What I have started off with now is keep generating backlinks to  my websites. Over the past 2 years all I had done was mainly build backlinks to the home pages, and do a few posts every few weeks or so. So some of my homepages have been on page 1 of the Google search results for my main keywords for a while, and I have seen some consistent search engine traffic from it. But there I was, thinking how much more traffic I could generate if I managed to get my other pages on page 1 as well, for their keywords!

Luckily, I have been a subscriber for Backlink Builder for a while now, I just never did anything with them. Seriously, I was sitting on a Goldmine and just didn’t take the time to act on it. Well, when I finally decided to come out of my hiding a few weeks ago, that’s what I decided to do – go systematically through Backlink Builder and start building those all important backlinks to my inner pages, as well.

As I had the thought of reporting about it on my blog here, of course I wrote the “starting positions” of some of my pages down before I started. Here they are:

On March 24 I had:

And then I started with my backlink campaign. Just went systematically through the files that you get with Backlink Builder, linking back to my inner pages with the keywords for those particular pages as anchor text. I made a point of writing down which anchor text I used on which site, and which page on my site I linked back to. For that I designed a very simple table which I fill out as I go along (otherwise you lose track). If you click on the image you can see it in original size. I created it on Open Office.

My next date when I checked my keywords was April 6, so just about 2 weeks later. These are a few results:

Can you see the huge jump in those keywords? It’s nearly unbelievable.
These are the positions as of today (April 29):

I find this just amazing. Now, some of the rankings still jump around a little, but I am quite positive that it will come further up again. The jumping around at the beginning is quite normal.

You know what else happened now that my inner pages are up in the search results?

• My traffic has increased – from between 500-600 views a day to most days between 900-1000.
• My affiliate earnings have increased so far by about 30%. For example, one of my Affiliate Programs made me $72 yesterday:

So – all is green in my books, so to speak! This stuff really works. You build a niche site with a few relevant pages, create some good content on those pages, – it really pays off to put effort into making the site a site that your visitors will enjoy and benefit from! – and start building links to it. I’m chuffed!

Looking forward to your comments!

Now, when I say it is my biggest earner, that doesn’t mean much, really. I have been going along at an extremely slow pace over the past 2 years, if I can spend 1/2 hour a day on my Internet Marketing it’s already a lot (and that includes learning about new stuff!). So my site on Beach Decor still earns me around $150/month and has been doing so for the past year or so. But – earnings haven’t gone up. Unfortunately. Even though I have been doing a little bit of work on the site occasionally. Hm. Why?

Well, the thing is this: Pretty much all the time when I did my link building for the site, I concentrated on building backlinks to my home page. Every directory submission, every link exchange, most comments I left, I had them all pointing to my home page. Which is ok – I have been on page 1 of Google’s SERP’s for quite a while for my main keyword “Beach Theme Home Decor”, and am getting really steady traffic from it.

But at the same time I have forgotten about the other pages on my website, the pages that have also been built around specific keywords to be able to achieve good Google rankings in the SERP’s (what else do we do keyword research for???). So, here I have a website with a few pages centered around keywords that could potentially bring in a lot of traffic, but I have completely neglected building backlinks to those pages.

Because that is what a good Internet Marketer should do who takes care of his niche site: Build backlinks to all of his pages to get the most out of potential traffic.

I want to show you something; it is a few screenshots I have taken from my SEOQuake Toolbar to show you what kind of difference in links built back to my sites pages there is:

Backlinks To Home Page

Backlinks To Page "Tropical Home Decor"

Backlinks To Page "Lighthouse Home Decor"

(All these screen shots have been taken with the software “Jing” which I absolutely love it’s so easy to handle!)

As you can see, my home page has by far the most backlinks and thus ranks the best out of all my pages. Some of my pages have only 2 or 4 backlinks pointing directly to them, one or two might even have none! So it is no wonder that they do not rank for the keywords that I had originally designed them for…

So what I have decided to do now is to try and get the other pages of my site that is already doing ok to rank better by starting to build backlinks to them. Instead of building all the links to my home page, I will concentrate of getting backlinks to my internal pages, if possible with the anchor text being the actual keyword. This should, over time, increase the visibility of those pages in the SERP’s and start to bring in some extra search engine traffic through these keywords.

