Adsense or Amazon? Which one is better?

[xTrav]

If you were to start a site today and try to monetize it in the quickest way, would you go for an Adsense site or Amazon products review site? If proper on page SEO and backlinking is done, which site would perform better in the short term?

[Goowai]

I'd go with Adsense. If you choose the right keywords that have low competition, adsense can be quite profitable.

[ichl13]

it depends what sorts of keyword you want to go for. I don't really like writing reviews so I stick to more informational websites so adsense is more suitable for me. If you use very buyer orientated keywords, amazon is the way to go.

[xTrav]

Originally Posted by Goowai

I'd go with Adsense. If you choose the right keywords that have low competition, adsense can be quite profitable.

Awesome! Thanks! Do you have some Adsense sites?

[xTrav]

How do you get paid from Adsense and how long does it take to actually get the money in hand?

[InTheMaking]

Originally Posted by xTrav

How do you get paid from Adsense and how long does it take to actually get the money in hand?

You can set up Adsense payment to be sent directly to your bank account, or by cheque.

You get paid at the end of every month for the previous month.

[aygabtu]

Originally Posted by InTheMaking

You can set up Adsense payment to be sent directly to your bank account, or by cheque.

You get paid at the end of every month for the previous month.

That's only on the months you 'earn' over $100. Otherwise they hold it until the accumulated amount at the end of the month breaks $100.

First two payments for me were every other month.

[xTrav]

Originally Posted by aygabtu

That's only on the months you 'earn' over $100. Otherwise they hold it until the accumulated amount at the end of the month breaks $100.

First two payments for me were every other month.

Are you ranking on the first page of Google and only making $100 per month??

[tonyalves]

He said that his two first payments were every second month, he didn't say that he is earning $100 now.

Actually I earned over $200 my first month after joining the AdSense program but that was back in 2003 when it was very easy to make money with AdSense

To your success,
Tony Alves

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by tonyalves

He said that his two first payments were every second month, he didn't say that he is earning $100 now.

Actually I earned over $200 my first month after joining the AdSense program but that was back in 2003 when it was very easy to make money with AdSense

To your success,
Tony Alves

It is not actually hard to make money with adsense. Just make sure the niche you have has a good amount of advertisers, and you do your proper keyword research. It does take work of course; but it is not as hard or complicated as most people will let you think.

If you can get some good traffic going you can earn as much as you want ( this is done by expanding of course ).

Start off with how much you want to make with adsense, then look at the possible traffic you can get for a selection of keywords ( make sure these keywords are not going to be too difficult to rank for ).

Look at the CPC in the adwords tool under contextual targeting. This tool will give you a more accurate estimate on the CPC inside the adsense program. The other amounts are for search and not content.

Divide your traffic estimate by 2 ( 1st place gets an average of 50% of the clicks ). Take that number and lets say you get a conversion of 5%. So for every 100 visitors you get 5 clicks. I have some sites that get as high as 40% CTR, but I usually see an average of 5 - 10% across the board.

So here is a starter example:

If you choose 10 keywords to target, and they get 5000 searches a month on average. You can expect to get 2500 approximately if you are in the 1st spot in google. And it converts at 5%, that is 125 clicks a month. Lets say the CPC is $3 a click; you get 68% of that, which works out to be about $2.04 a click. If you get the 125 clicks/month that is about $250 a month for that one site.

Now, you can either increase the sites traffic by targeting more and more keywords or add more sites to the mix until you get to the income level you want.

I would advise you to start off with one site and get the hang of getting the traffic to it and having it create some income. Once you have the hang of it, scale it up and work on more sites.

After you get to a certain amount of sites, keep the high earners and sell off the lower ones. Then with the money you get from that you can create a number of more sites by outsourcing it.

Once you get to a certain income level you are going to want to out source more and more of your tasks. This way you can concentrate on finding the niches, buying the domains, and letting other people handle the content and backlinking of your site.

Without outsourcing, I find it hard to work on more than 5 or 6 sites on my own. This is creating a page of content to each site a day, plus doing backlinks for each of them. I focus on one keyword phrase per site until it ranks in the top 3 spots in google, before I move onto the next keyword.

Remember, you get paid per click vs Amazon where people have to buy when they click through. Another thing with Amazon is that it takes longer to get paid. If you make money in September you don't get paid until late November, so they are almost 2 months behind with payments. Adsense is only a month. Anything made in September is paid by the end of October.

Of course once you start making money with Amazon you will a regular monthly cheque, it just takes 3 months ( if you start at the beginning of a month that is ). You won't feel it as much once that happens, it is the beginning that is the hardest.

If you do sign up with Amazon you have to double check to make sure you are within their associate area. There are more and more states that amazon is pulling out with because of the new tax laws.

If you want a jump start on your income, then start with adsense, and eventually look to expand to Amazon once you are at a comfortable level. It is always a good thing to diversify your income.

One thing to keep in mind is to make sure you read and follow each of the respective TOS. Google Adsense is VERY VERY strict, they will boot you if you break their rules.

-- Jeff

[JimmyR]

Both of them are good. Like people have said, it depends on the niche. For product oriented niches, like "buy ipods", Amazon is the way to go. For people seeing information such as travel and medical stuff, adsense is the way to go. Sometimes you can have both and still be effective. I write a couple of blogs that recommend products in the posts, and have adsense ads auto inserted into the posts. These have definitely been effective for me

[Aaron Egan]

Originally Posted by theverysmartguy

It is not actually hard to make money with adsense. Just make sure the niche you have has a good amount of advertisers, and you do your proper keyword research. It does take work of course; but it is not as hard or complicated as most people will let you think.

