Well, I am about a week and a half into my new full-time IM life and things aren’t nearly as productive as I had hoped. I only have 8 hours without kids to work and within that time I still need to do shopping, housework, etc so I’m really not full-time. And now that I am working for the majority of the day I try not to be online once my kids are home. I may jump on for an hour or so after they go to bed but that’s about it. I am also trying to limit my weekend time.
I have to admit, I’m a bit conflicted. When I am not on my computer I’m thinking about how I would like to be working on my computer which is a bit scary (is there an IM 12 step program?). So it has been an effort to stay away from online activities when I should be spending time with my family. But the main reason I am not planning to return to work outside the home is to have a simpler life, that was always the plan so I can’t neglect my household/family duties in pursuit of IM. I need to find the balance.
As far as moving forward, I have been struggling with coming up with a firm plan. My problem is that as I look back over all the work I have done over the past 1.5 years, I’m not seeing any true success. Yes, I am making some money, but not alot. And sites that I feel should have done better monetarily just are not meeting expectations.
For example, I made a niche site over a year ago which has more than 30 posts. It gets a trickle of traffic, but it is a competitive niche and I haven’t done too much promotion. BUT, when I placed adsense on this site, I received no clicks after more than 100 impressions. By all standard niche evaluations, this should be a good earning niche since it has high CPC values. Yet I was unable to make any adsense income and have since pulled it from the site.
This type of result leaves me a bit confused, and I have more than one site like that. I am pretty sure I want to focus on building more authority-type sites, but I could really be spinning my wheels if I build a large site that ends up to be a poor earner. I realize you can’t over-analyze this stuff or you’ll never do anything but still, I am being a bit more cautious in choosing some new niches.
This week I have been doing a bit of article backlinking as I had a few articles laying around that needed to be used. I got ArticleBot up and running, but I’m still not sure how useful it will be. After 2 test runs I didn’t end up with too many indexed links, but I am going to try spinning the articles next time and see if that helps. I am also using Link Racer and SocialAdr – two service from WF WSOs – to help backlinking. So far, so good.
I am also planning to try some good old-fashioned article marketing. I have one CB sniper which has made a few sales so I thought I would try to get a few more sales with article marketing. I also found a few other CB products I would like to promote. If they work out then I would consider building a site around those niches.
I also have some newer sites that I need to build up a bit and start backlinking. Since I’m unsure about the profitability of certain niches, I figure I might as well try to rank the sites I do have and see how they perform. Niches that do well are worth pursuing further.I may start testing niches first on web 2.0 sites before diving in completelely.
That’s where things stand at the moment. My adsense income was dreadful during the first half of the month but seems to be picking up a little. Next week is spring break (no school) so I will have very limited time to work. And in about 2 months will be summer break which will make me almost useless, so I need to get moving now!
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I think it is easy to become engrossed in your work when it comes to IM. I actually had to sit down and make a very DETAILED (hour-by-hour) schedule for each day, and for tasks that were not completed by this time — well they would have to wait until the next day.
I don’t have a family to raise (just my pooch), but with an upcoming wedding and tons of other responsibilities — working 13 hours days online was simply not good for my health.
I think it is important when you are just starting out that you stick to one system and tweak it as you go along until you can set it on autopilot because it is bringing up.
The unfortunate reality about IM is that there is so much too learn and so many different systems that there aren’t enough hours in a day and you’ll wind up dropping your other projects to hope on the newest, latest, and greatest one.
I’m curious where you have adsense on your site that didn’t get any clicks. Most people find having one big rectangle of adsense in-between the post title and the post body will get the most clicks.
Also what theme are you using? I have found using a 2 column theme works best for getting the most adsense clicks.
I do not recommend building a site out with 30+ posts without testing it out. TNB or “Amy” style blogs are great but why put all that work into a site if its going to be a dud? Test the site and if it looks like its going to do good then continue to add posts.
Hi Shelly,
I think I started with a 3 column theme then switched to a 2 column theme, no effect. I had adsense in the sidebar and above the post title. I started with the smaller block and then tried the larger rectangle above the post. No effect.
