Restart - $15/day with two small websites

Hi Everyone!

Short introduction:
I'm a 27 years old guy from Europe. I started IM in September after about a half year of reading this forum. I've made an amazon review site in the pet niche with ~20 product reviews and with a few 500+ words articles. Then I made a new website in October about a very specific spiritual niche. I wrote 15 articles and a few amazon reviews about related products. I've tried to monetize them with adsense, amazon and clickbank. I was generating traffic with instagram and reddit. I earned $37 through amazon, but then I felt discouraged and left them alone for several reasons (I thought I'll earn more with the work I put in, and I realized that amazon only pays in check in my country with $15 fees and heard problems about cashing) so I just gave up like so many people before me and started to look for other methods. (...and kind of relapsed again into my depression.)

Then after a few unsuccessful attempts to become a professional poker playercool I made a niche 'softcore' adult tumblr just for fun and through that I've found a good method to promote adult offers, so that's what I was doing in the last 2 months. I've made $100 with this, but I'm not sure how long I'll able to use that method, so I'm thinking about making a hosted adult blog from that money where I can place ads freely. I'm not sure about this, I'll decide it next month when I'll get my payment.

The Journey:
But don't get me wrong, this is not an adult journey(mostly)! I was thinking about making a viral site in my language where I translate short stories, post funny or interesting videos and get traffic through facebook. But then I realized that it might be hard to get traffic if I don't aim for a niche audience even in my small country. So I skipped this 'translation' idea and checked my websites. They have around 10 visitors a day and make a few orders from time to time. My plan is to redesign these websites and make them more blog-like viral sites and post articles daily. I will post cute pet videos and short articles on my pet niche site and post paranormal and spiritual videos on my other site. I plan to monetize these sites with adsense (already installed but only made ~$5 altogether) and with a content locker through a CPA network. (And they have payoneer payout method which I already have!)

I'll get traffic through facebook, twitter and instagram. I already have social media profiles for the sites (fortunately I didn't delete them) and when I'll get enough followers I want to sell shoutouts on instagram too. I think about buying ads on facebook, but I'll wait at least for a month. I plan to update my journey daily to get inspiration, make clear plans and to keep myself motivated.

Goals:
$15/day in total
I know this is a small goal for some of you, but I'd be really happy if I could reach this in the next 2-3 months.
(That would mean that I don't have to go back to a boring back-office job.)

Plans for tomorrow:
- Redesign the sites; get rid of the homepages and integrate the homepage links into the sidebar. Check out new themes for better design.
- Find 7x2-3 videos/short stories for content for the next week.
- Find out how to schedule posts in wordpress - or look around for plugins that post to facebook as well.
- Find out what to post on instagram-twitter - screenshot from the videos or just stay with general niche related free stock images?
- Register on the CPA network I've picked and learn more about content lockers - I don't want to lock my content in the first 1-2 weeks

14-02-2016 details

*Earnings and expenses from September 2015:
Hosting+Domains: -$80
Adsense earnings: $ 2.66
Amazon earnings: $ 37.55
Clickbank earning: $0
Total: $ -39,79

Pet niche daily traffic: ~10 UV
Spiritual niche d.t.: ~10 UV

Pet Niche Social Media
Instagram: 1143 followers
Twitter: 1345 followers
Facebook: 10 likes (I didn't updated the page, just a few posts on there)

Spiritual Niche Social Media
Instagram: 1350 followers
Twitter: 1919 followers
Facebook: 41 likes

Side project (adult blog):
Tumblr traffic: ~180 UV
Tumblr: 3682 followers
Instagram: 4312 followers
Twitter: 174 followers (just started)
Earnings: $109
(The earnings are not only from these social media profiles so don't be surprised,
but I think my method won't work in the long-term.)

So as you can see I have to work on my focus and persistence, but I'm really motivated to reach my goals this time.
Thank you for reading and following my journey and if you have questions or some useful tips for me please tell me in a comment! :beerchug:

Instagram noob here: How you get instagram followers ?! Just follow others & like posts ?!

Meddie said:

Instagram noob here: How you get instagram followers ?! Just follow others & like posts ?!

Click to expand...

I think the first step is to post quality content. In my example: pet niche -> cute pets; spiritual niche -> motivating quotes & beautiful photos; adult -> classy, cute girls.
And yes, I searched for bigger profiles in my niche and just followed people who liked their latest photos. Try not to follow too many people on a day though, because you might get a temporary ban that lasts for a few days. I don't know the limits, try to google them. I guess I followed around 100 new people a day in the last week.

Good luck man! Current earning's are good.

Thanks! Well they are from the last few months in total. I'm not sure if I made that clear enough so I added an extra line to make things more understandable.

Just checking in to update my journey daily. I didn't have enough time today so just played with the design and tried to turn the homepages into blog-like viral landing pages. Using free wordpress themes with limited html experience is hard, I'm thinking about buying a theme with modern and adjustable design. Anyone know nice themes like this?

Meanwhile I had a new idea with a completely different niche, that could work with a same viral-type site. I think it might worth a domain to try it out, but as I said before I have to work on my focus, so first I want these two sites to be ready.

Plans pretty much stayed the same for tomorrow, but now I made a schedule and I'll have a lot of free time during this week.

Ok, I'm back... I know that we learn from our mistakes and my mistake here was not pushing myself to stay with this journey. I had a lot of things going on lately but that's not an excuse to leave my sites alone.

But let's stay positive! The good news is that now I have all the time in the world to focus on my projects.

In the last few days I started to post daily on my sites and they had a few visitors (around 30-50/day/site) I'll do it for a month to see how it goes and then I'll decide which one I should boost with a little sponsoring.

