Where Did My Site Go?

As a blogger or webmaster, one of the last things you want to hear is that your site is in the Google sandbox. To some it is a fate worst than death. Once in the sandbox site owners lament, question why and attempt to work feverishly to get out of it.

It is what it is

As mentioned previously, one of my new sites is in the Google sandbox. The other day I went looking for it and I found it on the 19th page of Google search results. It wasn’t even at the top of the 19th page it was near the bottom of the 19th page. As far as I’m concerned, it is firmly in the sandbox (as is confirmed by the Sandbox Checker tool).

To combat that, I wrote four articles submitted them to content sites on which I will receive residual income. The articles are doing a nice job of sending traffic my way.  Unless I am so inspired, I don’t think I’ll be creating any more articles in an attempt to back link to this site. I’m noticing the back links are beginning to take on a life of their own.

I’ve since received back links from a public library and another information site. Instead of spending time back linking I’m going to spend the remainder of my time writing content and building the site.

Snapshot of Traffic Sources

In addition to Google analytics, I use Statcounter to check my daily page views and traffic sources. Here’s a snapshot of my Search Engine Wars page from my Statcounter account. As you can see Google accidentally sent me a visitor. I believe that one Google click was because of an image and not so much for the content.

Sharing Numbers

I created the site April 1, 2011. It went into the sandbox on or about April 21, 2011. As of May 31, 2011 I earned over $200 on my sandboxed site. Below is a listing of the earnings for the site

Why the high earnings?

I think the reason for the high return of earnings on my sandboxed site is because of the niche and targeted keywords. The niche is not unique and there are lots of sites on the topic. What makes my site different is that I’m not trying to sell anything. I’m not selling a product or a service. I guess you can say that compiling the site is the service.

In essence, I’m researching and consolidating information to make it easier for my readers to find the answers they want. The information I’m providing isn’t unique and is freely available on the internet. What makes my site different is that I’m taking all of the information digesting it and putting it all on one site.

Emerging from the sandbox

When and if the site ever emerges from the Google sandbox, I fully expect the site to take off and become a really nice moneymaker. However, if it never comes out of the Google sandbox, I fully expect this site to take off and become a moneymaker. It will take longer without Google but that’s fine. Either way, I look at this site as a success for several reasons:

1. It taught me not to rely on Google for the major source of my traffic.
2. It forces me to concentrate on what’s really important – the reader.
3. It’s inspirational to me that a new site can earn money right out of the box with little or no help from Google.
4. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to earn money online. My out of pocket expense included purchasing the domain name.

The Facilitator

In the past I’ve written about writing for love and writing for money. This one seems to be an odd mixture of both. The subject matter is not one that makes my heart skip a beat every time I think about it. But, the ability to research, locate the information, consolidated into a user-friendly fashion to help folks who otherwise would not find this information…now that makes my heart skip a beat.

Back when I worked in the insurance industry, I called myself a facilitator. I had to facilitate the meeting of the minds between the client and the insurance company. It wasn’t always easy, but we got it done. I think of this latest site as the facilitator between the reader and the information sought. It’s not always easy (the Google obstacle), but it will be done

What’s the difference between a niche site and an authority site? I think of a niche site as a small tightly focused site with no more than 5 or 10 pages. Its purpose is to create a low or no maintenance site that shares information and/or products while earning money.

An authority site is still a tightly focused site, but it’s larger. It’s chock full of information and becomes the place to go when researching the subject matter. The biggest difference between a niche and an authority site, is the size and the depth level of information.

Niche Site #1

As I said before, I tried to create a small niche site after performing a bit of keyword search. That site is up, running and lonely. It’s had a total of 33 hits since it went live on March 24th.

I think I knew when I created the site that it just wasn’t me. I did what the experts/gurus told me to do and my site is out there falling flat on its face. I’m chalking that one up to experience.

