The Lifestyle Journey

[wtyap]

Hey everybody, sorry I haven't posted any updates for yesterday or today so far, there was a family emergency and I have been unable to work on my websites or update this thread.

Today however I got three clicks and earned $1.67 so was a good result.

Apologies for my absence. I will start work and updates again tomorrow.

- Dylan.

You can do better. Good luck.

 

[mccullum]

good luck.i wish i had started IM right from a young age.Keep learning methods and most importantly,do it all for yourself and see what works specifically for you.i wish you the best of luck.

 

[bk071]

Good start Dylan. I'm subscribing to your thread and will be back tomorrow to hear more from your side

Best,

 

[outsidethesquare]

Day 6
November 27,

Hey everybody. Today was a day of mixed emotions for me. I began the day feeling very negative about this journey because of the recent events that have occurred meaning that I haven't been able to devote the time I wanted to this project so far, which makes me feel pretty slack.

I checked my rankings though and one of the pages I wrote for my site on the first day is now in position 21 for it's keyword.

I decided that today's activities needed to be done and I would get them out of the way first so that I wouldn't have any more problems with this: Organisation. I spent today organising everything in my life from the files on my computer to cleaning my bedroom and workspace. I have cut down on the inefficiencies and rubbish clustering my lifestyle and I'm finally ready to put in the hard yards on this project.

I believe I will still launch at least one website next week as that has been my plan all along and I want to stick to it.

Although this has been a slow start, the optimism has returned and I not only feel ready, but know that I am ready.

On a side note, I have also decided to take a more structured route to improving myself physically, and instead of just trying to do things better, I am going to be implementing a new health 'task' into my routine every Monday. My first was to eat breakfast everyday which I began on day one of my journey.

On the coming Monday, I will begin brushing my teeth twice daily no matter what, which is an improvement as I currently only brush my teeth once per day (dont judge me lol).

Looking forward to changes to come, and thankyou all for bearing with me while I kicked off a really slow start.

- Dylan.

 

[HAdrian1239]

Don't forget to take the RSS feeds from your content (if you are writing articles and submitting them to Ezine Articles for example, or your SB profiles) and submit those to RSS propagators, or make new feeds, and do the same.

Also, I Amplify (type of social bookmarking) almost everything I do. Make sure your niche research is sound, and go for higher CPC terms (low competition high CPC terms can be found) or higher end products depending on how you're monetizing.

It's just as easy to chase bigger bux as it is to chase pennies. I am sure you'll be fine. I look forward to hearing more about your success!

 

[outsidethesquare]

Day 7
November 28,

As day 7 draws to a close I'm maintaining my optimism as today I built more backlinks, did keyword research, and earned in Adsense.

I had 22 impressions and 1 click, which netted me exactly $1.

I don't know why my CTR is so low (around 3-5% generally) when I'm using the XFactor theme with the clickbump engine. Any clues anybody?

Today I did keyword research and chose my niche for my next website which is on track to be launched next week as I had hoped. Tomorrow I will finetune my chosen keywords and begin writing content and hopefully launch my website the day after that.

It took most of my day to find a niche for my website so I still need to brush up on keyword and niche research if I want to have a serious crack at this goal because I can't afford to be spending so much time on the one thing.

Does anybody have any suggestion for choosing keywords? How many exact match locals make going for a keyword with est avg CPC of over $1 worthwhile? 500? 1000? 5000? Any suggestions would be great.

I have continued to eat breakfast daily as I hoped I would and as tomorrow begins the new week, I will be brushing my teeth twice daily no matter what also.

One small improvement at a time will help me reach my goals

- Dylan.

 

[insightment]

Good luck man and try not to give up ever.

 

[MisterGemini]

Day 7
November 28,

As day 7 draws to a close I'm maintaining my optimism as today I built more backlinks, did keyword research, and earned in Adsense.

I had 22 impressions and 1 click, which netted me exactly $1.

I don't know why my CTR is so low (around 3-5% generally) when I'm using the XFactor theme with the clickbump engine. Any clues anybody?

Today I did keyword research and chose my niche for my next website which is on track to be launched next week as I had hoped. Tomorrow I will finetune my chosen keywords and begin writing content and hopefully launch my website the day after that.

It took most of my day to find a niche for my website so I still need to brush up on keyword and niche research if I want to have a serious crack at this goal because I can't afford to be spending so much time on the one thing.

Does anybody have any suggestion for choosing keywords? How many exact match locals make going for a keyword with est avg CPC of over $1 worthwhile? 500? 1000? 5000? Any suggestions would be great.

