6 Months Later: $300 Daily w/Adsense (Lessons Learned)

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by nateadelson

Congratulations XFactor. I would be interested to visit your blogs. Is it possible for you to PM me one of them?

Absolutely not. Sorry, but I protect my Adsense account at all
costs.

Not only is Google a fragile program that can ban you for stupid
reasons, but my sites are extremely important to me and I will
not risk having any of them damaged sharing the URLs.

Also, I do not use blogs.

- John

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by Jeremy123

Congrats xfactor,

this exposes the myth that people should only build big authority
sites if they want to last in the search engines.

I'll never build big authority sites again.

It truly is like owning properties that have more value than just
Adsense.

Just adding the idea of banner sales to each site (which another
warrior discussed earlier), will potentially add another $10,000 to
$15,000 per month to the bottom line.

I'd rather own 100 properties than 1 or 2 big ones.

But, as Steve said, big sites do work and if building big sites rocks
your boat, then rock on!

- John

[RhondaGiarraffa]

Awesome to hear you have found your groove!

Rhonda

[Chucky]

Hey John,

I think you missed my question on page 5. If you can spend a couple of minutes on that I'd very much appreciate and I'm sure that will be valuable to many people visiting your thread.

Thanks!
Chucky

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by W.P. Allen

Hey XFactor,

Is it against Adsense TOS to have the ad block below the title and above the content? I've read that you need some sort of separation so that the ads are differentiated .

Google says, “Ads shouldn’t be placed under a title or section heading in a way that implies that the ads are not ads.”

This is against TOS:


Some blogs I've noticed have written "Advertisement" above the ad block to make the distinction.

I do in fact have my Adsense block just under the content title, as shown
in your image.

However, my titles do not suggest for the viewer to click like in "Today's
Hot Deals" above.

This is a grey line for some folks, so all you have to do is write a couple
lines of text in between the two if you are worried.

- John

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by Chucky

Hey John,

I think you missed my question on page 5. If you can spend a couple of minutes on that I'd very much appreciate and I'm sure that will be valuable to many people visiting your thread.

Thanks!
Chucky

Hi Chucky,

I did not answer your question on keywords because I thought I
was already clear on that, which is that I build each site around
1 keyword.

But both approaches can work, so why not test each method? You
never know what good things could happen.

- John

[Chucky]

Originally Posted by XFactor

Hi Chucky,

I did not answer your question on keywords because I thought I
was already clear on that, which is that I build each site around
1 keyword.

But both approaches can work, so why not test each method? You
never know what good things could happen.

- John

Thanks John, the only reason why I asked was because you mentioned that some of your sites had as much as 30 pages. And I wasn't sure if they fell into this new category that you were talking about or the authority sites you were talking about.

How about the right hand side bar? Was what I hypothesized correct? Sorry to be persistent, but I know you're a helpful kind of person. I bought your video last time and you showed your templates there. I didn't think it was one of those minor things either because having the navigation menu and the adsense block at the same level can affect the CTR, in my opinion.
Chucky

[W.P. Allen]

XFactor

You said you build your sites around 1 keyword -- do you mean you use one keyword for the home page (your main keyword) and then a couple of other pages built around peripheral keywords?

Example:

Homepage/Main keyword = Brown Outdoor Grill
2nd tier keyword = brown outdoor gas grill
2nd tier keyword = brown outdoor coleman gas grill
2nd tier keyword = brown outdoor webber gas grill

I'm curious to know how you optimize your pages...

Thanks

[Jeremy123]

Hi Steve,

I said the myth that people should ONLY build authority sites,
authority sites work and now we see mini sites work too in the se's.

I was under the impression small sites will eventually drop off and lose
rankings over time to bigger sites as was Chris Rempel's experience
with his conduit sites.

xfactor- could you please explain how you build your sites around one
keyword if you have 20 or 30 pages.

also do you check how many adwords advertisers there are so when you
build your site there are relevant adsense ads.

