I wanted to take a brief detour from discussing new niche business ideas today and discuss exactly how I was able to quit my full-time corporate job on my own terms. When I say “on my own terms”, I mean when I wanted to, how I wanted to, and was able to make a smooth transition to full-time at home. (By the Way – the picture to the left is a joke, there is no easy “make money” button. It’s hard work, sorry).
As many of you know, I worked full-time as a Business Banker at Wells Fargo Bank. You can read more about my background right here. I spent a lot of time getting a bachelors degree in Finance and an MBA; but all of this was really my backup plan. Deep down I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I knew it was only a matter of time. Well, I got my first “real” full time job after my bachelors degree in 2003. So, it took me 8 years to finally find a business idea that worked for me, but I can now happily say that I am living my entrepreneurial dreams and I’m making more money than I ever have in my life!
How I Started Online
I have discussed my internet story a number of times, but essentially I started dabbling around with building websites in 2005 as a hobby essentially. I went from really just trying to figure out if I could get something online to eventually learning how to do search engine optimization. With a full-time job (as you probably know), its very hard to start a business on the side. However, the opportunities of the internet make it much easier. So, I worked MANY long nights after my wife and kids were in bed. I failed miserably for many years. I couldn’t get my websites to rank well in Google and I certainly wasn’t making money.
However, in 2009 I had a break through. I was able to make a shift in my thinking from trying to build websites on high traffic but also high competition topics to building small websites on lower traffic but significantly lower competition topics. Suddenly I was getting free traffic from Google, Yahoo, and Bing. My first couple of sites with this new theory started making about $20/month each. I did some quick calculations in my head and figured since it only costs $10 for a domain per year and a few dollars each month for hosting – that these sites were quite profitable!
My Google Adsense Earnings for March 2011
Well, the rest is now history. I have since scaled up my business of building “small” niche websites into a full-time empire. I get free traffic from Google and make money from advertising (primarily Google Adsense). I don’t usually like to show how much I am earning, but what the heck. I know most of you would be interested in seeing what I made from Google Adsense last month, so here it is. Please note I have multiple Adsense accounts, hence the 2 screenshots (1 personal account and 1 for my Business entity that I own).
So, you can see that I made $11,861.23 just from Google Adsense last month. I also had income from other sources, but Adsense was BY FAR the most. These are both screenshots from the month of March 2011. As you know, I quit my job on March 11th, 2011. So, the reality is that I was making more from my internet business than my day job for several months before I quit. And this is really what I mean by quitting on my own terms. My income from April looks at least as good as March so far.
Reinvesting Leads to Success
I was able to build up my internet business on the side to a point where it had surpassed my day job income. I could have quit a lot sooner and been just fine I am sure, but I wanted to build up my savings account quite a bit as well. In fact, everything I made from my business was never spent on anything personal. I could have been out buying big screen TVs, a new car, gone on vacations, or done other things with the money I was making on the side. However, I made a decision early on to either save or reinvest all the income from my business back into building my business.
A home for entrepreneurs turned investors
A hodgepodge of investing, startup, and online business discussions
- high-value email newsletters
- tips on sites for sale
- a podcast
- networking opportunities
- with more planned for the future
So, now I have a decent sized cushion of cash in my business account just in case anything “bad” were to happen. This is what I would recommend for anyone out there considering quitting their job. Make sure you are making real income from your business first, and that you have a little money saved for a rainy day. So, its only been about a month since I started working from home, but I can say that my mental energy is spent on how to grow my business NOT on how to feed my family. That’s the way it should be in my opinion.
So, the day that I “sprung” the news on my boss that I was quitting; was actually more of a celebration than a doomsday. I was excited to tell my boss that I was able to move onto a new phase in my life that I had been looking forward to for a long time. I could also do it knowing that I was already making enough money to support my family. Luckily I had a exceptional boss (really), and she was just as excited for me and the news I shared. After letting my company know that I was quitting, I worked a few more weeks to keep them happy and create a smooth transition period. As such, I am still on good terms with everyone from my old job.
