Truth Files #4 – Hitting My Ceiling
I just want to say first off, sorry for not posting much. I admit I am not good at running a blog.
I also don’t do a good job of moderating the comments. Unfortunately, I’ve got too many things going on so I’m just not as organized as I should be. Even though I get so many really cool comments, there’s always a few in there that are packed with a sting!
Unfortunately, those comments stick with me.
To give you an example, it seems there are a ton of people out there who don’t believe anything about anyone actually making money online. All I have to say is this is a business just like any other one. So to think no one makes any money with it is about as ridiculous as you can get. I think most of the people who question everything about everyone making money online probably don’t look at this as a business venture. Obviously, it’s taken me some time to get to where I’m at and I’ve been fully willing to show that here. It’s not like this income just happened overnight.
So anyway, since I know the earnings are what everyone’s interested in, I’ll get to that here in a minute. But I will be the first to admit that I’ve hit a wall with this for the last few months. It’s not like I’m complaining, ‘poor me I can’t get past $10,000 a month from this’, but I’m definitely stuck there (again, a great place to be stuck).
I don’t know why, but I have a hard time with that number, it’s my ceiling or something.
It’s like how some people think you can’t make money online, I’ve always had this, “$10K a month from anything is a lot and that’s probably all I can make mentality”. Even worse I find myself thinking, “wow that’s a lot so now I’ll just stop”.
It’s funny because I can start 3 things and get them each to $10K a month, but it’s traditionally been very hard for me to get one of them past that.
There are a few reasons why I’ve not moved past that mark yet. They’re kind of relevant to what a lot of people might be going through so I thought I’d talk about them.
For one, I decided to try to revive one of my other products. This was the first product I ever created and the one that got me into SEO in the first place. Most of the time I spent working for the last 3 months was working on that.
I did do a little with these content sites, but mostly, I just added content to them. I did next to no backlinking.
Part of my problem was that I thought I’d throw my computer out my window if I had to submit another article. I didn’t have a system for doing it. Even though I have a service I use (distributeyourarticles.com), it still takes time to copy and paste the articles into their system. I also manually submit them to ezinearticles.com
I realized even though this only takes about 5-10 minutes to do, I couldn’t stomach it anymore. I had kind of a mental block going on with the idea of outsourcing it (I think I actually thought someone else couldn’t do a good job of it, which is the lamest excuse ever), but finally took the plunge and do have someone set up to do this for me now.
I’m very happy about that and am busy having articles submitted for me. I’ve also figured out a couple of other backlinking systems that don’t take much effort from me because I’ve found ways to get them outsourced.
It really is a great feeling to know that even when you’re not working your business is not just earning, but actually growing. I’d like to remove myself from as much of the tedious, repetitious work as possible now and suggest when you start earning from your sites you do as well. I guess it’s kind of turned into my main business goal for 2011.
It’s too easy to get burned out like I did and then not grow. I would have done anything not to have to build backlinks and lost focus. Which is exactly why I went back to that old product even though I’d probably be in a better place if I hadn’t spent all that time on it.
The content publishing business is so scalable that it’s a real shame not to keep growing it once you’ve got things figured out. So if you’re stuck where I was do try to let go of some of the repetitious work. It’s a nice feeling to give someone else a job, people really appreciate it and it’s so helpful to you.
So right now I outsource articles for article directories in bulk and then I get all the resource boxes organized for someone else to submit them. So it’s not entirely hands free, but it’s getting much closer.
Obviously if you’re just starting out I don’t suggest this, it’s only once you have a system figured out.
Please don’t take my success for yours, this is essentially a business model, and just like any other business, you’re going to have to figure some things out on your own and will get better and better with trial and error. So during that stage (going from zero to $1,000 a month) if you don’t have the money to spend just do it on your own.
