So in short, I am looking for YOUR response to this question: “What public case studies are you following right now?”

I simply want to know about any interesting niche website projects or other case studies that are being documented by other bloggers right now.  In addition, I think we can all help each other find a few more both interesting and motivational examples of successful sites with this little exercise.

I have been sharing my public niche site project right here (for my site bestsurvivalknifeguide.com).  I’ve received amazing feedback and support during this case study!

But I’m not the only one sharing great content related to building and ranking websites.  Many others are doing the same.  To be honest, I don’t always “get out” much…so I only know about a few of them.

Public Projects I am Following

Here are the public case studies from other bloggers that I am aware of and following:

1. Pat Flynn at SmartPassiveIncome.com.  Although he hasn’t started his Niche Site Duel 2.0 quite yet, I’m excited to see how it unfolds!  He did very well with his first niche site duel right here, and I expect great content this time around as well.  Pat has the amazing ability not only to be open and transparent, but also to motivate and inspire others.  I highly recommend following along with his project.

2. Steve Scott at SteveScottSite.com.  Steve is a great guy always focused on quality.  He has started a public case study called, “How to Build and Authority Internet Business“.  He has revealed the domain here, and I think he has a great looking site in a niche with a lot of potential.  Overall, this is a project that I am keeping my eye on…and I’m rooting for him!

3. Zac Johnson at BloggingTips.com.  Zac started this case study a few months ago, and you can read all the posts here.  However, I haven’t seen any updates in a couple of months, so perhaps someone needs to ask him for another update .

4. Tung Tran at CloudLivingJourney.com.  Tung is an active commenter on my blog here, and has been following some of my strategies pretty closely for developing his own Amazon niche site.  He’s already reached #1 in Google and is having some great success!  He reveals his niche site and how he got to the top of Google here.

5. Eric Gati at My4HourWorkWeek.com. Eric started a public “authority” site several months ago.  He has shared the domain and the earnings each month from this project.  The is a case study still in progress, and I like to check in every once in a while and see how Eric is doing.  You can read his latest income report right here.

It’s Time for You to Share!

So, now I’ve shared 5 website case studies that are happening right now.  But I know there are SO many more going on right now.  That’s why I need your help.

In the comments below answer this question: What public case studies are you following right now?

Leave a comment with the URL of where others can follow along. (I am looking for links to the blogs discussing the project, NOT links to the niche sites).

In addition, SELF PROMOTION IS OKAY!  Yep, I said it.  If you have a public website case study happening on your blog…feel free to share it in the comments below!  This is one of the few times that I will approve URLs in your comments.

Also, please be aware that your comment may take a while to be approved, because many of these will get flagged for spam automatically.  So, be patient with me, as it may take me a day or 2 to approve some of these (because I’m traveling Boise, ID for a half marathon this weekend.  I’m hoping to set a PR.  If you are interested in seeing what my finishing time is, you can follow me on Facebook here, where I’ll post it on May 18th).

Overall, I hope to get a nice list of public case studies to give all of us some interesting weekend (and beyond) reading.  I may do an additional post in the future with a more formal list of the top projects/case studies, but for now…leave a comment!

Pulling up an excel spreadsheet to quickly calculate whether a business idea is feasible is something that I’ve long enjoyed, (and perhaps have wasted a lot of time doing as well!).  However, I do think its an important exercise to go through when starting any type of new venture. In fact, a simple spreadsheet may be all you ever need before getting started, as opposed to a full-blown business plan (like I was always taught while getting my MBA).

The Business Model for Niche Sites

Whether you want to build micro niche sites or large niche sites, the overall model is essentially the same.  What I mean by this is that you have the same inputs and outputs.  Essentially you will be paying for a domain, hosting, content, link building, and a theme or graphics.  The amount you spend on a few of these items could just be larger or smaller depending on the type of site and how many sites you build.

Overall, the basic model for niche sites is to create content targeting specific keywords and to rank at the top of Google for those keywords.  This is done in hopes of generating revenue through Google Adsense, Amazon Associates, your own product, or other affiliate programs.

This is the business model that eHow.com and About.com have implemented with great success on their web properties.  However, as most of us are “solo” entrepreneurs, we aren’t likely to build something quite as big as those websites, but our model is essentially the same.  As long as a new piece of content is bringing in more money than it costs, its profitable.

Costs of Building a Small Niche Site

So, lets walk through an example of the potential income and expenses of a smaller niche website.  First, I’m going to list out what it would cost to outsource everything (this is what I do). Here’s are some of the standard expenses (obviously some of these may be more or less depending on your own strategy):

• Domain – $10
• Hosting – $6/mth
• Content – $180 (15 articles at $12 each)
• Theme or Logo – $40
• Virtual Assistant – $50 (to install plugins, add articles with hyperlinks, or other basic tasks).
• Link Building – $250 (I usually hire various services, but this is more than enough).
• Total Cost – $530 one-time, plus $6/month for hosting.

Now the hosting cost is a bit deceiving, because if you build 10 sites its NOT $6/mth for each new site.  They can all share the same hosting account, so its still just $6/mth for all your sites combined.  In addition, depending on what you do for link building, you can hire services or buy tools for MUCH less (or much more).

So, in order to break even in one year your site would need to make $602 ($530 to $72 for annual hosting).  This means your site would need to make $50.17 per month or just $1.67 per day.  This is a very small site, and getting a site to $50 a month is really not that big a deal.

As I’ve shown, I have quickly gotten my public niche site (bestsurvivalknifeguide.com) to over $350/mth already after about 3 months.  This site is going to be highly profitable, which will allow me to invest in additional sites.

Do-it-Yourself Sites

Now if you were to write the content yourself and do the link building yourself, yours costs would be significantly less.  Here’s what your expenses would look like:

• Domain – $10
• Hosting – $6/mth
• Content – $0 (15 articles written by you)
• Theme or Logo – $0 (Not required if you use free themes)
• Virtual Assistant – $0 (you can do these tasks on your own).
• Link Building – $0 (you can do your own link building).
• Total Cost – $10 one-time, plus $6/month for hosting.

If you do everything yourself, you can have a niche site up and running for $10 plus just $6/mth!  So, as you can see depending on how much you do yourself, or if you decide to get help with link building, etc – you can spend anywhere from $10 to $530 to create a niche site.

Potential Profits for Niche Sites

As mentioned, my niche site that I’ve shared on this blog is bringing in around $350/mth, but the potential profits are MUCH bigger.  In fact, I have had a number of small niche sites making over $1,500/mth each.  My largest niche site was bringing in over $3,000 per month at its peak, and it was only about 20 pages of content.

So, you can see that the potential return on investment is HUGE.

And what’s even better, is that in the SECOND year of existence, these sites only have expenses of about $82/year (domain renewal plus hosting).  And even the hosting is negligible because again its shared with other sites.  So, really the cost is only about $10 to keep a site around.  And if its earning $350/mth, that’s an annual profit of $4,290 with almost no work.  (Most of my sites require NO ongoing articles or work in their second year…they are passive).

Then of course the idea is to build 20 or 30 of these sites to increase the overall income.  Then you start looking at revenue numbers of $80k to $120k a year.

Obviously some sites will do better than others, so it won’t all be pure profit (because you might have to build more sites to find successful ones).  But hopefully this gives you an idea of the potential.

