My residual income earnings have been averaging about $100 to $150 a month; however, I did an Excel Profit and Loss recently and realized I’ve basically been in the red almost every month for the past six months. Why? I’ve been buying things I don’t need like extra pictures, premium video making software and other cool things I have no business buying right now at the beginning of my niche site career.
If you have the funds, you can buy a lot of cool tools and outsource a lot of the work, especially the work you don’t like doing. I’m just not there yet. My goal is to be in the green every month first.
I’ve decided to go on a spending freeze and only purchase what I need. The bare basics are a backlinking service and new domain names. I’m also adding a few photos here and there from istockphoto. That’s it.
It’s been an interesting past six months since I started building niche sites. Here’s some of the most important things I’ve learned so far about earning a passive income online:
Build niche sites that have low competition. Low competition means finding a keyword phrase, checking the top ten results from Google for that keyword phrase and making sure the average page rank of the top ten search results is lower than 2.5–actually 2.0 or lower is probably better if you’re just beginning. You can find the average PR or page rank of the first page results from Google by downloading SEO Quake or finding a PR Check site online. Simply add up all the page ranks and divide by 10. Ten is usually the number of sites listed on the first page.
The next thing to do to check the competition is to analyze the backlinks of the top ten sites from search results in Google for the keyword phrase you’re considering. I use Market Samurai (affiliate link) for finding the average PR and analyzing the backlinks. Here’s an example of a recent keyword phrase on MS I’m using for my most recent niche site:
If you look at the PR column, the average PR for the top ten sites for this keyword phrase is 1.1. That’s very good. The next column-the BLPs or backlink pages– looks very good too. There are no red squares and only one yellow square. In MS red is competitive, yellow is cautious and green is good or very low competition. I should easily be able to create some quality backlinks and get on the first page of Google with the keyword phrase I’m targeting.
The four rows of red in the Title, URL, Desc, and Head mean that these four sites in the top ten of Google have optimized the keyword phrase I’m going to target. In other words, the keyword phrase is in the URLs. That’s easy to do on WordPress, and not a lot of people do this one easy step. All you need to do is go to Settings on your WordPress Dashboard. Then go to Permalinks. Choose custom structure and enter /%postname%/. Don’t forget to save or update your changes. Then instead of your URLs having weird numbers, you’ll have the title of your post. This is what Google and other search engines read so they know what your article is about. You can even edit your title so search engines read one title and your readers read something else. The permalink is right under the title when you’re writing your post. It’s followed by a little “Edit” button. For example the title for this post is Residual Income and Niche Sites, but if you look at the URL it says Residual Income Niche Sites. The URL title is a little more search engine friendly. Anyway, once you change your permalink settings, all your posts will have words instead of non-friendly SEO titles.
Make sure the keyword phrase you want to use gets enough traffic. This information is easy to find at Google Adwords Keyword Tool. It’s also on MS too. The daily hits the number one web site should get for the keyword phrase I’m using in the example above is 204. Anything over 100 a day is probably good.
There are three types of results you can get from Google Adwords Keyword Tool and MS. One is Broad Match, one is Phrase Match and one is Exact Match. I prefer to use Phrase Match because that one is the most consistent for me compared with the niche sites I have. Many people like Exact Match. Here’s how they differ. Broad Match means the keyword phrase you’re trying to target in any order plus a bunch of other words. Phrase match is the keyword phrase in the exact order with some other possible words. Exact Match is only the number of times people search for that exact keyword phrase in the exact same order with no extra words.
Make money. Make sure the Cost Per Click (CPC) is at least 80 cents. Both MS and Google Adwords Keyword Tool have information about the CPC. Keep in mind that lately Google’s CPC tends to run lower than MS’s CPC. I tend to think Google is more accurate. You don’t want to build a niche site with a keyword phrase advertisers are not paying for unless you have some cool affiliate product that’s very sellable. I prefer to use a little Google Adsense and some affiliate links. I mostly use Amazon Associates, and I don’t like to use any companies and products I haven’t actually used and liked myself.
You should also check Google Trends because you probably don’t want to put up a site that only earns money one month out of the year like Halloween or Valentine’s Day sites. Of course you could have 12 sites that target whatever holiday or even is going on, but keep in mind those are already usually pretty competitive, but not impossible. Also, you may want to avoid keyword phrases that having been going downward instead of up on Google Trends. However, in general everything seems to go in cycles. For example, I haven’t seen flared bottom jeans for over twenty years. Now, they’re back in style. I actually bought a pair.
Create quality backlinks. Since I began building niche sites over six months ago, the preferred way to do backlinks has changed a few times. Right now many of the most effective niche site builders use Build My Rank (affiliate link). With BMR you write unique content (no spinning) and for every 150 words you insert a link to your site and get a quality backlink. Most people don’t like doing backlinks. It’s boring, but right now it’s practically the only way to move your site up to the first page, especially if there is a lot of competition. I like BMR because it’s easy to use. I quickly figured it out. The other backlinking programs I was using before BMR were working, but they were kind of convoluted and annoying.
Optimize your WordPress niche site with the best plugins. The most important plug-ins are All in One SEO, Google XML Sitemaps, Easy Privacy Policy and Google Analyticator. I also use Contact form number 7 and WordPress.com Stats. I have a separate page for the Contact form, and I like WordPress.com Stats because it has real time information about the number of hits I get to my sites. Be sure to create an About page too. It should have about 400 words with your keyword phrase at least two to three times. Don’t overdo keyword phrases. Google is on to that. Just write naturally.
Purchase the best domain name. The best domain names are exact keyword phrase matches followed by a .com, then .net and then .org. If an exact match is not available, you can add a letter or two at the front or beginning of the keyword phrase like ikeywordphrase.com. You’ll get up to the top of Google faster with an exact match domain name, so that should always be your first choice.
Join or create a mastermind group. The best way to stay motivated and keep up with everything that’s going on with the Internet and residual income is to join a mastermind group. I belong to a niche site mastermind group. Every week we meet online and talk about our goals, tools we’ve used and anything else we’ve learned. Being a part of a mastermind group will also help you stay accountable. It’s also a great way to meet people online and make friends.
If you haven’t done so already, go to Pat’s Smart Passive Income blog. He knows a lot more than I do and makes a lot more money online than I do. Most of what I’ve learned, I’ve learned from Pat and his blog and his niche site coaching class.
What are your tips for creating awesome, money making niche sites?
Best,
CM Herold
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