I’m still alive! So much craziness still. I got my court date, it’s June 15th and my ex was served successfully last night. So now I just have to prepare for the court date. I have yet to hire a lawyer. I kinda wanted to do some more consultations because even though the one I spoke with seems most knowledgeable; he might be pricey. My older sister told me when she had to go through a child custody battle, her lawyer wanted a $5,000.00 retaining fee. I am praying I can find someone with a much lower fee because I cannot afford that at all. My mom and my very good friend have advised me to stick with the lawyer I spoke with since he seems pretty confident in the outcome being in my favor.
We also got news last night that my 9 yr old niece got hit in the hand with a soccer ball yesterday at school and her lil hand swelled up so much and the doctors have confirmed she will need surgery either tomorrow or Friday and they will placing 2 pins in her hand. So please pray that her surgery goes well and that she is pain-free soon.
Its not just raining right now, its pouring. The best comfort in all of this is that I continue to earn passively even though I have still not touched any of my sites in over a week. I hit another $40+ day over the weekend and on Memorial day I hit $35+ (which is totally surprising since I figured people would be traveling or BBQing.) The past two days have been $35+ days too so I am thinking I have finally surpassed my $30-33 per day bracket that I have been stuck in for the past 2 months.
Sunday May 30, 2010 earnings: $44.05
Memorial Day, May 31, 2010′s earnings: $37.67
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 earnings: $35.71
It seems that my earnings tend to increase by increments of $3-5/day, well when I do jump up to a new earning bracket. Getting stuck at $30-33/day for 2 months was rather frustrating.
I have noticed that many of xfactor micro niche sites that were built in March are either google dancing or are being sandboxed severely. They are still getting clicks so maybe the inner pages are getting some decent traffic but they are not ranking for their main keywords. Even my authority site project is currently sandboxed so I really think it has something to do with the age of the domains causing the dancing. The majority of those sites never used any ezine article submissions as back links, they only have back links from link exchanges and Blog Blueprint submissions. I’ll most likely look into forum profile back linking them.
But seriously, despite all of the google dancing going on, I am having some higher earnings days. Earning with Adsense is so unpredictable and yet there is some stability. I know its an oxymoron but its true. With having so many of my sites G dancing, you would expect to see some lower earning days and yet I am doing better than I did a week ago.
Also, my micro site #30 that is being backlinked with Backlinks Philippines is G dancing today, which is totally normal and expected. It’s not even on page 4 but I expect that in a few days it will be back and probably ranking higher than before. Its still getting clicks and earning money too. But I will update more about this tomorrow when week 2 approaches.












Hi Sara! Glad to see you’re fine, despite all that’s going on. I wish you luck with lawyers and stuff. I have my fingers crossed for you. I missed your posts the last few days (I quite enjoy reading your blog). =)
Good luck!
Whatever happen with the sites that you backlinked with Jeremy’s service?
.-= Carrie´s last blog ..May Earnings Posted =-.
It was one of my sites built in march and falls under the google dancing sites at the moment. It used to be position #4-5 on any given day. It also had a really high earning day on Monday. It did $6.62. Its showing about 50 profile back links to the main page so I think its dancing because some more of the links got indexed.
Congratulations on seeing better earnings from AdSense. I’ve noticed the same with my AdSense sites – my earnings always seem to jump by several dollars and then settle down for a bit. I wish you the best with your court date – I just went through something similar earlier this year getting legally separated from my husband, and it was no fun and emotionally completely exhausting. But it will all soon be behind you, and you will again be able to focus more on building your business and getting on with your life!
.-= Michelle´s last blog ..May Earnings Report =-.
Sara,
I checked your rankings today at 3:30 PM EST 6/2/2010 using Google Global and I saw your site sitting at No. 3. Can you please check what you see there actually in the US? On a side note, James, the Average Genius on Elance , did a similar experiment with us with his xfactor site, Keyword.com. He started out at No. 5 last week and now he is at No. 1. I expect James to be posting his results in his blog soon when he finds the time. Keep posted.
In our experience, xfactor/sniper .com’s are most responsive to backlinking. The .orgs seems to be slightly better than the .net
I use SEO for Firefox and it is still displaying my site as sandboxed.
update: a few hours later and now it is showing it at #4
Good luck to you in court-I hope everything goes the way you plan-I was curious if your Husband ever read your blog?
My Husband and I went through this about 5 years ago with my step-daughter. You were actually pretty lucky to get such a fast court date, we had to wait 2 months!