Anyway, here’s a re-cap of my earnings, from when I started this to what I earned in December…
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
August - $4,756.68 $5,670.15 $10,426.83
September - $4,395.73 $5,334.43 $10,426.83
October - $4,235.51 $4,048.30 $8,283.81
November - $5,033.08 $4,773.38 $9,806.46
December - $4,949.60 $5,274.18 $10,223.78
As you can see, I’m still right around $10,000 a month with this network, but not really much more than that. Honestly, I was really surprised I made as much as I did in December because these sites are not in the type of market you’d expect to receive a lot of holiday traffic in. I don’t know why October dipped down so much, could be a lot of reasons, but it was still a decent amount of passive income to be making from sites I set up a year ago. As you can see it did go back up in November and stayed up in December.
Again, I really didn’t build any links to these sites. I did however add a little content to some of them. Mostly because I have a few freelance writers I didn’t want to lose and I knew they could use a few jobs to earn holiday money. The extra content was something I could use anyway and was easy for me to get and publish on the sites so that’s really all I did between October and the end of December.
About 90% of the income is coming in from 4 sites now, but the rest are increasing so I’m putting in a lot of effort into building them up over the next couple months or longer. Here is the December screenshot for the CPA program. Sorry I’m not showing them all, some of them I can’t get at this point and really, if you still need proof from me after reading all the other Truth Reports a couple more screenshots isn’t going to help you J
CPA earnings for December:
Adsense earnings for December:
And here are the Adsense earnings which shows a little more as to the breakdown of where the earnings are coming from. Two sites earned over $1,000 from just Adsense while 1 was very close; $976.19 and another was $653.52. The rest were much lower. But as you can see there are quite a few earning over $50 a month. So that’s what I’m going to build off of in the upcoming months.
The nice thing is its pretty steady now. Again, I didn’t do much of anything from about October until after the Christmas holiday. I keep getting people writing in and asking if the traffic to my sites is dropping because theirs is, and well, no, it’s not. But that’s because I put in a lot of work to make my SEO plan stable. I go after lots of different keyphrases, not just one, and use lots of different types of links.
I’ve also noticed a lot of folks saying my SEO course is over a year old; geez I guess it’s not the shiny, new thing on the block anymore so it must not be good. And that’s fine, more for me and the ones who want to hop on the old SEO methods with me. It’s a lot better than spamming the heck out of forums by building up 100’s of useless forum profiles. Because Google’s never going to be able to sort that out of their algorithms (sarcasm here if you’re not getting it).
I’ve said it before, but the main stuff I use are directory links, article marketing a certain way, with the same article, just different resource boxes (with different links), RSS feed submissions, social bookmarking, 3rd party sites, and contacting webmasters. I also have good content on the sites and most of them have over 50 pages (or will soon). Each page is highly optimized because from my experience you don’t need near as many links to rank high when you’ve at least got your on-site sorted out.
I talked about article marketing in the last File, so this time I’ll go over a little about directory links. There’s a lot of misinformation about directory links out there. Most people say they don’t work, but I don’t see that. In fact, I’ll even pay to have my sites included in pay directories. It’s definitely worth it.
As a trial, because I recently read that an SEO guy I trust thinks free directories don’t work anymore, I did nothing to a couple of my underperforming sites from this network for a few months except free directory submissions. The traffic went up significantly. I’ve noticed that anytime I put in a batch of free directories, the traffic always goes up and stays up, but this was a good test to make sure. So I’m confident it’s still working.
I do try to find services that submit to quality directories. I do write a lot of different descriptions and use different titles when I submit my sites.
So maybe that’s the difference between why I see free directories helping my rankings and other people don’t. I really don’t know how one person can see such good results and another see no results, so there must be something different in the way we’re doing things.
Anyway, Directory Maximizer works if you take the time to set up your site in their account right (lots of different titles and descriptions and do your keyword research). I wouldn’t use it as the only means for backlinking, but you can definitely add it to your backlink plan if you want to see results over time.
