I want to cover some of these thoughts and findings in detail and overall address the issue of building niche sites after the Google Penguin update.

How Are My Sites Doing?

I am like many other people out there, some of my sites were hit pretty hard, but others were not.  Here is an example of one of my sites that was hit by the Penguin update.  You will notice that it was receiving between 130 and 150 visits a day, but once Penguin hit, the traffic went down to around 80 to 100 visitors a day.

On the flip-side, I also had many sites that were unaffected.  For example this site as you can see from the analytics below has been totally flat before, during, and after the Penguin update…no effect whatsoever.

Overall, the Penguin update hurt!  I didn’t like it at all.  However, it has given me a chance to step back and take a look at what may have caused some of my site to get hit, while others were not.  For those of you who were on the webinar I did last week, I gave you an early scoop on some of my findings.  If not, here’s what I’ve discovered.

Penguin was primarily targeting sites that were using too much keyword anchor text or were linking for less than relevant sources.  At least these were 2 of the bigger parts of the updates.

By contrast, the Panda update was targeting sites that had poorly written content or had very short/thin articles.  This is why article directories or wiki type sites like Mahalo.com and others were hit so hard.  The Panda update had nothing to do with targeting “small” niche sites, but targeted both large and small sites that had either short articles or poorly written content.  Both big and small sites were affected equally.

This is also true of the Penguin update.  Big sites were hit just as hard as small sites.  Again, this update had nothing to do with targeting small niche sites and everything to do with targeting link building practices.

Link Building Strategies Targeted by Penguin

So, for example if you were targeting the keyword “best laptop computers” and 100% of the anchor text that you used to link to your site was “best laptop computers”, then your site was likely penalized heavily by the Penguin update.  This didn’t matter if your content was amazing or if you site was extremely large; if you used this kind of link building practice, then you site was “Penguinized”.

The second type of link building strategy that was targeted by Penguin was linking from non-relevant content.  Matt Cutts, gave an example of this here. Notice in that image, that the links are using anchor text that is not relevant or doesn’t make sense to the article itself.  I have to confess that I have done something similar – although not as blatant.  Usually if I wanted to link from a less than relevant article, I would do so in the author box at the end.

So, essentially this is why some of my sites were hit by Penguin and others were not.  My sites that were built a couple of years ago for example all used a high percentage (75 to 90%) of the anchor text was the keyword I was targeting.  These sites were Penguinized.  However, other sites that did not use as much keyword anchor text were not.  Others are finding the same thing to be true.

How to Build Links Post Penguin

Some are saying that as long as you use under 50% keyword anchor text, then you will be fine.  I would personally be even more cautious than that.  In the future, I am going to try and and keep my keyword anchor text below 30%.  The other 70% may just be the site name, generic words (like read more, and click here), or secondary or unrelated keywords.

Overall, I’m not ready to write a full blog post on a link building strategy that everyone should follow, but a lot of the principles that I outlined in my previous backlinking post will remain the same.  Pat Flynn has also done a good job of that. The difference will be linking from more relevant content, using keyword anchor text less, and finding higher quality sources to link from.

My Challenge: Lots of Small Niche Sites vs. 1 Large Site

I suppose now is as good a time as any to let you know about my plans.  Even though some of my niche sites were hit by Penguin, not all of them were, and many of them are still earning quit well, despite the loss of my Adsense account. I have been using several Adsense Alternatives, and although its not as much as Google adsense, its still a very nice income.

Now that the dust has settled a bit from the Penguin update, I plan to start building more small niche sites.  There is still money to be made here, and I’m more than happy to collect some of it.

However, on the other hand, I have been thinking a lot about focusing some time and energy into 1 large site that I write all the content myself and put some real “Spencer love” into; like I do for NichePursuits.com.  Especially as I see the success that Fraser Cain has had with his site.  He made some very good points in the recent podcast interview I did with him here.

So, do I spend my time building lots of small sites or focusing on one large amazing site?

