Every month I like to share with you how things are going with website developments, challenges I’ve ran into, and cool new tricks I’ve discovered. It’s all part of being an online entrepreneur and seeing if we can create something from nothing into a constant sustainable business.
Right off the bat I’ll apologize and confess that I have not spent as much time working on my niche sites as I probably should be. That’s all because I’ve been pre-occupied with the finalization of my first eBook.
I’m very proud to report that I’m rounding third base on the whole eBook project. The front cover is finished. My editor and I have finalized the text (thanks Jim)! The last thing to do is to wait for the Kindle-formatted file to come back from the freelancer before I upload it to Amazon. Then I’ll officially have my first eBook – very exciting!
So while I might have been busy in other areas, I did manage to create quite a bit of content for NS4 and NS1. With that said, let’s see how March shook out.
Niche Website Income Report – March 2015:
Here is my income and expense report for the month:
Income Report Breakdown:
Here’s a closer look at my income sources for the month:
- Amazon = $49
- Clickbank = $351
- Google Adsense = $456
- iPage = -$105 – Wait, a NEGATIVE commission??? A small rant on this one below ….
- Personal Capital = $0.00
- Private Advertising = $225.00
Expense Breakdown:
This month I had a number of small expenses:
- $5 for a new article Banner on NS2.
- I tried to spend $5 on a new logo for NS2, but the freelancer did such a horrible job following my instructions that I eventually asked for a refund.
- $35 to make a change to the appearance of NS4.
- $150 for two new content writers for NS4 – more on this below.
More Content for My Amazon Site NS4:
Ever since our big boom in commissions around Christmas, my Amazon site NS4 (niche site 4) has been the website that’s been getting most of my effort. Last month you’ll recall I was in the process of receiving several articles from a freelance writer and uploading them to the site as I finalized them.
How did that do for sales? Not so great in March … on our income report we barely made $50.
So does that mean this effort was a failure? Not at all.
Despite the lackluster sales, I am happy to report the site is still actively increasing in keyword rankings. Whatever I’m doing with the way we’re structuring the new content and internal linking seems to be working well! You can tell by looking at the results from SEMRush:
More ranking keywords is precisely what we want. You see it’s all a numbers game:
- You can’t control sales. People will either buy or they won’t after reading your post and clicking over to Amazon. (And apparently not a lot of people wanted musical instruments in March.)
- But you CAN increase your odds of making a sale by increasing 1) the number of keywords your site gets recognized for in Google and 2) the amount of traffic that follows.
So with that I’ve decided to keep funding the addition of more and more new content to NS4.
To optimize my efforts I’ve spent a few hours this month researching brand new, high-volume, low competition keywords and musical products using Long Tail Pro Platinum. I’ve got to say I have a pretty good feeling about the list I came up with, and I’m eager to get the new content from my latest batch of writers uploaded to see what happens.
NS1 is Finally a Big Boy Site!
I’ve been saying this for a few months now, and it FINALLY happened … we now have over 100 pages of content on NS1! It’s finally reached a place where it can be considered a BIG niche site (or perhaps even an authority site)!
So what does that mean in all practicality? Now that it’s over 100 posts large, did balloons fall from the ceiling and my Google Adsense account jump up by the thousands of dollars? Hardly …
I’ve actually been toying for a while now with what to do with this site in terms of growth. Back when it was first getting off its feet I saw somewhat of a linear relationship between the number of new posts, increasing traffic, and its Google Adsense earnings. However that trend seems to have unfortunately plateaued off, and now I’m wondering if adding any new content is really going to help. Perhaps the answer is to better promote the content that is already there. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this by next month’s update.
VERY Unhappy with iPage:
( … Warning: Rant ahead! … )
Unfortunately one of my multiple income streams, iPage commissions, decided to give me a giant middle finger this March.
Back in January I had earned a commission through a link on My Money Design. When 2 months went by and the commission was never paid, I decided to write them to see what was going on.
Well lo and behold, they told me that they “could not qualify my commission because my website was in violation of their Affiliate agreement”.
What?? My Money Design has been promoting iPage for over 3 years and regularly earning commissions. How is this even possible? I decided to write them back and ask for more specifics.
What did they reply with? Nothing more than an exert of the legal mumbo-jumbo from their affiliate agreement contract text – the part to which I was supposedly in violation of. First of all, the section they sent me sounded like something I had not even done. And secondly, that was an extremely generic explanation of what I did wrong! Can I get a specific URL or part of my website where I’m not “complying” with the affiliate agreement? Can you show me what to fix so I can fix it?
I replied once more asking for clarification. This time they got really pissy. They replied saying that the matter was closed and that if I contacted them again that it would result in the termination of my affiliate membership. Burn!
I must say I am extremely disappointed by how they handled the situation and treated a long-time affiliate.
Fortunately for me web hosting companies are a dime-a-dozen. I’ve got a few different ones I use, and so it took me about 3 seconds to take down all of their banners and start promoting someone else. Who knows – I’ll probably have better luck with the new companies!
Readers – How are your side projects going so far?
Images courtesy of Flickr | alamodestuff
Nice work overall MMD, especially with the increased focus on the ebook and less so on the sites. Congrats on the ebook btw…it reminds me I actually need to get mine formatted and made available to readers. 🙂 Sorry to hear about the iPage issues. Like you said though, there are plenty of web hosting companies out there to promote. Do you have an affiliate manager you could contact that might be able to ask them what the issue might be?
