Well, I had to lighten the mood on this blog after yesterday’s post. I almost think it was worse to answer the phone calls last night because as I would explain the details over again to x person, I would start crying. I cried so much I had a headache for 10 hours. Enough is enough.
I have shared before how my mother believes in my business. So yesterday, I finally came out and explained to her how I am even more stressed because of my sites taking a plunge and I am earning half the amount that I was. My mom reminded me of some things that I was overlooking or ignoring. She said “Since all of this started with preparing to move and this court date, you stopped going to the gym and because you let the stress get to you, you stopped working on your business”. Leave it to a mother to point out the obvious. She is right though. I even at first tried to explain about Google’s algorithm that changed how my sites rank and she just replied with “Well, just work on your business again and find out how to get those sites earning again”. Bless her heart. As if its just as easy as 1-2-3.
She also reminded me since now we are going through mediation and then there will be an evaluation interview hearing which is the final ruling in allowing the move; I need to have a cut off work time. This is important so that I can spend some time with my son. In the evaluation interview, the court will interview my son and if he just responds with “I have fun at daddy’s because he takes me here, or takes me there, or we go to the movies, or go to Great America, or we play video games together and with mommy we don’t do those things. Mommy works a lot and mommy always tells me she doesn’t have the money to do those things”. Well, then things could look really bad for me. So my mom was reminding me that it is important for me to work hard but not to work in a fashion which it cuts into time spent with my son. So for the summer, I am going to be ending my days at 2:00pm so that I can still take my son to the park or do something he wants to do. Sometimes the kid enjoys nothing more than me sitting next him watching him play his Nintendo DSi. lol At any rate, mom is right again.
Yesterday was one of the better adsense days I have seen in the past 2 weeks at $18.80. I did notice I earned a few clicks at over $.78 and one click for $1.90 so this is good news. Over the past 2 weeks many of my cpcs were very low at about $0.15-0.20.
While I work on my amazon review site. I might try throwing some ezine and go article submissions at some of my xfactor sites that dropped in ranking due to the mayday update. One guy on xfactor’s forum reported that tossing 3 ezine artices at one site helped re-gain his first page ranking and he believes now that consistent link building is going to be the key to pull these sites out of the abyss.
Meanwhile another person reported how he has helped two websites improve. Site 1 improved by adding more images, several brand names and model numbers, some h2 tags and then he pinged it with 6 different services. Site 2 improved by also adding a few brand names/models, images and adding a few internal links with more varied anchored text links to the homepage even with every page having at least 2 internal links. he then pinged it and bookmarked it.
Another person has reported that by simply adding one new page about a very specific model number that had affiliate links going to amazon and then submitting an article to ezines to backlink the new page brought his site back to page 1.
All are interesting things to try. for today, I am gonna finish writing that first review for my amazon site and then write a quick article to submit to ezines for it. Then social bookmark and possibly do a few forum profile links.












I think it will be good for you to focus in the things that matter right now, i think that probably you’re passing for some hard times right now, but just try to relax (that sounds easy right) but probably the ability that you have to stay present and enjoy what you’re doing are going to give you more bennefits at the long term, i hope everything gets better.
As i can see this mayday think will ask for us to pay more attention to the quality of the webpages that we are creating, i think that this is a fantastic idea, so we can focus on better articles, more images, make more research of our keywords and start putting more brands and things like that, and thats a mindset that will provide better quality to our customer, the ones that are clickin on our ads. So i can see the good part of this mayday thing. Lets focus on quality, a lot of ppl will just give up, but if we stay focused on quality and enjoy this we can make more money than before.
Greetings from Mexico.
People are doing things, and their site improve. But how do we really know that is the only thing they did? And it is usually just 1 person. No one else can collaborate this.
About your low cpc, yours is better than mine. Some of my clicks are like $0.01. One day, i got 26 clicks on my hubpages and I got $0.15. Adsense sucks, but it is better than affiliate programs that you get a lot of clicks with no sale.
