Truth Files #3 – It’s Now a 5-Figure Network
Here’s an update on the network I started last November. Instead of creating a PDF file, I’m just putting it right on the site; hopefully it’s easier to read like this.
Just to re-cap, the network is about 20 sites. Each started with about 3 pages of actual content, plus terms, privacy, contact, and about us page and has grown from there. The smallest sites have about 20 pages, the largest probably around 75 pages.
I started building the sites in November of 2009 (so last year).
By December of 2009, although they were all small (and nowhere near finished), each site was ready to promote so I started backlinking to them.
Here’s a breakdown of the earnings since the beginning:
Month Adsense CPA Total
December - $82.44 $0 $82.44
January - $334.20 $0 $334.20
February - $473.12 $26.65 $499.77
March - $818.38 $167.87 $986.25
April - $1,196.77 $814.15 $2,010.92
May - $2,715.66 $1,430.50 $4,331.16
June - $2,258.39 $2,525.28 $4,783.67
July - $3,275.59 $3,142.88 $6,418.47
So that’s a snapshot of my earnings from this network of sites that I started in November of last year. I’ve put together two previous reports that have screenshots and some tips on how I got these results that you may want to read. You can get those here and here.
Part of the reason I’m showing you this is so that if you’re stuck back where I was in December, at only $80 something dollars hopefully you’ll keep going because you’re on the right track. As you can imagine, I’m very glad I kept going with this!
I earned $5,670.15 from the CPA offers and $4,756.68 from Adsense in August.
And this is all from the network of 20 sites I set up this past November.
So the grand total for August was over $10,000 for the month; the exact total is $10,426.83.
As you can probably imagine, I was very excited to reach 5-figures per month from these sites!
So the total time to get to 5-figures per month was 9 months. Hopefully it will stay above 5-figures for September, but still, the fact that I got to that point after 9 months is pretty exciting.
It hasn’t happened exactly like I thought it would because as you can see from the Adsense screenshot below (each line is for a different site), I’m making most of this money from just a handful of sites. I had to stop working on all 20 sites, and just pick a handful to focus on.
The problem is that if you start outsourcing or writing articles for 20 sites, you’ll go broke or wear yourself down too quickly. 20 articles outsourced only gets you 1 per site. So you’d have to do that 20 times to add even just one article to each site (which doesn’t really get you anywhere). If you want to add 20 articles to each site then you need to have 20 x 20 written. That’s 400 articles and 400 articles costs a whole lot more than if you just focus on one site and spend your time there.
But anyway, I’ll take the extra income either way. And I know there’s a lot more potential from this than the amount I hit last month since I have so many under-performing sites. As you can see, I have a bunch of them that are only making about $20 a month or less…
So that’s the Adsense screenshot and here’s the CPA earnings …
Sorry there’s so much blanked out, but you can see the totals.
Now by no stretch of the imagination did I sit on the beach somewhere and all this money magically appeared. I worked very hard to get my earnings up to $10,000 in August from the $6,000 I earned in July.
I spent a ton of time and money outsourcing content and building up links. If you’re wondering how much I’d estimate about $2,500 or so in July was spent on these sites. It sounds like a lot, but the thing is, I’ve earned all that money back and it should continue to generate a high income for me even if I stop spending on it.
Outsourcing that much content was a real learning experience.
The total was actually much more than that, I’d say about double, because I have my main site that I also was building up at the same time. So in all reality, I probably spent about $5,000 (most of it on content) between July and part of August. I actually stopped all my activities about half-way through August for a much needed vacation. I didn’t really resume doing anything until the beginning of September and to be honest, I didn’t do much in September and I’m only just now getting back into things. It may take me a while to get into a content outsourcing marathon like that again.
Again, I don’t recommend going out and outsourcing a couple thousand dollars on anything until you have a proven track record. And don’t even take what I’m doing as YOUR track record, because it really isn’t. And do note that even I didn’t spend that kind of money until I was already making money with this project (I spent what I earned in June on this so it’s not like it was my life savings or anything … please don’t do that).
Basically I outsourced content creation for my sites as well as content for me to distribute. Most of the money was spent on content for my sites (which is the way I suggest doing it). For one, I’m willing to pay a higher price for the content I put on my sites. And for another, I had a higher volume of content written for my sites than for article directories and other places you can add your content.
