Income Report – June 2011

Justin Cooke Updated on February 29, 2020

Income Report - June 2011

Before you skip down to the bottom to see how our June turned out, I just wanted to thank you for all of the contact and encouragement we’ve had from you over the last month.  You’ve shown a tremendous amount of support and the ideas shared have been interesting and actionable.  We hope that as we continue to learn and grow that we can help you as much as you’ve helped us through this process.

That being said, we’ve had a really exciting month!  We were able to increase our AdSense earnings by close to 40% and increase our Flippa website sale earnings by more than $1,400!  We had our first $100+ day with AdSense and then did it again…and again…9 times in total with our best day at $134.22 on 6/30/11.  More than our earnings, one of our greatest successes this month had to do with the addition of agents and the replacement of ourselves as bottlenecks in the process.  If you’ve followed along with our Keyword Research Strategy Part 1 and Part 2, we’ve now taken ourselves out of 50% of Part 1 and around 70% of the work in Part 2.  At this point, we still want to get rid of Part 1 completely and, if we can do that successfully, we’ll only be left with gauging first page competition and then picking out the keywords we want to target each week, including purchasing the domains.  That would get us down to around 5 hours of work per week with 30 sites per week…easily scalable to 50, 70, even 100 sites per week eventually.

This month, we’ve come across a project/group that we found particularly interesting on Facebook.  They’ve grown organically to over 40,000 likes, have a very engaged audience, appeal to young people and foreigners (Westerners), and have very little presence outside of Facebook with no real monetization to speak of.  We’re in the early stages of talking to them about ways we might be able to help them grow and start earning with their labor of love.  I’m unsure of what our goals might be at this point (Acquisition?  Investors? Advisory role?) but will definitely keep you updated as the discussions continue.

Adsense

Our average daily earnings climbed to $93.43 per day for the Month of June, and can be largely attributed to our 89 sites from April starting to hit their stride, averaging $5.85 per site for the month of June.  You’ll notice in the following chart that our average earnings per site for April/May sites is a bit down, but this is largely attributed to the fact that when I began the process, I started with the PURCHASE DATE of the URL’s to determine which month the accounts start in.

This is probably not the best date to use, as we started falling behind a bit on site/content creation and they were actually put up a couple of weeks behind, but no matter.  The change wasn’t too much, as you can see.  Also, we ended up selling off all of our December sites in the month of June and will no longer have long-term tracking on their numbers, of course.  We plan to sell our January sites through July/August.  This means that it will take longer for us to realize the long-term tracking on our sites but, of course, gives us a great cash injection to continue growing our network of sites.

Our expectations for July are quite high, as we expect to average over $125 per day, based on our historical averages.  Here are our updated projections:

Flippa

We again listed our first network of sites with a BuyItNow option and it got towards the end and someone snatched them up.  For the next sale, we decided to not include the BIN price and see instead what the market would determine was fair value.  We were amazed to see that sites with less earnings went for considerably more and to watch the bidding extend more than 24 hours from when it was supposed to end!  We’re considering this a quite successful test and will continue to explore not using a BIN option in the future.

We’ve still failed to pick up buyers before listing the sites for sale on auction at Flippa, but we’re not quite sure the reason for this.  We lay out the same information, but think it’s because we lack a large enough network of buyers to get someone to purchase.  So, instead of going through the extra work of listing the sites for sale on our website here first, what we’re going to do is email everyone on our email list once the auction has been listed on Flippa.  This email will contain a code that, when used on purchase, will include freebies like additional content, $50 – $150 off the Flippa purchase price, etc.  That way, we’re still able to reward you for being a part of our regular readers without the additional hassle of listing everything for the sale twice.  Nice, right?

Click here if you’d like to be notified of any website sales at a discount before we list them for sale on Flippa. You’ll also get a report showing you exactly how we make these sites, for free!