Do I Really Like Working From Home?
So, what is it like working from home? Well, I gotta be honest…I LOVE IT! I’m able to make my own plans for the day and execute them on my own schedule. I’m able to spend a little time in the morning helping my 7 year old get ready for school and hang out with my wife and kids a bit throughout the day. I’m able to have Pandora jamming in the background as I go throughout my day. I’m also able to go for a run (training for a marathon in June) in the afternoons if I want to.
Don’t get me wrong, I am still putting in about 8 hours a day (or more), but this is what I WANT to do. I’m passionate about my business and look forward to building it each day. However, having the freedom to take a day off or quit early to go hang out with my family when I want is a nice little perk! And the fact that my websites are bringing in traffic from Google and earning money whether or not I do anything is really a nice passive income stream.
Anyway, I just wanted to provide a quick overview of what led me to quitting my job, and what my life has been like in the month since I quit. Life is good. I have lots of plans to expand my business as you know. And of course you get to participate in those expansion plans on this blog as I move into new businesses and try other ideas suggested by you!
If you have any comments, I look forward to responding below!
Spencer Haws is the founder of NichePursuits.com. After getting a degree in Business Finance from BYU (2002) and an MBA from ASU (2007) he worked for 8 years in Business Banking and Finance at both Merril Lynch and Wells Fargo Bank.
While consulting with other small business owners as a business banker, Spencer finally had the desire to start his own business. He successfully built a portfolio of niche sites using SEO and online marketing that allowed him to quit his job in 2011. Since then he's been involved in dozens of online business ventures including: creating and exiting Long Tail Pro, running an Amazon FBA business for over 3 years and selling that business, founding LinkWhisper.com, and co-founding MotionInvest.com. You can learn more about Spencer here.
115 Comments
Conversation
Congrats Spencer, pretty good earnings and i am sure it gonna increase in coming months as you started working online full time. Posts like this will surely motivate lot of people.
I just wanted to know how many sites make up those earning total?
Hey Jason, yep I am certainly going to try and build my income over the coming months. I’m glad that you see this as motivational – I’m still debating on whether or not to show earnings in the future.
The number of sites I have fluctuates as some of my losing sites expire and as I buy new domains. However, it probably hovers around 200+ or so.
I have sent your link to me nephew in Kenya who has an engineering degree and seriously jobless. He has no idea what blogging and IM is but I keep on telling him to read. I send him to your other website and he was almost in tears. I too dream of making money with adsense since I can do it anywhere in the world even if I go back to Kenya. All the best and this is encouraging.
Thanks for sharing my site…hopefully what I discuss can be helpful to you and others (including your nephew). There are lots of online opportunites that can be done anywhere, not just adsense. So find a business model that works for YOU and go for it.
I am the nephew from Kenya. I am actually very inspired by your blog. My aunt introduced me to online marketing and I love the concept behind it.
I do believe I will learn alot from your site and advices. Your are a good mentor.
Hey Chris – you have an awesome aunt! Thanks for checking out the blog and hopefully you enjoy the content going forward. Best of luck in your endeavors.
Way to go Spencer!!!
I’m curious, if you had to start over from scratch, how long do you think it would take you to earn $1000/month from AdSense income?
Your success is inspiring— thanks for sharing!!
Lance
Hey Lance, that’s hard to say. If I had the time and money to invest in new sites (like I do now), I think I could build my income to $1000/mth within 3 months or so from scratch. It could obviously be more or less depending on some unexpected winners or losers. That’s just a rough estimate, and it could certainly be much longer for someone just get started without the know-how that I have (or time or money to invest in their business).
You can calculate a safe $1 per day per site. If you make more great!, so with 30 sites you can reach $1000.
Good point Claudio – $1/day is a good metric that I like to use as well. I was definitely over $1000/mth when I had my first 30 sites.
Great earnings Spencer-can you tell me what your average cost per click is?
