One of the more common emails we receive is from people with multiple sites who aren’t making much money from them. Only this morning, we received another email from someone who has around 100 sites…he had come to the conclusion that the multiple site model just isn’t working for him. He’s one of the lucky ones since he actually realized this before moving on to building even more sites. Not many people stop to see if something is working for them or not and keep going until they are totally burned out and they have little to show for all their work.
It’s hard work maintaining 100 sites. I can’t even imagine the work involved – we have 20 sites and when we were working on them all at once it was tough going. We don’t ever want to go back to that again.
Now we’re not saying having multiple sites doesn’t work. I’m sure there are people out there with hundreds of sites that are making money but this model has a number of drawbacks mostly the amount of work that is needed to keep the sites updated and maintained. Plus, we have seen so many people using this multiple site model that are really struggling and adding more sites makes no real difference to their income….instead it just creates even more work.
So what do you do if you have multiple sites and aren’t making much money from them?
Step 1
The first step is to stop, right now, creating any new websites. There is no point creating anything new if you aren’t making money from the sites you already have. If you are doing something that isn’t working, why repeat the process? So make a conscious decision to not create any new websites.
Step 2
Take a break from your websites. Take two days or even a week if you can and don’t go anywhere near your websites. The reason we suggest this is that most people who are in the process of trying to make money online are usually in what I call ‘frantic mode’. They have one thing on their mind and that is to make money so they frantically build more sites and frantically add more content and frantically look for backlinks. They never take a break and are constantly going from one thing to the next in the hope that the next thing they spot will work for them.
Taking a break clears the head and gets you into the right frame of mind to start afresh. You want to be in ‘relaxed mode’ not ‘frantic mode’ and taking time out will get you there.
Step 3
The next few steps involve getting some stats together. Hopefully you will have Google Analytics installed on each of your sites as this will help with your analysis. If not, you can use the stats provided by your hosting company.
Go to Google Analytics and find the top 5 pages on your sites that are getting the most traffic. This doesn’t mean finding the top 5 pages from each individual site – it means the top 5 pages overall. Just make a list of these pages so you can easily refer to them as you go through your analysis – you can use Word, Notepad or Excel for this.
Step 4
Take the first page in your list and go back to Google Analytics and look at the keywords that people are using to get to that page. This is how we do that:
1. Click on Content from the left menu in Google Analytics.
2. Click Top Content.
3. Click the actual url from the results that appear on the right hand side of the screen.
4. On the page that appears, click Entrance Keywords under Landing Page Optimization section.
This will provide you with a list of keywords that people are typing into Google to get to your page.
Add these keywords to your list – you only need to add the first 10 keywords or so.
Step 5
Now head over to Google and see where you are ranking for each of those keywords. Add those rankings to your list.
Step 6
Open up the free Google Keyword Tool and type in each of your keywords to see how much traffic each gets – (we use the ‘Exact’ option and look at Local Monthly Searches). Add that to your list as well.
Step 7
Now we are ready to analyze the data we have put together to see whether that page is worth working on. At this point, your list might look something like this for your first page (note that I made up the figures, so don’t waste your time going to Google to test these figures):
| Page: mywebsite.com/classicdiamondring.com | ||
| Keywords Currently Ranked For | Current Ranking in Google | Potential Google Traffic per Month |
| diamond ring | 6 | 6200 |
| classic diamond ring | 12 | 3200 |
| best diamond ring | 4 | 1800 |
| diamond ring review | 8 | 1500 |
| etc | ||
Now open up the actual page and take a look at the content on that page. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Does the content on the page match the keywords I am ranking for? In other words, if people are typing in ‘diamond ring’, ‘classic diamond ring’, ‘best diamond ring’ and so on to get to your page and your page is about ’emerald diamond rings’ then something is wrong. All you are going to get is people clicking the back button to find another site with diamond rings. If this is the case then simply change the content on your page to match the keywords people are using to get to your site.
- Is the content on the page helpful? – I can almost guarantee that if your page has less than 300 words on it, then it is not very helpful. You might think that creating a short snappy review will get people to click through to the merchant but I can tell you from experience we haven’t found this to be the case. Make your reviews long and helpful….around 1000 words.