Affiliates:

So we FINALLY get around to swapping some of our sites from AdSense to Amazon products and we get the dreaded California email from Amazon.  Ouch!  It’s not that terrible for us of course, but we really do feel for those of you who get a good portion of your revenue from the Amazon affiliate program.  You can check out Chris Guthrie’s answer to the problem if that helps.  Note: We are not tax professionals and cannot give legal advice.

We did switch a couple of our other sites over to both a lead provider, ABC Leads, and a very small, direct household goods company.  The household goods company gives a much larger percentage than Amazon, but they’re quite small and their page layout doesn’t seem to be great for conversions, unfortunately.  So far we’ve received $50 from ABC Leads (an improvement) and $0 from the smaller company (disappointment).  We’ll continue these tests for a couple of months and will report back when we have more data to review.

Also, we ended up with a Market Samurai sale this month!  We don’t do much in the way of promotion, aside from affiliate links sprinkled here and there, but we believe VERY strongly in MS as a keyword tool of choice.  Editor’s Note: We’ve switched over to using LongTailPro for keyword research as it’s faster and more reliable.


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Summary:

Sites created: 116

AdSense Earnings: $2,802.82 ($2,026.37 last month)

Flippa Sales: $4,795 ($3,390 last month)

Affiliate Sales: $96.56 ($0 last month)

Total: $7,694.38 ($5,416.37 last month)

 

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Discussion

  • Halfdan says:

    Hi,

    I saw you decided to test CTR Theme, which I am doing as well at the moment. How is that working out – or should I wait for juli income report to see that?

    regards,
    Halfdan

    • Justin says:

      Hey Halfdan,

      We did decide to roll out CTR Theme with some of the newer sites. Now…you’re SUPPOSED to test through it to make sure you get the same or better results before just rolling with it, but instead we just decided to roll it out and compare the growth on those sites to previous months for comparison. We’ve uploaded the ProSense theme as well and can switch over if need be, but we’re up and live with it on all new sites in July…should be interesting to see how it works out!

      I doubt we’ll have strong numbers to share about CTR Theme in the July report…that will probably come in Aug or Sep so that we’ve had the time to really let the data come in.

  • Michael says:

    Congratulations guys with your success on Adsense and Flipping scene.

    Found your website while I was trying to sell one of my own websites on Flippa.

    Think that will be regular readers as I am developing and flipping websites as well, but a bit larger ones

    • Justin says:

      Awesome, Michael, glad to have you stop by. Definitely share some of what you find here…we’re far from experts and are just starting to build some larger sites ourselves…would like to hear about the process from your perspective!

  • Daniel Hicks says:

    I think I have seen mention of the CTR theme on a previous post. I was wondering if you ever tested against any of your portfolio. Also have you found any thing that you think would cause concern in the way it operates with regards to Adsense TOS.

    Any advice would be appreciated – My CTR has dropped significantly over time on some of my sites and this looked like something worth trying.

    • Joe says:

      Hi Daniel,

      We are in the mist of a CTR Theme test as I write this. I have applied the theme to a large number of our sites. I want to test not only what affect it has on CTR, but also on ranking as the underlying structure and code of the site will change slightly. CTR theme is more easily customized than any other theme I have used previously, so it hope it does work. Look for a follow up post soon with the results!

    • Justin says:

      We’re looking at CTR Theme right now and I’m really hoping it tests out successfully. It’s a much better looking theme aesthetically and I’d be much happier with the sites on that theme, honestly. Plus, we really like the guy who designed CTR theme and would like to work with him someday on other projects as well.

      We’re testing it on new sites, but if we go back and place on older sites we’ll be sure to capture some before/after information to compare.

  • Jonny says:

    Great work guys!! Just wanted to ask what wp themes do you recommend for adsense thats good for SEO and CTR and also work well for selling via flippa?

    Cheers,
    Jonny

  • TRENDS says:

    First of all congrats on your results and progress over this whole process. The site content was definitely well worth the read.

