Every month I publish these reports to let you, the readers, know what’s going on with this passive income effort as well as help keep myself accountable. This forces me to really task myself with trying to find new and creative ways to grow my online empire.
Ultimately our goal is to build up as many passive income streams as possible from these websites while only investing a minimal amount of time and resources (therefore getting the best return-on-investment we can earn).
I can’t believe we’re already at Update #30. That means we’ve really been focusing and chugging along on this effort for two and a half years now!
Although (as you’ll see) this wasn’t our highest earning month, it certainly was a busy one! I made a lot of business (i.e. spending) decisions that I hope will pay off dearly in the near future. Here’s how things went in May:
Niche Website Income Report – May 2015:
Here is my income and expense report for the month:
Income Breakdown:
Here’s a closer look at my income sources for the month:
- Amazon = $92
- Clickbank = $525
- Google Adsense = $367
- Web Hosting = $0
- Personal Capital = $0
- Private Advertising = $0
My NS1 Link-Building Investment – The HOTH:
For a while now, I’ve noticed that growth on Niche Site 1 (NS1) has been pretty stagnant. This is despite my efforts to add enough content to build this site up and over 100 pages of great content!
Unfortunately, as great as it would be to ONLY have to add content to a website in order to make it rank and make money, it’s not 2005 anymore. These days you need a little more “something” behind it to give it some “umph”.
Usually that “umph” are backlinks; more specifically high quality links pointing back to your site. For as long as Google has been around, to some degree or another they’ve used links as a way to validate the authenticity and popularity of a website when determining where it should rank in the search engine results.
In the past I have been fine with building my own links. But as I alluded to in my last niche website update (#29), I decided to make a business decision and outsource this effort.
Before we see what effect it’s had on NS1, I thought it would be beneficial to first go over the steps I took to arrive at my decision.
Who knows – you might also decide to make the same sort of business decision about your own website!
What is The HOTH?
The link building package I bought for my NS1 was something called The HOTH Platinum Package from The HOTH.
First off, The HOTH is an SEO service that has been around for a number of years now. They’ve been featured on a number of other websites and they have built up one of the better reputations as a legit SEO service.
What do they do? With this particular package, their strategy is to create a series of smaller, diverse websites containing links to your websites. From there those smaller websites are boosted with links from Web 2.0 and other social media signals. This creates what’s known as a “tiered” link system.
The Logic Behind Picking Their Most Expensive Package:
The HOTH Platinum package I selected was one of their most expense ones; normally $250! (Actually I got it for 25% off at $187.50 thanks to an end of the month discount).
So why did I opt to spend so much?
Because of what you get for the price! With this package they create links for you over an area of 24 unique articles total. If you do the math, that’s $7.81 per article – and that’s CHEAP!
The HOTH has smaller packages at 3 and 16 articles, but the price per article doesn’t work out to anything nearly as low as the Platinum package.
Consider what would happen if you tried to do this yourself:
Last year I led an incredible guest posting effort to try to boost the rankings of all my sites. I spent anywhere from $5 and $10 hiring writers to produce the initial articles for me. BUT it doesn’t stop there!
With guest posting you still have to:
- Finalize the article with your own final touches (usually in its initial form the article you get from the writer is not of high enough quality to send out yet)
- Add in your own links (strategically)
- Finding graphics to go along with the article
- Network with other bloggers and websites owners to host your guest post
- Coordinate getting the guest post over to the host
- Promote the article once its live
- Respond to the comments left by readers on the host site
That’s A LOT of work!
With The HOTH $8 per article price, they take care of ALL OF THAT for you! Sounds like a terrific value to me!
Calculating the ROI for Our Investment:
So how can we predict ahead of time if our $187.50 was money well spent?
Well, first off, if you’re serious about making money from blogging, you need to treat it like it’s a business (instead of just a hobby).
In business, before we make an investment that we believe will help foster growth, we first estimate what the ROI – return on investment – of our money will be.
To put this another way: When are we going to make our $187.50 back?
To start, in general, I’d like to see a return on my money in as few as 6 month’s time. So doing the math that means I’ll want to see an increase in monthly revenue by:
$187.50 / 6 months = $31.25
Now let’s take a look at how much NS1 makes now. We can do this easily by looking at our Google Adsense for the last two months.
The metric you’ll want to use is something called RPM (revenue per thousand impressions). Mine were:
- March: 9,987 impressions, RPM = $8.51
- April: 10,035 impressions, RPM = $8.04
- Average: 10,011 impressions, RPM = $8.28
Knowing how much extra income per month I’m looking to earn and the average RPM, I can then calculate approximately how many extra impressions I’ll need to attract to make this a success:
- $31.25 x 1000 / $8.28 = 3,776 extra impressions
If I’m willing to settle for a 12 month ROI, I could do the same math and find we only need 1,888 extra impressions to make back my investment.