- Are there a lot of distractions on the page? – If you are promoting a particular product on that page then that’s all you should do. Don’t go adding Google Adsense and other pop-ups and widgets and flashing ads.
- Is the product worth promoting? – We’ve said this many times and we will probably say it many more times…there is no point promoting a product that isn’t worth promoting. Don’t just pick a product because you will get a healthy commission for it – choose products that people love. In other words, look at the reviews for the product and see what people are saying. If you choose a quality product to begin with then you will be streets ahead of those who randomly select products to write about.
- Will I get enough traffic to this page? – Since we asked you to find your top 5 pages, you are already getting traffic to this page but you will also want to see if you have the potential to get even more traffic. So check your list and see how many people are searching for those keywords. If I were already getting traffic for the keyword ‘diamond ring’ I would be working hard to get that page to the number 1 spot.
- Can I improve my ranking for those keywords? – The answer to this is always ‘yes’. Unless you are in the number 1 spot already, there is always the potential to increase your ranking and get even more traffic. This might involve checking out the competition to see how difficult it might be but in general for product type keywords, it is often quite easy to move up in the rankings by getting good quality backlinks.
- Will I get a decent commission? – We tend to avoid products that are under $150 – at least for Amazon products. If you are going to promote a product that is worth $20 and your commission is 8% you are going to have to sell a lot of them to make any decent money. If you are going with Amazon products try and stick with products over $150, or at the very least $100. If you using Clickbank products then you can obviously go with products that are cheaper since the commission rate is often much higher.
Do you see what we are doing here? We are focusing right in on just one single solitary page. Those with multiple sites very rarely have the time to do this. They create a short page of content that is often copied or is poorly written and then move on to the next page. That first page never gets the attention it deserves and never will. It’s simply forgotten and lost in the multitude of pages that get added to their sites.
You need to be doing the above steps for each of your top 5 pages to find those that are worth working on. If only two of those pages are worth working on based on your analysis then add them to a separate list. Now go back to Google Analytics and find the next 5 pages and go through the same process again.
What you want to end up with is five pages that you can focus your attention on for the next three months. They are pages that have the potential to get enough traffic, have products worth promoting, have products where you will get a decent commission and so on.
So your next three months might include the following tasks:
1. Reworking each of the five pages until the reviews are around 1000 words and are helpful to the reader. Think about what you would like to see in a review if you were about to buy a particular product.
2. Backlinking, backlinking, backlinking – spend the next 3 months getting as many GOOD QUALITY backlinks to those five pages as you possibly can.
That’s all you need to do.
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You’ve hit on a really powerful technique here. The jump in traffic from keywords halfway down the results page to one 1st place is often considerable. Heat maps show up to 20X more clicks so finding out what keywords are hovering in the middle of the page and building some back links pushing them into the top spot can bring you a ton of easy traffic.
You’ve given me the motivation I needed to write a post I’ve been meaning to do for ages now. I want to talk about how you can use this technique to create an SEO plan for large untargeted sites that rank with lots of long tail keywords.
On my website I never write for the search engines, it doesn’t even cross my mind what keywords I might be targeting, I just write things that I think my readers will want to read. When I look in my analytics I see all kinds of long tails that are bringing me traffic – there’s my keywords right there.
Good post, interested to read your comments and see how others are using this technique. Anyway off to write that post!
You’re one of the very few that doesn’t write for the search engines. More people should be doing that. When we get articles written by writers in Elance we never give them specific keywords to write about. Many of these writers can’t quite grasp that – they are so used to being given the keywords. We prefer them to write naturally and forget the keywords.
In 5+yrs of blogging, never have I blogged for the search engines. I don’t even really know how and am tired of reading post after post of clear confusion.
Any SEO/Keywording I even attempt is after the article is completely written and I’m in the proofreading before publishing stage.
I have decided that once I can afford it on a consistent basis, I will outsource SEO with strict instructions on not messing with my “voice”.
After all, if it turns out I can have both, why not? Personally, I just want nothing to do with it.
You’ve got it spot on there Dennis when you say that any SEO work is done AFTER the article is completely written. Too many people do it the other way around so their articles are just full of keywords and don’t make sense.