26 clicks for $0.15?! That’s horrible. On the bright side, you got 26 clicks on your hubpages. I usually average 1-3 clicks a day and I have 119 hubs. lol
WTF……..I am sure you were new to keyword research. I guess we can say it is then.
The problem is with hubpages, you have to treat the pages as you would a main webpage, meaning you have to get links to them. I never focused heavily on backlinking them. After about 2 months of building hubpages I discovered xfactor sites and never bothered to go back to build links.
I don’t know if you know this blog http://www.makemoneyonlinewithseo.com/. this guy makes like $100 a day with hubpages. He almost or I think he did that with infobarrel also.
So – silly question – do you still build hubs for backlinks? I’m still new to using web 2.0′s with a revenue share deal. I just went straight to building websites (OH MAN – I just got accepted into this one affiliate program with commission payouts BEGINNING at $90…on up to $1500!! I begged them to accept me – I don’t even have a website for it yet…).
The reason I’m asking you is that I’m wondering if you make any money on them…this sorta answers that.
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Up Against A Wall – Round Two Of The Aaron Wall Interview At The Average Genius
Yup, its definitely a good idea. You can naturally deep link into pages (no more than 2 per domain) and this def helps your SERPS. The key is to bookmark your Web2.0 backlinks which will develop power and give your money sites a boost. A lot of my hubs actually rank higher than my main term…lol.
Its funny, I’ve only got like 16 or so hubs but my profile is a PR2 and some of my articles are like PR1 etc which is really helpful. I;m now starting to see some income from HP although I use it for backlinks only.
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
Thanks – that’s pretty helpful info. I’m guessing you SEO your HP’s etc? I know that some don’t go that extra step, but it makes sense (esp. if you don’t compete against yourself: I SEO my article submissions, and try to rank for low-compete terms that I am NOT optimizing for on my site, so long as it’s all related).
As for juicing/backlinking your backlinks – I first read about that from Lisa Parmley (sp?), who runs “InLineSEO” dot com – her mind map was INCREDIBLE.
At the time, I tucked it behind my ear…now, since I’m breaking with XFactor’s method to do what I do best (make some sales, baby!), I’m actually returning to that mindmap.
It seems with Web20Bot and SENuke, Magic Submitter etc., she was spot on (they’re not designing these tools to go broke, or because they don’t work!).
I’ll be reporting how the latter has helped me out…after I actually use it! (Just did a massive run on my big money earner, going to be turning it into a bigger site on its product line.)
Thanks for the tips.
James,
Its always worth going that extra mile IMO as its achieved good results for me.
I don’t tend to read anymore eBooks, guides etc now as I just of stick to what Im doing as it oftens becomes too much of a distraction.
Havent read that mindmap but will check it out if you recommend it.
Oh and if you can, don’t forget to submit RSS feeds of your sites as well. A combination of all these things have proven to work for me anyway!
No worries about the tips, thats what we’re all here for!
Zaheer
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
So glad your mum is behind you! That’s really good that she’s giving you that advice. And you know I think stopping at 2pm will probably help your productivity the rest of the time. Once for a week I made sure I finished all my work by 12.30-1 every day and wow was I productive because there was a definite end point. Plus you’ll have some quality time with your son to look forward to and take your mind of IM every day. That sounds like a great plan to me

Ruth – Web Career Girl recently posted..Getting My Mind to Focus
Can we stop using the word quality? Its just so subjective, and adding a few images in my opinion doesn’t improve quality.
I have been thinking about LSI a lot and it makes sense – pack in lots of related keywords, and i think the relevancy of your article is improved in googlebots eyes. Maybe moving to wordpress for all of your sites will help too? You mentioned that your site with thesis was doing well – im only just starting to use wordpress and i love it!
