A Dumb Mistake and Starting Over

August 30, 2012 by Matthew Allen

I feel like I need to apologize as I admit to you (my readers) that I have made a terrible mistake with the niche site that I chose to do as part of this Niche Site (the Dumb Way) Follow-Along. As mentioned in my Choosing a Niche… post, part of the reason that I picked the election site was that nobody would steal my idea and build a copycat site due to the fact that the site will be dead after the election. My thought was that I could get it to rank quickly and make some easy money and then move on. This was due in part to my over-confidence because of my first niche site getting to #1 so quickly and easily. Well, it’s not ranking quickly and there are only two months left until the presidential election.

Why Isn’t My Niche Site Ranking?

Just two short weeks ago (about 3 weeks after I started the site) it was already ranking as high as #25 in Google! I was stoked, thinking that I was well on my way to the first page

Purchasing a Domain and Hosting and How to Set Up

August 22, 2012 by Matthew Allen

As part of this Niche Site (the Dumb Way) Follow-Along, I want to show exactly how and what I do to set up and create a website. This is pretty basic stuff and I realize that many of my readers already have a handle on it. But there may be readers, either currently or in the future, who are total beginners and don’t know the first thing about how to set up a website. This post will be geared towards the beginners, although some of you with experience may pick up a thing or two just by seeing how I do it. Better yet, those of you with experience may be able to give a few helpful pointers in the comments section below.

Purchasing A Domain

When building a niche site, this step kind of goes hand-in-hand with the choosing a niche and keyword research step. I purchase all of my domains at GoDaddy.com (affiliate link). Therefore, when I am researching keywords I am simultaneously checking for available exact match domains

Choosing a Niche and Keyword Research

August 15, 2012 by Matthew Allen

A few things were taken into account when I chose the niche for this Niche Site (the Dumb Way) Follow-Along. For starters, I know it can be risky to reveal my niche, keyword and URL to others. One reason is that somebody could steal my idea and build a better site around my targeted keyword. Another is that somebody could attack me (for various unknown reasons) by click-bombing my Adsense ads and putting my Adsense account at risk.

For the sake of this follow-along, I wanted to minimize those risks by choosing a very specific niche that will only be good for a limited time. Actually, I said that backwards. I already had the idea for this niche and decided that it would fit perfectly for this follow-along because it will be a short-lived site. Being that the site will have a very short life, I needed to find a keyword that I thought I could rank very quickly for. I am 1 for 2 on ranking quickly with my first two niche sites. Let’s hope that improves to 2 for 3 after this attempt.

Building a Niche Site (the Dumb Way) – Follow Along

August 9, 2012 by Matthew Allen

A couple of weeks ago, I had this idea to do a niche site follow along. This is not an original idea, as you probably know. One of the most popular follow-along’s out there is Pat Flynn’s Niche Site Duel. I myself have followed most of the posts in the Niche Site Duel and have learned a great deal about building niche sites from it. The difference with my follow along is going to be that I am doing everything the “dumb” way. When I say dumb, I mean that I am not using any paid tools or paying anybody else to do any of the work. I am doing everything myself using only free tools that are available. I am writing all of the content myself and doing any necessary link building myself.

Risking Very Little Money to Build a Niche Site

If you want to see how to build a niche site without risking very much money at all, this is the follow along for you.

Income Report – July 2012

August 1, 2012 by Matthew Allen

Welcome to my first ever income report here on Dumb Passive Income. I’ve been hesitant to start doing these as my online income is sporadic at best. It might be another month or two or three before I have another net positive month, but I decided to start my monthly income reports nonetheless.

There are several reasons I decided to start sharing my side hustle income on this blog:

This is my favorite part of the month in the blogosphere. Several bloggers and other internet entrepreneurs share their monthly income and expense reports and I always seek them out and read them. People are naturally curious about how others are doing, so I figured I would join in on the fun and help satisfy the curiosity of others.
Income reports serve as proof. This blog is ultimately about how to create passive income (the dumb way). If I share exactly how much money I am earning and spending, people who read this blog will have proof that what I am doing is or is not working.
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Month: August 2012