This has been an exciting month! We closed on the new house, got it painted and cleaned and, with the help of a lot of friends and family, we got moved and mostly settled in.
I've got to say I am now super motivated to see if I can get these websites making enough money to cover the house payment.
....
Lessons From July:
It's More Than Blogging
Really, these websites are really just blogs. Most of them are even built on Wordpress, one of the largest blogging platforms.
All I am doing is blogging. Anybody can blog.
The only difference - and the reasons these make money while blogs do not - is that my articles focus on keywords and repeat that main keyword (or key phrase) at least 1% of the article. (For those of you who don't have a math degree, a 500 word articles has 5 mentions of the key phrase)
That's the difference.
....
The Power of Long Tail Keywords
I went through Google Analytics this month and took a look at which searches were driving the most traffic to my webpages. Most people don't look for "how to paint rock", instead, most people search for "How to paint my rock furnace so that it looks like natural stone" (something my wife did an amazing job at this month).
Case in point, I have an article targeting the search phrase "Tassimo T-Discs".
It's never done amazingly.
I suddenly noticed last month that there was a surge of visits to my beloved Tassimo article. Turns out, that Starbucks is discontinuing Tassimo. I rewrote the article, included the phrase "Starbuck Discontinues Tassimo T Discs" 2-3 times, and provided some relevant information as to what the options were for Tassimo lovers now that Starbucks is out of the picture. I also added an affiliate link to some of the remaining Starbucks product that Amazon had, which provided my one Amazon Sale for the month.
I did the same thing for the top articles on each of my websites, found the top searches, and rewrote portions of each article to better answer those users' needs. Google loved it and moved these articles up in the rankings, and I saw a nice increase in traffic for these pages.
Expanding Your Range
A keyword may look awesome on paper, like some of my alternative energy keywords do. However, we (my wife has had to help me. I'm not that good at beauty stuff) just started this new website about beauty topics. It has half of the articles on it (9) that the alternative energy website does (23), and only about 1/10th the number of the backlinks (5 versus 60) . In June it had nearly twice the visitors and made almost as much money as the older, more worked on site.
Both sites are going to be winners, but you can believe that I am super stoked about growing the beauty site.
However, you need to write several articles and explore many keywords before you find your winners. It's the shotgun approach.
Show Me The Money!!
Last month: $5.44
Adsense: $10.83
Amazon: $2.98
Chitika: $0.79
This Month: $14.60
That's a 168% more money than last month. Pretty cool.
Total Visits: 1,494 (Total visits are something I am still struggling with. The software I've been using also counts repeat visits and my own visits. However, I used it for last month, so I'll use it again this month)
We're mostly settled into the new house. Anxious to see how focused I can be in August's sweltering heat!
I've got to say I am now super motivated to see if I can get these websites making enough money to cover the house payment.
....
Lessons From July:
It's More Than Blogging
Really, these websites are really just blogs. Most of them are even built on Wordpress, one of the largest blogging platforms.
All I am doing is blogging. Anybody can blog.
The only difference - and the reasons these make money while blogs do not - is that my articles focus on keywords and repeat that main keyword (or key phrase) at least 1% of the article. (For those of you who don't have a math degree, a 500 word articles has 5 mentions of the key phrase)
That's the difference.
....
The Power of Long Tail Keywords
I went through Google Analytics this month and took a look at which searches were driving the most traffic to my webpages. Most people don't look for "how to paint rock", instead, most people search for "How to paint my rock furnace so that it looks like natural stone" (something my wife did an amazing job at this month).
Case in point, I have an article targeting the search phrase "Tassimo T-Discs".
It's never done amazingly.
I suddenly noticed last month that there was a surge of visits to my beloved Tassimo article. Turns out, that Starbucks is discontinuing Tassimo. I rewrote the article, included the phrase "Starbuck Discontinues Tassimo T Discs" 2-3 times, and provided some relevant information as to what the options were for Tassimo lovers now that Starbucks is out of the picture. I also added an affiliate link to some of the remaining Starbucks product that Amazon had, which provided my one Amazon Sale for the month.
I did the same thing for the top articles on each of my websites, found the top searches, and rewrote portions of each article to better answer those users' needs. Google loved it and moved these articles up in the rankings, and I saw a nice increase in traffic for these pages.
Expanding Your Range
A keyword may look awesome on paper, like some of my alternative energy keywords do. However, we (my wife has had to help me. I'm not that good at beauty stuff) just started this new website about beauty topics. It has half of the articles on it (9) that the alternative energy website does (23), and only about 1/10th the number of the backlinks (5 versus 60) . In June it had nearly twice the visitors and made almost as much money as the older, more worked on site.
Both sites are going to be winners, but you can believe that I am super stoked about growing the beauty site.
However, you need to write several articles and explore many keywords before you find your winners. It's the shotgun approach.
Show Me The Money!!
Last month: $5.44
Adsense: $10.83
Amazon: $2.98
Chitika: $0.79
This Month: $14.60
That's a 168% more money than last month. Pretty cool.
Total Visits: 1,494 (Total visits are something I am still struggling with. The software I've been using also counts repeat visits and my own visits. However, I used it for last month, so I'll use it again this month)
We're mostly settled into the new house. Anxious to see how focused I can be in August's sweltering heat!