    The Free ebook guide as well… as well as the warrior forum thread. ( I guess I’ve been doing a lot of reading today. )

    A quick question regarding your article submission in Submit Your Articles…

    How many do you submit for each site target? Do you submit for each page on your site and do you have the article submissions scheduled?

    I guess that’s more than 1 question.

    Hope to hear from you soon.

    Keep up the awesome work. ( Inspiring! )

    • jwcooke says:

      Thanks! Actually, we’re sorry that both the site and DEFINITELY the format of the PDF’s is a bit ugly. For now, we’ve tried to focus on substance rather than style…we’re going to get around to cleaning up the site and PDF’s sometime over the coming months, I swear…I’d like them both to look a bit better, hehe.

      For SubmitYourArticle, it’s a bit hard to explain, but let me take a stab.

      What we do is this: Each article submitted will have at least 4 potential sites the article links to. These options are spun in the resource boxes. Each article will link to two sites randomly, out of at least 4 options. We USED to make sure every site had the possibility of at least 3 General articles or SubmitYourArticle articles linking to it, but we’ve cut that down to 1 or 2 lately as production has increased.

      As I’ve mentioned before, not all of our sites ever make the first page. Right now, we use the same process for all of the sites, but use some additional linkbuilding to test various things. What we’ve considered is having a post-creation or secondary process for non-performers, designed to boost their rankings through off-site SEO or linkbuilding. The question, though, is whether or not this would be worth our time. If it doesn’t make us more money…we just shouldn’t do it. I’d like to test it though, as our findings from that test would be incorporated into our AUTHORITY site creation process from the beginning, as we continue forward.

      • TRENDS says:

        Many thanks for the reply!

        I actually saw you guys on Fiverr first and wondered what this person was doing with these millions of articles lol.

        But it all comes full circle.

        Thanks for the reply and wishing great success on your business adventures!

        • jwcooke says:

          Saw us on Fiverr? Lol…small world!

          I saw your site and immediately thought of a few people you might like that I’ve been reading lately:

          http://sivers.org
          http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

          Motivational and/or thought-provoking without being irritating about it. If you haven’t read them, I’m sure you’ll like what they have to say!

  • Nicole says:

    What a great month! You guys are such an inspiration. I am really using all of your advice and the advice in your blueprint (with my own touch added). I am focusing on building one site per day because I am only one person right now (I outsource most of the writing but that’s all). It’s been a little over a month since I’ve really focused on your plan and I have 10 sites built so far (ok I’m behind schedule but I ran out of money for outsourcing and had to write articles myself which took forever and was torture!). These new sites I’m building are already starting to make more adsense money than some sites I’ve had for years! They are so targeted! I am so excited, and every day I see my adsense earnings increase. I’m spending a lot of time on the off site SEO so I think that’s why I’m ranking so fast and its not taking months. I just wanted to let you guys know that I really appreciate how open you are with your project. You are truly changing people’s lives. I know I will have a great success story to share with you someday and I really have you to thank for a majority of it. Not only for the invaluable information that you’re sharing for free, but also for the ongoing inspiration that is much needed when you begin to doubt yourself and what your goals are. Oh yeah, and the fact that you take the time to reply to every comment on the site is amazing!

    • jwcooke says:

      Awesome, Nicole!

      We’re so pleased to hear about your success. To be honest, our thought was that we could probably charge for the information we’re giving out…but the “catch” for us is this:

      If we’re able to show people how to make money from home in their PJ’s and they’re able to find success following a modified version of our process, we’re building evangelists for our brand, right? If by using some of our tricks, tools, etc. you do quite well…you’ll be so happy with us, right? That’s, hopefully, what we’ll be able to build. A team of successful, like-minded people that are able to share in some success.

      Additionally, we’ve received SO many tips from readers, it’s really been tremendous. By being open/honest with people, they’re so much more willing to share…it’s like it breaks down the barrier and allows others to share so much more as well, you know?