For the next 6 months, I am going to do both.  I work at this full-time, so I have the ability to do that.

For my small niche sites, I will outsource everything and spend perhaps an hour a day building up my portfolio of sites.

For my one large site, I will write all the content, promote it myself, and put some real love and care into it.  I will probably spend 2 hours each day focusing on this one site. Eventually I would like to create my own products for this sites and build real active community there.

The linkbuilding for this large site will all be done through “natural” methods.  In other words, I won’t be doing any manual link building; 100% white hat SEO.

Overall, that’s the plan.  I will build lots of small niche sites and 1 large site over the next 6 months and report back how it going along the way.  I don’t know what to expect as far as earnings from either project, but I think it will be interesting either way.

In conclusion, just because you may have been Penguinized, doesn’t mean that SEO is dead.  Small niche sites are ranking just as well as large sites.  Penguin and Panda could care less if you had a large or a small site; they only cared about the quality and length of your articles, and your link building methods.  Perhaps its just time to re-adjust your strategy slightly.  That’s what I’m doing.

Your Thoughts

Overall, I’ve laid out why some sites were hit by Penguin and why some were not.  In addition, I provided some basic guidance for how I will be building sites down the road.  I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject!  What do you think of my challenge to build several small sites and 1 large site?  What plans do you have for building niche sites after the Penguin update?

If you are not familiar with his story, Benny created an iPhone app called Photo 365 that quickly turned into a big success for him.  How big?  Well, its was so big that Apple featured it as an App of the week, and on the podcast Benny shared that his highest earning day during that peak period was $2,927.44!  Can you imagine watching your earnings grow like that all day?  I would love to check my earnings one day and see it nearly hit $3,000 for the day!

In addition, during this podcast interview Benny shares the exclusive information of how much the app has made to date in total.  He has not shared this anywhere else…including his own blog!

In this interview, Benny shares his story how he went from not really knowing what to do in college to eventually working in his family restaurant, where he has been for a little over 10 years.  Then about a year ago he heard how Pat Flynn was able to outsource nearly every aspect of his iPhone App business.  This inspired Benny to take some action..after all, he could outsource the programming!

He read the book: How to Create iPhone Apps without Programming Experience (I’ve read this book myself and its a good one) to get some basic education, and then began the process of creating an iPhone app.

So, he took action, thought of a great idea, and then executed that plan.  He launched his Photo 365 iPhone App in August of 2011.  To say the least, its been a big success for him.  So much so, that he is already near the end of creating 2 additional iPhone apps that he plans to launch very soon.

I absolutely LOVE stories like this!  Benny had a “normal” job of working in his family’s restaurant, but was still able to create something that is now bringing him a decent income even now.  He goes into more details about how much the app is making him right now.

During the course of our interview, here are some of the things we discussed:

• Outsourcing iPhone Apps on Elance.com
• Photo365 iPhone App
• How Photo365 became App of the week
• How he made $2,927.44 in 1 day
• How much Photo365 has made to date (exclusive information here!)
• The “dark side” of owning an iPhone app
• How to Market an iPhone App
• Benny Hsu’s blog: Getbusylivingblog.com
• The importance of simplicity

Overall, I really enjoyed the interview with Benny and found it highly motivational.  In addition, I was able to ask some questions about my own iPhone App: Ad Alert, which I will be launching in 2 weeks.  So, I was able to get some great pointers, but the information he provided can be applied to any iPhone app out there.

So, if you are considering creating an iPhone app, you definitely will want to listen to this interview.  In addition, I would love to hear any comments or questions that you might have below.

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider leaving a review on iTunes right here!  More reviews helps Apple know whether or not I have a good podcast and will eventually help more people find it.  Thanks for considering.