So that’s just one thing I do. Again, the article marketing method I laid out in the previous Truth File is something I still do and will probably continue to do for the next couple of years if not more. And that’s because it works and doesn’t take hours to do.
Again, the goal with this case study was to get to $15,000 a month and well, I’m pretty confident I’ll be there at the end of Jan or if not, Feb at the latest. I’ll try to make a post here soon after and share a few of the things I’ve learned from this experience with you. Thanks to everyone who’s been following along. As you notice, I usually try to answer the questions in the comments for a few days after I post so if you’ve got any, just include them at the bottom.
So anyway, thanks to everyone who still reads my blog even though I am one of the worst bloggers ever. Waiting 3 months between posts is pretty bad; it’s good some of you try to kick me into gear with your comments!
All the best for a happy 2011!
Lisa
I look up to you! I’ll be you one day.
Unfortunately Lisa, there will always be naysayers…and truth be told, even if you showed more screenshots, someone else would come along with another comment questioning the validity of it all.
In the end, I think not blogging so often and focusing on your business has done you well and will continue to do you well.
I’m sure you’ll be at $15k before you know it.
– Yolanda
HI Lisa:
Great to see your post again.
I am also in the process of setting up some content heavy sites, following your model ( 50+ pages).
Will be following you closely to learn and implement in my projects.
All the best in reaching 15K by Feb!
Cheers!
I’ve been using some of your methods from inline SEO and while I’m not getting the results that you are I can say that things are definitely improving. It’s always great to get a reminder to diversify my links and I’m doing just that! I think I’m about to have my first $1000 month and for that I can think you and a select few other people that like to cut the hype and give REAL techniques that work.
One question I would like to ask if you have time to answer is how you get so much out of adsense. I know with the types of earnings that you are showing that they can’t be paying you 5 and 10 cents a click but thats all I can ever seem to get with adsense on my site…
Joshua,
Glad to hear your sites are improving, $1,000 a month is great! As for adsense, it’s all about the market. Maybe adsense isn’t the best way to monetize your sites you currently have if you’re only getting 5 to 10 cent clicks? I’d look into affiliate programs or CPA offers because you’re right you aren’t making enough with adsense to waste that space on your site for that little payout.
Next time you build a site if you really want to earn with adsense you need to select a market with higher adsense payouts. You can use the google keyword tool and figure out how much it would cost you to place an ad if you were trying to advertise with Google Adwords. If it’s $2.00 to get a top placing ad, then as a rule of thumb you’ll make about $1.00 max from that keyphrase. You also want to make sure there are lots of advertisers bidding on those phrases and you check that by visiting google, typing the phrase in and seeing how many adwords ads come up. If there’s only 1 or 2 that’s not enough and find something else. You want to go where the money is.
You’re too awesome. Love seeing there’s a new blog post in my inbox from you.
Hi Lisa, great stuff there – I listened to your interview today in wpgm and you certainly inspire me. I think you need to posibly set some higher golas that really grab you if you want to break beyond $10k.
Shaun
I wondered what happened to you. I was afraid when I got your email that you were not doing so good. I keep posting and posting to my blog and still can’t seem to make any money! I think I need to get out of the self-help niche or something. You inspire me though, I’m so glad you posted good news! Keep going because you keep me going!
Oh, and, your course is the BEST I’ve ever used. It’s not the same old thing everyone else has, you really get into the nitty gritty. My friend, who is better at picking good niches than I am, used your course to get himself up to $8,000/month – with ONE site! I can’t wait to catch up with him!
I love reading your updates! Keeps me encouraged.
Just wondering, how many directories do you submit to for each site? Also many articles do you submit?
Hi Cathy, I might do 1,000 at directory maximizer over several months, a good start is just 200, but you should mix those in with other types of links. As for the articles, it really depends on how big your site is, how many keyphrases you’re targeting and your competition. I might submit 10 at a time and see what happens, then 10 more the next month. You always have to do more linkbuilding than you think.