This is exactly what I did to quit my job 2 years ago.  I was making more each month from my niche websites than from my day job…so I quit!

My Spreadsheet that I Use

I’ve used a number of different spreadsheet to “have fun” with my own niche site projections, and I want you to get in on the action (if you haven’t already started your own spreadsheet).  So, below you will find a link to my Excel spreadsheet that you can download and use.  Here’s a quick screenshot:

Click to Enlarge

In this example, I put in costs that were fairly high for each site…over $700 each. (The domains are $7.50 because you can often get them for this price through discounts, etc).  You can also see that the number of sites is adjustable…in this example I’m projecting to build 20.  So, building 20 sites would cost me a total of $21,494 if I basically outsource everything besides keyword research.  This includes a near full-time Virtual Assistant at $600 per month to help with some of the manual tasks of setting up sites, etc.

Now, for the fun part.  Below is an image of the potential INCOME based on those cost projections of building 20 niche websites:

Click to Enlarge

As you can see in the “Annual Profit” column, each site will need to make between $80 to $100 per month on average to break even with this projection.  However, you can also see that if all 20 sites are as successful as my survival knife site, my annual profit is closer to $65k per year.

And then of course, if they each earn $500/month, the Annual revenue get to $120k per year…not bad!

Again, these projections are based on investing over $700 per site, which my guess is that most of you are not spending that much.  If you are writing your own articles and doing your own link building, the break even point is going to be much less.

However, I’ll let you determine your own costs and potential profits.

Download the Niche Website Projections Spreadsheet Right Here!

And yes, I know the spreadsheet is ugly and could likely be even more accurate (for the sticklers out there).  However, projections are just that…projections.  So this spreadsheet is more than sufficient to help you dream big and also stay realistic when it comes to the niche website business model.

And oh yeah, you can also project MUCH bigger projects using this spreadsheet as well.  Want to build the next eHow.com?  This spreadsheet can help you calculate the costs and profits…

Your Thoughts

I would love to hear your thoughts on my overall analysis of the niche website business model and the spreadsheet that I’ve shared with you.  Do you have any questions or comments that you would like to add?  What has your experience been with projecting your own profits and losses.  I would love to hear it.

That site, bestsurvivalknifeguide.com, continues to rank #1 at the time of this writing for the keyword, “best survival knife”.

I’ve written several in depth posts here, about how I was able to rank the site, what I’ve done, and more. However, I still feel like I can’t emphasize enough the importance of effectively analyzing your competition before you ever try to rank for anything.

Choosing WHAT to rank for is much more important than what you DO to rank.  In other words, in my opinion, more than half the battle is won by picking a low competition keyword.

Unfortunately, this is the most common mistake that people make – choosing the wrong keyword.

So, today I want to dig a bit deeper on why websites rank and what are the MOST important factors for ranking a website in Google.  By understanding these factors in more depth, you will be able to look at the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), and more effectively determine if you can outrank them.

Ranking Factors to Consider

I have covered how to analyze the top 10 pages in Google previously here and here.  In addition, SEOmoz has put out a Search Engine Ranking Factors report that covers all of the metrics that are important for ranking in Google.  I will be drawing upon that report as well as my own experience to explain what works for ranking in Google.

Overall, I am going to look at 7 different factors and discuss how important each of them are.  Those factors are: Content/Keyword Relevancy, Page Links, Page Authority, PageRank, Type of Sites, Dwell Time and Bounce Rates, and Social Signals.

As I discuss these individually, I am going to order them from most important to least important.

Content and Keyword Relevancy – Most Important!

Think about how search engines work.  You type in a search query, and you expect Google to return what?  The result with the highest PageRank?  Absolutely not!  You are looking for the most RELEVANT result that meets your search query.  So, if you are searching for, “funny cat videos” you don’t want the Whitehouse.gov website to pop up just because it’s more authoritative, you want a website with funny cat videos, and you want it NOW!  Luckily Google understands this, they rank RELEVANCY above authority.

So, the lesson here is that even if you see some very authoritative sites ranking in the top 10 of Google, it still may be possible to outrank them IF you are able to target the keyword better than they are. The primary ways to target a keyword on your site is using the keyword in the domain, using the keyword in the title of your page, and using the keywords in the content of your article.

A perfect example of this was from my niche site targeting the keyword, “best survival knife”.  When I looked at the top 10 results in Google, a few of the results where using the phrase, “Survival Knife” in their Page Titles, but NOT “best survival knife”.

I saw this as a huge opportunity for me to go in and target the search query better than these websites were.  So, what did I do?  I made the title of my page to include, “Best Survival Knife” and immediately my page was a 100% match on the relevancy score for the searchers query.

So, even though many of the other sites have a better PageAuthority or PageRank, I was able to quickly outrank them – in part because my site is more relevant.

Page Authority – Very Important

Page Authority is a metric provided by SEOmoz.  So, what is Page Authority and how is it calculated?  According to SEOmoz,

“Page Authority predicts the likelihood of a single page to rank well, regardless of its content. The higher the Page Authority, the greater the potential for that individual page to rank well in search results.”

In other words, its a metric calculated by SEOmoz to predict the overall authority of a page and how well it should rank in Google based on several factors.  And notice they say, “regardless of content” – this just underscores the importance of keyword relevancy – you need authority + relevancy to actually rank.  Page Authority ranges in score from 1 to 100, with 100 being the most authoritative.  Here’s how Page Authority is calculated:

Page Authority is SEOmoz’s calculated metric for how well a given webpage is likely to rank in Google.com’s search results. It is based off of the Linkscape web index and includes link counts, mozRank, mozTrust, and dozens more. It uses a machine learning model to predicatively find an algorithm that best correlates with rankings across thousands of search results that we predict against.

So, its a complicated formula, and SEOmoz doesn’t reveal everything that is involved; however, Page Authority takes into account amount of links, mozRank, MozTrust, and much more.  Reading their description, its clear that overall link profile comes into play, including how authority sites are that are linking to the page, and more.

So, much more than raw link counts are used to calculate Page Authority, its actually looks at where the links are coming from and the strength of those links.

Page Authority includes, “dozens more” factors; which likely includes Social signals, and more.

In addition, this calculation is CONSTANTLY updated to reflect the most important factors for ranking in Google today.  (This is not true for tool bar PageRank for example, which is caculated the same way it was 10 years ago…which is why its not as important).  In other words, we have one of the top SEO companies looking at all the factors that exist to rank a page in Google and they are constantly tweaking, calculating, and making it the BEST indicator of how competitive a site is on Google.com.

What is also important to understand about Page Authority, is that its on a logarithmic scale; meaning the difference between a 25 to 30 is less than the difference between a 30 to 35.

Here’s how SEOmoz puts it,

“We score Page Authority on a 100-point, logarithmic scale. Thus, it’s easier to grow your score from 20 to 30 than it would be to grow from 70 to 80. We constantly update the algorithm used to calculate Page Authority, so you may see your score fluctuate from time to time.”

How to Use Page Authority

Now that you know what Page Authority is, how do you use it when analyzing sites?  I like to combine Page Authority with keyword relevancy to really start to get a feel for how easy or difficult the top 10 sites in Google are.  Lets take a look at an example.  Here’s a screenshot of all the sites ranking for “best survival knife” in Google.  (The screenshot is provided by Long Tail Platinum – my keyword research tool).