The reason for the earnings of my site not increasing in revenue is simply because there is only a certain number of people searching for “Beach Decor” or “Beach Theme Home Decor”, and I am getting all the traffic I can already from it. But I am not getting any traffic for my other keywords yet as they are not high up in the SERP’s yet, and that is due to the fact that I have very much neglected link building to those pages.

Building backlinks is a tedious process, especially if you do it yourself. But as boring it is, it is a vital – if not the most important – task if you want your websites to be successful and visible on the Internet. The more backlinks a site (or page ) has, the more value Google will put on it, generally, and the better it will rank.

So, even if it is one of the least exciting processes in the adventure of earning money online, I urge you not to forget your link building, especially also to any internal pages you might have within your website or blog, to reach it’s full potential.

Let's work out a plan of action!

Hey everybody, I am back online! Have been for about 3 or so weeks, to be honest. I just had to play “catch up” with my real life, after 5 weeks offline and a business to run it took (and still takes) a lot of time to re-organize and get up to date with everything. So my Internet Marketing has – again – taken a bit of a back seat.

If you have been reading my blog you have seen that, after lots of trials and errors, I have finally come to realize that the one way for me to earn a living of the Internet is “Building Niche Websites” and earning money through those sites with Google Adsense and Revenue from Affiliate Programs like Amazon.com or Ebay Partnernetwork.

Building Niche Websites is not the only way to earn money on the Internet, for example you can build email lists, too, but I have come to realize that it is not for me as I do not want to have to constantly write emails to my list to make money from it. It’s just not me. Admitted, if you do it right you can probably earn a hell of a lot of money from it, but you need to be prepared to put the expertise and hours into it.

When you build niche websites and monetize them, if you do it right you will have a fair bit of work to do at the beginning, but once you have got yourself established it will become a lot easier to maintain.

No matter what you decide to do – it is absolutely vitally important that you get yourself organized and have a plan. I just read through a post I made about getting organized back in July last year, and I am sad to say that I am back at exactly the same spot as last year. Stuffing around on the net but not achieving anything.

Have a good look at yourself – are you doing the same? Are most of us wasting heaps of time on the Internet trying to make more money but doing it without a proper plan of action, thus failing miserably and asking ourselves WHY?

For me, I also will have to sit down and think about my approach to establishing my niche websites and driving traffic to them. To date it is all over the place with no real direction, and that’s why nothing much has happened to my earnings over the past year. They have pretty much stayed the same, and that’s a pity as it could have been quite different if I was organized and focused.

So, make a plan, and work with it and on it. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you can always make it better over time. You just need to start.

If you also work with niche websites, one plan of approach could be to set aside a day a week per site (depending how many you have) and just work on that site on that day. Even if it’s only 1/2 hour. Work out what’s important and when and how to do what you have to do.

Please, we have to make sure we do not end up as the next Internet Marketing Casualty – we all need more self discipline and less distraction.

A very good online tool to getting organized and creating “mind maps” to keep you on track is “MindMeister“. It is definitely worth having a look at.

I apologize to you all in case I sound like rambling on, it’s just something I find really, really important and have big trouble doing myself. I am very upset about it, and I want to just remind you all of how precious our time is and how we waste it so often by being unfocused, and therefore not getting any further to achieving our goals.

Busy Building Niche Websites

Well, it’s been a couple of months or so since I decided that building niche websites will be what I will do to create an income online for myself.  since I have put my new niche website about Mens Wrist Watches Online, and I am very slowly building backlinks to it to improve its rankings. I think it is important to take the time to do you SEO properly as it will pay back over time.

Here is what I have been doing and will continue to do to get the word out about my site and to get it bumped up to a better search engine rank:

(At present it is nowhere near page #1  (to be honest I haven’t seen it in the first 20 pages of Google yet, so I have some work cut out for me), so the traffic I am getting is extremely low.  I have seen though through StatCounter – you will see the little counter on the bottom right hand side of Mens Wrist Watches Online – that for some keywords which I haven’t even considered it did show up on page #1, and that’s good!)

