100 Day Challenge - Small > Authority & Reach $100/day

I have a feeling that within this time frame... I am going to need it.

Welcome to my 100 day experiment in turning small sites into authority sites!

I really wish that I could give this person their credits for the following quote but I do not remember who said it.

"Built an authority site and never looked back, it's presence within the niche is similar to an elephant at a tea party rally."

This has been in my head for a while now as I was thinking up this plan. I bet you also notice how many of the large sites can elbow you out of your position by simply mentioning a product or service.

The main thing I did was look over my neglected health site and really correct many of the problems as well as trim it down. When it was started I got distracted quite fast and left a lot of loose ends on it (pages under construction... don't you simply hate seeing those.:p I bet that Google's robot also loved all of the dead ends with empty pages.

The site is now trimmed down to 26 pages... this makes getting this to over a 100+ pages even harder.

After a further examination I also noticed that the payout rate I am getting on both of these sites does not quite make sense.

From spyfu:

Health site - average $5 per click
Product site - average $.40 per click

Reality:

Health site - average $0.19 per click
Product site - average $1 per click

On the health site this could be due to people clicking on the bottom ads, as the one on the top pays out the most and the amount decreases with each ad... but still... $0.19 ???

- Day 100 -

I have placed 36 posts into the que of BMR (outsourced) for the health site (main keyword, and 3 other pages) and will have it go out at 1-3 per day. The last algorithm update makes it very important to control the velocity of the links being released.

Placed one article for each site into AMR and set the output for 10 per day... this might be small, but I like to do a lot of different types of link building and if I set something too high it might get me in trouble. Also I do not want to have Google see that I am getting 50 links per day for three months and then only 5 or 10.

Set up a fan page on facebook for my health site and already have two fans without any promotion... don't know much about social media but am going to figure out as much as I can during this challenge and share it with you guys.

I wrote 4 articles for the health site. It takes me a while as I really make sure that the information is solid, go for at least 700+ words (rarely have anything with less) and theme it really well using Web content studio.

Also scheduled for my squidoo anchors (both sites) to get plummeted for the next two days with blog posts from backlinks genie (have two accounts).

I never mentioned that this will be done with zero help, as this is a business and if I was in the construction world I wouldn't attempt building a house without powertools in the same amount of time.

Thanks for your support and I will keep the updates coming... next one in a day or two.


For those that still have trouble even making small niche sites, leave your questions as well... as I had good success with that without any tools when first starting out a few months back.

Click on the Thanks button if you enjoy the post

It seems like that it the way to go with Adsense. How long did it take you to get the site built up into an authority one and how many pages does it currently have?

The great thing is that so many working systems are available that no one can make an excuse for not succeeding... other than not putting in the work.

So very few who are building niche type sites fail to r4ealize this ... one can argue all day about which paid or free keyword selection tool, back links tool, etc. is correct. But we actually have a tool that _is_ always correct, so far as Google are concerned, and it doesn't cost, it pays.

There's no way to exaggerate the authenticity of the results you'll get by just building 100 'xfactor'-style sites and then looking at your SERP rankings and AdSense results in a few months. Google will tell you in actual dollars and cents votes which sites it values.

Then instead of crying about Google 'hating' some sites, just dump them and focus on what Google has already paid you to focus on.

Thank you... with these types of threads it is always hard to tell as even some of the best GURUs have failed... seen it before.

The only thing I can promise is that I will finish the task and give it my best... however, failure is not something that I take likely so expect a fight.

How time flies when you are working hard... lol

I completely understand how the algo changes wreck havoc in the IM community but that is because of the many systems with weak foundations that are followed. It just amazes me that I am still getting offers about auto-blogging and such nonsense after Google has officialy figured it out and thrown the concept out the window. These types of programs have been available for many years and they all last no more than a few months... if you are lucky.

Enough rambling... we are going old school / back to the basics with this thread. Solid foundations and techniques that some of the best current money makers (white hat) are using to get their large sites ranking over and over again. At least that's what I have been able to get out of them... and now the time comes to see if they are really onto something or simply blowing smoke.

If this experiment is even partially successful, anyone will be able to tack it onto one of the small niche programs out there and seriously make a killing. Not trying to get ahead of myself but the fact is that the ways to make a small site profitably are already working (many available) and all we need now is a easy-to-understand way on how to expand these sites.

As I might be a bit all over the place, what I will try to do... is later sum up what I have done in a easy to see format so that everyone can have a little cheat sheet to look over (if people are interested.) The reason for not following a straight route is that this is not an assembly line and things/thoughts/events happen which make me either enhance or add something onto a previous idea. That's just the type of a business that this is.

