Hello All, I am starting this thread to document the steps I take to try and get a new blog profitable. I am doing this for a few reasons: 1. By publicly documented it, I am more likely to complete the necessary tasks. I have WAY too many projects that are half-done. This thread is a way to hold myself accountable. 2. I know that personally, I love reading threads about marketers coming up with ideas, acting on them, and then reflecting on the results. Reading an ebook is one way of learning. But following someone's plan can also be very educational. 3. To get feedback from the forum. Although I am good at some parts of IM, I know I'm not in others. By documenting my progress, it allows members to give me different ideas and tips to become profitable quicker and easier. I may be making some major mistakes, and a "second" pair of eyes will help me seem them sooner. My Objective: To earn on average $25 a day with a free Blogger blog within 90 days Yes, I know that I could use a website or a Wordpress script. For this experiement, I will be using Blogger. I want to keep the financial expenses at zero (and yes, I know that time has value. Just talking about out of pocket money). So let's begin: I first want to express that I have no knowledge or experience in the niche I am about to tackle. I found it by accident while doing some keyword research last week. Before then, I didn't even know it existed. I had to look it up on Wikipedia because I had no clue what the niche even meant. In digging a little further with my keyword research, I discovered three keyword phrases that really intrigued me: Keyword phrase #1: 1441 daily Google searches - 7 competing webpages Keyword phrase #2: 1542 daily Google searches - 125 competing webpages Keyword phrase #3: 1526 daily Google searches - 925 competing webpages *NOTE: I came up with the competing webpages by placing the keyword phase inside of quotation marks in the Google search box Those search counts are daily numbers from Google searches, not monthly. So I am looking at a total daily count of 4509. That's awesome. And ranking high should not be a problem because of the low competiton. Look at KW phrase #1. There are only 7 pages to compete with it. My goal is to have ALL of the first page of Google for that keyword phrase. These three keyword phrases are very closely connected within its niche, making targeting even easier. So I am pretty confident that I can generate a fair amount of traffic. But how to make it profitable? This is niche is unique (its health related). There isn't anything on Clickbank that addresses it. I found one affiliate program on Commission Junction that pays between $5-10 per lead. I have applied for the affiliate program a few days ago, but haven't been approved yet (I just emailed them regarding how long it generally takes to get applications approved). Other than that, I will be using Google Adsense to generate the $25 per day needed to reach my goal. I know that it doesn't pay out the best, but because of the uniqueness of the niche, I can't seem to find many affiliate programs to promote. So I took the main word of my keyword phrases, and placed it in the Spyfu.com tool. It shows just 2 advertisers, but the Cost/Click value shows: $0.62 - $1.99. So I am going to estimate that I should make on average $0.50 per click. And if I use a conservative 10% CTR from my Adsense ads, then I will need 500 unique visitors a day to my blog to hit my daily income objective. Here's the math: (500 visitors X 10% CTR = 50 click X $0.50 = $25 per day goal) I know that I am not including the affiliate leads, but there's no guarantee I'll get apprved. When I do, I'll factor them into the equation. Are my numbers ok? Too high, too low? I have already signed up for the free blog at Blogger and set up the template. When I get approved for the affiliate program, I am going to use a button they provide which has an EPC of about $50 (to the my knowledge, this means that it generates about $50 in profits for every 100 impressions). I am going to place it on the top right corner. I have two skyscrapers going down the right side, with a small banner adsense ad at the end of the post. I have already written up one post, consisting on one way to use the keyword phrase I'm targeting. I also installed Statcounter code to keep track of the traffic. Here's my next step: 1. I want to get at least one article written and submitted to Ezinearticles.com today. Hopefully it gets published before the weekend, and I can get some early stats from the blog. I am going to write the article around KW phrase #1 (1441 daily demand/7 competition). If I can't rank on the first page of Google with it, then I might as well hang up my keyboard. I'll keep you guys posted. Best wishes, Joe P.S. I started this thread on the Warrior Forum. But one of the Mods had a problem with it, so I moved it over here. I just don't want anyone to think that I am spamming forums.
Update from things I accomplished yesterday: Ok, I think I may have my first obstacle. Going through Ezinearticles.com guidelines, I see that my keyword is on the list of topics that they will not accept. Well actually, the guidelines state that the "promotion of" this particular keyword is prohibited. But I'm not promoting it. I'm just acting like a reporter and writing facts about it. So my articles should be fine. But again, we'll have to wait and see. I just wrote and submitted my first article to EZA. It is based around Keyword Phrase #1. I hope to get it approved before the weekend. And when (if) it does, it should bring in a steady stream of traffic for quite some time (there's only 7 competing webpages - how far can I fall?). Best wishes, Joe
UPDATE #2 From Yesterday's Actions: I just submitted the blog post to Digg.com. I have never really gotten much success with getting traffic from Digg, but I just want the page to be indexed by Google as soon as possible. Maybe having a backlink from Digg will help. I also plan to join a forum where these keyword phrases will be relevant. Actually, I plan to join the top five forums. But for tonight, i'm just going to join the top one. I am going to become a member, and link back to my blog from my forum signature. I will then ask questions and respond to a few threads. I won't spam, of course. I will either add my own perspective on the topic at hand, or I will ask honest questions. Like I said, I don't have any prior experience with this niche, but I do have a monitary motivation to learn about it as best as I can. This may bring some traffic back to my blog. But the main thing I am getting is another backlink for my blog on a high ranking, relevant website. Nothing going on yet. I will post any results that I see. Joe
I have bought one for the same reason and I would add my one as well. Its a tech blog. BTW I am experimenting on the video ads by adsense.