Click to Enlarge

I personally like to see results pages that have a Page Authority of 30 or less.  If I can find at least 2 websites in the top 10 that have a Page Authority of 30 or less, this is a good sign.  You will notice in this image that several of the pages are VERY authoritative…anything above a mid-40 is a really solid site.

However, you will also notice that Results #2, 5, 6, 7, and 10 DON’T even include the exact keyword, “best survival knife” in the title of their page.  The keywords are bolded for your convenience in the software.  This means the results that are NOT targeting the exact keyword would be seen as less competitive, even though they might have a high Page Authority.  So, you need to look at all factors in combination with one another.

So, even though my niche site (and others here) have a lower page authority, they can rank above other results because we are targeting the keyword phrase better.  Then other factors come into play as well such as dwell time, keywords in the domain, and more which are discussed below.

I will also just quickly mention that the “Average Keyword Competitiveness” calculation that you see above is a formula used by Long Tail Platinum to combine both Page Authority AND relevancy factors (keywords in title, domains, etc) for one overall score for how difficult it would be to beat the results on page one of Google.

You will see that the #1 result (my site) has an individual KC (Keyword Competitiveness) of 59, which is the highest of all the results.  This means I’m doing a very good job of controlling the on-page and off-page factors that I can control.

Dwell Time

I recently wrote a post discussing the importance of time on site.  More correctly, the “dwell time” is likely much more important to search engines like Google now than it used to be.  Essentially dwell time is the amount of time from when a user clicks on one Google result to when that same user comes back to Google to look at other results.

If users are clicking on your site and then quickly clicking back to Google to look at other results, this is a signal to Google that your site is not providing what the user is looking for.

This is a signal of quality content.  If you have an excellent website that truly provides what the user is looking for, then Google will reward you with high rankings.  This is based on dwell time.

And to clarify, Google can calculate this time without using your Google Analytics data.  That is totally different data (including Bounce Rate, etc).  Google knows when a user comes back to their search engine because its their website.

So, technically it may not matter how much time users spend on YOUR site, just that they don’t go back to Google right away.  So, even if a user comes to you site and clicks a link to go away from your site just a few seconds later; you may have a HUGE dwell time if that user never goes back to Google for the same query.

This quality signal shows Google that you are helping the searcher out with their query.  So, quality content is very important…and is likely only to get even more important in the future because of this dwell time or other similar calculations that Google is likely using.

Page Links

When Google was first created, links were the way that all websites were organized and ranked on the internet.  However, as you can see, there are many other factors that come into play now as Google continues to evolve and become more advanced.

However, the amount and quality of links are still one the most very important factors for ranking a site in Google.  I listed it lower than page authority because page authority already takes into account not only the amount of links but also the quality of those links.

However, when analyzing the page one results in Google, I still like to look at the Page Links, and more importantly the “Juice Page Links”.  This metric tells you how many links are pointing to the page that are actually passing some sort of authority…or “juice” as SEOmoz calls it.  This is primarily “Do Follow” vs “No Follow” links; but again its calculated by SEOmoz so they likely also take into account overall quality factors of the link as well (authority of page where link is coming from, etc).

I like to see a couple of results in Google that have less than 30 juice page links.  And I get excited when 5 or 6 of the results have less than 10 Juice page links. (This was the case for my survival knife site).

Click to Enlarge

In addition, some believe Google is doing more and more to move away from anchor text and towards link page relevancy.  In other words, having a link from a survival site is much more important than having a link from a cat videos site; even if the cat videos site is a high PageRank and using my keyword anchor text.

So, link relevancy is important.

Don’t get me wrong, I DO still think that anchor text is important, but Google is likely moving away from anchor text.  In a few years from now, anchor text may have become obsolete. (And if anyone has any evidence, I could be convinced that it already doesn’t matter).

Type of Sites

When analyzing the search engine results, there are certain types of sites that are just generally weaker in nature.  A few types of sites that I like to see (because they are often easy to outrank) are:

• Forums
• Q&A sites (like Yahoo answers, etc)
• Article Directories (love to see Ezinearticles.com, GoArticles.com, or similar sites).
• Web 2.0 sites (like Squidoo, InfoBarrel, and others).
• Social Bookmarking sites (this is pretty rare to see anymore, so if you do…you might have a winner!)
• Other user generated content
• Other weak niche sites (If an EMD is ranking with weak links or is poor quality, this lets me know I can probably also rank in Google).

There are likely many other types of sites, but in general if I see one of these types of sites ranking in Google, it tells me the keyword is likely easy to rank for.  You still will want to look at other factors, but this is a very good sign.

When I was first analyzing the competition for my survival knife site, a Forum was ranking as well as a Squidoo page.  This got me excited…and as you can see, I quickly outranked them.

Social Signals

I put social signals a bit lower on the “importance” scale because almost none of my niche sites have any type of social media presence, and yet many of them rank #1 in Google.  So, other factors like keyword relevancy and links and more important than social signals.

However, for certain queries (such as recent events/news items), its likely that Google is paying more attention to social media stats; such as Facebook shares, Tweets, Pinterest, and more.  According to certain experts, the authority of those Tweeting or Liking a page is important in addition to the quantity of likes or tweets, etc.

Ideally you will have social signals, but many of my niche sites don’t, and they do just fine.  In addition, its likely that these social signals are already implemented as part of the SEOmoz Page Authority number…so you are covered when analyzing the competition for this.

PageRank – Is it Still Important?

PageRank is a Google algorithmn named after Larry Page and created in 1996.  So, if it was named after Sergey Brin, it would be called BrinRank.

Let me emphasize again that PageRank was created in 1996.  PageRank is still PageRank – but Google uses WAY more than this determine what sites to rank.  So, was PageRank important in 1996 and 2000…absolutely!  Is it important now?  Let’s see what others say about it:

Neil Patel of QuickSprout.com said (and this quote is from 2011, so its even less important now):

So while it’s true that PageRank played a huge role in Google’s ranking algorithm in the past, its role today clearly isn’t as important in terms of rankings, due in large part to the fact that plenty of other ranking factors have been introduced since the launch of PageRank. As more ranking factors are introduced, their relative weight must get smaller, as each represents a smaller percentage of a site’s total score.

Neal goes on to explain in that post that working on increasing his PageRank did not result in better rankings in Google.

Aaron Wall of SEObook.com said:

Yes, PageRank is important to driving indexing, but for rankings it is nowhere near as important as it once was in terms of delivering top rankings….

So, Aaron says PageRank still determines how quickly a site will get crawled and indexed, but not very important as a ranking factor.

But when determining which site ranks better than the next, link diversity is typically far more important than raw PageRank.

On CopyBlogger.com (from Feb. 2013):

The problem with PageRank was that you could game it.

This article emphasizes AuthorRank (quality of an author) over PageRank.  And in fact it is easy to game PageRank.  If I own a PR 5 domain – “site a”, and link to say “site B”.  Site B will automatically become a PR of 3.  The PR of site B will always be a PR of 2 less than “site a”.

So, if “site b” only has 1 total link, but its coming from “site a” that has a PageRank of 8; then “Site B” will be a PageRank of 6.  That’s just how it works.  So, yes, its easy to game, especially if you know how to find high PageRank expired domains.

