Traffic and Income Report - May 2013

For May, my income numbers remain dismal, when compared to some of the more well known MMO sites that I follow, like NichePursuits or My4HourWorkWeek... but, seriously improved over the April report! Although May is not quite over, I will share the month so far!

Niche Sites

Niche I (paralegal training)
The paralegal training site has had 54 visitors thus far in May. Because of the my poor keyword research (done without Long Tail Pro) there is little traffic, and as yet, no one has ever clicked on my ads! All of the income from the site has come from impression ads. In May, I made 3 cents from impression ads, which pushes the site to $0.07 in lifetime revenue.

The most popular searches have had to do with military paralegals and paralegal salaries. I have added materials in both of these areas, however, neither of these terms has sufficient traffic, according to LTP, to put much effort into it.

The PageRank for this site remains at 0, and the Alexa rank for the US is at #122,004.  Thus far, 5 backlinks have shown up for the page. I may do another campaign, just to see if I can bump it up.

For its main keywords, the site currently ranks 25th and 110th. Its third keyword does not rank. Except for a brief drop, this is where this page has lived since the beginning of April. Again, I do not expect this site to rise onto the first page of G, and will probably write it off at the end of the year.

The dual purpose of this site was to generate revenue, and create a site that would be useful for people looking for information on becoming a paralegal. Since few ever see the site, I think I have failed on both counts.


Niche II (Rats)
Site II has, so far, had 44 organic visitors in May. In April, that number was 37. These numbers have risen on the basis of a couple of long tails. A few weeks ago, I had a search hit the page looking for weather beer can kill rats. My page made the SERP because one of my categories was "Beer", leftover from the sites previous life. I was disappointed that the searcher was unable to find his answer on my page, and I was intrigued, so I did some research and created a post to answer the question. Since that time, this has proven the most popular way searchers find my page! Go figure!

The second most popular search result was "glue trap review'. For a few weeks, this page was ranking on page 1 of G. It has since fallen, perhaps partly because it was spammed by automated comments. I have since installed commentluv and a few other security apps on all my sites to prevent further problems.

The site's Alexa rank is now #101,234. Its PR remains 0, and it has two backlinks that have shown up.


This site is monetized with both AdSense and Amazon. The AdSense was dispalyed on the page as a text banner at the top of the page. Since that had not generated any revenue, I have replaced it with a 300x225 banner which is capable of showing impression ads, in hopes that it will at least bring in a few cents while I work on it.


This page also has Amazon affiliate links. These generated $1.01 in April, but have thus far made nothing in May. This may be because in part, I have neglected the site for most of the month.


This site is waiting to take off... it just needs some backlinking and it will be ready to go. Currently, for its main keyword, the site is sitting at 38th.

TNB

The Niche Blog has had 252 page views in the last 30 days. using Blogger, it is difficult to be more accurate than that, I'm afraid. Again, this site will eventually migrate out to a real web address, which should give me more control over the stats.

InfoBarrel

In May, so far, InfoBarrel has made a total of $0.22, bringing my all-time InfoBarrel revenue to $0.24! I have written 4 articles for that site. One surprising aspect of InfoBarrel is that, if you do not write anything (and I have not written in more than a week) your revenue stops coming in. If you arent active, there soimply isnt a way to find one of your articles, unless it shows up in a SERP.

In all of my InforBarrel articles written up to this point, none of them were done with any KW research... I just basically have been feeling out what happens when you just throw some content up there. I intend to write some KW researched  articles shortly just to see how they do.

BTW: On InfoBarrel, you CAN track which articles made how much! That is tres helpful.

Bubblews

I cant begin to tell you how stupid I thing the name "Bubblews" is, or how awful and kitchy I think their interface is. Just awful. I almost didnt post anything, because it looks like its meant for children. However, I decided I would give it a try. The criterion for posting are pretty low, so its pretty easy to smash out something. On Bubblews, I have churned out 5 (very trivial) posts. Revenue for these five posts? $4.19. What's more, I stopped writing there at the same time I stopped on Infobarrel, and in that time, my InfoBarrel revenue has not risen a penny, while the Bubblews money has continued to rise... in fact, almost half of the revenue has come since I stopped writing!