I really think this is important, and something to follow, kind of like a golden rule of content publishing. You want to add as much value to your own sites. The whole article distribution thing works, but you’re not out there to make someone else money, you do it to make money and build value for your business.
Plus once you have a site that’s gaining traction in the search engines, when you add a new piece of highly optimized content to it, you’re going to get top rankings for it much faster than when you add content to a new site. That’s because you’re linking to it from within your already ranked site. So it’s a huge short-cut and one of the fastest ways to increase your income.
I know I mentioned this in the last report, but I wanted to touch on it again, because I know the current trend for many in internet marketing is to just create a 3 page site and then walk away from it. That’s crazy, especially if it actually earns you some money. You’ll definitely make more if you research more keywords and write more content around related topics.
I should also point out that in most cases; I did not have time to build links to this new content. I was very busy just outsourcing it, managing the writers, and then adding it to my sites. So I didn’t have time to build links.
At this point I’m realizing that a better system for outsourcing would really help me out. I get all my content written, but there’s still a lot I’m doing on my own that would really be smart to outsource. For example, although I have outsourced it in the past, I’m taking the articles for distribution and loading them into Ezinearticles.com and Distributeyourarticles.com on my own. Just that takes a lot of time, and I really should find someone to do this for me.
Anyway, like I mentioned, I was little burnt out after outsourcing so much content and I did take a break. But I still earned a considerable amount in September … here are the totals from that month:
Adsense earnings were at $4,395.73 and CPA earnings were at $5,525.26 so that brings my September totals to $9,920.99.
Which is under the $10,000 a month mark, but still pretty good.
So my earnings did dip a little. I think it could be the market I chose (maybe Sept is a slow month), I’m also constantly tweaking things, and I just kind of took a break. I’m still very happy about this though and will keep working toward increasing the earnings in October.
So here are my Adsense earnings, each line is a different site. I have some sites earning next to nothing (because I haven’t had the time to promote them) and others doing over $1,000 a month just from Adsense. I’ve got 3 at that point and if you’ll notice, 3 more now that bring in over $100 a month from Adsense. Those are the next 3 I’m going to promote.
Here’s the CPA total from this network …
So what are the keys to going from ZERO to 5-figures a month in 9 months with content publishing?
I think there are 3 main rules:
1. You have to pick a niche where there’s money being spent. Here’s how you can tell.
It’s great when the market you’re thinking of entering is advertised all over; TV, magazines, online, radio spots, etc… Since you’re not going to create your own product (at least not at first and potentially never), there needs to be a lot of advertising opportunities for you to choose from. Lots of Adsense ads with a decent payout is nice and so is having a number of affiliate and CPA programs to choose from. I don’t like putting all my eggs into one basket so I wouldn’t suggest building a site around just Adsense. It’s nice to have a few checks coming in every month just in case.
2. You need a ton of traffic. I am getting this traffic through the search engines. Some would say that’s risky, but I have sites I’ve built from nearly 10 years ago that are still at the top of the rankings and I’m betting they’ll stay there another 10 years.
I’ll eventually start diversifying the traffic, but at first you need to master one method of traffic generation. So if you’re going to follow in my footsteps you would want to master SEO. Build your sites the smart way, with good, unique content and get lots of backlinks for tons of different keyphrases.
3. Work hard. Don’t expect to make much of anything at the beginning. If you’re new to this, I wouldn’t expect to make anything for the first 6 months. Just get a good site put together and start building links to it. I’d say it might take 2 weeks to see any movement in the search engines from your backlinks. So that means if you write and submit 5 articles to article directories and 2 weeks later you’ve only moved up 5 spots in the search rankings, you need to do more.
Don’t just sit there and expect if you do nothing you’ll move up 5 pages with your tiny efforts from before.
That’s all your going to get from that.
You need to keep working.
It may take 20 articles submitted all over + 500 directory submissions + 100 social bookmarks + links from 2 squidoo lenses, a hubpages hub, 12 other 3rd party sites, RSS feed submissions, and contacting dozens of other webmasters before you start getting a decent stream of visitors to your site. Doing that might get you 5,000 unique visitors per month or more, but it just depends on how well you’ve optimized your site, the foundation you built with your keyword research, and the competition in your market.