  • peter says:

    I recently purchased a few articles from your main content page writer you suggested on fiverr and I have to say I was really impressed with the writing! But writing those articles can be expensive overtime, how many articles do you try to put on your websites?

    Also for all my sites I am having a terrible time getting the ranking up and even with the ranking on First page I’m hardly getting any clicks 🙁

    I have been spending alot of money on backlinking my sites but I was really surprised that you said that you only spent $6! Do you suggest that I also build a linkwheel for my MNS? how many sites should my linkwheel have?

    • jwcooke says:

      Peter,

      We start with 1 primary article and 4 secondary articles at least on all sites and then expand them out from there if they’re winners. We consider a “winner” anything making $30 or more per month from the fourth month on.

      Are you sure your search results aren’t skewed by being logged into your Google profile? Try logging out, searching with a proxy, or using any of the free online tools to check that you’re really ranked where you think you are. If you’re ranked and not getting clicks, here are a few of the more likely reasons:

      1. Bad niche. Some niches are more informational (artsy sites, educational sites, etc.) while others have searchers that are more likely to be “ad blind” (tech sites, make-money-online sites, etc.) Our favorites are around housewives and Do-It-Yourselfer type niches.

      2. Poor ad placement on site. It’s funny how people search, what they click on, where they look, etc. Try anyone of the free templates out there that have already figured this out for you and definitely use WordPress…much easier for non-techies like me.

      3. Bad ads for your niche. This is mostly out of your control, but maybe the advertisements on your page are just simply not converting well? This happens with new sites. Remember, you’re partnered with Google on this…and they’ll be rotating through different ads until they find some that work for you, for them, and for the advertisers.

      4. Site description turning people away from clicking. I’m not entirely sure about this, but if you have a poorly worded description show up on the SERP, searchers may be less likely to click your site and pass over you to go to the next result they see.

      Yeah, we’re cheap on backlinks. We’d rather spend more time up-front (keywords) so that we can spend last on the back-end of the process.

      • peter says:

        Thanks 🙂 Actually I read those tips on your other posts. Actually what I just did (you mentioned it earlier) was I made my title and H1 tags the same, added a high PR link to the post and moved around the ads.

        Your content writer that writes the secondary content do you make it as a page and not a post? because as you know the posts go to the top of the page and push down the good content…

        • jwcooke says:

          Yep, pages for the secondary content and not posts. There’s also a nifty plugin you can use that hides the post date so that it doesn’t show up on the SERP. I don’t remember which it is right now…will take a look and post it here later.

        • Nicole says:

          I do all posts for secondary content and keep my good content posts on the first page by checking the box in wordpress “make this post sticky”, and it keeps it at the top. Also, I use the SEOPressor plugin on all my adsense sites so I never have to think about on-page SEO.

  • Tipjar says:

    Hey guys,

    what kind of costs do you incur to register, build, and develop those sites?

    If we take the $40/per site that you quoted above, I can assume you spent around 116 x $40 = $4,640 spent on sites this month?

    • jwcooke says:

      Yes, that’s about right. That’s why we’ve chosen to sell off some of our sites that earn passive income…it helps the project fund increased expansion without coming out of pocket. We can continue to add more sites, month after month.

  • Walter says:

    Hi again B3n,

    Yes, maybe I’m too picky about keywords but you have to keep in mind that I don’t have the means to produce 100 sites per month. My target is 10 per month at this stage. I’d love to build lots more though. Anyway, just 10 sites per month kinda forces me to be a bit more picky in my opinion. I’d like to have a few of those 10 sites to be worth it to keep or at least have the least chance on getting stuck with $0.50 per month sites. Numbers game 🙂

    I’ve been searching for info about breaking the frame and Adsense TOS and have come to the conclusion that it is actually not a problem. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=6bf55ff4a02dd31c&hl=en
    I do use it on all of my sites. Even if on average it would result in a few extra clicks per month per site, in your case it could add up pretty fast. You can always go for a second opinion by asking Adsense support ofcourse.

