Excited To Move from Small Niche Sites to Something Bigger

October 11, 2012 by Matthew Allen

Niche sites are all dried up! - Dumb Passive Income — Image from Flickr by Thomas Tolkien

Over the past week and a half or so, I’ve been mulling over and contemplating what I will be doing to create passive income after the setback due to the Google EMD update. Just after the update, my only site that was still ranking and earning was seemingly untouched. This surprised me, because it was my very first attempt at a niche site and was horribly built. It remained at #1 and was still getting a few ad clicks. Just yesterday, I checked again and it dropped from the #1 spot all the way down to #14. Micro niche sites are completely dead to me!

10 of the 12 domains that I own were initially purchased specifically for the purpose of building small adsense niche sites. All of these domains were either Exact Match Domains or partial match domains. Since the EMD update, I went back and did Google first page analysis again for each one of them.

Google’s EMD Update – Setbacks and Moving Forward

October 2, 2012 by Matthew Allen

If you haven’t heard by now about Google’s latest algorithm change, the EMD (Exact Match Domain) update, well then you are living under a rock as far the internet marketing community is concerned. Just like the former Panda and Penguin updates, this latest one has internet marketers all in a tizzy. More specifically, people who build niche sites and micro-niche sites. It has long been known and accepted that EMD’s held value on their own and were given a little bonus, or boost, when it came to search engine results. If you could find an exact match domain available for a good keyword, it was like finding a nugget of gold in the bottom of your pan!

The niche site community doesn’t know what to think and nobody is certain what exactly the latest update is targeting. One thing that is certain is that Google’s SERP’s are totally different than they were before the update. Everybody has their theories and I’ve been studying up as much as I can to try to figure this out and come up with theories of my own.

My Content Strategy For Niche Sites

September 21, 2012September 21, 2012 by Matthew Allen

If you’ve been following along in this Niche Site (the Dumb Way) Follow-Along, you know that I am not using any paid tools, themes or plug-ins and that I am doing all of the work myself. This includes writing the content. This is by far the most time consuming part of building a niche site and one of the things I look forward to outsourcing in the future. For now though, until I get this business rolling and profitable, I will continue to keep doing things the “dumb” way. By doing this, the only thing I stand to lose is some of my time. I am risking very little money (hosting costs) to see if I can make this niche site thing work.

How To Find What To Write About

By this point, I already have my main keyword I am targeting – getting rid of fleas. How to get rid of fleas is a close second, but I am sticking with the former and using the latter as secondary in most of the content. Okay, so I am going to write about getting rid of fleas, but I need to be more specific. I could just guess and start pulling topics out of thin air and write about them. Or,

WordPress Setup for My Niche Sites

October 4, 2012September 14, 2012 by Matthew Allen

I use WordPress for my content management for this blog and all of my niche sites. In my former blogging ventures and experimentation I stuck with Blogger – but have now seen the light. WordPress is far superior with its endless options and easy plug-ins that are available. It takes a little bit of learning and getting used to if you’ve previously used another platform – but it is worth it. I highly suggest you familiarize yourself with WordPress if you wish to take the easiest route to success with niche sites (or a blog for that matter).

Loading WordPress Onto My Domain

In a previous post, I explained in detail my process for purchasing domains and hosting. As mentioned in that post, I use HostGator for my hosting because of it’s extreme ease of use, great customer service and ability to host unlimited domains on the same account for one low monthly price.

My New Niche and Keyword Research Explained

September 7, 2012September 7, 2012 by Matthew Allen

My everlasting quest to create some passive income online has now led me to my 4th attempt at a niche site. As promised, I will be revealing my niche, keyword(s) and domain as part of this Niche Site (the Dumb Way) Follow-Along. I have to admit right off the bat that I was a little apprehensive about sharing this particular niche. The reason being that it is the best of the ones available that I have already purchased domains for. I am a little bit worried that a more experienced and better niche site builder will read this post and “steal” my niche and build a better site that will easily outrank mine. But then again, I am not the only one who has had this idea, as I’ve found at least a few other niche sites built around the same keywords. I think I can build better sites and outrank them – but at the same time I worry that somebody else will build an even better site and outrank me. This is the risk I am taking though by making public and sharing exactly how and what I am doing to build a niche site in an attempt to create some online passive income.

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

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.

How To Find What To Write About

Loading WordPress Onto My Domain

Why Isn’t My Niche Site Ranking?

Risking Very Little Money to Build a Niche Site

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