4 Months After XFactor Method

[misterkailo]

I am not an affiliate with XFactor or looking to make money by writing an e-book or anything, but I just want to say that my average AdSense earning is over $60 daily with 110 sites after four months of using his method.

About 20% of them do not make money or only a few pennies so I will have to evaluate them again later, and once they are near expiration date, I might have to consider letting them go.

Some of my top earning sites I have not touch them since I made them in April, and they are making $4-5 average.

I use red instead of blue for my Adsense title links. I'm just saying that works well for me, but might not work well for everyone. My best sites convert over 25% with the red, and some convert at around 10% and less.

I just want to thank John for giving wonderful advice on how to make money with AdSense. I can now comfortably use this supplemental income to invest in stocks. It's like investing with free money because I literally don't have to do anything except a little bit of maintenance here and there with the sites.

I am expecting my average earnings to be over $75 by end of September without adding more sites.

A lot of sites went into sandbox and came back out so if you guys lost rankings on your XFactor sites (but not banned), then it is just a matter of time for them to come back to rank well. I still have about 10 sites that are stuck in the sandbox, and once they come out, I will probably be seeing $100 daily before end of year.

Good luck to all!

[Mike Grant]

You may want to consider adding about 10 pages of content to each site.

[Fraggler]

Nice work!

It sounds like you have a great foundation now to expand those sites for even more returns.

[jonat2005]

110 websites is a real work. How long did it take you to make those sites? And did you register unique domains for them all?

[yukon]

Good job with your Adsense sites!

Instead of letting the sites that don't earn any money go, why not flip the sites on Flippa?

Maybe offer the whole group of non performers as a package deal.

That might at least get your money back that you already invested into the sites, hosting, time invested, etc...

[misterkailo]

@mgtarheels - that's where the maintenance come in .. I do keep them updated.

@fraggler - thanks, and I will keep expanding them to maximize my returns.

@yukon - the problem is that all my sites are hosted by Blogger. I know people will tell me to switch to WordPress, etc. but I am too lazy to do that lol. The average costs for my domains are just $7. I wait for special domain promotions, and sometimes I even get domains for 99 cents each.

@jonat2005 - started this approach beginning of April, and finished all sites by mid June. I outsourced all the article writing. They are all unique domains, but they are all hosted by Blogger.

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by misterkailo

@mgtarheels - that's where the maintenance come in .. I do keep them updated.

@fraggler - thanks, and I will keep expanding them to maximize my returns.

@yukon - the problem is that all my sites are hosted by Blogger. I know people will tell me to switch to WordPress, etc. but I am too lazy to do that lol. The average costs for my domains are just $7. I wait for special domain promotions, and sometimes I even get domains for 99 cents each.

@jonat2005 - started this approach beginning of April, and finished all sites by mid June. I outsourced all the article writing. They are all unique domains, but they are all hosted by Blogger.

Right on.

Congrats and good luck to your continued success.

[Clyde]

Good work.

Were you hit by June 2nd's algo-update?

[yukon]

@yukon - the problem is that all my sites are hosted by Blogger. I know people will tell me to switch to WordPress, etc. but I am too lazy to do that lol. The average costs for my domains are just $7. I wait for special domain promotions, and sometimes I even get domains for 99 cents each.

That's funny your on Blogger, I make most of my Adsense money on Blogspot.

My biggest money maker is a blogspot site that has a blogspot domain (example hxxp://myAdsenseSite.blogspot.com), that site made $1,200 last year.

I also run a few Adsense/Wordpress sites.

[teatree]

Just be careful - Google does a manual inspection once your account reaches $100 a day on Adsense.

So spruce up your sites and make sure you are ready for the inspection...

[nickey512]

great..for that result how many article and keyword you targeted in each site?

[spanisheye]

Originally Posted by teatree

Just be careful - Google does a manual inspection once your account reaches $100 a day on Adsense.

So spruce up your sites and make sure you are ready for the inspection...

Since when???? That sounds like a load of rubbish to me.

[teatree]

Originally Posted by spanisheye

Since when???? That sounds like a load of rubbish to me.

Take a look at the following article:

How Not to Make Money Online | How to Make Money Online with SEO

That was in April. I doubt G has now turned nice to sniper sites since then.

