There can be plenty of highs and lows when building a niche website to generate passive income. This has been true for me over the past two weeks as I experiment using the The $5 Mini-Site Formula to jump start one of my sites. Last week I reported awesome earnings numbers from working this plan only to come back down to reality this week with a huge decrease.
Here are my recent notes and current status from this experiment.
Outsourcing
I reported last week that my ghost writer had completed the articles that I outsourced. I am only using these articles to help drive traffic to my niche website and writing all the other content myself. I hired a ghost writer to help me save some time with this project. I outsourced 27 articles, each 250 – 300 words to be published on a variety of article marketing websites. I am only a portion of the way through publishing these articles and hope to finish this task up this week.
I have realized there are several reasons not to outsource and hiring ghost writers is one of them. I will admit that I am not a great writer, but I never seem to be happy with the articles that I receive back. This is the reason why I am only using these types of articles to help build links and drive traffic to my niche websites. For the time being, I am writing all of the content for my niche website myself instead of outsourcing it.
Traffic
The $5 Mini-Site Formula uses article marketing to drive traffic to a niche website. Publishing content on sites like EzineArticles and GoArticles that link back to your website is the main focus of this plan. In simple terms, the more of these articles you can publish, the better chance you will send traffic to your niche website.
I have seen steady growth in pageviews to my site since starting this experiment. Here are my weekly pageview results to date -
- #1 – 59
- #2 – 39
- #3 – 79
- #4 – 89
As I work to finish publishing content on several different article marketing websites, I fully expect the traffic to my niche website to see some major growth as well. I have made some decent progress but have a long way to go!
Earnings
My earnings over the past 7 days were a big disappointment. While I am not getting all caught up in the day to day income that is being generated from this site, I still would like to see steady growth. In my last report, I noted that my earnings really took off which motivated me to build this niche website into a $500 per month income stream. After those great numbers, I had a reality check this week.
My earnings took a sharp drop which leads me to believe that last weeks results were a bit of an anomaly. As I continue to track this information, I should have a better overall idea of what I can expect.
Here are my weekly earnings results to date -
- #1 – $0.44
- #2 – $2.32
- #3 – $16.16
- #4 – $1.08
Final Thoughts
On the bright side, I increased the pageviews to my niche website which is a very good sign. Regardless if people are clicking on ads or not, they need to get to the site before they can take any action. Without traffic, there are no possibilities for earnings.
Over the next several days, I will be focusing on finishing up the The $5 Mini-Site Formula by completing my remaining tasks. This includes publishing the remaining ghost writer articles as well as completing the EzineArticles that I am writing myself to send traffic to my site. As traffic increases, I have no doubt my earnings will improve as well.
In case you missed them, here are my first three status reports detailing the The $5 Mini-Site Formula –
What kind of progress did you make building your niche websites recently?
Related posts:
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 3
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 2
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 5 & 6
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 1
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula Review
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for being so detailed in these reports, it’s really interesting. My $5 Formula site isn’t doing too well, but like I said I had second thoughts about the keywords. I have a new site ready to try which has fewer searches but the competition also looks very good (as in easy to beat).
About outsourcing, I am the same. I can be quite fussy, so I am only outsourcing for article marketing for my sites at this stage. I still prefer to write the actual site content myself, to make sure I have control over the kind of quality that goes out on my sites.
@Ruth – No problem. Detailing everything helps me as well as my readers (I hope). The outsourcing of articles bothers me I must admit. Writing is one thing I would be fine doing less of. I enjoy writing here on PFI, but can really get bored of it on some of my niche sites. The problem is that I haven’t been able to automate this yet, but I think it can be done!
John,
The sudden drop is rather alarming. However, this is your first month with your niche site, so we’ll see how it progresses in the next 3 months. I know that’s easier said than done, after all, I do the same thing with eHow. Watching your earnings not grow steadily really does take you on an emotional roller coaster ride and sometimes I find myself burned out. Be careful not to let that happen.
I do wonder why there was such a spike in Week 3. Either way, interesting set of reports John.
@Moon – I agree with your point about burnout. I have been working to build passive income now for almost 2 years and haven’t given up yet, nor do I believe that I ever will.
Not sure what is going on with the week #3 spike, but I am encouraged that my traffic continues to rise. We shall see what happens.
Hi,
I started one of these $5 sites recently as there was a lot of talk about this program on the blogs I visit. I’m some way behind you though; I have one article to finish for the site content, and then the daunting article marketing to start out on. I think I’ve chosen a good niche and a good domain name, and the subject is something I’m happy writing on, so it shouldn’t be too painful once I find the time.
I don’t think you can really judge success or failure until all the articles are submitted.
I look forward to hearing your progress with this.
@Des – As you probably already know, the article marketing task takes a ton of time. One thing that I don’t agree with in the $5 Formula is to submit the same article over and over to various sites. I don’t feel comfortable with that which would have saved me time.
Best of luck to you!
I wouldn’t worry about the drop at all, I’d just chalk it up to the natural high’s (week 3) and lows (week 4) of Adsense income. It’s a very unpredictable beast, and sometimes there is no rhyme or reason why you’ll bank big time one day, then make nothing for the next four or five.
As long as you’re making SOMETHING on a consistent basis, you’re doing better than most people! Even if it’s just a penny or two per day (most people don’t make anything). I’ve learned to enjoy the highs – man they are awesome! – but focus my energies on increasing the $ on the low days.
@Lee – Thanks for the encouragement. It is definitely a roller coaster with me on these niche websites. I am now seeing some uptick in incoming from a site I worked exclusively on in January and haven’t touched since. Hopefully the work I am putting in now will pay off down the road for this site.