As you know the past few days have been absolutely crazy for me. I spent the day getting the stuff I wanted to sell in our garage sale ready and I also caved in and went to the chiropractor for the first time. O-M-G, I am in love. He made it feel so good and today I feel 100x better even after moving things around for this yard sale.
The yard sale was an absolute success. I ended up selling enough to make up for the raised mortgage, at least for June’s payment. I am moving back home in 3 weeks, once my son finishes school. I plan on building my business, paying off credit card debt and start saving money for a down payment on a new house down the road.
I have a lot going on this next week. Monday is my birthday and I have a lunch date with my ex’s mother and her family (they adore me!) and then I have dinner with my family.
I still have to work on getting stuff ready to sell for another yard sale next weekend and slowly pack up the things I am taking with me to my parents; which is basically nothing. I am looking to sell out everything in the house and just starting over fresh.
Now as far as my authority site is going, something is terribly wrong. Yesterday I noticed it was getting the 500 internal error message and the website was not displaying. I contacted Hostgator and they said some coding was changed in my .htaccess file. I assured them I had not changed it. They fixed it and it was working fine. I asked if I had been hacked and they said it may not necessarily mean I have been hacked but if it happens again I need to notify them and they will look into the security measures for my site. They also asked if I had installed any plug-ins recently and I have not. So tonight, I check it for the first time and it is getting the same error. So I think the site has been hacked but so far there hasn’t been any real damage done.
I did take up John on his offer of 400 free back links and I will creating a separate post for that in the next day or two giving you the information of the site’s position rank prior to any back links and details of the site’s increased earnings.
I have family over until tomorrow so no work done this weekend but I will do what I can on Monday and try to get back to my daily tasks required for each day starting on Tuesday.
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Good for you on decided what to do and sticking with the plan of working online. I was wondering if you posted an ad on Craigslist-when we had our garage sale so many people came because of the ad. At the end of the sale I posted another ad of free stuff (the leftovers) and people came and took everything-clean up was easy! It might work for your next garage sale!
A question for you I know that you use TBS, but I am stuck on deciding which one to buy out of TBS or MAR. I am planning on making my decision by Monday.
.-= Kelly´s last blog ..My Goals for the Future =-.
I have no experience with MARS. But James has and he has things he likes about both of them. Have you done the trial with TBS? It’s a 7 day trial I think for $7. The trial sealed the deal for me.
I am thinking about actually doing the trial, most people are pointing to TBS.
.-= Kelly´s last blog ..My Goals for the Future =-.
Sara – I sometimes get a 500 error when there is too much happening on my server. I installed a plugin that used a cron job to run once and then ended up trying to run too many and I got a 500 error on all of my sites. Check your server load on your HG dashboard – it’s a bar chart on the left hand side of the screen.
Overloading isn’t the issue since this hosting account only has 20 sites versus my other hosting account that has 70+. lol It’s only showing 2/25 processes running.
Nice job on the yard sale! We are putting our house on the market soon and trying to clear out junk – not much fun. But it does feel good in a way.
Probably not the same as you, but I had some trouble recently with my WP databases corrupting. Some of it was related to using a caching plug-in, but then other sites corrupted that I swear I hadn’t messed with. It was an easy fix once I contacted HG but scary at first.
So, are you planning to rent your house out? Is that fairly easy to do in your area? We’ll be taking a hit selling our house, but hopefully it is a bit of a wash since we are also buying and the value of the new house should be down. Interest rates are great right now at least.
Good luck with the move. I’m glad you have a plan and you seem to be taking things in stride which is admirable.
.-= Carrie´s last blog ..Google Rankings Stuck =-.
I am not using any plug-ins other than the wp-backup on my sites. The authority site is on my 2nd hosting account which has nothing but my last 20 sites on it that are all wp blogs that use clickbump’s theme so there was no need to install various plug-ins.
What is scary is that I happened to be tweaking the sites when I noticed the posts were missing. Otherwise things could have been down for weeks. It would be nice if HG had an email alert or something if there are a bunch of 404s or what not. Good thing you caught it.
.-= Carrie´s last blog ..Google Rankings Stuck =-.