My comment was just a friendly warning to the OP, but hey, if you want to go ahead and get all your sites deindexed, be my guest.

[sousen]

Add moe content on your site

[spanisheye]

It's a coincidence. New sites are always up and down. If they are crap sites all it takes is someone filing a spam report to get them thrown out.

I live off Adsense and have never had any problems at all. I also always make sure that my sites are actually decent. Online marketing is about long-term gain, not short term so people need to make sure they don't throw a load of rubbish websites out there or they will get thrown out.

Adsense is NOT linked to Google indexing or ranking.

[kursat]

Originally Posted by spanisheye

It's a coincidence. New sites are always up and down. If they are crap sites all it takes is someone filing a spam report to get them thrown out.

I live off Adsense and have never had any problems at all. I also always make sure that my sites are actually decent. Online marketing is about long-term gain, not short term so people need to make sure they don't throw a load of rubbish websites out there or they will get thrown out.

Adsense is NOT linked to Google indexing or ranking.

I don't know much about Adsense, so I thought I would ask. Can you display affiliate products on the same page as Adsense? Would this be a problem in future?

[bay37]

Originally Posted by misterkailo

... but I just want to say that my average AdSense earning is over $60 daily with 110 sites after four months of using his method.
...

Congrats.

However, this is not a good long term plan. It's beyond me why anyone would spend months of their time (you say you "maintain" all of those sites as well) building minisites like that. 110 website - oh come on!

[Clyde]

You're right, it's not. OP need to ramp it up and build 500 sites instead. $15k/mo is a good long term income. Split that up over 4-5 accounts, don't interlink them and he's good to go.

It's a numbers game.

bay37, I thought you built these sites as well at some point?

[williamspd]

Originally Posted by bay37

Congrats.

However, this is not a good long term plan. It's beyond me why anyone would spend months of their time (you say you "maintain" all of those sites as well) building minisites like that. 110 website - oh come on!

Why is this not a good long term plan? I've been making money from Adsense for over a year, and enjoy it. I'll be making money from Adsense in the next few years. By 'long term' do you mean 'retirement planning'? ;-)

I'd be grateful if you could explain your point of view in a little more detail please.

[bay37]

Originally Posted by unlimitedsubmissions

bay37, I thought you built these sites as well at some point?

Not anymore. Not worth my time. Though I do get your point - it is a numbers game. So much so that if you can't/don't know how to automate/outsource the whole process - it's just not worth it.

15k/month is not a lot of money to me anymore. It was at some point. There's just so much more $$$ to be made providing services, building better researched aff. sites and doing massive SEO. This whole Internet thing freakin' rocks. haha

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by kursat

Can you display affiliate products on the same page as Adsense?

There's no rule against it but, in general, it's best to keep Adsense and affiliate ads separate. This is because most good affiliate offers pay better than Adsense in the same niche and you don't want to get 8 cents for allowing somebody else to earn $20 from a sale. On the opposite side, the best paying Adsense categories tend not to have good affiliate products. Occasionally you'll find something that is well balanced between the two but, most often, keeping them separate works best.

[Clyde]

Originally Posted by bay37

Not anymore. Not worth my time. Though I do get your point - it is a numbers game. So much so that if you can't/don't know how to automate/outsource the whole process - it's just not worth it.

15k/month is not a lot of money to me anymore. It was at some point. There's just so much more $$$ to be made providing services, building better researched aff. sites and doing massive SEO. This whole Internet thing freakin' rocks. haha

Well, by all means, do share.

[TristanPerry]

Congrats on the success

His methods are definitely good and I'm looking forward to his new/updated e-book since it sounds like it'll be even more awesome (if that's possible! )

[misterkailo]

I am not too sure about the whole de-index thing as the person who was banned after making $100 probably had crappy sites but he wouldn't admit it.

I was hit in beginning of June when my earnings was down to about $20-$22ish.

I won't be making more AdSense sites, but just add more content and SEO them to rank up higher for multiple keywords.

I am going to start new projects to work on Clickbank products with no AdSense in them. Gotta diversify

[Kay King]

I am not too sure about the whole de-index thing as the person who was banned after making $100 probably had crappy sites but he wouldn't admit it.

They never admit it I agree - keep building content especially on the sites that are doing well - but I would also keep building on the others for while. Don't give up on them too soon.