I am making great progress too but not 11k worth of progress..yet!
I would have to double check what it is across all my sites (multiple adsense accounts), but its hovering close to $0.95 or so I think.
Great result Spencer !!
That’s my dream, that’s my goal.. have a freedom financial for my life.. like you.
I am believe if you can.. i will can do that too… lol..
This posts have give me an idea.. what I have to do..
But, how many website do you have to get reach this income?
Thanks,
Genta
Genta – best of luck in your ventures. I mentioned how many sites I have above.
Definitely inspiring and impressive… put me down for voting to share each month’s revenue. I think some of us need to see these real examples to know that there will be fluctuation and changing (probably!).
200 sites, hey? More good info – please keep it coming for those of us struggling…
Your vote is duly counted! I’m sure it will fluctuate as well, but April is looking just as good as March so far…
Wow, that is pretty amazing Spencer. I’d like to know the answer to Lance’s question as well.
Would you say that your Adsense empire is mostly made of the concepts in your Longtail handbook? Can it still be done? I’ve been working at this for a few months now, and even though some of my sites are ranking on page 1 and 2, I still get very little traffic. I believe I am closing in on $5 from adsense.. 😐 Total. Anyway thanks for sharing. -Eric
Yes, this can still be done from scratch ABSOLUTELY! I am building new sites every month. Yes, everything I do is in my Long Tail Handbook (although I no longer sell the full version). If you are ranking well (must be on page 1 – page 2 will get no traffic) – preferably in the top 5 – and still not making money then you picked a keyword with too little traffic. It may be time to move onto a new site.
The traffic is the most important. My best earnes have between 500 to 1000 visits per day.
Thank you Spencer and Claudio. I suspected it was a traffic thing. To me that seems to be the hardest part so far. I’ll keep working at it. More links for better ranking I guess. But WHO to outsource linking to? I’ve tried a few and they made lame, irrelevant links.
Wow, congrats on your earnings Spencer! Can I ask how many niche websites you own?
between 200 and 300 (don’t know exactly).
How many pages on average each of them has?
I start with 5 to 10 pages and build depending on the success of the site.
Great work Spencer!
When you say pages, do you mean posts published or actual pages?
So if I start a niche site, how many posts and pages should i start with?
Thanks 🙂
Yes, I meant actual posts. So I might start with 5 posts – but I would also have an about us, contact us, and privacy policy page.
I love this blog. You guys are just awesome. Keep up the spirit.
Spence,
I think I’ve been following your journey more or less since you posted in the WF starting your challenge.
You mention above that you have multiple Adsense accounts. How is that possible? Do you have to have a different bank account for each? It’s intriguing and I’d be very grateful if you can share how it is possible.
Hackbridge 😉
Brian – you can only have 1 adsense account under your personal name. However, I have a business entity (legally filed per government requirements, etc). Google allows business entities to also have 1 adsense account. So, I have one personal adsense account and 1 business adsense account – make sense? And Yes, I have separate bank accounts for each.
I’ve been trying to get my stuff to work for months and I dream of being in the place where you are Spencer. I appreciate your sharing your information. It encourages me and shows me what is possible if I can just stick to it. I’ve got several sites but none of them are earning even $5 a month yet. I’ve mostly been working on sites that are focusing on Amazon products, but I think I need to start mixing in some sites focused on Adsense. Thanks for the boosted encouragement today. I’m going to break back out your Long Tail Handbook and do a refresher.
And I would say yes to sharing the information. Although I understand how sharing that information can be rather interesting. It’s not like most people would be comfortable to just tell everyone how much money they are making each month.
Steve – glad you enjoyed the post. Best of luck in your ventures!
