Comments for Affaholic.com

Comment on Bing Search API Now On Paid Platform by Garavi Gujarat

Garavi Gujarat — Sat, 19 May 2012 13:01:20 +0000

can it will be helpful for small business?

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by web designer philadelphia

web designer philadelphia — Sat, 19 May 2012 09:51:38 +0000

Good stuff.
First questions:
What is current traffic sources breakdown?
What is the site currently making… with goal of $2000.
How many pages are on the site… pages/visit at 1.69 seems like not much depth.

Thanks for sharing

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Steve Eason

Steve Eason — Sat, 19 May 2012 08:52:02 +0000

Great! Looking forward to watching this process and learning a few things along the way!

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Jay (Jason Van Orden)

Jay (Jason Van Orden) — Sat, 19 May 2012 08:49:51 +0000

Great questions:

The traffic is 100% organic search (mostly from Google).

The site is currently only making the occasional web hosting commission. So some months it is $0. Now and again it will I’ll get a $75 check.

There are about 20-25 pages on the site.

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Mike

Mike — Sat, 19 May 2012 08:19:44 +0000

Great idea, and thank you for doing this!

Question: What is considered an acceptable bounce rate? 75% seems high (?)

Thank you,
Mike

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by clint

clint — Sat, 19 May 2012 07:51:55 +0000

Sounds great Jay! Question: How long has this site been live? Nearly 18,000 unique visitors per month is pretty impressive.

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by clint

clint — Sat, 19 May 2012 07:18:12 +0000

Nevermind, just saw it in the post. Sorry.

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Wesley

Wesley — Sat, 19 May 2012 06:45:16 +0000

Looking forward to it!

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Bill Alpert

Bill Alpert — Sat, 19 May 2012 06:30:39 +0000

I’d love a sense for the content development process, since it seems that the traffic is purely content driven. So please let us know how the specifics of how and why content was created.

Besides creating the content, what else was done to initially bring traffic to the site? Were you starting from scratch, or did you leverage an existing built in audience? Did you use PPC? Special SEO tricks?

Thanks!

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Ron

Ron — Sat, 19 May 2012 06:05:00 +0000

Very nice!

I’m interested to know how you get such traffic for a niche site.
Have you done any backlinking to it?

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Sanjiv Manifest

Sanjiv Manifest — Sat, 19 May 2012 05:25:33 +0000

Thanks Jason … impressive stats … look forward to learning how to monetize.

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Phil

Phil — Sat, 19 May 2012 04:39:04 +0000

I am very intrigued by this, looking forward to seeing how it unfolds. I am in the process of launching a new site, so this is very timely (just in time training!).

I have been through the acadamy and now putting the lessons learned into practice.

Tks

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Jay (Jason Van Orden)

Jay (Jason Van Orden) — Sat, 19 May 2012 04:02:52 +0000

This can really vary per niche and traffic sources.

For a home page, higher the bounce rate might be higher because it is attracting a wider variety of traffic and might now be as focused in topic.

I agree that the bounce rate could be lower on this site. This is definitely one thing I could look at, though I think I will concentrate first on monetizing the traffic that is there and then bounce could be considered for better conversion of traffic to money.

Given that I am already ranking quite high, I’m not worried about it. If I was getting lower rankings, improving the bounce rate might convince Google to rank me higher. But that is not needed in this case.

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Richard

Richard — Sat, 19 May 2012 03:04:59 +0000

While the emphasis on your site is on google organic search. Could you give some pointers on how to tweak online and offline seo to achieve better ranking for Bing and Yahoo. Google have been changing their search results algo far too often and emphasizing on smaller search engines may be the way to go. Its more stable and consistent. I’ve got sites that is on yahoo and bing organic search result but it does not seems to rank well on google and it would be great if you can give insight on how to rank well on these smaller search engines

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Jay (Jason Van Orden)

Jay (Jason Van Orden) — Sat, 19 May 2012 02:06:22 +0000

Great questions, Bill. I will definitely go into this more.

Here are a few things to answer that a bit now:

* The traffic is all natural SEO

* I focused on domain name, on page SEO, content topic selection

* There was just a little bit of link building to get things started, since then the links have grown organically

I think I’ll do a post both the content, the on page SEO and the one on the link-building. Thanks for these suggestions.

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Jay (Jason Van Orden)

Jay (Jason Van Orden) — Sat, 19 May 2012 01:22:49 +0000

There was just a little bit of link building to get things started, since then the links have grown organically.

I’ll do a more extensive post about this.

Right now I have over 800 .edu links and a handful of .gov that have built up over the years unsolicited.

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Frank Daley

Frank Daley — Sat, 19 May 2012 00:53:57 +0000

Great idea..a learning experience for me!
With 17K monthly unique visitors you must have several things going for the site.
Longevity is one, 25 or so post/articles is not many, I guess, (maybe it is for a site that generally just sits!)but they must be good ones!
Other comments re the process would be helpful too (See Bill above and others!) I have about the same no of posts but a list of only 25 (stop laughing!)So I have a lot to learn.

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Alan Forbes

Alan Forbes — Sat, 19 May 2012 00:20:48 +0000

When you say “bounce rate”, do you mean that someone goes to the home page, then wanders away? OR does that term have another specific meaning?

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Sterling (Jeremy Frandsen)

Sterling (Jeremy Frandsen) — Fri, 18 May 2012 23:38:57 +0000

Yeah me too! I love seeing someone elses stats.

