Niche Site Case Study Week 6
September 27, 2007
I said I would wait two weeks before posting another update on my niche site case study. Well, it's been two weeks, and the traffic for the last two weeks is almost equal to the traffic for the previous month. Here's the stats:
Two weeks ago the total was 575 unique visitors. Now it's up to 949. Notice, too, that the total visits is 1,337, which means that about 30% of my visitors are return visitors. That's very important, as it demonstrates that visitors are seeing the site as a quality site worth revisiting. I thank the tools I used to build the site for that.
Even six weeks into the game, EzineArticles.com is still sending traffic. Here's the screenshot:
That's 269 total visitors sent from EzineArticles.com this month. Here's a snapshot of my EzineArticles stats screen:
According to this, EzineArticles has sent 413 visitors since I started the case study in mid-August. Comparing the stats to the stats from two weeks ago shows that I've gotten at least 100 or so additional unique visitors from EZA in the last two weeks.
Some exciting movement in the site's ranking in Google. Thanks to 3WayLinks.net, as of yesterday my site is now ranking #11 for its primary keywords in Google, and #14 for its secondary keywords. To date, people have found my site via 198 different sets of keywords. Thus, my Google traffic has officially overtaken my EzineArticles traffic for the month:
My traffic spiked now that I'm ranking better in Google for my chosen keywords. That resulted in a $2.90 AdSense day yesterday. That may not seem like much, but multiply that over a year and it's $1,058.50 — from one site. Build 50 or 100 similar sites and… well, you get the picture. So the goal is to keep things moving in that direction (which they are doing nicely).
I've also started getting a little bit of traffic from some of the other search engines (AOL and MSN/Live).
I am very happy that my site is already at the top of page 2 in Google's results for my primary keywords — and in only six weeks! I can't emphasize enough the power of 3WayLinks.net to get sites ranked like this. I'm hardly alone. I've read dozens of incredible success stories of 3WL members who are seeing the same results.
No doubt in a few more weeks my site will rank on the first page, resulting in far more traffic. The first page of results for any search engine gets a lot more traffic than the second page, and the top 5 results get far more than results 6 through 10 as well. My goal is to get my site in the top five for at least 2 of its 3 chosen keywords.
To date the site has earned $29.81 in AdSense revenue. I've been running AuctionAds.com ads on the site now, too, and despite 8,039 impressions, it hasn't earned me a dime. I'll be patient, since I've only gotten 38 clicks and the ads are well-targeted, but so far I'm not impressed.
$30 in 6 weeks may not seem fantastic, but look at the growth in earnings per day since the case study began:
Week 1 : 13 cents a day
Week 2 : 16 cents a day
Week 3 : 39 cents a day
Week 4 : 66 cents a day
Week 6 : 71 cents a day
My goal is to get the site up to $3 a day in revenue. Why? Because that means its earning about $1,000 a year. 5 hours of work for $1,000 in return per year is $200 an hour. Not a bad wage! Repeat the process 50 or 100 times and… like I said, the goal is clear. The site may do much better, as many of my sites do, but that's the goal.
Also, with Google you have to be patient. It takes a solid 2 to 3 months to rank well (even with 3WayLinks steadily aiming more links to your site from its network of websites). So don't give up on a site just because it's not getting a lot of traffic and earning wads of cash in its first few weeks.
Finally, one observation that I'd like to make is that my AdSense CTR is awful on this site, only 5.47% overall this month. However, it's spiked in the last few days since I started getting more traffic from Google for a variety of new keywords. Over the last 7 days my CTR was 6.46%. I hope that once the lion's share of my traffic comes from my primary and secondary Google keywords, my CTR will continue to rise. The preliminary evidence appears to be pointing in that direction.
I'll post my next case study update in about one month (October 25th). My family and I are going on vacation next month, and so I won't be available to post until then.
As always, to see exactly what I did to create this niche site from scratch, with only 5 hours of week, click this link.
Please post your thoughts and questions in comments below.
