Still not making much money from site

[nightdiamond]

Hi James, one thing you can do for ideas is to browse other websites that are simillar to yours and look at the newsletters they're offering. What is their site like? What appears to be the main theme of the site, and what are they offering in their newsletters?

You're getting the buzz because your website is unique James! You can turn a list into a hot topic forum from what you're doing. If they do respond to these lists, then they would possibly like subscribing to your newsletter.

The affiliate ads can go on your website itself, not the newsletter. When you decide to offer a product to your subscribers, you don't use the newsletter, but send a separate, full page text ad to each subscriber. You have their permission, and you have lots of room to describe your product and promote it. You can simply place an affiliate link in the ad where they click on it and are taken to a full page website offering the product and the price. The affiliate manages the site for you and processes the orders.

Plus you can also advertise your text ad in OTHER people's newsletters as well. Some newsletters have subscribers in the tens of thousands and sell full page stand alone ads that are sent to each of the subscribers.

This is a good way to earn extra money, not just a little but a nice amount and often all you have to do is send out an email text ad. It will depend on your ad writing skill, how many subscribers you have, and the product your promoting.

Is it a way to earn a living? It still depends on you and how much energy you put into this, your skill and progress. It is possible to make huge amounts of money doing this, but it is still wise to use caution and be careful, and patient too.

Let us know how you're doing James...

[jamestl2]

Thanks, I'll be checking into more about affilate ads, newsletters, etc. and see what I sould do

I've also been hard at work on my site over the past few days and I gave it a much better "Friendlish" design. I'm also working on incorporating forums at the moment.

[Andreas]

Well, I don't normally bring threads back from the dead (5 months has passed), but I'd like to comment on some of the discussion going on here. Also, Thank You Steve! That post was a revelation for me, and completely applies to me at this point in time. Just priceless info.

MadHyeNa

PS: Invest your time more productively. Don't spend meaningless hours working on your site if there is little or no gain at all. Better read a few SEO articles, apply those, and expect the results. Spend your time on valuable activities. Do the marketing. Advertise. Optimize. Reap the results.

It's true, SEO is important, but one should remain balanced.

This is interesting. That comment written about 5 months ago, right? Well 5 days ago (weird coincidence), James published this little gem: How To Break Free from the SEO Wannabe Mindset He asks himself some great questions about how he feels about SEO, and basically summarizes what he learned from this thread (mostly from Steve's fantastic advice) Great article, James! I really enjoyed it.

Jim, I also noticed that SmallTownBigShot currently has an Alexa rating of 431,777! Congratulations on your progress.

What I've seen time and time again is a pattern like this:
320 Hits
400 Hits
800 Hits
825 Hits
5,099,388 Hits

It's like all of a sudden it's BAM! a crapload of traffic just shows up and then it grows linear/exponential from there... What I'm interested in looking for is why this happens. What CAUSES these QUANTUM LEAPS in traffic. Study Steve's traffic, study JohnChow.com and you'll see what I mean.

I think we see growth patterns like this because you're seeing many trends (which could be represented in waves) as overlapping. One wave is steadily climbing as more links come in, and another we could call a "hit wave." If just one article gets popular on StumbleUpon, that wave peaks and add to the smaller wave. Except it's not always easy to see the difference between these two types of waves in your statistics.


Although Nightdiamond seems to be quite gung-ho about newsletters, I have to wonder why Steve only choses to send out about 2 newsletters per year. Why restrict your content to be accessible only by newsletter? Wouldn't putting your content up on a blog and then using contextual advertising make you more revenue in the long run? Isn't the best way to use email by allowing your visitors to subscribe to your RSS via email if they so choose?

Thoughts.

I'm learning so much, and it's saving me a lot of wasted effort.
Thank you all, and Thank You Steve!

[rebelwithacause]

Hi James,

I think that there are a lot of great points here...Some people talk about tight niches, and others that I do business with have broad niches and do extremely well too.

For instance, ETR newsletter is about health, wealth, wisdom, online marketing, etc...

They all kind of flow together to build a better life.

Just like here...Steve is all about personal development...which some would say is a broad niche...is it about Law of Attraction, how to make money, successful mindset, etc...

Still, it's at the top of the search engines...it's the content.

