This is Part #2 of a series. A list of all the other updates can be found at the bottom of this post.
I couldn’t have put it better myself George. No wait – that’s not true. I definitely could:
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
There we go – one of my favourite idioms, beautifully butchered by Dubya (as only he could). I’m more interested in the “traditional” wording, as it applies beautifully to the situation I find myself in regarding my authority site, Deal With Anxiety.
Any links to products on this page are not affiliate based – I do not get paid a commission if you buy any product that I recommend. If you would like to know why this is the case, check out my article: Why I Am NOT Trying To Make Money From This Blog.
I Am The Fool
I have just read through my previous posts regarding the site (here and here), and I can’t for the life of me figure out what I was thinking. The fact that the project started off as an experiment in white hat SEO, before evolving into a more typical niche site duel type affair, isn’t relevant. What is relevant is the fact that I targeted a set of keywords that are never likely to make me more than a few pennies.
And here’s the kicker – before I even started working on the site, I already knew. Here’s an excerpt from the post that introduced this project:
I did quite a lot of keyword research and found out that whilst keywords relating to anxiety and panic attacks offer some relatively low competition, high traffic potential, the commerciality of the niche is less convincing. Whilst the AdWords Cost Per Click (CPC) can be quite high, there seems to be a limited number of companies advertising for a lot of the related keywords.
So in terms of keyword research, it is a mixed bag. If I were approaching this niche cold, I would probably disregard it. But in spite of that, I have started work on Deal With Anxiety.
And here’s my justification:
Whilst I would love to make a good income from the site, I also feel like I can build something that is of value to people. That is a big driving force for me. I also think that the project will teach me a lot about what truly makes Google happy. And, it helps that I find it very easy to write about the topic– it is a piece of cake compared to writing about child modeling!
If you don’t mind, I’ll be the first call myself out here. What a dick move. I picked a niche with no commercial viability and probably spent 40 or so valuable hours on it. Whilst building something of intrinsic value is of course a noble endeavour, it was never going to be viable in the long term without an income to justify the man hours involved.
What Is The Problem With The Keywords?
As I have alluded to above, the problem is the competition (or lack thereof) for AdWords spots.
In my opinion, competition amongst advertisers is one of the least talked about factors when it comes to keyword research. From memory, Pat Flynn doesn’t even mention it in his niche site duel posts (please correct me if I am wrong). But when it comes to researching profitable keywords, advertiser competition is just as important as the level of traffic or CPC.
If you are building AdSense sites and the concept of advertiser competition is new to you, your keyword research strategy should accommodate it immediately. If you are a Market Samurai user, the field you are looking for is “AdWords Comp (AWC)”. If you use the Google Keyword Tool, the competitiveness of any given keyword is presented as either “Low”, “Medium”, or “High”. I am sure that whichever tool you are using, advertiser competition is featured somewhere (if not, you should think about finding a new tool).
So What Now?
Although I will be doing next to no work on this site once I have wrapped things up in the next few days, I’m not giving up on it making money just yet.
There is one keyword in the anxiety niche that is worth a look – “how to deal with anxiety”:
Those who aren’t familiar with Market Samurai’s interface should download my free keyword research and competition analysis guide, which explains it in detail.
Whilst these figures are far from great, they aren’t horrendous either. Both the competition and CPC are light (I would ideally want them to be above 50% and 65p respectively), but the number of searches (local US) is quite healthy. Let’s take a look at the competition:
Whilst it appears fairly heavy in terms of PR and domain age, the onsite optimization amongst the top 10 is atrocious. And most notably, an AdSense site has managed to make it to top spot.
Backlink Analysis
That caught my attention. As Trent Dyrsmid says, an AdSense site in the top 10 is a good sign – it means that all you need to do in order to rank above them is have a better-optimized site. And whatever this guy is doing, he’s doing it well enough to rank 1st in Google.
Let’s take a look at the site’s backlinks portfolio first, using Market Samurai’s PR and Anchor Text Analysis tools:
The tool shows 121 links that are mainly targeting two keywords: “how to deal with anxiety” and “dealing with anxiety”. The fact that the two keywords have the exact same number of links leads me to assume that the site owner created 52 linksets (i.e. sets of two or more links leading from one page). Stinks of article marketing to me.
It is important to note that this data doesn’t match with the numbers produced in Market Samurai’s SEO Competition module. Effectively tracking all of the backlinks to a site or page is notoriously difficult, so I use the above data as a guideline only, rather than an assumed interpretation of reality.
We can also see that there are absolutely no pages linking to the site with a PR above 0. This tells us that the backlinking portfolio is extremely low-quality.
It only took a minute of poking through the linking sites to discover exactly what this guy’s backlinking strategy was – RSS feed subscriptions, article marketing, and private blog networks.
So What Next?