I don't have too much extra time (I do have very full plate in front of me in terms of some writing projects that I am working on), but I want to do at least one thing each day to grow this blog. Today, I want to write and submit another article to EZA, and write up a new post on the blog (centeredt around one of the keyword phrases). My first article still hasn't been approved by EZA (hopefully happens tomorrow). I have posted in a couple of niche related forums and submitted the blog post to Digg.com. That accounts for the scattering of early traffic. Here are my results for the blog: Day 2 Unique Visitors Total: 6 Unique Visitors Per Day: 3 Income Earned Total: $0.00 Income Earned Per Day: $0.00 Actions Taken: Total Posts In My Blog: 1 Articles Written and Submitted To EZA: 1 Articles That Are Live: 0 Forums I Have Posted In: 2 Blogs I Have Posted In: 0
great, I will keep watching on this post. hope this will open my mind about blogging, how to blog, creating articles and start to make my first blog.
UPDATE: Ok, I was able to write and submit an article to EZA. I was also able to write another post on the blog. That's probably all that I'll do today. Things should really start to pick up when the articles to start getting published. I'll you guys posted. Best wishes, Joe Here are my results for the blog: Day 2 Unique Visitors Total: 10 Unique Visitors Per Day: 5 Income Earned Total: $0.00 Income Earned Per Day: $0.00 Actions Taken: Total Posts In My Blog: 2 Articles Written and Submitted To EZA: 2 Articles That Are Live: 0 Forums I Have Posted In: 2 Blogs I Have Posted In: 0
hey joemack, Start setting a daily target of back-link building to get more traffic. Maybe 5 per day.
While it may be disappointing to have not gotten any ciicks yet, keep up the faith. You are taking some good steps towards building a successful blog. Like noobie2shoes said, building up backlinks will do a great job of helping increase your traffic. Good luck!
I have never milked a blogger blog of more than $15 a day. And I did that in a span of 6 months. Good luck to this experiment, I am subscribed
Hey, thanks for the suggestion. Five backlinks a day seems feasable. How do you suggest I best create back-links? So far, I have create two back-links by posting a response on two threads (again, it wasn't spam) in forums targeted to the blog's niche. Also, what effect does posting multiple times to the same forum/blog have? Is each post considered a separate back-link? Or is it negated because it's from the same forum? Ideally, I would like to participate in 3-5 forums dedicated to this niche. Not every day or anything. Maybe just once a week, I'll visit each one and respond to a thread. But I also want to focus on building up backlinks. Any opinions would be cool. Joe
Today's My Birthday.... I was really concerned last night because there are only 2 Google Adwords advertisers. I made a few cosmetic changes to the blog, and when I checked it out, only one or two of the ads being displayed were relevant to the keywords I am targeting. The ads were mostly about blogs and blog promotions. But before doing anything drastic, I decided to wait a bit and check back this morning. Today, almost all of the Adsense ads are relevant to my niche, which is good. Here's how I have the blog set up right now: - two long skyscrapers along the left side of the page - one more half-banner just after the blog post It's not very pretty, but we'll see how it performs. I have applied to several CJ affiliate promotions, but have not been approved yet for any of them. Because there aren't many directly related affiliate programs, I am thinking about going a different route. I'm considering adding an affiliate program that appeals to the masses (like debt, dating, weight loss, etc). An example of one I am considering is for a credit card company, which has NOTHING to do with the blog's niche. But, credit cards is something that most people have. Not only that, but this particular credit card company is averaging $400+ EPC over the last 3 months. What does that mean? Well EPC represents the earnings paid out per 100 clicks. So this credit card company is average $400 for every 100 clicks for the past 3 months! But, my traffic will not be targeted, so I don't expect to get anywhere near $400. If I got just 10% of that ($40), I would be perfectly happy because it would more than accomplish my goal. I'll keep you guys posted on where I will go with this. I have decided not to write anymore articles to EZA until I know that they will publish them. I don't want to keep submitting articles to them if they won't accept them. The reason for this uncertainty is that keyword I am targeting is a topic that EZA may not approve. According to their guidelines, they won't approve articles that "promote" the keyword. I submitted my first articles two days ago so I should know something today. Again, I'll keep you guys posted. Best wishes, Joe P.S. If you guys (and ladies) would like to comment on my efforts and plan, good or bad, by all means do so. Any feedback is appreciated.
Quick Update: I just checked my email and saw that my first articles was approved by EZA. Sweet!! This is good for two reasons: 1. I can now start getting more traffic. If you remember, I wrote the articles around the keyword phrase that gets 1441 searches a day, but only has 7 competing webpages. 2. I can continue with my EZA article marketing strategy. Oh, and the third reason is because it adds a strong backlink to my blog (strong in the sense that its on a high ranking site - its not very relevant to my specific niche though). So now that I know that EZA will be ok with my articles, I'll try and write/submit another one day. Keep you guys posted. Joe P.S. I hope people don't get mad at me for posting too much. I'm not doing it to spam the forum or to unnecessarily bump my thread to the top. I just do it when I have an update to document.