Your AdSense strategy is very much similar to my own. Just curious as to how much you make per month from it?

Currently I'm close to $500 p/m..

[jimmy69]

I personally think Adsense is better.

[kuwakcai]

I prefer adsense, more revenues with the right keywords

[TryBPO]

I'd have to go with AdSense, but only if you are looking to scale the process and have hundreds of sites. If you just have a few, affiliate marketing pays more per visitor on average. Downside is you have to take time and find the right products for each site plus measure conversion rate. It takes a bit more care and attention to get it right.

[supershoesclub]

I think adsense is easier to deal.coz as long as you have a quality blog post with the competitive keywords,you will bring huge traffic to your post,thus, you will get many visitors'c clinks easily.But amazon is a hard work to do for a beginners.and it must have many things to do for the revenue,like choose the suitable products,clink rate,etc..

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by Aaron Egan

Your AdSense strategy is very much similar to my own. Just curious as to how much you make per month from it?

Currently I'm close to $500 p/m..

Well to put it into perspective I do do this full time, and I have been for almost 2 years now. I went full time Feb/2010

-- Jeff

[positivethinking]

Put both. They are two different ad module. Put adsense as your basic ad. Go amazon.com and create a ad widget related to your page. When user click your widget or link and buy a product from amazon, you gets referral fee which is high amount. You gets percentage of the product price. So, put both. But, if you are in California, forget the amazon ad since they cancel all the contract with Californian because of the recent bill charging sales tax on online sales passed by California.
I hope it helps..

[adammck]

Originally Posted by theverysmartguy

Well to put it into perspective I do do this full time, and I have been for almost 2 years now. I went full time Feb/2010

-- Jeff

How long did it take you to get your sites off the ground? Getting decent amounts of traffic/revenue?

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by TryBPO

I'd have to go with AdSense, but only if you are looking to scale the process and have hundreds of sites. If you just have a few, affiliate marketing pays more per visitor on average. Downside is you have to take time and find the right products for each site plus measure conversion rate. It takes a bit more care and attention to get it right.

This is what I Don't get; people keep saying that you need 100s and 100s of sites to make it with adsense, but you don't. People even say this about amazon sites too.

Your income is all relative to the traffic you get; the more traffic you can get the more money you will make.

People who have 100s and 100s seem to be the ones that either can't get enough traffic to make enough money or are choosing the keywords poorly.

Having that many sites isn't even sustainable, unless they are autoblogs, which as we all know are not what they once were.

If you had even 100 sites that did a measly $10/day you would be making $30,000 a month. BTW, if you HAD 100 sites they are most likely only making you $1 - 2 a day, if that. This is still about $3,000 - $6,000 a month.

However, you can EASILY do that with 10 sites. So why put more work into building up 100 sites when you can do a 10th of the work and only make 10 ( you could do it with less as well. )

In my last example I said a site with 5000 searches a month for the keywords would get 2500, and get about 125 clicks a month right? That is about $250 a month for that site.

The thing is that is ONLY 2500 visitors a month. If you build up that site and continued to build it up so you had 50 - 100 keywords ( this is 50 - 100 pages of content ) for that 1 site, you could potentially have enormous amounts of traffic.

If we stick with the LOW average of 500 searches per keyword, then that would be 25,000 - 50,000 searches a month. And even at the low conversion of 5% that is still about to be $1,275 - $2,550/month for just the 1 site. If you duplicate that ( which is the only smart thing to do ), you could make that for each site you create.

Now, you won't make that much for each site, but you can still flip them if they aren't performing well, and invest that money back into building more sites.

I stay within the same type of broad niche for all my websites. This gives me an idea of how they will perform across the board. And for the most part the DO actually perform pretty much the same.

If you build a bunch of sites and a good part of them are on totally different style of topics, this is when you get most of the hit and miss sites. When you stick with a certain TYPE of niche ( in the broad sense ) and take the "micro" ones inside that niche, you have a better chance of having a pretty similar performance out of them.

You can't really gauge how long it will take you to make $XXXX amount of money, so I am not going to go that route, but I will show you something else. This next bit assumes you have already did your keyword research. You should be able to find 50 - 100 keywords in about a day.

1. First take a look at how much time EACH day you have to work on generating this extra income. When looking at this time, REALLY look at it. Look and how much take you WASTE doing things you really don't need to do. Only then can you REALLY calculate the amount of free time you have to put into this.

2a. Look at how long it takes you to do each task; writing a page of content; creating 10 high quality backlinks. ( why only 10? I will get to that in a second ) And then add to this until you fill up your amount of time available.

2b. When looking at creating 10 backlinks look at a high PR blog network; most of them will distribute about 10 links a day to its network on your behalf. Sure,you can write more, but if you only have enough time to do a small amount, make sure you USE up your ENTIRE 10 allotment. For an example of a high PR blog network: BMR.