I have continued to eat breakfast daily as I hoped I would and as tomorrow begins the new week, I will be brushing my teeth twice daily no matter what also.

One small improvement at a time will help me reach my goals

- Dylan.

goto http://www.google.com/sktool/#keywords

at the bottom of the page you will see the link 'Or see top keywords across all categories' << click on it.

In the left you will see categories. Click on them or the specific one you are trying to operate in and then sort the results by suggested CPC.

Those one at the top are the high paying places to be. However, note that this is for all keywords, not just content network, which is where you are.

It's best to target the general category instead of a specific keyword. Then you can expect more of the higher paying ads to appear more often.

To be frank, the highest paying terms are the ones where there is a lot of competition, and a lot of profits to be had. You don't need a tool to tell you what those are, just think about the biggie industries. Insurance, banking, credit, health, education and so on.. all big tickets with big companies and big budgets they need to spend on advertising to keep their milk machine going (by milk machine I mean.. to milk you ). $1 clicks is a norm in those industries in the content network, and sometimes even $2 to $3 clicks.

On a side note.. your site is too new for it to deserve the higher rate clicks. Smart pricing only kicks in after a week. If you have your adsense on other sites that are not performing, take them off. They will drag down your potential EPC because smart pricing is calculated based on total Adsense account performance, not per site performance. So one bad site can drag down the earnings of your good sites. Some estimates suggest this can increase your earnings by as much as 15-20%.

At this early stage, I recommend you take your eyes off the nickles and dimes, and keep focusing on how to turn out more traffic. You can figure out how to best monetize your traffic after you learn how to get it, instead of trying to figure out how to get more from so little.

3-4% CTR is perfectly acceptable without any tricks involved.

This advice is almost two years old, but it would work just as well today for what you are doing:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/making-money/49601-how-seize-traffic-your-site.html

Apply some of those methods to your daily routine and I am sure you will do fine.

Don't abandon the sites you have done to create other ones. Sites are babies. They need to be fed, changed, and burped. You abandon it or give it too little attention and it doesn't grow much, or worse, dies. It's tempting to turn your attention to another site thinking it might turn out better results than what you got.. but like I said, learn the ways of traffic generation first.

Pay attention to all you learn from what you are doing. You are going to need to reapply it all later. Consider the sites you are working on now as assets that will be able to contribute to other more profitable projects ion the future (ie, they will make great link fodder).

Brushing twice a day is a good idea.

Removing the clutter in your room is a good idea. Your environment is a reflection of your mind space.

That's all I got to say about that.

Mister Gemini

 

[consciousnesscreates]

You need to get a degree incase things done work out for later life that is if crazy countries dont blow us all up as of this moment

 

[MisterGemini]

You need to get a degree incase things done work out for later life that is if crazy countries dont blow us all up as of this moment

The only reason for a degree is if you are going to be in a profession that requires it. If you are only talking about a degree for the sake of getting a job, then forget about it. Unless you are satisfied being a bloc in a corporate wheel and have no plans to work for yourself, then sure, get the degree.

Many people will opt for the latter, but the reality is, many of those same people do not have the steel cahonies to be in business for themselves. There is a certain degree of emotional maturity that is required that many people never reach, and thus, would lead a better life being lead, rather than leading.

Now mind you, I never went to university. I spent some time in college to figure out what was going on there quick enough. Instead, I spent probably about as much as I would have on a university education in my own business ventures, and thus gained my own education. That education today serves me. A degree, would do absolutely nothing for me today. I have never lost anything for not 'having that piece of paper', except the opportunity to apply for those certain job offers that I will never apply for, and the social acceptance of doing what everyone else is doing. Oh yeah, and should hell freeze over, my business experience in many instances is considered an 'equivalent'.

If you can control/generate traffic/eyeballs, make sales, and generate wealth in general, you are a valuable asset anywhere you go. Period.

Mister Gemini

 

[J1218]

The only reason for a degree is if you are going to be in a profession that requires it. If you are only talking about a degree for the sake of getting a job, then forget about it. Unless you are satisfied being a bloc in a corporate wheel and have no plans to work for yourself, then sure, get the degree.

Many people will opt for the latter, but the reality is, many of those same people do not have the steel cahonies to be in business for themselves. There is a certain degree of emotional maturity that is required that many people never reach, and thus, would lead a better life being lead, rather than leading.

Now mind you, I never went to university. I spent some time in college to figure out what was going on there quick enough. Instead, I spent probably about as much as I would have on a university education in my own business ventures, and thus gained my own education. That education today serves me. A degree, would do absolutely nothing for me today. I have never lost anything for not 'having that piece of paper', except the opportunity to apply for those certain job offers that I will never apply for, and the social acceptance of doing what everyone else is doing. Oh yeah, and should hell freeze over, my business experience in many instances is considered an 'equivalent'.