Yeah, I agree with not building bigger sites without knowing if they are profitable. That site was a TNB site, now I know.
Try removing the sidebar adsense. Have just one adsense unit per page, and make it the big rectangle in between the post title and the post body.
What color are your adsense links? The color can make a big difference.
Here’s one of Amy’s sites – hxxp://www.getridofpimples.org/
See how she has the adsense placed between the post title and the post body? This is what you want but I recommend going with different link color, a brighter blue. Changing the post text on your site from black to a dark gray will make your adsense links stand out more and will help with CTR.
I don’t use 3 column themes, the less links on a site the better, I want people to click on the adsense links.
I may have removed the sidebar block when I tried the big rectangle but now I can’t remember. Usually my adsense links match the theme color but I do think I tried another color also. I did the usual things to increase CTR but nothing seem to help.
I won’t do the adsense block under the title. Google is a bit ambiguous about when this is allowed and is not, and if the title is confusing (“cheap widgets on sale”) then that is against their rules. Rather than worry about whether one of my titles is improper, I just don’t mess with it.
I am more conservative than most with adsense. I don’t want to do anything that could potentially risk my account so I play it very safe. I have another site that does get clicks that was set up the same as the one that doesn’t get clicks. I tend to think it is a niche issue although I am sure there are ways I could have done better.
I actually have a smaller site in the same general niche which still has adsense on it. It has gotten at least a couple of clicks, though not many, so I may just tweak that site a bit and see what happens.
Thanks for your advice!
I wouldn’t feel too bad about choosing niches. I’ve been doing this for a year now, and I still occasionally choose a niche that I’m absolutely “sure” will make money, only to watch to flop around with low adsense.
Just keep practicing, you’ll get the hang of it. Eventually you’ll stumble on to a method that works for you, and your income will really start to climb.
I think it is difficult to anticipate what will be the response of the visitors to your website. I have several adsense-based websites myself, and while they may all have a similar template, some of them show a high click through rate, while others have barely any click for the same number of impressions.
I think the reason is that some niche bring visitors that are only there to learn about the topic . Those people are less likely to click on an add than visitors that are looking for a product, a thing to buy or try.
Making websites is a hit and miss, you just have to keep trying.
Good point, Nat. I probably need to work on driving traffic to inner pages which having more of a buying or urgency type of keyword.
What is missing in your Adsense business is: high CPC (should be $0.25+), and high CTR (should be at least 10% to 20%), with this two factors in place, you sites can be profitable with very little traffic (e.g. 200 uv / mo).
Hi Carrie,
I am new to the site-I just came across your site, and I have to say I totally agree with Flippa Chick. I have to have a schedule and it is actually taped to my computer screen-if not I would browse blogs and forums all day long!!
I quit my job 3 years ago–good for you I noticed that in one of your posts. I quit mine for content sites not just per say for building Niche sites. I just switch over to sniper sites (well in a couple of weeks I will be
)
I was curious how many sites you have-$200 seems pretty good!
-Kelly
Hi Kelly,
The ~$200 per month comes from one medium size personal site I set up many years ago plus a smaller niche site plus eHow articles. My total number of sites is in flux right now as I am planning to build some new ones and ditch some older ones which just aren’t doing much.
Carrie, great commenting going on here!
You are with Amazon.com or .co.uk, right? If Adsense is not working after fiddling around with it for while then try out Amazon products?
Personally, my own favorite is eBay. Its much tougher to join their affiliate scheme now than ever before, but it can be worth making the effort for sure – a dud adsense site can be a hot eBay products site in short shrift!
Regards
Joseph
Hi Joseph,
I applied for eBay awhile back and was turned down so I haven’t thought about trying again. I actually used an older, established website so not sure what their reasoning was.
I finally joined CJ and there are some affiliates there that match with my adsense site duds, so I’ll try that route for now. And yes, I am in the USA.
If the sites still aren’t profitable I’ll let the domains expire and move the content to Hubpages or Info Barrel. That’s what I am doing with another site I gave up on. Hate to let decent content go to waste.