[Journal] Yet Another Journal...

I figure I could use some accountability. I have a lot of different things going on, and some items are falling through the cracks. A journal might be just the ticket to keep myself in line.

I'm fairly new to the IM world, but I feel like I have learned a lot. Obviously the field is constantly changing, so my knowledge has to constantly grow and adapt.

What's working:

I have a mini autoblog-farm (4 sites) that operates on the pay per post model.

I just picked up a client where I am more-or-less a high level VA. I am working on promoting his online and offline empire. Tons of different tasks here.

I hawk stuff on eBay. I try to structure my purchases such that I make about 20 percent net on any particular transaction. I need to be much more proactive here though.

My personal blog and YT channel have adsense on them. No real promotion going on here, just my real online life activities.

What's not working:

I started an authority site and put some adsense on it. I have not developed it nearly enough. I got busy and realized that spinning articles is *really* boring.

I bought 2 MNS here on BHW. I got exactly what I ordered but haven't even gotten around to putting adsense on them yet.

I started a couple ShezBlogs, but have not found a good solution to gaining a twitter following since the Twitter crackdown on 3rd party apps.

I guess that's the state of things right now. Onwards and upwards.

2012-08-20 Efforts:

VA-job - talked with boss about tasks to do. Submitted article for spinning to BHW service. Created a few event postings for boss' speaking dates.

Future plans:

VA-job - develop linkwheel for articles and videos
get sub-VAs to do web 2.0 work like Yahoo Answers, reddit, etc

MNS - actually do something with them

Authority site - create original content based on keyword research. Create media. Develop backlinks

eBay - Get inventory listed (urgent!)

ShezBlogs - ???

PPP farm - write a couple pending articles. I'm not sure if these are worth developing links to or not.

Hah, I totally forgot my biggest plans for the future: offline marketing.

I'm fairly savvy in the offline marketing world, but only recently learned about Places SEO and related services.

I'm planning on developing a local SEO firm that would offer free, simple WP sites to businesses that don't have sites and get an affiliate commission on the hosting. Then the firm would offer Places SEO and possibly ORM.

Great Work.

Thanks!

2012-08-22/23 Efforts:

I sub'd to Linkwheel Bandit, and so far it's awesome.

VA job: I did a bunch of PR submissions to newspapers and magazines for a speaking event.

MNS/Authority site: I started a new linkwheel for one of my soon-to-be authority sites. It's in the stock market niche, so my adsense CPC is high. Unfortunately my traffic has been low. Theoretically, my linkwheels will change that. I'm keeping my anchor text about 30% keyword, 20% site name/url, 50% generic term. I know this is pretty conservative, but I'd rather build things slowly and have them work than go fast and fail.

I'm building a 7-10-10 structure. Tier 1 will not have any interlinking. I'll be using SB Bomber to blast the tier 2 (and maybe tier 1) with social bookmarks.

I'm still evaluating whether article submissions are still worth it.

PPP blogs: got a payment

Last couple days' efforts:

eBay - listed a bunch of consignment inventory. Still waiting on response from BHW member on shipment.

VA - received spun articles back. Started a LinkWheel Bandit pyramid. Submitted press releases for upcoming event to newspapers, tv news, and radio stations.

MNS/Authority - ditto on the pyramid.

Been a while since I updated this journal. Here's what's been happening.

VA Job - wasn't paid on-time, so I quit.

eBay Businesses - Continuing to do well

MNS/Authority - Bought a couple already performing sites, and am now making about $250/month in adsense earnings. Starting with the next payout, I'm going to be developing a reinvestment plan.

I'm thinking something like 10% profit taking, 25% adding content to sites, and 65% expand into more sites.

I dropped the link building campaigns because I was spending way more in captcha solving and such than I was making in earnings. So the payoff just wasn't there. That may change as my MNS empire grows.

One of my ShezBlogs is doing OK. The others aren't. If anyone knows of a tool that still works for adding twitter followers, I'd love to know about it!

So I have decided that I need a plan for my burgeoning online empire earnings. Right now, between AdSense sites eBay sales and a joint venture here on BHW, I bring in about 700 bucks a month in mostly passive income. I want to go this to the point where I'm making at least two grand a month.


So I need a plan.


I need to plan for reinvesting back into my sites as well as growing new sites. So far had been pretty unsuccessful at building new niche sites for AdSense, but I have been very successful at buying those sites from people who have already built them.


So here's my plan currently:


10% is going to be taken out as profits.