I have a grill site and the adsense ads are not so relevant, maybe because
of the economic situation.

[homebse]

Thanks for this post. I too love adsense and when someone is willing to share their techniques and results I find it interesting.

I too have gotten spread too thin doing other things and am trying to once again focus more on my adsense/Amazon/Ebay/Walmart sites.

Jackie

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Jeremy123

I was under the impression small sites will eventually drop off and lose
rankings over time to bigger sites as was Chris Rempel's experience
with his conduit sites.

That hasn't been my experience. I've found small sites to remain remarkably stable once they started getting good traffic. The only ones I've had fall off either never had stable search traffic or lost search results placement due to competition that got better links.

[tjk1058]

Originally Posted by XFactor

Update On My Template Layout:

After starting this thread, I deleted all of my headers, and every
site's CTR increased.

Ugly sites now, but I'll not be using any more headers. I ran this
test for months and months now, and to see such a drastic increase
in earnings in such a little time of removing headers, I'll be sticking
to this setup.

This is what I mean whenever I say test, test, test & test some more.

Testing never ends.

- John

John,

I totally agree... the uglier the better sometimes as I think the visitor is more drawn to the ads at that point.

When I was doing adsense arbitrage the sites I made was basically a small article with the larger rectangle ad block only. That displayed usually the first four higher paying advertisers and the ads were right in their face for them to click on.

I had some extremely high CTR's for these types of pages. I'm talking 60-70%.

It was good money while it lasted :-) .

TedK

[YoYoPro]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

That hasn't been my experience. I've found small sites to remain remarkably stable once they started getting good traffic. The only ones I've had fall off either never had stable search traffic or lost search results placement due to competition that got better links.

I'll second that.

I've even got one health related site that is 20-25 pages large and never did any backlinking other than about 10 EZA articles that still gets traffic and clicks every day.

I don't know whether it's the fact that there has been no competition for the keywords or what the deal is, but it makes Adsense money and that's all that matters.

BTW the site has been up for over a year now.

[loybond]

XFactor, if you're going after a keyword phrase that includes a manufacturer's name, say "weber grills" for example, how can you beat the manufacturer's site (Weber, in this case)?

Do you think it's absolutely necessary to be in position 1, or is it okay to simply be somewhere on the first page? With low search numbers... I would think you would have to be in position 1 to get any sort of decent search traffic.

Also, does anyone know what variables MNF takes into account for the SOC number?

[Steve Crooks]

I find around position 3 is about the sweet spot in Google.

Originally Posted by loybond

XFactor, if you're going after a keyword phrase that includes a manufacturer's name, say "weber grills" for example, how can you beat the manufacturer's site (Weber, in this case)?

Do you think it's absolutely necessary to be in position 1, or is it okay to simply be somewhere on the first page? With low search numbers... I would think you would have to be in position 1 to get any sort of decent search traffic.

Also, does anyone know what variables MNF takes into account for the SOC number?

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by Chucky

Thanks John, the only reason why I asked was because you mentioned that some of your sites had as much as 30 pages. And I wasn't sure if they fell into this new category that you were talking about or the authority sites you were talking about.

How about the right hand side bar? Was what I hypothesized correct? Sorry to be persistent, but I know you're a helpful kind of person. I bought your video last time and you showed your templates there. I didn't think it was one of those minor things either because having the navigation menu and the adsense block at the same level can affect the CTR, in my opinion.
Chucky

For starters, there is no wrong or right way of doing this stuff, just so
you know. For my sites that have more than a few pages, some of them
have the main root keyword in them, some are just related long-tails.

The right side bar has nothing by a small navigational menu of the home,
about us, contact & privacy policy, and I do put one link unit below that,
and that's all.

- John

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by Jeremy123

Congrats xfactor,

this exposes the myth that people should only build big authority
sites if they want to last in the search engines.