With the HOTH Platinum package you get 3 URL’s to promote. So the question from there is: How can I best use this link building package to garner an extra 3,776 impressions each month?
To figure this out I entered in all the keywords I’ve targeted on my niche site into Long Tail Pro Platinum to quickly discover:
- The average CPC
- Local search volume
- Keyword competition (KC) score
Combining these three variables, I was able to narrow down at least three good inner pages on NS1 with a combined 266,000 search volume that would make good candidates for this HOTH package.
As it stood currently, I was hardly getting any hits on these articles whatsoever. So if this HOTH package could improve my search rankings for these 3 URL’s and capture just 2% more of that search volume (5,320 hits), then I’d likely accomplish my goal!
So Did It Work?
Unfortunately (and realistically) it’s a bit too early to tell.
Here’s a screen shot of my Adsense comparing April to May. Notice how light blue “April” is higher on average:
However, when I look at the Ahref’s activity for the biggest page I want to get ranking, things do appear to be moving in the right direction!
The truth of the matter is: With SEO these things can often take some time. It could be months before the sites the Hoth built pickup enough authority to pass on a decent amount of link juice.
And we can be patient – I’ve given myself 6 to 12 months to recoup the investment. So there’s no need to declare it a waste only 1 month into this effort.
I will say that for $8 per article, the sites The HOTH created do look very high quality and have a nice feel to them. Honestly it would take a lot of effort to try to recreate their output.
One other really cool thing: You have complete access to articles they created. SO in 3 months if I decide that these pages are never going to rank, I can go in and change the links to other internal pages on NS1. That’s a pretty cool feature!
At some point we’ll do a follow-up to this article and see how things have progressed along.
I do have my eye on yet another HOTH offering called The HOTH Blitz. With this one you get fewer links, but they carry WAY MORE link juice because they come from sites with already established domain authority.
More Content for NS4:
NS1 wasn’t the only site to get some love in May.
I also decided to pony up and get some more articles to be produced for my Amazon-based music site NS4. I can already see the benefits of having done this last month (notice the uptick around May’15 on the far right):
This one was a really easy decision since I had already made the investment back in April. When my original writer failed to complete the gig, I simply held on to the money I was refunded and then offered the gig to my new writer.
Building up the site with more keywords and more content is something I really need to do. I’ve been sitting on several really good, low competition keywords (that I got from my competitors no less). If I look at how NS4 is doing relative to its competition within the same niche (using this free tool from SEMRush), I can see that I’m falling way behind from where I could be.
Going forward I may choose to use The HOTH Blitz to juice this site and help build its authority. Plus I have some other ideas I plan to try June and July to help better promote the site.
Readers – Have any of you ever used The HOTH? What were your experiences with this service? What other services do you use to help build link juice to your blogs or niche websites?
Images courtesy of The HOTH. FTC notice: This page contains affiliate links.
I’ve never heard of the HOTH system, though it does sound interesting – especially with the amount of what you receive vs. the cost. That being said, the Blitz package sounds interesting given the extra link juice you’d receive from more established sites. I know you said they have a fairly good reputation – have you found anything thus far you would change about them or the service?
Service has been absolutely wonderful! Honestly the only thing I think I would change would be to make the packages scaled slightly more proportional. Obviously any business will price their best package in a way that makes it more economical. But it seems like they could stand to give you a little bit more with the two lesser priced packages.
Once again, great job! We had a niche website on our agenda years ago but never made time to make it happen! Maybe one day, but at this point, I doubt it =/
There’s always an opportunity to start another site; niche or just another blog for fun!
Good post and thanks for sharing a bit of the back end income strategies you use. I’ve done guest posting in the past and you are right, its more complicated than the program you used. It seems like more established websites get great link authority and link juice to them. Looking forward to see if these types of programs will be beneficial for your rankings.
Me too. I’m hoping to get a HOTH Blitz package and really see both packages pay off over the next few months.
Do you still think niche sites are worth the effort? So much has been written about the need for authority in the eyes of Google, but I know some people are still killing it with 25 page sites…
I definitely think niche sites are still worth the effort; although the concept is totally different than it was 2 years ago (when I first got into them). Anymore if your niche site doesn’t resemble a professionally, commercial website with awesome +1,000 word articles, fresh Facebook links, and the works, then forget it! Good luck trying to attract any traffic or make any money!
This back link stuff is very interesting (if not a little confusing) so it’s great to see some real life examples.
I’m still a newbie to blogging, et al but a niche site (or two) are definitely on the agenda in six months or so.
I look forward to your next report to see how your investment pans out.
