My my my have you all been busy commenting in the last 36 hours I was gone. I had to do a last minute dash run to my parents home yesterday to get my son enrolled in the new school he will be attending for when I get it approved from the court to move. (Notice I did not say “If” I get it approved. I’m practicing the secret for this hearing on Tuesday.).
I have had some astonishing low adsense days and it seemed as if each new day was getting worse. through this Mayday update so far my lowest adsense day was June 8th at $10.67 and in the past seven days I have only earned $114. Ouch! This is very painful especially when I was averaging about $225 a week. However I did hit $16.64 yesterday so I am hoping to start seeing a rise in my earnings again.
My sites are not recovering their rankings. At least not to the point that I can tell. They are still not found listed withing the first 100 positions meanwhile the 3 sites I adjusted the content by adding LSI words to have just maintained their previous positions.
My site that I was converting into an authority site for my challenge was also deeply effected by the Mayday update. This is why I throw out the idea of “fresh content” being the reason for losing rankings because this authority site received a new post for 10 days straight and i stopped working on posting new posts to it for about 2 weeks. I don’t think a 2 week lapse in info is enough for google to consider the blog as stale or inactive.
Anyhow here is a screenshot for the traffic on the authority site. This pretty much sums up what all my micro niche sites are doing at the moment.
I am baffled how some sites that are not ranking seem to be improving in traffic over the past two days and yet those same sites are not actually getting clicks.
Ok Matthew, i saw your plea for a new post to continue the Matt Cutt’s video interview and Caffeine discussion. So fire away! 
I found all the comments very interesting and for the record I am a total nub myself. I just felt that by documenting my efforts in this blog, I could help others from learning from my mistakes or passing on a tip or two. I do not think I am lil’ Miss Thang and I do appreciate and learn various helpful things from many of you that post comments on my blog. Even you newbies to IM. That’s what’s so great about the IM world; since we have tried various methods that can be drastically different we can exchange so much knowledge for free. So thank you everyone!
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Currently on Ryan’s webinar about flipping, anyone else on? … Welcome back Sara.. sorry to hear about the earnings, but I know we will come up with a solution in the near future. Just have faith!
I hate it when people keep pumping all of these “hot” new courses and then charge people who can’t afford it outrageous prices like $997 or i’ve even seen $2997 on one of them.
If you can actually, in all honesty afford $997 for an internet marketing class, then you probably don’t need it!
matthewdc recently posted..I get sidetracked…alot..=)
I don’t know who Ryan is. lol
Haha, sorry, Ryan Moran…he’s been in the IM world for a while and had several fairly large successes. He runs eTycoon.net now among other things..mostly focuses on training for flipping sites.
Matthew DC recently posted..I get sidetracked…alot..=)
Sorry if this is a bit of topic, but Sara or anyone else, have you tried putting youtube vids on your xfactor or MFA type sites? I have read that it is a big factor in getting higher ranking, but just thought would it be too much going on the page to take away from the advertising?
My traffic is still a little on the low side, but my earnings are about back to normal. I remember checking my rankings back a few months ago with caffeine before it was launched, and I saw then that most of my sites actually did better under caffeine. Did you ever test caffeine before the switch? I did see a few of my sites move up nicely in the past few days, but that could be due to backlinking efforts as well – it’s so hard to sort things out given all the changes. I certainly don’t think backlinks are the problem, as I have been doing all sorts of backlinks to my sites (including lots of forum profile links) and haven’t been hurt by these at all. But given all the things going on right now with Google (caffeine, MayDay long tail shifts, and possibly some other algorithm changes that target EMD or thin content sites in some way), it would seem that testing and trying different and new things out is the best way forward from here.
Michelle recently posted..Are We Selling Ourselves Short with Amazon’s Affiliate Program?