Spencer,
We always hear from the “gurus” that we need to get the latest and greatest super duper IM juice on the market. Its cool to know that all it really takes is handwork and tenacity. Not major lists or literally paying your dues to some uber cool mastermind so that you jv to other lists just to make $1000. Man, thanks for being so transparent. You’re site along with a few others are my new go to spots. Really! I would follow all these gurus but need $4,000 for the latest ladybug link-building open-source software training course. What crap!! Dude you are the truth! I’ve been doing online marketing for offline businesses for like 6 months now and I think I’m ready to take to plunge with my own niche sites. And I have you and a few reality based bloggers to thank. I have a vending business too and so I decided to blog about all 3 of my pursuits. Thanks man you’re an inspiration!
Nope – you don’t need the latest and greatest gadgets or software. However, it does take some knowledge and a lot of hard work. It also takes the right attitude – so when a site fails miserably (like many of mine do), do you quit, or do you try a new site? The vending business sounds like fun! I’ve considered that before too…
Spencer – awesome post…as always! I really look forward to your e-mails. You are so inspiring and keep the rest of us going!
I have a question…what do you feel is the best and fastest way to drive traffic to your sites? I have 26 sites so far and about half get great traffic (due to low competition) and I am still promoting the other half. Besides article submissions and backlinking (if you even do that route), do you hire outsourcers to drive traffic to your sites?
Hey Stacy – thanks for continuing to follow along! All of my traffic is from search engines and a very little is from article directories. So, I don’t directly hire outsourcers to drive traffic to my sites. I do hire outsourcers to build links to my sites though – which in turn helps me rank better in Google, etc.
Thanks for all your AWESOME input Spencer… really appreciate it!!
Do you have a favorite tool for automation you like to use? Particularly for getting links… curious if one has risen above the rest that you like to use (and i’m all for using your affiliate link if you go one!)
Thanks again for all your advice!
Awesome! I love checking out your blog. It really light a fire under me seeing your success.
David – that’s what I’m here for – to light a fire under you. Time to quit eating donuts (or whatever you do in your spare time 🙂 ) and start acting like an entrepreneur!
Hi Spencer, very impressive results – it encourages me to spend more time and effort on the Adsense side of my business.
However, I really do hate the mundane task of link building and have been looking at various outsourcing options (SENuke X service providers) – do you have any recommendations?
Well, I hate to give away my primary link builder right now – but it is just someone I found on a forum. I would recommend trying a few different link builders on separate sites and see which one you like better or produces better results. This is what I did until I found one that I liked.
Your tip on reinvesting is the best one! I was thinking of buying a big tv and a car! 🙂
C’mon suck it up! Do you want a TV and a Car now? Or the ability to pay cash for your dream home later? 🙂 Seriously though, I think reinvesting is very important to success.
Hello Spencer,
Everybody here is glad you’re making this kind of money ’cause it just makes us believe we can do something with adsense as well…
The secret: keyword choice + ads position…
Sometimes the cost per click is showing very profitable and then when it’s clicked is absolutely low!!!!!!!
Do you have a answer for that?
Regards,
Federico
Federico – this could be a entire blog post discussing why sometimes the adwords tool shows a high CPC but the actual CPC on your site is low. Put simply – whatever you are getting on your site is the REAL CPC unfortunately. Maybe you thought it was going to pay alot, but it doesn’t. It has to do with how the market place for adwords is always changing and how prices are calculated…
Impressive. Can you tell me how do you build backlinks? Is it via profile links or some other thing?
Anand – I outsource my link building to someone. Essentially my links come from a blog network and articles. I don’t use profile links at this time.
Spencer you said that it costs domain name and hosting to run business, but you did not mention content outsourcing. Does that mean you write content by yourself?
The comment above was simply meant to say that you COULD do it for those basic costs. I myself do indeed outsource content creation, link building, etc.
Spencer, you are absolutely crushing it – congrats man. This is definitely an inspiring story for anyone.
I’m sure you have an entire process down by now, but what I would be most interested in is how you backlink each site? I imagine the burden of maintaining backlinks for 200+ different sites would be overwhelming based on how people usually create backlinks, so I’m guessing you have some way that works for you, and allows you to rank the sites efficiently (aside from picking good domain names).
