Farms, Pick Your Own Fruit and Orchards In or Near Westchester County - Westchester NY Moms
Farms, Pick Your Own Fruit and Orchards In or Near Westchester County - Westchester NY Moms
It Was The Best of Times, It Was The Worst of Times - March 2011 Income Report
March was a very interesting month for me.The Best Of Times
A lot of good things happened to my niche site in March. After finally realizing that I needed to invest more in my niche site in order to see some positive returns, I purchased Blog Blueprint to help me with backlinking and I could not have been happier. It's easy to use and gets results. I purchased it on March 6 and by March 15 the traffic started creeping in:
Before Blog Blueprint I was maybe seeing 2 visitors a day, but after 9 days of use, adding no more than 10 backlinks a day, the traffic started to shoot up.
I peaked at 27 visitors a day. And my highest rank was 22.
Now that may not sound like much but it was clear that I was attracted highly targeted visitors:
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| Yay Earnings! |
I can finally type, "Earnings for March"....$20.52 (of course I haven't turned a profit, but you have to start somewhere)
I'm rich! Well not quite. But most of those sales occurred over a 4 day period and considering I never ranked higher than 22 for my main keyword I would call this a success. Now just imagine if I was ranking #1 for my main keyword! I still wouldn't be rich, but I sure would be happy.
For now that's all I can do. Imagine.
The Worst of Times
If you scroll back up and take a look at the traffic graph you will notice a little downhill thingy happening.
Yea, Google had to fook with my head.
So after feeling like the world's beset internet marketer, the Big G decided to de-rank my niche site. I went from the top of page 3 for my keyword, seeing traffic, converting, all that great stuff, to some nether-world otherwise known as page 79 of google search results!
Once I got the crying under control I sought out some advice in the Twittersphere and Warrior Forum and found that this is to be expected with a site that is just about 3 months old. So now I continue to use Blog Blueprint to backlink, but am varying it up a bit by creating product review videos (thank you Fiverr), profile backlinks, and also blasting mass article submissions to some of my existing articles on Ezine to see if that will help too.
Right now the site is dancing (with two left feet). It's gone much higher, a little lower, higher again, and just a tad bit lower. I want to add two more product reviews and I want this dancing to stop (I hate dancing, always have. I was that guy who thought he was too cool for it, but in reality, I'm just terrible at it, so I pretended to be too cool instead). My friend Michelle of My Passive Income Online Blog said to give it about two weeks or so and the site should emerge from this dance in a stronger position than when it started. So, we'll see what happens.
In the meantime I am looking to start two more niche sites (one of which will be monetized only via Adsense). I guess we just gotta keep on keeping on!
How Blog Blueprint Saved My Internet Marketing Ass
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| Yea, that was me! |
If you've been following my experiences as a rookie internet marketer, then it comes as no surprise that I have been operating under a cloud (a voluminous, dark, gray cloud) of frustration!
Come to think of it, looking back at my old posts, it has reduced me to a sniveling, whiny little baby.
Not what I intended!
I started this endeavor knowing full well (maybe not "full") that it would be some time before those passive dollars would magically appear in my bank account and I prepared myself by defining success in terms other than just making boatloads of dough.
So what the hell happened anyway
I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere and the time I was putting in at night, after a long day of work, was all for naught. I knew if I had to persevere if I wanted to find any type of success but the forces were working against me, and I was beginning to feel its weight.
And it was suffocating me.
I hadn't given up per se, but I was doing less and less with my niche site to help it with each passing day. At that point, my main backlinking method was blog commenting. BLOG COMMENTING.
And it gets worse from there. I began to substitute reading and putzing around online for doing anything with my site in the name of progress! Instead of building backlinks, I would look for tweets about backlinking. Or read someone else's blog, drool over their success, and trick myself into thinking that will be me in a years time.
All I was doing was tricking myself.
A Change In Tide
I needed to shift my perception and treat my pursuits more like a business. Businesses require investments in order to succeed and that is what I did. I made some investments.
I bought Market Samurai and the first thing I did was use their rank checker to find out exactly where the hell
I stood before the eyes of Google. As of purchase time I was ranked at 256 for my main keyword. I was pleasantly surprised (apparently in my frustration of searching for my site in Google I would give up after page 20!)
Then I heard great things about Blog Blueprint from fellow awesome bloggers Pat Flynn and Moon Hussain. This was the greatest investment I made for my business so far.
Blog Blueprint is a backlinking service that allows you to place up to 20 100-word posts per day on their network of high PR blogs. Each post is allowed 1 anchor text backlink, giving you the possibility 20 backlinks per day! And all are do-follow as well!
I started using Blog Blueprint on March 8. As of this writing, I am now ranked 93 for my keyword when doing an exact match search! That's a movement of 163 positions! I already surpassed the goal I set for myself in my last post of cracking the top 100 by end of April!
This feels good!
Not only has Blog Blueprint surpassed expectations that I had previously set for myself, it has re-energized me as well. The taste of success has laser-adjusted my focus. Knowing that one system is working means that other systems can as well as long as I keep at it. And now more then ever I need to diversify where my backlinks are coming from. I don't want to rely only on Blog Blueprint because I don't think it alone will get me to the top spot in Google.
If you want to give Blog Blueprint a whirl, you should. It will set you back $57/month, but consider it a long-term investment that can be used on an infinite number of your sites (no need to purchase again and again for each site you create!)
*Note: The links to Blog Blueprint are affiliate links. If you decide to purchase and do so through my link, I am truly grateful!
My Second Ever Income Report - February 2011
February came and went and all without a sale but definitely with some changes (and these changes cost some money!). The theme for me in February was frustration.