I was thinking that related keyword usage might have been given more weight to downgrade the whole random article with keywords inserted. For example, by having the keyword in the URL, page title, and headers, and 5% density in the article, you could probably have ranked well once upon a time. I could have put the keyword “yellow boots” in the right places, but written some random article about what I did today, and it would have ranked well for “yellow boots” Fairly recently a came across such a site in the home improvement niche – the article was some really random stuff, but they keyword was in all the right places, and it was ranking on page 1!
Just a thought…
Totally agree with you on the LSi stuff Dan,
I think its the way to go. With regards to WordPress, I am a HUGE WP fan and use it for pretty much most of my sites. What I have noticed though is from experience, there is no advantage to ranking higher in WP than there is on a static site. The only difference is that things can be done a lot quicker in WP. You can simply install plugins to carry out things like XML sitemaps, on page optimisation etc. Oh and its incredibly easy to use and I can update stuff on my mobile (cell) out an about.
Oh and I doubt images will help to improve quality although they may help in image optimsiation. I hate the word quality too, the articles I had written were truly fantastic, very useful, compelling content and great to read, exactly what Google want, so why did they drop? Again the assumption here is LSi.
How are you finding LSi related terms Dan? Im using the wonder wheel and also the ‘~keyword’ operator.
Cheers
Zaheer
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
im just firing up the google keyword tool – you can sort the related keyword matches by relevance, so basically google is telling you what related terms it thinks are most relevant for each keyword. Usually you get a massive list, so i just take 10 – 20 keywords and pepper them through my content. It is actually not hard to do, and I think another bonus of it is that you attract extra longtail traffic.
I have only just started focusing on it, so cant say for sure if it works yet, but it does make sense. WordPress rules, xsite pro has officially been dumped
That’s not a good quality comment. We care about the quality of Sara’s blog, man, keep your eye on quality. Please.
Lol
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
Getting in shape and staying there is definitely worth any efforts; it took me about 2 years to lose the 30 something pounds gained through my separation and divorce.
Exercising helped me a lot to focus and work out the stress of becoming a full time single father from one day to another. Since I didn’t have time to go to the gym, I bought myself an elliptical and a rowing machine and used them every morning, before anything else. Maybe your mother is onto something here…
Regarding setting up limits for work, I use the Pomodoro method. I installed an app on my desktop, work very efficient for 25 minutes and then take a five minutes break. It works for me.
I decided not to work at home when my daughter is around. She goes to school and I have a day job, so the time we spend together without rushing to school or doing chores is scarce, and I learned to cherish it.
I bought myself a DSi and now we play together, besides doing a bunch of other outdoor activities. I find your idea to spending more quality time with your son great.
Without knowing the details of your parenting arrangement, I believe our situations mirror each other a little. I feel for you and I wish you’ll find the fortitude to accept the things that you cannot change. I know for me it got better once I accepted it.
I got interested in IM only a few months ago and I am still struggling with the basics. I put up a few sites and I am about to build backlinks, but somehow I lost the drive along the way.
Despite the fact that I have access to affordable quality content, not PLR, but truly original content, around my keywords, I feel that nothing moves as expected.
Anyway, I find the community you built here very friendly and honest and I wanted to say thank you for the inspiration provided. It looks like your earnings reports are genuine and I hope to follow your progress for a long time to come.
Hi Dan,
Thanks for taking the time to post a comment. Welcome!
I do know that my health should definitely come first. I seem to be most productive after I have already killed myself at the gym. Oxymoron, I know; but still its true. I have managed to gain 4 pounds in my 4 week gym hiatus. Although to be fair, the first 2 weeks of that was due to back pain that I couldn’t explain at the time. I now know it was the stress. but still I don’t want to gain any weight period. Especially since I am single and need to catch the eye of a hot stud! haha!
My chiropractor suggested that applet you are talking about for your desktop. he said it would really help with preventing back pain from working at the desk. I really need to check into that.
Its true that nothing moves as expected in this business but the sites will move if you continue to add content and backlinks to your pages.