Listen to the Podcast Here:

This has been a long time coming as most of you are probably aware, so it feels GREAT to finally have it completed! As I have revealed before, this is an iPhone app that allows you to check your Google Adsense earnings quickly and easily.  In addition it has a unique feature that incorporates sounds (via push notifications) that I hadn’t revealed up to this point.  Well, now you can see exactly what the app does on the Ad Alert App website here!  I have a cheesy video of myself up there and everything…you don’t want to miss that!

My iPhone App Timeline:

I also want to review with you the steps that I have taken to lead up to the app getting complete.  Here’s a quick time-line of everything I have done.

• March 2011 – Created NichePursuits.com in order to try business ideas outside of small niche sites
• April 25th, 2011 – Allowed readers to vote on which new niche business idea I should pursue.
• May 2nd, 2011 – Voting Results are in – the iPhone App business is the winner!
• June 23rd 2011 – I decide on the iPhone App I’m going to build.
• November 17th, 2011 – I decide on a different iPhone app to build (a drawing game) and post a job on Elance.com to hire a programmer.
• November 26th, 2011 – After looking at how expensive the bids are on Elance, I decide to scrap the drawing game iPhone app idea and build the Google Adsense iPhone App.
• December 13th, 2011 – Got bids on Elance.com for the Adsense iPhone app idea and decide to hire one of the programmers.
• February 16th, 2012 – First Version of the iPhone App is ready for testing!
• March 23rd, 2012 – Final Version of the iPhone App is essentially done.
• April 6th, 2012 - Start the application process to the Apple Developer program.
• April 25th, 2012 – Realize that Apple is VERY slow about approving users for the Developer program, so apply to the Personal developer program and get approved on the same day.
• May 4th, 2012 – Submit the App to Apple for Approval.
• May 11th, 2012 – Apple approves my App for sale!  The app is called AdAlert: Google Adsense App
• May 28th, 2012 (in the future) – App will be released for sale on the Apple App Store.

As you can see, its been a very long process.  I originally started thinking about building an iPhone app just a little over a year ago.  However, with the fact that I have been working on other parts of my business and that I changed App ideas about half way through, it took much longer than it needed to.

I really didn’t start working on the current Ad Alert App idea until December of last year; so its been about 6 months in the making.  However, I could have completed this project much quicker if I had been focused a bit more on it and knew some of the “ropes” a bit better.

Overall, I am very happy with the way the app has turned out, and I’m excited to finally get it up for sale in a couple of weeks!

Again, if you want to see exactly what my new iPhone app does, you can check out the demo video I created at AdAlertApp.com right now. 

I would love to hear your thoughts, comments, or questions that you might have on the project of mine.

Specifically, we covered how to do keyword research and analyze the competitors in Google.  In the process of discussing the Penguin update, I also went over my new strategy for building sites.  I will most certainly still be building small niche sites, but I also plan on focusing on 1 larger site that I hope to have for many years to come.   Anyway, if you didn’t catch the webinar, we covered some GREAT content!

You can catch a replay of the webinar on this page here: Watch the Webinar Replay

The webinar itself went a little long – nearly an hour and a half!  That was due to the amount of content that we covered, and we spent a lot of time answering questions as well.

Overall, we spent the second half revealing a couple of really cool new features of the theme.  In particular, the theme will allow you to automatically blend in your Google Adsense ads to match the colors of the theme!  So, no matter what color you change your theme to, your ads will change colors right along with it.  And of course, we still give you 3 ad variations to test from; so one can match your theme colors, and the other 2 can be different colors. This will allow you to truly pick out a winning ad.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know that the webinar replay is available in case you missed it.

Check out the Webinar Replay here.

Fraser is the owner of UniverseToday.com, which he started back in 1999.  As revealed in the podcast, the site now receives up to 4 million visitors a month!  He goes into detail how he built the site from scratch, where the idea came from, and how successful it is today.

I also asked a lot of questions about search engine optimization for that site.  If any of you are familiar with Fraser, you will know that he does absolutely NO back linking to his site…yet he receives most of his traffic from the search engines!  How is this possible?  Well, you will have to listen to the podcast to find out.