All sites may go down in rankings. Some may stay up for a long
time but never expect something for nothing.

Big sites, small sites, medium sites, 1-page sites, etc... all are
subject to the ups and downs of the search engines.

- John

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by W.P. Allen

XFactor

You said you build your sites around 1 keyword -- do you mean you use one keyword for the home page (your main keyword) and then a couple of other pages built around peripheral keywords?

Example:

Homepage/Main keyword = Brown Outdoor Grill
2nd tier keyword = brown outdoor gas grill
2nd tier keyword = brown outdoor coleman gas grill
2nd tier keyword = brown outdoor webber gas grill

I'm curious to know how you optimize your pages...

Thanks

Bad idea to do this, it looks like keyword spam and I can't imagine
that this will help the site in the long run.

Yes, some of my new pages will have the root keyword in them,
but most are just additional long-tails in the niche.

- John

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by Jeremy123

Hi Steve,

I was under the impression small sites will eventually drop off and lose
rankings over time to bigger sites as was Chris Rempel's experience
with his conduit sites.

As I stated in a recent post, no site is immune to being dropped in
rankings. So never count on this.

xfactor- could you please explain how you build your sites around one
keyword if you have 20 or 30 pages.

I did just touch up on this in the reply before this one.

also do you check how many adwords advertisers there are so when you
build your site there are relevant adsense ads.

I have a grill site and the adsense ads are not so relevant, maybe because
of the economic situation.

I sure do. That is important to ensure your site will turn visitors into
clicks.

About your grill site, it may not be targeted enough. Right now anything
with grills is making MAJOR money due to the season, so check your
keywords.

- John

[W.P. Allen]

You said you build your sites around 1 keyword -- do you mean you use one keyword for the home page (your main keyword) and then a couple of other pages built around peripheral keywords?

Example:

Homepage/Main keyword = Brown Outdoor Grill
2nd tier keyword = brown outdoor gas grill
2nd tier keyword = brown outdoor coleman gas grill
2nd tier keyword = brown outdoor webber gas grill

I'm curious to know how you optimize your pages...

Thanks
Bad idea to do this, it looks like keyword spam and I can't imagine
that this will help the site in the long run.

Yes, some of my new pages will have the root keyword in them,
but most are just additional long-tails in the niche.

- John

Ok. Gotcha. Thanks for the response. I'm gonna get on this immediately!

[elitesystem]

great info. i have given out on adsense but it does work if used in the right way.. lessons learned

[Chucky]

Originally Posted by XFactor

Bad idea to do this, it looks like keyword spam and I can't imagine
that this will help the site in the long run.

- John

Ok, that's kind of bad news for me because I've already started to make a website on a domain name like 10.1MPdigitalcameras.com and my pages are going to be nikon 10.1MP digital cameras, canon 10.1 MP digital cameras, philips 10.1 digital cameras etc etc.

I do have a few other keywords like nikon digital camera cases or whatever and I think now I'll include those as well to hopefully dilute the spammy effect?

Well..let's see what lessons I learn from it :-(
Chucky

[Theresa Mayhew]

Hello XFactor,
I'm new here and would appreciate your thoughts. Since you have experience as an Ebay affiliate, can you tell me what you think they're looking for in their approval criteria? I've read their policies, but have no idea why they turned me down. They just refer you to their policies again. What kind of a website did you send them to when you submitted your application? Also, do you concern yourself with people clicking on the adsense ads and leaving your site when you have other products for sale? Maybe I didn't understand how you are using adsense and the affiliate products. Thanks for your understanding of a total newbie.

Congrats on your new baby and getting focused again in your business.

Theresa

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by Chucky

Ok, that's kind of bad news for me because I've already started to make a website on a domain name like 10.1MPdigitalcameras.com and my pages are going to be nikon 10.1MP digital cameras, canon 10.1 MP digital cameras, philips 10.1 digital cameras etc etc.