( 1 page of content and 10 links = about 2,000 words worth of content. This takes me personally about an hour at MOST. If the work is researched ahead of time then it takes me about 40 mins, sometimes in as short as 30 mins. )

3. Use wordpress - this makes setup simple, and you can easily find a proper set up guide anywhere online. I use SEO Ultimate to do most of my on page SEO formating. The deep link juggernaut module is pretty slick. Here is the short list of plug ins that I use:

akismet
easy adsense ( easily integrates adsense into your site )
easy privacy policy ( creates the MUST HAVE privacy policy )
google analytics for wordpress ( easily integrate analytics in site )
XML sitemap Generator for wordpress ( easily generate sitemap for google )
maxblogpress ping optimizer ( regulates pinging of your site so that it does not over ping )
quick cache ( helps speed up site )
rss includes pages ( includes pages into RSS feed )
SEO Ultimate ( helps with on site SEO factors )
wp-DBManager ( helps speed up site )

4. Setup all the pages/posts ahead of time. You don't need to come up with the fancy title; you want the URL to be just the keyword anyways. You will do all the titling and description with the SEO Ultimate plugin when you write the content.

When you set up everything you will have the URL, the meta keyword and the deep link anchor text already set up. So all you have to do is write the content; just go down the list as you write and everything will deep link itself ( just make sure you use a couple of the keywords in your posts/pages so that it does actually deep link ).

5. Write content for 5 of your pages/posts ( i use about 3 or 4 pages, and the rest posts and then I have the posts on the front page with about 100 words shown for each one. Then I set the feed to show the first 20 posts. ) THen you can submit the site for consideration into the BMR network. They do not allow thin sites.

6. Set up hootsuite and connect it with ping.fm. Set up all the accounts in ping.fm. Put your rss feed into hootsuite. Each time you update your site hootsuite will detect it in the RSS feed and post it to ping.fm. This will give you an initial set of backlinks to your site for easy indexing. Technically this should have been set up BEFORE you started writing your content.

7. Submit your RSS feed to the top rss sites. I use RSSbot to do this for me.

8. Write 1 page/post of content a day ( this is above and beyond the initial 5 ). Start with the easiest keyword to rank for and start building backlinks for it using BMR. Why the easiest? Because it won't take long to rank high for it so then you can move onto the next one. If you go after a hard one, it might take you just as long to rank for it as it took you to rank for 5 or 6 keywords.

Look at how long it will take you to do things once it is all set up and done, that way you will know how many sites you can work on at once.

Because I like playing video games and doing other fun things, I am usually working on about 5 - 6 sites at a time.

I hope this helps.

-- Jeff

EDIT: Do this with consistent work and you can see a good income within 3 - 4 months easy. This is as long as you do the proper keyword and niche research ahead of time.

[outwest]

Originally Posted by theverysmartguy

It is not actually hard to make money with adsense. Just make sure the niche you have has a good amount of advertisers, and you do your proper keyword research. It does take work of course; but it is not as hard or complicated as most people will let you think.

If you can get some good traffic going you can earn as much as you want ( this is done by expanding of course ).

Start off with how much you want to make with adsense, then look at the possible traffic you can get for a selection of keywords ( make sure these keywords are not going to be too difficult to rank for ).

Do you use the allintitle search for google and try to target a certain number that way? or what is the procedure to narrow down kws so that you know ok this has ultra low competition I can rank top 2 for this one in a few months

Look at the CPC in the adwords tool under contextual targeting. This tool will give you a more accurate estimate on the CPC inside the adsense program. The other amounts are for search and not content.

Divide your traffic estimate by 2 ( 1st place gets an average of 50% of the clicks ). Take that number and lets say you get a conversion of 5%. So for every 100 visitors you get 5 clicks. I have some sites that get as high as 40% CTR, but I usually see an average of 5 - 10% across the board.

So here is a starter example:

If you choose 10 keywords to target, and they get 5000 searches a month on average. You can expect to get 2500 approximately if you are in the 1st spot in google. And it converts at 5%, that is 125 clicks a month. Lets say the CPC is $3 a click; you get 68% of that, which works out to be about $2.04 a click. If you get the 125 clicks/month that is about $250 a month for that one site.

Now, you can either increase the sites traffic by targeting more and more keywords or add more sites to the mix until you get to the income level you want.

I would advise you to start off with one site and get the hang of getting the traffic to it and having it create some income. Once you have the hang of it, scale it up and work on more sites.

After you get to a certain amount of sites, keep the high earners and sell off the lower ones. Then with the money you get from that you can create a number of more sites by outsourcing it.

Once you get to a certain income level you are going to want to out source more and more of your tasks. This way you can concentrate on finding the niches, buying the domains, and letting other people handle the content and backlinking of your site.

Without outsourcing, I find it hard to work on more than 5 or 6 sites on my own. This is creating a page of content to each site a day, plus doing backlinks for each of them. I focus on one keyword phrase per site until it ranks in the top 3 spots in google, before I move onto the next keyword.

Remember, you get paid per click vs Amazon where people have to buy when they click through. Another thing with Amazon is that it takes longer to get paid. If you make money in September you don't get paid until late November, so they are almost 2 months behind with payments. Adsense is only a month. Anything made in September is paid by the end of October.

Of course once you start making money with Amazon you will a regular monthly cheque, it just takes 3 months ( if you start at the beginning of a month that is ). You won't feel it as much once that happens, it is the beginning that is the hardest.

If you do sign up with Amazon you have to double check to make sure you are within their associate area. There are more and more states that amazon is pulling out with because of the new tax laws.

If you want a jump start on your income, then start with adsense, and eventually look to expand to Amazon once you are at a comfortable level. It is always a good thing to diversify your income.