I appreciate the support and hope that this really helps with what you guys are already doing or planning on doing next.

- Day 98 -

Within the last two days I have done the following:

• wrote 4 articles for the health site
• submitted 72 posts to BMR (health and product site)
  
• Studied on how to write/send press releases
  
• wrote 2 press releases for health site
• wrote 1 press release for product site
  
• searched for additional 8 keywords that I will write up on for the product site
  
• Sent 1500 blog posts to a Squidoo buffer (health site) aimed at money site
• Sent 1500 blog posts to a Squdioo buffer (product site) aimed at money site

There are various ways to use backlinks genie but what I have noticed that by sending multiple types of spammy links at them, even harder to rank for pages start to get indexed and sometimes come up quite high. I vary the type of web 2.0 properties that I create as well as from my experience having anymore than 10 Squidoo lenses pointed at one site is pointless. Some people say that you should create one squidoo lense for each site on your page but I would rather take than energy elsewhere. After 10 links from the same site, the strength of any additional ones becomes seriously diluted.

Backlinks Genie as well as SEO robot create these type of properties and I use that for that as well. I plan on creating a few batches for the different long tail keywords and throwing a ton of links at those to get them ranking.

My health site at the moment is ranking "80" for its root keyword (shorter version of the one I have in the URL) for 60,000 exact daily visits.:rolleyes:

This is due solely to the fact that I hit my buffer sides hard with backlinks. I haven't done it yet to the BMR posts as this might be a bit dangerous do to the fact that Google might one day figure out their network and devalue it but it sounds like an interesting experiment to do for maybe one or two pages.

I always like to experiment with either two or three properties to see if the results are similar. One could be lucky or a fluke so that is why I have chose two sites for the 100 day experiment as well.

Three would have been optimal, but due to my time constraints (still working on other sites) that would have been too much to do realistically.

Keep the comments, questions, suggestions coming...

I appreciate it, I looked at the bulk ping... but am still searching for something that can individually ping a list of links. I used to use pingdevice for that but it wouldn't ever complete the entire list and now simply shows an error upon submission.

Might be something with the amount of links... but I can't be bothered to break up my lists.

Let me know if you start offering something like that, very interested.

Day 93 - Week One Update!

It has been an interesting week in regards to the business. As I have never spent so much time working on the same sites, my patience has been tested beyond belief. There are so many other ideas and strategies going through my mind it is hard to stick with doing the same thing over and over.

The niche sites make it easier as although the process I have made is similar... the topic changes often. I guess it is a good thing that I picked something which I was interested in at least a bit so that I do not go completely nuts.

One process which was completely new to me was writing and submitting press releases.

This is what has been accomplished within the last 7 days:


Product Site

1 Press Release - webwire.com
8 pages added
Sent 5250 blog posts to web 2.0 buffer sites
Directory Power Submitter submission
35 article submissions

Health Site

2 Press Releases - webwire.com / Press Release Submitter (900 submissions) / 10 high PR free services
8 pages added
Sent 5250 blog posts to web 2.0 buffer sites
Directory Power Submitter submission
35 article submissions

The sites stats for end of week 1:

Product site - 51 uniques per day (16+ from last week)

Health site - 35 uniques per day (25+ from last week)

I am not sharing the revenue yet as I am not really seeing much of a difference at this point. It seems that Adsense CPC has went down over the entire board as although the traffic for all of my sites increased by about 25% but the daily average is about the same.

The point here is to get the traffic up substantially for both of these sites. Since I am still submitting them to directories, I want to keep my advertising and affiliate offers to a minimum as many of the better directory owners frown upon that.

My largest challenge this week is that I am leaving on a short vacation from Thursday to Sunday and will be unable to work on the sites. There are a lot of things to still work on and it is very important to set up some more things so that the sites can keep getting backlinks and get at least a small but necessary content update. I want Google to send its spiders to them every week like clockwork.

For those that are thinking of doing the same type of experiment as me, I will give this food for thought.

Make sure that you have other offers/affiliates available in the same niche alongside adsense. This can make a huge difference later on for numerous reasons.

Thanks for the support

I am glad that you are enjoying it.

I completely understand as that is exactly what I have noticed. People start off excited and then either fall off without saying anything or come back a year later excusing themselves. Probably due to the initial excitement wearing off...

As for me, I am not going anywhere and always start what I finish so no worries there.