I do have a few other keywords like nikon digital camera cases or whatever and I think now I'll include those as well to hopefully dilute the spammy effect?

Well..let's see what lessons I learn from it :-(
Chucky

Chucky, I really wish you (and other warriors) would not take my input
on your questions as the all-knowing rule of Adsense.

Your plan may very well work, especially since you have many product
names in the keyword.

My approach to every one of my sites is the same, however, there are
always different angles that may work with some niches that may
not work on other niches.

So, go with your plan and do your best.

You may very well strike a $200 to $1,000 per month website with this
idea.

- John

[alvanpilot]

Hey Xfactor!

This may be a dumb question but I gotta find out............

When you put your sites online, do you use one low cost host to host all of them? And, simply do away with each site as it goes downhill??

ALSO, IS YOUR VIDEO STILL AVAILABLE?

Thank you Sir and hope your 4th of July was good.

[rtrotter]

John,

Thanks for sharing so much!!

In regard to using domain name with keyword, have you tried using subdomain off some general domain when a good domain name is not available?

BTW, you said this earlier,

Originally Posted by XFactor

Yes it is easy, but "easy" to me means working your ass off day after day.

I see in your avatar you're holding the reason you do this.

Rodney

[Jeremy123]

thanks xfactor

What I did with the grill site is I chose weber grills, george foreman grills ect,
then I made a list of most of there products for each brand, checked if there
some traffic in the google tool, then had my writers write a review naturally
about the product, not targeting any particular keyword.

so I 'm targeting specific models, but I never checked number of adwords ads
or competition.

got MNF last night, how many adwords ads do you like to see for a keyword.

thanks

[32paul52]

Great thread -do you have a way you choose your niches? eg - Est number of searches per month X CPC X competition ?

[jbgal]

John,

So where do you put the links to all your inner pages? Or do you put them on your homepage at all? I do think it helps with SEO if you put a link to your inner pages on your homepage, right?

JB

Originally Posted by XFactor

The right side bar has nothing by a small navigational menu of the home,
about us, contact & privacy policy, and I do put one link unit below that,
and that's all.

- John

[mrrichesinniches]

John,
When you delete the headers do you just use the name of the website up? Also, I agree and have proof the uglier the better. Thanks again for sharing all this free tutorial.

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by alvanpilot

Hey Xfactor!

This may be a dumb question but I gotta find out............

When you put your sites online, do you use one low cost host to host all of them? And, simply do away with each site as it goes downhill??

1) I use several reseller accounts at hostgator (already mentioned this).

2) I have no idea what you mean by "do away with each site as it goes
downhill".

ALSO, IS YOUR VIDEO STILL AVAILABLE?

No, it is not.

Besides, the Adsense video that I had up was about discussing my old
methods of building one large website. However I still use very much
the same layout, with some minor changes on the nav menu and such.

- John

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by Theresa Mayhew

Hello XFactor,
I'm new here and would appreciate your thoughts. Since you have experience as an Ebay affiliate, can you tell me what you think they're looking for in their approval criteria? I've read their policies, but have no idea why they turned me down. They just refer you to their policies again. What kind of a website did you send them to when you submitted your application? Also, do you concern yourself with people clicking on the adsense ads and leaving your site when you have other products for sale? Maybe I didn't understand how you are using adsense and the affiliate products. Thanks for your understanding of a total newbie.

Congrats on your new baby and getting focused again in your business.

Theresa

I'm really not the guy to go to on these questions, so it is best that
you start another thread so that you can get the direct help you need
from other warriors.

And to be honest, I don't even add affiliate links to my content all of
the time, because I'd rather drive the viewer back to click an Adsense
ad.

(My preference of course)

- John

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by rtrotter

John,

Thanks for sharing so much!!

In regard to using domain name with keyword, have you tried using subdomain off some general domain when a good domain name is not available?

I do not use subdomains. If the keyword is not available then I just
add a word at the end, like review, point, choice, shop, now, online,
etc.