Or it might take you 2 times the work I just mentioned or much less. It’s hard to say, but if you’re not seeing traffic, you need to put in more effort. Some of my sites start earning faster than others, it’s just due to the nature of the competition.
But once you start seeing your traffic increase and your profits growing, don’t stop, keep working hard and you’ll be at a much higher income than you planned.
So those are the main rules to making income like this from my experience. Lot’s of advertising possibilities in the market, traffic, and effort on your part.
So from here, I’m still working toward my goal of $15,000 a month from this network of sites. Honestly, I feel a little weird sharing my income stats even now so once I get past the $15,000 a month mark I might stop posting these reports.
For now, I do hope they inspire you to get something like this set up for yourself.
I know I’ve been inspired when others post results of their success and in some ways it’s kept me going enough to get to the point I’m at. So I hope this helps you reach your goals as well!
All the best…
Lisa
Thanks for all the info! i always look forward to your reports. I wonder if you could tell us how much your pay fora decent article. Lets say 500 words of quality content? Ive had problems finding quality writers so any information would be much appreciated!
Sam – Thanks! I pay anywhere from $10 to $25 an article. Usually if the person is good with a fast turn-around time, I’ll increase their pay after a while. But many of the writers I outsource to I pay about $10-12 an article at first.
That’s so awesome!
I’m one of those who started doing a bunch of little sites. I found my focus was all over the place. I have never had more than 1000 visitors to any of my sites up to this point.
However, I am now focusing on your style of building larger sites. I have one now that currently has 30 pages and am seeing more traffic with this one site then all of my 12 other small sites combined.
I never write on people’s blogs. I normally just read them and read what others are saying. Your advise and teachings have done great for me & I felt compelled to write on your blog. So thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise!
Hi Lisa,
Thank you very much for sharing your progress with us. I for one, seriously appreciate it. It is extremely helpful and is encouraging me to continue my efforts and to change some of the things I have been doing wrong and to do others I have been putting off doing.
Your successful journey shows there really are no shortcuts so the sooner we stop looking for them, the better off I (and others) will be.
Thanks again Lisa.
Thanks for another great report, very inspiring and really makes me want to try out some CPA offers… My 3 sites finally broke $1000/month from adsense in September and if I could find a way to diversify with CPA it would be awesome. I don’t think you mentioned how to use CPA in your inlineseo course but it would be great if you wanted to share some CPA advice in a future blog post/product (not sure how broad the subject is for CPA on websites that gain traffic from SEO).
Really appreciate your report!
Alex – Congrats, $1,000 a month is great! It really depends on your market, but you can go to offervault.com and see if there are any related offers that your visitors would be interested in. If there are, then just apply for the CPA program and try some ads on your site. You might have to create a banner ad or even a text ad for the offer, but it’s easy to do on your own or pay a graphic designer to do. Sometimes even just a link stating ‘click here for a chance to win a free ipod’ is all it takes. It’s a great way to at least start. I hope that helps… Lisa
maybe you should come out with a course that details how to do this – establish authority sites. My only concern is that the success rate appears to be 3 out of 20, so this is the norm new people should expect, therefore they will need to work on at least 20 sites just to find a couple of really successful ones. If they work on only a handful none might reach this type of success.
Chris – I’ve said it many times throughout these truth reports, don’t build as many sites as I did at first. The only reason 3 are earning high income is because I completely stopped building out the others. They were the first 3 on my whiteboard in my office. All these sites will eventually be at this level, but I don’t have the time to build them all at once. It’s funny though because even though I say ‘don’t build too many at once’ everyone tries it and then asks me how to promote them all. You can’t. It’s too time consuming. Even I had to narrow them down. – Lisa
Awesome news, you proved that those people who cant make same kind of money is because they didnt follow you sincerely and dint work hard enough to get there. I would love to get some private consulting time with you to get inspired and start working.
That’s so immense, many congratulations Lisa!
It’s been great following your reports and seeing you break the 5-figure barrier is brilliant.
Out of interest, what CPA program do you use? I’ve used AdSense a lot but haven’t read much about CPA programs, but they definitely seem to be a powerful revenue earner so I’d like to learn more about them.