What do you think guys, which one is the best method to gain more followers to sites like these? I'll have around $100 to spend at the end of the month.

/Actually I'm thinking about spending that on adult hosting and 'move' there my tumblr blog so I could place ads on it, because my 'side-project' (the adult blogging) has twice as much visitors then my niche websites altogether./

Good luck man, keep it up. Set small goals for each day and evaluate where you are at the end of each week.

Yeah, do what Boomba said. What helps me is setting aside days of the week for specific projects. It helps me focus.

Example: Mon-Wed = Agency, Thu-Fri = Niche sites, etc.

Good luck OP. Keep at it.

Thank you for the replies! You guys are really motivating me, I won't give up, because working online is something I really like!
However I think this method I tried just won't work for me (method: find popular videos in my niche and 'embed' them on my sites in a 300 words article.) because I don't feel comfortable posting someone else's content. It's okay on my sites, but to post an edited picture from the video on social media (instagram, facebook, twitter) under 'my brand' just feels odd. I guess I can't get in trouble, because every viral site does that and I only embed the videos, but I don't feel comfortable doing that. (Not to mention that if I want to sell shoutouts on instagram I guess this is not the best type of content.)
I guess I'll need to create my own content, but english is not my first language and writing articles is really hard work for me. Maybe I should buy articles, but spending $5-10 for an article... that's $25-40/month if I want new content every week. I'm not sure if that could be profitable.
Ok, I know these thoughts seem a little desperate.. don't mind me, I'm just thinking out loud here. :hmmmm:

So I'm starting again in these days. Hopefully I'll have time to work on my sites daily this time.

Pet Niche Site
I wrote an 800+ words article about 5 amazon products. (So I have 25 articles now)
Bought 250 facebook likes, because I had like 3 likes.
Still ~10 UV/day, but some came from Google!
Instagram: 1216 followers
Twitter: 1376 followers

Spiritual Niche Site
I wrote a 1300+ words article. (total: 21 articles)
Bought 250 facebook likes.
~20 UV/day mostly from social media
Instagram: 1473 followers
Twitter: 2021 followers

(Semi-)Adult blogging
Tumblr: 4343 followers
~80 UV/day
Instagram: 7308 followers

I wonder if you'd give me some advice on what should focus on. I want to earn only $15/day.

Amazon earnings:
I considered buying blog comments to generate traffic to my niche sites. I don't have the budget to buy SEO packages right now.

Adult offers monetization:
I had a good method to drive traffic to adult offers but it's ended, so right now I just have a redirected URL to a cam offer in my tumblr description, but it doesn't generate leads.
I might try instagram shoutouts soon, but I'm not sure how it works in the semi-adult niche.

Anyone has any advice on which direction should I go? Is it even possible to earn $15/day if I don't want to buy ads and SEO or just give up my sites and try other methods?

TLDR: I have these sites, how to make money out of them?

My advice: don't buy any SEO packages until you understand how to do it on your own. Even then I don't suggest buying them if you're in it for the long run. You can get started making web 2.0 properties (Wordpress/Tumblr/Overblog) It's time consuming, but do it right and you can get some decent rankings if your keywords are low competition.

Good luck with your journey! It seems that you have a good set of sites, so, if money's an issue - invest time. Basically everything that you need to know about building the sites, getting traffic and monetizing is in the forum (Google search too). It's all about staying consistent and getting your ass to work on the things you have.

Regarding your two niche sites and Amazon, you have a good arsenal of social media accs, maybe continue building them and having regular activity. As far as SEO goes, blog comments you can do yourself - just find good blogs in your niche and shoot out some comments yourself. Read around about building backlinks on your own and you might get an idea of what you can do by yourself.

I don't know about your niches, but if they have relatively low competition, with good amounts of work from your end, you might have some success with them. And as far as stats show how they're doing, it seems like it's possible. I wouldn't say anything about your (semi-)adult blog, since I don't know shit, but having 80 UVs/day may count as something good. Trying to get these websites somewhere better may be a good move, since at least you will learn a lot of stuff on the way. Just my $0.02, hope it gives you some ideas.

Decided to follow along on this one. Good luck.

Thanks for the replies! I will make more web 2.0s, I made a tumblr for the Spiritual Niche Site when I started and one of my post still generates visitors. I just don't know what to share on these sites... It's okay if I just post photos like on Instagram? Or should I write articles? Or a shorter version of my article on the website? I'm a bit confused here, but tomorrow I will focus on blog commenting and creating web 2.0s.

Pet Niche Site
Posted cute photos with call to action.
UV: 11
Facebook likes: 147
Instagram: 1253 followers
Twitter: 1380 followers

Amazon clicks: 2


Spiritual Niche Site
Posted photos to social media and shared an article in a facebook group.
UV:53
Facebook likes: 287
Instagram: 1501 followers
Twitter: 2030 followers

Amazon clicks: 4


(Semi-)Adult blogging
Set up automatization: 15 photos/day and it also posts to twitter.
UV: 123
Tumblr: 4371 followers
Instagram: 7345 followers


//Since Instagram is the platform I like to use the most I'm thinking on creating a new account in a different niche. Did anyone have any trouble creating 5 accounts on one iphone? I have 4 now and they are connected (so I don't have to log out and log in every time). I read that 3 accounts/proxy is safe, but I don't use bot and instagram wouldn't have created this feature if they wanted to ban
users with 5 acc., right?//

Glad you have updated. It is really hard to say if this is safe or not. I would not think that they would have that option if it were not safe.