Hi Lisa,
Love your long term, big picture approach and techniques. I’m someone who knew this stuff, but went for the quick and easy approach, only to have it crash and burn 4 years later.
Having learned my lesson, I’ve returned to the tried and true method I originally learned almost 10 years ago. My one question pertains to long-tail keywords. Since we all want tangible results as quickly as possible, I’m curious as to how you determine which keywords you can quickly rank for – even with mostly just on-page SEO. Are you looking “only” at low search counts, or are you taking other things (competition, Top 10 PageRank, etc.) into account.
Thank you for all you have shared.
-Mike
Hi Mike,
Your story sounds familiar, I think we may have even spoken before.
Anyway, glad you’re getting back into this. I try to rank for so many keyphrases the competition is practically irrelevant to me. I do type in a few of the main keyphrases (The one’s with the most searches) and see what’s already ranking high on google. If it’s .edu or .gov sites then I get a little scared and would probably find a whole different niche/market. If it’s cruddy 1-3 page sites then I could care less.
I also might look at the pagerank of the pages just to give me an idea of how hard it’s going to be. PR5 or above is more of a challenge, if the SERPs are full of pages with PR below that then I don’t consider it a big deal. That’s all I do.
I like your approach a lot. I am desperately trying to remove my shiny new object fixation and your system (which I bought) while its not revolutionary and in some ways “simple”, is different from anything I’ve seen. I think most (me included) want a “do this, click here and wait for the $ to roll in”. I have proven to myself at great cost in time and $ that it simply doesn’t work that way. You are the only IM’er as far as I can tell who has shown what it takes and what it earns over time. So bravo!
One question I do have which is stopping me driving forward is niche selection. You developed 17 related sites for the Truth report…and only 6-7 of them make decent money….that seems to say that niche selection is vital unless you do 17 sites the way you did. So some will fly while others stumble along. (I can’t afford that). Yet in the report you seem to imply that as long as you build a properly optimized authority site you can get the revenue up …but that has clearly not happened.
The course deals with setting up 1 website so I’d be a long way from $10k a month…and so I should really want to develop 15+ to stand a chance of mirroring what you did.
Thoughts?
Hi JGK,
Thanks for the nice comments. You might want to go back and look through the other Truth Files. I built all the sites and then realized it was too crazy to try to promote them all at once (it was draining all my money). So I stopped working on them all and went to the first 3 or so on my whiteboard. Those are the one’s doing the best. The 4th one was the next one down. So in my case they’ll all be able to bring in 2K to 3K per month (there may be a few that are less just due to lower searches). I just haven’t had time to promote them all.
So yes, if you do build a properly optimized site in a good market (one with lots of advertisers like CPA offers, affiliate programs or Adsense, or even best; a combination of those), and you spend the time to promote it I don’t see how you can fail. So again, re-read these reports because you’re not getting all the info.
Glad to see an update on your network and I am glad it is continuing to perform well for you. It just shows that if you put in the work in the beginning that it doesn’t take much to maintain.
Congratulations on you success.
This case study has been worth more than most paid courses, especially those recent rehashed adsense courses (100k, X Factor’s). Everyone has what they need at this blog to build a six figure income. The question is, will they put in the work?
Hi Lisa,
Don’t let the barbarians get to you. People that have an employee mindset and can’t see past what they can earn immediately have very little chance to make it online. I struggled for 3 years before seeing any real success and the last 6 months have more than 5 figures a month. That number is still growing. I am using a different system than the one you use, but intend to start heading in the same direction you are going because it seems to be more stable and long term once it is set up. I would be very interested in learning your outsourcing system as it seems to be very effective. Maybe this can be a future post or a new product for you.
Lisa,
I eagerly wait for your blog posts and have your RSS on my iGoogle page. I recommend you have your assistant weed out useless negativity so you never see posts geared to upset you. There will always be critical people no matter how good the activity, but it is a low percentage.