Congrats again!
It’s nice to see what’s possible although I feel like a total failure. I have over 40 sites and am only making $300 a month. Of course these sites don’t have near the amount of content that yours do. A few are one page wonders (besides the utility pages of course) but most have between 5-15 pages of content.
Cathy – Sorry, it sure wasn’t meant to make anyone feel like a failure. If you’re at $300 a month, you’re on the right track. Don’t stop what you’re doing. As you can see I was at only a few hundred a month for several months. And many of my sites are doing poorly. The trouble is when you’ve got so many sites you can’t possibly do all you need to promote them. I just started 17 and like I said there are a ton earning under $20 a month (even now, just look at the screenshots) because I don’t have time to promote them.
If I were you (which I was in that boat with these sites not that long ago), I would pick the one that’s bringing in the most money and go nuts with it. If it’s not bringing in the traffic you want it’s likely because you need to do more link building. It’s boring work, but it gets the job done.
All the best …
Lisa
These type of reports are so inspirational that I hope you keep them coming. At least until you hit that 15K.
Your InlineSEO system has worked great for me just with the keyword research part and coming up with tons of keywords to rank for. My stats for searchers finding my site by different keywords keeps going up every day.
Thanks for a solid course and I look forward to implementing more as I move through the course. I’m probably going slower than others since I’ve got a full-time day job. But I do see some light.
Lisa, thank you for the updates and this latest report.
May I ask, what were your Page Impressions and CTR for the months of August and September for those 20 sites?
Thank you.
Daniel – No, it’s against Google Adsense policy to display most of what you’re asking.
Thanks Lisa, You very much just made my day. I have been struggling with about 15 sites of my own. I have a Super Affiliate friend and she just gave me the one piece of advice that you’ve given – FOCUS.
It’s hard to make ANY money when you go back and forth on sites (although I can’t help myself). But I have let go of the majority of them for now, until the ones I’ve picked with the most potential become profitable (only 3 of them including my first self help site). Then I’ll grow the rest of my garden.
You’re GREAT! Thanks again!
Lisa,
Congratulation on your success and thanks for sharing it.
Your truth files are really a great inspiration for me and it’s has been a true motivation for me to work hard on 6 sites which I currently have. I was only making $100-$150/month so far from them but now I know that I am on right track.
I generally don’t comment much but after reading your 3 reports so far I am compelled to let you know that you are a real inspiration for many people like me who want to make decent earnings through online business.
Hoping to have at least couple of more updates on your progress before you hit $15/month !!
There’s far more value in your (far too rare) posts than in the tons of garbage that flood in from the email-spamming IM “experts”, and like the others who have commented, I really do appreciate your sharing this information.
I may have missed the information in the earlier posts, but are there particular sources of freelance content that you would recommend?
Thank you again.
Hi Bruce – Thanks for the comments! I really appreciate them and am glad people are finding value in this. I know for me, I’ve only been able to get to this point due to hearing about the success of others. So maybe my success can help others believe they can do it to.
I usually use guru.com to find writers.
Wow! You really are an inspiration. Just when I thought there was no money in Adsense too. All comes down to traffic I guess.
Hi Lisa,
Thank you for another excellent report.
I had been playing around with different niche websites for the past 3 years but not really focusing on any one of them.
Your “Truth File” series has inspired me to concentrate on one site at a time. I now have three sites that are making reasonable money and the revenue is increasing every month. At last there is light at the end of the tunnel. I just hope that now I can finally convince my family that I am not wasting my time, and that it is possible to make a living online.
Thanks once again.
Keith
Hi Liza,
Congratulations. I’ve been following your updates and I’ve learned a lot from you. I like to find out out the few sites that are earning you much more than the other sites – were these sites with higher CPC or average CPC. I presume they are the lower CPC ones but the reason why they earned you this much is because you have a lot of traffic and more clicks of course. I just want to know this as most of my sites have low competition so I intend to add more contents(pages) with more keywords like you.
Hi Peter – The sites that are earning have the most traffic coming to them because I’ve done more link building to them and they have the most content.