Hi Michelle – bit off topic, but just curious as to how many profile backlinks you consider to be “alot”? Just trying to gauge how many other webmasters are using for their micro niche sites. Thanks
Depending on the site, anywhere from 50 to over 2500. Most that are over six months old, have gotten at least one run of 400 links from the Blackbelt monthly. I wait on younger sites until they are at least a month old to do any profile links, and then I’ll start them off slow – maybe 50 links for the first run or so.
Michelle recently posted..Are We Selling Ourselves Short with Amazon’s Affiliate Program?
im a member of blackbelt monthly too – But I am finding that only 200 or so of the 400 actually stick! The rest of the forums close registration, make links no follow, or disable signatures/url’s. Was really disappointed – now I find my own with scrapebox, would recommend it!
[http://ugetlinks.com]
have no idea if it works…but I’ll prob buy that thing
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Up Against A Wall – Round Two Of The Aaron Wall Interview At The Average Genius
I haven’t been affected by the “Mayday Mayhem,” but I can say that I don’t believe backlinks (per se) have anything to do with a sudden decrease in ranking.
Across the board my traffic and rankings in SERPs has increased by several spots, with many websites landing in 2nd and 3rd positions, and their backlink counts haven’t changed. Instead, I believe it has to do quite a bit with on-page SEO factors including the linking structure of your website and its inner pages.
Interesting take on the SEO side — considering this is what Cutts has been suggesting is behind the whole shebang (i.e. quality SERPs). I’ll have to double-check the deep-linking on my sites from here on out, to tell the truth I haven’t paid much mind to it all.
Anyhow, for the record, I have been learning tons from these discussions, and have a hard time turning off the think-tank. Very much appreciate the discussion.
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Off The Wall – Aaron Wall Of SEOBook Grants The Average Genius An Interview
I hear so many conflicting stories, but age does seem to help. At a minimum, with just some aging you should hopefully recover.
Again, I think there are so many variables involved it will be impossible to find a cure-all, but I too think on-page factors may be contributing. I know we talked about tag clouds before, are they on all your sites? Related posts plugin? I don’t know about your sites but some of the micro-sites I have seen have poor navigation and interlinking.
Just some thoughts. I really have no clue.
Carrie recently posted..Building Article Backlinks – Posting Complete
agreed.
=D
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Up Against A Wall – Round Two Of The Aaron Wall Interview At The Average Genius
so guys… whats the plan going forward? I havent been hit too hard so far *fingers crossed* but it is making me uncomfortable about small sites. I have my eye on a health niche and finance niche that has tons of longtails… although more competitive, im thinking that it might be better to go after a higher competiton but higher reward niche? Some of the longtails with 1000 searches are actually not that competitive. High payout affiliate and CPA offers. Content that is actually what the searcher is after, and may attract natural backlinks – lets face it, nobody is really that interested in these mini product sites. Most people searching for 4 slice toasters want to buy it, not read “quality” articles about it…. Also means I dont have to deface my sites with adsense!!
Thoughts?
Me personally, i’m about to start kickin it old school. I’m going back to the process I used when I first started out, before I got caught up in all these systems.
I am just gonna pick something I like writing about that gets decent traffic, build a site with a catchy domain (NOT a keyword domain), write a ton of content, post it on the site, submit articles to Ezine, then spin it and submit to UAW, all while posting blog posts to BB intermittently. I might post up a link wheel or 2, some squids and hubs, and do a round or two of Backlinks Phillipines, and then just have fun.
The fresh updates, authority from Ezine and BackPhil, and link numbers from BB and UAW should help me get ranked.
Basically I am going to build a real site. Not a mini site just to rank, not a site I don’t really take pride in, and not a site I would immediately hit the back button on were I to find it while surfing.
Google wants us to build real sites. Besides, that’s where the traffic and money really is anyways. I would rather pick a tough to rank for keyword, work my butt off, and earn what I know will be a consistent income, rather than take my chances with systems Google might slap.
