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.