I subscribe to a ridiculous number of newsletters and get pitches constantly. I have purchased way more than I should have, but I keep going back to your system. It is just so honest and that is what I like. I appreciate what you do. I would love to see more on how to select good niches. It is still my stopping point.
Have a great year and let’s hear from you more!!
Hi Lisa,
Thank you for journalling 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 4 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? I only ask, beacause it looks like your top earners are hitting an income ceiling, so I can only assume that’s because they have peaked in rankings for their main keywords due to your SEO efforts, no?
Keep up the great work!
Thanks,
Matt
Lisa why do you apologize for anything? You can never please everyone. The issue I have with your InlineSEO course is that you don’t address CPA at all yet half of your income is derived from CPA offers.
Create a course showing the step by step of everything you do and I will buy it. I’ve bought your InlineSEO course but I don’t feel like it’s complete.
Rick – half my income doesn’t come from CPA offers. It’s all over the board, all I’m willing to disclose was this new network, but I offer products (more than InlineSEO) work with adsense and affiliate programs. I don’t discuss any of this in the Inline SEO course because that course is a course on traffic generation using SEO. That’s all it is. It’s geared toward small business owners who already have something going and want more traffic to there products, services, or content publishing sites.
I don’t believe in make money online systems. In fact, I think if you are looking for a cookie cutter type business then your best bet is to find a suitable franchise (some are very inexpensive). As you probably know, all you do with Adsense is copy and paste code to your site. CPA is not much different. You find a product/service you think your visitors would be interested in and apply to a few CPA programs that offer them. Then you copy and paste the link code to your site. What kind of a course does that make???!! Try it, that’s all there is to it, but yes, you do have to figure some things out on your own to run a successful business, no spoonfeeding here, and honestly, no one else will have that for you either even if they won’t admit it.
You are truly an inspiration. Thanks for putting the Inline SEO program together. I just started the Primary Link Building Trio today (for the first time!). Thank you for being a beacon in a sea of vultures.
While I’m not in the Adsense/CPA game, I always enjoy seeing you pull back the curtains on your evil plans. The fact that you’re not spamming me every week with the next big JV Thingy-ma-bob is appreciated. I bought your course about a year ago and still reference it to remind myself what the core principles are.
Will have to look back into that Directory Maximizer again. Tried it once and wasn’t seeing the results I expected.
Thanks Lisa.
Hi Lisa,
I am a newbie and have just discovered your blog. I have already learnt so much on seo from you and these posts are so inspirational. I do have a question though regarding keywords.
You say you optimise your articles for more than one keyword per article but I am not clear how you do that. Does that mean you have several keywords in the title, heading, first paragraph etc…? If so, how would that make sense and isn’t that keyword stuffing? Or do you mean you target one keyword(the main one) in the title, heading, meta etc. and then just mention other related keywords somewhere in the text of your article without them being inserted in the title, heading, meta tags, and so on?
Sorry, just a bit confused… thanks.
Annabel,
I pretty much do the 2nd way. Target one main keyword in the title, etc. and then mention the others in the text.
Lisa,
Thanks for sharing the REALITY of marketing online. I have also come across mental blocks… and know how powerful they can be. I am looking forward to seeing the $15,000 report.
Heather
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for the update, it is good to know it is working even if you are having a with your “ceiling”…
And for get the cat calls and nay-sayers. The world if full of people that never succeed because they are to busy looking at what the down sides are and never take any action to make something good happen. Leave them to their own misery.
Keep the good information coming and hope 2011 is better than your 2010.
Phil
Hi Lisa
I would rather read one of your blog posts every 3 months or so than a daily post from someone who has nothing to say:-) So don’t feel bad about your blogging skills!
Thanks
Rachel
Lisa,
Please don’t apologize to the naysayers about making money. Your energy should just supporting “us business owners”. I have always maintained that an owners attitude is only obtained by owning a business. I have owned a brick and motar business and have had to focus on the offline business as the same “owners attitude”.