If you can control/generate traffic/eyeballs, make sales, and generate wealth in general, you are a valuable asset anywhere you go. Period.

Mister Gemini

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[outsidethesquare]

Day 8
November 29,

Today was a good and productive day for me. I continued my backlink building campaign, finalized my keywords and picked out a domain name for my website which I will launch tomorrow, and wrote the content for my next website.

I feel that I have definitely selected winning keywords for my next micro niche site, though I will take a while to rank it because it does have some competition.

Today I have begun brushing my teeth twice daily as well as continuing to eat breakfast so my health routine is on track, as is my internet marketing project.

My average earnings for November to date is $0.50 per day from my website which currently isn't ranking in the top 3 positions for any keywords, but is in the top 10 positions for 12 keywords.

I am pleased with the progress I have made so far and whilst I am not on track to launch two websites this week as I intended, I have made a decent effort and intend to sustain it if not build on it.

That's it until tomorrow

- Dylan.

 

[outsidethesquare]

goto http://www.google.com/sktool/#keywords

at the bottom of the page you will see the link 'http://www.google.com/sktool/#keywords' << click on it.

In the left you will see categories. Click on them or the specific one you are trying to operate in and then sort the results by suggested CPC.

Those one at the top are the high paying places to be. However, note that this is for all keywords, not just content network, which is where you are.

It's best to target the general category instead of a specific keyword. Then you can expect more of the higher paying ads to appear more often.

To be frank, the highest paying terms are the ones where there is a lot of competition, and a lot of profits to be had. You don't need a tool to tell you what those are, just think about the biggie industries. Insurance, banking, credit, health, education and so on.. all big tickets with big companies and big budgets they need to spend on advertising to keep their milk machine going (by milk machine I mean.. to milk you ). $1 clicks is a norm in those industries in the content network, and sometimes even $2 to $3 clicks.

On a side note.. your site is too new for it to deserve the higher rate clicks. Smart pricing only kicks in after a week. If you have your adsense on other sites that are not performing, take them off. They will drag down your potential EPC because smart pricing is calculated based on total Adsense account performance, not per site performance. So one bad site can drag down the earnings of your good sites. Some estimates suggest this can increase your earnings by as much as 15-20%.

At this early stage, I recommend you take your eyes off the nickles and dimes, and keep focusing on how to turn out more traffic. You can figure out how to best monetize your traffic after you learn how to get it, instead of trying to figure out how to get more from so little.

3-4% CTR is perfectly acceptable without any tricks involved.

This advice is almost two years old, but it would work just as well today for what you are doing:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/making-money/49601-how-seize-traffic-your-site.html

Apply some of those methods to your daily routine and I am sure you will do fine.

Don't abandon the sites you have done to create other ones. Sites are babies. They need to be fed, changed, and burped. You abandon it or give it too little attention and it doesn't grow much, or worse, dies. It's tempting to turn your attention to another site thinking it might turn out better results than what you got.. but like I said, learn the ways of traffic generation first.

Pay attention to all you learn from what you are doing. You are going to need to reapply it all later. Consider the sites you are working on now as assets that will be able to contribute to other more profitable projects ion the future (ie, they will make great link fodder).

Brushing twice a day is a good idea.

Removing the clutter in your room is a good idea. Your environment is a reflection of your mind space.

That's all I got to say about that.

Mister Gemini

Thanks for all the info and advice I'll take all that on board. Thanks and +rep given

 

[sbella]

I am subscribing to this thread as well. It is going to be very interesting keeping track of it. I like when people do this so we can all see the struggles/progress. But good luck to you. You seem to have some really good and ideas.

 

[sackboy127]

You're doing great, keep it up, and you're going to have an awesome lifestyle!

BTW what is your method of link-building, I have similar kinds of sites and I need a good daily link-building routine to get enough traffic.

Thanks in advance, and I wish you the best of luck!

 

[outsidethesquare]

Day 9
November 30,

My brother came down to visit from Melbourne today and I don't see him that often so I decided I'd take today off (one of the three days I intend to take off per week).

I had a good day, continued eating breakfast and brushing teeth, and still got in about an hour of internet marketing.

In that hour I registered my domain name (which I made a last minute change to so I could get an exact match for a related keyword I found with 1000 exact search volume per month), put up my fully functioning new website (though I still need to write more articles for more pages of content for additional keywords I discovered today), and did some more keyword research.

