How a Newbie Makes Monthly Income

42 replies
Hey everyone,

I've been a long time lurker and have only been doing IM for just about a year on the side. But since this forum has been so helpful to me, I wanted to give back in some way and share how I make a couple hundred a month through one niche site that I own. A lot of this isn't original, and I'm sure that there are a lot of other more experienced IMers that could make this process easier and faster. I apologize in advance if I am all over the place...

I'll go into more detail if requested...

Anyway, quick background... I currently work full-time for a very large aerospace company. Well, although I get paid decently, the job isn't that challenging, plus my wife wanted to be able to stay at home with the kids, so I needed to find a way to make extra income. Asking for a promotion didn't work out too well, plus, I would have needed about a 50% increase anyway.

I decided to start my own business fixing home computers in hopes that it would lead to bigger things. The pay sucked, the hours were long, and I realized that I hated it.

In 6 months, I made a whopping $340...

BUT, the fact was that I was getting paid for something that I was doing on my own.

I had been dabbling with web development, with outsourcing, and then with niche marketing for a while and decided to create a web development business that leveraged outsourced employees (this will be for another thread if anyone would like to know). At the same time, I hired one person to focus solely on my niche marketing endeavors.

First Mistakes

Although I thought knew how to do keyword research, and I taught my VA how to do it too, I didn't know how to correctly choose a niche. I had been recently listening to another well-known IMer that was big on targeting health and fitness products that you can promote via Amazon.

Since it was a big ticket item and because there were some keywords that I "thought" would work - I chose Home Gyms.

These were the keywords that were potentially targeted:





I had my VA create a site, optimized it and started backlinking. The site was homegymwonders (dot) com. (Now a parked domain)

I decided to rank for home fitness gym.

One of the most important things that I found out was that Google's keyword tool doesn't tell you how people type in keywords. For example "Home Fitness Gym" may have a ton of searches according to Google, but that doesn't mean it's types in that exact way. People may search for "Home Gym Fitness" or "Gym Home Fitness". While this may not seem like a big deal, it is.

To me, the main reason why having your words in the right order is important is because you get a true sense of the competition. Check out these two competetion analyses (keep in mind these were done with Market Samrai that was over a year old. They recently changed their calculations):





The first is for the keyword "Home Fitness Gym", competition isn't too bad right (as far as PR is concerned)...

Now check out "Home Gym Fitness", which is a far more correctly searched term.




If you were going after "Home Fitness Gym", not only would you be targeting an irrelevant and un-searched keyword - you'd be facing more competition than you were expecting.

After 3 months of backlinking... Nothing. I wasn't in a ranking that would justify continuing.

As many of the awesome gurus here will tell you, the last thing that you want to do is dwell on something that doesn't work. That being said, it was time to start over...

Lessons learned
  • The main problem was that I was choosing "niche" that was far more competitive than my beginner keyword research had shown.
  • The keywords that I had used, although they looked like they got good traffic, they were often permutations and weren't truly searched in the exact way as I was marketing them.
  • I should have choen a domain name that had better keyword relevance (although I have ranked terms high without it with other sites).
  • The order of keywords matter.


Disclaimer: I AM A NOOB. These are just my experiences in what works and what doesn't. I am sure there are gurus out there that have a different take on this or I may be completely wrong.

I will move into what worked for me and how I made a site that makes decent monthly income in the next post if people are interested.
#income #makes #monthly #newbie
  • Profile picture of the author 711gemstone
    Thank you for your useful post. I like the details you have included. The screen shots do a great job of showing your points.
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  • Profile picture of the author ArwenTaylor
    I haven't used Google Keyword Tool in a long time but I always thought they did tell you how many people searched for particular keywords. I think there is an option to click for "Exact Search" or something similar. Otherwise, these are great tips
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  • Profile picture of the author xtrapunch
    One of the most important things that I found out was that Google's keyword tool doesn't tell you how people type in keywords. For example "Home Fitness Gym" may have a ton of searches according to Google, but that doesn't mean it's types in that exact way. People may search for "Home Gym Fitness" or "Gym Home Fitness". While this may not seem like a big deal, it is.
    Google allows you to see the results for both "Broad Match" and "Exact Match". In exact match, you get the results for the exact same keyword, in the same order.

    I will move into what worked for me and how I made a site that makes decent monthly income in the next post if people are interested.
    You should have shared that. What made you money is more important than what didn't. Isn't it so?
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    • Profile picture of the author HairyPoppins
      Originally Posted by xtrapunch View Post

      You should have shared that. What made you money is more important than what didn't. Isn't it so?
      I'd say what not to do is an important part of the puzzle. It steers you away from things you may have done on your own in other situations. At least that's been true for me in the past.
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  • Profile picture of the author cb1803
    Online business is not different from offline ones. The success does not depend only one or two factors, rather it does need all the necessary ingredients to make it happen. Your explanation seems to be an eye-opener.
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  • Profile picture of the author big jeffrey
    man this is right on time, I just got market samurai for a 10 day trial. was hoping to make the most of it.

    your screenshots are A++ Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author positivemagic
      Let me know how that works for ya. I was thinking of trying it again.
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      Ps. What if instead of hunting people down until they begged you to stop... pre-qualified prospects actually sought you out and asked you what you do and how you do it? Click here.