I've been in the biz for a long time...and content is still king. So in addition to those top ten lists, you can then do your commenting on what you learned or give your opinion...


Add more of your personality and brand to the mix...

and definitely to monetize...the newsletter is a great idea as well as adding affiliate products and links to your site that match your topic or theme.

Constant contact is a great source to generate a newsletter, and html emails...they also manage all your email subscriptions too...

Fairly reasonably priced...

I agree with what Franco said, it is very important to know
who you target audience is so you can drive targeted traffic.

If you don't know what your niche is, perhaps you can come up with one that wraps around your theme of top 10 lists that appeals to a certain group of people...

Just like personal development is a broad category...you can find one that works for your audience too...

Then build up that list, develop the relationship with your audience, let your personality show...

And keep in touch with them through your newsletter...and then you can make those solo ad recommendations...

Because now you have the rapport and relationship built up...give first, offer products second...

Attraction marketing and good selling 101...

Great work, and I look forward to see more...

Scott

[smartile]

Steve P - thanks for that great advice!

My intuition was telling me the same thing (ie. no marketing equals no income). Now it's LOUD and CLEAR after reading your tips.

thank-you.

Stephen Martile — Personal Development Made Simple

[TheStrongerSelf]

Good suggestions so far that i read, don't know if this has been posted but id also suggest you drop the ads until you got at least a couple thousand (3-5k is a good number) hits a day regularly. Or at least replace them with ads that dont send the user away from your site forever like adsense does. You want to build a regular readership, sending the users away from your site for a couple cents can hurt that a lot in the beginning.

[laciemn1]

Originally Posted by jamestl2

So far I’ve made a whopping $12 from Adsense.

I don’t want to make money a primary concern of my site, as I still want to focus on writing valuable content, but I’m practically broke.

And I’m getting pressure from my parents, who want me to get a job, but getting one means it will seriously cut back the time I spend on my business. I’ve spent over 10 hours a day, 7 days a week on it for the past 6 months or so, thinking of new things to write, promoting the site, etc. Not to mention I had (have) a full college schedule (in the fall).

I’ve told them it takes time to build a site from scratch and generate income from it. But they seem to think I’m making poor life decisions and think my time would be better spent at getting an entry-level job, and I’m going nowhere in life.

I also realize that I may be biased towards myself (I think we all are), and an outside opinion would help me have a better perspective on things.

Sorry if I’m ranting here
I was just wondering how to generate more income from a website besides adsense? (Or if I could somehow convince them it will make money in the future?) And I’m more than willing to work harder at achieving it

It sounds like you really put a lot of work into it. It's impressive either way!

[Meg]

Originally Posted by impaul99

As far as comments go, can someone explain why this works? Meaning, most blogs do not display the comments on their home page when an article is written. It just says ">> 8 Comments" or something like that, and it is only when you click on the actual page of that article, where the blog displays only that article do you see the comments below.

The thing is that while the home page of a hot blog site might be Google Ranked at 5 or 6 or higher, the individual article pages are usually ranked 0 especially if the blog pumps out 3 posts a day.

Speaking strictly from a traffic creation point of view, not morally right/wrong, would it actually benefit my traffic largely if I went and posted comments on lets say the top 10 blogs in my category just saying "Great Article!" for example? Assuming the blog authors allowed the comments, would it actually build links to my blog?

I heard of this "tactic" before, but I never understood how/why it would work. For some reason I thought that having fewer links from highly rated sites was better than more links from lower rated sites? Is this not true?

Someone please enlighten me.

Thanks.

It's not about building PageRank or SEO. It's mostly for what I call "traffic-sharing." You comment other blogs, leave your link. The author usually checks out people who leave comments, as do other commenters. You get their visitors to check out your site too. If you comment enough, you'll probably get some link love.

I just started my blog about a month ago. I have 9 posts in all. I put up my stat counter January 2. Since January 2, most of my traffic has come the blogs that I've commented, whether from the author or their visitors. In one week, I've earned almost $7 in AdSense. In one week, I've had over 100 visitors. And I have 9 posts. I'm still very much new to blogging, especially marketing.