And most have no idea how easy that is for humans to spot.
Thanks so much for this! I stopped my “website empire” at 45 total sites and only a handful actually make money. I’m going to get to work on this!
That’s a lot of websites Cathy. You’ll find that when you only focus on a few pages your life becomes a whole lot easier and more relaxed.
oh, by the way, just heard your interview on James Martell’s show. Great info. And I love your cute Aussie accents!
LOL, I didn’t realize how bad my accent was until I started doing these types of interviews. Wanda haas more of a Kiwi accent since she was brought up in New Zealand.
Well being a dumb American, both accents sounded the same to me. I have always loved Aussie and New Zealand accents!
Excellent post! Thank you for the detailed instructions – I will definitely implement this into my business model, and utilize it to refine my sites.
Excellent Tammie – you will notice a difference if you focus in a little more.
You’ve created a masterpiece in this post, ladies! I also read about people with hundreds of sites and my mouth just falls open. I don’t know how they do it – and I guess the point to take away is that for many of them – they DON’T do it.
After reading your Amazonian Profit Plan (which I loved) I started doing something similar to my main site. Rather than trying to write more and more pages for it, I already have over 250 pages on it, to concentrate on a few pages and help them consolidate their position. And it has definitely paid off.
Love your advice on try to pick products that are worth over $150. My best selling product costs a princely $5.89!!! You can imagine my commission on it!
There is one upside to it (and only one!) at that price I sell a lot of it which pushes me rapidly through the commission levels which is a bonus for products where I get a larger commission.
Wonderful post which is going to really help anyone who has the commonsense to read it and DO IT.
That is actually a good tip for people promoting Amazon products. Find a cheap product that will get a lot of sales and will be easy to rank for – the more you sell, the higher your commission rate in Amazon. And, as you say, it means a better commission when you sell the more expensive products.
What a fantastic post. I only have about four blogs but I think I’ll follow this post and see if it helps improve my income. :)
You’re one of the lucky ones Dean with only four websites but even that is too many. We have over 20 and at one point we were working on all of them at once. We decided that was too much and decided to work on only five of them. We realized that was even too many. Then we finally bit the bullet and focused on just one. That was actually really difficult to do but we forced ourselves to do it. Even so, we found that working on the whole website was even a lot of work so that’s when we came to the conclusion that we should focus on just a few pages at a time.
Still all new to this and been playing around with it and now realise I was just playing, now I will have a break then do some hard work which will be enjoyable knowing Im on a better track
Now’s the time to pick up some good habits David. Being new to it all you can avoid the mistakes that the rest of us have gone through.
Work on just one website and focus on just a few pages until they make money.
Thanks for the step-by-step, ladies! Great post, as usual. I’ve been focusing on one site since September, working the backlinks like crazy. But now that I’m seeing traffic and some sales, I’m going to go back through this process and really focus on getting the top 5 pages ranked as high as possible for as many keywords as possible. I really appreciate how much information you share.
I love it when you say you have been focusing on only one site and working the backlinks like crazy. You are doing it all perfectly Julie. Excellent!!!!
hi paula and wanda,
whew – 100 websites? totally unbelievable! i have two – one huge digital scrapbooking site which involves a LOT of work and my mac mania site – and i find it more than enough to keep up with. i couldn´t imagine to do that with more LOL – even if i produce a lot of content (and i´m just recording 24 videos for the adventcalendar for my site) that is more additional stuff on my plate that is good. so i definitely agree – quality before quantity and you can make it.
Wow, that will be a lot of work doing those videos but what a great idea. Those are the sorts of things that make working online really interesting.
Great info! What do you think of auto blogger software? Are they a waste of money? I’ve been tempted to try one, but really don’t understand the concept. (Sorry if you’ve covered this,first time on your site)
We’re not really in to those sorts of software Ken. They tend to result in sites full of duplicated content and if it isn’t duplicated it is spun and never reads well.
That’s kind of what I thought. I’ve been getting bombarded with all these “Can’t Miss Money Making, Super Secret, Only 199 Available” offers.
Thank you,
Ken
Wow, now if more people did the step by step as well as this, it would surely cut my blog subscriptions/reading to a minimum. lol
I am actually building a network of multiple blogs, but all to be authority types.
