I am now through my second week experimenting with The $5 Mini-Site Formula. I am using this technique to build one of my niche websites. If everything goes to plan, I should be able to generate $150 each month in recurring income.
As a part of my SMART Goals for this year, I plan on generating $500 per month from at least 3 niche websites. While I am nowhere close to reaching those targets yet, I am leveraging the $5 Formula to begin building one of my sites. If I am successful with this experiment, I will plan to replicate the process on another one of my niche websites.
Here are some of my recent notes of implementing this new process.
Outsourcing
In my last report I mentioned that I would be spending about $80 to hire a ghost writer to help me with this project. In order to be successful building a solid income producing machine, I need some help. I just don’t have the available hours in my day to balance work and family, while also working on building passive income.
I outsourced several short articles (250 – 300 words) centered around my keywords that will be used to drive traffic to my niche website. The ghost writer that I hired came at a very low price, but asked for 14 days to complete the project. One of the risks of
outsourcing articles is losing some of the control. While I would have preferred to have the articles completed in less time, I compromised with the writer to lower my costs.
I anticipate these articles to be completed this week and published on various article marketing websites.
Traffic
According to the The $5 Mini-Site Formula, I will need to drive about 120 visitors to my site each week in order to bring in $5 of income per day. While that doesn’t seem like too much, I have found it a bit challenging to do with a new website.
During the second week of this experiment, I received 39 pageviews to my niche website, which was down from 59 pageviews in my last report. That is only an average of 5.5 pageviews per day, which is not exactly where I expected to be at this point.
Why so few visitors in my experiment? I have not had the opportunity to follow through on many of the remaining steps laid out in the formula. Once I am able to finish the outstanding tasks on this project, I am certain that I can land 17 visitors per day.
Earnings
Even though my pageviews were down in the last 7 days, my earnings actually went up. I earned $2.32 this past week in AdSense earnings compared to $0.44 before. I am now averaging $0.33 per day, which is still a long way to $5 per day that I am looking to generate using this process.
The one thing that I can take from all of this is that I believe I made a good choice on keyword selection. While my traffic and earnings are nowhere near were I need them to be, I see some positive results on the CPC of my site. As traffic increases, I will most certainly see my earnings rise exponentially.
Remaining Tasks
Why have I not hit $5 per day in earnings yet using The $5 Mini-Site Formula? The fact is that I just haven’t had the time to complete all the necessary steps. One of my lessons learned I will take from all of this is that I can’t build a niche website on my own in a week, given my current schedule.
I plan to put time back in my day by using some batching techniques while leveraging my ghost writer in the coming days. If I am successful with both, I should see a nice jump in traffic and earnings next week!
Have you tried The $5 Mini-Site Formula yet? Are you seeing successful results?
Related posts:
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 4
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 3
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 5 & 6
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 1
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula Review
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John,
Thanks for the update. I have hired a ghost writer too, so far so good. It’s only for eHow right now, but now a niche site seems more do-able as well. I guess once we start seeing the bigger picture (i.e. outsource work to writers, etc), the quicker we can see the results.
@Moon – I personally believe it is much easier hiring a ghost writer for tasks like article marketing as opposed to a strict format required by eHow. All that said, if you can establish a good rapport with your ghost writer, then it may be easy to have eHow articles outsourced.
Let me know how it goes!
I may also hire a ghostwriter or hire another writer to co-author my site. As time is getting shorter but the need to expand is widening. So I look forward to how the experience goes for both you and Moon.
The $5 mini-site? Looks like a gimic. Anysite is lots of work.
@Money Funk – Agreed on the work required to setup a site. I have spent a ton of hours so far writing EzineArticles pointing back to my niche site for the $5 mini-site.
Do you have a preferred platform for hiring ghost writers?
John, where did you get your ghostwriter from, and how cheap is cheap? Does the low price mean the quality isn’t so good? Or did it take you longer to find someone who was a decent quality at a low price? Hope you don’t mind the questions.
Regarding my own $5 formula site, I don’t know if I already mentioned that I am not too happy with my keywords. But I have done all the pages and have done 8 articles so far. They do not get many clickthroughs at Ezine Articles at all – I think it’s because the topic is so specific. Because of this, I think I’ll have to wait for the rankings to improve. But I still have a lot more articles to submit yet! I have been doing it all myself, which is why it’s taken me a bit longer since I was away for a week.
@Ruth – I hired my ghost writer from Elance. I have also used oDesk in the past but prefer Elance if I had to choose. I am paying $.01 per word, which to me is on the cheaper side of articles that I have paid for. I will let you know about the quality as I have not seen the articles yet. I usually base a lot of my decision on hiring a ghost writer based on feedback provided by others who have hired the same resource. I also ask for published writing samples from sites like EzineArticles that I can trust.
I am going through the same thing with all the articles. While I knew this process would be a lot of work, I guess I did not realize it would be this time consuming. I don’t feel comfortable submitting the same article over and over again to several sites, so I am writing all the EzineArticles content on my own and will be using the ghost writer to submit the majority of the rest.
Thanks for the answer John. I have found great writers in the past for $0.01 per word, but usually they disappear on me quickly which is a shame. I think I will try again, I’m not familiar with Elance or oDesk but I think it’s worth me using them to find some writers, since I always need new content whether it be for my own sites or sites I plan to sell.
@Ruth – No problem, always glad to help. Where have you found your writers in the past?
I am going to give this strategy a try this weekend! I actually read about it a while ago, but something shiny distracted me and I forgot about it!
Unfortunately, I simply cannot stomach outsourcing. Everything I have EVER gotten back was complete rubbish. I sometimes wonder if they (the writers) even read it back once to see if it made any sense at all.
For now, I guess I will have to do it the hard way!
@Dusty – I don’t blame you on the outsourcing. I have not had great experience hiring out ghost writers. However, this time I am taking a different approach and using the content for article marketing sites. I also won’t use the articles on EzineArticles as I don’t want to jeopardize my account with them.
All in all, the $5 Formula requires a lot more hours invested than what I had planned. If I can get one site up and earning consistent daily income I will feel much better.
I wonder how long this sort of technique is going to remain effective now that it seems to have caught on. I guess as long as new keywords develop and flow into the internet with changes in culture, news, etc.
@Brian – Nice point. To me it is more about the amount of work you are willing to put into getting this sites up and running. The competition will only keep growing, but if you can put in the work to create backlinks, then you can always stay on top of the others in the game.