Matthew Allen

[Dumb] Passive Income Report for April 2014

January 21, 2020May 9, 2014 by Matthew Allen

Why am I sharing my income publicly? Hopefully to gain credibility with you (the readers) and to maintain a certain degree of accountability for myself. I could blog all day long about what I am doing to create passive income online, including some of my unique strategies. But why would anybody trust me and believe that what I am doing works if I don’t prove it by sharing my results? This is what I mean by gaining credibility and this is one of the main purposes for sharing my income. I also share my failures on the blog, which holds me accountable. Knowing that I will be publishing a monthly income report will keep me motivated to keep pushing forward and plugging away on the things I need to do to create future passive income.

The Fastest Web Hosting for WordPress – A Major Upgrade and Results

April 9, 2015April 18, 2014 by Matthew Allen

Upgrading to a better and faster hosting account has been on my mental to-do list for quite some time. I’ve procrastinated in this regard for months and months. I figured, my sites still get traffic and rankings. I’m making more and more money each month. Why bother? I’ve been paying only $9.95 per month for a shared hosting account at Hostgator. All of my money sites and blogs were on this same hosting account. But late last month, I got the kick in the butt that I needed to finally make it a priority to upgrade to a better hosting plan. Not only did I get a better plan – I am now proudly using the best and fastest web hosting company when it comes to WordPress sites. Want to hear more about that kick in the butt? Keep reading.

[Dumb] Passive Income Report for March 2014

January 21, 2020April 9, 2014 by Matthew Allen

Welcome to my [Dumb] Passive Income Report! This blog is all about what I am doing to create several different passive income streams. This monthly income report details my results. I work very hard and dedicate many hours each week to working on my different online endeavors in an attempt to create passive income. So why do I consider it passive income then? Because I am not trading specified amounts of time for a predetermined amount of money like I do at my day job. Most of the income you will see in this report results from work I have done in the past. Why am I sharing my income publicly? Hopefully to gain credibility with you (the readers) and to maintain a certain degree of accountability for myself. I could blog all day long about what I am doing to create passive income online, including some of my unique strategies. But why would anybody trust me and believe that what I am doing works if I don’t prove it by sharing my results? This is what I mean by gaining credibility and this is one of the main purposes for sharing my income. I also share my failures on the blog, which holds me accountable. Knowing that I will be publishing a monthly income report will keep me motivated to keep pushing forward and plugging away on the things I need to do to create future passive income.

How I Increased Adsense Income on a Small Niche Site to Well Over $100 per Month

March 27, 2014March 26, 2014 by Matthew Allen

You know that feeling of euphoria when you finally accomplish or achieve a long-term goal. It could be something like paying off a credit card, a car loan, student loan debt, or even your house. It could be hitting a certain income threshold at your day job or hitting a milestone with your retirement savings. These are all big wins. But the little wins are just as important. In my case, it has been a goal of mine for quite some time to reach the $100 payout threshold for Google Adsense on a recurring monthly basis. I’m ecstatic that I’ve been able to do so for a couple of months straight now – and it appears that the income will remain steady and stable. In this post, I’m going to show you exactly how I did it and how you can use the exact same technique to grow your Adsense income. But first, a short story about the day that I first hit the $100….

[Dumb] Passive Income Report for February 2014

March 26, 2014March 14, 2014 by Matthew Allen

Passive Income Report - February 2014 — Creating income inequality – one website at a time – on my way to the top 1%!

[Dumb] Passive Income Report for January 2014

February 11, 2014 by Matthew Allen

Using a Free Heat Map from Crazy Egg for Blog Re-Design and Niche Site Optimization

February 24, 2015January 31, 2014 by Matthew Allen

Updated (24Feb2015) – the nice folks over at CrazyEgg recently found this post that I wrote just over a year ago and offered a special 90-day free trial for readers of Dumb Passive Income. I made a few edits to this post and updated the links to get you that 90-day free trial.