And no quote from this one, but SearchEngineWatch.com also wrote an article called, “Why PageRank Doesn’t Matter“; the title says enough.  In a future article I will dig into whether getting links from high PageRank sites really matters.

Other Ranking Factors

Google is known to use hundreds of factors for ranking websites, so there is no way that I could cover them all.  However, what I’ve covered here is what I feel are the most important factors to look at when trying to rank a site in Google.

So, when you are analyzing the top 10 results in Google for a particular keyword, you should focus first on keyword relevancy (in title and domains), Page Authority, Juice Page Links, and the Types of sites ranking.  If you can find weakness in these few factors, you are likely well on your way to finding a low competition keyword.

Your Thoughts

As always, I am VERY interested in hearing your thoughts.  I’ve laid out pretty well what I think in regards to the most important metrics for ranking in Google.  However, if you feel like I have missed something or would like further clarification, please leave a comment!

I look forward to the discussion…

The site currently is bouncing between positions 1 and 3 on Google for its primary keyword “best survival knife”, and is enjoying significant traffic from lots of other keywords as well.  In my full report today, I’m going to share exactly how much traffic the site is getting and where its coming from.

In addition, I will be sharing the total amount of money made, expenses, and much more.

Traffic Stats

Before I jump right into the earnings of the site, I want to share the amount of traffic coming to the site.  First, here’s a screenshot of how the traffic has grown since it was created (in mid February):

Click to Enlarge

The site has gone from ZERO visits in January to 16,709 visits in April!  That really is some amazing growth.  Now here is a screenshot of the Google Analytics for the month of April.

Click to Enlarge

You will notice around April 21st when my site started bouncing up to position 1 and 2 on Google – and the traffic has consistently been higher since then.  Also, you will notice some additional that the traffic is pretty high and there are some additional peaks.

This is basically explained because of people that read NichePursuits.com checking in on my site frequently and in particular when I publish a new blog post here.  As a result, a little over 34% of the traffic coming to the site is Returning visitors.

So, really around 66% of the visitors to the site are NEW visitors, which is really still quite good.  (And even normal niche sites will have a certain amount of “returning visitors”, so the entire 34% is not all readers of my blog here).

Where is the Traffic Coming From?

Most of the traffic to the niche site is coming from Google.  However, a few other search engines are doing their best to send me a little bit of free traffic.  Here’s the breakdown (I think I’ll keep focusing on Google ):

I didn’t do anything to get search traffic from these other search engines.  I only did what I’ve already laid out extensively in this case study.

Approximately 61% of the traffic is coming from search engines, and about 33% is coming from direct traffic (a large portion of this direct traffic is probably my blog readers here).  Here’s the pie chart:

Keywords Used to Find My Site

Now we come to my second favorite part of this report (my favorite is the income), seeing all the keywords used to find my site!  I am actually surprised at the HUGE variety of keywords being used to find my site.  Sure, I expected a lot of different long tail keywords based on the various articles produced for the site; however, I’m impressed with the amount of keyword queries that are being used to find my site.

I did all my research for the primary and secondary keywords using my keyword research tool, Long Tail Pro.

Here’s a couple of screenshots to show the most popular keywords and some of the longer tailed keywords:

In total, I received search engine traffic from 1,083 search queries in the month of April.  The term, “best survival knife” was by far my biggest search query, but you can see in aggregate, that MOST of my traffic is coming from other keywords.  This is normal and should be expected.

However, you will also notice that many of the keywords include either “best” or “survival knife”.  This is one reason why its important to focus on one primary keyword to start because you get both the searches for that exact keywords and lots of related searches.  Then I am clearly getting lots of searches to my additional content on the site (not just my primary article).

Income For April 2013

For the month of April, I continued to exclusively use the Amazon Associates program to monetize my site.  The income for April was $356.42!  Sweet!!

To remind you, the earnings in March was $83.86 (see report here).  The primary reason for the month to month increase in revenue is due to the increased traffic.

So, overall, the site has made me $440.28.

Also, out of the 149 items purchased, most of them were knives or very similar camping/survival items.  I thought some of you would find it interesting to see some of the items purchased, so here’s a couple of screenshots of where my commissions came from:

I am using the EasyAzon plugin to insert and manage the Amazon affiliate links on my site.  The plugin makes it much quicker to find and insert links as well as change certain settings (like cloaking, ad previews, and more).

Overall Expenses

Seeing the income is nice, but its also important to take a look at the expense side of things.  I’ve detailed previously here what my expenses had been up to that point; however, I am going to cover everything here.

• Domain name with Privacy: $10
• Hosting with Bluehost: $17.85 (3 months at $5.95/mth).  However, I also can share this hosting account with other sites, so the true expense is spread out with lots of sites.
• Articles: $392.  There are currently 22 articles on the site. (So, that’s an average of $17.82/article…yes this is more than I usually pay).
• Link Building: $244. About $25 for a VA to submit my site to web directories; then $219 for link building service through LayeredLinks.com.  A big part of the influence for my overall link building strategy came from the Link Building course called Point Blank SEO.  I highly recommend it if you want to do your own link building or learn more about how a good link building strategy should work.
• Graphics: $50
• I am using the Niche Website Theme (which I created) on my niche site.  Since I already own the product, I’m not putting it as an expense.  However, its currently being sold at a discount right here.

So, in total, I’ve spent $713.85.  Subtracting my overall income leaves me with a net loss of $273.57.  If this site does as well as it did in April, I will turn a profit in May.  And I actually expect that the site will earn more in May than April because it should have a full month near the top of Google.

My expenses will also be significantly less as many listed above were one-time costs.  I may spend another $100 or so on articles in May, but that should be about it for the expense side.  So, if I hit my goal of earnings $500/mth starting in May; I will have a passive income stream of $500 each month on a total investment of less than $900!   That’s a really high Return on Investment obviously.

Plans Going Forward

Overall, I am SUPER happy with the way this niche site has turned out.  The site is doing very well, and I hope the success continues for a long time to come.  My plans going forward are fairly simple at this point.  I will continue to add between 5 and 10 articles to the site in May, and possibly in June as well.  Depending on how the site is doing, I will re-evaluate in a month or so if I should ramp up the content even more or if I should just leave the site as is.

I have been building a small email list, but haven’t quite figured out what to do with it yet.  I have a 4 part auto-responder series that is likely bringing people back to the site, but I’d like to explore some affiliate opportunities.  Hopefully in May, I can find a good fit.  I currently have 67 subscribers on the survival knife email list.  I could likely add a ton more by adding a splash page or pop up.

Your Thoughts

As always, I want to be as open about this case study as possible.  I think that I’ve provided some valuable stats, screenshots, and more on this income report that can help you evaluate what’s going on with my niche site. However, I also know that you may have additional questions that you would like clarification on…I’m here for you!

So, please leave any thoughts or questions that you might have below.

My younger brother, who has a couple of self-published books on Amazon, recommended that I check out the Steven Pressfield book.  So, while this book is primarily written by an author for other authors or creative people, I think it can help entrepreneurs and other do just what the subtitle says, “break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles.

A Quick Overview of the Book

Overall, the book is more motivational as opposed to teaching any particular skill or even telling a story.  Although Steven Pressfield does give some personal anecdotes about his own struggles with writing, odd jobs he’s worked, and more. Its the kind of book that perhaps you would never pick up and become entranced by the story, but on the other hand it is the kind of book you could randomly pick up, read a paragraph, and feel a bit more motivated to pursue your endeavors.