When I do step further into the affiliate marketing minisite/sales-page arena, I will absolutely follow these examples.
I just hope others realize there is a big difference in the two.
That’s going to be a lot of work Dennis. Regardless of whether you build authority sites or those mini-type sites, the more you have, the more work you will need to do.
If you can focus on just a ‘few pages’ instead of a ‘few sites’, you will notice the difference.
I’m a little confused. You’re talking about a few pages, being sales pages, yes? Pages that are strictly selling something?
I’m not…
Example, this blog. Do you focus on just a few pages?
This blog is a little different only because we don’t focus on it to make us money. We have our product blogs for that. If this were my only blog then I would definitely be focusing on only a few pages. I would still write regular posts but I would select a few pages to focus all of my attention on. They would be pages where we have written a review for something.
If you’re not selling something Dennis then what are you doing? Are your blogs just for fun? If that’s the case then you don’t have to worry about any of this and just enjoy the process. But I suspect that you want to make money from your efforts and if that is the case then you need to sell something to do that. It’s impossible to make money without promoting a product of some sort.
My situation is somewhat similar, kinda…..I’m building now.
I won’t be looking to make a whole lot from DEDC (DennisEdell.com). It’s primary function will be “hub” to all things ME.
Now, when SBBC, (SmallBusinessBlogCoach.com), my main marketing blog is running smooth, then yes, I’ll be looking to earn.
Not necessarily all on it’s own though, the domain itself leads me to numerous services I can perform from it.
The “network” I speak of is me thinking of the long-term, the big picture, (ant other cliches you can think of)…I have lots of domains earmarked; once each one is running on it’s own, so to speak, others will be created.
Agree totally Paula,
It’s easy to get swept along with the ‘gurus’ sure fire ways to making quick money. Building lots of sites being a particular bad idea for your sanity, not to mention the end visitors.
In my ignorance I started to build separate sites about topics that interested me using wordpress, thankfully now I have imported them into the one ‘blog’, making it a small ‘portal’ if you like.
One site, one set of wordpress updates, one set of plugins to update, one site to back up, one domain to ‘push’ out there, one thing to focus on…..the benefits just get better and better.
Feels like being a ‘real’ webmaster too…….the multiple site route always felt unnatural to me and dare I say, a little ‘spammy’.
At least you guys are getting the word out!
Whenever I think of ‘multiple sites’ I think of lack of quality. As an individual you can’t provide quality if you are focusing on multiple sites at the one time. It’s just impossible to find the time to do it all.
Thank you for this wonderful tips, It opened my eyes. I have few good pages that I have tried to convert it with Clickbank but no sale yet.
I think I need to write useful article on those page, I think I will get something back soon,
That’s right Santel. If you can rework those pages so that you provide really helpful information to your readers then they will be more likely to buy. Also just keep working on getting good quality backlinks to those pages to increase your ranking in Google.
This is just a great blog.. It´s very motivating to read your success story, and just love how you focus on quality over quantity:-)
I god a question im sure you can´t answer, but here we go.. I have taken you advice and focus on 1 side with a review with over 1000 words.
So far I have had 48 clicks on my links to Amazon, but not a single sale.. I know this is not a large enough population to be statistically significant, but is this normal?
I would think that I should have had at least 1 sale by now? What is your experience with this?
Thanks again, and great blog.
Regards Pede
The industry average for an affiliate sale is around 1 in 100 clicks. In other words for every 100 people that click through to Amazon from your site you are likely to see 1 sale…maybe. The reason I say ‘maybe’ is that there are so many factors involved that could affect the sale – for example, how helpful your review was, whether the product is worth buying and what the reviews are like on Amazon.
The great thing about Amazon however is that you tend to get a much better conversion rate than most other merchants so you may do much better than 1 in 100.
You really need to wait until you have had at least 500 clicks through to Amazon before you can make a good judgment about whether things are working or not. If after 500 clicks you haven’t made a sale then you need to stop and look at what the problem might be.
Also, take another good look at your review and think about whether you are making things helpful for the reader. Imagine that you are the person ready to buy this product and are looking for a good review to help you make a decision. What would you like to see in that review?
