I built a new niche site back in June and last month it made over $500. That's an incredible amount of money for a small niche site competing for 2-3 main keywords and a ton of longtails. I spent a little over $350 making it, but I've already doubled up on doing it. So yes, even though there Google Keyword Tool is dying... there is still money to be made in niche sites.
SEO is going to be different for every single site.
I launched another site and did the exact same formula over again and it's not ranking nearly as well as the other one. When I scoped the metrics in LongTailPro, I considered this new site to be much less competitive. Google apparently doesn't think so. When doing SEO, make sure you have processes for your different forms of linkbuilding (social, blogs, comments, guest posts) and can scale these. You may get traction in one area and not another. If the process is good you can scale it, if not... you're screwed. I'm just okay at this and usually pay more money to outsource it to trusted providers.
There's still money in Adense, but it's also full of crap.
This site does about a $17.50 RPM, which is pretty good. I built another site in a different niche out that's supposed to be a $75 CPC and am getting around 2-4$ per click. I don't get it, but don't really want to waste the time in trying to figure it out either. :eusa_naughty: he best use of your time is doing what you're good at and for me it's definitely not trying to game google or understand its methods to the fullest extent. I'll take it and just keep going.
It's all in the keyword... (a new way of thinking)
When I built this site mainly it was just for the keyword. I outsourced the content and everything else just to rank for this one keyword. But when one of my VAs dropped (pretty frequent occurrence), I started writing some of the content myself. I started to understand more about what people were searching for.
You see niche sites can't stand alone anymore. They need to be at least mini authority sites. This one I'm talking about specifically is over 55 pages with 500+ words on each page. Before you freakout... remember that I only paid $350 to get it built and for the SEO efforts.
Okay so what's really important here is that you have to understand what the person is looking for when they type in the keyword and then what kind of experience you can provide them when they land on your site. Going through page by page can you put a link somewhere that they'll click through? Is there a search function or images that you can add that will keep them navigating through? This should be your goal. Make them go through page to page so it looks good to Google and also it will increase the chance that they click an ad.
As I mentioned in my last post (found here), a lot of blogging is based on pageviews. Most people like the Huffington Post or CNN make it difficult to find things you're looking for. You might think you've found it, but you have to click through 5-6 times. DO THAT. Lead them down the path and you will make more money with adsense.
Last and the most important thing...
Unless you're flipping them, Adsense sites are not a business:nono:. They are NOT a good way to make money. They are slowlane Prius' driven by senior citizens. They are susceptible to a lot of different things (negative seo, google slaps, competitors) and because you don't care enough about them you won't do much to fix it. DO NOT EXPECT TO GET RICH OFF OF YOUR ADSENSE SITES.
BUTTTTT.... you can use building niche sites to learn more about processes. Creating processes that scale. That's the #1 thing you'll learn and if you take that and just that with you... you'll be on your way.
Proof / Backstory (cool bc my prediction turned out to be correct!)
The major takeaways
SEO is going to be different for every single site.
I launched another site and did the exact same formula over again and it's not ranking nearly as well as the other one. When I scoped the metrics in LongTailPro, I considered this new site to be much less competitive. Google apparently doesn't think so. When doing SEO, make sure you have processes for your different forms of linkbuilding (social, blogs, comments, guest posts) and can scale these. You may get traction in one area and not another. If the process is good you can scale it, if not... you're screwed. I'm just okay at this and usually pay more money to outsource it to trusted providers.
There's still money in Adense, but it's also full of crap.
This site does about a $17.50 RPM, which is pretty good. I built another site in a different niche out that's supposed to be a $75 CPC and am getting around 2-4$ per click. I don't get it, but don't really want to waste the time in trying to figure it out either. :eusa_naughty: he best use of your time is doing what you're good at and for me it's definitely not trying to game google or understand its methods to the fullest extent. I'll take it and just keep going.
It's all in the keyword... (a new way of thinking)
When I built this site mainly it was just for the keyword. I outsourced the content and everything else just to rank for this one keyword. But when one of my VAs dropped (pretty frequent occurrence), I started writing some of the content myself. I started to understand more about what people were searching for.
You see niche sites can't stand alone anymore. They need to be at least mini authority sites. This one I'm talking about specifically is over 55 pages with 500+ words on each page. Before you freakout... remember that I only paid $350 to get it built and for the SEO efforts.
Okay so what's really important here is that you have to understand what the person is looking for when they type in the keyword and then what kind of experience you can provide them when they land on your site. Going through page by page can you put a link somewhere that they'll click through? Is there a search function or images that you can add that will keep them navigating through? This should be your goal. Make them go through page to page so it looks good to Google and also it will increase the chance that they click an ad.
As I mentioned in my last post (found here), a lot of blogging is based on pageviews. Most people like the Huffington Post or CNN make it difficult to find things you're looking for. You might think you've found it, but you have to click through 5-6 times. DO THAT. Lead them down the path and you will make more money with adsense.
Last and the most important thing...
Unless you're flipping them, Adsense sites are not a business:nono:. They are NOT a good way to make money. They are slowlane Prius' driven by senior citizens. They are susceptible to a lot of different things (negative seo, google slaps, competitors) and because you don't care enough about them you won't do much to fix it. DO NOT EXPECT TO GET RICH OFF OF YOUR ADSENSE SITES.
BUTTTTT.... you can use building niche sites to learn more about processes. Creating processes that scale. That's the #1 thing you'll learn and if you take that and just that with you... you'll be on your way.
Proof / Backstory (cool bc my prediction turned out to be correct!)
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