Hold the presses — what applet?
My lower back’s trying to prove to me I’m part jellyfish.
I spend ALL day on the QWERTY (trying to escape a horrid brick n mortar situation = nose to the grindstone).
Here is the link for the Chrome extension. You’ll find there also a link to the original Pomodore website, with more details about this time management technique:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/edhkjecdcakijjmlelnjjiohjmlaikhb
Let me know what you think about it. I use it daily and it dramatically improved my efficiency.
SPOT ON! Thanks man! My biggest time waster is THIS BLOG.
Way too much good information on here…darn it…
=)
Thanks for the tool!! Efficiency is my weak point.
Well…that and when my son makes choc chip cookies…and my 2 yr old interrupts me with her brown eyes and a few cheezits or goldfish…or when my son tells me about Daniel Boone or Pa Ingles ’cause he’s a reader…or when my wife stops by my nook and tells me what I need to fix that isn’t composed of pixels (years of remodeling/construction experience does that)…or when … yeah. I need that tool.
Well, I don’t know about Silicon Valley, but here in Marin, just north of SF, it seems that hot studs are on every trail, biking or running; you should check it out sometimes.
Anyway, your witty remark made me think about an article I read this morning featuring a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who’s latest achievement was to lunch a dating site exclusive for Mac user. In a way, this is the ultimate niche approach…
Thank you for your encouragement regarding my IM efforts. Right now, I am adding about 1-2 new pages daily on a couple of sites, and link it with articles at EZA and ArticlesBase.
Unfortunately, not much time is left for other backlinking efforts, like Hubpages or social bookmarking. I was thinking to hire a VA for a few hours daily.
What is your opinion about outsourcing routine, repetitive tasks?
Just a quick one on using ArticlesBase, unless you’re spinning your articles, I would suggest you use Ezines, GoAritlces or Buzzle since they are DoFollow, AB is a nofollow so it may be worth having that lower down the priority.
Zaheer
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
I find spinning (good) articles takes me as long as proofing new, originally ones, that I can procure cheaply from my sources.
I read that all anchor text links at ArticlesBase have the ‘nofollow’ tag (and I actually noticed that all hyperlinks are ‘nofollow’ as well), but for Buzzle my articles are too short at ~400 words. It looks like they only accept articles at ~600 words, or am I wrong?
I will give a try to GoArticles; it is on my to do list for tomorrow.
Oh you’re in Marin?! Nice! Nice and expensive to live there! haha! Wow, the mac dating site sounds interesting. But I suppose that guy would really be onto something good. Unfortunately, I don’t do Mac except the makeup. haha!
I had no idea that such a thing as MAC makeup exists; I had to google it first. This is another reason why I like this blog, beside the genuine commentators, I get to learn new things outside the IM world, too.
Marin is beautiful indeed and I love being here. It can be indeed very expensive, especial for full time single parents like me; that’s why I am trying my best with this IM (ad)venture.
If you are ever in this area, give me a shout and I’ll gladly show you around.
You are so lucky to have a supportive mom. I gave up years ago on my mom being supportive for me in any way. She’s more the “tear down” type.
It sounds like you have a good action plan here.Keep us updated when you can.
Cathy recently posted..MIA but for a Good Reason
Hey! We have the same mom?? =O
…I did not say that out loud. And: this isn’t even my computer/avatar/identity. My name’s Bill. “Bill on oDesk”….
Hey “Bill”. So you are my long lost brother, huh? LOL
Cathy recently posted..MIA but for a Good Reason
I think we may be. OR our moms are twins? Cousins maybe? Thank goodness my mom…er…”mom” doesn’t read this blog.
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Up Against A Wall – Round Two Of The Aaron Wall Interview At The Average Genius
Mine neither. All she does on the computer is play online Bingo and wouldn’t have a clue how to find anything else on the net, thank God.