Fraser’s methods of dealing with the search engines, is something that anyone who is trying to build a business that gets traffic from Google should be paying attention to. In particular, we discussed some of the events related to the Penguin updates. How should you be building sites after the Penguin updates? We cover this in detail.

In addition, we discussed the advantages of owning a product based business (where you sell your own products) vs. an information based business.

Here are some the items of sites that we mentioned:

• UniverseToday.com
• Google Penguin Update
• KeywordStrategy.org
• Keyword Strategy Podcast
• Kickstarter.com
• Product vs. Information websites
• Myth of passive income
• Connect with Fraser on Google+

Warning! This podcast is very motivational and will make you want to go out and create something great!  I think the strategies that Fraser shares for building a real business are quite valuable and will be applicable for many years to come.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on the podcast below.

You can subscribe or leave feedback on iTunes right here.

Listen to the Podcast!

However, I wanted to get some of his history and what he is up to now.  So, how does someone go from dragon boat racing to owning an SEO services company?  Well, you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out – its an intriguing journey!

We discuss some of his early business ventures while he was attending University and then move onto how he now employees a full-time staff helping out a number of corporate and other clients with their Search Engine Optimization efforts.

In addition, we discuss how Youtube Marketing is turning into a big part of his business.  I found this to be particularly interesting.

Overall, here are some of the items or sites that we discussed:

TyroneShum.com

SEO services business

OutsourcingLive.com

Niche Site Duel

Youtube Marketing

As usual, I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts or comments on the show!  You can subscribe in iTunes right here.  Also, if you like what you hear, you can leave a rating on the show…thanks!

Listen to the Podcast:

As a result of loosing my Google Adsense account, I have been scrambling trying to find some good Adsense alternatives.  Its only been a short while since then, but I wanted to share what I have found that’s working so far, and what some of my plans are down the road for my small niche sites.

First, just to remind everyone how my sites were performing, I want to re-state that I made over $125k last year from Google Adsense. You can watch my 2011 year in review video here.  All of that Google Adsense income came from my niche sites.

On top of that, I obviously made some additional income from sales of Long Tail Pro, and a token amount from affiliate sales on NichePursuits.com. However, since I only started selling the full-version of Long Tail Pro in October of last year, the largest portion of my income was from Google Adsense.

So, it hurt pretty bad to lose that source of income.

However, I have moved on!  I now have alternative ad networks running on all of my niche sites, and they are all at least bringing in some income!  Whereas a couple of weeks ago, they weren’t bringing in anything.

How My Sites are Performing?

So, how are my sites performing with the alternatives to Adsense?  Well, the truth is that I haven’t found anything yet that pays quite as well as Adsense for a General ad network, but I am at least happy to have some revenue back.

Right now, my sites are probably bringing in only 1/3 of what they were bringing in a month ago.

Yes, its not that great BUT I still have A LOT of testing to do and I think I should still be able to bring the income up quite a bit.

Essentially within a couple of days of being banned from Adsense, I went straight over to Kontera and Infolinks (where I already had an approved account) and started placing these contextual links on my sites.  I put Kontera code on about half my sites and Infolinks on the other half of my sites.  This was really done as a stop-gap.  I wanted to start bringing in something as quickly as possible.  Now I am starting to get more creative at looking at alternatives.

In addition on a few of my sites I also tested out Chitika ads, Vibrant Media, GumGum, and SkimLinks. Here is how those ad networks stack up against each other on an eCPM basis.  This tells me how much I am making per 1000 views on my sites.

• Infolinks eCPM: $10.41
• Kontera eCPM: $6.37
• Chitika eCPM: $1.94
• Vibrant Media: Does not report on an eCPM basis (but I wasn’t impressed with the earnings).
• GumGum eCPM: $0.44

A quick word about GumGum: this is an image overlay advertising network.  So, this is space that usually does not have any advertising – so this is something that can very easily be added to any other existing in-content advertising that you have.