What I did though was accidentally find a PF (my niche) blog, explored the site, and checked out her blog roll. Checked out her carnivals, posted comments, etc. When I got my blog up, she was my first link out. She was also my first comment. Her site provided me with what I needed to get started - gave me a list of other blogs in the niche to comment on, which in turned provided me with other services that I use.

What amazes me is that my blog is still very new. A month old. And I'm getting great hits from Google. I check out what keywords they are using, and I see what Googles brings up, and my very new blog is on the front page.

So I don't know what I'm doing (right or wrong), but it's working.

[rebelwithacause]

Here are some other great ways to get free traffic.

First I agree about the leaving comments on high traffic blogs, and high traffic forums.

Remember to always provide good high quality content...no pitches...which I think is a given.


Setting up a squidoo page, a hub page, writing articles on and off your blog etc...and then going out to the social bookmarking sites like stumbleupon, digg, delicious, reddit, technorati etc...and bookmarking your content...

will bring you not only immediate traffic, but it will also give you very credible backlinks...

Google loves sites like squidoo, hub pages, ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, etc....and all
the social bookmarking sites.

If you have a facebook account, list your blog in there as well...another very high ranked, credible site backlink...

And if you are trying to avoid the adsense look, then find credible products that you like, and and join their affiliate program...talk about them in passing throughout your content, and/or create a resource or review section...

When people click on those, you can create additional streams of revenue.

The bottom line to making money online is either creating a product, affiliate marketing, home business, adsense, etc...

Traffic and list building are the foundation to success, providing you have done your home work and know that there is a market there, and the keywords for people to find you organically through google, and the other sources of promotion that have been discussed on this thread...

Keep up the great work!

[AndrewPavelski]

Get some Kontera in the mix. A few affiliate programs. Boost up that traffic! Use some StumbleUpon, tell your friends about the site, tell your parents, put flyers up around campus. Stay determined and good things will happen.

If I were in your position, I would get a job that I enjoy, but stay on the grind towards website development in my free time. I think that we are all biased towards ourselves, but I think it is good. You've got to believe in yourself if you want to be successful. Don't get discouraged by the parents...

I wish you the best of luck!

Originally Posted by jamestl2

So far I’ve made a whopping $12 from Adsense.

I don’t want to make money a primary concern of my site, as I still want to focus on writing valuable content, but I’m practically broke.

And I’m getting pressure from my parents, who want me to get a job, but getting one means it will seriously cut back the time I spend on my business. I’ve spent over 10 hours a day, 7 days a week on it for the past 6 months or so, thinking of new things to write, promoting the site, etc. Not to mention I had (have) a full college schedule (in the fall).

I’ve told them it takes time to build a site from scratch and generate income from it. But they seem to think I’m making poor life decisions and think my time would be better spent at getting an entry-level job, and I’m going nowhere in life.

I also realize that I may be biased towards myself (I think we all are), and an outside opinion would help me have a better perspective on things.

Sorry if I’m ranting here
I was just wondering how to generate more income from a website besides adsense? (Or if I could somehow convince them it will make money in the future?) And I’m more than willing to work harder at achieving it

[Andreas]

Or you could even create a little presentation to show your parents.

By using a presentation software such as Powerpoint (though I much prefer Apple's Keynote software), you can visually illustrate your traffic growth and revenue growth to your doubting forebears (parents).

You can even highlight articles where people have specifically mentioned your blog.

In short, celebrate your small victories! .....because Gratitude breeds more victories.

[AndrewPavelski]

Nice advice Steve

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

I've seen this pattern countless times, going all the way back to my shareware days. Here's the formula:

Great product + no marketing = no income

Your site has an Alexa.com ranking of 1.67 million. So you have virtually no traffic. That's why the site isn't making money. No traffic = no income. It doesn't matter if you add more content if your traffic isn't growing, since no one will be there to see it.

Google shows you have only 4 incoming links to Toptenlisted.com - The Premier Source for Original Top Ten Lists, and all of them appear to be from your own forum postings. That means no one is linking to your site either, so your search engine rankings will be nearly nonexistent. This will hold you back for sure, and it implies you've been using the wrong strategy ever since you began.

It won't do you much good to keep adding content if no one knows about it. Content alone will only grow your traffic once you've established a reasonable baseline... say 100,000 visitors per month. You're currently tossing new content into a void where no one will see it. Given your traffic levels, hitting "Publish" is almost like hitting "Delete."