I think it would be prudent to just spent a little more time developing backlinks to this site. I can see no reason why, with a little bit of work, I can’t at least rank alongside this site, which seems to easily have the beating of all other sites in the top 10. I should also be able to rank for “dealing with anxiety”.
I have broken my strategy down into three steps:
Step 1 – Onsite SEO
Whilst the site is already fairly well-optimized, I need to adjust it so that it is really nailing the two keywords I want to rank for. I will go back and edit some articles and images, and add videos where appropriate.
Step 2 – Offsite SEO
I already have a backlinks portfolio made up of 9 web 2.0 properties and 89 private blog network posts (of which 10 are targeted to either of my keywords).
I am going to drip feed all the web 2.0 properties and the relevant private blog network posts using Unique Article Wizard via one of the many Fiverr services available (I hate manually spinning articles, and I hate using UAW!). That will give me 19 highly-relevant web pages, all funneling link juice through to the main site.
I don’t think it is worth my time to continue submitting private blog network posts, but I have literally just found this site via the guys at AdSense Flippers. I may give their service a go.
Step 3 – Wait
This is the important step. Once I have started drip feeding all of those articles, I will wait to see the effect. Once I am finished with the onsite SEO and have ordered the article submissions, I will sit back and leave the site for four weeks. At that time, I will re-assess the situation and decide whether or not I should do any further work.
Is It Worth It?
If this were a brand new niche site and you asked me that question, I would hesitate. However, given that the site infrastructure and content is already in place, I am pretty confident of my plan being worthwhile. Here is my monthly income estimate for the site:
£22 per month may not seem like a lot, but it needs to be put into perspective. There are three things to bear in mind.
1. Conservatism
My estimate should be conservative – it does not account for any long tail traffic, and the site has 23 posts, most targeting a specific keyword.
2. Passivity
The income will be passive – once my ranking in Google has solidified, I will be doing no further work. Theoretically, the site will continue to make money for months and years to come.
3. Return On Investment (ROI)
You could (rightly) argue that my total ROI on this site is going to be awful, because £22 per month for my 40 hours of work equals an hourly rate of £6.60, when calculated over 12 months. However, what I have done in the past is irrelevant – it is the ROI on what I do from now that I need to take into account.
I will spend about £60 on UAW submissions, and I will probably spend a couple of hours taking care of the onsite optimization. For the purposes of this calculation, I am going to assume that I will not build any more private blog network posts.
I am currently not accepting freelance work for less than £30 per hour, so we can use that as my benchmark cost per hour. Therefore, I will be investing an estimated total of £120 at this stage.
If I manage to rank where I anticipate I can with my backlinking efforts, I will be making say £20 per month, or £240 per annum. A year’s worth of earnings would certainly pay off my investment (and then some).
You can take it even further by considering the annual return on income, which would be (using the figures above) 50%. A 50% return on almost any investment is considered excellent.
However, there is a problem with the above two methods – AdSense niche sites are extremely volatile assets. You could justifiably argue that using the annual income or yield as a basis for calculating the feasibility of an AdSense niche site is foolish.
Fortunately, there is one more way of calculating your return (and it is perhaps the best) – by the site’s perceived asset value. AdSense websites are regularly sold, and their value is typically determined by a multiple of the monthly income. I do not intend to get embroiled in a debate over the correct multiple, but for the purposes of this estimate, I will use 6x months earnings. In this case, the site would be worth £120 – which pays off my time and financial investment.
The Evolutionary Project
Deal With Anxiety is now entering its third stage of development. It started off as an experimentation in white hat SEO. It then evolved into a blundering attempt at making money where no money was to be made. Hopefully it is a case of third time lucky with my new strategy!
Edit: it seems rather silly that I didn’t include the most important piece of information in this article – my rankings! I am currently ranking 35th for “how to deal with anxiety” and 53rd for “dealing with anxiety”.
Read The Whole Series
- My First Authority Site: Deal With Anxiety
- Update #1 – The Value of Experience
- Update #2 – An Evolution
Creative Commons photos courtesy of Kevin Dooley, Kaptain Kobold, Oliver Hammond, Donald Macleod, jamieanne, fPat Murray, Nic McPhee and rstrawser
Congrats on your success with your niche site right now Seems like things are working out really well for you right now. If your looking to make a bit more money with your niche site you can always offer a free ebook to throw them into an autoresponder and pitch them a product down the line. I’ve setup some of those before and they worked out really well so I’m creating money on both a front and backend process.
One major problem there Justice – the site attracts barely any traffic! 🙂 It ranks in the top 10 for a few low-traffic keywords, but there’s nothing of great substance. Hence (in part) the drastic shift in strategy.
To be honest, with the amount of traffic I anticipate this site attracting, the time taken in writing an eBook would not be worth the investment. But I do agree with the strategy in principle, that’s for sure.