400 backlinks…. Terry Kyle?
No, John from backlinksphilippines.com offered me 400 backlinks. His team does use terry’s packets though.
I’m glad you seem to have a plan in place and did so well with your yard sale. Also great that you got offered 400 backlinks, hope they work out well.
.-= Ruth – Web Career Girl´s last blog ..Beautiful Day Here: Got Me Thinking About My Goals =-.
Hi Sara!
You are so brave for doing all this! For sticking to your dream of working online, despite everything that happened with the mortgage and your ex, and now for moving and starting fresh! I wish my mom had half the strength you have, after a bad divorce. I’m sure it will pay out and you will achieve your goal sooner than you think.
As for the strange things happening on your site, I have a little ebook I put together on WordPress security. Just send me a message on my email and I’ll be more than happy to give you a copy.
I hate to be a debbie-downer but I have been following our blog for a while and wouldn’t want you to face anymore disappointment. Please read this latest blog post:
http://www.makemoneyonlinewithseo.com/how-not-to-make-money-online/
I do not own this blog but it seems this guy know what he is talking about. Manual reviews seem to be on the rise with these micro niche sites. I to have a bunch of these micro niche sites and I am starting to second guess if this strategy has any foundation.
I think you are on the right track converting your micro niche sites into authority sites. I heard from plenty of people that manual reviews are coming. I used to just shrug it off as hype but this is the first time I have actually seen “proof” (I use that term loosely).
Anyway, I’m sure you have heard this rumor before, so this probably doesn’t come as a shock to you. I am going to rethink this whole business model and try to adjust my strategy.
Just wanted to bring this to your, and your followers attention. Good luck with whatever you decide. I will continue to follow your blog.
God bless!
TiJay
Hi Tijay,
There is no way to determine why his sites were deindexed and his account banned. Its possible his content was “junk” content or autoblogs. Of course he is not going to expose all of his back linking tactics and maybe that was even the problem. Perhaps Google found out about his multiple Adsense accounts. there are just too many unknown factors in all of this. I think that whenever you go from $50-$100/per day in just a matter of weeks, that is going to raise a red flag to Google. They will do their investigation to find out how the income jumped so quickly and if you are doing anything that is grey hat to black hat, they are gonna shut you down.
Bottom line is that you should not be afraid of micro niche sites. Just make sure your content is supplying useful information to the visitor and not just a paragraph or two with adsense slapped all over the place.
I would suggest building sites that have content pages with at least 450-500 words that tell the visitor how to use X product, compare X product to similar brands or tips for using X products.
It also helps to have related youtube videos and don’t be afraid to link out to other sites that are relevant. You can link out at the very last paragraph of your content that way the user is not as likely to leave your site via the link but its still there to give them an option and Google will be pleased that you are providing relevant resources to your visitors.
I choose not to be afraid by posts like that. At the end of the day you have to decide how to form and establish your online presence. If you are against micro sites, then do authority sites. If you want to test the waters of micro niche sites then go for it. But letting fear stand in your way will prevent you from ever being successful in this business. This business is never guaranteed. You have to take risks in anything related to it. Just as you risk whether or not a keyword you use is a winner or not, you take a risk with IM business models too.
“beware an opinion that paralyses you with fear”
Keep building micro sites, just make sure you are providing factual relevant information. Where to buy x, how to use x, popular brands, links to manufacturers and retailers, how x works etc.
Personally i dont think it matters if you have 1 page or 100 pages. Dont waste time building loads of pages unless it is actually going to make you money.
And if google does deindex you/ban your adsense/come to your house and whip you whilst you are dressed up as the gimp – dont sweat it. You now now that micro sites dont work, so start building again.
The way i feel is that the skills i have learnt these last few month – I’m not afraid. I think I could go out and build 5 large sites in competitive niches and still make money. Content is no longer an issue for me, on page SEO is no problem, and I can build links all over the place, no problem. At the end of the day, thats all making money online really is.
Well said Dan. Don’t let fear steal your dream Tijay. Build your business completely white hat and you will have nothing to fear but fear itself!
Sara, by no means am I letting fear steal my dreams, just choosing to diversify that’s all
I am still pulling for you regardless if you take my advice or not.
