Last week I highlighted my plan to start using The $5 Mini-Site Formula as a way to build and grow a niche website that I own. I have a SMART Goal this year to earn $15 per day from this site. Since I am currently averaging less than $1 per day now, I thought the $5 Formula was worth a shot.
Running a niche website is not entirely a passive income opportunity, but one that can generate significant earnings just the same. Operating a few of these websites is part of my overall strategy to build a solid set of diversified income streams to put me one step closer to financial freedom.
Here are my notes from the first week using The $5 Mini-Site Formula.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is an important part of the $5 Formula, as it is with most niche website strategies. From start to finish, I spent about 4 hours researching all of the keyword combination’s that will make up my site. I probably would have spent more time, but I already had purchased the domain name and had published some content prior to this exercise.
The process of identifying keywords using this formula were a bit time consuming but a good learning exercise I must admit. If I decide to setup another niche site using the $5 Formula, then I will plan on leveraging the Micro Niche Finder tool I purchased last year. I am always looking to make my processes more lean and cut out the fat – Micro Niche Finder is one way to do that.
Publishing Content
Since I already had my niche site up and running, I didn’t have to spend anytime researching and buying a domain name and setting up the site. I was able to revamp a few previously published articles and spent a total of 4.5 hours writing new content for the site.
Each of the new and revamped articles were very detailed to a subset of my keywords I am using. I choose to write these articles myself, instead of outsourcing them, as I wanted to see how long it would take to write them. Outsourcing future articles for other niche sites will be a way to make this process leaner and take me out of the equation.
Article Marketing
The main driver of traffic using the $5 Formula to my niche site will be through article marketing. I was a bit naive to think this step wouldn’t take very long. I am not even close to completing this step yet and have a lot more work to do. Setting up a niche site that works takes a lot of time and effort.
I have actually decided to outsource some of this work to help accelerate this process. I have budgeted about $80 to hire a ghost writer to create several short excerpts (250 – 300 words) that I will use to post to a bunch of websites. The intent is to drive traffic to my niche site through these articles.
If I am able to earn $5 per day in the near term through this process, then my $80 investment will have been worth it!
Traffic
My eventual target through this formula is to send at least 120 visitors per week to my niche site. I hope to eventually get a lot more than that in order to hit my SMART Goal target of generating $15 per day from this site.
During my first week of implementing the The $5 Mini-Site Formula, I received 59 pageviews to my site, which is half of my goal of 120 visitors per week. As I continue my article marketing efforts, I expect this number to grow. In the 5 weeks prior to launching this experiment, I only averaged 14 visitors per week, so I am seeing some improvement.
Earnings
If I stick to the plan, I should be earning $5 per day from my niche site. I am not really cool with that number and plan to build this into a $15 per day site to align with my goals. As I work to improve this process, I believe that I can hit this target by the end of the year.
The first week I brought in $0.44 in AdSense earnings. Averaging just over $.06 per day is nothing to go crazy about, but at least it gives me a baseline to work from.
Passive Income for the Long Term?
One of the reasons that I like eHow so much is that once I publish an article, I never touch it again. That means that I spend 20 – 30 minutes writing and publishing the content and invest not a single minute after. That is the passive income model that I look for when investing my time.
When it comes to running a niche website, I am not so sure about how passive they can be over the long-term? If I want it to be profitable and earn steady income, I am certain I will need to periodically add new content to the site to keep it fresh.
Since my goal is to earn passive income, I am documenting my steps through the $5 Formula. This way I can look to reduce time and costs through things like batching, outsourcing, and leveraging technology to make it a leaner process. I plan to share my results along the way!
How much time do you invest on your niche websites for maintenance?
Related posts:
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 2
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 3
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 5 & 6
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 4
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula Review
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John,
I’ll be closely watching this experiment! I am looking for another site in addition to eHow (that works on similar model) so I don’t put all my eggs in one basket.
At least you have some sort of earnings starting off, that’s always encouraging.
@Moon – I am starting to write some content for Suite101 as an alternative to eHow. Still working on getting my account setup and first article approved, but will let you know how it goes.
I’m also following the $5 formula so far I’m only making .60-1.00 per day but hey it’s a start. I wish you luck on your 15.00/day goal I will stay tuned
Please keep us updated seeing others succeed is always an inspiration
@Lamps – That is great. I didn’t do all that well with the $5 formula and am switching over to a different strategy for my site.