Anyway, keep it up, looking forward to reading more about your progress in the future.
– Eric
Nevermind, I just looked about 3 inches up on the screen, and see you answered this question for someone else…
Eric – Yes, I outsource linkbuilding as your discovered! I also focus heavily on finding low competition keywords – so the amount of link building I need to do to each site is often minimal.
How many sites does one need in order to achieve your type of result.
I have 200+ sites.
Holly guacamole! 11K! Did you double your income in the last 2-3 months?! I thought you were around 5-6K in January?
I was happy with my $25 dollar adsense days recently, geez I’m going to step it up.
Yes, my income has improved significantly over the past 4 months. I built several sites that are doing well now; also since the “Google Farmer” update my sites are doing much better as well.
Hey Spencer,
Exactly when did you start your first site? Basically, what I’m wondering is how long it took you to get to the point where you are now? Thanks for the serious inspiration!
Keep the posts and income screenshots coming!
Thanks!
I discussed this in the post. I built my first site over 5 years ago. However, I started building smaller targeted niche websites about 18 months ago.
Hey Spence,
Awesome! congrats. I feel the passion of the Internet through the computer screen LOL. I’m the same way, love it!
I was actually wondering on a guess how many successful domains did you get that werent exact match but you had to ADD something.
I will be tasting that approach out, wanted to know your experience on it.
Thanks!
Some of my most successful websites are NOT exact match domains. I always prefer it, but if its a great keyword, it really doesnt matter.
And I thought you were mostly an EMD-guy…..that’s interesting. Do you target “buying” keywords or “informational” keywords? What have you seen better success with?
I am mostly an Exact Match domain guy. But if I find a great keyword with low competition that doesn’t have the exact match domain, I still build a site on it. I target both “buying” keywords and “informational” keywords. I base my decision on the CPC. As I explain in my free ebook, I target keywords with at least $1 CPC. I have seen success with keywords that have very low competition (based on the top 10 sites in google).
I’m always amazed when I read stories like this.
Where do you see yourself in 5, 10 years time? Still earning from adsense?
I’m sure I will still have some adsense income, but I expect to be either selling more of my own products or producing larger sites that are either affiliate based or perhaps combination of adsense/products.
hello
How do you create content for website for 200?
I hire article writers – its all in my free ebook.
Do you still use textbroker.com to get your content created ?
(i remember in your past blog you said you use them for all your articles : )
Yes.
How can I get your free ebook.
Spencer congratulations and thanks for sharing.I’ve been reading and researching internet marketing for about a year now.Have bought so may e-books to last a lifetime.I finally built an Amazon site selling homewares but am stuck with the backbuilding.It is so time consuming.I think I might try an adsence site now and outsource that part like yourself.Would love a step-by-step guide for us non-techies!
love
ovelove love is
There is no difference really between an “Amazon site” and an “Adsense site”. But target keywords and try to take advantage of free traffic from Google. The only difference is how they are monetized. In other words, the linking, etc is all going to be exactly the same for both types of sites.
Hey Spencer,
Were any of your sites negatively effected by the latest Google Panda/Famer update that happened last Monday?
Anthony – I have honestly noticed no negative impact from the Google Farmer update. In fact, my sites are doing significantly better since the Feb. 24th Google update. I don’t know if its because of it or not, but my earnings and rankings are certainly up over the past couple of months.
Spencer to make your monthly reports balanced, I would also appeal that you include your expenses for that given month. In that way, we’ll be in a position to reflect on both sides of the story, as you’re outsourcing some tasks like content generation and link building…these expenses have to be accounted for.
I love income reports as they motivates me to try improve my own attempts online.
Yeah, good point Muzi. Spencer- while you can get article writing and link services for pretty cheap (fiverr, for instance), with 200-300 sites, it’s got to add up. Obviously it’s worth it or you wouldn’t be doing it. But would you be willing to share an estimate of your outsourcing costs? If you can, thanks!
