Test, diversify, rinse & repeat
November 16th, 2006 by Remon
I’m a big forum and blog lurker. I usually never reply or comment on anything but I love to spend some time reading blogs and forums.
I’ve noticed that a lot of newbies, and some more experienced webmasters, make the same mistakes. They start a site, write content for it and then want to monetize it. No mistakes here, but let’s break it down.
Start a site
Write content
Monetize
Anything missing here? If you answered no then read on!
The above breakdown is how most newbies think to get rich on the internet. They forget some important points though. First, no link building?? Are you kidding me?
1. Link building
Link building should be done for every site, whitehat or blackhat. No link love, no search engine love. You do want to rank in the engines, don’t ya? I always aim for 10-20 links per month for my whitehat sites. Sometimes more, sometimes less depending on the niche.
2. Write content
While writing content is good, make sure it’s unique. Don’t take other articles and change a few words or sentences but read up on your niche and write from your memory. Rinse and repeat. I always try to write 1 article a day for new sites or blogs, and 1 article a week for established evergreen sites.
What most newbies also forget is they need to keep adding content, or at least updating their existing content. Google loves sites that update regularly, and google is the traffic king so we do as she pleases.
3. Monetize
Monetizing your site is a good thing. You put the work in, so let’s get some money out. Unfortunately these days everyone and their mother has adsense on their sites. Now, I like adsense as well, but if you want to earn a lot money, you should also look into affiliate programs, text links etc.
3.1 Monetize - Testing
You can do pretty good with adsense, but sometimes your CPM will be way more with affiliate programs. If you don’t test it, you’ll never know.
With adsense, test different ad layouts and positions. The potential financial risk of screwing it up is very small, but the potential “risk” of earning a lot more because of a small change is very high.
I would recommend using multiple income streams on most sites, get the maximum out of it. Add text links, intelliTxt (if you can), affiliate programs or adsense. A small change like adding 10 text links may make you an additional $500-$1500 a month (for small sites). Test it and you’ll know. I can’t stress it enough, TEST TEST TEST!
4. Rinse and repeat
Most newbies, when having a moneymaking site, slow down on the site updates when they’re making money. Now listen good: it can all be gone tomorrow!
When you have a site that’s making money and the site doesn’t need you to put a whole lot of time in it, then rinse and repeat. Start another site, do what worked well with your first site and do it again. You can easily manage 50 to 100 sites so start building already!
You have a smaller chance of losing all your rankings, and a greater chance at making a lot of money. So what are you waiting for? Build a whole network of sites, have multiple income streams and make sure to get at least a few links to each site every week.
Test, diversify, rinse & repeat. That’s all there is to it.