyword, 3 are in the top 40, and one is ranked #3 at MSN. (Again keeping in mind that these sites are less than a month old with exactly *one* backlink each.)
It’s still too soon to figure out what the ultimate payout will be, but considering I’ve made more with Adsense in the past two weeks then I made with them in all of 2008, it bodes well for the future.
The first goal is to get this group of 30 up to $1 per day per site ($30/day combined). My goal for this is May 1st. If I reach it, I will have created a $1,000/month passive income stream in 90 days – diversified across 30 sites in 24 different niches.
Once I reach that point, I’ll repeat the process with another 30 sites, while continuing to add links to the first group, building its income ever larger.
From there, just rinse and repeat until you reach your income goals.
Mike you are an animal. When you signed up for the Crash Course I knew you were serious about your goals but you are really walking the walk man.
I think you’re easily on track to hit your first $1k in May, and will have earned it. Keep on truckin!
Thanks Mark,
My original goal was to have 60 sites up by 2/15, but that proved to be a little unrealistic.
My challenge is always the follow-through, and the difference this time is that I’m sticking to what I do best, and outsourcing the rest.
I know not everyone has the ability to do this at first. But forcing myself to give up control and outsource the stuff I suck at is making all the difference this time.
It really is the difference between just owning your own job, and owning your own *business*.
~Mike
Mark, what about other ways of monetizing sites… have you had any experience with $7 sites?
Haven’t heard of $7 sites…
As far as other ways of monetizing, I’m not sure I understand the question. Do you have heaps of traffic and you’re not sure what to do with it or are you just thinking about starting something and looking for the right method?
Inspring post. I sort of need a kick in the pants every once in a while to forget about details for a minute and just start cranking out work building new sites and writing content.
Great challenge Mark!
I have set up over 20 domains in the last couple of weeks myself that were aged domains that I bought and hadn’t done anything with.
One question though, is it ok to have a site that isn’t really focused on one keyword and use it as a general site related to that niche? I am just wanting to clean inventory and put something up to get them indexed and see what traffic comes in and for what keywords to let them age more with content and then go back and narrow down on keywords…
Good or bad?
Way to jump in full force, Mark. I know you’ll meet your goal as long as you keep that same fire burning. I’m also in a similar situation, so seeing you fired up helps a ton. Keep going!
Awesome post. The general rule is 80% of your money will come from 20% of your sites, so I think a goal of $1000 per site is going to be tough, but one site hitting $1000 is attainable, and an awesome achievement.
I agree with you – with a twist. I expect 80% or 90% of the income will come from 10% or 20% of the PAGES. Every one of these sites will exceed $1k per month.
Mark, are you setting up all the sites on one hosting account or buying a separate hosting account for each?
One hosting account. I don’t know what it is about this one hosting account versus many hosting accounts question but it’s popping up all over the place right now.
Here’s the deal with hosting accounts. I’d put a site on its own hosting account as soon as its earnings justify it – or maybe not. Why pay for all that extra hosting? In your quest for rankings you have bigger fish to fry than hosting accounts – it’s all about the links!
Cool stuff. I’ve got about 25 very serious sites going at the moment, none of which are making $1000 a month, so I think I’m going to opt out of this challenge and focus on link building for the time being.
I have to say, though, $1000 a site seems pretty optimistic. How broadly focused are these sites would you say? I started out by going after very small keywords, and have found that I don’t make that much even with a #1 ranking on some sites. I’ve since moved on to bigger fish, but have yet to achieve the rankings to break the $1000/site/month barrier.
Mark, I like the challenge. I am new and I am struggling finding the keywords but I am taking the challenge.
I like the attitude around here. When you talk about “you cannot use another 5K a month” reminds me of what I used to tell my scouts shoot the highest star even if you miss it at least you will be up there in the stars anyway.
Thanks
Got to go got sites to build.
Mireille
Hi Mark,
Pretty educational stuff here.
From what I’ve just learned from reading this site, one has to treat this undertaking as a business which means that there would be risks involved in terms of monetary success or failure.
…but just for clarification, did you mean to say that setting up numerous niche sites is like placing numerous bets to increase the chances of succeeding in this kind of business? Among the numerous sites that one puts up, what would be the percentage of successful sites?
i built 20 this week. hows that? then again i did make my assistant do a lot of work too…plus these aren’t for adsense purposes….something else all together…
also, really want that SEO coaching session…..but feel like you know that….i guess i’m being quietly sidelined on this…
Ok, I am in. I just setup 6 sites in the past 3 days. 2 of the domains are 7 months old and rest are new. I am planning to add at least 5 articles to each of them. All 6 of the sites have the keywords in the domain name.