If you’d like any advice on backlinking, just read back through some of these niche site reports. You’ll find a ton of experiments of things I’ve tried in the past and whether or not they’ve worked.
With Google hitting the PBNs hard over the last several months I wasn’t sure if a service like The Hoth was worth it. I have been looking at The Hoth and considering it for a few weeks now. Glad you shared your experience and statistics. This has given me the confidence to try their services. Looking forward to your follow up post to see what happens in a few months.
Thanks David and welcome to the site. I’m glad to hear this may have helped sway your decision. Let me know if whatever HOTH package you end up going with works out for you.
MMD, your income report is very impressive! Great job! It’s good that you have many sites you can depend on, but I know how it is hard to keep them maintained and updated.
Tell me about it! As I keep on trying to make each site and income stream grow, I’m finding I need to devote more time to them. Less passive in the short run, but well worth the payoff if what I’m trying works!
I’m familiar with the Hoth System. Cold as hell. Barren wasteland. I heard it was used as a base by rebel scum until an Imperial Fleet took it back. Glory to the Empire!
In all seriousness, I’ve always been under the impression that these link packages did more harm to sites than they did good. I’ve read that on this very blog, amongst other places. So I’m surprised that you would even look into the idea, MMD. What made you decide to do it? And what exactly do they do that’s so different than other link packages? Are they really able to build up a collection of authority sites with social media links and the works that fast? If so, I’d pay them just to build up my future niche sites for me, rather than a collection of potential competitor sites. Unless I’m completely misunderstanding how they work.
Loving these niche site income reports, as always. Once my blog has more traffic and more articles, I will start devoting time to building a few niche sites. Soon, soon.
Sincerely,
ARB–Angry Retail Banker
Link building is a very tricky thing. But its also a necessary evil if you want your sites to excel.
The thing that attracted me to the HOTH was that it was about as close as to a whitehat style of linkbuilding as possible. Very different from the spammy Fiverr 1,000 link package or some stranger on the Warrior Forum. As close to natural but diversity is exactly what you want in this day and age of linking.
Technically you could go to Tumblr or WordPress.com yourself, build the same sort of mini-sites, and then link to your own money sites. But for the price it was way more economical to outsource it to a service like this.
I will admit I was somewhat skeptical, which is why I choose three pages that were already not ranking very well at all (what would I have to lose then?) I’m eager to see how the Blitz package works out once I implement that one next.
Having several months of experience using The Hoth – I would suggest pointing some Hoth Blitz links to the same site you pointed the Platinum links to. With my own recent experiments, I’ve seen little movement from the weaker link packages (Platinum) and I’ve seen considerable ranking increases from the more authoritative Blitz links. I don’t consider my Platinum purchases a loss though. They add nice diversity to my backlink portfolios.
I’m somewhat perplexed and amazed at your mathematical analysis and how you calculated your potential ROI. I never pay attention to stuff like that. I either get more traffic and money or I don’t. That’s my analysis! Thanks for explaining your thought processes in detail.
Thanks for the confidence Matt. I do plan to use the Blitz package as soon as my expense fund resets. I love the idea of getting homepage links from real, established sites.
That’s a great reaction to my business side of things. However I can’t agree more with you more. No matter how much math you do, the ultimate grade is whether or not you made any more money off it or not! 🙂
I have just seen you mentioned clickbank. How doe one really make such income from clickbank? Someone introduced me to it almost 10 years ago, i even forgot my password. I never understood it really. Good work though, your income sheet is superb!
I hear you! For my first 3 years of blogging, I never made one cent from Clickbank even though every big blog I knew always mentioned it as a sure-thing money maker. But then again I didn’t try very hard to do anything about it either.
So about a year ago I tried something different. I strategically picked a small handful of Clickbank products that I felt were a good match for niche site 2. I added them to the main page and re-wrote the content to market them. To my surprise one of them sold – and sold very well! After that I just kept trying out new products and switching out the ones that didn’t work until I’d see some sales. That brings me to where I am today – making almost $400 to $500 per month!
Interesting…I might have to look more into this. I’ll be eager also to read the long-term updates on this option as well. I am going to be making a big push myself with guest posting for some of my sites as I have found this strategy to be a good one that works. It’s just time consuming!
For sure. I’ll post updates and let you know when I use the HOTH Blitz package. Guest posting is still a great way to connect with others and get terrific links. But yes – it takes time if you want to do it right.
MMD,
I too noticed the ClickBank love. I think I will have to check that out and get on the band wagon 🙂
In your opinion, is LongTailPro a must for a normal blog writer like me? I was under the impression that it was a must for niche sites, but I’d like to get your thoughts on just using it to name normal blog posts… The cost is a bit high for my shoe-string budget mentality, but I can easily make it work if you think the ROI is there.