Good idea to diversify, too.

kay

[Intrepreneur]

You're doing the wrong thing if you need 110 sites to make $60 per day.

Top Earning Blogs – Make Money Online Blogging

That's what you should be doing!

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Intrepreneur

You're doing the wrong thing if you need 110 sites to make $60 per day.

Top Earning Blogs – Make Money Online Blogging

That's what you should be doing!

LMFAO!!

The guy is making $60 per day, & you're telling him he is doing something wrong.

I know every business plan needs tweaking online & offline, but cmon don't tell him he is doing the wrong thing, that's just lame!

[DireStraits]

Originally Posted by bay37

Not anymore. Not worth my time. Though I do get your point - it is a numbers game. So much so that if you can't/don't know how to automate/outsource the whole process - it's just not worth it.

15k/month is not a lot of money to me anymore. It was at some point. There's just so much more $$$ to be made providing services, building better researched aff. sites and doing massive SEO. This whole Internet thing freakin' rocks. haha

Well, well, well, me owld mucker. If that is the case it sounds like you may well be living the life of Riley now, indeed

[Intrepreneur]

Originally Posted by yukon

LMFAO!!

The guy is making $60 per day, & you're telling him he is doing something wrong.

I know every business plan needs tweaking online & offline, but cmon don't tell him he is doing the wrong thing, that's just lame!

I said if he needs 110 sites to make $60 per day.

And I have a suspicion it's not even true.

So meh.

[DireStraits]

Oh and congratulations, misterkailo! I'm both pleased and excited to hear of your success in following "John's methods".

I must concur with some of the above posters, however, in feeling that the sheer volume of sites you have to make your ~$60/day is perhaps slightly unnecessary. Having said that, that is your chosen strategy, and you're making some decent money, so if you're happy maintaining your 100+ sites then great!

I follow similar principles as those detailed in Johns book to work my own Adsense sites, but I have a much smaller number and make a lot more money from each.

I'm also erring more towards setting up larger sites yet (focused more on a general market - or at least a more broad niche - rather than really small, micro niches), but may continue to set up and work on smaller sites at a slower pace just for the sake of having a more numerous properties which I can sell and what not, individually, in the future.

[brittlesnc]

Could someone please clarify something for me?

I've been told by several people that you have to have more than 1 way to monetize a website than just Adsense or that site is really considered a MFA site and will be in violation of the TOS, is this true?

And if it's true, I've also been told that having Adsense and affiliate offers on the same page hurts conversions for both monetization methods...how true is that?

I'd appreciate any experienced opinions on these two matters.

[DireStraits]

Originally Posted by brittlesnc

Could someone please clarify something for me?

I've been told by several people that you have to have more than 1 way to monetize a website than just Adsense or that site is really considered a MFA site and will be in violation of the TOS, is this true?

And if it's true, I've also been told that having Adsense and affiliate offers on the same page hurts conversions for both monetization methods...how true is that?

I'd appreciate any experienced opinions on these two matters.

I have a hunch that MFA may not stand for "Made for Adsense", but "Made for Advertising". In any case, I think you have a greater risk of being de-indexed for running MFA sites, than being banned from Adsense. I believe people who have their Adsense accounts removed are usually suspected practitioners (or victims) of click-bombing / click-fraud.

If Google reviews your sites and believe they offer no real value to the visitor due to thin / unreadable content and you've clearly only obtained good rankings through your own backlink manipulation, then they will deindex those sites.

Either way, it's going to translate into vastly reduced or completely vanished earnings.

In the end, ask yourself this. If Google feels a site is so low quality as not to be deserving of the priviledge of displaying their advertisements, how much additional value do you think they'd consider that site to offer if it also simply displayed affiliate links or product offers?

The value (or lack of) is in the informational/factual-content and product reviews/descriptions, not in the presence (or absense) of additional means of monetization such as affiliate links or CPA offers.


As for your second question, you probably will indeed find that the more distractions present on your site, and the more opportunities there are for the visitor to leave (affiliate links, offers, adsense, chitika, whatever), the action will be split between them. This may sometimes result in potentially higher earnings, and sometimes it may go the other way; decreased earnings.

