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Journey To Profitable Niche Blogs

by Leslie B
14 replies
It's about 10 years ago when I first started the IM adventure. At that time I started with niche blogs (Amazon, Adsense, ...) and was quite successful with it. Not that I made thousands of dollars each month from one site, but a few hundred dollars monthly per site was definitely a nice extra. After that I learned about my love for working with WordPress and worked as a service provider for a while until I started homeschooling my kids. At that time I had sold my niche blogs, quit my service business and basically did nothing IM related. But now that I have a nice rhythm going for homeschooling, it's itching to blog again.

Last week I went through the domain names I still had and picked out a few that I thought still had potential. Some of them still had a blog on them with content, others didn't. I made sure every one of them has WordPress installed and cleaned up now and ready to go.

My goal is to start posting content on five of those sites with minimum one post on each site per week and have them start making money by december 2018. I'm not setting an income goal for this, I'm just looking to see if I still "got it". One of them that still had content has made some money in the last year (not much, a few small sales here and there on Amazon) so I know it's still possible.

My second goal is to start re-learning. After being out of it for this long I know things has changed and I'll need to find out what works and what doesn't in todays IM world, so I'm also making it my goal to take some time every day to learn something new AND implement it on those sites (at least one of them to test and if successful try out on the others).

Below I have an overview of where I am right now, I'll update this weekly to see how things are improving. I'll set all of them at $0 for now, even the ones who have made money in the past, just so I can see how things are improving. I'm not expecting income immediately, but I do hope to see improvement soon.

ETA: as Kay King pointed out below, traffic might be a better way of keeping track of how things are going. So I'm adding the traffic numbers I have at this point for March 2018. Since most have been "dead" that won't be a lot, but hey, it's a start One of these has a Facebook page which I still post too regularly, so once I figure out how I plan to use that I might see traffic for that one going up faster. We'll see.

Site 1: 6 blog posts - 23 visitors in March 2018

Site 2: 3 blog posts - 7 visitors in March 2018

Site 3: 16 blog posts - 24 visitors in March 2018

Site 4: 2 blog posts - 11 visitors in March 2018

Site 5: 0 blog posts - 7 visitors in March 2018 (no clue were those are coming from since I have no content on it and it's not me)

My first update will be on Monday, I hope to have at least one, maybe two blog posts added to each.
#blogs #journey #niche #profitable
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  • Profile picture of the author Kay King
    Just a thought:

    If your 'path' is to write blog posts....that's one thing. Relating that number to $$$ won't make sense without visitor numbers, will it?

    Perhaps weekly updates on post counts - and monthly updates on $$$ and on traffic?
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Singletary
    Why not choose 1 (or at the most 2) that have the most potential ROI as well as interest for you and focus on building them up?

    I know from personal experience it's tempting to want to do a little on all of them but your results may be much better by not spreading yourself so thin.

    Mark
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    Hi Leslie,

    Way cool. Fun to follow your journey.

    My suggestion: dive deep into re-learning blogging and niche blogging. The landscape changed dramatically over the past decade blogging-wise. I've been blogging the entire time. Used to be about publishing helpful content and a few basic SEO techniques; this helped you earn hundreds or even thousands monthly.

    Now you want to create helpful content persistently plus build strong connections with other bloggers in your niche. The opportunities arising out of these friendships - guest posting, interviews, profitable partnerships - are the lifeblood of what makes a successful blog these days.

    Reviewing top "blogging tips" blogs helps you get on the straight and narrow with what works these days.

    Happy Blogging.

    Ryan
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  • Profile picture of the author Leslie B
    Originally Posted by Mark Singletary View Post

    Why not choose 1 (or at the most 2) that have the most potential ROI as well as interest for you and focus on building them up?

    I know from personal experience it's tempting to want to do a little on all of them but your results may be much better by not spreading yourself so thin.

    Mark
    Thanks for your response, Mark, and I do see your point. However, for now it's just me testing out the waters again. Seeing if I can implement things back into my already busy life, which is why I want to see if I can keep up with a rather filled writing schedule. And knowing myself, I will need a variety of topics to write about to keep me from wanting to give up before it leads to something. It's what I did when I first started too, I started a couple of things, noticed success with one (and later a few more) and focused on those afterwards. The idea is to see if one of those will stick out in terms of traffic/income (maybe) and then I will turn my focus on that in the future. But for now it's mainly to see if I still "got it" as I mentioned before.

    Originally Posted by ryanbiddulph View Post

    Hi Leslie,

    Way cool. Fun to follow your journey.