Cathy recently posted..MIA but for a Good Reason
Speaking of twins, I can hear my twins crying…..grrrrrrrrrrr
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
James,
You are no longer my son. Maybe Elance will adopt you.
Mom
That’s ok James if your mom disowns you. I’m probably old enough to be your mom. I’ll adopt you sweetie. My 25,22, & 19 year old will tell you that I’m a good mom.
Thanks for the laugh today! LOL
Cathy recently posted..MIA but for a Good Reason
HaHa for the link you put theaveragemom.com!
Kelly recently posted..What I have Learned About IM in the Past 2 Months
I like that he used a different IP to get the “sour-pussed” looking gravatar.
What is SUPER hillarious is that this WASN’T me!
I laughed out loud – whoever the clever one was – fantastic!
Seriously-that is even funnier! Okay who did it?
Kelly recently posted..What I have Learned About IM in the Past 2 Months
I totally thought it was James.
Not my IP — it was YOU, wasn’t it, Sara? Or….mom?
Yea, my mom rocks! I entered her in Kloe Kardashian’s Mother’s Day giveaway but didn’t win.
My comment was short and sweet. Just straight to the point but just wasn’t picked.
Its great to have the support of your Mother, trust me, its not nice when you don’t have any family support. No matter what happens, if your family are there to support you it somehow does help.
The time is just past midnight here in London and I’m usually at about £14-£15 at this time. By 7am (when it resets to 0) I’m usually hitting about £20-£25 per day. As of now I’m on £5.86 and I doubt Ill hit £7. Its considerably better than the last few days…lol, a few trickles from Yahoo and Bing have helped.
With regards to my major drops, its actually been VERY difficult to focus and I’m always jumping from 1 site to the other in some kind of desperation, in the end very little gets done.
Ok, so what I’ve done is as the post mentions above is focused on LSI. A lot of my XFactor sites have fantastic content, by this I mean very well written and researched articles but I have noticed that some of them are repetitive. This may be one of the problems.
I’ve also noticed that I’ve targeted my keywords so that they are very highly focused on a specific phrase for example;
‘dog training collars’,
dog training leash’
dog training widgets’
dog training blah’
dog training blah blah
guides on dog training
So every article either precedes or contains the term ‘dog training’ before or after. This I think played havoc with my WP sites where the ‘recent posts’ widget was just rife with these repetitive terms. As you can see, this poses a problem and I haven’t broadened out the content.
I have 1 Xactor site that didn’t move, 2 pages out of 7 were sitting in position 12 & 13. So for I got my writers to write a few health articles (totally unrelated to the niche) in a hope to boost its rankings into page 1 in the hope of trying to targeting the quick wins. This has only been done in the last few days so will let you know if there was any movement. I also noticed with that site that I had a few LSi articles.
So what have I done?
Over the last few days I’ve submitted several articles to EZines and have seen slight increases in rankings. Articles have been submitted to Ezines, GoArticles and I also have my own article directory so there too. With some articles I’ve changed some of the content slightly to include some LSi terms but this isn’t as easy as it seems.
Siloing: After putting my son to bed late last night, I woke up at 3.30am after his feed and started to completely re-categorise the articles on the site. I got rid of the ‘recent posts’ and just created relevant categories. I know this does help because my bro in law has a business where he uses W and organises everything into categories. His sites actually increased their rankings. The domains are about a year old.
I also added a contact page and a ‘proper’ privacy policy and it actually looks like a proper site…lol
LSi Content: My approach is changing to the way I write content. Firstly, I find my main keyword (using MNF as before) and then use the Google ‘wonder wheel’ and related terms by typing ‘~keyword’ into Google. This brings back all related terms. I’ve then asked my writers to just write in their normal manner but more naturally. Not gone too overboard with this but will initially try this with 5 articles for 1 site and see if it has any effect.
Other than that I’ve done the usual social bookmarking, and hubpages to see if this has any effect.