Thanks for the directory maximizer, I tried it out for 150 sites for $24, that is pretty cheap outsourcing.
I cannot believe that your back linking is not so relevant on your sites.
Thanks,
mark
cool and informative post. stories about stuff that works are always interesting.
Your blog posts are always well worth the wait, I learned well from your methods and they have worked so well for me that I love seeing an update from you to see if you do anything new or what not. Too bad some people do not believe you, to them I will simply tell them that I went from not knowing how to host a website last march to making $100+ a day from adsense (in truth files #2 or 3 I mentionned that I was at $20 at the time!). How did I do it? I simply stuck with your methods, the $100 is from 4 websites with 80% of the income from 2. Don’t create spam, write good content and non spammy backlinks and it works.
Also, I did not believe in directory submissions even when I read them from your guide a year ago. Yet, I tried them 2 months ago and yes they do work for me (interestingly I do it the exact same way as you, shows that when you put in some extra effort you get extra results!)
Alex – that is awesome, thanks for letting me know!
As always Lisa – Thanks for sharing!
It’s always great to read your posts, however infrequent, your honesty shines through.
I reckon the people that think making money online is a myth, maybe have had their fingers burnt by a few scamsters or have only dipped their toes in the water and not applied the full methods for the necessary months.
What I’m trying to say is that – this is a business and just like most other business – you have to put the graft in for six+ months before you see any returns. This is a difficult concept for 99% of people, as we’re all used to working for a month and getting a pay cheque, to an amount that was agreed before we started working. This business is very unknown and you have to work for at least 6 to 12 months before you start cashing the cheques. It takes a great leap of faith to devote yourself to do this.
My advise to anyone thinking of taking the leap is to get themselves a solid plan, that works, like Lisa’s and put in at least a year’s work before you start whinging about it not being real.
Keep up the good and honest work.
All the best, John
Great point about the directory backlinking as part of the strategy. I do that with some of my clients. The main thing is to have some high quality links in with the simpler links. When you have the right mix, a link is link is a link. Also, it sounds like your roadblock is mostly mental. Re-focus on your reason for having your business or find a bigger reason!
Lisa, I think its awesome growing your business the way you have, its so hard to give in to adverse comments about your integrity, stay true to who you are. Sorry to hear a bit about the burn out, its easy to get that way in solopreuner land. I find it hard to outsource too, but starting to for my sanity – its also a good lesson in letting go of my control tendencies.
I am working through your seo inline system, I love your work, it is so logical to me and easy to follow. I changed tack in the middle and have set up a new website which is much more amenable to the strategies you suggest – looking forward to big things for me, in 2011.
As far as your glass ceiling, you are right there probably is some subconscious limitation in there. I have just started training with Chris Howard, at the Academy of Wealth and Achievement. It has been incredible, it has turned my life around, mainly because I am learning so much about myself and one of the things we all have are boundary limitations and yours is $10,000. 2011 break through that ceiling.
Thanks for being so transparent, Lisa. It’s really a breath of fresh air, in the IM space.
The gap in blog posts is no big thing. Mainly because we know you’re busy practicing what you teach. And when you do post something, it’s worth it.
Personally, I IMMEDIATELY open your emails when I get them. I can’t say that for a lot of people.
Like Yolanda mentioned, it doesn’t matter what you do, there will always be someone who wants to discredit or keep you down to their level.
You and your bank account know that the system you use works. And that’s the only thing that matters! Just ignore the naysayers and keep doing your thing.
Thanks again for sharing your process. It really helps to see someone approach building an income online, in a systematic & practical way – without the hype.
You’re appreciated!
Lisa, love your updates and the interview with Mark.
There are always the negative people Lisa. A lot of the time it is people who are jealous of ya!
Personally, I like the fact that you blog post when you have something of value to say.