    Best regards..

    P.S. Next time you can just push the domains you didn’t purchase over to me. Seriously, I don’t mind at all.

    • jwcooke says:

      Walter – After 4-5 months of creating 10 sites/month, you can then look at flipping those initial sites for an influx of cash and reinvesting that into adding more sites. You then have a project that’s self-funding.

      We like the idea about breaking the frame…we’re looking into it further and think we’re going to implement as well. Thanks!

      • Walter says:

        I hope it will become self funding at a certain stage.

        Good to hear that my comments somehow contribute to your project.

        I have a particular site which is not ranking at all yet but every day I get around 10-15 visitors through image search which results in about 1 or 2 $1.00-$1.50 clicks. Not bad, I think.

        • jwcooke says:

          We have a strange, similar situation. We have a site that’s ranked…then goes away for 30-40 days…then back again for another 10 days…then gone. It makes like $8-$12 a day while it’s ranked and then drops back down to the 5th page or so. The images are what still gets it $0.75 a day or so during it’s “down time”. This is really the only site we have like that…odd…still, the times it’s ranked really makes up for the times it’s not, I guess, right? hehe

  • jwcooke says:

    Wow, Buddy, lots of questions! Let me see if I can get them answered:

    1. Using the free OnlyWire account. More hassle, but haven’t gone to the paid version. (We probably should)

    2. Definitely missed the cost of SubmitYourArticle. We currently have around 500 sites, so we’re talking like $0.13 per site per month, but this would obviously be a higher percentage if just starting out.

    3. Primary articles go on the main page of the site and are the MAIN article for the primary keyword. Secondary articles are additional pages on the site that were researched and are related to the primary keyword, but that get ranked and searched for independently. $5 for a Primary article and around $2.50 for a Secondary article.

    4. We have “General” articles that are written for us and link to our sites from ezinarticles, SYA, etc. We spin the sites they link to and the price was included in the backlinking costs.

    5. We’ll usually have two articles that have a link to a site submitted as General articles, but remember that we spin those links too so it’s closer to .50 – .75 general articles per site.

    6. Yes, $6.00 is the cost for all backlinking, not the price per backlink. (This price might be a little low. We have agents that work on the backlinking and when they start falling behind on site creation backlinking suffers…but when we’re slightly over staffed they deliver more in terms of backlinks, if that makes sense. We’re currently going from being overstaffed to probably being understaffed by the end of August)

    There are other costs I’ve left off including:
    SEnuke X
    TheBestSpinner
    MarketSamurai
    WooThemes
    AWeber

    But many of these are used for other projects and not our niche sites specifically.

  • andrew says:

    hey,
    thanks for keeping these monthly updates coming. it’s encouraging to see what is possible.
    big question: what is your average total cost of generating one of these sites (from domain name purchase to content creation, to wordpress installation, to seo/backlinking promotion)?
    thanks!

    • jwcooke says:

      Hey Andrew,

      Great question! It costs us just about $40 all-in, not including my time, but including EVERYTHING else. It’s hard to estimate the cost per site long-term (changes, added content, updates, etc.) but we try to keep it minimized unless it actually adds value or revenue in some way.

      • andrew says:

        wow! that’s amazing. i’m just getting started with this and i’m trying to workout the process and outsource as much as i can. in doing so, i’m struggling with cost issues.
        would you mind breaking down your costs?

        • jwcooke says:

          No problem, Andrew:

          $6.00 KW research Using Market Samurai (We’re testing paying for someone to do some of the initial KW research while we then check the first page and choose those we like)
          $7.00 domain – from GoDaddy domain club
          $3.00 site setup from in-house
          $5.00 Primary content from in-house or Fiverr
          $10.00 Secondary content from in-house or Fiverr
          $3.00 content management (Including ordering/receiving content and posting everything)
          $6.00 Backlinking Via OnlyWire and SubmitYourArticle
          Total: $40.00 approximately ($38 – $45) is a pretty fair range

          Keep in mind that this really does vary, as some of it is based on hourly work and how efficient/inefficient they are.

