Today marks week 3 of my grueling 12 week goal of building 14 sites a week. Unfortunately I failed at building 14 sites this week. It started off with last Sunday, I was unable to build my 2 sites because one of my writers did not turn in her articles on time. Then on Friday, I was preparing for a night of a Speed Dating session so most of my day was spent running around putting together the perfect outfit. I didn’t get anything accomplished on Friday other than communicating with and paying my writers. So I tried to make up for some lost time on Saturday, by building 3 sites instead of my two for the day. So basically for week 2, I only built 11 sites.
I know you are eager to hear if my income has increased any and sadly it hasn’t. In fact, it has gone down just a bit. Instead of my usual $15-20 a day, I actually pulled in an average of $14.79 per day. The good news is I have noticed that my sites from week 1 are just now getting a few clicks which has only started the past 2 days. So as I look at today’s adsense earnings, only 3 out of 14 earned clicks and they pulled in a whopping $1.57 all together. Not exactly as I had hoped, but I am not discouraged. I know this method works and I have seen how I was able to pull in $15-20 a day with only 30 odd sites so I know that as the first of these 14 sites age 2-3 months, they should also be pulling in another $10-15 day.
Now, what I am really excited to share with you are the rankings of week 1 sites. After being live for 7 days and now compared to 2 weeks, you will notice the ranking changes as the following:
Site #28 – Ranking #20, now at #18
Site #29 – Ranking #10, still sitting at #10
Site #30 – Ranking #22, now at #18
Site #31 – sandboxed, #18
Site #32 – Ranking #26, now at #8
Site #36 – sandboxed, now at #13
Site #37 – ranking #11 (there is another xfactor site ahead of me)
Site #38 – ranking #28
Site #39 – #11 (there is another xfactor site I am competing with and another one; only the template is not John’s exact)
Site #41 – sandboxed
Site #42 – ranking #24
Site #43 – ranking #13
Site #44 – ranking #12
Site #45,46 and 47 are all sandboxed
So from these latest sites, I think its fair to say that my sites are immediately sandboxed and then within 1-2 days they seem to slowly make their way to page 2. It’s obvious that with some time and a little bit of back links, these sites will easily rank on page 1.
Now for the back linking news. This is the most exciting part yet. I am totally in love with Traffic Kahuna. Its official. My back links are showing up under Google webmaster tools in less than 1 week’s time (faster than goarticles and ezines) and they are super easy to get. I have now decided that I am going to be using one part of the TK system (that part of the system that basically helps automate permanent back links) for my xfactor sites immediately. I will make this one step part a key component to be completed each day just as it is important that I bookmark the site or submit the rss feed.
I had been cutting back from article marketing since starting off on my goal of 2 sites a day but now I am even more so convinced that article marketing with ezines and goarticles just doesn’t reap the benefits as much as using traffic kahuna’s back link opportunities. I wish I could go into further detail as to how these links are practically automated but unfortunately I cannot due to the TOS. All I can say is that the links are built in a fashion as to show that they were built naturally. You do not need to worry about having links built too quickly and alerting Google or any other search engine for that matter since it is not spamming or botting. It’s totally natural looking.
So basically I am using unique article wizard and 2 parts of Traffic Kahuna to get back links. Unique article s still great for getting back links over time, but for some reason the blogs and 2.0 properties your articles get submited to through TK get indexed sooner and Google recognizes them quickly. So as of now, I won’t be following John’s approach of using Goarticles and ezines for the initial back links when building a new site. I will just be using my spun articles to submit through UAW and TK.
RSS Feeds
Do you think that there is benefit in also submitting a few ezine articles and goarticles? I like the idea of using all of these methods.
TheDebtHawk.com´s last blog ..The Purpose Driven Life – My Journey Begins
Well, ezines can bring in some additional traffic. At least that is what I constantly read from other marketers aboutt ezine. But just by looking at my main niche blog which has 2 ezine submitted articles, I only received 1 visitor from ezines it in a period of 30 days.