Some sites may earn more with the coupling of Adsense and affiliate links, for example, whereas some sites which displaying particularly tempting Adsense ads for buyers in that particular niche market may lose out on clicks when the visitor leaves through an Amazon or other affiliate link, doesn't buy, and also doesn't return. If that site were only to display Adsense ads, the chances that this visitor would've clicked one of those ads (almost guaranteed to have resulted in some earnings) is likely to have been higher.

P.S: Sorry if my writing isn't very clear tonight. I've had afphew ayles

[bay37]

Originally Posted by yukon

LMFAO!!

The guy is making $60 per day, & you're telling him he is doing something wrong.

I know every business plan needs tweaking online & offline, but cmon don't tell him he is doing the wrong thing, that's just lame!

Can you live on $60/day? Because managing 110 sites sure sounds like a full time gig to me.

[bay37]

In all seriousness - one good service launch can easily get you to $15k/month in profit.

Originally Posted by DireStraits

Well, well, well, me owld mucker. If that is the case it sounds like you may well be living the life of Riley now, indeed

More stressed than ever before. And I don't even know why.

If Google reviews your sites and believe they offer no real value to the visitor due to thin / unreadable content and you've clearly only obtained good rankings through your own backlink manipulation, then they will deindex those sites.

They de-index your sites and put a notice up in the webmaster tools thingy that says "site may be in violation of our quality guidelines". Then they can ban you from Adsense for that if they choose to (Adsense ads shouldn't be displayed on sites that don't meet our quality guidelines...). I think.

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by bay37

Can you live on $60/day? Because managing 110 sites sure sounds like a full time gig to me.

If you can't live on $60/day, then you need to evaluate a lot of things.

[williamspd]

Originally Posted by bay37

Can you live on $60/day? Because managing 110 sites sure sounds like a full time gig to me.

I know people who live on less. And managing 110 of these sites is a lot easier than you seem to credit. Most of them require little or no upkeep, maybe a bit of extra content every couple of weeks. But nothing like a full time job. I do more than this in a fraction of my spare time each week. So the $60 a day is likely to be a nice sideline on top of other earnings.

Setting them up takes up a bunch of time, yes. And if I decide to turn any into a serious authority site to exploit profits or to sell it on later, then focusing on it takes some more time too. Like you say, outsourcing is your friend in those situations.

Just remember that there are hundreds if not thousands of people out there (and plenty in here) who are doing much, much less than $60 per day. Why not help them out a little, seeing as you can so easily afford to, instead of just making them wrong?

I'm not trying to knock what you are saying - it's great that you are doing so well and can't remember what it was like to live on so little :-p but to be dismissive of this guy's success without doing anything more than tease him with vague references to your own superiority is just unhelpful and a little insensitive.

[Carl Brown]

GREAT JOB! You've inspired a lot of us.

[Reverb]

I think $60/day is nothing to sneeze at. A lot of people would be more than happy to make that with AdSense sites, so congrats on that! I can't imagine building 110 sites myself, but if it works - it works!

[yukon]

Originally Posted by bay37

Can you live on $60/day? Because managing 110 sites sure sounds like a full time gig to me.

Try $56.00 a day, for the last 2.5 years, with a family of three.

House & 75 acres, 2 SUVs, car, $17k in savings, all paid for (debt free)!

Maybe it's time to look into debt management, If $60 a day isn't doing it for you?

Trust me once you pay off that last debt (mortgage, car, etc...), it's like you've been released from prison (lol), nothing else like it.

So, the answer to your question is, yes I can live off $60 a day, easy.

[mejohn]

I look forward to getting released from that prison. That is a huge goal of mine!

Originally Posted by yukon

Try $56.00 a day, for the last 2.5 years, with a family of three.

House & 75 acres, 2 SUVs, car, $17k in savings, all paid for (debt free)!

Maybe it's time to look into debt management, If $60 a day isn't doing it for you?

Trust me once you pay off that last debt (mortgage, car, etc...), it's like you've been released from prison (lol), nothing else like it.

So, the answer to your question is, yes I can live off $60 a day, easy.

[clr]

Hey guys, first post here.

I've been an online entrepreneur for years and am new to this MMO deal.

That is, I've been making money online via startups for quite a while without realizing that there is a whole industry dedicated "making money online".

I actually found this forum on Google, and the XFactor thread was what came up in the search results.