.-= Kelly´s last blog ..Earnings for the Month of May =-.
I don’t think he would be able to find it. I do have it
listeddelisted on my Facebook account but only friends can see it and the live traffic feed would indicate another San Jose visitor and so far its only me.I got a quick court date because I filed an ex parte declaration.
That’s cool you got a fast court date, and I realized I put *Husband* again-I meant to say ex-Husband!
.-= Kelly´s last blog ..Earnings for the Month of May =-.
Sara,
Good luck with the court action. I’ll send positive energy your way. And also prayers for your niece.
Is your passive income mostly coming from XFactor sites? Or a mix of sites? I missed that part.
Thanks!
Sandy
All my income is coming from xfactor sites. I have 1 niche blog that now only averages about $2 a day so I don’t even really count that as another income source or path.
Thanks Sara. Those are great results.
Sandy
Congrats on the income, and yep — will be posting about BLP on The Average Genius. Pretty interesting results!
One site was already ranking well, but is now #1 for main KW, the other site jumped 20 or so spots up (my “problem” site) — pretty cool!
Will need to post after my gigs are done on Elance.
Speaking of…L8R
.-= JamestheJust on Elance´s last blog ..Help Me With My Next Interview! What Do You Want To Know About SEO, Keywords, Backlinks? =-.
Backlink profiles do work, but keep in mind that you have to keep doing it – the deletion rate is high even with the double pass method as sites will often shut off public profiles when they start to get spammed, which is inevtiable. For example, if you build 500 profiles, it is likely that within 4 weeks, only 400 or so will be intact. So to maintain 500, you have to build 100 every month. They are just rough figures from what I have seen so far.
This could become expensive with outsourcing – have you tried DIY? I have become pretty speedy, and can build 500 in a day. John – any jobs going at backlinks philippines lol
(off topic – Sara: any idea where I can find a good review of or guide to Thesis theme? I recall you said you use this, and im tempted to jump in. Cheers
I have read up on a lot of tutorials for Thesis Theme. My favorite basic intro to hooks is by Sugarae.
Thanks Sara – have you rolled it out to all your sites or are you sticking with HTML? Before building more sites, I am currently backlinking and building out my current sites. I don’t like the green and black xfactor theme, and want to give each site its own style, so was looking for a really nice looking customisable theme and Thesis looks good.
How are your thesis sites doing now in terms of CTR and rank? I remember your post a few weeks ago about one site rising.
The two micro niche sites I used Thesis on are actually doing very well. One is sitting at #3 and the other is at #7.
Both sites earned about $10 more for the month of May then they earned in April. The rankings have stabilized. One site is still at #3 and the other is #7.
How do you know a site is sandboxed? Just wondering. I’m having more problems with Yahoo than Google on the 2 sites I have. I was #3 in Yahoo and now down to #40 and not even ranked on my other site. Frustrating!
.-= Mike Roosa´s last blog ..Monthly Review – May 2010 =-.
Oh yeah, lawyers and ex’s suck!
.-= Mike Roosa´s last blog ..Monthly Review – May 2010 =-.
I wouldn’t worry about Yahoo – of all the SE’s, I’ve actually seen more CTR/sales from Bing of all places (when talking about non-Google SE’s). weird, tho
In any case, not sure about the others, but when I have a site that shows “-” in Rank Checker, it seems like it’s sandboxed.
Or, if a site just can’t be found in its former position, such as going from position 5 to…nowhere…then it’s sandboxed, but you have to have something like Traffic Travis or Rank Checker (a lot of people use Market Samurai) to see.
.-= JamestheJust on Elance´s last blog ..Matt Cutts Says To Think Beyond PageRank For Ranking In Google =-.
I consider my site sandboxed when it is not showing up on the first 4 pages when I put my keyword without quotes into the google search.
Sara,
That’s great that your daily income has increased. Do you think submitting articles initially to article directories can be a way to avoid sandboxing as the links are in pages that have a lot of content? Also can you say how many links you usually send out per day with sites that are new or a few months old?
Deb
I think there is no way to avoid a google dance. Its bound to happen sooner or later to a site and it doesn’t matter if you article back link or use a different back linking method. Sending any sort of back link is enough to make it move.
I usually start off with an initial link amount of 20 via blog blueprint and then when I use the link exchange its slower with maybe 1-2 links a day for a period of 30 days or so.
So glad to hear your Adsense is doing well despite you not working! That’s great! Good luck with everything, it’s nice to hear from you again.
.-= Ruth – Web Career Girl´s last blog ..Looking Back on May and Forward to June =-.