The more and more I look at it, the more I think it is down to LSi and correct Siloing. These in my opinion are the key things that will help to get our rankings back. Oh and I think the days of small thin sites are gone. Its all about building authority with at least 50 or so pages.
We may be down but certainly not out!
Zaheer
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
Zaheer – you know that MNF has an LSI feature, right? If you left-click the term, it will come up in a pop-up menu.
Or whatever adjective is technically correct.
Pop Up
Pop Under
Pop Eye
Pop Tart
…whatever. There’s an LSI feature on MNF. Left click. Pop Tart menu.
Hi James,
Yes thanks for that, I have used it but don’t know why its just not as useful as using the wonder wheel.
Thanks
Zaheer
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
That’s good information. I haven’t used it yet, it’s been down. I emailed James Jones, LLC and received feedback from “Sharon” — they admitted they were on a love/hate relationship with their vendor (can’t recall who), and she said Google’s WW was a good option (I didn’t know the “~” was the same thing — does that return LSI?).
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Up Against A Wall – Round Two Of The Aaron Wall Interview At The Average Genius
The ‘~keyword’ returns related keywords, so you could type
~thick yoga mats
then type ~thick yoga mats -thick yoga mats
and then just keep adding -keword until you build a list of related terms.
You will see the related terms as they will be highlighted in bold blue. Just don’t use the 1 word terms first. I use the wonder wheel in addition to that and its working like a dream so far, the proof will be in the pudding though IF the rankings increase!
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
I know no one asked me but I’m using this free program to find LSI words:
http://lsikeywords.com/
Cathy recently posted..MIA but for a Good Reason
THanks! Sometimes the 3rd party on MNF is down, so the LSI terms aren’t always up – they referred me to the wonder wheel on those down times, this is a 3rd resource. Lovely
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Up Against A Wall – Round Two Of The Aaron Wall Interview At The Average Genius
Its a great resource, you just open up the wonder wheel on 1 monitor and write your article in the other. Just doing some tweakign and its workign great. Just hoping it reaps some positive rewards.
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
Isn’t it funny how most of the time moms are right? That’s wonderful that you have a mom that supports you and can help you get back on track and feel motivated again.
I know my situation is not even close to yours but I have two little ones at home and like you I feel like I should be out playing with them rather than working, but then I feel torn because we need the money to take them out and do things. I have cut down the hours that I work during the day and only work around 1-2 hours while they are awake and once 9pm hits, I start really working. I then work from 9pm till about 1am, so I still get in about 5-6 hours a day of work, sometimes more if I get on a role doing something. Would you be able to squeeze in more hours after your son sleeps and then cut your working time back til noon during the day? Like I mentioned I know my situation is not like yours, but this way you can spend more time with your son and stil get work done. I also find I have better focus when I work during the night because no one else is around and I can completely focus on work.
Good luck with everything and keep on chugging along!!!!

Tiffany recently posted..5 Hot Niches that Won’t be Going Away Anytime Soon
ITA with you, we have 7 kids in the house (oldest is married), so it’s busy-busy-busy around here. My wife’s a SAHM and soon i’ll be a SAHGooglingDaddy, by year’s end.
Working at night mostly is the best time for me, too, especially since we’re those craaaaazy homeskuler types.
Yeah. I said it. Homeskule. What? What do you mean it’s spelt rong? Lemme guess: u wren’t homeskuled?
Figures.
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Up Against A Wall – Round Two Of The Aaron Wall Interview At The Average Genius
Wow 7 kids, thats amazing! How do you cope?
Night time is actually the best time to work, I’ve got 3 boys, 1 2.5 who I look after as he is a 24 hour job with tube feeding and then 1 year old twins who the MRs manages, the night time is def best, its not ideal but the only time when theres a little peace and youactually have time to work and maybe some time to yourself.
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
“How do you cope?”
God gave me a wife. She’s who Superman looks up to.