Hello Lisa,
I have been in IM for a bit over 3 years and have been through all the courses. You are one of the few people I trust and have respect for if what you are posting is true. I do tend to you believe you and sorry for a bit of doubt. However, I’m sure you understand in this “crazy guru-infected IM world” we are in.
I have been wanting to get back into IM because I do love the auto-pilot income it can bring in. The most I’ve grossed in 1 month was $41,000 (net $11,200) with ppc. I was promoting legit cpa offers and then Google wiped me out.
I really would like to master seo but it like ppc has me very concerned that the serps will just wipe out everything again. Even you stated that you will eventually start diversifying your traffic.
I would love to starting mastering seo and followin your footsteps but I just feel like the serps are so vulnerable to build a business on.
Your sites that are still making money 10 years later are very encouraging though.
Any thoughts?
George – It’s your choice of course. You can either take a risk or not. Personally I think it’s worth every bit of the risk to build your own business, but nothing is really bulletproof. Even though I really like SEO, I’d be a fool to not diversify my traffic as the amount of money I’m making now is too high for me to keep all my eggs in one basket. Even just by continuing to build lists on these sites and possibly optimizing videos I’ll be diversifying enough to feel better about my income.
All the best … Lisa
Lisa – I really appreciate your reports, they keep me motivated and on track.
I am going to concentrate on the uk market with .co.uk domains – over here most of the google serps are dominated by these TLD’s.
Also, in the UK I think that over 80% of searches are made via google; bing, ask and yahoo are right down the list, getting only the left over searches.
I know the search volumes and therefore visitor numbers will be lower than if I reach page one of google.com – but my thinking is that I won’t need to use as many resources/time/effort to get to page one of google.co.uk
Also, I think that your idea of setting 15 sites off at day one is a good one, as long as you just concentrate efforts into two or three sites at any one time. I think the dormant sites with a bit of content on them will age nicely and the results will come through quicker when link building efforts are applied to them. Google seems to love/trust aged domains and content.
I bought your course about a month ago – it is possibly a life changer. The problem is that my day job keeps on getting in the way and slowing me down.
If you would prepare an outsourcing course that would be something I would definitely buy, as I know how much more I could get done using trusted freelancers working on my sites behalf. It is definitely an investment in the future and this is a long term income plan, certainly no get rich quick with no work scheme…
All the best, John
Hi John,
Thanks for the comments, it’s great if my posts help keep you focused. The 15 sites on day one was a big mistake, I think I’ve said that now like half a dozen times, but people still try to do it anyway! All the best… Lisa
Thank you for this update, Lisa. I appreciate all that you have shared in your free reports and blog.
I guess the thing that keeps confusing me is that it seems like over the time you have built out these 20 sites of yours, since that November 2009 period, you pretty much paid for all your article content, right? And I understand you were at the same time still paying writers to help you with your other main site(s).
But in your last free Truth report I think you said that you weren’t profitable yet with the 20 sites? You were bringing in income with Adsense and CPA offers, but you weren’t yet profitable because of all the outsourcing expenses you had in the beginning?
Is that right? So even though you are now in the $10,000 per month ballpark, when did this set of 20 sites begin to become profitable for you? In July or August?
I guess I’d like to see a clearer breakdown of:
From November to September I spent XXXXXX on outsourcing.
At the XXXXX month mark I became profitable.
Because that’s an important part of the equation. People need to understand both the time investment and the monetary investment you made (with your outsourcers.)
And if you have already shared this, I’m sorry, I didn’t see it. You seem to be putting out dribs and drips of info about making XXXX amount on your site and “spending some money on outsourcers” but could you bring those two factors together?
Tell us how much you spent over what amount of time on outsourcing; and tell us at which month you became profitable. It would be helpful for people who otherwise might just be very impressed with your earnings results to understand what percentage of that is actually profit – and at which months profit kicked in.
Because it sounds like you weren’t profitable at all with these sites until summer of 2010 at least?
So your style of approaching these sites is very much that of building a longterm virtual real estate empire, but really having to give them a lot of time – and spending a fair amount of money on the outsourcing – before any profit kicks in at all, right?
Or am I completely misunderstanding? Apologies if I am!
Thanks again for all you are sharing.