Mounting frustration.
It's to be expected, I guess, especially for a new internet marketer. In my last post I wrote about my backlinking hell and since then I have taken steps to climb the depths of Google rankings from the dungeons to at least the cellar.
It required me to make some investments.
I had to lay out some cash.
Something I said I wasn't going to do (sorry honey, remember I love you!)
But I think I was being shortsighted. I realized that I needed to treat this endeavor more like a business and less like a hobby. And business requires investment. Investment which will show a return (hopefully). So I made three purchases during the month of February to increase my efficiencies and mentally get me in a better place.
The first purchase was to help with article marketing. I purchased The Best Spinner to spin articles that I can distribute to various article directories and gain backlinks. The marketers I admire most all use this product so I have no doubt in my mind that it is a good product. I am still figuring the software out (and right now it seems that it takes me longer to spin an article than actually write one!) but I can see that it is a very handy tool.
Next purchase was Market Samurai. This was more of an emotional purchase for me rather one that is completely necessary for me at this time. If you don't know, Market Samurai is the premier keyword research tool available. It not only does in depth keyword research, but evaluates competition, manages the ranking of your sites, and a whole lot of other things I need to figure out. It was more an emotional purchase because I was getting so frustrated with my niche site, I started to look for new keywords to monetize. I needed this break.
The final purchase was Blog Blueprint. This is a tool that gets you contextual backlinks from high PR domains. It's real easy to use and lots of people can attest to its success (Pat Flynn uses it as part of his backlinking strategy that works, and Moon Hussain is experimenting with Blog Blueprint for her niche sites as well). All you do is write a 100-word posts and include an anchor text backlink and Blog Blueprint does the rest. I started using this two days ago and built 8 backlinks so far. We shall see.
So lets get to the numbers.
Amazon Affiliates....$0
The Best Spinner...$77/year
Market Samurai....$147
Blog Blueprint....$57/month
February Income...-$281.00
As you can see, Blog Blueprint and The Best Spinner have recurring charges. The downside to that is, I can really get myself into a financial hole if I don't start generating some income. But the upside is that I can use these tools on an infinite amount of sites, so this should pay for itself eventually.
Eventually.
My Niche Site Progress - An (un)Update
Sure finding a niche to monetize can be time consuming, but is it really "difficult?"
Being a doctor, that's a hard job. One bad day and someone literally loses a life. Cops, firefighters, they put their lives on the line for us all the time. Physicists, molecular biologists, that's some hard shit there.
But internet marketing. Come on. This stuff is a walk in the park.
Then why the hell am I having such a hard time with it?
Let me give you an (un)update on what's been going on with my attempt to build passive income with a monetized niche site.
Previous posts covered why I chose to monetize my niche site with Amazon, how I built the site and filled it with content. Next comes the backlinking.
I had a sorta, kinda, maybe kind of plan. It consisted of:
- blog commenting
- writing some articles (I won't call this article marketing)
- some forum profiles
- social bookmarking
- a little pinging action
Oy!
I've been at this diligently for a good six weeks. I get some organic traffic to my site via long-tail keywords (keywords that I am not choosing to actively rank for but are relative to my main keyword. For me, these long-tails are product names+some term after it. So, if you were ranking for mountain bike, a long-tail keyword could be "Specialized bike seat") but it only amounts to an average of 4 visitors a day. For the month of February I have so far 35 clicks on Amazon but no sales.
But for the life of me I can't even crack the top 1000 in Google search results for my main keyword. And, I think, here's why
I left a comment on a post related to my niche on geniusbeauty.com (I found the site by reverse engineering my competition. Note to self, write about this at a later date). A couple days later my comment was accepted and all is good. A few days later I am checking the amount of backlinks pointing to my site with Yahoo Site Explorer and all of a sudden I have 4000 backlinks!
All from geniusbeauty.com!
That's a lot of links and it happened in a very short amount of time. The damn site uses a recent comments widget, so my keyword rich anchor text backlink ended up on every single page on this site (and this stupid site about celebrity gossip, makeup, and other bullshit has thousands and thousands of pages). So Google sees a brand new site instantly receive thousands of backlinks all from the same site.
Well, I'm fucked.
I posted comments with a different name, dusting off the old AOL email address, on the sites newest posts to push myself off the recent comments widget and have since then seen a steady decrease in my backlinks. But I have a feeling I landed in the dreaded Google sandbox.
Oh, and this happened not once, but twice more. I didn't get the same amount of backlinks, but it couldn't have been good.
So, I thought I would just slog on through this but lately, that small tiny voice in the back of my head, that small tiny voice of self doubt has grown into a full on choir. We're talking church bells and all (and I'm Jewish!)
I haven't seen any improvement in my site's ranking. And because I haven't seen any improvement in my site's ranking I have been working on it less and less (kinda the opposite thing to do, huh?).
If I'm stuck in a sandbox or whatever, why try and get out?
Eric over at My 4 Hour Workweek just wrote about impatience being a killer to the new entrepreneur. And I do have a mighty bad case of it. He suggests that it is okay to walk away from whatever it is your doing, whether it be an hour or a few days, as long as you return to what it is your working on. The break can lead to fresh perspective and leave you feeling recharged.
Well, I walked away, and for a minute there I thought I might not return.
But, return I am. Doing.
I wrote about goals in my very first post and I think what I need to do is talk about smaller goals with deadlines in the very near future. So that is what I am going to do here. I am totally switching up how I backlink and want to give myself until end of April to at least crack the top 100 for my main keyword. If I am not in the top 100 by end of April I am going to move on. I will basically start over.
At least I have a plan. That wasn't so hard now, was it?
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