How I Got Rich

This is the kind of idea I should be having

I stumbled across this website yesterday – Thailand ebooks – and it occurred to me that this was the kind of site I should’ve thought of or at least something along these lines.

Since being in Thailand I have been thinking about trying to find a way to use my location and experience of being in Thailand from an affiliate perspective.  I thought about a Thailand blog (which I did start) but couldn’t think how to monetise it.  I presumed the readership would already be based in Thailand so what could I sell them?  I couldn’t find any Thai affiliate programmes and ordering items online overseas is a bit risky due to the officials down at customs always on the lookout for tea money.

But the above site finds a clever way around that by promoting online products of which in this niche there are money.

Hats off to your sir whoever you are!

Getting all my sites to number 1 in Google

This might sound like an obvious goal but for now I am going to focus on getting my existing sites to number one in Google.  Most of them are at number one in Google for their main keyword but not all of them.

Normally I start a new site, put up some content and wait for it to get to number one.  If after a while it is not on page one or close then I leave it and move on.  But as I have vowed to not make any new sites for a while I am thinking I might as well get the sites I have to number one so I can see if any of them will get any traffic.

I have sites for keywords that get, according to the Google keyword tool, anything from 3,000 to 50,000 exact searches a month.  As I’ve now realised the Google keyword tool is not to be believed and does not even give a rough idea of searches.  This has made me think that I might be sitting on a site that gets 100′s of 1000′s of exact searches each month and I won’t know until I get the site to number one.

So with that in mind I am going back to my older sites that don’t rank well and seeing what I can do to get them to number one.

I’ve never really done any work on back links so I might have to finally get around to giving it a serious go.  I will also be adding content which I will probably end up outsourcing as I don’t have much spare time any more.  It is quite expensive at £10 for 500 words but probably cost effective in the long run?

Anyone got any tips for getting a site to number one in Google?

Google Keyword Tool Strikes Again

Nearly all my niches look good on paper with well priced products (£20-£100) and 20,000~ exact searches a month.  However once I get the sites to number one in Google I quickly realise that either the Google Keyword Tool was misleading with its estimate for exact match searches or no one wants to click on my sites or that the click through rate for being number one in Google is less than 5%.

Take one of my earlier sites for instance.  Last month it is reported by the Google Keyword Tool to have gotten 18,100 exact match searches but during that month it only got 529 unique visitors which is less than 3%.

I know the Google Keyword Tool is not renowned for its accuracy but surely this is way too out for it to be of any use?

I have checked my other sites and nearly all of them get around 5% of the figure quoted by the GKWT making them a waste of time as the traffic is so low!

How do you check that a niche is actually searched for?