Comment on Niche Site Duel – Investigating a Sudden Drop in Earnings by Brock

Brock — Fri, 18 May 2012 23:16:07 +0000

I think if Google did that, it would be their downfall. One of their mottos (though maybe a little ironic) is “Don’t Be Evil” and I think if they pushed out smaller sites that may have the best information, they’d be doing themselves a major disservice, and it may be an opportunity for other search engines to begin taking market share. Google has to try to serve up the most relevant information possible, and hopefully they understand that it isn’t *always* the big players that give you the most helpful and relevant information.
Great insights Pat, your site has inspired me to give online business another try after failing last year and pretty much giving up. I’ve also heard every episode of your podcast.
I’m one of those that doesn’t participate much, but I consume everything. I’ve bought a few things through affiliate links of yours as well. Thank you for all the insights and motivation you’ve given me!
-Brock
webmarketingcamp.com <– New and definitely not yet thriving

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Jay (Jason Van Orden)

Jay (Jason Van Orden) — Fri, 18 May 2012 22:59:44 +0000

The site has been up since summer of 2005.

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Jay (Jason Van Orden)

Jay (Jason Van Orden) — Fri, 18 May 2012 22:42:57 +0000

Thanks, Wesley. I’m excited about it, too.

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Jay (Jason Van Orden)

Jay (Jason Van Orden) — Fri, 18 May 2012 22:32:26 +0000

Awesome, Phil. I would love to give you one or two ideas that are actionable for your new site. Should be exciting!

Comment on Niche Site Duel – Investigating a Sudden Drop in Earnings by Celine

Celine — Fri, 18 May 2012 22:27:02 +0000

This is a fantastic post, Pat! You really lay it out and make it easy to follow your thought process. Even the ”Hmm…”s get us right into the same thinking space as you.

I, myself, am building my first niche site under the guidance of your Niche Site Duel. I have yet to go live, build traffic and begin to monetize, but the thought of monitoring income and Click-Through Rates etc. isn’t quite as daunting to me now as it once was.

Thanks Pat and here’s to future success with securityguardtraininghq.com!

Celine

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Jay (Jason Van Orden)

Jay (Jason Van Orden) — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:49:31 +0000

I’d like to think the content is quite good. I put a lot of time into it when I launched in 2005.

Admittedly the site needs a refresh. It still gets referenced a lot though. I’ll for sure go into the process of content creation.

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Greg Cheatham

Greg Cheatham — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:36:38 +0000

Jay, love the work Sterling and you do. I’m going to take 3 months off starting June 1st when my son is
born. I’m going to use the limited off time to concentrate on my blog along with yours. Really excited about this. I started my web site 3 months ago and right now I’m at page rank 3 I think. My site is http://www.HuntWildPig.com and is focusing on hunting wild Boar in each state. Sign me up Sir!

Great idea Jay! Hopefully you can help teach me to stay home with my son for good!

Follow the Water,

Greg “The Boar Hunter”

Comment on Niche Site Duel – Investigating a Sudden Drop in Earnings by Jamie Alexander

Jamie Alexander — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:30:44 +0000

Pat,

Just thought I’d throw an idea your way since it popped in my head.

So there’s 50 states (Or not. I’m Scottish, lol) and they probably have a lot of big cites in them, lets say 5 because I’m rubbish at math.

50 x 5 is 250.

I was thinking you could get someone to cold call around every company in the cities and ask them if they want a spot on the site. Let’s say it would be $10 per month for easiness.

250 x 10 = guaranteed $2500 (before adsense)

I was thinking when someone clicks on a state, you could have a list of the major cities with one number to call for more information.

I think the best think is it’s so cheap a company wouldn’t mind trying it out, maybe with a subscription to Papal.

Anyway, just an idea.

Comment on Niche Site Duel – Investigating a Sudden Drop in Earnings by John Stapleton

John Stapleton — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:25:09 +0000

Hi Pat – I know you drew the conclusion that there is something going on with the Adsense and maybe you have saturated your advertising on the site too much, but I’m wondering if you also did a comparison of the keywords that has been sending your site visitors(comparing popular keywords from a time of high earnings, compared to the present where earnings are lower)? For example – maybe at the time of higher earnings, google was sending you visitors from more BUYING keywords, such as “buy security guard training” or “cheap security guard training” which based on those keywords indicate the visitors are towards the end of the decision making process and hence ready to click and buy, but ….maybe some google algo changes are now sending you visitors through different INTENT keywords – for example “what training is required to become a security guard”, or “security guard qualifications”, which are of course more “discovery” type enquiries and arguably less likely to result in a sale. Anyway, I hope you get my point and I’m wondering if you did take a look at the top keywords sending your site visitors and indeed if there is a correlation between them and the drop in sales?

Comment on Niche Site Duel – Investigating a Sudden Drop in Earnings by Pat

Pat — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:43:14 +0000

Yep – already played around with this idea Jamie – a lot. Attempted a directory on the site that accepted paypal payments for a spot on the site but execution was much harder than I initially anticipated, so I had to step back to rethink how it should happen. I definitely forsee “old school” methods to get companies on board though, such as cold calling. Thanks for the push!

Comment on Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study Pt 1 by Jay (Jason Van Orden)

Jay (Jason Van Orden) — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:36:52 +0000

Alan,

According to Google the bounce rate is:

“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.”

So these are people didn’t stick around longer to look around.