I feel that this hour was definitely productive (I worked hard and focused the whole time).

I found a new keyword that has 4500 exact search volume per month, an estimated average CPC in Google of over $2, and an exact match domain available, relatively low competition in top 10, and was wondering if you guys think I should register this and try to rank for that single keyword with a one page website.

I'm still not sure what makes a keyword valuable enough to chase after. I think I will register this domain tomorrow and quickly throw up a website to get it to rank and see if I can get it to rank 1st in Google which will help me evaluate the earning potential of keywords in the future by guaging them against this one.

I come across loads of 1000-2000 exact search volume keywords per month with decent average CPC with low competition and exact match domains available but I'm never sure whether or not it's worth buying those domains and making a one page website because I don't know the earning potential of keywords with that amount of searches.

Sorry if this post was a bit repetitive lol.

Any advice on keyword value and estimated Adsense earnings formulas or ideas would be greatly appreciated if you guys have the time.

Thanks.

- Dylan.

 

[outsidethesquare]

You're doing great, keep it up, and you're going to have an awesome lifestyle!

BTW what is your method of link-building, I have similar kinds of sites and I need a good daily link-building routine to get enough traffic.

Thanks in advance, and I wish you the best of luck!

My focus has been on creating forum profile links on edu and gov websites.

What I did was scrape gov and edu forums with scrabebox (which I forgot to mention in this thread earlier that I own) from a variety of platforms (vbulletin, phpbb, etc) then manually go through the resulting lists to post my links on.

I have had a very low success rate but I started with huge lists so ended up with a few decent links.

Now, I intend to do some scrapebox commenting possibly, and make use of the packets of Angela and Paul's backlinks that are shared in the forum.

I also want to look into web 2.0 links because that seems to be the way of the future and what Google loves.

But basically, a short answer to your question is that I am creating forum profile links and letting them be naturally indexed (most never get indexed).

 

[supamanjon]

I don't know why my CTR is so low (around 3-5% generally) when I'm using the XFactor theme with the clickbump engine. Any clues anybody?

It should never be that low unless your niche is purely information for instance anything with like surgery and medical stuff. Those are more towards information vs products.

How many exact searches does your main keyword have?

 

[outsidethesquare]

I don't know why my CTR is so low (around 3-5% generally) when I'm using the XFactor theme with the clickbump engine. Any clues anybody?

It should never be that low unless your niche is purely information for instance anything with like surgery and medical stuff. Those are more towards information vs products.

How many exact searches does your main keyword have?

My niche is a service but also has product keywords. My site has 6 pages of content - some on the products and others on the service. My main keyword (which I'm not ranking for) has around 15000 exact per month. But I'm in the top 10 for around 12 keywords with much much less search traffic.

I'm not yet ranking above position 6 for any keyword (even the low traffic ones) which is why I'm not getting the traffic or revenue potential that my site has. All in due time though.

 

[J1218]

I found a new keyword that has 4500 exact search volume per month, an estimated average CPC in Google of over $2, and an exact match domain available, relatively low competition in top 10, and was wondering if you guys think I should register this and try to rank for that single keyword with a one page website.

I'm still not sure what makes a keyword valuable enough to chase after. I think I will register this domain tomorrow and quickly throw up a website to get it to rank and see if I can get it to rank 1st in Google which will help me evaluate the earning potential of keywords in the future by guaging them against this one.

I come across loads of 1000-2000 exact search volume keywords per month with decent average CPC with low competition and exact match domains available but I'm never sure whether or not it's worth buying those domains and making a one page website because I don't know the earning potential of keywords with that amount of searches.

Sorry if this post was a bit repetitive lol.

Any advice on keyword value and estimated Adsense earnings formulas or ideas would be greatly appreciated if you guys have the time.

Thanks.

- Dylan.

I personally think you should go after all of the keywords with low competition that have good search volume and an EMD available. If you're sitting there debating over every little thing and trying to crack some formula to see if the keyword is worth it or not, you're wasting time that you could be building the site and making money.

I never concern myself with any complicated formulas based on Adsense CPC or any of that crap. If I find a good keyword and I think I can rank for it and the EMD is available, I go for it.

One thing I actually should mention though that you should do, is go into Google and search for your keyword phrase and see if any Adwords PPC ads come up. That way you know if people are at least advertising on the keyword or not.

You have to figure that a domain is under $10 and no matter how well or poor the site ends up performing, you will almost always at least make the money back that you spent on the domain. Assuming you get the site to rank anyway.

Even if a site is making a mere $10 per month which isn't much at all, you would be able to flip it to someone for around $100. You can always hold onto it as part of your portfolio too if you want.