One thing to keep in mind is to make sure you read and follow each of the respective TOS. Google Adsense is VERY VERY strict, they will boot you if you break their rules.

-- Jeff

Thanks Jeff your strategy makes a lot of sense

What I am trying to figure out is a kw strategy with adsense
i find plenty of kws with decent traffic (ie 10k per month exact) and good CPC, above $2, but then I think hmm I look in Market samurai and the top 5 is way too strong to compete

whats a good kw strategy as in

1. how much monthly exact to target
2. what CPC to look for
3. how do you guage your competition and say, ok this is the kw I will target I know I can get to number one with this one

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by adammck

How long did it take you to get your sites off the ground? Getting decent amounts of traffic/revenue?

Once I shifted through the bad advice and the wrong turns, it took me 3 months to create a good income with my sites. This was once I had a decent system down.

-- Jeff

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by outwest

Thanks Jeff your strategy makes a lot of sense

What I am trying to figure out is a kw strategy with adsense
i find plenty of kws with decent traffic (ie 10k per month exact) and good CPC, above $2, but then I think hmm I look in Market samurai and the top 5 is way too strong to compete

whats a good kw strategy as in

1. how much monthly exact to target
2. what CPC to look for
3. how do you guage your competition and say, ok this is the kw I will target I know I can get to number one with this one

This is easier than you might think.

I started using MNF a couple of years ago, but have soon realized that with a lot of the changes that google has made in the way it ranks sites, A LOT of keyword tools are not going to give you proper competition results. Why? Because they are only looking at certain factors.

Yes I still use MNF to sort through the keywords to get them grouped together properly. But you can use the Google External Keyword Tool as well.

I start at around 500 searches a month, then I work my way up from there. I only look at the front page. I look at which ones on there are actually trying to rank for that keyword; what the PR those sites are, and the type of backlinks they may have.

If there are NO pages that are actually properly optimized for that keyword then I go for it, regardless of the backlinks they have. Why? Because On Page SEO Trumps off page.

If they ARE optimized then I check the backlinks.

I honestly don't care how MANY backlinks they have, it is WHAT KIND that matters to me. They could have 50,000 backlinks, and it wouldn't phase me a bit. Unless they were all QUALITY backlinks. And at that amount I doubt they would be. Honestly, it is the ones that have about 100 - 200 that are out ranking the ones with 1000s that concern me more.

If they aren't quality then I attack.

If they have quality then I check how many they have and their PR. A PR of 6 or higher is all that really concerns me. If its anything below then I go for it. I look for anything with 200 or less HIGH QUALITY backlinks. If they don't have the HIGH quality at around 200 then I attack them. You can shoot for higher, it really depends on how long you want to take to outrank them.

For CPC, take your keywords and plug them into the Contextual Targeting Tool inside the google adwords admin panel. This will gauge how much people are paying for keywords INSIDE adsense. I aim for $2 an up inside that tool. Usually the keywords that are paying $2 and up in there are paying usually triple that in the search ads.


1. how much monthly exact to target: 500+
2. what CPC to look for: $2+ INSIDE the contexual targeting tool.
3. how do you guage your competition and say, ok this is the kw I will target I know I can get to number one with this one ( see above ).

I hope that was clear. If you need me to explain in more detail then let me know.

-- Jeff

[Sabiha]

I think making money with Adsense is easier. Specially if you are getting a lot of untargetted traffic to your site.

Amazon is more profitable when you get targeted traffic for higher priced products. Because with low priced products the commission is too measely to make a difference.

[outwest]

Hi Jeff, wow thanks that was a very long detailed explanatin and frankly, you have confirmed some of the asumptions I was already making, but I had no confirmation of the assumptions, until now.
One of the assumptions I was making was that, if the site is really not actively targeting the term, ie no kw in title, header url, or description, I thought hmmm and there is also no kw in the domain, and no subpage, just the domain is showing with a bunch of backlinks
I thought, should I just ignore this kw because of all these types of sites showing,, despite the fact that they are obviously NOT targeting the kws, and that was obvious by their onpage SEO being NOTHING
I think most people would look and say, oh, oh no, this is a 6 yr old domain PR 5 with 20,000 backlinks showing, and just move on

I thought, what if that means nothing? what if its a mistake to move on because these guys did nothing to rank for this kw, they didnt even target it, You telling me google doesnt even rank other sites, who are actively SEO for this kw higher than this type of site?
According to what you wrote, google does care about onpage SEO, more than offpage SEO
Now, this is contrary to popular opinion which says its all about backlinks. But
maybe thats assuming you are talking bout pages which are already SEO for the term, then yes the one with better backlinks will win

Ok now what about if I find a site with 20k searches a month, the top 5 sites have almost no onpage SEO, you look on Market samurai and see nothing but green, and N N N N, under the onpage SEO

OK lets talk about domain buying
Ok obviously the EMD is not going to be available in this situation because of the high search volume.
. Not even the hyphenated EMD.
In that case if you decided to go for it, what domain buying strategy would you use. Does it matter?

How about My+EMD
or a variation EMD+whatever.com
I heard google is cracking down on these types of domain names,
could be just a rumor

[theverysmartguy]

Outwest: EMD really doesn't make a difference.

If you want, you can put some words at the end of it. Words that of course will make sense.

OR, choose a keyword that has less searches that is in the same niche.