          • Buddy says:

            Aren’t you missing out some costs here?
            What about your monthly costs for Onlywire?
            Since you have multiple sites, I would assume you are using the Pro version to not have the headaches.
            Also, the costs incurred for Submit Your article.

            These would come to:
            $13 per month ( Pro Plan for 1,000 submissions) —
            $0.43 cents per day (assuming one service to all X number of sites)
            $67 per month (Gold plan for full features)
            $2.23 per day (assuming you use this main service to all X number of sites)

            $80 per month ($2.67 per day) – total

            Does secondary content mean articles that are spun & sent to directories? Are these prices per article? Or are you saying $5.00 primary content for a base of 5 articles?

            The other thing that’s confusing is:
            1 time primary content for the main site 1 time
            1 time secondary content (assuming sent to various directories)
            A. The secondary content is sent to submit your article and submitted to X amount of places. The question is how many?

            Can you confirm that your “all the time” operational (traffic building activities) are the following:
            1. Bookmarking via Onlywire which generates backlinks
            2. Original articles submitted to ezinearticles w/ links (how many?)
            3. Spun article of originals sent to Submit Your Article w/ links for over a period of 30 days ( how many?)

            Also, are these costs you stated based on 1 item to 1-site to 1 activity relationship? Meaning, $6.00 for backlinking as in the full process of items 1 through 3 for all the articles/spun articles created, OR, $6.00 per backlink.

  • Walter says:

    Hi,
    I don’t know if this is the correct post to ask this but how about ranking? From your reports I make up that it takes around 2 months for your sites to rank in Google. From your guide, I recon that the only thing you do when it comes to back linking is article submission. Are these drip fed? And over what time span?

    How about traffic coming in through image search? It pays to add a small piece of javascript in your header to break the Google image frame. This way visitors actually visit your site instead of just copying the image from the frame.

    What I also noticed is that certain sites with certain topics have a higher CTR when an image ad is applied instead of the 300×250 pure text ads. Maybe that’s something to consider as well.

    I’ve been trying out your system, which I really like, though I still find it quite hard finding good TLDs to go along with the keywords targeted.

    Keep up the good work people!

    • jwcooke says:

      Hey, Walter, thanks for the comment!

      1. You’re right that we don’t have to do much to get the sites ranked. Don’t quote me on this, but around 80-90% of our sites are ranked on the first page within 60-90 days right now. For backlinks, we use OnlyWire for bookmarking, profile links (not much any more), blog comments (sometimes), and article links. We have original articles written and manually submitted to ezinearticles and then spun and submitted through SubmitYourArticle over 30 days…that’s usually it! (We also use SEnuke X, but found it overkill on minisites and use it for other projects.)

      2. You’re totally right about the image search…part of our emails to subscribers talks about this and how to take advantage of it. Love your point about breaking the frame, but we thought that might be a problem for Google? Do you do this and have you ever had or heard of any problems with doing so? Would love to test it out!

      3. Across the board, our image ads do MUCH better than the text ads, but we don’t force the issue. We know (assume) Google will find the better performing ads and place them for us, but we definitely prefer image ads based on our experiences so far.

      4. Problems with TLD’s? I did the bit of KW research required for us this week and found a ton…I had so many that I pushed the ones I didn’t purchase over to Joe for him to review next week. What kind of stats are you looking for…too picky maybe?

      Thanks Walter!

  • Hey Adsense Flippers. This is a great overview and a great encouragement. Though I don’t have the resources to build as many sites, I’m starting small and working my way up. Your keyword research process has really helped me find great keywords and domain names and I feel confident that my new sites will do much better than my old.