Felicita – I understand what you’re saying, but it’s completely irrelevant to you that I’m willing to put back all the money I earn from these sites to continue to build the income. That’s definitely what I’m doing, although once I hit a certain amount monthly, I wasn’t able to spend it all. The time it took even to outsource was too great to spend all the money. But what’s that got to do with anything?
I said in I think the second report that there’s no reason why a motivated individual couldn’t build out their own 10 page site and promote it. Don’t outsource anything if you can’t afford it. You would hardly have to spend any money and if you kept at it, you could be making $1,000 to $2,000 a month after maybe 6 – 9 months. I’ve done this myself a few years ago. I wrote all the content to the site and might have spent a couple hundred dollars on link building, but other than that it was all done by me. So I know this works.
My goals are bigger now so I’m willing to re-invest most of my profits. But someone who’s starting at nothing and just wants to make some extra income or replace the income from their job doesn’t really even need to worry about that to begin with. I even said in this post not to go out and spend thousands of dollars on anything when you have no proven track record (and even if you do, it’s going to be a risk).
Lisa
Lisa. So everything in your training course was done in this project ? Anything new or different ?
Joe – My course is strictly an SEO training course. It does show the steps I use to get traffic to my sites in detail, but it’s not a ‘make money online’ kind of course. I don’t want to sell something like that.
Thanks for the speedy response, Lisa!
But I do think that understanding how much you spent on outsourcing for how many months and at what point your sites actually became profitable is a useful thing for us readers to know. (It doesn’t have to be the exact amount; just a sense of at XXX month is when I became profitable is helpful. And I wasn’t sure – was that this summer? So about six to seven months after launching that group of sites?)
Because with your teaching it seems that you are telling people that they can be profitable while doing all the writing themselves just as easily, hopefully? It’s just going to be a matter of doing the work themselves, following your steps, and being patient as the months go by and their rankings improve? It sounds like you’re getting “fast” results anyway by search engine standards – six to seven months to get the kind of traffic you’re getting is great.
I guess I’m just concerned that since I can’t afford to hire the content writers that I’m not even going to get close to anything like you’ve done here BECAUSE I can’t outsource. And I’m trying to get a realistic ballpark estimate of, if I work on this full-time for six months, will it take me as long as you or double the time frame? I’m an experienced affiliate marketer with a lot of experience building sites and picking products that sell well, but I seem to suck at the traffic building part.
Felicia – I think you’re missing the point completely. If you must know, I estimate I spent about $200 to build each site + the initial backlinking. So since I made a mistake and built 20 that’s $4,000 right there. Are you going to do that? I sure hope not!! Because like I’ve said that was a big mistake.
From there once I realized I was going to go broke if I didn’t change my strategy I focused on 3 sites only. I might have spent about $500 each on the 3 that I focused on so that’s another $1500. So whenever I made at least $5,500 was when this was profitable for *ME*. So I have no idea when that was, but you’re focused on the wrong thing at any rate.
I think you’re very set on making this out to be something that you can’t do because you don’t have the money. Again, don’t hire any writers and do the work yourself. It’s not a big deal. Or don’t do this at all. I’m not out to twist anyone’s arm here, I’m just sharing what’s working for me.
If I were to guess I’d say you could make $1,000 – $2,000 a month after 6 to 9 months of very hard work. I said that in my last comment and will repeat it again since you keep asking for a realistic ballpark. But I have no idea what your idea of very hard work is, some people think they’ve done enough after like 10 hours and then they give up. If that’s the case, you won’t make anything … just trying to be honest here.
Lisa i just want to say well done on the results that you got from these sites, your one the people online that i have faith in and you really do give, plan and simple advice as to how to make money online, just a thought about the outsourcing, have you checked out john jonas method of outsourcing you work to the philippines? this method that your using will really would work well with this because you can hire a content writer for less that $200 per mth along with that person doing the backlinking for you which really would get your sites moving at an even greater pace, lisa thanks for the follow up and good luck for the future.
Thanks for the great update and congratulations on your sucess with this project. We (my husband and I) purchased your SEO course and are following it step by step with a new site and are applying it to a couple of our existing sites…We know that we will be increasing our traffic over time because this time we are doing great keyword research and everything we are doing is very well optimized. We work together–my husband sets up the sites and writes the content and I work on the backlinks. We hope to be seeing more traffic to our sites soon.