Really, it doesn't matter. Name the website something related to the niche and you will do fine.

Remember, Google doesn't rank the SITE it ranks the pages on the site. Make a page for that keyword and rank it. NEVER focus on just that one keyword, regardless if it has a ton of searches.

-- Jeff

EDIT: I usually end my domain with "website" or "site". That is if it makes sense.

[WiiLoveSuccess]

Originally Posted by theverysmartguy

It is not actually hard to make money with adsense. Just make sure the niche you have has a good amount of advertisers, and you do your proper keyword research. It does take work of course; but it is not as hard or complicated as most people will let you think.

If you can get some good traffic going you can earn as much as you want ( this is done by expanding of course ).

Start off with how much you want to make with adsense, then look at the possible traffic you can get for a selection of keywords ( make sure these keywords are not going to be too difficult to rank for ).

Look at the CPC in the adwords tool under contextual targeting. This tool will give you a more accurate estimate on the CPC inside the adsense program. The other amounts are for search and not content.

Divide your traffic estimate by 2 ( 1st place gets an average of 50% of the clicks ). Take that number and lets say you get a conversion of 5%. So for every 100 visitors you get 5 clicks. I have some sites that get as high as 40% CTR, but I usually see an average of 5 - 10% across the board.

So here is a starter example:

If you choose 10 keywords to target, and they get 5000 searches a month on average. You can expect to get 2500 approximately if you are in the 1st spot in google. And it converts at 5%, that is 125 clicks a month. Lets say the CPC is $3 a click; you get 68% of that, which works out to be about $2.04 a click. If you get the 125 clicks/month that is about $250 a month for that one site.

Now, you can either increase the sites traffic by targeting more and more keywords or add more sites to the mix until you get to the income level you want.

I would advise you to start off with one site and get the hang of getting the traffic to it and having it create some income. Once you have the hang of it, scale it up and work on more sites.

After you get to a certain amount of sites, keep the high earners and sell off the lower ones. Then with the money you get from that you can create a number of more sites by outsourcing it.

Once you get to a certain income level you are going to want to out source more and more of your tasks. This way you can concentrate on finding the niches, buying the domains, and letting other people handle the content and backlinking of your site.

Without outsourcing, I find it hard to work on more than 5 or 6 sites on my own. This is creating a page of content to each site a day, plus doing backlinks for each of them. I focus on one keyword phrase per site until it ranks in the top 3 spots in google, before I move onto the next keyword.

Remember, you get paid per click vs Amazon where people have to buy when they click through. Another thing with Amazon is that it takes longer to get paid. If you make money in September you don't get paid until late November, so they are almost 2 months behind with payments. Adsense is only a month. Anything made in September is paid by the end of October.

Of course once you start making money with Amazon you will a regular monthly cheque, it just takes 3 months ( if you start at the beginning of a month that is ). You won't feel it as much once that happens, it is the beginning that is the hardest.

If you do sign up with Amazon you have to double check to make sure you are within their associate area. There are more and more states that amazon is pulling out with because of the new tax laws.

If you want a jump start on your income, then start with adsense, and eventually look to expand to Amazon once you are at a comfortable level. It is always a good thing to diversify your income.

One thing to keep in mind is to make sure you read and follow each of the respective TOS. Google Adsense is VERY VERY strict, they will boot you if you break their rules.

-- Jeff

This was extremely helpful. I've made some money with Adsense but not to the extent I'd like and you provided me some very useful tips. As always I'm glad I'm a participant here at Warriors Forum.

[JoeUK]

Monetize in the quickest way I'd say adsense, not that amazon is slow but I think it can take a little more effort and research to make a site successful with it as opposed to adsense. Why choose one or another though - both potentially can work side by side perfectly well.

[Nathy Curiel]

Adsense is my main source of income. It is very easy to do for everybody !

[sandy11]

If you like writing product reviews, then go with amazon site. otherwise please stick with Adsense.

It's not hard to make money with adsense if you have a good system to follow.

[bamstk090]

it depends the site
adsense doesn't need sales to make money
amazon need sales to make money

combine adsense and amazon will be better

[TryBPO]

@theverysmartguy - Your information is completely on-point, even if we disagree that it's pointless to build smaller niche sites targetting micro-niche keywords. Yes, getting to #1 on a search term that's highly marketable and gets 5,000 exact match searches per month should get you somewhere between $100-$300/month...but it's not the easiest thing to do...that's a bit more aggressive than a beginner might want to target.

Just starting out, it's useful to go with something that has a higher success rate...even if it has a lower potential payout, in my opinion.

There's more than one way to skin a cat. Spencer from Niche Pursuits builds sites more along the lines of the volume and revenue you're discussing. He mentions multiple approaches to niche sites that are pretty interesting here:

4 Niche Website Strategies Reviewed | Niche Pursuits

Anyway, good value/information in this thread...nice!

[outwest]

Hi Jeff , First of all I want to thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. You have given me inspiration and hope, i was having a hard time finding someone who really would open up about a few major issues I was having, you really helped a lot and lifted my spirits also

Ok here is a very important question that I think is extremely relevant and a lot of newbies are not aware of this issue but all my reading has made me understand how important this is.

Lets say I have found the niche for this site, the CPC is very good, (high above $2) and good traffic

I want to target a major kw that gets a lot of searches for the main term. However there are MANY long tails for this niche that I want to target.