    My suggestion: dive deep into re-learning blogging and niche blogging. The landscape changed dramatically over the past decade blogging-wise. I've been blogging the entire time. Used to be about publishing helpful content and a few basic SEO techniques; this helped you earn hundreds or even thousands monthly.

    Now you want to create helpful content persistently plus build strong connections with other bloggers in your niche. The opportunities arising out of these friendships - guest posting, interviews, profitable partnerships - are the lifeblood of what makes a successful blog these days.

    Reviewing top "blogging tips" blogs helps you get on the straight and narrow with what works these days.

    Happy Blogging.

    Ryan
    Thanks for your response, Ryan. And while I haven't been active as a blogger myself, I have been keeping track of other "players" in the blogging world, and I have seen the changes, which in itself are definitely a good thing. I will keep doing that, that's for sure!

    Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

    Just a thought:

    If your 'path' is to write blog posts....that's one thing. Relating that number to $$$ won't make sense without visitor numbers, will it?

    Perhaps weekly updates on post counts - and monthly updates on $$$ and on traffic?
    Kay, you do have a point, visitors would be a much better thing to follow for this as a way to see if one of those does have potential. Changing that right now. Thanks!

    Leslie
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    Taking it one day at a time!
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  • Profile picture of the author michal125
    You need to use high quality Seo optimized content and share you blog link in all social big site.
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  • Profile picture of the author Nick Million
    May I suggest that you implement a list building element to this as well? There is nothing more powerful in IM than having your own email list of subscribers you can market to over and over again. You seem to be ok with producing content, so you could create a valuable short report to giveaway in exchange for subscribers. You could then follow up with them on a regular basis and provide them with recommedations for related products and services that you are affiliated with for some nice commissions.
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    • Profile picture of the author Leslie B
      Originally Posted by Nick Million View Post

      May I suggest that you implement a list building element to this as well? There is nothing more powerful in IM than having your own email list of subscribers you can market to over and over again. You seem to be ok with producing content, so you could create a valuable short report to giveaway in exchange for subscribers. You could then follow up with them on a regular basis and provide them with recommedations for related products and services that you are affiliated with for some nice commissions.
      Actually, I will be working on creating a list of subscribers for each site over time, just need to create a short report to giveaway. Site 3 already has a sign up form on the site, I do need to set up either an automated series of emails to go out for new subscribers, or focus on doing a weekly newsletter. Still undecided.
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      Taking it one day at a time!
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  • Profile picture of the author Leslie B
    With the Easter weekend and some family obligations I didn't find the time to get here on Monday, and then I figured, why not do an update at the end of the first week (aka today). So, I did get some work in, not as much as I would have liked, but I did add an article on each site. I have not checked the visitors for the first few days in April yet, however. Will do that in on Sunday when I had a full week for this month.

    A few of these sites also had some social media accounts linked to it. For site 3 I have a FB page with around 300 followers, on which I kept posting memes over time even when I didn't update the blog. So, for this site I did a search on some interesting quotes, found a few interesting pictures in the niche, went to canva.com and created about 20 images that I'll be releasing over time on that FB page over the next few weeks, combined with sharing some of the older blog posts and the new ones. I will do the same for the other ones over time.

    I also have a lot of PLR on my computer, some of it for the niches I'm working on. I never just use PLR as is, it's more of a starting place for research for me, so I'll be going through them over the next few weeks to see what would be interesting topics to research more.

    Stats:

    Site 1: 7 blog posts - 23 visitors in March 2018

    Site 2: 4 blog posts - 7 visitors in March 2018

    Site 3: 17 blog posts - 24 visitors in March 2018

    Site 4: 3 blog posts - 11 visitors in March 2018

    Site 5: 1 blog posts - 7 visitors in March 2018 (no clue were those are coming from since I have no content on it and it's not me)
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    Taking it one day at a time!
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Singletary
    It's been 3 months since the last update. How are things going?

    Mark
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  • Profile picture of the author abodoha5
    Thanks for these tips
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  • Profile picture of the author oppyeaunome
    Keeping a close eye on this one. You have to take action if you want your online business to grow. Too many times I see people not hitting their goals because they just would not take action and make it happen. The more action you take the luckier you will get with this online thing.
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  • Profile picture of the author affmarketer101
    Keep growing bro. It seems you are on the right track.
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  • Profile picture of the author brettb
    Also interested in this one, keep us updated OP.


    I tried blogging in a few niches this year. But it seems Google has closed the door to new blogs in so many niches. Even if you have unique and interesting stuff to say, Google isn't interested.



    Happily I have found a new niche I'm passionate about and which has few competitors. I've also found it relatively easy to rank for keywords in this niche.
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  • Profile picture of the author newton
    Hi Leslie, how is this going for you?
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