Thank you again…
Hi Lisa,
I’ve been greatly inspired by your success to keep promoting my sites even though I’m hardly getting any traffic now and my family members keep saying that I’m wasting my time at this “internet thing”.
Just 1 question: Are you using any of the software tools such as SENuke (which is highly recommended by other internet marketers) to do your backlinking?
Thanks.
Hi Lisa,
I’ve been following you for quite some time now and these reports are extremely helpful as well as motivating. I have a network of 6 sites I’m really working hard at (about 50 hours a week at the moment).
I was wondering, did you share your unique visitors to each site per month? I’m very curious.
Thanks for the motivation!
Your perseverence shows it can be done. I applaud your effort. I was suprised that you made so much with adsense. I know adsense isn’t as big a moneymaker as a few years ago but with the right keywords and niche, you can make some decent money. Article writing is a big hassle for me but you have to plug away to see results.
I cant believe you have made so much money out of this. Thats realy great work. Keep it up mate!!
Great post and a good idea to post the pdf here. You are earning alot. Well done mate.
I have read all 3 of your updates and am very glad that you found success. Thanks so much for the updates. I do have one question though:
Are these static html sites or wordpress type sites?
Hi Lisa,
thank you for sharing these truth files with us.I get encouraged and do more.
I just want to know what other traffic sources do you use apart from SEO to your new sites that you create.thank you.
Superb reports unbelievable true lisa you are the only one online that i have seen that tell it like it is I have your course and will be using it to the letter from now on.
Just did a goggle search for do follow diver and your site is not only #1 but #2 and #3 how did you do that I know this site is an authority site now but I have never seen a single domain not only capture the top 3 spots but for all the same keyword how how how… if this is not proof enough that this course works then i don’t know what is
Prince
Hi Lisa, I just wanted to drop by and let you know that you are an inspiration to all of us who want to make more money from their site (well at least to me!) and who want to really treat this as a business.
I am already making around $1000 per month with Adsense and Amazon however I seem to have gotten to an invisible barrier and I can’t seem to get past that. I think one of my main problems (as you might have already guessed) is due to focusing on too many sites at one time. I have more than 20 sites that I’m working on at the same time, each day writing an article here and there for one site, then backlinking to it, then rinse and repeat. However as you mentioned in one of your truth pdf’s adding content at this level will get me nowhere. So I really got motivated to do more than I am doing now. I’ll start focusing on no more than 3 sites that earn me the most right now and leave the others to get some more age and will pick them up once these initial 3 are up there making me better moeny.
I’ve just found 2 writers at Elance (one more expensive and one more cheap, so the average is just right) and I’m looking forward to receiving their articles so I can finally do something more with what I have at hand.
Please do not stop posting these truth articles even when you are past the $15,000 mark as you are indeed an inspiration for us to really push our limits to get where you are as well.
Boy did I just write a novel? lol
Marika
Hi Lisa,
Thank you for journaling your progress towards a $15k/month network of sites. I’ve been an avid reader of your materials for some time now and I have your excellent inlineseo training course as well. I’m making some great progress through the modules and already seeing some traffic to my main site.
It’s obvious that your SEO plan works as evidenced by my own results as well as the results that you have been reporting here on your blog. However, as someone who was so used to working on several sites at a time, thinking it unwise to put my eggs in one basket, it was quite the struggle to put all that aside and just work on one site. But it seems to be working thus far.
I was wondering, how well is your new network of more focused, “category” sites doing as compared with the original, larger authority sites from which the categories were taken? I know you mentioned that the original site had hit 2k visitors/day, but that it had not yet hit $10k/month. If you are already at $10k/month with this new network(having really only focused on 3 of the original 20 sites), then I’m guessing that this new multi-site approach will end up being more profitable.
If my goal was say $5k/month, how likely is it that one site could get me to that level following all the steps in your course and focusing on adding lots of new and keyword targeted content each and every month while reinvesting profits vs breaking that site into 3-5 category sites and building those out with the same amount of effort? If you wanted to hit that dollar amount in the shortest possible timeframe, what would YOUR strategy be?
Keep up the great work!