I’m ready to start another website, and I am torn between trying out a niche site and starting up another blog. My blog now makes ~$400 – $500 a month, but it is a bit of work to write articles for it each month. Any thoughts as to what would be a better long term return for my time (blog vs. niche site)?
-Thanks!
Hi Derek,
Yes, Clickbank has been working out pretty good for me on that site. It’s tricky because you can’t just throw up any old product on your website and hope to make a profit. The site and content have to be VERY tailored to a particular product to make a conversion.
Yes, absolutely Long Tail Pro Platinum is a must for any blogger. I say “Platinum” because that’s the version where you get the keyword competitiveness (KC) tool, and that’s worth every cent. No matter whether you are blogging on your regular site or building up niche sites, anything you post on the Internet should have some sort of keyword research and forethought in it if you hope at all for that page to rank well in Google.
I’ve heard a lot of people try to nix keyword research saying its pointless because Google keeps on changing the ranking game. Yes, Google constantly changes the rules. But at its core a webpage will still only rank if it has been optimized for a particular keyword. Choosing the right keyword can mean difference between the potential for 100 new visitors per month or 10,000 new visitors per month. Plus without knowing the KC of a particular keyword, its very difficult and time consuming to fully understand just how hard or easy it will be to rank for that dynamite keyword.
Start a new blog or niche site? The answer depends on how you want to (a) run it and (b) monetize it.
If you’re looking to build some sort of a “community” feeling where the readers know you, you know them, you spend a lot of time on social media, etc, then I would say start a blog. If you want the site to be more “hands off” and less interactive, then I’d go niche site.
If you want your revenue to come from a particular product or service you plan to eventually pitch to your audience, then go blog. If you’d rather your revenue come from Adsense, Amazon, and other affiliate products, then I’d go niche site.
BTW – Even though I say “niche site”, the general consensus now among the big-name web gurus is that in order to really rank in Google and build up your domain authority, you really need to focus on building an “authority site”. Think of it as a niche site on steroids; the one and only place people would want to go to get the information they need about whatever. This is a much different mindset than it was 2 years ago when building a small 20 page site would do the trick. I’m currently trying to build up all my active niche sites into authority status with over 100 pages large using big +800 word posts. Be ready to put in some work and/or investment!
I hope this answers your questions. Feel free to email me if you have anymore specific questions.
MMD,
Thanks for giving such a great and thorough response. It sounds like what I am looking to build is another authority site. I’m not really much into social media and all that stuff. I plan to make most income from AdSense, Amazon, and affiliate links, and sponsored posts.
Really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on LongTailPro Platinum. It sounds like I really need to pick that up ASAP! I have had some posts that get a ton of traffic and some that may only get 20-30 hits in their entire lifetime. Talk about wasted effort!
I will definitely be sending you an email with more questions if you have time to help 🙂
You’re welcome, Derek.
I’ve never heard of their SEO services, but it is good to know about. There are a lot of SEO services out there that are just not reliable. I’ll keep them in mind. I added your affiliate link to my favorites so when I have the extra income to purchase, I’ll go through that.
I’m just starting up blogging after a 2 year hiatus. One is my personal finance/lifestyle blog and another is a recipe site. I used to coupon blog but it was sooooo time consuming. I ended up flipping my two coupon sites for a profit and took a break. I just love blogging too much. It’s fun for me. So here I am, building up two sites from scratch again.
Thanks for keeping my affiliate link on record. I do appreciate it!
Welcome back to blogging. Having a previous career of flipping two sites isn’t bad! I find it to be quite an accomplishment when anyone builds something from nothing and then turns it over for a profit.
Be sure to check back to these Niche Website updates. These are the posts where I add in as much good stuff as I can find about blogging.
Wow, I’ve got a good headache from all the information that I have learned. I got as much from the comments as the article. I’m a newbie blogger who started 2 years ago and then stopped. I’m back. I like the community feel that you referred to so that’s my goal as I try to build traffic. But now I want to also try this niche thing. I’m suffering from information paralysis because I can’t nail down a definitive answer on back links. I think I’m beginning to understand. Thank you. I will subscribe to your newsletter and cut back on some of the other noise. I’ve got too many coaches. I can’t get focused.
I know the feeling! A few Google searches and you can really overload yourself with a bunch of info – most of which is useless. Websites I trust for backlink building are Backlinko and Quick Sprout. Try those for some good advice. On my niche site updates I’ll be sure to share anything I try that actually works (or doesn’t work so you can avoid it).
I know the feeling! A few Google searches and you can really overload yourself with a bunch of info – most of which is useless. Websites I trust for backlink building are Backlinko and Quick Sprout. Try those for some good advice. On my niche site updates I’ll be sure to share anything I try that actually works (or doesn’t work so you can avoid it).