This isn’t because of Mayday, or Caffeine, or anything else. It is something we have all been slowly progressing towards for a while now anyways. Sara with her authority site challenge, Yolanda with selling off her dead niche sites and looking at bigger sites, and many others as well.
We want to build a business. You do that by building a solid brand that people believe in, trust, and are willing to support for the long term.
Is it harder? Yeah, of course it is. But guess what? All of those things you’ve learned by ranking your mini sites, they still work for authority sites. You just have to do them two, three, four times as hard. But I would rather focus my attention on 3 quality sites, that I can tell people I own and be proud of, and make $50 a day each, than have to manage 150 sites making $1 a day and constantly monitor them and check their rankings and stats.
So thats my plan. Sorry if this is long, I am going to post something very similar to my blog, but I know a lot of people here want to have this conversation, and I think a lot of us are on the same page on this. So that’s my 2 cents. If you made it this far in without falling asleep, thanks for reading! =)
Matthew DC recently posted..I get sidetracked…alot..=)
spot on matt, exactly what im thinking. Focus on building real sites that people actually want, then you dont have to sweat about google updates
Im submitting to google – no point resisting them anymore… 
The thing is, a lot of these more competitive niches will pay off. If you can rank a few inner pages in the top 5, you should start seeing sales. If your niche has cpa offers and products going at $20 – $30 per pop, as more of your longtail inner pages rank, your sales will go up. I dont think expecting $50 – $100 per day from 1 large site with well ranked inner pages is unreasonable. Build 3 or 4 of these sites, and you have a very handsome income.
- create a site on a niche with lots of longtails
- create a site that you can actually write quality content about, and content that the searcher is looking for (i.e not 4 slice toasters, think “school grants” etc)
- choose a niche that has some nice affiliate / CPA offers
- build a pretty blog/site and start publishing a few articles per week
- rock out with all the backlinking and promotion methods you have learnt these last few months! Lets face it, backlinks are easy if you put in the effort. After you have published an article, write a few ezas, do a few profile backlinks, and whatever else floats your boat.
Even in very competitive niches, you will be able to get some long longtail traffic early on. Think 3 – 6 months down the line, and you will really start to rank. In 1 year you could be ranking for the “head” terms…
Thats what i am going to do starting next week… just looking for some catchy .com domains and nice wordpress themes…
I think this is a good idea, but what I am planning to do is start with a lot of sites and build on the ones that actually look promising!
You can fail with an authority site, the same way you can with a ‘thin’ site.
Kelly recently posted..New Theme….again Plus Updates
Very good point Kelly. It comes back to putting all your eggs in one basket. Its a risk to focus on only one site and later discover its a dud and at the same time you could end up having a truly successful site that pulls in thousands of dollars a month from it.
Good point – but by looking at the competition, you can usually tell which niche will be profitable – its high competition for a reason! A niche with no competition is likely to be unprofitable, as I am sure many of us have discovered with some of our micro niche sites – even if you rank well.
With a larger site, you can choose a niche that you know is profitable – just check out all the affiliate offers, competing websites, and number of searches.
Why not be more ambitious, and shoot for a site around weight loss? Just target loads of long tails around weight loss and backlink them. Instead of using adsense, use high payout affiliate products / cpa offers. You end up with 1 large site targetting lots of profitable long tails + you get the authority bonus from having it all on the same domain.
I would feel far better having 3 large sites that cover “legitimate” keywords, than 100 sites that are basically tricking the searcher into visiting them and clicking an adsense link.
Lets face it – do we really think people are reading our articles about “mini widgets”? No, they are seeing our exact match domain for “mini widgets” appearing high in google, they click it looking for product listings to buy (e commerce basically) yet they find text… they see the blue shiny links with what they want, so they click it. The product micro sites are just an extra stepping stone between the searcher and their final destination.