For example, here’s a quick couple of sentences from the beginning of the book to give you an idea of the type of book it is, “There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard.  What’s hard is sitting down to write.”  (I personally just replace “real writers” with “real entrepreneurs”, etc to apply business owners and creators in general).

The book is broken down into 3 Parts:

• Book One: Resistance – Defining the Enemy
• Book Two: Combating Resistance – Turning Pro
• Book Three: Beyond Resistance – Higher Realm

In Book One: Resistance, Pressfield basically destroys ever reason you’ve ever rationalized for not getting something done.  Accomplishing your goals (creative, business, or otherwise) is a battle.  You are fighting resistance.  And this resistance is manifested in all kinds of ways; procrastination, criticizing others, fear, depression, and many others.  Here’s a small gem from the first section of the book:

Self-doubt can be an ally.  This is because it serves as an indicator of aspiration.  It reflects love, love of something we dream of doing, and desire, desire to do it.  If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are.

The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident.  The real one is scared to death.

In Book Two: Combating Resistance, the author delves deeper into how to overcome resistance and to truly become a pro. “The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it.  He commits full-time. That’s what I mean when I say turning pro.  Resistance hates it when we turn pro.”  This section covers more motivational tips for overcoming resistance and truly dedicating yourself to your “craft”.

Finally, in Book Three: Beyond Resistance – Higher Realm, Pressfield talks more about some of the intangible things that can work in your favor – forces that you can tap into to help you accomplish things.  These forces acts as the antithesis of Resistance; and he uses words like, muse, angels, love, magic, dreams, ego, life, death, and more.

This section is all about tapping into that “Higher Realm”.  The book finishes with this:

Creative work is not a selfish act of a bid for attention on the part of the actor.  It’s a gift to the world and every being in it.  Don’t cheat us of your contribution.  Give us what you’ve got.

My Thoughts

I think the book is good for what it was written for: a motivational book for anyone involved in creating anything.  Is it a good story?  No.  Does it teach you a valuable skill?  Not really.  Will it help you overcome your inner battles and get you back to work?  Probably.

 —>You Can Pick up The War of Art on Amazon.com Right Here <—

So, this book has to be read with the knowledge that its not really written like other books.  You could consume this book in a couple of days; but you could also just open it up randomly and get some unique thoughts that might change how you view your current situation.

Overall, I really liked the book.  Steven Pressfield hit on a lot of “resistance” points that I face when sitting down to write a blog post, build a new niche site, or improve my own business in some way.  Being able to view resistance for what it is (part of an ongoing battle), helps me understand that its not just me…but others also experience the same things!

If you have any thoughts you would like to add, please do so below.

If you have been following along with my Niche Site Project, you know that I have gone to great lengths to explain my entire process along the way.  In fact, before I even started the site, I recorded a webinar explaining what my strategy would be and how I would go about finding my primary keyword, launch the site, and more.

Obviously being a project for everyone to watch, I had high hopes that this site would reach the number one position in Google, but I also knew that having thousands of people watch along can sometimes impact results (positively or negatively).  So, I’m thrilled (to say the least), that my site has performed to my highest expectations!

So, how did I get my niche site to the top of Google?  In my post today, I am going to reveal more details on some of the tactics I’ve used, along with a complete overview of what has happened to my site – including earnings, rankings, and more.  Ideally, you will be able to take some of this information and find success with it in your own niche site endeavors.

Going from Ranking Nowhere to #1 on Google

So, how long did it take from the creation of my site to reach number one on Google?  Here is a timeline of the major movements in Google since I created my site:

• Feb. 7th, 2013 – Domain purchased
• Feb. 22nd, 2013 – First Article Published (62 days from this date, I ranked #1 in Google).
• Feb. 25th, 2013 – Not ranked in Google
• Feb. 26th, 2013 – 395 (position on Google)
• Feb. 27th, 2013 – 36
• Feb. 28th, 2013 – 34
• Mar. 1st, 2013 – 25
• Mar. 4th, 2013 – 29
• March 9th – 237 (See my explanation for this drop and recovery here).
• March 10th – 246
• March 11th – 225
• March 13th – 25
• March 15th – 21
• March 16th – 6
• March 17th – 7
• March 18th – 8
• March 19th – 4
• March 23rd – 11 (Its normal to bounce up and down for a young site)
• March 25th – 9
• March 26th – 3
• April 11th – 3
• April 14th – 2
• April 23rd – 2
• APRIL 24TH – #1 IN GOOGLE BABY!!

Now there were more minor movements up and down than what I’ve shown, but this gives you a general feel for its progression over time.

Current Earnings of My Niche Site

I will be doing a more full income report once the month of April is complete; however, here is where I stand right now (earnings through April 24th):

I am VERY happy with $254.10 in earnings for this month so far!  In fact, you may remember that I just posted an earnings screenshot a few days ago…and it was $174 (through April 21st).  Part of the increased earnings over the last few days is that I hit the 7% commission tier rate on Amazon!

The more items you ship, the more Amazon pays you.  Here are the commission tiers on for the Amazon Associates program:

As you can see, I have shipped 112 items, so my commission rate was bumped to 7% retroactively on ALL the sales I’ve made in the month of April.  So, I had a nice earnings increase…sweet!  I expect things to get even better as I enjoy the increased traffic from being in position 1.

My Goal for May is to hit $500 in earnings…looks like it could be close…

The Most Important Step of ANY Niche Site

I wanted to take you back to the very beginning of the project when I began looking for a keyword to target.  I have stressed over and over again that keyword research is by FAR the most important step in building niche websites.  I think that I’ve proven that with this project.

If you find a keyword that is easy enough to rank for, you won’t need to build as many links to your site – and you will be much more likely to rank at the top of Google.

I wanted to target a keyword that had 5,000 exact match searches or more for this project and find one that had low competition in the top 10 spots of Google.  I used my keyword research tool, Long Tail Pro, to brainstorm, research, and find my winning keyword.

I found the keyword “Best Survival Knife”, which had just under 5,000 exact match local searches, and also had very low competition in the top 10 results in Google.  I felt strongly by analyzing those results (and using the built in Keyword Competitiveness function in the Platinum version of Long Tail Pro), that I could at least get on the first page of Google.

You can watch videos of me finding this keyword and read much more details right here.

So, even though I am now going to explain below everything else I did to rank this site in Google, I want to strongly remind you that the keyword research is the real reason I am able to rank in Google.  If you fail this step, it doesn’t matter how much other “SEO” tactics you use.

Quality Content Really is Important

As I explained early on, I wanted my content to be super valuable to the end user of my survival knife site.  To be honest, its very possible to still rank a site with less than stellar content – as long as you do great keyword research and some basic link building.  However, I wanted to make this site something I could be proud to share and to truly be useful to those searching for survival knives.

So, I wrote the primary article myself (homepage) and created an in-depth knife comparison chart.  The article is using my primary keyword in the title and is overall targeted the keyword I want to rank for. The article and chart took me several hours to complete, but as a result, I think my site REALLY is more useful than the other sites that are ranking in Google right now.