Now when I look at one of my xfactor sites that is using traffic kahuna, I can see I received 17 visitors from one of the sites in which my back link is located. So, I just see ezine as not being as valuable for me.
The real question is…how did the speed dating go
Carrie´s last blog ..Time to Update
Haha. It was um…interesting. I met a lot of nice men but none that I found attractive. I would do it again but maybe in another city. In fact, the next one is held in March and I may go to another city’s event and hopefully there will be more of the type of men I like there.
About 5 of the men were fascinated when they heard that I was an internet marketer. One guy actually worked for yahoo and another guy started up his own search engine that is suppose to be big news. He said he has one of Google Adwords former advisor’s now working for him but he never told me the name of his company. lol
“He said he has one of Google Adwords former advisor’s now working for him but he never told me the name of his company. lol”
Maybe he was making it all up just trying to impress you. Perhaps if the dating part isn’t working out you could use these sessions to find a JV partner.
Carrie´s last blog ..Time to Update
LOL @ Carrie…JV partner
Sara´s last blog ..January Earnings Updated
Hi Sara,
Nice to see that you are putting in the time and effort necessary to be successful with your goals this year.
I’m curious about something you said in a comment on a previous post. You said that you aren’t following Xfactor’s method exactly and you aren’t sending backlinks to your inner pages, I think you may be losing out on a lot of clicks by not sending backlinks to the inner pages. If you start sending links to the inner pages your website as a whole will be 5-6x more powerful, imo.
Also, do you actually try to make sales on your website? On my sites I typically place adsense ads in the proper places for maximum clickthrough, however I also have distinct buttons for customers to buy the products I’m talking about on my site. That way any customers who come to my site looking for something specific can actually be directed to how to buy a product.
These are just my suggestions and nothing more than that, so please do not take it the wrong way as you are already doing plenty right as far as I’m concerned. Averaging 15 bucks a day is still pretty good and it’s residual income and I know a ton of people who would be happy with an extra $500 a month (who wouldn’t).
It’s always a good thing for me when I see people actually taking action and not just sitting around hoping for a million dollars to fall into their laps.
Ray@howtogetridofrazorbumps´s last blog ..B & C Skin Tight – Extra Strength For Your Razor Bumps
Some good advice there Ray about inner pages, its amazing how when some of the inner pages start to hit the top page you see an increase in earnings. Its defintely worth deep linking these pages and building the power for them as well.
I’m not too sure about adding affiliate links on the xFactor sites though, wouldn’t this dilute yoru clicks? I haven’t really tried this to be honest as I’m afraid that Google will decide to do something and as a result will lose those hard earnt rankings. Would love to hear your feedback ont his Ray.
Sara, you make ONLY 11 sites sound like as though you’ve been lazing around…lol, trust me if I could get 11 sites up and running in a week I’d be kind of chuffed.
How’s your backlinking coming along? As a percentage of your tasks, how much effort do you assign to backlinking? Just curious thats all.
I tend to bookmark and submit the rss feeds pretty much straightaway for the main url and then drip feed this out over a perdiod of a few days…..after that Bookmarking Demon tends to take care of it with the randomization feature.
Keep up the good work!
Zaheer
Hi Zaheer,
To be honest I am getting overwhelmed trying to keep up with all the back linking each day. Sometimes i do not get all the back links completed. I sometimes wonder if I should just build sites 6 days a week and then on the 7th day back link all the pages I build all week long. I dunno, even that sounds tiring. lol
Sara
Sara,
Maybe you should build for 5 days, backlink for 1 day, and rest for 1 day. I know you need to get the income flowing, but a day of rest could protect you from burn out and maybe even keep you more productive the rest of the week.
Take that one day of rest to do laundry, grocery shop, take a long walk, play with your son, etc. As a mom I know you must have alot of household duties to keep up also.
