Well it’s has appeared to have finally happened. The ride is over and Google has cracked down on micro niche and Xfactor style websites in their index. Now I can’t say this for sure 100% and all sites are not effected, but I can say for sure that since the update last month most of my sites have taken a big dive and AdSense earnings are half of what they were.

What is really strange is that one of my newer sites I started to build had what I thought to be a higher quality of content as opposed to poorly written content or just poor product descriptions that most people implement to build there sites with.

Now as far as back links are concerned they are for the majority coming from the same spots. What even stranger is that my sites that I started out with which I solely linked only with EzineArticles links seem to be doing the best in the search engines and benefiting the most from those links which don’t have much IP diversity. So is IP diversity really that important as everyone preaches in SEO? That’s the main reason I abandoned the Xfactor method as far as link building because he relied solely on Ezine and GoArticles for back links.

I going to change things up a bit. If I’m going to be building all these sites I’d rather build a big authority site on a topic I have interest in and can write about as opposed to outsourcing some five page site with mediocre content and building lots of poor back links to compensate for a few powerful ones.

My verdict on the micro niche sites is this. Keep building them but only for short term income and fast profits for selling. I think they can still be valuable to flip and sell niche blogs as opposed to wasting your time building them up over time and trying to maintain above the fold rankings on page one.

Look at it this way, if you really spend the time to create some excellent content, people will link to you and make your job easier. Only poorly written content needs to be manipulated by people to rank high as it is not valuable to the end user.

Total earnings for May 2010: $288.47

May was a good month considering that not much was accomplished as far as updating sites and building back links. I put a lot of time this month in to building an old auto insurance blog that I have not touched in a long time. I really don’t know why I did not stick with the insurance niche, it really has some of the highest payouts. Even though it’s harder to rank for keywords inside of the insurance related niche, when you do get a click it’s well worth it!

I’m kind of getting tired of putting a lot of effort into building five page sites that rank relatively easy but really only earn maybe $5 a day and that’s a gem in my collection which are few a far between. I’m also starting to realize that although I could in theory put up 300 sites, but there is no way I’m going to have the free time to promote them and maintain their rankings while still working 40+ hours a week. I really need to focus my efforts on automation as much as possible and building a long term sustainable network of sites which are not at risk for potentially being flagged as spam or de-indexing.

It’s time now to put all of the noise and hype behind me. I think the number one reason why people fail to find success with making money online with Internet marketing is because they are always looking for the perfect system or step-by-step plan. I mean how many times can you buy an ebook or video or purchase a spot in a membership site telling you how to build a blog, get traffic to it and monetize it. I think the trick is to just learn the basics and then just go out on your own and do your own experiments and create and implement your own systems till you find something that works for you. Besides I’d rather build a website that revolves around something that I actually have interest in and can write really valuable content which will be liked by visitors and also will be in turn valued highly in the search engine robot’s eyes.

So that’s it for me! No more courses, ebooks, videos and membership sites. The only money I’m spending is on automation software, outsourcing and business expenses to keep this thing going and operating in the black! Now I really have to make the decision if I want to go ahead and continue to build micro niche sites. I think it might be worth it for short term income and I can always flip them for quick cash, but from here on in I really want to focus on really creating sites that are valuable to the user and not some spammy site made to get ranked quick and dropped a month later. The only downside to my auto insurance blog is that it seems like I have to put a lot more work into it to get it to rank and make money as opposed to throwing up a niche site.

The point is this. If you spend all of your time trying to figure out how to build the perfectly optimized blog post and what WordPress plugins you need and where the newest place to get back links from, then you’ll never move forward. It’s time to put all the guru’s in the closet and become one yourself. Create your own systems for driving traffic, SEO and marketing and the results will come quicker.