Eric, this could be an entire post – but essentially I outsource articles about $7 apiece. So, $35 for a 5 article site. I outsource linkbuilding – which is maybe $40 per site. Once you add hosting and domain name, my cost is about $100 per site. So, even if a site only makes $1/day that $365/year. Which is a 265% return on investment. The margins are HUGE. If I have a $20/day site my return on investment over 5,300%. I have many sites like this. The ongoing expense are very little. Sometimes I add articles to sites, sometimes I dont. I usually don’t have to do any more linkbuilding either.
Cool, thank you. You are really helpful.
What type of linkbuilding do you do for $40 ?
I typically order a package off a popular internet marketing forum. Article marketing/blog network type link building.
Okay, if I decide to do income reports in the future; I will consider this.
I’m curious with your success with niche websites, if you wanted to take a month or two month vacation could you?
What attracts me so much to your methods to success is that after the initial time spent you can basically “maintain” the site and move on to investing your time and energy into the next project. Let me know if you are perceiving this wrong.
I know you’re the type of person that would get bored not having a problem to solve or a goal to achieve. That being said, I’m curious how much freedom you’ve earned for yourself by establishing your niche website business..
Jayson, great question. The answer is YES! I could probably not even look at my websites for couple of months and my income would remain the same. I only “maintain” sites if there is a drop in rank or I want to add content. However, most of the time sites don’t drop that much. So, this really is a passive income opportunity. However, I wouldn’t say its a perpetual income source. If I don’t do anything for 6 months, I’m sure some of my sites would start to drop in the search engines. Eventually (maybe?) all of my sites could drop in the search engines. So, there is some upkeep. I can tell you though that I do have sites that I have not touched or even looked at for almost 2 years now that still earn me a consistent income each and every month.
That’s so awesome!….you are inspiring. Thanks for sharing your story, ideas, and techniques…its so motivating.
Guys, do you know why sometimes some clicked is not include on estimated earnings??? actually that happens to me nearly everyday.I’m just imagining how much money Spencer lost this way….
This rarely ever happens to me. I imagine these are somehow invalid clicks – not sure why you are getting so many.
Strange…Just happened today again,I don’t even check the sites,’cause I wanna stay away from adsense on my sites,just to be on the safe side…What do you mean invalid clicks?,how google know when is invalid clicks?…
What about to rank in yahoo and bingo??? Do you have any strategy? I think 1 of my sites, the clicks come from yahoo rank(first page) this particular site is on page 2 on google…
Any Thoughts?
I get lots of traffic from Yahoo and Bing. The strategy for ranking in these search engines is the exact same as google. As far as invalid clicks, I don’t have an answer for you.
Wonderful post, Spence, can I call you Spence? Just kidding.
Seriously, Spencer, I plan to read your ebook — but how often do you have backlinks built? Like one per week?
I got a little slap-happy with some of my backlink building for a niche site or two, and I noticed Google took away the ranking for the term, but they still get a little traffic.
Plus, I may have used the same anchor text a bit too much.
Just curious…
I can live with Spence, Paula! I actually try to minimize my link building – in other words I will build links and wait a few weeks to see what happens. I might build 30 to 50 at a time. If more are needed, I will build some more. I have found that I usually need fewer backlinks than one might think. Many of my high ranking sites have less than 50 links.
Too many links too quickly can indeed hurt you (which sounds like happened to you). So, I am now a cautious link builder.
Hi, I got a mail from Google adsense today informing me that my account has been disabled. I dont know why because I have not click on any of the links, also, non of my relations or friends know about these site. This is the message I got from them:
While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage
our advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.
Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in
advance for your understanding and cooperation.
If you have any questions about your account or the actions we’ve
taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information
by visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153&hl=en_US.
Help needed!
Peter – sorry I cant really be any help here. However, if you read through the answers provided on your link, I’m sure you can find some good info. Also, try asking on the Google Webmaster forums – perhaps you can get some more clarity.