1. what is the best strategy? I actually have about 30 to 50 longtails , that when added up add to 10,000 searches per month

2. I am sure that these are almost zero competition, so should I make individual pages for each of these terms? and then SEO onpage optimize those pages? or would that be considered spammy by Adsense

I want to make the site relevant and I fear If I do this it will look kind of repetitive and Google might look at the site and say. your site is delisted because it appears as if you are just making page after page targeting specific keywords just for the sake of targeting those keywords. (I have heard of guys getting letters like this before)

Thank you much

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by outwest

Hi Jeff , First of all I want to thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. You have given me inspiration and hope, i was having a hard time finding someone who really would open up about a few major issues I was having, you really helped a lot and lifted my spirits also

Ok here is a very important question that I think is extremely relevant and a lot of newbies are not aware of this issue but all my reading has made me understand how important this is.

Lets say I have found the niche for this site, the CPC is very good, (high above $2) and good traffic

I want to target a major kw that gets a lot of searches for the main term. However there are MANY long tails for this niche that I want to target.

1. what is the best strategy? I actually have about 30 to 50 longtails , that when added up add to 10,000 searches per month

2. I am sure that these are almost zero competition, so should I make individual pages for each of these terms? and then SEO onpage optimize those pages? or would that be considered spammy by Adsense

I want to make the site relevant and I fear If I do this it will look kind of repetitive and Google might look at the site and say. your site is delisted because it appears as if you are just making page after page targeting specific keywords just for the sake of targeting those keywords. (I have heard of guys getting letters like this before)

Thank you much

What I do is make individual pages for each of the long tail keywords. As long as each page is made up of purely unique content you should have nothing to worry about.

HOWEVER, if you have some keyword phrases that are basically the same thing just with some words switched around, I would hold off on those. I'm not saying don't do them, just do them later down the line after you have done a bunch of other ones that are different. Just make sure that the content is totally unique,

I have a few article templates that I use to populate my sites with:

1. Problem
2. FAQ
3. Comparison
4. Tips List
5. Reasons List
6. Benefits List
7. Mistakes list
8. How - To
9. Quiz
10. Question
11. Review

I rotate and mix up the style of the content to fit into these types of articles. For each keyword I pick away that I will write it so that it will be different than the rest of the content that I already have.

If you have a ton of long tail keywords, then there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to write a page of content for each of them.

When I create a page of content it targets that keyword. So that is what is in the URL, and the page "title" onsite. But then I use the SEO Ultimate plugin (SEO All IN One works too ) to create a unique and clickable title that is seen in the search results. This is also what I put at the beginning of the page/post too; usually using the H2 title tag ( Since the Main keyword is already an H1 ).

My sites are far from spammy, and all the content is unique to each page.

Plus, what you just mentioned is basically what I do anyways. Create a page for each long tail keyword ( the ones that actually get 500+ searches a month anyways. ) I then purposefully optimize for it both on and off page.

There are of course going to be long tail keywords you will rank for, and get traffic for that don't meet my search criteria, this is always going to happen. However, I don't create pages for them, I just create backlinks for the long tail keywords to the pages that they are showing up for.

Make sense?

-- Jeff

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by TryBPO

@theverysmartguy - Your information is completely on-point, even if we disagree that it's pointless to build smaller niche sites targetting micro-niche keywords. Yes, getting to #1 on a search term that's highly marketable and gets 5,000 exact match searches per month should get you somewhere between $100-$300/month...but it's not the easiest thing to do...that's a bit more aggressive than a beginner might want to target.

Just starting out, it's useful to go with something that has a higher success rate...even if it has a lower potential payout, in my opinion.

There's more than one way to skin a cat. Spencer from Niche Pursuits builds sites more along the lines of the volume and revenue you're discussing. He mentions multiple approaches to niche sites that are pretty interesting here:

4 Niche Website Strategies Reviewed | Niche Pursuits

Anyway, good value/information in this thread...nice!

Actually those 5,000 searches a month ARE FROM multiple keywords; it does say that it the post I made. ( to be exact I mentioned 10 keywords for a total of 5000 searches ). I totally agree to target the low hanging fruit first.

-- Jeff
EDIT: BTW my sites would not be considered small micro-niche sites. My sites average anywhere from around 50 - 100 pages of solid content.

[outwest]

Originally Posted by theverysmartguy

What I do is make individual pages for each of the long tail keywords. As long as each page is made up of purely unique content you should have nothing to worry about.

HOWEVER, if you have some keyword phrases that are basically the same thing just with some words switched around, I would hold off on those. I'm not saying don't do them, just do them later down the line after you have done a bunch of other ones that are different. Just make sure that the content is totally unique,

I have a few article templates that I use to populate my sites with:

1. Problem
2. FAQ
3. Comparison
4. Tips List
5. Reasons List
6. Benefits List
7. Mistakes list
8. How - To
9. Quiz
10. Question
11. Review

I rotate and mix up the style of the content to fit into these types of articles. For each keyword I pick away that I will write it so that it will be different than the rest of the content that I already have.

If you have a ton of long tail keywords, then there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to write a page of content for each of them.

When I create a page of content it targets that keyword. So that is what is in the URL, and the page "title" onsite. But then I use the SEO Ultimate plugin (SEO All IN One works too ) to create a unique and clickable title that is seen in the search results. This is also what I put at the beginning of the page/post too; usually using the H2 title tag ( Since the Main keyword is already an H1 ).