Hi Ladies
It is a pleasure reading your blog and picking up tips and strategies without it getting too technical.
After reading this post I now have a better idea on how to pitch my content and add value to my sites. Looks like I have quite a bit of work to do. But, at least I am on the right track now.
Many thanks to you both for sharing your experience and stories.
I look forward to hearing more about you and your business ideas.
Cheers
Welcome Lawra, happy that you have picked up some tips from our blog. We find that by focusing on just a few pages at a time, the workload becomes much more manageable and more enjoyable.
FYI, re the comment above, I know that Amazon converts in the ballpark of 9%. So 48 clicks not converting would suggest poor traffic or a poor choice in landing page.
I still think 48 clicks is not enough to determine whether things are working or not. If 9% is Amazons conversion rate then that is a average which means some products may convert at 1% and others may convert at 20%. Who knows what this product is going to convert at or any product for that matter.
Have to agree with this – 48 clicks is not enough to decide upon.
We’re talking averages here so a product that is going to convert at 5% will sell 5 products for each 100 clicks through to Amazon.
BUT, those 5 sales are not going to come along neatly at every 20th click. It is possible you might have 95 no sales and then sell on the next 5 clicks.
Not likely but you might have 190 no sales and then 10 consecutive sales.
It is an average and averages need quantity to reveal their true level.
I really enjoyed this coaching. Practical, useful.
Focus, focus, focus ’til it’s working right.
Focus is definitely the key to making this all work.
Yeah – that “F” word to IM and success in general. Focus, I mean.
Solid tips as usual, and keen insight into the biggest two weaknesses of any IMer: it takes work, and focus.
(OK, AND it takes a bit of a nose for analyzing what you’ll be selling and such…but my point is that it’s not auto-blog easy, set and forget.)
Thanks for keeping it real, ladies.
Hi Ladies,
I found your blog as a result of doing some reading on the Warrior Forum – there was a post by Paula on a thread way back in June in response to the question ‘Amazon Affiliates – Are You Seriously Making Money ?’
Having just read through a couple of posts on here I’d like to share with you my efforts so far in my quest to try and earn something from affiliate marketing.
I’ve done a ton of reading, most of which results in my having to part with my email address in exchange for some free info. Soon after that the auto responder mails start to flood in and ultimately the mails will contain affiliate links to even more information products that I aren’t free. Right now I don’t want to go down that route as I have issues with the way content is just spewed out in that blinkered quest for a sale.
I subscribed to Sara Young’s course in the end as she didn’t seem as pushy. As you are probably aware Sara makes an income as an Amazon affiliate too. I have bought a domain name and installed a wordpress blog and uploaded a reasonably nice new theme rather than the default one. The domain name is more generic than niche and my idea was to use it as a general review site promoting various different products in different niches. So far the only content on there is the ‘Hello World’ page so there’s nothing to see yet.
After filling you in with all that I’d like to know if my starting approach is along the right lines. I can see by reading around the site you aren’t fans of multiple sites which is great as I really didn’t fancy having to manage a whole bunch of niche blogs. One other thing I’d like your input on is about the Amazon associates program itself. I’m sure Sara said in one of her videos that you shouldn’t apply to be an associate until you have got at least 5 pieces of content published…what’s your take on that ?
I’m sorry for the long post but that’s just me. Hopefully I’ll keep the waffle down to a minimum when I start writing content. Look forward to your reply,
Regards,
Rob
I think your ‘starting approach’ is just fine Rob. Just start with one site and work on it until you see some income come in. We usually suggest creating three to five product reviews and focus only on those reviews until you start getting traffic and sales and you are in the top positions in Google for your keywords.
Most people don’t do this and move from one thing to the next without ever giving anything a chance to succeed.
I’m not sure what Amazon’s policy is on approving new sites but Sara probably has it right by saying you should have some content up before applying. Amazon will want to check out your site first and if it is empty they aren’t likely to approve you.
I just wanted to say that for the record – I’m lame. It’s posts like this that show my lameness – because I’ve never actually “used” Google Analytics beyond just a couple of pages – then I read your post here and started toying with it…
I especially LOVE the “in-page analytics” (on page?)…WOW! No wonder Google dominates. This is free!? (OK, not “free” since they are being given our analytics data…!)
