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Ask HN: Need advice on what to do next with my niche adsense website

2 points by Vejita00 ↗ HN
Sorry for long text :)

A read somewhere on HN about creating small niche adsense sites, so I decided to give it a try. I did this in free time, usually after coming home from work.About 1 or 2 hours a day.

I used google keyword tool for about 3-4 days, and finally I found my micro niche - "how to have twins". It maybe sounds funny but it has 22.000 global monthly searches ,low competition and 0.89$ approximate CPC.(Sounded good to me, but maybe it isn't)

Then I searched domain names and found out that howtohavetwins.org is free.Bought it immediately. I built my little website fast using wordpress and did everything there is to do about on-page SEO (title description tags, unique content(but only one page because it took me long time to spin it), page name and website structure,must have pages such as privacy,about us,contact us)

Then I did some offpage SEO like blog commenting, link wheels, web2.0 links, youtube account with short movie about website (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctM1DtIM1kE) which sucks in my opinion,but I wanted to try even that:)

And that's it.I did that in about 2 weeks. Now when you type 'how to have twins' on google, i think my website(www.howtohavetwins.org) is number 9.

But I earned about 1$ total :( What did I do wrong? What is the next step I can do to improve this website earnings?I aim at about 10$-15$ a month, but I don't know if I am going to make it.

Thanks for anyone who will give me some advice on this topic.

22 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 59.6 ms ] thread
byoung2
Not bad for a few weeks. The most important things for niche Adsense sites are content and links. I made a few sites in 2009 and some are earning $150 a month each, but they all started at pennies to $1 per month at the beginning. Get some plugins to tweet new posts, and get some plugins to post content from RSS feeds (check with site owners first) if you aren't putting much content in yourself or hiring people to do it.
mapster
Would you mind sharing whether your sites are long tail keywords and how much global traffic they receive? Would be very helpful in dialing in such metrics knowing they could be profitable to such a degree.
byoung2
The long tail ones get 1000-3000 uniques per month, and earn $5-30 per month. These are random topics like feng shui decorating tips and electric model trains. I hired someone in the Philippines to write articles for $1 each and put 20 on each site, then used RSS to keep updating them. The big earners (if $150 is big) were in travel and shopping and these get 8000-10000 uniques. In both cases a few articles rank well for a keyword. One article on airline miles outranks the airline's site, and one printer review outranks the manufacturer's site. So I got lucky there. The goal was to build thousands of these sites, so that $10/mo average x 1000 sites would be a nice passive income. I may get there, but right now I only built a dozen.
mapster
How do you keep hosting costs down for 100 sites with each bringing in ~$30/mo?
byoung2
I have a hosting account on Rackspace cloud for $100/mo for unlimited sites. The traffic is low enough, that I could probably do it on cheap shared hosting, but I already have the account for bigger sites as well.
Vejita00
"Get some plugins to tweet new post"

Done.

"and get some plugins to post content from RSS feeds"

Done.

Thanks for suggestions. Is it a big problem in pageranking if articles arent unique?

byoung2
Duplicate content is not a problem if you link to the original. If you are lucky, sometimes the source site has poor SEO, and you can outrank them.
helen842000
What kinda CTR are you getting? Adsense is a 2 part task. Getting the users to your page (SEO) and then keeping them on the site long enough to browse through several articles and actually click on some links (CONTENT)

It sounds like you're lacking in the content area so I suspect users hit your site and immediately hit the back button. Try to get them to hang around longer.

Vejita00
"What kinda CTR are you getting?"

1.22%..about 164 views and 2 clicks

"It sounds like you're lacking in the content area so I suspect users hit your site and immediately hit the back button. Try to get them to hang around longer."

I added three more categories with few posts.Thanks for advice.

jefflinwood
Sounds like you got the SEO in, but you need to have some reason for people to stick around.

Do you have Google Analytics? That should probably be your next step. Figure out what people are searching for when they come to your web site, then build niche content for those search terms.

Vejita00
I am new to Google Analytics.I see a lot of options there.Where can I see what people are searching for when they come to my site?

Traffic sources->Overview?

mapster
Traffic sources > keywords. Traffic sources > referring sites. And "Bounce rate" are what you want to look at first glance.
md1515
Try to write some relevant content on a regular basis. I know a Swedish website that is nothing more than a couple that write about raising children from books and magazines and nothing more. They have no original content, but they do it in Swedish so they pull ~ 20K/year (they used to - it has now been sold)
Vejita00
Wow, that's nice income! I really can't do that(writing) because I'm no expert in having twin babies. I can use other articles from internet and books.Is it a big penalty for my income if articles aren't unique?
mapster
You are using Adwords for traffic? Seems like there is enough organic traffic for you to go after.
Vejita00
I don't know about adwords.Will read about it tonight when I get home. Thanks.
mapster
You mentioned "0.89$ approximate CPC"., so I was wondering. I checked your site out, and video. The site is a great start. Add a bit of content every week or month and it seems the site will grow in traffic as well.
sixQuarks
First of all, I love your take-action attitude. That's probably the most important key to success.

Unfortunately, you're doing it all wrong (in my opinion). Your chance of success is very low if you're just going to follow the crowds and do exactly what everyone else is doing.

I consider niche adsense sites to be the multi-level marketing equivalent of the internet business world.

These sites are a big problem for search engines because they're creating a bunch of spammy, low-quality pages that users have to keep sifting through to find the good stuff.

I've found that I can't rely on Google anymore for many of my searches due to these types of sites proliferating.

It's only a matter of time before we get better search technology that filters that stuff out (even possibly going back to a more human-filtered/curated search engine).

Instead of working on these random niche adsense sites, why don't you work on building a site around a topic you're actually interested in? Build great quality content, build an email list, build applications that help your target audience.

Choose a target market that's big and spends a lot of money, and create a niche within that market. It's easier to get a small piece of a large pie than a large piece of a small pie.

Vejita00
"First of all, I love your take-action attitude. That's probably the most important key to success."

Thanks!

"Instead of working on these random niche adsense sites, why don't you work on building a site around a topic you're actually interested in? Build great quality content, build an email list, build applications that help your target audience."

That idea came on my mind while I was making my 'random niche adsense site'.But I thought that I don't have enough experience,knowledge,etc to build something like that.So i decided to start making small niche adsense sites.

But that is definitely something I will work on in near future (in my spare time)

Thanks for advice!

Vejita00
UPDATE: Did some offpage seo in last two days and now I'm 3rd when you search how to have twins, just bellow about.com articles! Got two questions for you guys:

1.How I am third when I type how to have twins on google without "", but seventh when I type it with ""? Isn't it logical that I have better rank with "" (cause less results)?

2.I also made twitter account(http://twitter.com/HowToHaveTwins).Is there a faster way to get more people to follow you?

EDIT: well I was third for hole 5-10 minutes :) not anymore

Vejita00
It seems somebody hacked my website. I logged in tonight to find my wp-content folder empty. Don't know why somebody would do something like that to my little website. Great.