In my little world of internet entrepreneurship, a lot is happening. Considering the time that I have to spend on this side hustle, I am starting to get some things accomplished. My most recent schedule change at my day job leaves me with just under 2 hours each day to do whatever I need to do on my computer. I get up at 5:30am every day and have until about 7:15 to work on my computer. In this time I conduct several forms of research, including: keyword research (the dumb way), online income and how to build niche sites research (mostly by reading other blogs), learning how to use WordPress research (playing with new themes and plug-ins) and whatever else I happen to stumble across. When I am not doing that stuff, I am trying to actually get some work done on my sites and this blog. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I try to get at least one post up on this blog per week. Since I am not really trying to make money with this site right now, I find it more important to work on my other sites.
The State of My First Niche Site
As chronicled in my glimpse of success post, my first attempt at a niche site is still doing well. Now that I see the light, I fully understand some of the stupid things I did with that site. It’s actually quite shocking that I made it to #1 in Google so quickly and so easily. With that being said, #1 for that particular keyword doesn’t really amount to much. The site remains at #1 and consistently gets 100 to 200 page views per day. Number of visitors per day in the last 2 weeks has ranged from 29 to 78.
Those numbers may not look impressive, but here is why they impress me. The first dumb thing I did in the initial keyword research was that I was looking at Broad match results rather than Exact. I thought my keyword was good for 2,900 searches per month, when in reality the exact match search results were more like 880. The average CPC is only $0.67. Most seasoned niche site pro’s would not even consider this keyword, which might be why I was able to take it to #1 so easily. Given these numbers, I think my traffic is doing quite well. I also continue to get ad clicks regularly from this site and still expect that it will be a $10-$15 per month site.
The State of My Second Niche Site
With my glimpse of success behind me with the first niche site, I think my head got a little big. I got a little bit better at keyword research, but probably still don’t know everything I need to know about first page evaluation. I decided to build my second niche site in the same market (or niche) as the first one, but targeting a different keyword. The first niche site was an exact match domain for my primary keyword. For my second niche site, the exact match was not available, so I bought a .net domain with the exact keyword in it and a suffix at the end.
I spent a few days last week, and as much time as I could on the weekend getting the site set up and writing the initial articles. I did everything manually, including: buying the domain on GoDaddy, changing the name servers to point to my hosting account at HostGator, loading WordPress onto the domain from within HostGator, manually loading all of my essential plug-ins and writing all of the content. I did all of that and wrote the first 5 articles.
So far, it is not even on the radar as far as ranking in Google. As it turns out, this one isn’t going to be as easy as the first one. This particular keyword is kind of the main monster for the micro niche market that I am targeting. It gets 33,100 exact match searches per month with a CPC of $1.23. Yeah, I probably bit off a little more than I can chew at this point. I may have to actually learn and experiment with a little bit of manual link building. For now though, I think I am going to let the site sit while I work on some other things. Who knows what will happen with it, as my on-page SEO is killer (I believe) for my targeted primary keyword.
On The Horizon
I’ve got some big plans and ideas in the works. I just bought 6 more domains yesterday and have a good idea brewing in my head about how I can possibly do a Niche Site the Dumb Way Follow-Along. I think that could be really valuable for this blog and for some readers who are new to the niche site scene like I am. I hope to have figured out exactly how I am going to do this very soon. Stay tuned!
Until then, remember that there are several dumb ways to create passive income online, but only one site that is blogging about it! Dumb Passive Income… dot com.
If you are a newbie like me, I would love to hear how your niche sites or other passive income ventures are going. If you are a veteran or have experience in the niche site game, I am always open to criticism and advice.
-Matt
Matthew Allen
Thank you…glad to know that I am not the only one with these types of issues. It’s good to see how you got rid of some some stumbling blocks.
Yeah Pat – I think stuff like this is worth sharing since most newbies probably run into the same sorts of issues. Many of the niche site pro’s made many of the same mistakes when they started out, but you don’t find them talking as much about the simple stuff like this on their blogs anymore.
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you stick around for my Niche Site the Dumb Way Follow-Along. I think it will be a great learning experience for others as well as myself.
Hey Matthew,
By getting up so early, you are demonstrating the type of behavior that separates the people that do from the people that just talk. Well done!
Kind of miss reading your old blog and your stories. I just topped myself and did it in a way I am committed to write a sequel that explains what the Bible predicts for the end time. The one I just put up explains why the end actually might be getting near, based on natural events like global warming, but as I say cooling it really the bigger threat which you will see if you read the post. Anyhow was up in your area over the 4th, Went to the U.P. to take my grandson to his fiancee’s. Anyhow maybe sooner or later we can get together and have a face to face so you can show me on a computer what you are doing. As I am not getting it from the posts. Later….Turtle <
I’ll take that as a compliment Trent. Thanks! And thanks for taking the time to stop by. Always cool to hear from somebody I look up to.
Hey Turtle! Pretty cool that you’re stopping by and reading my stuff despite not understanding it. Think of it as trucker turned internet/computer geek. Still trucking during the day, and trying to make this internet marketing/niche site business work in the wee hours of the morning. Coming up, I am planning on doing kind of a step-by-step follow-along kind of series where I will show exactly how I build the type of sites that I am building to try and make money. Perhaps if you follow my upcoming posts, you might better understand.
Ouch.. exact or broad.. world of difference 🙂
Try to focus on at least $1 dollar or even $2 dollars (usually the results in the Keyword Tool will be lower so going with $2 is still good if it drops down to $1.. better than 1 dollar to 50 cent 🙂
Keep it up!
Thanks for the advice Ralph! I’m beginning to understand how all the variables and numbers fit together thanks to help from experienced niche siters like yourself.
Thanks for sharing your example of a keyword with huge search stats and low CPC. That really does make me more or less ignore all the “rules” put out by other niche siters.
Sorry Pastor GiGi, this comment of yours somehow got pushed into the Disqus spam folder. I found a bunch of them in there yesterday. Perhaps I should watch it more regularly.
Thanks for keeping up with my new blog – even if it isn’t really in “your niche.” Are you actually doing some keyword research now before you write your posts?
Hi
The idea of a minimum of 1000 exact match search with a cpc pf $1 has a ot of value dont just ignore the idea. HOWEVER what im finding is by dialing down to 880 as a standard and a cpc of $0.75 there are tons of domains available.
I still stick with an seo value of ten as min so (cpc x exact match search)*0.01 so i can then “see” sites which do 880 say but a cpc of $3 ! thats more valuable than a 2000 x $1 !!
So im just trying to open up the ideas from dogma. which is not supported by facts. Hope that makes sense..
Guidelines are essential or we get lost and cant focus but in some niches its productive to vary the “rules”