With great difficulty, I had to leave my job 15 months ago as would you believe an ‘SEO Consultant’ to lok after my boy full time as he suffers from serious GERD. My wife was pregnant with 3 month premature twins who were in the neonatal unit for 2 mnths and my eldest has just had some sugery a few weeks ago so ermmm its all systems go. Coping is a nightmare so I try and do as much as I can at night when they are sleeping or in between night feeds.
I do have a wife but its just too much for her and wouldnt be fair on her…lol
One has to do what one can…lol
All fun of life I guess.
Wow, still getting over the 7 kids, what are their age ranges James?
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
Wow. I’ve actually been really fortunate thus far – the only health issues have been my asthma (allergies, thanks NoCal!), and my 5-yr-old now 6-yr old had stitches in his numb-skull.
Sorry. He jumps around in the shower, and has met the toilet in a nasty fall or TWO…finally paid those off.
Anyhow, as for the 8 kids (7 at home, oldest is married):
18 y/o girl (married)
16 y/o girl
12 y/o girl
10 y/o boy
6 y/o boy
4 y/o girl
2 y/o girl
and my 3rd son, born Jan of this year.
Got started at 16 – hey, California does that sort of thing to a guy! – and now my oldest is moving out here to Idaho to be with us (her and her amazing husband).
I’m sorry to hear about your family’s woes! Much respect and hat’s off to you, that takes incredible strength.
Wow Zaheer, you really have your hands full! Kudos on quitting your job and doing what is best for your family.
I hate hearing these stories of people needing to make a living from home and then getting slammed by Mayday. I really wish I could do something to help.
Carrie recently posted..Article Backlinks Test – Life Delay
Thanks Carrie, its actually a lot worse than I explained and I wonder if I’ll ever get a break or if my son will EVER eat but I don’t want everyone to be upset…lol.
The only way I think we can help is to keep up what we’re doing on this wonderful site by sharing knowledge and learning from each others mistakes. Hopefully this way we can all try and support our families and make our lives just that little less stressful.
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
I can’t imagine the stress you must deal with Zaheer. I wish you all the success so that you can enjoy more time with your family. Your little boy is in my prayers. Do not worry about possibly bogging down anyone with your personal issues. I think the majority of the readers on this blog are good people and most of all we’re a very supportive community.
Tiffany,
Do you find time to do a lot in the 1-2 hours where you work or do you outsource?
Zaheer
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
Yes, working at night is most likely the answer to my situation. It sucks though because lately I am ready to hit the sack at 10:00pm. I blame lack of exercise and poor eating habits.
Sara,
Just a tip on working throughout the night if you do decide to go that way. Do try and organise your time so you now exactly what you need to get done. The night absolutely flies by and before you know it the sun has already risen and its time for an early breakfast.
Its very important to stay within a timetable. Sometimes I drop off with my son when I put him to bed at 10pm and wake up for like 2am. Sometimes at 4am etc, obviously this can really mess with your body but fortunately your time is not dictated by feeds.
It can be very good working through the night as there are no distractions however it can incredibly easy to jump onto FaceBook and keep on checking your email and AdSense earnings so discipline is vital.
I often set myself a goal of keyword research one night, writing x number of articles the next, adding content from writers the next and so forth.
This is based purely on my experience but you obviously know what you’re doing….just wanted to give yo some moral support thats all
Good luck with it.

Zaheer
Nettech recently posted..The worst birthday ever and all because of Google’s Mayday Update
Hi Tiffany,
Thanks for the suggestions and your support.
@Dan N I think hiring a VA is a fantastic idea. If I could afford one now, I would. Another good backlink service is Backlinks Philippines. When this service was used on my xfactor site, I saw it rise in the SERPs immediately and my site had already doubled its previous month’s earnings in just 1 week. Unfortunately the site stopped ranking when this mayday update hit and so now it is bouncing from page 4 to page 10+, through no fault of the backlinks since 95% of my sites are also behaving the same way. It has more to do with the fact that that site was newer and had not been updated since it was built in January. I’m thinking that google wants to see more sites being updated and this is an easier method to weed out micro niche sites, especially when you have quite a few of them like me.