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  • Profile picture of the author Brendan Vraibel
    If you use an exact match in GKT it will tell you how much people search for that exact phrase. You can then put that phrase in quotes in Google and check out your competition.

    Remember that the number of sites for results doesn't matter as much as the websites themselves on the first page, as those are the sites the only ones that you'll be competing against. For example search A might have 1,000,000 total results but the first page could be filled with all ezine articles and low pr blogs. Search B could have 1,000 results but if they are all Wiki, CNN, and any other authority sites you won't have much luck.

    Best of luck.
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    • Profile picture of the author DeanSoto
      Thanks for the great responses... Here's part 2.

      Since I knew what went wrong, it was time to decide on another niche and get things going again. I found a niche that got about 50+ Exact phrase searches a day for #1 in Google (calculation is global exact searches x 42% divided by 30), with competition around 50,000. You end up getting a lot longtail search terms as well so no worries.

      Monetization Strategy

      The original monetization strategy was an affiliate program through Commission Junction that paid $30 per lead and more for sales. While the actual keyword that was chosen was not exactly what people would be looking for, it is very complimentary.

      The keyword was an actual product too so Amazon associates was also used. This works out great especially during the holiday seasons since you get a lot of people clicking through to by one thing, but end up buying a buinch of other things as well.

      After a few months, I also decided to try out adsense. I expected it to hurt the success of the other two, but the impact was nominal and as it goes right now I make $60 - $200 from Adsense alone.

      The website

      Keep in mind that 99% of this is all done by my VA... The site is based on the Canvas Wootheme simply because it makes it easy on my VA to change things around since they aren't a developer. You could use really any theme, but you definitely need to make sure that it is coded well since that can be a big factor in SEO.

      I am a big believer in creating valuable content (and most of the gurus here that know way more than I do seem to agree). My VA created a contact page, about page, and privacy policy. Then they would add a new blog post weekly.

      The posts were base off this list from Problogger in order to keep everything fresh (52 Types of Blog Posts that Are Proven to Work). The great thing about this is that it also teaches my VA how to create high-value blog posts - a skill that can be used for offline marketing and other things in the future. About 7 weeks of posts was good enough.

      On-page SEO is a big factor too. To make things easy I bought Scribe SEO (I've recently switched to Easy WP SEO). That way I could make 100% certain that the posts were good SEO wise.

      Backlinking Strategy

      In between the blog posting was back linking. This included:

      Article marketing - Submitted to Ezinearticles, Article Alley, Infobarrel (Your profile can have two DoFollow backlinks w/anchor text there, Article Blast, Amazines, and a couple of others. Articles were then spun via The Best Spinner and distributed to hundreds of other blogs and directories via Article Marketing Robot (yes, only hundreds. I can't seem to get past the 1K successful mark with AMR). The articles through AMR would link back to the aforementioned manually submitted articles. In essence you are creating a mini-net or pyramid. For some keywords on my newer sites, I've ranked for them without AMR (or any other article distribution service/program) and only the manual directories, but it all depends.

      Directories - I know that the consensus here is that directory submissions are worthless... I don't think so. They add to your link diversity and some of them can really pack an SEO punch. An easy way to find directories in your niche is to type intitle:add+url "Your Keyword" into Google. I had my VA do 10 of these a day.

      High PR links - There are a lot of High PR link packet services here - get one they are worth it. I used Angela's High PR Link packets and my VA would drop a few every day. One good thing to do is to create a few social bookmarking profiles and bookmark the links you set (you can do this with directory submissions too). I generally vary up which social bookmark profiles that I use for each link so that it looks more natural.

      Social Bookmarks and Social Media - Every now and then I will create profiles and link to some of my content and other content.

      Fiverr - You don't need to use anything from Fiverr, but I generally use it for maintenance as I will add a few high PR EDU links from here. I ONLY CHOOSE out of the top 5 rated SEO gigs here. Fiverr can really mess up your site (I jacked one of my new ones up recently by doing too much with Fiverr and deviating from the top 5). In essence, I just search "SEO" and sort by ratings. Use it sparingly once every month or so to save some time. As my ranking starts to fade a bit, it bumps it right back up.

      The Key To Ranking Well

      No doubt that the key to ranking well is valuable On-page and Off-page content that is built naturally. My site was unaffected by the Panda update and I have no worries about it in the future. The majority of content that links back to it is either high PR or unique contextual content (one of the best things about AMR).

      Currently I am in maintenance mode, which means a fiverr gig a month and sometimes (rarely) a new article submitted. Initially it was a lot of work, even with a VA (they were learning and so a lot of time was spent teaching them), but things are looking good now.