If I were in your shoes, here's what I'd do. It won't cost you a dime:

1) Curtail your new blog postings to about 3 posts per week: Mon, Weds, and Fri. Set each post to go live between 3-5am. You can post more often, but I'd cap it at 10 hours per week max.

2) Spend 1-2 hours per week doing blog carnival submissions of your best posts at blogcarnival.com. Do that every single week. Every round of submissions will get you some free links and grow your traffic a bit. It's free, so take advantage of it. If you do this consistently, you'll have dozens of new links within a few months.

3) Spend the bulk of your time commenting on other people's blogs and forums in your field, especially the most popular ones, and include your link in your signature. Share some of your article links if you can do so in a way that helps people and doesn't spam.

4) Make sure your blog is pinging pingomatic.com. WordPress does this by default.

5) Don't worry about trying to optimize your ads right now. The income isn't likely to be significant anyway until your Alexa rank is less than 100,000. Forget about adding new income streams, and put your energy into link and traffic building. If you can build the traffic, the income will soon follow.

6) Read (or re-read) How to Make Money From Your Blog.

This will take time, but you should start seeing positive results within 1-3 months. You're in a situation where new content isn't as important as gaining links. Links will give you some traffic, but they'll also boost your search rankings, which means more traffic. Don't worry about posting so much new content, since it's a waste of time given your traffic. Put 80% of your work time into building links to your site. Carnival submissions, blog comments, and forums are great ways to do that.

Once you have a good baseline level of traffic, then writing good content can be enough to keep it growing. But first you must do some marketing work to allow the site to put down roots.

Don't give up. Just adapt to what the numbers are telling you, and continue on with a more appropriate strategy.

[taldrknlovly]

Doesn't it all come down to traffic, traffic, traffic, and the more people, the more income? Doesn't it all have to do with page rank and coming up in the first few pages of search engine results?

[Gsus]

Andrew, like the concept of your website.

How is it coming along for you??

[Meg]

PageRank has nothing to do with it. Your PageRank has nothing to do with the indexing on search engines.

My site has a -1/10 PageRank, and I come up on first page just based on SEO/content.

Traffic, traffic, and more traffic is the key though. Like Steve said, no visitors = no income.

[codefreeze]

Basically Steve is right - you have no revenue because you have no traffic. This is quite a common problem on the web. You need to get more links into your site.

With other sites I've run, one of the best ways to get more traffic is link exchange. I was running a Thailand related site and one of the best sources of traffic I had was a link from a Thailand based online newspaper.

Once you have traffic boosted I also think it's really important to get your page view level boosted. Although this is proportional to traffic, maximising page views can boost your income considerably.

Several useful techniques for boosting traffic have already been mentioned in this thread, so implement all of them.

You might also find the following article of interest:

The Truth About AdSense

[AndrewPavelski]

Thanks! The site's coming along well. I've just created a "homepage," and currently I'm working out a bunch of coding and plugin kinks...I'm also considering buying a custom WP layout via UniqueBlogDesigns.com...Each day as I make more progress and learn more, things become easier.

Originally Posted by Gsus

Andrew, like the concept of your website.

How is it coming along for you??

[Mr D]

Originally Posted by AndrewPavelski

Thanks! The site's coming along well. I've just created a "homepage," and currently I'm working out a bunch of coding and plugin kinks...I'm also considering buying a custom WP layout via UniqueBlogDesigns.com...Each day as I make more progress and learn more, things become easier.

Do those themes still have all the copyrights at the bottom? (ie this theme is by ____ etc...)

Have you thought about hiring an elancer to make you a theme?

[yakito]

For my own experience the first million is the hardest... although for me it was the first $100. After being able to attract those first $100 money didn't stop coming from all types of internet programs.

Just one advise, never put all your eggs in one basket... and when money starts coming find a way to secure an amount every month

[AndrewPavelski]

Yakito is definitely right when he says "don't put all of your eggs in one basket." I recommend checking out John Chow's "money makers" and applying some of those. You must also generate website traffic. I also recommend following my website for the latest monetizing tactics. If you currently aren't generating much traffic, check this article out: How To Increase Website Traffic.

Best wishes,

Andrew