From this I conclude two things. First, In the long run, serious articles on IB are going to generate more revenue, because G likes IB, and your (KW researched) articles will show up on search results. Bubblews, because it is not trusted by G, and because so many of the articles there are so trivial, I believe that these articles will not make money in the long run. They generate revenue in the short-run because, as people explore your connections, they find your articles, and the articles stay posted in view on the category pages for a long time. So, while I work on something meaningful for IB, I will be be churning out some Bubble-crap for Bubblelews.

Lending Club

I still have not had time to pursue this, and at this rate I will not be able to. I may pull the plug.

Conclusion

For May, I made $4.41 on the internet. So, I am going to continue steaming ahead until I reach port, or hit an iceberg! that's the American Way. Clearly, what I need most is to improve my keyword research, and discover the backlinking strategy that works in 2013. Maybe blog comments and Facebook likes are the only things that still work?

I will be doing KW research for my future IB articles. If I find that I become good at doing KW research, then I will consider creating another niche site. Until then, I makes sense to learn these techniques in a cost free environment!

Time and Clarity

Learning from Mistakes

The purpose of The Niche Blog is to record my journey in making money online. I want to use this record to help guide myself and to jot down what I have learned so that I can use that knowledge to correct my course. The Niche Blog is a simple self correction mechanism.

What I've Learned This Week

Niche Sites

Niche Site 1 has been up and running for some four months. It has generated only a few pennies from impression ads, and almost all of that traffic was me, as GPT is one of the tabs that I leave open at all times on Firefox. Although it has been slowly climbing in G, it will probably never make the first page, because most of that page is dominated by .edu sites. When I started GPT, I did not understand that those sorts of sites are difficult to beat. If the current trend continues, I will let the GPT domain expire. Unless it starts to get some traffic, I have done all I am going to do with it at this point.

Site #2, eRATication, has made about three cents in the two months it has been up. It too is on the rise for its search terms, and, although I could be mistaken, I think it may one day break into page one. I will continue to work on this page and round it out a bit more.

Site #3 is the page you are on. The Niche Blog is not monetized, and it may never be monetized, and, as I said in the first paragraph,  that is not its purpose anyway.

Site #4: No, there isnt a site number four! But, I do own one more domain, which I bought to use as an email center for my backlinking campaign. It is TwoDollarMonkey.com. At this time it is just for email, but, in the future it may become the home of this blog.

Some Backlinking Thought

After putting AMR through its paces, I found it was easy and enjoyable to use. I REALLY like the spinner part of the program, but really the whole thing is great. However... there is a problem. I do not think that mass articles work anymore. After sending out hundreds of AMR articles, I saw no effect on rankings, and not one of those backlinks  ever showed up anywhere. I am not convinced that any of that work accomplished anything. I will run a campaign to support the rat site, but I will have a skeptical look on my face the whole time.

Thus far, the only successful backlinks are those associated with blog comment links.

SocialADR

Interesting... my SocialADR campaign was focused on creating backlinks to my link wheel. And, in fact, several of those links showed up in my Alexa toolbar. I had read many times that social links will not stick, and indeed, several weeks after these links appeared, they were gone again. It seems to me alot of mindless work to get just a couple of links for just a fortnight. Again, I will continue using this for now (I mean, it is free, after all)

Article Sites

Originally, I created an Infobarrel account so I could use it in the backlink strategy. Then I began seeing articles about some folks who were making a good income from sites like Infobarrel alone. So, I checked out my article and discovered that it had made 2 cents. After doing some research, it seemed that Infobarrel, Squidoo, and Bubblews could make more money (at least early  on) than a niche site could, and with no startup costs. So, I am writing some articles for these sites. Inforbarrel is now up to 9 cents, while I have made one thin dime on Bubblews. I dont think these sites could ever deliver the $3,000+ a month I am looking for, but I think 500/month is quite reasonable.

So... that is what I learned this week.
1. Niche sites are harder than they look.
2. Good kw research is paramount
3. Article writing is easier and more lucrative in the short run

I know that perhaps it appears that I am waffling on where my focus should be, but in reality I came into this not knowing anything about the reality of IMing, and, as time passes and my real world experience and research feed each other, I am learning that there is money to be farmed out of the internet... but it will take awhile, and many money traps have to be laid before the cash can be snagged.