When you break it down, I dont think this is sustainable as a business model, which is why im moving forward to concentrate on putting what I have learn into practice, but with sites that are built with the user in mind. I want people to acually read what I am writing and comment on it – and if they should happen to want to purchase a relevant product through one of my affiliate links, then great.
Sara – just a question – dont you prefer this site to all your micro sites? I mean all of us read your posts, follow you, and are moved to spent LOADS of time commenting on your posts lol… I would guess that you find that far more rewarding than any other site? So why not take your obvious writing + SEO skills and put them into a couple of sites that will have the same effect?
I hate to be the one to chime in and say to just wait it out but according to the xfactor forum, several people posted within the past 24 hours that many of their sites are returning to their page 1 rankings. I do hesitate at the thought of running around and trying to “fix” the sites that are not ranking. For now, I am just going to continue to add more pages of content to my authority site I abandoned when I had my drama freak-out week! So, I technically am waiting it out other than watching the 3 sites I added LSI words to and now adding content to my authority site challenge.
Even if things do return back to normal, im still finished with the xfactor method/ product site method. It was a good education in SEO, but as matthew says, im going “Old school”…
I dunno. Obviously the theory that keyword domains not ranking with the new algorithm is not fact since obviously there are still plenty of examples of people that are following Xfactor’s ebook whom have not had their sites or earnings take a nose dive. The xfactor method could still work and still does work.
I’m still inclined to think that George Brown was really onto something with his suggestions on how to build a sniper site. His whole point was you didn’t even really need backlinks at all in order to rank but that his “snipping” SEO method was all you needed. My sniper sites did not budge and if anything rank higher now so I am more inclined to think that his suggestions for the amount of LSI words used in each post and in what order to post related keywords is crucial.
Nothing wrong with old school but I wouldn’t call xfactor’s method over. We just need to figure out why person x and person y’s xfactor sites and earnings remain unchanged and why my 70 sites took a nose dive.
At the same time I understand your frustration and desire to not wait but to be productive again. Its understandable. i would love nothing more than someone to come in and say “Ok Sara. Here’s plan B. Start off doing this and you’re good to go and you’ll be a success”. But in reality we do not have that luxury and if someone did march in, we would have to question the proof of it working.
Not saying it doesn’t work, just saying that I dont fancy earning $2 per site anymore (my average across 30 sites now)
Lets face it, exact match domains + sniping low comp product keywords is gaming the search engines – when someone searches for a product name, they want to buy it. If they wanted reviews or information, they would add “review” or “information” to the end of the search query (most of the time)
I totally agree that exact match domains hold a lot of weight, and probably will for a long time. But what has happened these last few days has really opened my eyes. Do I want a portfolio of sites largely based around the exact match domain boost and various other “tactics” or do I want sites that are genuinely relevant and exactly what the searcher is after? Do I want dozens, even hundreds of sites to backlink, or do I want to concentrate my backlinking on a handful of sites. Do I want to put thousands of pages of content online just to grab a few adsense clicks? Or do I want to put a few hundred quality highly searched articles online, and monetise them with affiliate offers.
More and more I am being drawn towards concentrating on fewer, larger, more competitive + higher pay off sites that offer content that can attract backlinks naturally.
Google will never stop updating, and will constantly strive to improve the relevancy of results – I cant help but think that many more “maydays” are in store these next few months and years… As such I think providing searchers with what they truly want, combined with tons of backlinks, and a well structured site, is the best way to rank well going forward.
@Sara – I believe the xFactor method still works. I just don’t necessarily see it as fitting with my goals or ambitions. Once you have the tools to be successful online and understand how to rank a site, why not go all out? Why not shoot for the moon and try to create a legitimate business that people recognize by name?
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I tend to shy away from showing people my adsense sites. Not because of the threat of competition, or revealing my business, altho i use that as an excuse to avoid the subject, but because honestly, they embarrass me to an extent. I’m not saying it’s wrong, or that I don’t think it can make you a ton of money with a ton of work, but i’m being honest about how it feels to be in this business for me.