So, overall Infolinks appears to be the highest paying in-content ad network at this point.  I am going to be moving more and more of my sites over to Infolinks to gain some of this additional revenue.  Overall, they are very simple to implement and use.  The only downside it that you need to get each one of your sites approved.  However, I submitted about 100 sites and they were all approved (minus a couple) within about 24 hours.  So, it wasn’t too bad.

Media.net and SkimLinks

I actually applied to Media.net right away, because I heard so many good things.  However, I have yet to get my account approved.  I waited 10 days (because they say it can take a week for approval), then I emailed them.  They immediately responded and said my application had been denied because my site did not meet the qualifications.  Get this – I applied with NichePursuits.com!  I’m not sure what they are looking for, but I think this is a pretty good site!

However, they did say I could reapply using a different site.  So, I did that a few days ago and still haven’t heard a response.  So, I’m still hopeful to try Media.net out, but they are not real quick at approving my application!

I also have tried SkimLinks out on just one of my sites.  I’m impressed!  Its very easy to implement, like Adsense, and relevant words are automatically turned into affiliate links for various products, services, or information.  Its a pretty cool product.  The best part is that it looks like I made a couple of sales!

Obviously, SkimLinks is not going to be the highest paying way to monetize most sites, but I think it could be a GREAT additional source for many sites.  In fact, you could easily use both Google Adsense (or other networks ) and SkimLinks on the same site to maximize the earning potential.

If you are interested in testing out SkimLinks, check it out here.

Future Plans After Google Adsense

Now, I do also want to state that I have spoken with a couple of different CPA networks, and most of my sites just do not seem to be a good fit.  I do have some coupon sites that would work well, but these are very small sites that don’t get much traffic, so overall its not real helpful.

CPA offers tend to perform well for very targeted or specific offers.  Many of my sites are more general and informational, which works great with Google Adsense or other contextual ad networks, but not for specific affiliate or CPA offers.

However, I do still plan on exploring the CPA/Affiliate route to see if I can find a good fit for some of my sites.

Overall, in the future I hope to get approved to Media.net and to test out other networks as well (I’ve applied at a couple others). Unfortunately, I don’t know that its feasible that I will get my income back to where it was with Google Adsense because Google advertisers just pay so much compared to these other networks.  However, I am hopeful to gain a good portion of that income back.  I am going to get the income back from my existing sites as much as possible and may try to sell a few off.

Long term I am looking long and hard at the new sites that I am creating.  Do I want to continue to build lots of small niche sites?  Or do I want to focus on creating a few high quality long term sites?  Or do I want to create some unique products that can help people and then create interesting websites around those products?  These are some of the things that I have to consider as I build my business for the future.  I have not built any new sites in the past few weeks, so I’m taking some time to think things through.  I will be discussing some of the topics in detail over the coming weeks.

Your Thoughts

I would love to hear your thoughts on my review of a few Adsense alternatives.  Do you have other suggestions that I should be trying out?  I look forward to your input!

Not only do they share how many sites they are building each month, but also some very specific strategies for how they are able to accomplish such a task.  If you are at all interested in niche sites, Google Adsense, outsourcing, business systems, the future of search engine optimization, or link building, then you are going to love this podcast!

In addition, we were able to discuss a new project that we have been working on recently called: Niches for Charity.  This is an idea that Justin and Joe had to try and make a real difference in people’s lives by giving back.  They approached me a few months ago with the idea, and I was more than happy to jump on board.  We are still in the early stages, but this is definitely something that is on the horizon.  We cover some more details of what its all about on the podcast; but also feel free to check out the site so you can stay notified.

Here are some the sites, products, or other items we discussed during the podcast:

• AdsenseFlippers website
• TryBPO
• Virtual Staff Finder
• Unique Article Wizard
• Long Tail Pro
• Niches for Charity

As always, I enjoyed doing the podcast with these awesome entrepreneurs!  I would be interested in hearing your thoughts and comments below.