This is incredible. I had no idea which sources were being clicked the most…which KW’s, links used to exit, etc. I love you guys!!
I mean that in a strictly professional way, but man! I keep learning from you. Love that.
Google Analytics is great. Google actually bought out a company who were charging quite a lot of money for this sort of information so to get it free is fantastic.
It can really help with analyzing pages on your sites to see what is working and what isn’t.
I think its fair to say that plenty of people are making money from building 100s of niche websites, monetised using Amazon and / or Adsense. They report good results from these sites. If done properly you can build them and move onto the next one. It works for some people. I too have gone down the multiple minisite route and it just drives you crazy. However, why not start with 50 – 100 niche sites and then focus and build out the 10 – 20 best performers?
I’ve always maintained that just about every method of making money online works – it’s just a matter of sticking with it. So yes, definitely agree with you that the multiple site model can work but as you say it’s not easy.
We’ve focused on 20 sites before and found that it was just too much. We moved down to 10 sites and that was too much, then 5, then 3 and then 1. Even 1 was too much and so we focused on just a few pages – that seemed to do it for us and that is when the money started to flow in.
I purchased your book and really enjoyed and learned from what you ladies wrote. I am confused about one thing. In the book you said that larger sites did not do as well as small sites. As I read your replies you stated that your down to one site. Is it safe to say that site has more than one product on it? Just above this you said “1 was too much and so we focused on just a few pages”. Are those 5 pages product in niches or a variety of products?
Thank you,
Fran
Actually we didn’t say that the larger sites don’t do as well….at least I hope we didn’t because that really isn’t correct. It really has nothing to do with the size of the site. We have large sites and we have small sites – both types make money. We just wouldn’t bother building huge sites anymore because we know that isn’t needed.
In fact, we had someone comment on this blog recently who has sites with only a couple of pages and she has done quite well over the Christmas period. And yet, we have pages on large blogs that make money. So who is correct?….both of us because it all comes down to the pages and not the site itself.
Our first mentor James Martell always said to us that “Google ranks pages not websites”. That’s the key to all of this. You have to start focusing on pages.
We have over 20 sites and at one point we were working on all of them at once. We decided that this wasn’t working so we moved to just one site and just a few pages from that site. Now we do this with all of our sites. So we find pages on any of our sites and rework the reviews and then work on getting backlinks to those pages. In other words, we focus on pages on all of our sites but not the sites themselves.
Paula,
Re. your comment above about focusing on pages not sites. From your data, do most of your profitable trafic come from very narrow/targeted keywords or broader ones. For example, say your site has a section on electric drills, further say that your most profitable review page here was for “Panasonic SuperDuper Amazing Drill XX”. Do most people get to that particular page by searching specifically for “Panasonic SuperDuper Amazing Drill XX” or other narrow KWs on Google or did they get there using something more generic like: “Electric Drill reviews” or “best electric drills”. This also gets into your keyword research and backlink building method. So when you say emphasize the page and not the site, what does it mean for your KW/backlink strategy? Do you go first after the specific KW that would focus promotion on that singular page and then secondarily get to the generic KW that would tend to benefit the site as whole?
I’m looking at how your KW targeting and backlink building strategy should be shaped by your conclusion that its individual pages, not entire sites, that matters most when it comes to profitability.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I think we all appreciate it.
Edward
They come from a variety of keywords Edward. Some long tail and some not.
In most cases we focus on the product review page that we are going to rank for when we go looking for backlinks. But sometimes we do as you say and focus on keywords that can benefit the whole site. For instance, if we were to submit a guest blog post to a site, we might include two links in that article using two different keywords that link back to our product review page and also 1 other link that leads back to our home page.
What great words of wisdom and a powerful post! In the past, I’ve found myself in the “frantic” and also frustrated mode trying to figure out why the money wasn’t pouring in. My response was “build more sites!”
Once I realized more wasn’t necessarily better, I decided to pause my frantic building and take stock of what I was doing. That’s when I found the two of you at the Warrior Forum. Lucky me!
Your business model is so efficient and is much more in line with my long term goals than my prior “build, build, build” model.
