How I Got Rich

New Atomic Niche Site Launched

I’ve almost finished a new atomic niche site.

The logo links at the bottom of the page are yet to be set but apart from that it is ready to go.

I wonder how quickly the site will get indexed if I only post a link to it from this blog?

The site is about the a Tefal slow cooker and uses an Easy Content Unit for its price comparison feature. The rest of the site I build by hand using HTML, CSS and a touch of PHP. The item retails for about £40 from the cheapest merchant so will land me about £2 per sale (if bought from the lowest priced merchant).  This isn’t much but as my last atomic / micro site was for an item that cost £1,000 I am hoping this one might get more action as I think its easier to ‘sell’ lower priced items as the user is more likely to make a purchase on the spot.

Picking the Niche:

The main thing stopping me making more atomic / micro niche sites is that it is hard to find out whether an item will be something people will be searching for or not.  With a generic niche you can use the Google Keyword Tool to see how many people search for the niche per month.  As atomic niches get much less traffic as they are more targeted the GKT will often say ‘not enough data’ in the search results.  This makes it hard to know if the product you have chosen will get any searches and without any searches you will not get any traffic and without any traffic you will not make any money.  So how did I pick this niche? I thought of a niche – slow cookers – then went to Amazon and picked one with good reviews, that wasn’t too old and that over 75% of the people who had viewed it in Amazon had bought.  I also checked that lots of places sold it so I can do a proper price comparison that would hopefully entice the user to buy then and there as they were sure they were getting a good deal.  I also looked at the natural SERPS for the item to check out the competition.  The Amazon product page for the RK701115 was number one so to me that was a good indicator that I could get to number one as I have beaten Amazon product pages in the past.  That was all I had to go on but I had ticked all my boxes so off I went and registered the domain name and the next day the site was ready.

Promoting the Site:

I am aiming to get the site ranked well organically but if that does not work out I will try promoting it using PPC. If I am paying 10p per click I will need to be making a sale every 20 clicks to break even. If I can make  one sale every 10 clicks that should get me £1 profit per sale.  I would be happy with that provided I make a few sales per day (3.3 sales a day would get me £100 a month which would be great) .  But then how many people are going to be searching for a slow cooker each day?

I’ll be adding comments to this post to track my progress and see if this site sinks or swims.

New Site Launched

I’ve finished the design of a new site (#26) and put in a bit of content so its ready to be indexed.

Normally when a site gets indexed it tends to go straight into page one in Google for a few days and then if Google decides it is worthy of page one it will stay but more often than not it gets shunted down the ranks to page 10 and beyond!

Due to this I now always make sure my site had a fair few affiliate links on before it gets indexed.  This means that I have a good chance of converting some of the page one traffic it will gets before Google sends it off to page 10.  Another site I launched last week did this and managed to make a few sales before it left page one.  Hopefully the sites will return and make some decent sales but its nice to get a few quid out of them before they head off to exile.

This new site is for a type of tool and got 33,100 exact searches in June 2009.  If I get to number one in Google I’d expect 5% of that number in hits per month which is equal to 1,650 hits per month.  If 10% of those resulted in a sale I could be looking at ( {average comission = £1.50} x {10% of 1,650 hits per month = 165} ) £247 per month.  Highly unlikely but worth a punt nevertheless.

Another New Site For Summer

I launced a new site last week (#24) and it made its first sale yesterday.

This is another keyword niche domain site and is for a niche that will probably only get sales in the summer.

When I was researching the keywords I must have had the Google Keyword Tool set to broad because when I checked it just now it was 9,900 rather than the 60,000 I thought it was!  Oh dear.

I also registered the domain with an abbreviation of the keywords as that gets a large amount of searches too.  I was initially going to park this domain but now as it turns out to get more searches than the domain I started working on I think I will develop it.

I’ve not worked on two different sites in the same niche before so I will have to be careful not to duplicate any content.

Right, I’m off to go and recheck the last batch of domains I registered using the Google Keyword Tool but making sure I select ‘exact’ match this time!

Where is my site Google?

Yesterday I saw that one of my sites that had recently made it to the number one spot was no where to be seen in the Google search engine results pages (SERPS). This wasn’t one of my main earning sites but it made me realise that this could happen to any of my sites and if it were to happen to a big earner I’d be in trouble!

I hadn’t registered any new domains for a while as I had decided to work on my existing sites and try and get them ranking a bit better. But after Google’s treatment of one of my well ranked sites I decided I better get some more sites up and running to try and spread my earnings across multiple sties and therefore spread the risk of losing a site and a revenue stream

I saw down with my girlfriend and we went through some ideas for niches. Coming up with niches is probably my joint weakest area along with getting links. Luckily she came up with a couple of 40k exact match domains and one 60k exact match domain and a few 12k ones. I registered about five domains and got the first site up later that day. A few of these sites are seasonal and will make most of their sales in the summer months so I am working on getting those up and running first. The others should makes sales all year round so I will get those sites up and running after the summer ones are done. Think I will take some time out this weekend and get them all up and running.