Yeah, if the site was increasing in traffic you could or even to test to see if it worked out or not. I know I outsourced the creation of an ebook with full design for $130 as a giveaway for a niche site. Or look into a PLR book on the industry as well too.
But, it depends on the traffic and the funnel that your looking to create for that site too.
I like your thinking Justice – it’s all about calculating the cost of any particular strategy and estimating if the return will be high enough (in theory, at least).
So if you want to build an email list and value each email collected at say $1, you know that you need 130 subscribers to break even on your eBook investment.
Lots of things to bear in mind! I look forward to chatting with you more on this topic tomorrow.
Thanks for another thorough analysis of the process you’re using, Tom. If you get your site gets to #1 for some key terms even if they aren’t very competitive, it at least shows you know what you’re doing to get there. Perhaps that’s not the goal with niche sites, but it’s a plus in terms of SEO credibility. Either way, I hope your new strategy pays off!
Hey Jeff,
It’s my pleasure 🙂
You’re absolutely right – even if the site doesn’t make much money, I will have further my SEO expertise just that little bit more. There’s value in that, even if there isn’t value in the site 🙂
Cheers,
Tom
Great post – thanks Tom.
Your timing is impeccable. I’ve just been looking for a new keyword to build my second niche site around (made some mistakes with the first, and I don’t think I’ll be making much money from that!), and have found a couple with over 30000 exact local searches in the US, which look doable. CPC is fairly low, around 50p but the high search volume would make up for that. Sadly, the AWC is <10%. Might have a look to see if I could turn traffic into cash some other way, but if not I'll just walk on by. There aren't many people who talk about the importance of AWC, so thanks for bringing it up.
Chris,
That is good timing! Glad I could be of help.
I hope you have some joy finding alternative ways of monetizing the traffic, but consider this – if not many companies are bidding for the keyword on AdWords, the likelihood of it being commercially viable for any form of monetization is low.
Niche site building is a huge learning curve, but the great thing is that every mistake increases your overall knowledge base. So even the cock-ups are of value!
Having said that, it is easier to simply pick up the lessons from other people 😉
Cheers,
Tom
Absolutely!
I think you’re right. I can’t find many viable looking products or services to drive the traffic towards. I reckon there is potential there, but it would be a pretty big job of building an authority site as well as a couple of decent products. Maybe one day…
I’ve learned loads from my first site. There are definitely things I’ll avoid next time! The site seems to be going through the infamous google dance at the moment (at least I hope thats what it is!) which is quite unnerving. Like you say, it’s all good experience though!
Chris
Absolutely Chris – your attitude is spot on. Sounds like you’ll be making good money in time.
I honestly believe that the vast majority of people who don’t make money from AdSense sites fail because they gave up too easily.
Best of luck!
Hey Tom,
I’ve made that exact same mistake…..twice! I got stuck on an idea I loved ignoring the fact that my keywords have limited potential. But at least it’s a learning experience. I now know for my next venture that proper niche selection and keywords up front are absolutely critical to success.
On the bright side, fighting an uphill battle for traffic has made me a lot tougher and I’ve learned a few tricks I might not have learned if things were easier…..now when I pick an easy niche/keywords, growth should be so much smoother!
Hi Geoff,
No matter what you tell yourself, it can be tough to not get “emotionally tied” to certain keywords. If you’re not too careful, you can convince yourself of potential that doesn’t exist.
Coming from the commercial property industry, I understand this all too well. You can fall in love with a property, but what truly matters is the bottom line!
I wish you all the best with your sites and hope to see you around here again soon 🙂
Cheers,
Tom
Hi Tom,
Your analysis is spot on and do you think that once it ranks no1. in google for those two keywords your income might be more than 21 Euros ? I still believe that we should be testing any niche site we are building initially with 4 to 5 pages (something like a microniche site) and once it proves to be a potential earner we can make it as a big authority website… Thanks for the great analysis.. 🙂 Do you intend on buidling microniche websites… If so a post on it would be great 🙂
Hey Sudarshan,
Good to have you back! How are things going?
As I said above, my estimate is pretty conservative. I would like to think that I would outperform it if I hit top spot.
I totally agree with your approach. I certainly do intend on building microniche sites (check out my most recent income report). A post will be coming up soon!
Cheers,
Tom
Thanks Tom 🙂 I am trying to diversify from adsense so making sure not to put all my eggs in the same basket… My new year resolution is to learn how CPA works and try to make a substantial income using CPA… I am checking out offers for my niche site…I will be even checking some high converting offers and then do keyword research around it… Who knows what might pop out 🙂 Looking forward to your post on micro niche sites 🙂
Very wise – I just said in another comment that diversity is the key to making money online. We work in a pretty volatile field!