Good luck
Oh and Tijay – I was following you on the warrior forum. Disappointed man, its obvious you have let the naysayers paralyse you. Remember the most important thing – taking action. Don’t let fear stop you taking action. As i said before, if google does deindex you, then build large non product related sites.
Look at it this way, if you do get banned, its likely because you had a manual review after making $100+ per day. If you can make that much with adsense, you are one of the rare few and can EASILY do it again.
Dan, well it’s not that I am paralysed. I have been slowly adding content to my 10 sites that I featured on that warrior thread. I get my content ghost written so it’s been taking a while. Like, I said before, I have other micro niche sites and I am doing just about as well as Sara is per month. Maybe slightly better. But that is neither here nor there.
What I’d like to do is smartly and effectively build a network of sites that have a stable foundation and as I am reading more and more, google seems to be cracking down on these micro niche sites. Yes, we all have been hearing this for a while and yes, I am finally bought into the hype.
I wouldn’t want to invest all this time and money on something that can be taken away from me once I cross the $100/day mark. And speaking as a person who has had a site taken away (not a micro niche site) a few years ago that was bringing in over 1K per month alone, I know that it can happen.
My site was 10-15 pages, unique content and design. Didn’t have contact, about or privacy pages I believe (early in my IM career so I didn’t know) so it’s likely that could have been a red flag. It helped people with a certain aliment and I thought it was pretty decent. Not the best looking site in the world but decent and had well written content. They classified it as MFA and it’s gone, just like that.
Now I realize that I have enough SEO knowledge to build more sites to “EASILY do it again” as you said. But this income that I am making from adsense is not just play money. I am in a financial jam, not similar to Sara’s situation but pretty bad to say the least. If this money isn’t coming in, I and my family are screwed. Sure, I could easily do it again but how long would that take and what would the investment be to get me to that point again.
Enough about me though, this is Sara’s blog. She seems like a good enough person and we are all routing for her. I just wanted to put it out there that putting all your eggs into the “micro niche” basket could get you burned. Believe me, I have been there and I am still there as we speak. That doesn’t just go for adsense, putting all your eggs into any one financial basket is probably not the greatest thing to do.
So I will get off my soap box now and shut up, lol. I really hope that all of you succeed, especially Sara because I feel for you. I am going through the same f’d up financial stuff.
If you are looking to diversify though and get some other types of sites besides adsense going, “info product killer” is a pretty darn good product. I am in the process implementing the creator’s strategies. Seems to make alot of sense. If not, no biggy. I and everyone else I’m sure are still in your corner.
Oh and BTW, the company backlinksphilippines is awesome! I almost exclusively use them for my profile links.
Good luck to all of you. Sara I am pulling for you!
I do think its nice to expand to other branches of earning money online. I’ve never had much success with clickbank products and I would much rather prefer affiliate sales on actual product goods.
I have a site that drips in a a bit of income from ebay and using an affiliate feed service called GoldenCan which I posted about on my blog last May. haha if some of you are curious about hearing my voice, well here is your chance. lol I suck at these instructional vids but it was fun. So anyhow, those outlets are interesting to me as well and once I earn a more solid income from adsense I might start branching out or just work on making authority sites. I’m not sure at this moment.
Yeah, I have never had much success with clickbank either. I have had some (minor) success with amazon, but enough to know that it works. So that is my next revenue stream I will explore.
Anyway, great blog and I wish you well in all your future endeavors!
TIJay
At the end of the day, we are all making MFA sites arent we? We are only making the sites so that we can put adsense of them, and make money. So what is a made for adsense site? Nobody really knows. All we can do is our best, the rest is in the hands of google. Im going to carry on making my sites the best i am capable of, and backlinking them. If in a few months google deindexes them all, well i will just move on to another model. Im just happy i have learnt how to build and rank sites.
Look at john x factor – product based sites, content is rewritten product descriptions and reviews, no outbound links. He hasn’t been deindexed, and i suspect its because he was white hat about it. All these people complaining about deindexing, obviously got bored and tried out some shady methods (in my opinion) – if i get deindexed, i will post back here and eat humble pie.