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 3^rd 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