I'd just rather keep everything separate in case I want to sell
my sites in the future.

- John

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by Jeremy123

thanks xfactor

What I did with the grill site is I chose weber grills, george foreman grills ect,
then I made a list of most of there products for each brand, checked if there
some traffic in the google tool, then had my writers write a review naturally
about the product, not targeting any particular keyword.

so I 'm targeting specific models, but I never checked number of adwords ads
or competition.

got MNF last night, how many adwords ads do you like to see for a keyword.

thanks

Honestly I do not have a figure on that one, never needed to check.

- John

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by 32paul52

Great thread -do you have a way you choose your niches? eg - Est number of searches per month X CPC X competition ?

No I do not use any crazy formulas, there is no need. I just use Micro
Niche Finder to help me go from a general product name down to
several long-tail keywords that have great SOC numbers, and enough
searches to make the niche profitable.

I really like to have at least 3,000 searches for each site though, and
if a keyword has something low, lik 500 or so, then I'll see if there are
enough related keywords to add up.

But this then changes the site from a small site to a medium one.

It's all good though, depends on how much effort I want to put into
each.

- John

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by jbgal

John,

So where do you put the links to all your inner pages? Or do you put them on your homepage at all? I do think it helps with SEO if you put a link to your inner pages on your homepage, right?

JB

At the top of the page now, small and out-of-the-way, but still linked
from the home page.

- John

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by mrrichesinniches

John,
When you delete the headers do you just use the name of the website up? Also, I agree and have proof the uglier the better. Thanks again for sharing all this free tutorial.

The keyword stays as the title of each page on top, H1 tag.

- John

[box-to-box]

Hi John,

Thanks for your clarification on niche subjects and congrats on your success.

John is giving us a wealth of information based on his own experiences through his absolute (and slightly obsessed!?) dedication and hard work. Whilst he can answer all our questions, IMHO I think everyone would get more benefit from learning from our own experiences instead of obsessing over where your menu is and what colour your H1s are. I agree that tweaking these things will help conversions but get the sites up first, get the traffic and then make the tweaks - dont be worrying before hand.

Sorry to ramble, I know why people do it (and why I do it), we're petrified of working on something that might not work, the site might be a failure. You reckon Johns bothered if one of his sites fail? I don't, in fact I would consider it part of the plan because when a site bombs, he will learn exactly what went wrong and build on it.

Do what he did - erase the Warrior Forum from your memory and go put the graft in.

Al.

[hipnol]

Its really impressive John. Its much impressive that you replied to queries of everyone here. Thanks for all the info you have shared. Could you please share the keyword tools and how you use those tools (I mean, your way of digging out the right keywords).

[tjk1058]

Originally Posted by hipnol

Its really impressive John. Its much impressive that you replied to queries of everyone here. Thanks for all the info you have shared. Could you please share the keyword tools and how you use those tools (I mean, your way of digging out the right keywords).

I think John says he uses MicroNicheFinder... if so then you would normally do a keyword search for a root keyword and then take all the secondary keywords- I normally concentrate on the 3-4 word keywords with decent amounts of search traffic and check their SOC.

SOC is MNF term for how competitive that keyword is for competition. If it is green then the SOC is low and there is a good chance you can rank for it.

So if you had a keyword "dog grooming" and ran it through MNF and one of the terms came up "beagle dog grooming" and it had a SOC of like 45 and in green then you should be able to rank for this term pretty easy with some backlinking.

At least that is what I do. Not sure if this is how John does it though?

TedK

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by box-to-box

Hi John,

Thanks for your clarification on niche subjects and congrats on your success.

John is giving us a wealth of information based on his own experiences through his absolute (and slightly obsessed!?) dedication and hard work. Whilst he can answer all our questions, IMHO I think everyone would get more benefit from learning from our own experiences instead of obsessing over where your menu is and what colour your H1s are. I agree that tweaking these things will help conversions but get the sites up first, get the traffic and then make the tweaks - dont be worrying before hand.