I recently discovered a new (to me) tool that I am finding to be very powerful and useful not only for my Dumb Passive Income blog, but for my niche sites as well. The tool is called Crazy Egg and I’ve been using my trial account to generate free heat maps for a couple of my sites. I’ve been thinking about doing a slight re-design here on Dumb Passive Income and this heat mapping tool is proving to be very valuable. By being able to visually observe the clicking behavior of visitors to my site, I can see exactly what doesn’t need to be on my site and, more importantly, what needs to be optimized better.

I’ll show you exactly what I mean with a screenshot below and further explanation. After installing the tool on this blog and monitoring it for a couple of days, it dawned on me that this would be extremely helpful for my niche sites too! I installed it on one of my niche sites that is getting pretty decent traffic and it has already given me an amazing revelation and helped improve my plan to better monetize the site.

Crazy Egg lets you generate a free heat map for up to 10 pages within their free trial period. This is plenty more time than I would need if I were just using it for one site re-design. But, as I plan to build out several more niche sites in the near future – I definitely see the value of this tool and plan to pay the low cost to keep it. Get your 90-day free trial for Crazy Egg now or keep reading to learn more.

Building a Niche Site on a Bad Domain – And How I Fixed It

July 30, 2022January 21, 2014 by Matthew Allen

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been deep-diving into building a niche website that will be monetized primarily through the Amazon Associates affiliate program. I’ve been pretty excited, as this is my first attempt at a site that will be monetized primarily by promoting Amazon products. What had me even more excited is that the particular set of keywords that I am working with for this site are collectively some of the lowest in competition that I’ve ever found! I knew before I even started this site that I would be able to rank on the first page of Google pretty easily for many of the secondary keywords – and without building any backlinks! To give you an idea of how ridiculously low the competition is for these keywords, I’ve shared the stats for some of my top keywords in a chart below… So, imagine my dismay when I figured out that my site wasn’t ranking because I had chosen a bad domain!

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[Dumb] Passive Income Report for December 2013

January 8, 2014 by Matthew Allen

[Dumb] Passive Income Report for November 2013

December 31, 2013December 13, 2013 by Matthew Allen

How to Find Profitable Keywords for Amazon Affiliate Sites

August 8, 2015November 29, 2013 by Matthew Allen

Amazon affiliate sites seem to be all the rage lately. It seems like everybody is building them. The popularity of Amazon product-based niche sites seemed to make itself apparent when Spencer Haws published his first public niche site project on his popular blog – Niche Pursuits. Ever since he shared his success with that public project – I’ve been seeing Amazon affiliate niche websites everywhere! The popularity of Amazon sites was proven even more to me recently when I launched my own keyword research service. Just during the beta test period, 60% of my customers wanted me to find keywords for them to build Amazon sites around. As a result, I’ve been doing a LOT of keyword research around topics that relate to products that are being sold on Amazon. In case you didn’t know – Amazon sells almost literally everything imaginable! In other words, there are limitless products being sold every day on Amazon and even more keywords that can lead to those products. Amazon is willing to pay out healthy commissions to their affiliates – which makes creating Amazon affiliate sites more and more attractive. Once you see how easy it is to find low competition keywords that lead to profitable Amazon niches – you’ll likely want to jump on the bandwagon too!

Providing a Keyword Research Service – Increase Traffic and Profits

November 19, 2013November 18, 2013 by Matthew Allen

In the past, people have suggested to me that I should start a keyword research service as an offering via my Dumb Passive Income blog. I’ve blogged a LOT about the benefits of keyword research and why I think it is beneficial not just for niche sites, but for other types of sites (blogs) as well. I’ve written so much about keyword research over the past year that people have started to perceive me to be a bit of an expert on the topic. I wasn’t so sure that I was an expert. I thought I was just learning as I go just like everybody else. But after reading blog posts by actual experts and even watching tutorial-type videos by experts on how to do keyword research – I realized that I know just as much as they do. I’ve learned from some of the best and I’ve applied some of that knowledge with my own experiments. I’ve gained valuable experience and people have noticed.

Which brings us back to the suggestions that people have made to me – more than one person over the past year has suggested that I start my own keyword research service. Despite the fact that I like doing keyword research and there seems to be a need in the market for a service like this – I rejected the idea for two main reasons…

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