As part of my SMART goal setting for this year, I have a plan to build at least three niche websites that earn a steady income. My goal is to generate $500 per month in passive income (per website) that is recurring. While there is a lot of work involved in setting up these potential income streams, I believe it is worth the effort and will payoff for my family in the long run.
Over the past several weeks I have been tracking the progress I have made using The $5 Mini-Site Formula. Here are my recent notes and current status from this experiment.
Traffic
I have been using The $5 Mini-Site Formula for just over 6 weeks now and have seen my pageviews start to really drop off. I am not completely sure the reason for this, but am a bit disappointed in my results. Due to work constraints from my full time job, I have not been able to finish all of my completed tasks which has not helped. Hopefully over the course of the next couple of weeks I can complete my remaining tasks (i.e. finish article marketing) and move on to building up one of my other sites.
Here are my weekly pageview results to date -
- #1 – 59
- #2 – 39
- #3 – 79
- #4 – 89
- #5 – 93
- #6 – 19
As you can tell, my latest pageview results are a huge disappointment. Building a successful niche website (in my opinion) that earns consistent income takes a long time. I still expect to see some positive results from my effort sometime in the future, but it seems that it will probably take some time. I won’t let a one week drop in traffic (or even a couple weeks) stop me from pushing on with this experiment.
Earnings
My earnings over the past 14 days have been another disappointment, just as my pageviews have been. I did manage to squeak out some income in the past week which as about the only good news I can report. The one positive sign I can take from all of this is that the earnings potential from my chosen keywords is very high. When I can get consistent traffic to my site, the earnings will start to really add up.
Here are my weekly earnings results to date -
- #1 – $0.44
- #2 – $2.32
- #3 – $16.16
- #4 – $1.08
- #5 – $0.00
- #6 – $3.67
eHow Articles
While I have not been publishing too many EzineArticles or other article marketing content, I have been adding some eHow articles that point back to my niche site. Publishing content on eHow is probably not the best way to drive traffic to my niche website, but I have actually seen it work. Based on my traffic results, I have seen a decent number of visitors coming to my niche website from my eHow content.
Another nice side effect of these articles is that I have already earned $5.50 in eHow earnings from these articles in less than 3 weeks.
Final Thoughts
I have been realizing just how time consuming building niche websites can actually be. It has even made me think twice about how passive this type of income stream can truly be. The next couple of weeks should prove interesting for me to see if I can make some positive progress building up this site using The $5 Mini-Site Formula
In case you missed them, here are my first four status reports detailing the The $5 Mini-Site Formula –
How much time do you spend on your niche websites?
Related posts:
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 4
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 3
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 2
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula – Week 1
- The $5 Mini-Site Formula Review
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey! You can do this man, all you need is a bit of perseverance and consistency
@Paolo – Thanks! Consistency is very important. As long as I don’t get burnt out, I think I should be able to push on and make something of this site.
Hi John,
I can see why you’re alarmed by the pageviews, but in terms of $$, you earned more with only 19 page views (exception being week 3).
I wonder how competitive your niche is and if you can rank the website. How many articles have you written (to promote the site)?
@Moon – I will admit, the niche is competitive but something I still think I can do very well in. I have only written about 15 articles of my own to promote the site and have used the ghost writer articles on GoArticles. Still planning to post more when I get some more time.
This is still quite an accomplishment, you should be very proud of yourself either way.
Perhaps what you could do is opt for your ghost writers to write ‘pillar articles’ in your niches. Instead of paying them say $10 for 5 articles, pay someone $10 for 1 GREAT article which dominates social media and the search engines.
I’ve noticed on one of my main blogs, one pillar article I wrote generates nearly 30% of the traffic each month which works out to be about 3,000 visitors from the one article alone.
Just something to keep in mind.
@Murlu – I like the pillar article concept that you mention. I am actually working on writing some now for one of my niche websites.