Doesn’t anyone else feel that way at times?
Matthew DC recently posted..I get sidetracked…alot..=)
Matthew,
ITA with you here and that’s why I always strive to build my personal/passive income niche websites the same way I would for a client. I figure if I invest the time now towards the design aspect, then I’ll have a website I wouldn’t be ashamed to put my name to, nor would I have to worry about my websites having a high bounce rate because I didn’t feel like “doing all that” in terms of the appearance/layout.
…however, if you’re building sites in large quantities, the time you dedicate to your website’s appearance comes secondary for most people.
Since you seem to be going the “authority site” route, then consider it a one-time investment.
I know what you mean, Matthew.
Until I check my Googl3 analytics and Adsens3 page and realize it works, that is.
But piggy-backing on what you and Dan are saying:
1) I respect your direction, and think you need to do what you *want* to do and feel like you can sustain.
2) I don’t think XFactor’s over — actually, I had one site in a “macro-niche” that was knocked off the map. It’s back today in position 5…so: it’s all good in my ‘hood.
I was talking w/my wife over all this, however, and think I will be doing what Aaron Wall suggested, and basically have a mixed bag, but get more towards thicker/authority sites.
I am *not* a member of John’s forum (his ebook was purchased by my brother in law who built two lousy sites and got tired of “all that writing,” although his two sites are *not* product related and are *not* thicker than 3 pages….go figure they do horribly). But I do have his ebook and he has my respect.
I think where a lot of IMers have gone wrong (NOT pointing any fingers at anyone) is that they don’t pay close enough attn to what he was saying, and several times he’d mentioned in the book that you go back and build up your sites that are working out well.
The guy’s method is plain easy, it works, and yes it may seem that we’re “tricking” people into getting to our sites, but I don’t think so — at least, not if you write right.
Rather than get into a debate over that, though, I wanted to come out and say that for me, I’ll be doing the fewer/higher quality route myself. I’m doing it not because of Mayday, but that was a catalyst in my changed thinking…
Rather I would rather get more sales and face the challenge of figuring out the best way to do that (just repeating what’s worked on my one XFactor site that’s selling a $2k/each product for a pretty nice commission, about $150-170/sale for me, plus incentives).
I won’t give up on Adsense, however, nor on the XFactor method altogether — but I’m going to be playing to my strengths instead — and I like sales, personally. Not gimmick-type, used-car sales, but “I believe in this product, here’s why you should, too” sort of sales.
Word of mouth-ish, all strategically done with article submissions and Web 2 properties (gotta use that Magic Submitter I have!).
This is *fun* and I want to be focused on where I find the most reward/challenge. In the meantime, John Xfactor sites will still be in my mix, but secondarily until I’ve built up enough of these CPA and aff sites.
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Up Against A Wall – Round Two Of The Aaron Wall Interview At The Average Genius
James, I dont think anyone here is saying the xfactor sites dont work. I think what me and matthew agreed on was that we personally just dont feel comfortable with the mini product sites.
Not matter how well you write – a user searching for thin yoga mats is most probably looking to buy thin yoga mats, and when they click on thinyogamats.org they are expecting an ecommerce site.
John actually states in a forum post that he doesnt care if they read his article, in fact, he says that he is happy for them to immediately click the adsense link. But its this practice and business model of misleading the searcher into visiting your site, that I dont see lasting. Google will come up with a way to filter these sites out eventually. Im not saying your guys are putting “buy thin yoga mats online” in your titles, but i know many people are, just to attract the visitor, then they have loads of articles about how great thin yoga mats are, but none for sale. This puts more “clicks” between the user and their final destination, which is against what google is trying to achieve.
Ah. I see your point.
Check this article out, though, I think it blasts the theory that Google is actually going for “quality searches” out of the Pacific:
http://bit.ly/9U1BHq
I got the link from Aaron Wall’s Tweet, hence the Bit.ly URL.