Just a thought
Carrie´s last blog ..Time to Update
Hi Carrie,
That is an excellent suggestion and wise too. I think the only way to boost my income quicker while building these sites is to actually become even more picky with my keyword research as Clickbump has done. His research is conducted in a way that there is no need to back link at all because he is able to basically “snipe” a spot on page one because he targets next to no competition but obviously sites with decent CPC.
I do feel guilty about not having enough free time with my son and I had a talk with him last week about all this. I told him how for the next 2 months I was going to have to work really hard so that in a few months I will have more free time. He understood. Well, as much as a 7 year old possibly can about what is to come.
Hi Ray,
I don’t recall saying that I do not back link my inner pages. I just said that I do not really use ezines or goarticles as directed in John’s ebook. I do run BMD and I also use Unique Article wizard and traffic kahuna to get links to my inner pages.
And just as Zaheer stated, using affiliate links would dilute your clicks and for that reason I do not place affiliate links on my sites. I only use one big adsense block on my sites and that is it.
Sara
Hi Sara,
Sorry if I misinterpreted what you had said about the way you go about getting backlinks to your inner pages.
As far as having your Adsense clicks diluted by affiliate links I don’t really see it as a problem. If I make actual sales of an item that’s paying a 10% commission that one commission could end up equaling multiple Adsense clicks. Even if it’s 10% of a $20 product that’s still $2.00 off of virtually one click through.
M
Ray´s last blog ..B & C Skin Tight – Extra Strength For Your Razor Bumps
I can see your point here Ray, but do you not think that you’re just confusing the user? I would like to kind of control where my users click. I’m not too sure whether affiliate links would work.
How are you doing with having aff links and adsense? I may test this on mone of the newer sites.
Thanks
Zaheer
Hi Ray,
It’s no problem. I did say something back in december how I was struggling to build sites because i hated trying to back link them with articles and I think I said something how I wasn’t going to back link and see if I could get them to rank on their own.
Anyhow, I try my best to back link inner pages at least the first 3 that have the highest cpc keywords. lol
Yea, I know that it makes sense to put in affiliate links so that you can possibly gain a $2.00 commission versus a $0.50 click from adsense but I still think its better the get that adsense click off of every 10 visitors or whatever versus converting a sale through the affiliate link which might have a CTR of 1/100 or whatever.
I guess I’ve always just have better luck building blogs with only one monetized method of either ads or affiliate links but never combining both.
I’m just waiting for the day when you tell us that ALL your sites have literally hit the top 10, I swear you’re gonna be in the money….woot woot!
Zaheer
It’s good to see that you are increasing in the SERPS over the weeks Sara. I’ve found that I’m ranking on Page 2 within the week – but I’m not using just my keywords in the domain which is annoying! I followed John’s advice to add on an extra word and bought 10 domains before I read on your blog that it was useless advice – I agree with you
I’d be interested to see over time whether the sites you built with the article backlinks perform better or worse than the ones you are now just using TK for.
Clare Swindlehurst´s last blog ..Site 5 is now indexed!
Hi Clare,
It’s funny that today you mention how you are using domains that have an added word to the main keyword. Surprisingly, last night as I was checking out the ranking of a site I built a week ago, I noticed out of no where came another xfactor site that had added the word “info” to the end of the main keyword. So it was something like keywordphraseinfo.com and this site is actually outranking me on the keyword, even though I have the keywordphrase.net. The thing I noticed is that the site has a crapload of back links. It is sitting at 200+ back links, all from various sources too. Its really mixed up between article directories, blog commenting and some sort of 3 way back link system.
So obviously your sites are not a total loss but you are going to have to ramp up your back links in order to rank for the main keyword.
I wouldn’t call them a total loss but you will need to decide whether or not you want to just focus on building up back links for them, or move on to keyword domains.
Personally I would move on, let those sites age and just focus on exact keyword domains. Then who knows, in 2-3 months those domains with the added keyword may surprise you in how they are ranking or you can just try to build up a little bit of link juice to them each week by tossing them a few back links.