End of May Totals and Some Choices to Make Moving Forward
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.
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Hey Daniel,
I was just reading one of your ezine articles and found this blog through the links at the bottom. I have to say that this post is one of the most honest and real stories that I have read by a blogger.
You are so right about just giving it a go and not bothering with all those ebooks, courses, etc. Sure, some of them are useful and will help get people started, but there is so much “noise” in the “make money online” niche that it is difficult to find the genuinely helpful products amongst the fluff.
Have you done much in the way of promoting the .ws domain through GDI? I just watched one of their sales pitches and while it seems like an interesting opportunity, I do not personally pursue MLM/network marketing schemes. I build and sell software tools and have been doing okay with that. Part of my self-discovery, as you speak about in your post above, is that I can write about my experiences so far and help others (for free) by blogging about it.
Anyway, this comment is fast becoming more of a post than a comment. I am interesting in hearing more about your progress and will sign up for notifications.
Although you mention “best plugins” above and talk about avoiding spending all your time looking for this and that, can I respectfully suggest you get “subscribe to comments”. It is a free plugin that allows comment authors (like me) to sign up to this post. You see, when you approve it, unless you have another plugin active that does it, I will not get an email advising me to come back here and see what you may have said in reply to this comment.
Cheers, Michael.
Hey Michael,
No I really don’t promote GDI anymore. It’s what I got started in and I’d figure the best way to utilize the domain is start my own blog because most people who join GDI don’t even use the service they are just trying to promote it and get people to signup. To be honest I probably could of stuck with it and I was making a couple of hundred of month with it but it’s very high maintenance and a high dropout rate, plus you have to spend all your time training people because everyone who signs up with it is a newbie.
Thanks for the plugin suggestion, I will check it out.
BTW Adsense earnings are way down this month! I’m kinda getting worried now about putting all my monetazation efforts into Adsense. I think it’s much wiser to have a backup. I’m thinking a mix of CPA, Adsense and some affiliate offers just in case.
Regards,
Dan