My sites are far from spammy, and all the content is unique to each page.

Plus, what you just mentioned is basically what I do anyways. Create a page for each long tail keyword ( the ones that actually get 500+ searches a month anyways. ) I then purposefully optimize for it both on and off page.

There are of course going to be long tail keywords you will rank for, and get traffic for that don't meet my search criteria, this is always going to happen. However, I don't create pages for them, I just create backlinks for the long tail keywords to the pages that they are showing up for.

Make sense?

-- Jeff

Hi Jeff, great thanks yes makes perfect sense I just downloaded SEO ultimate plugin
I already purchased a killer domain today for a really high CPC kw with tons of long tails also

I appreciate you detailing your strategy as there is so much to learn it sometimes get confusing if I go to google and try to learn it that way

Lets say you have 100 longtails that are 50-200 searches per month each. Hate to waste that traffic
I know you will get pulled up for all kinds of longtails you have not even optimized for.
Wat would you do to get traffic for those low search number kws? just put up a few pages where you mention those phrases 2 or three times?
Some of those phrases I dont even think they need to be in the title, url etc just talking about them on pages will pull up those pages since they are rarely talked about.

Any other WP plugins you recommend?

Fun to strategize though
Thanks Jeff

[mkl3377]

Thanks so much for sharing the info in your posts Jeff.

You stressed a few times the importance of "proper keyword research". Would you mind sharing your strategy on brain storming and how to come up with ideas to begin the research.

To me that is the hardest part. I've got the technical stuff figured out(number of searches, competition, backlinks). But I struggle with coming up with ideas and clearing the cloud and revealing the gems to be the toughest.

Appreciate anything you may share.

Thanks

P.S. May I combine your posts into a PDF and sell it for $7. LOL...

[alantay]

They are two different thing. If I were you, I will first check for the value of your keyword. If it is lowly paid, I will go for Amazon. However Adsense won't be dead there. You can run two simultaneously.

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by outwest

Hi Jeff, great thanks yes makes perfect sense I just downloaded SEO ultimate plugin
I already purchased a killer domain today for a really high CPC kw with tons of long tails also

I appreciate you detailing your strategy as there is so much to learn it sometimes get confusing if I go to google and try to learn it that way

Lets say you have 100 longtails that are 50-200 searches per month each. Hate to waste that traffic
I know you will get pulled up for all kinds of longtails you have not even optimized for.
Wat would you do to get traffic for those low search number kws? just put up a few pages where you mention those phrases 2 or three times?
Some of those phrases I dont even think they need to be in the title, url etc just talking about them on pages will pull up those pages since they are rarely talked about.

Any other WP plugins you recommend?

Fun to strategize though
Thanks Jeff

Remember, having the EMD for your given keyword phrase is good, but it won't guarantee you rankings. It basically just makes it easier for the on page SEO that is all.

I believe I mentioned this before, but when creating your website, create 5 - 10 PAGES and the rest posts. And have the post feeds on your front page.

Display about 100 words for the summary, and make sure you actively put the more tag into your post. What this will do when you have SEO Ultimate is create an anchor text automatically, instead of it saying read more. It will say read more on "keyword".

This helps a lot with deep linking your site, ON TOP of using the deep linking juggernaut module in the SEO Ultimate plug in.

I usually don't bother to create a page with anything less than 300 - 500 hundred monthly searches. Some people might even thing that is too little, but that is just how my strategy works. However, that doesn't mean you can't, but i don't feel that is is a valuable use of my time.

As for the other plugins I use, I did mention that in an earlier post but here is the list again:


akismet
easy adsense ( easily integrates adsense into your site )
easy privacy policy ( creates the MUST HAVE privacy policy )
google analytics for wordpress ( easily integrate analytics in site )
XML sitemap Generator for wordpress ( easily generate sitemap for google )
maxblogpress ping optimizer ( regulates pinging of your site so that it does not over ping )
quick cache ( helps speed up site )
rss includes pages ( includes pages into RSS feed )
SEO Ultimate ( helps with on site SEO factors )
wp-DBManager ( helps speed up site )

-- Jeff

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by mkl3377

Thanks so much for sharing the info in your posts Jeff.

You stressed a few times the importance of "proper keyword research". Would you mind sharing your strategy on brain storming and how to come up with ideas to begin the research.

To me that is the hardest part. I've got the technical stuff figured out(number of searches, competition, backlinks). But I struggle with coming up with ideas and clearing the cloud and revealing the gems to be the toughest.

Appreciate anything you may share.

Thanks

P.S. May I combine your posts into a PDF and sell it for $7. LOL...

You are very welcome, I enjoy sharing my strategies with other people; everyone should be allowed to be successful.

AS for the keyword research: Pick a topic in an evergreen niche. These types of niches can usually be found in "heath, wealth and love" broad topics. Just pick a topic that you think you would be interested in, punch it into the google tool, make sure that you have it set to EXACT match, and away you go. For starting out try to ignore most keywords with less than 3 words in the phrase.

You can use a keyword tool like MNF ( MIcro Niche Finder ), but like all keyword tools, you should use other tools to back up the information that it gives you.

Honestly, don't worry about finding the "nuggets". Why? Because you should NEVER EVER rely on just one keyword to rank your site and make you money.