Authority Site Type of Gal

Learning quickly from that mistake, I modified the information I got from the experts. What I did was I inserted the Felicia factor for the Felicia sites. You can substitute your name where mine appears in this blog post. The Felicia factor is factoring in my personality, preference and nature. With the second blog I still took a bit of what I learned from the gurus but calibrated it just a bit to suit my personality.

I’m still amazed at the early results of blog number two. The blog currently has 9 posts and 4 pages. The pages include the privacy, about/contact, sitemap and a primer on the subject matter. It went live on March 31st (two weeks ago) and has had over 500 page views and earned over $16. I knew I had something when a public library linked to it on day number 5 (by the way, I didn’t do any backlinking).

Originally I was going to create a small niche site but as I continued to write content and learned more about the topic, I realized I wanted to explore the topic in depth and produce an authority site. I think I can fully cover the topic with a 70 or 80 page site.
[smartads]

The More I Learn the Easier it Gets

As I delve into the topic, it’s becoming easier and easier to write additional posts. The information flows. I have a better understanding of my subject matter and I think I’m gaining a bit of information on what the reader is looking for. I’m not employing any tricks for getting them to click on ads. As a matter of fact, I think the information is so complete there really shouldn’t be a need to click on the ads, but they do it anyway. Go figure!

How I Did My Keyword Search

Some time ago, I came across a Hub about the Money Matrix. That very same matrix is the one I used to come up with the keywords for both blogs. I apparently screwed things up the first time, but learned a valuable lesson for the second go ‘round.

When I’m wasting time on my computer playing Solitaire, I realize I can play the Money Matrix game instead. After all, it’s

not fun losing imaginary Solitaire money and going further in the hole. With the Money Matrix game, I can come up with keywords for my next site and earn real money.

Getting Rid of the Bottle Neck

When I come up with winner keywords, I put it on a list for further investigation. I currently have 4 more niche sites waiting for content. Since I’m not very passionate about those particular topics, I’ve decided to use Textbroker to have someone else write content for those subjects. This way, I can continue creating the authority site that I’m enjoying so much while other writers can help me get my other sites up and running. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’m learning to get out of my own way when it comes to exploring new avenues for earning money online. It all comes down to that chubby Panda guy. I’ve said it before, but I’ve got to say it again. Thank you, Panda for forcing me to take a new and exciting path.

When I first started writing online, I would compare last month’s earnings to this month’s earnings to get an indication of how well I was doing. In my first year of writing online, it was the only method of comparison that I had.

Senior Year of Online Writing School of Hard Knocks

Now that I’m nearing the end of my senior year of online writing (I’ve been at it for just shy of 4 years), I compare my numbers in a much different way. I compare apples to apples instead of apples to oranges. In other words, I compare January 2007 earnings to January of 2008 and so on.

I’ve found that comparing my December numbers to my January numbers doesn’t give me an accurate picture of my earnings growth. Seasonal fluctuations should be compared to other months with seasonal fluctuations. Doing so will allow you to better prepare for the dips.

Learning Your Dips

I’ve found that one of my sites seems to do well in June, July and August, drop in September and October and then start to pick up again in November in December. That December high is followed by a January low that lasts well into May. In my first year I worried myself sick thinking that I did something wrong or that Google had pulled the plug.

I worried for nothing because the site followed the exact same pattern the following year. Only the second year’s numbers were better than the first. That site taught me three lessons:

1. Worrying is useless (I knew that, but apparently I needed a reminder)
2. Build up content during the dips so that when the boon times come, they’ll be boonier (I know that’s not a word, but you get my drift).
3. Build an offsetting site.  An offsetting site is a site has a different set of seasonal fluctuations. If Site A does well in the summer and winter, Site B is targeted for the Spring and Fall, this way there’s a steady stream of income all year long.

[smartads]

Stats and Numbers

This all leads me to encouraging you to take time to track your numbers. It may seem like a royal pain at first, but it is well worth it if you want to work smart. Although I started tracking my numbers in my freshman year of online writing, it wasn’t until my junior year (last year) that I started seriously tracking my writing efforts in addition to my income.