Hey Tom, I suspect that if you were that big guy you would not be so much floating on that yellow inflatable in the pool as you would be lying on the bottom of the pool (with your ice cream and pizza)

As you mentioned a while back, chances are that a few more exact match domains will become available as lots of folks who got involved with IM fall by the way side, or find that they don't understand how to make money from ranking a webpage or pages even though they bought up a number of emd's in an early frenzy.

Joseph

If this helps you in some way then I have done my part

It's definitely not a fast way to riches, but combined with other ways of income... it's not too bad. However, this business will humble you sooner or later... sort of like the stock market.

The product site is structured in the following way

Home page

article about the main keyword

links to five other keywords (each page has an article)

link to a category called Articles or if the keyword was tires... I would call it "Tire accessories"

A couple links to other .gov or .edu sites in the same theme. These show Google that I am here to educate people and not simply sell them something.

That's basically it (always include the privacy policy, terms, contact etc... pages)

The health site was set up in the same way but I have changed it to look more like an authority site.

The home page is a directory, listing all of the categories and has links to the articles on it.

The category pages all have articles in their theme within them.

You are completely right... but it's okay to do with the program that I am using, and this is why.

As I started testing it, I noticed that it scrolls through the different categories are most of the sites it simply skips because it does not find one that is related.

Out of a 100 directories it maybe posts into 5-15 of them at the most.

So let's say that on an average after running the program for a couple days I do get 900 submissions done, this would break down to maybe a 150 per day.

Half of them are probably not going to be accepted or will send me an e-mail asking for a payment.

That would be about 75 per day at the most... which would normally be too many for a newer site but consider this.

If you have any experience with directory submission, you will know that it takes from a week to a month or more for the majority to get accepted. That spreads out the risk quite a bit and on top of that I believe that since Google already knows that this is an acceptable but forced type of gaining backlinks, they will not penalize you for getting them for a month or so and then stopping.

Even with all of this said, I wouldn't do 9000 back to back.... I do around 1500 per day, pausing the program for a few hours and restarting it again.... gives it a bit of randomness as well.

Hope that helps

Hi TomL,

Which directory submission software do you use ?

There are two different things that I do in order to target both the money site, as well as give the forced backlinks (web 2.0 properties) strength.

BMR is a high profile blog service which I use to link back to my money sites. It allows for contextual links which is something that Google loves... even more so now than before the last algorithm update.

The web 2.0 properties such as (Squidoo, blogger, wordpress) are known forced links... that means that both you and big G knows that it was you who made them. Normally these have a hard time getting indexed and not hold any strenght but after you send thousands of spammy blogs posts and high rank profiles their way... all of that spam is converted into a strong page which then is pointed towards your money site and shows up as a much stronger link.

If you simply throw all of the spam directly at your money site... the consequences could be very bad.

Hope that helps,

Tom

Day 79 - Week Three update

It's funny how time flies when you're working hard. Before going into a sites update I wanted to address some factors that need to be considered when attempting on making a larger site or internet marketing in general.

MOTIVATION

Let's not kid ourselves here, there are a 101 ways to give up on this type of an experiment or internet marketing altogether. That is one of the main reasons why I believe so many people start different things while they are excited, and either get regular jobs, become discontent (some turn into internet trolls) or just annoyed. This can wreck havoc on a person's life if they do not realize what is happening and get back in balance. This business is shown in a very glamorous way and does not need much upfront capital but don't let anyone fool you into thinking it is easy.

All of your pages will take some time to mature, and it seems that this time frame is becoming extended by Google with every update. This means that the work you are doing today will probably not show much signs of life for at least three months. This happens to all of us, especially with adsense. You create a small site and it hits the first page, brings in some $$ and falls into oblivion.... now depending on how you react, it will either come back stronger or never be seen again. Sound familiar?

Creating an authority site is no different and has its own ups and downs just like anyone else. I do not get phased by it much as I expected it and already go through it with the smaller sites. Stay realistic if you want to make it here, and adjust your plan accordingly to what you see happen. Since I have noticed that it is easier to rank long tails with three or more words than it is for two word phrases... that is what I do now. Even though I had many two word keywords on the to do list (and yes some two word sites ranked quickly and are making money) I chose to take the path of least resistance. Of course, I still check some for competition and if I see it is weak enough, I risk a couple hours of work and cash to dive into it head first.

RISK-AVERSION

If you are not a gambling type and feel safe in on steady waters, do not follow what others tell you to do. Everytime that you give up on something that you are already fairly experienced in.. you are jumping into turbulent waters. Even if there is money in it, and the person wrote a nice inexpensive guide for you... there are always things that are left out. How you handle those will separate you from a winner or a statistic of the ones who don't make it. Getting off the beaten path is great but only for those that can handle the pressure.