Sorry to ramble, I know why people do it (and why I do it), we're petrified of working on something that might not work, the site might be a failure. You reckon Johns bothered if one of his sites fail? I don't, in fact I would consider it part of the plan because when a site bombs, he will learn exactly what went wrong and build on it.

Do what he did - erase the Warrior Forum from your memory and go put the graft in.

Al.

Thank you, you said it perfectly.

- John

[triosolutions]

John Great Stuff. You should write ebook with your practical experience and sell through website. you will get tons of money by selling your experience. So many newbies searching and trying to earn money from Google adsense. At least they will get something valuable insted of buying some crap content from some copycat.

[kab1973]

Wow! Thanks for posting this John. Makes me want to look into building Adsense sites again. It's just so easy cashing those checks. Still get one but it's not as big as it used to be. Maybe I'll cut out some time to dedicate to this to again.

Thanks for sharing your ideas and methods.

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by triosolutions

John Great Stuff. You should write ebook with your practical experience and sell through website. you will get tons of money by selling your experience. So many newbies searching and trying to earn money from Google adsense. At least they will get something valuable insted of buying some crap content from some copycat.

Ok, I'll write up something and create a video example of my template
and some keyword research stuff.

- John

[bannor32]

Every time I start to drift away from Adsense to work on other ideas I come across a thread like this that gets the ideas churning again. Still one of the most lucrative programs for the individual to succeed with. Thanks for the guide.

[loybond]

XFactor, you mentioned you worked 18-hour days and still work 8-hour days... may I ask where most of the time goes? Writing articles? Doing niche research?

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by loybond

XFactor, you mentioned you worked 18-hour days and still work 8-hour days... may I ask where most of the time goes? Writing articles? Doing niche research?

All of the above, but with most of that time writing content.

- John

[bigbyte]

Thanks for posting all that information, John. I am doing something similiar - just less in public. Good to see how others are working the system. Keep up the good work.

Just as some advice for all those that are trying to replicate the system. Don't over analyze John's words. There is more information in this thread than you can really use. Stop reading. Build 10 sites, do SEO, analyze the traffic and data. Then come back with detailed questions and share what worked and what did not work. Don't expect results in a week. Google will give new sites the benefit of a doubt, but if your SEO is of bad quality you might fall down the rankings fast. You need at least 4-8 weeks of data - preferrably 8-12 weeks to have a solid baseline for your traffic patterns.

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by bigbyte

Thanks for posting all that information, John. I am doing something similiar - just less in public. Good to see how others are working the system. Keep up the good work.

Just as some advice for all those that are trying to replicate the system. Don't over analyze John's words. There is more information in this thread than you can really use. Stop reading. Build 10 sites, do SEO, analyze the traffic and data. Then come back with detailed questions and share what worked and what did not work. Don't expect results in a week. Google will give new sites the benefit of a doubt, but if your SEO is of bad quality you might fall down the rankings fast. You need at least 4-8 weeks of data - preferrably 8-12 weeks to have a solid baseline for your traffic patterns.

Good point, thanks.

I'd like to add something about getting data.

Some people get frozen over this subject as well. And to be honest, I
am very bad at this myself. I rarely look at my logs and stats.

Could I take more time to improve some sites?

Yes, there is always something more to do.

Must you worry over stats? No, at least not at first.

Get your sites out there, build 1 site per week, or 2, get a good
20 articles out there to high PR article directories.

Do as I have instructed here and watch your Adsense income
increase daily.

You can always come back and perfect the system later.

- John

[legitimatefreestuff]

Thanks very much for your great info.

Do you still use GoArticles for backlinks? Are your backlinks showing?

Have you experienced a drop in CPC because of adding too many sites too fast? Is that why you only add 1-2 sites a week?

TY.