In addition, I’ve now hired (on Elance.com) a camping and survival expect to write lots of the content that you see on the site.  This author is providing secondary articles that each target different keywords; mostly different knife makes and models.  These articles are well written and provide a unique voice from someone that truly understands knives and what to look for (better than I could).

As a result of my quality chart and other quality content, users are spending more time on my site.  This time on site, or more accurately “Dwell Time”, is providing a positive signal to Google.  This helps my site do well.

The average user is spending 2 minutes and 38 seconds on my site.

Link Building for My Niche Site

Now I come to the section that I suppose many of you have been waiting for.  I’m going to give you a detailed look at the exact link building that has been done on this site.  And yes, this has helped me rank #1 in Google.

I wrote a full post on the link building strategy that I would follow, and I have essentially done what I said I would do.  But here is a recap (and this includes some details I have not discussed previously):

• I was ranking #25 in Google on March 1st…BEFORE I built a single link to the site.  I mention this to just remind you how important my keyword research was.  I was ranking purely on the fact that I was targeting a low competition keyword.
• March 7th to around March 21st – I started making about 20 or so comments on related blogs.  These comments were made by me, and were real comments (not spam).  They were related to the blog post and were genuine.  I didn’t use keyword anchor text other than my name or sometimes Spencer @ Survival Knife Guide (or something similar).  Also during this time period I had my VA build between 10 to 20 (not sure how many got accepted) web directory links.  These were just general web directories with high pagerank.
• You will see that around March 15th or 16th, my site started ranking on the first page of Google.  I believe my keyword research, quality content, blog comments, and web directory links helped my site make the jump.
• On March 21st, I secured a quality in content link from an authoritative site related to weapons and knife reviews.  This is the only link where I used my exact match anchor text of “Best Survival Knife”. I haven’t talked about this link up to this point, but I share more on this below.  In a nutshell, I used a high PageRank expired domain to “trade” links.  Was it this link that pushed me to #3 in Google on March 26th?  Very possibly.
• On March 25th, I started noticing lots of links being built to my site that I DID NOT build!  I wrote an entire post on what I believe is negative SEO from someone towards my site.  The big question that everyone has (including me) is did these links help my site…or will they eventually hurt my site?  I don’t know the answer, BUT I do know that I would have ranked without them just fine.  You see, I was already on the first page of Google before they showed up (and position 25 before I ever built a link).  And as I’ll show below, it was clearly my link building efforts that pushed me from just page 1, to Top position.  I would have made it just fine without these links, so its unfortunately that I couldn’t prove that…because these links did indeed occur, and I have to acknowledge that.  So, make your own call here.
• The fact that these spammy links have not hurt my site, gives me a bit more confidence that maybe Google really does know how to filter out these “bad” links; as Matt Cutts stated in this video here:

• I continued to make just a few more blog comments on related blogs through about the end of March. I only made another 5 or 6 more.
• On April 11th I hired someone to start building links for me that fit very close to my original plan as shared here. This link building job was completed on April 22nd.  My site went from position 3 to position 1 during this timeframe…you be the judge!  I want to share EXACTLY the links that were built during April 11th to April 22nd – and I’ve shared that below.

Links Built From April 11th to April 22nd

As explained, I hired someone to build some links for me.  Below you will find a list of exactly the work that was done during this time period.  Also as a note, I did not use the term “best survival knife” as my keyword anchor text on any of these, because of the negative SEO links I had received that overused my keyword anchor text.  These links were various phrases to help diversify that anchor text.

• 1 Squidoo Lens
• 10 Web 2.0 Properties with 3 articles on each property
• 3 Wiki Properties with 3 articles on each property
• 1 Slideshare with 3 articles
• 1 DocStoc with 3 articles
• 3 GoArticles.com submissions
• 15 PageRank 4+ Blog Comments (DoFollow)
• 100 Social Bookmarks
• 7 Press Releases on quality web properties

Those are all the links pointing directly to my site.  (Notice its not a HUGE number of links…other than the social bookmarks.  And likely most of the social bookmarks won’t “stick” anyway).

However, I also had a second tier of links as I explained in my original link building guide.  Here’s the kinds of links I got for my second tier links (links NOT pointing to my site, but pointing to my other links above).

• 200 Wiki links
• 2500 blog comments (yes these were probably automated and really crappy links.  But the sole purpose is to just index and boost my other links).
• 50 Article links

Overall, those are the links built to my site in the past couple of weeks.  The articles used were original; however, they were used over and over again.  In other words, the 3 GoArticles.com articles may have been original, but a slightly spun version of these same articles were used on the Web 2.0 properties and other locations.

Using Expired Domains to “Trade” Links

As I mentioned above, on March 21st, I secured a high quality link from a great site about weapons, knives, and more.  I was able to get in contact with the owner of the site and I basically offered him a high PageRank link from an existing domain I had access to (that had been an expired domain).

So, the owner of the site agreed and wrote me a “guest post”.  I place this guest post along with links back to his site on the High PageRank domain.

In turn, this person placed an in content link from his site to my survival knife site.  So, essentially it was a 3 way link.  None of the links are pointing to each other.  Hope that makes sense.

Overall, this is a great way to use Expired Domains to attract high quality links to any of your web properties.  I actually could do this a lot more if I needed to.  I currently have 2 webmasters interested in trading links, but I may not need to at this point.

How Are People REALLY finding My Site?

I am going to provide a more detailed report on traffic and earnings once the full month of April is over.  However, I thought you would find it interesting to know how people are actually finding me on Google.  Obviously lots of people are typing in “best survival knife” into Google and are finding me. But the exciting part is that I’m getting TONS of traffic from related long tail keywords!

This really is the beauty of niche websites and targeting great keywords.  Because my site is doing well with the one keyword, its also naturally do well with lots of related keywords.  So, here is a list of some of the top keywords people have been using to find my site:

However, the exciting part is that in JUST the month of April, I have received traffic from 848 different search queries!  Check this out:

So, yes, I’m getting some traffic from my blog readers here at NichePursuits.com.  Some of you are typing in “best survival knife guide” (as you can see from the top image), and that’s fine.  However, I can see that most of the keywords used are NOT things that my blog readers here are typing in.  This is natural search engine traffic from people performing real Google queries.

I currently have 22 articles on the niche site that are all being found by people using Google.  I intend to continue to add more content throughout the month of May as well, so I only expect the number of long tail phrases used to find my site to increase with time.

Going Forward and Your Thoughts

I’ve done my very best to explain how I have achieved a number 1 ranking in Google after just 62 days with my niche site.  If you still have further questions, you may be able to find some of those answers in the several updates I’ve posted specifically for this project right here.

I will continue to provide updates and future plans for this niche site.  I’m currently building an email list and have plans to start monetizing with other affiliate products.  I will be covering these plans and more in future posts, so I hope you will stick around for sure.

I fully understand that many of you will have further questions or comments in regards to this project, so I invite you to leave a comment below!  Because this is a project that I’ve done publicly from the very beginning I’m fully aware that some of you will have positive comments and some of your may have negative reactions to what’s happened.  But overall, I just want to state that what I’ve shown here is essentially what I’ve done “privately” with hundreds of other niche websites that I own.

I’ve ranked #1 in Google many times before, so the tactics that I’ve laid out work.  I truly hope that some of the information that I’ve provided here and along the way will help some of you improve your own business and achieve the success you are looking for.