I have barely any knowledge of CPA so wish you all the very best with that. Perhaps you can teach me a thing or two when you have become an expert! 😉
Thanks for stopping by.
Tom,
Sounds like you have a good plan to at least get to the top traffic spot.
Still though, have you thought more about how to monetize once you get a steady stream if traffic? As you pointed out adsence on it is pretty low to make that your primary method?
Are their good ebooks/courses/ads for dealing with anxiety? I think their must be some way to increase the 21 euros a month with a little thinking/research.
As for getting there (really the most important part, since what you do with traffic is moot unless you GET traffic) you might really want to look into BMR/fiverr over UAW/Fiverr.
I always felt UAW was a mixed bag for quality of links. More importantly, I have never seen as big of an EFFECT using it as i would like. Over the past few months of using BMR instead, I have seen a significant rise in SERP results on sites after using it.
Just saying…. but I think it is a more sound system than UAW and the quality of the sites it links from are a lot higher. It is the old case of quality vs. quantity.
Anyhow, good luck and I look forward to hearing how it all goes.
Hi Steve,
RE potential future monetization methods – I agree – there are better things than AdSense. However, I am using that as my bottom line. If all goes well and the site is attracting a decent level of traffic, I will consider alternative methods of monetization.
As I alluded to in the post, I will almost definitely be doing a mix of UAW links to anchor sites, as well as BMR backlinking. I have a bit of a soft spot for UAW as it was the primary method that got my first ever niche site to top spot in Google. I will be using Linklicious to ping all of the articles that UAW produces, which should improve its effectiveness no end.
Thanks for your advice and comments – I really value it. 🙂
Cheers,
Tom
P.S. A couple of people seem to be making this mistake so I’m not picking on you specifically – the currency I am referencing is the British Pound (£). We’re not in the Euro 😉
I used to think that if there was search volume for a keyword, but low competition, then I had discovered an untapped niche. But I guess there are no untapped niches anymore.
Robert,
You’d be surprised. To a great extent, it’s far more about perspective.
Say you’re looking for a good keyword, and you spot one. You think there’s potential for you to get in amongst the top 10. You break in and get to say 3rd spot with relative ease and move on.
That doesn’t mean the keyword is dead. Who’s to say I can’t slide up behind your site? Or get ahead of it with a better backlink portfolio?
People think far too much in terms of the top spot in Google, but at the end of the day, it comes down to math. Broadly speaking, hitting 6th place in Google for a 2,000 search keyword is as good as hitting top spot for a 1,000 search keyword.
Cheers,
Tom
Hi there
I came across this and thought it would be worth commenting.
I’m sure you know a lot of MS customers have been experiencing issues with key word ranking checks.
There are some other solid platforms out there; online tools would probably be best as you don’t have to worry about your proxy servers. Analytics SEO, Raven, SEOMoz and WebCEO are a few examples.
I work for Analytics SEO and we’ve setup a coupon code for market samurai users who have been affected by this issue. We may or may not be what you are looking for – but you can try it for nothing! In fact most tools these days have a free trial. If you want to trial our platform don’t hesitate to get in touch – tim.thomas@analyticsseo.com
Regards
Hey Tim,
Thanks for stopping by and making this suggestion.
I am now using a combination of MS and SECockpit. For rank tracking, I use the feature within ManageWP.
Your service looks great but is a bit out of my price range!
Cheers,
Tom
Cheers Tom,
Thanks for replying – Keep improving those rankings 🙂
Tim
Hi Tom,
came here via Pat Flynn’s site and am fascinated about your niche site projects.
Couldn’t find an update on how this site developed. How big was the impact of BMR being slapped by Google?
Thanks in advance for your insights.
Y.
Hey Yamato,
I’m not focusing on niche sites to a great extent at the moment – I have a whole bunch for which I am testing a few different link building strategies on, and I will be sharing my results at some point in the future.
As for this site, it took a hit from Penguin and the traffic about halved.
Cheers,
Tom
So…you get hammered by Penguin or what?
This site got hit – was attracting around 100 visits per day up to April 26th, then dropped to around 30. It has recovered a bit now to around 50…strange behavior.
Tom,
did you ever try any monetisation with this site?
Yes — AdSense.
This site looks a bit like one of my own attempts. I built it on a fluke, and have been working with it ever since. Luckily, the community on a FB fan page that I built for the site early on started to chime in often enough that I didn’t leave the site. It makes almost nothing even today, but the traffic has been growing and now I’m working to get advertisers for it.
Another site, in a travel niche is making around $190-200 per year and was built with the same poor keyword analysis – around the same month, too! That’s my second niche site I started up. A lucky hit.
Glad to hear about the evolution of plans, the resulting madness and all that : )
Cheers
Samm
Cheers Samm 🙂