If anyone wants to swap any backlinks get in touch.

New Site Launched

I have just made another new site.  This one will be referred to as site #23. It is an ‘atomic niche’ site or micro niche site focussing on just one product. So far it has just one page and I am going to leave it that way for now and see how it ranks. The main keyword is the product number and the domain is the main keyword and is of the .co.uk variety.

The site has an Easy Content Unit price comparison widget as its main feature followed by text about the product.  This product retails for about £1000 so I am hoping for some healthy commission from this one.  If this attempt at a micro niche site is successful I will quickly add a few more and see how they get on.

The main downside and unknown factor in setting up a site like this is that as these niches are so small it is unlikely you will be able to get monthly search figures from the Google Keyword Tool for them.  Therefore you have to take a leap of faith that the keyword/niche you have picked will get some searches.  But due to the ease of setting up the site and the lack of competition this issue should be out weighted.

I will be providing updates of how this site gets on for anyone who is interested.  If anyone out there has tried their hand at a micro niche site please post a comment about it.

Another New Site

Another new site was setup and indexed this weekend.  I will be referring to this site as #20.  I made it over a couple of days based on my standard template using HTML, CSS and a touch of PHP.

I bookmarked it in digg, delicious and twitter and it was indexed less than 12 hours later finding itself in the top half of page one in Google.  According to the Google Keyword Tool the keyword this site is based around got 6,600 exact matches in April (last month) in the UK.  So far it hasn’t had any hits from being on page one in the SERPS so we shall see…

The site doesnt have too much content at present and I am experimenting with Easy Content Units a bit more by placing the ECU right at the front of the page showing a selection of products and their prices rather than the usual price comaprison I have been using it for.

I’ve started on another site in a similar niche using the same layout but haven’t had the motivation to finish it off and have been working on existing sites instead as they are making me money so get my time.  Both these new sites are for items costing over £100 so if they do make some sales I should be looking at some healthy commissions for a change. I have also registered another domain for a site in a similar niche which I will probably get to work on when I get back from my holidays.

New Site Launched!

Registered a couple of new domains this week and have just got the first site built.

This site will be known as site #19 and has been made using HTML & CSS and is based around the template of one of my most popular sites so far.  I decided to give WordPress a miss this time as although it is easy to setup and use I miss the customizability you get with an HTML site.

I have used ECU to make a basic price comparison page but the main landing page just has product descriptions with links to the merchants.  This is the method that has worked best for me so far.  All items are over£40 so I should get at least £2 per sale.  The exact local search volume for April 2009 was 14,000 so if I get to the top of page one I should get 40% of that which is 5,600 hits per month.  If 1% of those visitors buys the cheapest item I will earn £112 per month.    A lot of ifs there but we shall see…

To get the site indexed I have bookmarked it in digg, delicious and left one comment on a new blog.  If it doesn’t get indexed in the next few days I will do the Gumtree method.

Today’s Progress

Went shopping with my girlfriend yesterday and she bought an item of clothing I had not seen before.  This gave me an idea for a niche so I checked the search amount on Google which was 4,400, so far so good, then checked if the domain was available.  The .co.uk was gone but was not being used so I took the .org.uk

Today I installed WordPress which I will be using for this site (#18) and added an Easy Content Unit which I have put in the first post which I will make sticky so it is the first thing users see when they land on the site.  All other posts will be positioned beneath.  The ECU has about 20 items ranging from £5 to £80 from three merchants.

Each post I add will be based around a single product and hopefully it will get indexed within the next few days.

This is an item of clothing that is suited for the summer and this will be the first summer they have been in UK high street stores as far as I can tell.  I’m guessing it will probably be the last too!

Also done a couple of blog posts today but nothing major.  My girlfriend is away for two weeks from Saturday so I will be making up for lost time and getting my existing sites up to scratch whilst she is away.

Today’s Progress

Two of my sites were indexed today (#13 & #14).  One was straight in on page one and the other wasn’t in the first 10 pages of google.

I also started work on another blog (#17) which I will be working on as a long term project and not be promoting a specific line of products on for now.  I will hope to add around five posts to it a week with the aim of building up a large amount of content which should get me a wide range of organic traffic.

Site #13: .co.uk vs .org.uk, let battle commence!

From what I’ve read so far it is best to go for the .co.uk version of a domain you are after and if that is gone then try and get the .org.uk

I recently registered a domain for a niche landing site with the .co.uk extension.  I didn’t do anything with the site as I was working on some others but today I decided to instal WordPress on it and get a couple of posts up.  As I was doing this I discovered someone had registered the .org.uk version a few days after I had registered the .co.uk version and already had a niche landing page up and running.

I will still go ahead with this niche as I’ve paid for the domain so might as well use it and it will be interesting to see how the two pages rank head-to-head.  I might even contact the owner and see if they want to compare sales data to help me get a better idea of what converts and what doesnt regarding links to merchants on landing pages.