Tracking each separately is good, but they become a powerful duo when you track them both. One without the other is like Batman without Robin, or Ren without Stimpy or Bert without Ernie or…(uh oh, too much coffee…sorry).

Keep the Big Picture in Mind

There’s not much I can guarantee when it comes to online writing, but I can guarantee there will be dips. You’ll see them daily, weekly, monthly and seasonally. In your first year those dips can throw you for a loop because you’ve got nothing to compare them to.

Take heart and just keep pushing on. The first year can be the toughest because you’re not quite sure what to expect or what you’re doing, but stick with it. Don’t let the dips stop you.

Abandoning a Blog

One of my newly created blogs has been taking quite a long time to get off the ground. I never expect too much in the first year, but this particular blog wasn’t showing the same signs of life early on in the process as my other blogs had. I figured the topic was a dud topic and that it just didn’t pay. Some folks don’t believe in placing ads on a new blog, but I do. It’s my measuring stick to see if my efforts are paying off.

The traffic to the blog is minimal, which is to be expected. What was a bit unusual was that in the several months that the blog has been up, the ad clicks were just about non existent. That was a little unusual even with minimal traffic. So, I made a mental note to abandon the blog. After all, in the space of 5 and a half months I earned a whopping .03 cents.

Changing the Ad Size and Location

Before totally abandoning the blog, I decided to change the location and the size of the ads. The color remained the same, but I increased the size of the ad and placed it within the content instead of above the content.

The flow of traffic remained the same but in less than a week, the blog earnings increased from .03 to $1.92. No, I won’t get rich off of $1.92 but it did tell me one thing…don’t abandon the blog. After not having a single ad click since August, I’ve had ad clicks several days in a row.

Getting Back to the Basics

I guess I was falling into the “disposable society’ syndrome. If it doesn’t work, throw it out. Instead, I realized that I didn’t need to get rid of the blog, it just needed some tweaking.

Lesson Learned:

If your blog’s income seems flat or barely existent, play around with the ad placement, size and/or color. You might be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Of course after a momentary celebration, I had to take a more detailed look at how I did it and how I should approach this residual writing stuff going forward.  Here’s how I got there this year:

• eHow 49%
• Suite 24%
• Google 16%
• Infolinks 4%
• Text Link Ads 2%
• Amazon 1%
• Chitika 1% (I’ve since dropped Chitika)
• Affiliate sales 2%
• Kontera, Orato and AdBrite 1%

Earning $20,000 in residual income is especially exciting considering how much it cost for me to do it.  My top two money makers cost $0 to join.  Most of the rest of my income is tied into my own sites which cost me about $100 per year in hosting and $10 per domain name (I’ve registered about 5 domain names this year and only used 2). When I renewed my existing domains last year, I renewed them for multiple years so I didn’t incur the expense this year.

So far in 2010, I spent about $150 (although, this doesn’t include purchasing a new USB headset when my other one crapped out on me a couple of weeks ago).  When I compare my current expenses to the expenses I incurred driving to a part-time job 5 days a week, I’ve got to say that quitting that part-time job and working from home was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. After all, the part-time job only paid $8.38 an hour.

My Goals Going Forward

It is quite obvious after looking at the percentages that I’ve got a lot of work to do. I need to balance my numbers a bit more and add one or two more revenue sources.  In addition to more diversification, I need to beef up my numbers all around.  By increasing everything else, my eHow percentage will have less of an impact on my income. I’m not comfortable with them being the lion share of my revenue source.

I also want to invest in my money making resources.  I need to do things like upgrade my computer software, blog themes and some of my computer hardware.  My existing software/hardware has done a fine job in getting me to where I am, but I’d like to ramp things up a bit going forward.

In addition to the physical ramping up, I’ve got some mental ramping to do.  I’ve got to spend more time studying, learning and improving on what I’ve done in the past three years.  The Internet is constantly changing and if I want my earnings to grow (I’m still aiming for $10,000 per month in residual income), I’ve got to change along with it.

Well, there you have it, $20,000 in residual income.  If I can do it, I KNOW you can too.