You can get a full time VA from the Philippines starting at $250 a month, and if you really can’t afford that, you might want to look into going halves with someone for a full time VA, or hiring someone part time. I know I certainly didn’t feel I could afford a VA for a long time, and right now I am paying almost half of my earnings each month to the one I have. But if you only have limited time to work, I think you probably can’t afford to not do it. I really can’t work when my two year old is up – the only time I can fit work into my schedule is at night or during naptimes – and I know I am not going to get anywhere fast by only putting in 3 or 4 hours a day by myself at this point. I’m not saying having a VA is always easy – there is a lot of training up front, and it was touch and go with the one I hired for the first month or so. But right now she is working out great, and it makes me feel great knowing there is someone working even when I can’t – building backlinks to my sites for eight hours each weekday. I seriously think you should consider hiring someone at least part time. I would guess the results you would see from this would pay for for the help pretty quickly.
Michelle recently posted..June 8-14, 2010 – Weekly Update #2
@Michelle My time is very limited as well. My daughter is nine and she started going to bed later than usual; sometimes she is around past 9:30 PM. I cannot work much during the night because I need my 8 hours beauty sleep
Luckily, I can squeeze some work during the day, since my day job workload is very low right now.
Anyway, I had good experiences with content writers from the Philippines; they seem quite reliable. I am thinking that a VA from Philippines would make a good choice.
Yesterday, I posted a VA bid request on RentACoder and I am waiting to see the bids. I would gladly share it with somebody else. Any takers??!!
@NoteworthyTips Thank you for your recommendation; however, I am not sure if I am ready to pay for any backlinking service just now.
I realize that I’ll not be able to get as many backlinks as such a service could provide, but I feel that whatever I am getting on my own is better quality and will stand the proof of time in SERPs.
Anyway, if I understand the trend correctly, it looks like do to the MayDay update, and future predictable such updates, these link building services are going to be made obsolete.
My issue right now is more of a practical matter then anything else. I started like everybody else with a bunch of niche sites and, after a VERY steep learning curve, I managed to get them online on Thesis frames with original content.
However, no matter how well organized I am and what kind of shortcuts I employ, it still takes a lot of time to make any dent into such a workload. I am starting to question the feasibility of such an approach and I am more inclined right now to build authority sites that could rank for more than one keyword.
My data volume is too small to jump into any conclusion, but this is only a feeling that I am getting.
Personally I think too many people are over thinking the issues of drops in rankings. If it is a thin site add a load more articles and get lots of backlinks. That is all that is needed really.
The only real drops people seem to be reporting are for these small 5 page sites. Get a proper large site and build it for more keywords. Try not to focus just on one or two and you really should be fine. I would not get to involved in if you need to add images or a single post etc. Just take an hour for each site and add another 3 articles or so and backlink like crazy.
But any site that is performing best I would really build it up to a large site with 100 plus posts, interlink all the posts, write new ones for any longtails you get and interlink to the original post that go the query and enforce with the search engines that you really are about any longtail you get, you will rocket in the rankings. But, personally I think adsense is about the hardest way to make money online.
And I am sorry for all you seem to be going through, sounds like a tremendous drain on you.
Dave recently posted..How To Build An Authority Site
Yea, I agree that just making sites with more content is the way to go. As I work on my amazon sites, I will most likely look back on my best performers and build those sites out. I think I can better focus on 5 authority sites versus my 100 xfactor sites.
@Ridna – Yes I am familiar with that blog and that is actually why I started up with Hubpages but then later opted to own my own niche sites since you have to do revenue sharing with Hubpages and you would have to market them just as any other site. I think its best to invest in your own domain than have to split earnings with someone else. Actually Ben was the one that advised me about not focusing on earning so much with hubpages BUT to invest in my own domains.