My goal is similar to yours, except that I am looking to earn an additional $2000/month from them, and not in 6 months, but by the end of the year.
Hey Mark,
Great post, I think I’ll take part in this too
One quick question though, how long do your sites usually take to start seeing good amounts of search traffic?
I’ve read that it takes most sites 6 months or more before they start to do well in the SE’s, is that right?
You’re awesome. That was inspiring. I love building websites but hate link building, its a flaw of mine.
I’ve managed to setup 7 websites so far. content creation is going along just fine. hopefully I can move on to link building soon. however I have to that conten creation does need a bit of creativity.
Mark, Just checked my domain registry and I have 5 domains that have been aging for a while now (over 6 months each). Plus the site I just launched and have been working through UAW. So, let’s do this thing… Two of the sites I registered for my daughters (16 &
to teach them about internet marketing, so they’ll thrilled we’re working on them. THanks for the kick in the butt.
I’m wondering what is feasible from the volume perspective? How many quality sites can your typical person manage, in your experience. I know you can outsource some stuff once it makes sense, but if I wanted to be realistic, how many can a typical person manage on their own?
Mike, I think it depends on what kind of time you have available and how many hours you want to work. Personally I’m spending about 1-2 hours per site per week.
An update
writing my third article for most of my websites. haven’t started on link-building yet. writing the articles is quite interesting and daunting at the same time.
OK, I am going to give this a try. I already bought the domains and installed fantastico…now to do the rest. I have to try to fit in the time between family and kids – out of curiosity, how many hours did you spend? Also, I would love to follow you on your quest to make $5000 in 6 mos. You mentioned updates, I think it’s actually a good idea…do you Twitter?
Hello Mark!
I read your post with great interest. You see, I have around 200 niche sites that earn me a passive income. Some of them are great, most are duds. I would like to make a couple of observations that maybe your readers might benefit from. Here we go:
1) Niche choice is important. Here’s why: I have several websites that target small niches which Google pays me $0.04/click. These websites only make a few dollars/month. Generally, I view a site as a success if it makes over $10/day. I think that is reasonable. Let’s take our real world $0.04/click for a “poor” niche and see what it would take to get $10/day. I go to my adsense account and see that on average, 4.49% of my visitors click the ads. Let’s crunch some numbers: to get $10/day, at $0.04/click, we need 250 clicks/day. OK, sounds great. Now how many people need to see that with a CTR of 4.49%. That number is 5568 visitors per day! Ouch! OK, how many visitors is that per month? Well, just a shade over 167 THOUSAND visitors/month. OK, let’s say for illustration, we assume that each keyword here (I actually looked at on of my sites for this number) has around 2,000 searches/month. Let’s be kind and say that we capture every visitor. That would mean we need around 167/2 or around 84 articles to get there.
2) Optimizing and testing is soooooo important. Here’s why: Let’s say that we optimized our website for clicks and got a 10% CTR. That would mean we could get away with writing 38 articles instead of 84! Hey, big incentive there! People, that means you should be doing everything you can to get that click! OK, let’s say we got that 10% CTR, moving on, what else can we do? Here’s what: target keywords that get $0.20/click instead of $0.04/click. Really, it is not hard at all. Google’s external keyword tool now has CPC (cost per click) data. Fixing our website to target these clicks means we need 1/5 the traffic. Well, how much is that? 5568/5 is a much more reasonable 1114 visitors/day. With all our previous numbers being equal, that would mean we target 38/5 keywords, or 8 keyword phrases. Isn’t that MUCH better? Doing some research definitely means all the difference between success and failure.
Well, as you see in my example, choosing the right niche and testing and optimizing your CTR makes the difference between writing and promoting and dominating 84 niche phrases or just 8 phrases. Which would you rather do? Now go out there and make some cash.
Thomas C. Gajdjis
Hey Mark (or anyone else),
I went to Hostgator and it seems they only have hosting for Linux and not Windows. Do you know of another company that has the ulimited domains for a monthly hosting fee that work on Windows?
Thanx
Oh another thing….
So I have been doing my research almost the same way as you…but instead use the “phrase match” in Google KW Tool and not looking at the PR per say in the comnpetition but rather the number of competing sites AND the PR rank. Is this not a good strategy? I want to make sure I am doing it right before I spend all the time. What is your basis for ONLY using Exact match and NOT Phrase match? Looking forward to your reply…
cheers