For the past month or so I've been reading and absorbing the various threads here, and to me it's been quite interesting. Here are my thoughts:

"XFactor" Method

Building a farm of MFA mini-sites is like making a house of cards. It may hold up for a while, but ultimately it'll be doomed to collapse. Do you think Google really wants these "4 slice toaster" sites cluttering up their index? The hammer will come down eventually.

The takeaway that you should be getting from these type of methods is that niche research is a golden opportunity to make money.

Once you discover that the niche is profitable, build the site into an authority. Get to know the niche intimately. Are there any publications for that niche that you can advertise in? Can you form strategic partnerships with any other companies?

Building Equity

The harsh reality is that the best way to make long-term residual income is to make quality, authority sites providing a service or information that people need. With authority comes traffic, and you can monetize that traffic.

You can then branch out from that into mailing lists, paid memberships, paid downloads, affiliate offers, AdSense, CPA, etc.

When you build something of great value, you are building equity into your business. You will eventually be able to sell this business for a multiple of what it's earning.

Money Making eBooks

You will (most likely) not find a magic formula in some ebook that will instantly make you rich overnight. You may make some money up front, but the income stream will dry up.

I see people spamming CPA deals on Facebook, creating fake fan pages, etc. to make a quick buck. Do you want to be doing that for the rest of your life? I sure as hell don't!

Case Study

To give you an example, the last 1-person startup that I launched started generating $600/day of profit 1 month after launch. The site only had 300-400 unique per day at that point! For those of you who are wondering, the site is not in the "how to make money online" niche. And it only scales up in a limited fashion because the customer base is limited. The key is to get repeat customers for life.

Of course, I had to put in a solid 6 months of work into it ahead of launching. I am a programmer, writer, graphics designer all rolled into one and keep overhead as low as possible.

Would I even attempt to write that into an ebook? Sure, I could write a 400 page book on it, but it'd be useless to 99% of people because it's the implementation that counts. General tips, yes. A "method" or "blueprint"? Hell no! My words and advice here have cost you a total of $0.00.

What I want you to do is to take what you learn here about SEO, marketing, and other skills and put your own spin on things.

Hard work and trial and error are what counts. The only way to succeed is to get out there and do it. With the Internet, anything is possible!

[yukon]

Originally Posted by mejohn

I look forward to getting released from that prison. That is a huge goal of mine!

It took me a long time to get out of debt, about 6 years.

The largest thing that will suck your savings dry is a car payment (no joke), it really sucks paying for a car & then it breaks down, that just blows!

I'll never own another car in my life If I can't pay cash for it.

That's why I say the $60 that the OP is making is good money, the average person would never make money like that offline working a part time job.

That's almost $22 a year.

[Kay King]

I think the OP deserves more credit than he's getting here. When John released his book and, before that, posted about his own success here - half the people on the forum were asking questions and vowing to "get started".

How many did anything past the first 2-3 small sites?

You have someone who has stuck with it for 4 months and though he's built a lot of sites for the income - he's learned by doing.

One thing he's figured out is if you site "disappears" - keep working on it and it will usually reappear. Remember the threads where so many had done the least amount of work they could - put up a bunch of ONE page sites - and then quit when they were de-indexed?

They swore "this doesn't work" - even though many people here have been making money this way for years.

The complaint was "why isn't anyone posting about their success" - yet when someone does, what happens? He's told he's doing it wrong, doing the wrong thing, it's a house of cards, blah blah.

The OP is WAY ahead of many posting in this forum - he's actually making money! In four months he's gone from $0 to $1800 a month - and he doesn't have to keep plugging daily to get that $1800 a month.

I think it's great progress and he should be proud of it.

kay

[clr]

Originally Posted by Kay King

The complaint was "why isn't anyone posting about their success" - yet when someone does, what happens? He's told he's doing it wrong, doing the wrong thing, it's a house of cards, blah blah.

I'm not disparaging him for trying. In fact, it's great that he is putting in effort and I congratulate him. I'm just saying that in the long run this won't be sustainable. You need to aim for quality, not quantity.

[Clyde]

Kay King, you do know that misterkailo has swayed away as far as possible from the original xfactor course, right? Those people that gave up are the ones that follow xfactor to the TEE..

because the course doesn't work, unfortunately.

Well let's not get into that for now shall we.