Like I said, though, I’m with you in the sense that I’m headed the same direction (see Matt’s blog for my comment there) – I enjoy sales, and definitely haven’t followed the XFactor no-affiliate policy (all my sites have aff links, I found a few that work and tweaked the CSS to favor aff sales).
All that to say, I guess I don’t fit the mold (re: not an ecommerce site…my XFactor sites give the user an opportunity to buy, and $2k in sales later, I’m happy I did).
Thanks for clarifying the point, though, and for the record, I’m with you/Yolanda/Matt on this idea…BUT I won’t be tossing out AdSense altogether. I think I’ll keep two concurrent campaigns, or have AdSense pages and strictly CPA/Affiliate pages?
Not sure…probably just do two different sites altogether: AdSense/Affiliate, keep them simple and maximize sales that way.
Great. Now I’m rambling…
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Up Against A Wall – Round Two Of The Aaron Wall Interview At The Average Genius
I definitely think that it is important to venture out and try new things, authority sites, medium sites, thin sites, membership sites. Everything you can think of until you try what works for you.
Mike, George and John are earning good money just on their ‘thin sites’ even though George and John now how authority sites I believe. There are those people like Shoe Money and John Chow that are pulling in 5 figures a month with only I believe a few sites.
I do not have the link but Dave is earning like 8k a month, someone correct me if I am wrong-through his Amazon sites.
Everyone is doing something different to see what works and what pays off for them. I am gonna try almost everything-not to sure about the membership sites, but who knows.
No one can ever say what will work, or everyone would be doing it. I find this interesting and it gives me something to do like a challenge to take my off of everything that is going on right now.
Kelly recently posted..New Theme….again Plus Updates
I do agree with you Kelly. And what is right for one person may not be successful for another. I know I cannot stand list building or pushing clickbank products and I won;t venture out on building websites with that sort of foundation and income goals. I’ve always favored actual product sales.
But the only problem I have with venturing out is you get system overload. You start doing this program or following that ebook and the next thing you know, you have never really given any particular program your full attention. The xfactor ebook was the one program that I stuck to over my entire 19 months of IM.
Certainly I cannot be alone on this.
That is my problem-staying with one program-I need to figure out a path and stick with it! That is good you stuck with xFactor for 19 months! Your sites will come back around!
I need to pick a program and build 10-20 sites and see what clicks-the ones that look really promising I want to turn into authority sites. I definitely do not want to have just ‘One Basket’ so to speak.
My goal is to get to 15k a month, and I am going to try to monetize different kinds of sites-honestly the fewer the better…whatever it takes!
Kelly recently posted..New Theme….again Plus Updates
Yep, you’re one to watch — great goals and fantastic idea. experiment and see what works, in the meantime there are plenty of bloggers out there who are doing exactly that.
The cool thing is that not all of them have become the e-book brokers just yet…so you can learn from their experiences and conduct your own experiments along the way.
Exciting stuff!
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Up Against A Wall – Round Two Of The Aaron Wall Interview At The Average Genius
Some of mine are coming back to where there were. One is even doing a lot better. About 5 sites though have yet to make an appearance from the netherworld they were cast off too. My de-indexed site is still de-indexed.
I did notice that my sites that were not affected at all were over 6 months old.
Cathy recently posted..I Found a Cool Free Productivity Tool
Thanks for reporting your results Cathy. I did notice that my sites that stuck also are older than 6 months old. That’s also great news that your sites are making a come back. Sorry to hear about your de-indexed site.
Have you added new content to it?
No, I haven’t done anything to the de-indexed site yet to try to help it recover. Except to study it to try to figure out why it got de-indexed. Still don’t know why.
Cathy recently posted..I Found a Cool Free Productivity Tool
Yeah, my site are still low and my earning and a little lower than normal, not that big of a drop. I hope the summer will help with a couple niches I have. will look at adding more LSI words within the content.