I look forward to hearing your comments and continuing the discussion below!

As I personally think of this question, its seems intuitive that one factor to include in my formula would be to rank sites higher if people spent a lot of time on them.  Doesn’t that seem to make sense?

If people are spending a long time on your website, that must mean that they are reading, learning, or otherwise enjoying the content that is there.  So, I personally believe that the metric of time on site is a good way to know if people find the content on your site valuable – and hence should be ranked higher.

But the real question is: How important is time on site (Really) for ranking in Google?  Does Google actually use this metric currently to rank sites higher or lower?

Bounce Rate vs. Time on Site

To be completely forthright, Google has never stated whether or not they use Visitor Time (or time on site) as a ranking factor.  But Matt Cutts has explicitly said that they do NOT use Bounce rate as a ranking factor.

But bounce rate is not the same thing as the amount of time a visitor spends on your site.  Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that leave your site after only viewing one page.  Notice that time is not a factor in bounce rate at all.

So, a visitor could come to your site and spend 3 hours reading just one page, but if they click back to Google without viewing a second page on your site, this is considered a bounce.  So, while they’ve explicitly said that bounce rate is not used, there is no official word on average visitor duration.

However, as others have said, controlling your bounce rate is still very important.

My Take on the Importance of Time on Site

I personally think that its very important to keep visitors on your site for a long time and likely is part of the Google ranking algorithm.  But I don’t think Google is spying on your Google Analytics. (I know that other feel differently about this).

Most likely they simply look at how long it takes someone to come back to Google after they click through to your site.  This is referred to as “Dwell Time”, according to a few SEOs.  Dwell time is basically how long it takes a user to come back to Google after looking at a site.  And they don’t need to see your “Analytics” to get this number.

If users are quickly coming back to Google every time they land on your website, Google might start thinking that your site isn’t worth ranking.

What is a Good Time on Site?

I can give you some stats from my own sites, but the average visitor duration is going to be very different depending on the type, quality, and subject matter of the site you own.

• The “average visit duration” for my site NichePursuits.com, according to Google Analytics, is 3 minutes and 58 seconds. This is a long time for an average visit duration.
• My survival knife site (from my public niche site project here) has an average visit duration of 2 minutes and 36 seconds.  This is also very good for a small niche site.
• I think anything over 2 minutes is actually very good for a niche site.
• Between 45 seconds to 2 minutes is perhaps average for a niche site.
• Under 30 seconds is really bad.

These are just some general numbers I put together looking over a few of my own niche sites that I own.

Closing Thoughts

While it has never been stated explicitly by Google that they use Time on site to rank sites, I personally believe that this does come into play for SEO purposes.  Google knows how quickly users are coming back to Google after visiting your site, and can use that data.

So, in addition to the many factors that I’ve discussed for how to rank in Google, you should certainly do what you can to increase the amount of time visitors are spending on your site.

Do you have something to add to the discussion?  I’d love to hear your comments or questions below!

I’ve received lots of stellar feedback from this project from all of you, and I appreciate that!  I think as a community we have all learned (including me) different tactics, asked important questions, and felt a little more motivated.  Thank you for all of following along and making this project a success so far!

Overall, I am going to give some interesting updates on the rankings of my site, the earnings, and discuss my strategy going forward.

Ranking #1 in Google?!?

I actually wanted to write an entire post today announcing that I was ranking #1 in Google!  However, at the time of this writing, I am still currently ranked #2…which is still AWESOME!

I thought I was going to have a chance to write the “Ranking Number One in Google!” post, because I actually saw my niche site briefly hit the top spot on Saturday night!  I don’t know how long it was there, but sometime on Sunday (yesterday) it must have gone back to number 2.

I think its very possible that I’m ranking #1 in some locations because my traffic was WAY up on Saturday night and Sunday compared to previous days and weeks.

However, I am going to officially say that its currently bouncing between position 1 and 2…so we will see where Google ends up putting it!  Once I’m solidly at number one (how’s that for confidence?) for a few days, I’ll write the “I DID IT” post and give some more nitty-gritty details.

But for now, I’ll just say that I’m extremely happy with the ranking and traffic for my site!

Current Earnings

Last month my survival knife site earned $83.86.  A great start for its first full-month of being in existence (I started it part way through February).

As of yesterday (April 21st), the site has earned $177.03!  See the image below:

That’s alot of survival knife sales!  The best part is that the site is increasing in traffic and earnings in the later half of the month.  So, I fully expect to hit $250 in earnings this month.  Will I be able to hit $500 next month?  I don’t know, it will be exciting to watch though.

Strategy Going Forward

I’ve done some additional link building which is likely the reason its bouncing up near #1.  I’ll go into much more detail on this later, but I essentially followed the plan I laid out here.

In addition, I’ve continued to add content at a slow rate.  I’ve added about one article per week over the past few weeks.  I would actually add 2 to 3 per week, but my author writing the articles has been a little slow about getting them to me.  I’m not too concerned about this, because the articles that he does get to me are high quality, and that’s much more important.

I’ll continue to add 1 or 2 articles a week for a least the next month or so.  Then I’ll likely go back and do more knife reviews on more and more knives moving forward.  As long as the traffic and earnings continue, its worth the investment for additional content.

Your Thoughts

Overall, I just wanted to provide a quick update on my niche site project.  The earnings a great and so are the rankings!  At this point the site is mostly on auto-pilot for me.  I just have to read and edit an article about once a week and hit “Publish”.

I would love to hear any thoughts, comments, or questions that you might have below.

I felt like it was time that I sat behind the microphone and shared a few of my thoughts on the current state of SEO and my public niche site project.  In fact, as I look back at when I published my last podcast, its been over 4 months!  What I think you will find here are some motivational words to help you see how I view the world of Search Engine Optimization and more.

In addition, I cover a few topics in regards to my niche site project that I haven’t mentioned previously on my blog yet.  So, its definitely worth a listen.  Here’s is some of the information I cover in the podcast:

The State of SEO

Overall, I believe that the state of SEO is very good.  Meaning, I believe that now is just as good a time as any to build and rank niche websites in Google.

I share a couple of pieces of evidence to support this claim.  First, I think I’ve done a decent job showing that its very possible to build and rank a niche website with my survival knife site for my niche site project.  This is proof that you can type into Google and see for yourself, so you don’t really have to take my word for it.

However, I often find myself looking to other companies when I want some extra motivation.  One such company that I check in on from time to time is Demand Media, Inc.  The company is publicly traded on the NYSE under the ticker symbol DMD.

If you are not familiar with Demand Media, they own the websites: eHow.com, LiveStrong.com, Cracked.com, and many others.  I often look to this company for inspiration because they are employing the exact same business strategy that I am for my business!  Yes, they own much larger websites and implement this strategy on a much larger scale, but at its core, the strategy is really the same.

Demand Media does lots of market and keyword research, and once they find a low competition keyword based on their own formula, they hire freelance writers to create an article on the topic.  Then the article gets posted on ehow.com where it gets free traffic from Google and makes money from Google Adsense or other contextual ads.

Sound familiar?

This is essentially what I do with my niche websites.

So, I get my inspiration when I look at their financials and see growth.  Below is a copy of their quarterly income statement:

You will see that they are clearly growing.  They had a net loss for the quarter ending Mar. 30th, 2012, but have since seen increasing net incomes for the next 3 quarters.  This is encouraging, because the 2011 and 2012 were shaky years for SEO with the Panda and Penguin Google updates.