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Niche Site Case Study Week 4
September 13, 2007
It's been one month since I first started this niche site case study. Week four was a good week, to be sure. The site is building nicely, growing in traffic from Google and rising in revenue.
Let's take a look at the overall traffic figures:
As you can see, the site has had a significant increase in unique visitors, with a total of 575 unique visitors in four weeks. More and more of that increase is beginning to come from Google, as can be seen in the next screen shots:
August
September
Compare that to the traffic from the articles at EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com:
August
September
Last week's results showed 28 visitors from Google and 62 from EzineArticles.com. This week the site received about 1.4 times as many visitors from EzineArticles.com as last week, but 2.75 times as much traffic from Google as last week. So the traffic growth from Google is starting to improve. As I said in last week's update, it usually takes two to three months for all of the linking power of 3WayLinks.net to really take effect, so I expect to see that growth continue in the coming weeks.
EzineArticles.com has really proven itself as a source of initial traffic, as can be seen from my member stats screen above. 1,194 views of the articles in less than a month, and 335 visitors from those views. The articles are spreading around the web, getting posted on a variety of sites, which is helping to build authority in Google's eyes (since more than just the home page have in-bound links).
Revenue is up, too. Week one showed a total of $0.91, week two $2.30, week three $8.27. This week, week four, we're up to $18.64 in AdSense revenue by itself. In absolute dollars it's not much, but it's a 225% increase from last week, which shows promise going forward.
This morning I added AuctionAds.com to the site as well, to see about earning some additional affiliate income from the site. It's now showing super-targeted eBay ads next to the AdSense ads now, so we'll see how that works as time goes by.
So there you have it. One month and the site is growing quickly in all respects. For the details regarding how I chose the niche and created the site, see the original case study post.
I am going to wait for two weeks before posting the next update, so look for it on the 27th.
Please post your questions and comments below.
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Like what you see? Then subscribe to Marketing Insiders and reap big benefits! By subscribing to my free Marketing Insiders email list, you will regularly receive special member-only insider information, discounts and freebies. You will also be notified when new articles are posted here at the blog. It's absolutely free to subscribe, and you can leave the list at any time. For subscribing today, I will give you a valuable free gift as well! |
Niche Site Case Study Week 3
September 6, 2007
I'm back for the third week's results from my niche site case study. The overall traffic is doing well, as you can see:
So far I've received 367 unique visitors and 1,468 page views. That's an increase of 173 unique visitors — almost as much as the last two weeks combined. This is due in large part to the traffic I'm receiving from the articles, as you can see from the external link traffic:
August
September
The articles are still getting a lot of attention at EzineArticles.com as well, with 900 views generating a total of 233 click-throughs:
Google has now indexed 8 of the content pages, and Yahoo! has finally indexed the site as well, though MSN/Live still has not. Google is steadily sending traffic, which I expect to increase as I get more and more links into the home page from 3WayLinks.net and more links into the inner pages from the articles (which are still being spread around the web).
August
September
The site's AdSense revenue has risen from $2.30 last week to $8.27, due to more clicks and Google's SmartPricing granting the site a higher value per click. Very positive news there if the site can hang onto that EPC as the search engine traffic grows. It usually takes 2 - 3 months before a brand new site really starts to catch on in the search engines, even with a good number of links coming in, so we have to be patient.
My click-through rate was rather low, though, just under 5%, so I've made some modifications to the templates and uploaded the changes to the site. We'll see next week if it helped increase the CTR without causing a down-swing in the click-value (which sometimes happens).
You can read all about how I created the site and what I've done to optimize it for the search engines in the original niche site case study post.
I'll post the next update next Thursday. Please post your thoughts and comments below.
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Like what you see? Then subscribe to Marketing Insiders and reap big benefits! By subscribing to my free Marketing Insiders email list, you will regularly receive special member-only insider information, discounts and freebies. You will also be notified when new articles are posted here at the blog. It's absolutely free to subscribe, and you can leave the list at any time. For subscribing today, I will give you a valuable free gift as well! |
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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