Unfortunately as much as I would have liked to speak to one, there was no affiliate manager that I could speak to. Oh well, though … their loss!
You have a ton on your plate, and I’m always impressed with how well you manage it all and continue to make money. Bummer about iPage. I don’t think most companies value their affiliates, no matter how long or how many sales you have made for them.
Thanks Kim. Hopefully both me being amazing and the continued generation of money keep going! 🙂
Sorry to hear about iPage. So you don’t even know what you did. Yet another reason to diversify your passive income streams. Or more like all your income streams. How many people with NO passive income sources are getting the same thing from their day jobs?
Provided I don’t pass out when I get home, I’m going to send you an email regarding logos. I found an AWESOME artist on Fiverr (I was there on your advice, so thanks) who did my logo, but his user name escapes me at the moment. You won’t want a refund from him (I gave him a big tip and a good review).
Congrats with the ebook! (Auto correct almost changed that to Enola. That would’ve been awkward)
Sincerely,
ARB–Angry Retail Banker
ARB,
The new logo looks awesome! (Though I hope that’s not your grumpy face within the center of the image.) I’m a fan of Fiverr despite my one setback this month. I have about a 3:1 success ratio with Fiverr. Like many things, even if one person does a bad job on a gig, I can usually find someone else really quickly who does an amazing job and gets it done.
Good point on the comparison between iPage and day jobs. Whether it’s your main income or passive income, you certainly never want to be tied to just one source of income.
Thanks! No, it’s not my grumpy face, though it does look like the result of Dick Cheney and Richard Nixon having a kid. I actually really like that. It’s a lot better than what I thought it would look like.
Dick Cheney … LOL. I love it! They really did do a good job with your logo. That’s money well spent!
Good job. My eBay side hustle has been excellent. My niche site is not doing so good but I have some things that I will change this month.
I just visited your site and read about your eBay hustle. So you’re taking things you find at thrift shops and selling them for 10X more? That’s some real arbitrage! Nice work.
Nice work! It’s reassuring to see how reliably consistent your income seems to be from these passive streams. Do you have plans to add any more sites to your portfolio in the near future?
At the moment, no further plans for more sites. I’d really like to see if I can do something further to improve the quality of the ones I already have. For example with NS1 I feel I should see A LOT more traffic and income based on the number of pages I have. I feel like there is a disconnect between the size of the site and how much organic traffic I’m actually attracting.
iPAGE actually threatened you?! How is that any way to treat an affiliate? Wow… Not only would I stop promoting them, I would move any sites you have left with them somewhere else and ditch them altogether (assuming you still have sites hosted there). Then I would email someone in charge and explain exactly why you left. That’s just what I would do… 🙂
I had a bad customer service experience with Host gator awhile back and I’m finally getting around to moving all my sites to my other hosting accounts. Good riddance!
Believe me – If I had had an account manager with iPage, I would love to give him a piece of my mind. Oh well though – I signed up to be an affiliate with BlueHost and made a commission within 2 days. Your loss, iPage!
Nice income! I have started 2 niche sites out side my main site and they are starting to gain some traction. It is a fun process. Put you never know when and where the next click is going to come. Thanks for sharing your advice, It has help me in my site building!
I’ll have to check on your progress if you plan to write any updates on your niche sites. I always love seeing what works and what doesn’t for people.
Congrats on the upcoming Ebook, and now you can add Author to your name. ITs unfortunate you had a negative commission, but at least you took action to remove them. Good luck.
Thanks EL. I’m very excited to see how the eBook shakes out!
Nice work on the ebook. It really is a great feeling when you see it up on Amazon.
That’s crazy about the affiliate. Is it me or are companies becoming dumber and dumber? With social media nowadays, one bad user experience can go viral and it will cost them much more to clean it up than it would have if they just addressed the issue. I wonder how they treat their customers?
It really was disappointing how they handled that whole situation. $105 seems like such a small price to pay to keep a guy on who has promoted you for years and years. Where’s the loyalty. Even aside from money, I would have been fine with them telling me exactly what I was doing wrong and where on my page it needed to change, and I would have done so. But they decided to be uncooperative, and so on to the next affiliate I go.
Great update, always fascinating to see the ups and downs on your.niche sites. Sorry to hear about the ipage issues. Their loss another provider’s gain with your business MMD!
Congrats on the eBook, I’m sure it will provide another income source for you!
Srjlfour
Thanks Srjlfour! Not to get ahead of myself, but I’ve got big expectations for the eBook!
Kudos, MMD! Your income from Google Adsense ($456) is very impressive. Mine is just approximately $120, not even half of yours. I wonder when I will be able to pull that amount off. What strategy would you recommend?
Where do you have your ads placed at? About a year ago I started playing around with ad placement, colors, and sizes. It was surprising how much of a difference it seemed to make.
Awesome results across the board. Seems like you are developing a system that you could eventually replicate to dozens of NS and just organize the entire operation from a higher level like a conductor.
I’m going to poke around your site some more and see if I can get some ideas/inspiration to kick off a niche site of my own.
You’re certainly welcome to look around all you want. That’s what these updates are here for.