Hey Spence, I found your blog through the guest post you did for Eric G. Awesome stuff! Just want to say that you’re truly an inspiration
Glad you found me through Eric’s blog – I love the stuff Eric is doing over there! Its always nice to hear that some of the things I share here are inspirational…thanks!
Hi Spencer,
Grouse post mate and congratulations. I have a question.
Do you spread your sites across different IP’s?
If so, how many domains per IP do you do?
Cheers mate,
Craig
Yes, I use multiple IPs. How many I use per IP varies – but 20 is probably close to average.
Thanks for the motivation! I need it Google adsense is definitely not working for me?
Can I use a two page (unique content. micro niche site) site for adsense without account getting disabled.
Spencer,
You have quite the inspiring story. There’s no doubt about it; this takes work and lots of it. I’m no stranger to the late nights but I’m not as active as you in affiliate marketing and Adsense.
Thank you for sharing your story. I’m passing this on to my friends and followers.
-Jon
Hey Jon – thanks for stopping by! Best of luck in your business ventures as well…
Awesome work Spencer.:)
Just want to ask, how long to build this niche site until have steady earning from Adsense? and how many pages this site have?
Have you ever flipped any of your sites?
I have flipped just one of my sites. And actually this was one that was not earning anything – it was just a new site with a great concept that I had built but didn’t want to focus on anymore.
Hi Spencer,
Thanks for all of the great information in your e-book!
You mentioned in an earlier post that you use multiple IPs. Can you explain the reasoning behind doing so? What does that help with?
Thanks
Having multiple IPs helps to lessen your footprint to Google. In other words it helps to keep all your websites separate in Google’s eyes. The reason I do this is so that if Google for some reason decides to penalize one of my sites they will be less likely to also penalize another site on a separate IP.
Also, I am doing keyword research right now and I’m trying to choose 30 keywords to start with. I have applied the filters you suggest in your book to my list and am now trying to narrow it down to 30 keywords.
What filter might you use next to narrow it down? Would you first create sites for the keywords that meet criteria and have the highest average CPCs, highest search volumes?
I would go with sites that have a higher search volume definitely. You want to build sites that get more traffic, but all of the keywords should at least have a CPC of $1 or more. So, if all your 30 keywords have $1 or more CPC – I would then go after the keywords with the highest exact match search volume.
Spencer, I’m just wondering if you could give me a web address of one of your money-making sites? I guess I need a visual of how complex (or not complex) your sites are. I learned how to build websites last year and now I am armed with loads of technology — need to make money on it. 🙂 Thanks a bunch. I’m a wee baby in this business but am determined to get there.
A dollar a click is very impressive they must pay more than they use to. Do you know of any good adsense alternatives?
Wow. What a revenue! I always imagine my self to earn big money from the internet. But so far, I till not reach it. I wish I could get it.
BTW, nice article, guys! Long comment, long tail. Nice Blog!
Thanks for stopping by Mr iPhone Apps! Hope you enjoy the rest of the blog…
Congrats Spencer. It seems you are replying to everyone’s comments. I like the responsive people. You did it here. All the best. And Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Spencer,
If you are averaging around $80-85/day (based on your earnings shot) how would that equate to $5-7000/month?
The earnings shot is only 1 of my adsense accounts. I have multiple adsense accounts – as I believe I discussed in the post above. So all of my accounts in total equal the income I mentioned.
Hi, your story very inspiring me to quit my job and running my passion in blogging.
great post!
thanks..
wow..perfect mr…
Hello Spencer,
very interesting to hear that you are earning over $10,000 a month with adsense. The data you showed are from march 2011; is this still going on in 2013 despite of Panda and the other animals?
How many sites do you have to build for that? As I heard from several people it is a numbers game; make 10 sites and a get one good earner out of them. Does this happen to you too?
After Google Sniper of George Brown there was a big believe in exact matched domains. The EMD rule of Google last year should have changed that. Do you still focus on nearly matched domains or do you have experience meanwhile with more relaxed solutions for keyword in URL?