[mejohn]

Same here on car payments. We don't have any. Just working hard to pay off debts from poor choices earlier on in life.

Originally Posted by yukon

It took me a long time to get out of debt, about 6 years.

The largest thing that will suck your savings dry is a car payment (no joke), it really sucks paying for a car & then it breaks down, that just blows!

I'll never own another car in my life If I can't pay cash for it.

That's why I say the $60 that the OP is making is good money, the average person would never make money like that offline working a part time job.

That's almost $22 a year.

[Kay King]

I'm just saying that in the long run this won't be sustainable. You need to aim for quality, not quantity.

Why do think the sites aren't quality? There are many members of this forum who have hundreds (or more) sites. Have you tested this? How many sites do you have?

I have an old site - ugly but lots of pages of content that was the first site I built myself in 2001 - it makes money with adsense every month. That's pretty darned sustainable to me. I have other older sites that do the same. Nothing lasts forever but if I can work for a week and create a site that makes money for 9-10 years, I'm happy.

you do know that misterkailo has swayed away as far as possible from the original xfactor course,

No - I don't know that and it doesn't matter. If an ebook or product teaches you and motivates you to get started and follow through on a project - does it matter if you don't follow it line by line? Of course not. You develop your own style and make it work.

kay

[Dellco]

Well, many times I've personally seen Google remove sites which they deem as MFA and seen many people get banned after they have been running a ton of MFAs (and making money too), so that risk will always be there.

Two high profile cases recently were the banning and removal of both Alan Liew's site and Grizzly's sites, which underwent a manual review. Both were top ranked for "make money online" and both were running for years. Both were making tons of money. Both are also not MFAs in my book.

Personally, the moment I land on an MFA, I'm out of there in seconds, and I've been seeing the same increasing trend (over the past few years) on all the MFAs which I did in the past. They are all failures and had high bounce rates, as I suspect people are wisening up to this and are able to spot "fakey" sites from "genuine" ones. Didn't get good CTR no matter how you disguise the ads or shift them about. I believe people are getting better at spotting inaccurate details and sussing you out, and probably they've visited a site (s) similar to yours just a few moments ago before they landed on yours.....

In order to make this work, I likely had to churn out literally hundreds of them and that's not feasible to me. I would rather focus on the few that are in my alley.

So, to make a ton of MFAs is not really a good long term plan if you ask me (you got to think 2-3 years from now) but if the OP is happy doing it, just keep on.

[MarketAbel]

Originally Posted by mgtarheels

If you can't live on $60/day, then you need to evaluate a lot of things.

WHAT?!

1. Yes, this is an international forum so there are all kinds of economies...
2. I don't know your age, but you look very young...
3. $60/day x 30 days = $1,800 mo = $21,600 or a PT 30 hrs/wk job @ $13.85/hr...

I guess I need to evaluate things, cuz I haven't been able to live on that much since I was single, no kids and 23 years old.

Sorry, but realistically ALOT of normal, average Americans can't live on $60/day...

...and I mean can't as in they would not want to because the lifestyle $60/day affords is not that much.

Me? I would love $60/day in addition to my 40 hour FT job. That would be great!

My $0.02...

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by MarketAbel

WHAT?!

1. Yes, this is an international forum so there are all kinds of economies...
2. I don't know your age, but you look very young...
3. $60/day x 30 days = $1,800 mo = $21,600 or a PT 30 hrs/wk job @ $13.85/hr...

I guess I need to evaluate things, cuz I haven't been able to live on that much since I was single, no kids and 23 years old.

Sorry, but realistically ALOT of normal, average Americans can't live on $60/day...

...and I mean can't as in they would not want to because the lifestyle $60/day affords is not that much.

Me? I would love $60/day in addition to my 40 hour FT job. That would be great!

My $0.02...

You just refuted the point you tried to make in your post.

"...and I mean can't as in they would not want to because the lifestyle $60/day affords is not that much."

Again, if you can't live on $60/day, you need to evaluate some things.

Let's break this down.

-Around here, 700-800/mo for a 2br apartment is standard. (daytona beach, fl).
-$300/mo car + insurance (high)
-$300 groceries (high)
-$300 utilities, gas, etc.
-$100 miscellaneous
-$75 savings

Did I forget anything?

Extravagant? Not by US standards, but surely can be done without much difficulty.