Most bloggers post a whole lot of filler between meaningful posts.
Thanks for the update. We have your course and are working our way through it. We think it is the best one out there and have seen a rise in our online income–we consistantly go back and relisten to different sections to make sure we haven’t missed anything. Thank you again!
I just want to thank everyone who has made a comment here. It’s wonderful to feel so appreciated and to hear about some of your successes! Great job and maybe we’ll all reach our goals this year.
Thanks Lisa I will review the reports again but thanks for spelling it out for me…I have tendency to think too much
Time for massive…but well thought out…action 
And as for the loonies out there who are putting you down …well I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said that “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”. Don’t even give them the time of day. The feedback on this blog clearly shows that your reports/methods have been extremely valuable and have made a difference. I know they have for me. I will write my own updates by mid year.
Hi Lisa,
Thanks so much for taking the time to respond. Yes, we’ve spoken before. I had to go back to a job for awhile and make a clean break from everything I was doing so I could return fresh and start from scratch. There’s nothing more deflating then watching a 6 figure income drop to $400/month in a span of 18 months.
I think the biggest challenge for all of us (myself included) is faith – faith that what we are doing in the early days, weeks, and even months is ultimately going to work out.
I’m there now. I’ve been building a rock-solid new site for about a month. Traffic is essentially zilch. Now I’ve done very little backlinking so far (that part is just getting ready to ramp up), but even with the years of experience I have, I still find myself wondering “am I wasting my time?” “Will I ever see traffic?”
Once you start seeing a steady stream of traffic and some income, you realize that anything is possible via scaling what you’ve just done. But getting to that point without giving up is without a doubt the hardest part.
Thank you once again for your willingness to share your knowledge, and for being a breath of fresh air in a market full of stale snake oil.
-Mike
It is amazing that you reach $82 a month later after you lunch your sites. May I know how many articles do you posts to achieve that in a month time? I am also on adsense, I will appreciate if you can tell me that.
Liu – I’m not sure I follow, but I had 3 articles on each site at that point (they all have a lot more now). I might have had time to submit 1 article per site to the article directories at that point.
Just wanted to say that it was great to see that your still around, started using your system since december 2010, after wasting 2 years on build smaller niche sites, i’ve got 6 domains in total, 4 health niche, 1 hobby, last to do with insurance, and there all .info so wish me luck.
Larger authority are the way to go, everyone is now jumping on the band wagon, because this really is the way to go.
Keep up the great work, and you will hit that 15k mark
Hi Lisa,
Loved the blog post. It has finally inspired me to actually use your course(which I bought last year but thanks to my procrastination never got around implementing *shame face* ).
I have bought several domains and have done all my keyword research and made the lists like you teach I have one important question which makes me go around in loops..should I use wordpress or just normal HTML website? Because in wordpress although I could make a custom categories to list all the articles using my keywords as anchor texts, but that would require me to understand PHP and I am not that great at it.
Are you using Wordpress on your websites or are they simple html sites? Would really appreciate your feedback
Good luck with reaching the $15,000 goal
Hi Kiran,
I use HTML for these, but I don’t think it matters. Whatever you are most comfortable with is fine. – Thanks, Lisa
Lisa
Have learnt a lot from your posts (both on your blog and on the warrior forum). Your course has also taught me a lot about how to build and promote a website.
Thank you for sharing your story – very inspirational once again.
Arthur
Lisa,
Thanks for the Adsense tips. I already monetize the site with affiliate programs but was using ad sense as another method to monetize the site to pull in more revenue. I just haven’t been able to figure out why I have only $300 – $500 months sometimes with 11,000 hits to the website. Seems like that kind of traffic should produce a bit better results but I don’t have the experience to confirm that.
By the way I ran my keywords through the keyword tool as you suggested and get estimated CPC of around $1 for most of my keywords. I guess that explains the low payouts a bit.
Thanks again!
Greatest information of 2011 Very Interesting Post! Thank You For This Post Lisa!