• Continue to add new pages to the site – this is important as it shows that the site is expanding and “alive”, not stale. And we all know that the more quality and relevant content you have on your site the more the search engines will love you!
  • As I have a big problem with coming up with content for a wrist watch site I did outsource this task on Elance and got 11 content pages for mens wrist watches for $75, and I am very happy with it. It would have taken me months to do this and I would have really struggled. I still have to add some of the pages to my site, and will do so slowly over time.
• Keep commenting on other related blogs or internet marketing blogs and leaving a link to my site, preferably with one of my keywords as anchor text. These blogs should preferably have keywordluv enabled and be dofollow.
• Writing and submitting articles to Ezine Articles – these articles are purely there to provide backlinks to my site in the resources box. The articles are not optimized for any of my keywords that I have for my site, as I don’t want them to compete with my site. I just want great and valid backlinks to Mens Wrist Watches Online. The articles are related to anything that has relevance to watches, like accessories, watches (!), time management etc.
  • Here, as with creating content for my pages, I outsourced the writing of the articles on Elance and got 10 beautiful articles back within a week for $50. Again, I am prepared to pay this amount of money as the website will give me that money back and a lot more over time. Paying for the outsourcing of content and articles is the only money I have spent and will spend for this site. My other niche website about Beach Decor is making me a consistent $150/month from several sources, and I am confident that it will be the same with Mens Wrist Watches online. And I haven’t even started with optimizing for the keywords for all of my other pages, I have only been building backlinks for the main site! So there is a lot more to be gained still, on both sites.

So, there you have it. Building Niche Websites is really the optimal way to earn some money online for me, as I have found in the past that I am not good with keeping up with updating blogs, or writing emails to a list, or anything that requires a lot of time and creation of content on my part.

Mens Wrist Watches Online has already earned me a tiny little bit of money through ebay, so I am confident that it will grow, given time. I can only recommend to anybody with little time who wants to break into making money online to start doing the same as I do – building niche websites! Read my previous post on it, and act. I am sure you won’t be disappointed – I am not!

Every day, day after day, I sat down frustratedly and tried to write. Didn’t know where to start or what to write. Delayed and delayed the launch of my site. Constantly had the feeling I need to do this, I need to finish it, I need to write. I can tell you, it is an awful feeling, and maybe you can relate to it.

So after a couple of weeks of trying to write, I finally decided to do this step towards my “last resort” – outsourcing my content writing. See, I knew what else I wanted on my site, I had the titles for my pages, knew what kinds of ads I wanted. It was just the 300+ words per page I needed to get on paper. I had never outsourced before, so I was a bit apprehensive. But I had heard in the past about Elance and that this was probably the best place to outsource my writing, so I signed up with them and posted my first project.

Within hours I had several writers on Elance bidding on my project. Basically, you post what exactly you want done and your budget range, and the professional writers on Elance can put bids in to say “I will do it for X amount…”. All you have to do is have a look at all of them and pick the one that suits your needs best!

Have a look at their previous feedback – it should be close to or more than 95% positive. Also check out some of their customer reviews, that will tell you a lot about the work they have done previously. It is also wise to check out whether they had repeat customers in the past, and how many. Repeat customers mean that they did a good job for other people before who decided to use them again. You should also make sure that they have included one or several samples of their previous work in their proposal for you to read. This will give you a better insight into what to expect.

The whole process for me was super easy and very pleasant. Within a week I had my 12 content pages written, including meta descriptions and proper keyword density, and I am very happy with the result. And the best thing was that after having assigned the project to a professional writer I felt that a lot of my valuable time had been freed up for me to do other pressing things instead having to worry for hours over creating content. For example, I could go off without feeling guilty and start studying for my bookkeeping again!

You want to know about the pricing? I know that cost is a huge factor for many of us. I paid $83 for 12 content pages (that’s less than $7 per page) on something that would have taken me several weeks to complete, and it meant that I could concentrate my valuable time on other equally important things.  To me that is more than a fair price. I even had an offer that was lower than that, but I decided to go with the slightly higher price as I had the feeling I would get more for my money in this instant. But this is totally up to you.

I for once am super happy to finally have taken the step to outsource my writing, because I suck at it and the prospect of having to produce good quality articles always made me feel under pressure. I truly feel that I have conquered one of the last big hurdles that might have been holding me back from real success, and I am very glad I found the courage to start outsourcing! If you are struggling with it like I do, it is something I would urge you to think about…. if you can somehow afford it, it is truly worth it!

…Once I have my new website live, I will add it to “My other websites” in my sidebar to the right so you can check it out.

Let's Build!

It has gone awfully quite around here lately…. I have been busy with other things! To be more specific, I came across a couple of posts on two of my favorite blogs, PeterLee’s Work From Home Business Blog and Paul’s Money Making Schemes Blog which sort of ripped the blinds of my eyes regarding something I have pretty much known all along.  And that is – building niche websites is the way to go!