When determining the price of the keywords, use the Contextual Targeting Tool to get a better matched price for your keywords

-- Jeff

[outwest]

Hi Jeff , what a great list of plugins, wow thank you very much

I can find on the WP site for plugins (with searching)
"google privacy policy" I dont see "easy privacy policy" is there a download link?

Also maxblogpress ping optimizer I get other wp plugins talking about pings and actually talking about maxbloggpress optimizer in their description, here are the two that come up in the search tool
cbnet Ping Optimizer


Cbnet MBP Auto-Activate






i will keep trying

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by outwest

Hi Jeff , what a great list of plugins, wow thank you very much
I am attempting to download these and having a terrible time, every time I go to google, for example, to adsense privacy policy wordpress plugin

it takes me to wordpress pages discussing the plugin, then on top I see "download" link

then that takes me to a link for downloading WP, LOL

i will keep trying

You are more than welcome.

You can just use the WP admin panel to download them directly into your site. And then with FTP you can just transfer the directory on to your computer.

Its a work around if you are having trouble finding them on google.

-- Jeff

[thedog]

I vote amazon.

Takes a lot of work to make decent money with adsense, plus, Google can ban you at any time, and they do quite often, for nothing... seriouslly...

My advice, don't solely relly on adsence. Why not try both?

That's what I did... 3 of my adsense sites ranked on the first page of google. They had good traffic, but never made much with adsense. Now my adsense has disspapeard... no warning, no email... no help... google will not reply to your emails... I'm just glad I found this out early on.

My amazon sites are just starting to take off... one I made 3 months ago, is now getting decent traffic... I've made $80 so far this month, and 5 orders are yet to be processed... so I'm sure I'll break the $100 mark, and most of this traffic has come from the middle of the month.

This is just one site, so, once I've tweaked it, I'll rinse and repeat

That said, there are issues with amazon and american tax law... not too sure what it's all about, so if you're from the US, LOOK INTO IT... SORRY, I'M IN CHINA AND THIS KEYBOARD SUCKS... STUCK ON CAPS...

I BASICLY TRUST AMAZON MORE.

GOOD LUCK

[outwest]

Originally Posted by thedog

I vote amazon.

Takes a lot of work to make decent money with adsense, plus, Google can ban you at any time, and they do quite often, for nothing... seriouslly...

My advice, don't solely relly on adsence. Why not try both?

That's what I did... 3 of my adsense sites ranked on the first page of google. They had good traffic, but never made much with adsense. Now my adsense has disspapeard... no warning, no email... no help... google will not reply to your emails... I'm just glad I found this out early on.

My amazon sites are just starting to take off... one I made 3 months ago, is now getting decent traffic... I've made $80 so far this month, and 5 orders are yet to be processed... so I'm sure I'll break the $100 mark, and most of this traffic has come from the middle of the month.

This is just one site, so, once I've tweaked it, I'll rinse and repeat

That said, there are issues with amazon and american tax law... not too sure what it's all about, so if you're from the US, LOOK INTO IT... SORRY, I'M IN CHINA AND THIS KEYBOARD SUCKS... STUCK ON CAPS...

I BASICLY TRUST AMAZON MORE.

GOOD LUCK

How many pages were on each of your adsense sites? I know if its a thin site, just a few pages, they dont like that , when they find that they will deindex all your sites

[thedog]

Originally Posted by outwest

How many pages were on each of your adsense sites? I know if its a thin site, just a few pages, they dont like that , when they find that they will deindex all your sites

Well I was following the advice of those who made it with adsense.

My sites had 6 well written articles each.

And a couple of pages, t&c's, contact, sitemap...

I did do my research.

I'm thinking it could be that I haven't entered my PIN as I'm away, and they posted it to me... but, I have no idea... there's no help, no warning... it's like, why should we care, we're google.

[outwest]

Hi Jeff I found Maxbloggpress, I guess they have their own site I was searching on WP plugin site

The only one I have a question on is Easy Privacy Policy
The only one I could find is called

Google Privacy Policy
Is this ok ?
WordPress › Google Privacy Policy « WordPress Plugins

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by outwest

How many pages were on each of your adsense sites? I know if its a thin site, just a few pages, they dont like that , when they find that they will deindex all your sites

Surprisingly there are to many people that go after adsense that create a multitude of thin sites and then wonder why they bomb with adsense. They say that Google was unfair to them, etc etc.

BTW, I have each hosting account under its own unique IP. Some places will include that in the higher packages, or you just pay like an extra 2 bucks a month to get it. I highly recommend you get you packages off of the group IP and put into its own. It makes it safer for you.

-- Jeff

[outwest]

Jeff when you say safer , and individual hosting accounts, unique IP etc
do you mean each of your adsense sites has a unique IP?
Thanks Jeff

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by outwest

Jeff when you say safer , and individual hosting accounts, unique IP etc
do you mean each of your adsense sites has a unique IP?
Thanks Jeff

That would get pricey after awhile. But no, you should limit each hosting account to about 10 websites, and then each account have its own IP. It just makes it safer if Google decides to penalize an entire IP block ( it has been known to happen ).

Plus, with different IP addresses you can actually interlink them together to get some links. You wouldn't link the sites on the same account, but between different accounts with their own unique IPs it is perfectly fine.

-- Jeff

[outwest]

OK thanks Jeff
I know I can add IP addresses at my host for like 1 dollar per month
But
I did ask one time is this separate C class IPs
and they said, sometimes, but you cannot request that (dont even know if its important)

they said whatever IP C class you get is just random