So, clearly Demand Media has found a way to continue to grow after these updates.

And so have I.

My Public Niche Site Project

Despite some setbacks in 2011 and 2012 with all the Google changes (and my Google Adsense account mishap…and by the way I still have my new Adsense account open and all is well); I am seeing some real success in 2013.  In fact the last few sites that I’ve built have all reached page one of Google.

So, what does this mean?  To me it means that I’ve learned and improved my processes.  What I was doing in 2011 and even early 2012 does not work anymore.  This is exactly what Demand Media has done as well…we’ve shifted our tactics slightly.

If you are just starting out in the niche website business, I actually think you are lucky!  You can start doing things the right way and hopefully never experience some of the big penalties that have happened over the past couple of years.

On the podcast, I shared some of the traffic and earning numbers for the site.  The past few days I’ve been getting 500 unique visitors per day to my survival knife site!  This is huge.  Now obviously some of that is from my blog readers here, but how much is tough to quantify.

However, I AM selling lots of survival knifes, and I don’t think that’s coming from you .  As of yesterday, I’ve made about $120 in Amazon Associates revenue for the month of April.  I hope to hit at least $250 for this month, and then $500 for the month of May.

Click to Enlarge

In order to increase the amount I’m making on the site I have 3 plans.  Rank higher.  Add more content.  Add an email list.

In fact, just yesterday I added an email opt-in form to the site to start collecting email addresses.  I currently have 4 emails that will go out in an auto-responder series that essentially drive people to different pages of my website.  So, once people are on my email list, I can drive them to individual knife reviews or my knife chart to get more clicks, and hopefully purchases.

However, I am also on the lookout for good survival related affiliate products.  I’m sure there are some good survival or emergency preparedness ebooks, but I haven’t found the right one yet.  Once I do, I will be able to add this to my email marketing plan to further monetize my site.

Here’s what my email opt-in form looks like (just a template provided by Aweber):

In addition, I plan on adding a Twitter page to gain some more followers.  Thanks to a strategy that I was recently reminded of by Cliff Ravenscraft of PodcastAnswerMan.com, I should be able to gain a decent following without too much work. Cliff discussed this strategy at the Social Media Marketing World conference which I attended last week in San Diego, CA.

In a nutshell, I am going to use Tweet Adder to automatically follow people on Twitter that are interested in the survival niche.  Tweet Adder is a tool that I have used in the past, and to be honest, works pretty well.  When you follow people, many of those people will follow you back.  So, if you follow enough people, you can build up a decent following.

This is how I gained an initial following on my Twitter page for NichePursuits.com, I used Tweet Adder.

I have nothing to lose by doing this with my survival knife site since I have NO Twitter following right now.  I’ll provide updates on this once I get started.

Your Thoughts

Overall, the state of SEO is very good.  I’m doing well with my niche websites, and other companies including Demand Media are achieving record profits.

I’ve shared what’s working for my niche site and what my plans are for the future.  The podcast below has even a few more details that I couldn’t cover in the text here.

I would love to hear any comments or questions that you have below!

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes right here.

Click Play to Listen to the Podcast!

I am most comfortable working with Google Adsense, and that is where I’ve made most of my money. However, I recently started my niche site project, and the public site is being monetized with the Amazon affiliate program (Amazon Associates). Over the past couple of months, I’ve learned some things that I never knew before, and wanted to share.

After all, there is nothing more frustrating that having a problem and not being able to find an answer. Hopefully this post can answer a few basic questions in regards to making money with Amazon.

How to Insert Amazon Links

There are a couple of different ways that you can insert Amazon affiliate links into your site. First, you can use different options provided directly by Amazon.

If you are logged into your Amazon associates account, you can just visit ANY page on Amazon.com and click the “Link to This Page” to get your affiliate link for that exact page. Here’s what it looks like:

Clicking the “Link to this page” will bring up a new window where you can select to link with a Text and Image, Text Only, or Image Only.  I typically will just select the “Text Only” option and then highlight just the link code itself (as shown in the image below).  Then I can use this affiliate link anywhere I want on my site (with an image, my own anchor text, etc).

You can also use several other options that are provided by Amazon directly for creating affiliate links such as inserting banners, creating an astore, and much more.  For my own niche site, I have not used any of these other options. See the image below for a few options:

Using the EasyAzon Plugin to Insert Links

Another option to build Amazon Associates links on your site is to use a plugin (if using WordPress).  For my survival knife site (my public niche site), I am using the EasyAzon Plugin.

The EasyAzon plugin makes it very quick and simple to insert Amazon affiliate links without ever having to leave your WordPress dashboard.  So, rather than go over to Amazon.com to find your product and then copy and paste the link, you can have the plugin do it directly for you within WordPress.

Here’s an image of the EasyAzon plugin in action:

So, this is located directly below where you create a post in your WordPress text editor.  All you have to do is type in your search query (mine is “tom brown tracker knife” above), then hit search.  This will pull back all the Amazon results as you can see in the image.  Then simply select whether you want a text link, image link, info block, or call to action.

I went ahead and selected a “Text Link”, and here is what I get:

In the link text box, you can change your anchor text to whatever you want.  You can see that I made it, “Click Here for Pricing, Reviews, and More…”.  Then simply clicking “Insert Shortcode” and your Amazon affiliate link is all set!

Other EasyAzon Settings

To first get started with EasyAzon, you will need to input your basic affiliate details.  Once you input your Amazon Associate affiliate tag, you can select whether to cloak all links, open links in a new window, make affiliate links “No Follow” and more.  Here are the options you can select:

A Lesson Learned About Amazon Links

You will notice at the bottom of the image above that you can, “Enable Link Localization”.  What this does is detect what country the user is from that clicked your affiliate link and direct them to the correct Amazon country page.  In order to get paid when a user from the UK purchases on Amazon.co.uk for example, you MUST be approved to the Amazon.co.uk program; which is different than the Amazon.com program.

In other words, you need to apply and be approved for each of the countries for this function to work.  Well, it sounded like a lot of time and effort to apply to multiple countries; so I just figured I’d stick with the US for my survival knife niche site.

However, I was contacted by one of my readers who told me that it only takes a few minutes to apply to each of these programs, and that it could increase my income by over 15%!  To be honest, the only reason I hadn’t applied to the other country affiliate programs was because I thought it would be too time consuming.

So, that is my next step!  I’ll be applying to the programs and then using the EasyAzon plugin to automatically localize the Amazon results for each person that clicks my affiliate links.  As far as I’m aware, there is no other way to do this automatically using Amazon directly.

I mention this in case there is anyone out there just get started with the Amazon Associates program.  This is a simple tactic that could definitely increase your overall earnings.

Watch a Full Demo of the EasyAzon Plugin Here

In Conclusion

If you are getting started using the Amazon Assoicates program, hopefully some of these tips will be useful to you.  Amazon provides lots of different options for inserting links into your site.  I’m personally using a combination of Amazon directly along with the EasyAzon plugin.  The plugin allows me to get things done a little bit quicker and provides some advanced options that I may not be able to accomplish otherwise.

Do you have any questions about using the Amazon affiliate program?  I’d love to hear your comments or questions below.