I’ve bookmarked your post as a reminder and will use the outline in my monthly review of my sites.
Again ladies, thank you for sharing your wisdom and I wish you continued prosperity in 2011.
Unfortunately unlike you most people don’t take stock of what they are doing and just continue building. You’re one of the lucky ones.
Our model is the relaxed way of making money online. All you need to do is focus on just a handful of pages at a a time. It’s so much easier.
OMG! This is so true and exactly where I was at up until just the last few months.
I’ve now stepped back and I’m actually in the process of selling a lot of my sites so that I can focus on just a few.
Great advice! It does come with experience – I know :)
Excellent Sue. Your life will be so much easier when you don’t have so many sites to look after.
I know I’m probably being thick here but I cant get my head around what you actually mean by “One site”. Is this a generic thing that includes a wide variety of associated niches with categories for each niche and you slowly add reviews for each particular niche within your generic keyword/domain?
I don’t think I’ve put this very well but I hope you understand what I mean. I would much prefer to only have one web site which I could expand with a wide variety of products. Or am I wrong with my thinking?
Do you also submit your articles to article directories or use some kind of automated software?
Joe
‘One site’ can mean one specific niche site with related products or one generic site that covers a range of products that are totally unrelated. We have both types and both work.
Having one site doesn’t ever mean you can’t have two sites. What were trying to get at here is that people often will build site after site without ever giving time for the first one to work. So before building a second site, get the first one making money first.
I write a review on my blog about product X and I write a blog post about product X with a link to the review. When I backlink, do I link to the product review page, the blog post page about product X or does this matter?
You can actually link to both but your main focus should be the product review page. That’s the page you really want to rank well in Google for.
But it doesn’t hurt to also build backlinks to your articles as well to help boost up the site in general.
Hi Paula,
You are so right about multiple sites, I started building Amz type stores last October, have about a dozen and it’s really exhausting doing the promotion for each. I have invested a bit in automation software(scrapebox, auto-blog commenting, profile links etc.) to avoid going insane, and so far have only made $1,300, nothing to write home about yet. Will mix it up using your approach and see how it works out for 2011, I read your stuff in the Warrior forum and inspired right now to really give it a go!
May thanks for sharing.
I’d be pretty pleased with $1300 in only a few months so you are doing well. But yes, having multiple sites takes a lot of work. A lot of people find that they want to work from home but they end up spending more time working than if they were in a regular 9 to 5 job and you don’t want that.
Hopefully with our approach you will find a more relaxed way of doing things and more time in the day.
I may have misunderstood something. I am not sure this is right you: said you’ve gone as far as working on one to three sites. Are you promoting and marketing for one niche with multiple products? related products on it? It’s just not making sense to me that one product would bring you the kind of income you’re talking about. What would you have to keep improving if your doing just one product? Are them in the same genral product category like a gift site?
Different question: I can’t find this in your book even though I’ve gone over it several time. Does the name of your domain have to be your product keyword? Does the domain name matter? Or are you using a name that encompasses multiple products?
Thank you for your time and attention.
I was confused like Joe Because in the book it appears to say large sites don’t work. Thank you for clearing that up. NowI know wht you mean.
Thanks
So does that mean all your questions above have been answered? If not let me know and I will answer anything that still isn’t clear.
Such a wrong way to go about these things. I don’t see the point of starting a new blog when the first blog didn’t show much results, then repeating the process all over again until having so many blogs that does nothing financially for them. If they can’t make the first one work out like they want to, what makes them think that the second or third and so on will work out differently. They should start learning the right way beforehand and when they start seeing positive results and are contented with it then they can start thinking about making a new one and implementing the things that they have learned from the old one.
The tips are very useful and I rework my review from 300 review to 700-800 words now. But a problem shows up. My site lost their rankings.
In one week I reworked 3 reviews of each site. All sites lose rankings.
Am I work too fast to cause the ranking lost?
Has your whole site lost rankings or just those pages? If it’s the whole site then it should have nothing to so with the changes you made to just three pages on your site. Changing 3 pages shouldn’t affect your whole site.
If on the other hand, it’s just those 3 pages that lost their ranking then obviously it will be because of changes you made to those pages.