    I’ve also always done well on Flippa with Adsense sites. I sold a site a few months ago that was making maybe $4 a month for $125. Selling networks of sites seems more profitable, and I plan on following a similar plan as yours.

    Thanks for the update and for all the help (I’m the guy who asked for the spreadsheet you use).

    • jwcooke says:

      Hey Kenny, that’s great to hear! As always, let us know if you have any questions, get stuck, etc. We may not have the answers but might be able to help point you in the right direction at least!

      • I do have a question about keyword research for you. How do go about choosing your secondary keywords (basically, the four other keywords you use for the secondary content on your sites).

        These comments are pretty darn helpful! Especially the ones about how much outsourcing costs.

        • jwcooke says:

          Good question, Kenny.

          We use the SAME process we use from our KW Research Process I and II, except we use the exact match keyword we found a domain for as the SEED keyword. We also put in the following changes:

          1. 2-5 words in the KW for Market Samurai
          2. Will go as low as 500 exact match searches a month for the keyword.
          3. Drop SEOC requirements to 100K or so

          We then find the best in the results and go with that. We also choose 3 long-tail keywords through the GKT to target for each article as well.

          To be brutally honest, it’s probably more work than required, but we’ve always done it that way and it’s been working so far, so we’re hesitant to back off from it! hehe

        • jwcooke says:

          Also, Kenny, we’ll adjust the 3 points mentioned if we get too many keywords, too few, etc. If there’s WAY too few to get secondary keywords for articles, we’ll use a closely related keyword to the exact match keyword as the seed word and try again.

          • Thanks a lot for the explanation. That’s what I was thinking of doing, using the exact match domain KW as a seed. For one of my sites (that just hit number 3 in Google, woohoo!) I used the related searches as keywords. Seemed to make for some good content and I feel like it helped the site rank faster for it’s main keyword.

  • Good planning and execution. It shows the professionalism in online business.

    Can you please give some of your best articles to find out the niches and create a niche sites for adsense without falling to Google sandbox and how to source articles for these sites?

    Thanks in advance.

    • jwcooke says:

      Hey Dinesh,

      Thanks for stopping in! You just reminded me…look above at the links to our “Keyword Research Strategy” Part 1 and Part 2…I think that will help you.

  • Andrew says:

    Hi,
    I know this is only partly on topic here. I have had good success finding a bunch of (i think) good exact domain names in good niches. I am having the content written and working out some kinks in the wordpress set up.
    My big question now is SEO strategy. Until i was banned, I did everything via adwords. Clueless about SEO.
    Would you mind explaining your underlying seo strategy and how you implement it? You mention some tools in one of the comments above…in what way do they contribute to the strategy?
    I’ve read a good bit about link wheels…do you build them?
    And lastly, how do you do things in a way that doesn’t piss google off and get you sandboxed?
    As always, your willingness to share and be open means more than you know.
    Andrew

  • jwcooke says:

    Congrats on getting started and “taking action”, as they say.

    Most of our SEO strategies relies on onsite SEO. This would include things like completely original content, internal linking, on topic posts, H1 exact match tags/titles, linking once or twice on the page to a high-level authority site, etc.

    Our linkbuilding strategy is fairly light, actually. I think many people overthink the offsite seo…we’re not trying to rank for “dui attorney” or anything, right? We’ve built link wheels ourselves and have them built through outsourcing. Even this, though is a bit complicated for the sites we’re building and are better used elsewhere.

    One other thing I’ll mention is that while we do use some “tricks” through article marketing, blog comments, etc…this is really light stuff and is primarily just used to get the sites found. Once found, crawled, ranked, etc. we may tweak the sites a bit with the content and onsite stuff, but it’s not common and minimal.

    There’s really no reason to trick Google…we get those types of questions often. Keep in mind Google is trying to give the most relevant results to searchers. Ultimately, you’re looking to connect potential buyers/searchers to companies they buy from. Our goal is NOT to get clicks…it’s to connect people. If we continue to do that, everyone’s happy, including Google!

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