For those just starting out, do not think about doing what I am doing without some experience and really thinking about it. Creating small sites is still easy and yes, you can make money fairly quickly. I went a bit crazy and made a hundred in a span of three months (5+ page sites) and it worked out for me. Work at your own pace and do not switch methods until you have fairly perfected the one you are working on now.

Finally to the updates:

Health Site

4 pages added
Sent 5250 blog posts to web 2.0 and high profile buffer sites
35 article submissions
Ran the site through a directory submitter resulting in around 200 completed submissions
Added the site to sitevaluestats.com

Product Site

2 pages added
Sent 5250 blog posts to web 2.0 and high profile buffer sites
35 article submissions
Added the site to sitevaluestats.com

For those that never heard of it sitevaluestats.com is a quick way to create backlinks on sites which evaluate how much your site is worth. This is a free tool and is simply another way to diversify your links.

This week I am planning to do a bit more content and less spammy blog posts. Even though they are buffered by other sites, I do not want Google to start thinking something fishy is going on.

I am still working on the magnetic content for the site as well so hopefully I can get that into place on one of the sites and share that information with everyone on here.

Even though this experiment is scheduled for a 100 days, I am not going to simply give up on the sites or take in the money that come and lay back. These sites will continue to get maintained and increased until that $100 per day is reached with them. If it takes longer than a 100 days... well, then everyone will see for themselves what this process realistically looks like and decide on whether it's the right one for them.

The sites stats for end of week 2:

Product site - 44 uniques per day (-14 from last week)

Health site - 38 uniques per day (0+ from last week)

All of the linking that I have made to the product site is causing the site site to bounce around. This means that I have to keep up the velocity and the site should make it back into the top 3 or 2 back soon. It is a normal occurence when you start to give your site juice and is one of the reasons why many people are scared to touch any sites that are already making money.

Do not get scared of making mistakes, it is the quickest way to success (well, if you learn from them that is).

The health site received its first click that was in the $3+ range and that made me smile. After a while you learn to find motivation in the tiniest of successes even if you've been doing this for a whle. Since I know that the work I am doing now will pay off later it is the only thing to do to continue down the path without getting discouraged.

In two weeks I will probably create a larger post showing how much these sites are making and point out any progress that can be seen even in such a short amount of time.

Once again, guys, adsense and authority sites is not a way to overnight riches... overnight heart attack, maybe... but not riches.

Tom

Backlinks Genie does have a daily report... i have checked them numerous times and all the links seem to be there.

Rukshan,

I hope that the newbies as well as the more advanced users get something out of this.

Thanks for the comment,

Tom

Although most people would congratulate you on this plan... I have considered it before as well. The drawbacks of maintaining and keeping a 1000 sites on life support seems to exceed the benefits.

Some times I tend to get so caught up with work that I don't take the time to see if what I am doing is still making sense. A couple of months in the Internet World is like years offline.

You could probably compare it to dog years.

The comments and questions definitely help but I am really doing this as a thank you to some of the other people that I was able to learn from on here. Documenting is always a pain, but it has been one of the things that I did since the beginning and is very helpful in reverse engineering the successful sites.

That is one of the main reasons how I have been able to improve and multiply my initial income in a very short time.

Tom

Great stuff! Thanks for sharing

Tayuyaa,

I also mix up CPA offers and pay-per-install offers on some of my sites. The two I am working on here only contain Adsense at this moment.

If I had a banned account, I would either set up another one under a corporation or go with Chikita.

Do you know why they banned you?

Hope that helps,

Tom

Speaking from my perspective...I do think of micro niche way as a short term business but not in the way you suspect, I gather.

It's short-term in that it gives you a fairly quick return on your money. I can see a few dollars on a micro site in a few weeks...and I'm completely paid back within a few to several months. It may last years, but it's a quick turnaround on getting my investment back and starting to make a profit on the site.

Authority sites, on the other hand, might show you a few bucks early, but the investment (time and money) is much higher and more front loaded. Lots of content to even launch the site, lots more to build authority, etc. With an authority site, if you want to rank for a keyword that's not in the domain but's related, it will take time until your site has the strength to start boosting the other pages and getting them ranked, whereas with a micro niche, if I want to target a new keyword...I just make a new site!

Ultimately, the authority sites are better real estate to have. They tend to sell for more monthly revenue (if done right), have more use in a network of sites, etc. I'm MUCH rather have 15 sites making me 15k/month rather than 1,000 sites making me 15k/month...but it's more risk in sweat, blood, and tears to get started.

Great post, thank you for day to day reports that make me feel not alone...

will make my own challenge soon..