Finally, if you can subscribe on iTunes here to my Podcast.  If you like the show, I would love any positive ratings…thanks!

Listen to the Podcast!

Chris is a great example of someone who took the time to build a large authoritative website, monetized it with the Amazon Associates affiliate program, and then sold that site for a healthy profit.  In addition, Chris also shares some of his early website ventures and some of the lessons he learned along the way.

Finally, Chris also goes into some details about his current business of buying and building up existing websites.  He shares some specific examples of sites you can go and check out the whole way through.  In addition, he also provides some insight into the projects that he is currently working on and has planned for the near future – including building more software tools.

Here’s a few of the topics and sites mentioned on the podcast:

NetbookReviews.com

CopyCatCrafts.com

Flippa.com

NicheWebsiteTheme.com

EasyAzon.com

MakeMoneyontheInternet.com

Available on iTunes!

I am also happy to announce that you can now subscribe to the Niche Pursuits Podcast on iTunes!  Check it out and Subscribe here!  (Yes, I know I need to edit some of the descriptions and other text on iTunes, but I’m just happy its up!)

If you feel like the podcast is worthy, I would LOVE any positive ratings on iTunes!

Listen to Podcast Now!

Let me know if you like the intro/outtro music – trying a few things out .  Would love to hear your thoughts on the episode below.  Thanks!

First, I want to briefly discuss what this penalty is and then how my own sites are doing.  First, Matt Cutts says in the announcement that they are essentially targeting sites that they feel are gaming the system through link schemes and keyword stuffing. Overall, this is effecting about 3.1% of queries in English.  So, it effecting quite a few sites.  In addition, this recent announcement essentially follows up with the previous Panda updates that are trying to help higher quality sites rank better, and lower quality sites to rank worse.

However, from the discussion I am seeing all over the place, it appears that more than 3% of sites were affected.  Did Google go overboard?

How My Sites Are Performing

Unfortunately, Google of course won’t reveal exactly what might be triggering penalties, but here is what I am seeing across my sites. Overall, I have definitely seen some movement down with the rankings of some of my sites.  Not all of my sites, but definitely a significant movement with some of them.  At this point its still too early to tell with some of my larger sites how the actual traffic to my sites will be effected.  My analytics appear to be pretty consistent with the number of visitors to my larger sites over the past few days.  So, I may need some more time to assess the full effect.

However, I am actually noticing a couple of my sites are getting more traffic.  So, some of my sites have moved down and some have moved up.

This gives me a good comparison of what might be causing some of the movement.  From a quick look at my stats, it appears that sites that I did NOT really build very many links to are performing best.  Those sites that perhaps I built more links to, and used similar anchor text to, appear to be the sites that are most effected.

Overall, without using Adsense anymore, its hard for me to see right away how all my sites are earning.  If I could just log in and see my Adsense stats I would have a MUCH better feel overall how my sites are performing!  As it is, I am trying look at the analytics for some of my bigger sites and this is what I’m seeing.

Some of the Techniques Google is Targeting

I think a very relevant and educational video recently done my Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz.org is right here:

Rand essentially discusses some reasons that Google could be penalizing sites for being over-optimized.  Items such as spammy titles, keyword stuffing, unnatural link building, overuse of keyword anchor text, and more.  I think Rand nailed it with this video.

Overall, this penalty and the fact that I no longer have an Adsense account continue to encourage me to shift my niche site business away from lots of small niche sites to the prospect of building just one or two larger sites.  I have lots of sites and will continue to make the winners better sites, but may also eventually move more towards only holding a smaller portfolio of sites down the road.

How are Your Sites Doing?

Now that you have heard about my sites, I want to hear about yours?  Have you seen movement up or down your rankings in the past day or so?  This appears to be a pretty big deal for many peole…lets discuss it!