30% will be reinvested into developing the niche sites. I want to buy more articles, publish them periodically, and slowly but surely turn them from niche sites into small authority sites. I think by really focusing on keyword content targeted quality, I will stay ahead of any Google updates in the future.


60% will go towards a new purchase fund. So this money will buy new sites to then be reinvested in.

OK, so adsense payout was the other day. I am kicking my plan into action.

Last month's web revenue was a little over $200. So I'm allocating $81 to new content.

I use the organic search results from analytics to feed keywords into Long Tail Pro Platinum. I then look for keywords with a low keyword competition factor. Then I order articles based on those keywords.

I gave the writers 5 days to complete the articles. My hope is that the time will enable them to write articles that aren't complete crap.

My plan is to edit the articles for quality, then add amazon links where appropriate.

The articles that I ordered have started to come in. The quality is ok, which is about what I expected. I'll be editing them, adding images and links, and then posting them over the next month.

In other news, I ordered an amazon site from the warrior forum. The price was very low, so it will be a test case.

Just read through your journey... looks like you have a nice plan in place. Figure out where your $$$ is coming from and build that up.

Quick question: you said you purchased a couple of sites that were already performing with AdSense. Where did you find them and how much were they making before you bought them?

Peace,
Jax

There are lots of guys out there selling adsense sites. The main source is flippa though. It's kind of a hassle, but that's the way it is. You can look here on BHW under site flipping and JVs too.

The sites I bought weren't making a lot because they are micro niche sites. Anywhere from $10-$80 a month. I typically paid 15x-20x the monthly earnings for them. I know this is on the high end of the range, but it's more proof of concept than anything else. My hope is that by building out the article content and diversifying the income structure, I'll increase their profitability.

I've been thinking. If I'm going to turn small niche sites into somewhat larger than sites or even authority sites, then I am going to need a more robust traffic generation system.


I won't be able to rely simply on the 1 to 10,000 people searching for my keyword phrase.


And that leads to social media, list building, and advertising as the most direct methods for bringing traffic.


The question is whether the profit opportunities on the websites are worth that kind of spending in advertisement. I know from past experience that I'm not going to build up a huge Twitter following by myself. I would have to rely on retweet services and shout outs and all that kind of thing from fiverr gigs to create a following. Same thing for Facebook.


Solo ads and similar are easier to implement for me, but the payoff has to be there.


And that all leads me to some sort of list building. My micro niche sites are in many different categories. Some of them would make sense for special reports. Some would work for lead generation, which I can then sell to contractors.


I guess all in all in order to get more revenue out of the sites I have to create more value for the visitors, especially since I'm interested in this as a long-term income source, rather than a one-time score with black hat methods.

And the work continues.

Today I spent about 2 hours editing and then spinning one of the articles I received. I spin on the sentence level and then go back at the word/phrase level. This creates output at 85-95% uniqueness, but takes a long time for me.

I also wrote a post for one of my blogs. I then went to fiverr and hired a guy to retweet it to his niche-related followers. He "guarantees" 500+ clicks, so we'll see.

Thank god I use dropbox. I was working on spinning my first article and TBS crashed on me. It overwrote the huge text file with just whatever was highlighted during the crash.

Fortunately, dropbox maintains previous versions, so I was able to restore the most recent save. I lost about 15 minutes of work, but that's better than the 5 hours otherwise.

And the journey continues.

Still waiting on the fiverr guy.

I made a video for my personal passion project blog. It's a lead in to amazon, which seems to be working ok. It's made about $12 over the past couple days. The problem with my passion project is that it has very low cpc metrics.

I ordered a bunch of small sites from a guy on WF who claims to do ongoing SEO for a year after purchase. I'm very curious to find out if that will be true.

And I just found out a friend of mine has a huge blog network that he sells posts on. I'm going to be getting some pr 6 links to one of my soon-to-become-authority sites. It has a very high CPM, but lacks traffic. So if I get my rankings up, that should take care of itself. It could be a $500-$1000 a month site if I get it higher in the SERPs. But it's in the very competitive stock market niche.

I haven't finished that first article spin yet. That will be the project for tomorrow.

Oh, I forgot to mention... Over the next few months, I am going to be working in a tax office seeing 20-25 people a day, every day.

There is an upside and a downside to this. The downside is I will have very little time to work on articles, link building, etc. that's why I am so focused on passive types of sites. The upside is that many of these clients have small businesses. So I will be venturing into basic offline marketing solutions.

I figure I will offer a basic site for free when they sign up with my hosting service (host gator reseller). Then the are local seo, video marketing, and other services I can offer as add ons. If I get just 10 clients a month, that will be a significant income over time.