      Here are last month's figures:

      Commission Junction: $210
      Adsense: $121.39
      Amazon: $14

      Not bad. I have other sites that I'm trying to do the same with, and whether or not they work out, I know that it is possible to make money as an IM. This is at least enough to pay for my full-time VA and still have a tiny profit.

      So hopefully this was helpful, or at least inspires other newbies like me to keep trying. It works just keep trying and learning from the amazing people here.

      Let me know if you want me to go into more detail on anything.
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      • Profile picture of the author positivemagic
        Great post! Thanks for the detailed info!
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        • Profile picture of the author SlowlyMan
          Really useful information. Thanks for putting your experiences to paper.

          How did you find your VA?
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  • Profile picture of the author jamesrich1
    Very detailed useful post on targeting different niches using SEO, outsourcing and making money from multiple lanes of income. It sounds like you will be able to keep duplicating this over and over to scale up. I bookmarked this thread because you dropped a full SEO strategy that works.
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  • Profile picture of the author Beven
    very useful post for any beginner, thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author Fazal Mayar
    thanks for teh post man, you have proved that proper research is what makes you successful at the end in IM
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  • Profile picture of the author Msands
    Hey Dean...

    You prob. think you being a Newbie others may not appreciate the info but this is relevant information that I'm sure will save lots of people time and money in the future to figure out the same information that you share so freely to us..

    I appreciate it man...I'm definitely interested in how you made a site that makes decent income for you...If you're as detail as this post, It'll be great information that I look forward to...

    Hope you write it and share your findings...
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  • Profile picture of the author aeri
    I'm still having a little bit of trouble getting my article to the first page of google (i'm stuck between rank 25 to 35 for one of my keywords), but it might be because I need more backlinking and that weekly blog post. That was definitely a good reminder for me and a good example of how this strategy actually does work if all of the proper work and research is put into it Thank you for sharing and hope that you will continue to have a good inflow of income from this
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  • Profile picture of the author vpunch
    Very useful insight everyone. Keep it up
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  • Profile picture of the author officer_iron
    Great story. I'm glad you were and are sticking with it, even though it hasn't been easy. That's what makes a great IMer. Dedication and perseverance.
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  • Profile picture of the author scraig
    I think the biggest hint here is "creating valuable content".
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  • Profile picture of the author Osman_M
    That was also my first mistake. What I started to do from there onwards was to launch Adwords campaigns to see if the keyword actually gets searched. That solved a whole lot of problems for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author celente
    Do not worry, part of this business is failure. Do not reject it, accept it and use it as a teacher. That will help you not make the same mistakes again. These sort of little things are priceless but its good you were willing to share it in here.
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  • Profile picture of the author vivi62
    Hi Deansoto
    this is a very helpfull post for other newbies,hope you will keep posting good information like this.
    Regards
    vivi62
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeKey
    Great article, very insightful. I did the same thing wasting time with poorly chosen keywords and a poorly chosen niche.

    Let me ask you this, your second niche, was it something you where familiar with personally?

    My first niche I picked a topic I basically knew jack about, and I think it compounded all the mistakes.

    Fast forward and I started finding niches in areas that I'm familiar with the topic. Which has made it easier to narrow in on my goals.

    Kind of curious if this is common for folks setting up sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Ditfort
    Is that market samurai. Thanks a helpful post!
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  • Profile picture of the author goldenbbq
    hey Dean,
    Thanks for sharing your experience here. It's inspiring to me as newbie,
    can you please send me your e-mail address at: nfagir@gmail.com if you don't mind?
    I have some questions to ask you. please make the topic: from WF.
    thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author timb98133
    Thank you for posting this. I will add it’s very important to NOT give up and to learn from your mistakes. Good luck in the future!
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    • Profile picture of the author AfteraDream
      One tip:

      Your competition is not how much websites there is total, it's top 10 of them. If you beat one of them you beat the rest behind it. Doesn't matter if it's 100 000 or 1 mil competing sites... measure the strength of top 10 only..
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  • Profile picture of the author suffolkman
    Hi Deansoto,

    Thanks for the detail that you have provided.

    I liked in particular the share about the 52 Types of Blog posts.

    52 Types of Blog Posts that Are Proven to Work

    All the best for the future.

    Peter
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  • Profile picture of the author World Marketing
    Good post appreciate the detailed information!
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  • Profile picture of the author SEOmaniac
    Great post.
    There are specific kw tools like market samurai that are very useful assessing the competition in every niche, and for every Kw.
    I use them frequently, and find this tool is quite acurate and time saving.
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanmilligan
    Banned
    Nice article. Lot's of detailed information.
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  • Profile picture of the author The Real Deal
    Great post. A lot of people underestimate the importance of selecting

    1. The right niche

    2. The right keywords to target

    Getting those two things right can be the difference between making $10 a month or making $10,000 a month.
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  • Profile picture of the author feliciayapsl
    Thanks for your sharing. This goes to show that this really works if you put your effort in it.
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    • Profile picture of the author Daniel Evans
      That's a hell of a lot of valuable detail right there. Good job.

      No doubt many people are going to find this of great use. Well done for nailing it!
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