See, the first big thing I learned when starting out with making money on the Internet was how to build my own first niche website. I had it up and running about half a year after I started looking into earning money from home. It’s my site about Beach Theme Home Decor. It’s pretty much a static site, I have 9 pages up (plus a site map and a resources page), and each of the pages has been optimized for one keyword phrase. I was working on this site for a couple of months, did link exchanges with other sites, and submitted it to directories using Directory Maximizer. I wrote a few Squidoo lenses on different beach themes, a few articles and submitted them to Ezine articles, and that’s about it.

As I built the site on a WordPress platform, I created “pages” instead of posts, and I have a little blog running in the background where I post whenever there is anything interesting I have to say about the beach or related themes. Which I do about once a month.

Because I did my initial keyword research right and I optimized each page separately for one keyword, this site is on page #1 or 2 of Google for a few of my keywords. About 90% of all the traffic I get is from the Search Engines. That’s pretty cool! And with this traffic my website is making me between $100 and $250/month in revenue ($100 is on really bad months – not very often). That’s when you combine Google Adsense, Amazon and ebay affiliate earnings.

So to me, this is working. And I have seen this beforehand, I just got sidetracked into trying other things, to make more money sooner. Guess what, it hasn’t happened! So when I read the posts on PeterLee’s and Paul’s blogs about building niche sites, I came back full circle and went “YES – that’s exactly what I should concentrate on!!!! Because I can SEE that it works!”.

What I find extremely attractive about building niche sites is this:

1. no need to constantly update or post new things – it’s not a blog! It’s enough to change something little once in a while, that’s it.
2. you do the work once, and then can have recurring income for years to come. True, each site might not bring in much by itself, but over time the site building process can be repeated in your own time, and that means your income will slowly build up over time.
3. you don’t have to build monster sites, or maintain a newsletter or email list – you just have your site up and let it do the work.

See, I hate to have to constantly think about “What am I going to write next” – it stresses me out (I hope you will appreciate my honesty here). I do not like writing. It might sound ok once it’s on paper, but it sure as hell costs me a lot of thoughts, time and sweat to get it on paper. It takes me a LOOOOOOOG time, and that’s something I really don’t have enough of. Same with list building. Fair enough, I believe that all the big gurus are making their big bucks by building huge lists and by marketing to them via email. That’s great. Just – I can’t (don’t want to) do it. It’s even more stress for me – something else to think about and write!!!!

So I have decided to get back to what I can do and like doing, and that’s building niche websites, one at a time, and get them up and running properly, and start making some more money! And I am going to use niches with REAL things to buy, just like my beach decor site.

So here is how I have equipped myself now and what I have done so far to get the job done as professionally as possible, with the least amount of time:

1. 

   Micro Nice Finder

   I got myself MicroNicheFinder, a great keyword research tool. It has been recommended via several sources, and I actually had it sitting on my computer for about a year, unused (!), but I have decided to put it to good use now. Micro Niche Finder really takes a lot of time out of keyword research and comes with some great features. It will also tell you whether you should go for a keyword phrase or whether it will be fruitless and you might be wasting your precious time because of the competition! That’s extremely valuable.

2. I got myself XSitePro 2. This is a fantastic web design software even somebody like me can use to create great looking professional websites in a very short time (I always take a bit longer, but that’s because I am stuck with the content, not the design ) Sure, you could do the same with a WordPress blog – like I have done before-, but I want to do this on a professional level now, and XSitePro 2 still gives you more options than a WordPress blog.  I have also read several times that Google really likes sites that have been created by the software, which is always a plus!
3. I have registered a new domain name (I’m not telling!) and have started building my next site. At the moment I am stuck at – writing content (who’d have guessed ) ! BTW, if you want to register a new domain, check out these Domain Coupon Codes – I registered my new domain for 2 years which would have cost me $21 but with the domain coupon codes it only cost me $14, and I think that’s cool!

So, this is what I am up to right now, and why it has been a bit quiet around here. As I mentioned before, some of my favorite fellow successful bloggers have started doing the same, and they know what they are doing. And I have seen the success you can have with niche sites first hand (mind you, mine is a very little fish!), so for me that’s the way to go from now on.

You should think about it – seriously. It works. Might not be bringing in millions for a while, but you can build yourself a nice and steady income in a fair amount of time.