Thanks,
Matt
Hi Lisa,
I came across your site whilst looking for something else and boy am I glad I did. It is fantastic you give so much value and share so much, excellent. I am going to bookmark it and come back time after time.
My question to you is this: backlinking can be so tedious to do, can I ask who you use to do this for you and do you set them how many backlinks you want?
Also I have a site with adsense, not done anything yet as only been up a few months, it’s a christmas site, so I was going to take the adsense off and put ebay xmas products, but do you think I should stick with adsense?
Look forward to hearing back from you,
Rosetta
Hey Lisa!
Your honest, no nonsense attitude to SEO and making money online is something I’ve only experienced through some exclusive forums from only a handful of individuals.
You give a realistic view on the whole situation so people can set their goals to match up with reality. It’s a lot better to hear:
“You can make $1000-2000 a month after 6-9 months”
Than
“How a student of mine made $73,211.97 on his coffee break!!!”
After having your program on repeat while at work (converted to mp3) I can’t help but wonder: “Raspy voice; confident but feminine – she has to be hot…”
I digress.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but…
Send me some newsletters!
Hi Lisa,
Well I’ve just had my 39th birthday and reading this have resolved to be living off my online income by my 40th this time next year.
We’ve got 1 site up and running and have ideas on a couple more niches, actually I have ideas of a whole bunch of niches but there isn’t enough time in the day to research them all
thanks for sharing all of this, it has really made it seem do-able.
Phil
I really want to be the master of seo as I worried about these PPC serps only will destroy everything. If you say you will eventually start diversifying your traffic.
Hi Lisa
I did come across an offer the other day that is for 1 original article per day for $147 per month but I cant remember the site name.
If you need it give me a shout via the blog.
Regards
Pete
Your post is very inspiring!
And thank you for all the tips at the end to try and increase visitors. I will now be spending my time writing some more articles that match my sites category to try and increase its exposure.
I’m not after making money on my site at the moment, I just want to see people visiting it at least first
Hi Lisa,
Do you notice any changes in traffic lately, as lots of webmaster suffering decrease of traffic due to drop in ranking. Myself included.
Thanks
Wow. This is a perfect post to keep my motivated. I have about 20 good sites I started a year ago but I’ve left them untouched because I’ve been cranking out mini-sites. I’m outsourcing content and going to focus on making 20 super sites.
Keep the motivation going for us.
Great post! Yes, it does take a LOT of work, but it’s easier than digging ditches for living… and if you do it right, it will keep paying while you sleep and while you spend time with your family… something digging ditches never does!
It seems like you’ve made a big investment, and done A TON of work, but that it has really paid off. Good luck to you and your future endevors!
—————————————————————————-
Rachel
Pet Care Expert
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for sharing this wonderful information with us,i cannot believe your ad-sense earnings, I have one media site, that’s having more than 3000 pageviews per day but earnings are very very low, even we cannot able to make even $1 per day. How i will increase my earnings
I guess the thing that keeps confusing me is that it seems like over the time you have built out these 20 sites of yours, since that November 2009 period, you pretty much paid for all your article content, right? And I understand you were at the same time still paying writers to help you with your other main site(s).
For those looking for decent but affordable articles, I use textbroker.com. Articles range from level 1 to 5, I usually use level 4 at .022 cents per word and the quality is good.
I find this very hard to believe…I used to make $6000 a month with Adsense in 2004, then dropped to under $100…same sites, same content….
This is some great motivation here. Very inspirational post. I actually have made money online by writing articles for other people who have websites. Now I would like to create my own sites and see if I can make some money. I hope I don’t have to wait six months. However, I do know that internet marketing takes some patience.
I’ve been more successful at affiliate offers than adsense. It’s nice to see someone pulling in 4 figures with adsense after a relatively short period of building backlinks and mini sites.
So you build out your sites, then start on the backlinking, rather than doing it simultaneously?
this is something inspirational that will make us strive to have what you are earning now. But how do you manage your ORM. Online Reputation Management is very important. What are your style and techniques? DO you hire a SEO company? I read SEOP Reviews, there are a lot of positive comments regarding this SEO company. Or you don’t need someone who will manage your Online Reputation because you are not selling products or offering services?