Lisa, I appreciate your blog and your course. Of course you can break that 10K ceiling… set your next goal and go for it!
[...] of your site in online and mobile search results. I was checking out articles and came across this from our friends over at InLineSEO (full disclosure, I have not done Lisa’s training, however [...]
you really got successful with adsense very quickly, but most of adsense publishers can’t do that because they don’t have enough of traffic, as I understand, key to adsense earning is good traffic.
Many thanks for sharing your earnings – it’s great to see perseverance paying off!
Hello Lisa, thanks for the update, and for the tip about directories.
It’s funny, one very good SEO person I know recommended directories and said they’ve always for worked for him. I’ve never actually tested it for myself and tended to ignore that piece of information (as it seems just too obvious and simple).
I’ve also used article directory submission – with heavy spinning – with great success but am currently preparing to put your method into action.
You know, one day you should examine yourself and write an ebook about how you’ve managed to stay away from funky new marketing fads and stay with ‘timeless’ stuff like directory submission (that everyone decries as too old and ineffective).
It’s really a special and unique ability.
Lisa,
Spot on post you made, once again.
There was a typo at the end of your post, however.
… “it’s good some of you try to kick me into gear…”
Should have read…
” it’s good some of you try to kick me in the rear…”
Right???
Yeah Lisa, I don’t know how you expect anyone to buy
a training course that is ONE YEAR OLD !!! OMG !
I wrote my first profitable software program in
the winter of 1972, made $500 from it.
It predicted NFL football scores each upcoming week.
Fairly accurately, I recall…
That was a lot of money back then when I was a
high school senior.
Tricky Dick Nixon was still President at the time !
So I guess your ONE YEAR old SEO course is still
Shiny-New in my book.
And another thing…
Lisa, I must strongly second Rick’s comment above about
your CPA revenue…
“you don’t address CPA at all yet half of your income
is derived from CPA offers.”
I am looking forward to your in-the-trenches
training course on CPA as well !
I don’t wanna do any A$$-Kickin’, but I will if
I have to…
So get that course out-the-door… like now…
purty-please ~
Lisa, for the first time I made over $10,000 in
profit this last 30 days.
It’s nice to break that glass ceiling at last.
I’m certain my Online income will surpass my
Chiropractic health clinic profits this year.
Been a Doctor since 1988, over 90,000 patient visits
so far, and climbing…
But it is 50% overhead, and definitely NOT Passive income!
The Online income IS mostly Passive Recurring Income.
“Me Likey That Very Much”…
Made nothing for 8 years online, and then started making
some moolah about 2 years ago, increasing every month.
I have about 5 income streams / methods from my 150
online sites.
But I have not been able to make any profit from
CPA offers, unless you count ClickBank sales.
I’ve produced thousands of clicks to various CPA offers.
I have joined about 10 of the big CPA networks,
including Ebay, etc…
But I have NOT made squat with CPA !
So, give it up Lisa.
We want the goods on your CPA success methods.
I ain’t gettin’ any younger.
Congrats on all you have accomplished Lisa.
It took a lot of damn hard work and perseverance,
as you truthfully documented in your 4 excellent posts.
When you come up for air, shoot us another post soon, okay ?
And I hope you make us that CPA Success training course,
Real Soon, okay… OK ?
Thanks again…
Your Friend in Texas,
Dr. Michael Quadlander
________________________
Thanks for putting the Inline SEO program together.
Thanks Lisa for taking your brain out and shaking it out into this blog post. Those little nuggets that fell out are GOLD and I don’t mean the “Fools” type either. I greedily gobbled them up!
One of my mentors was describing how he trains a virtual PA once his business reaches a certain point so that he can continue to expand his system into other niches. Have you looked into that? Thanks for the great post.
Hi Lisa,
Good to see you back.
So you earn $15k/mon from your whole network? I thought it’s from 1 site of your network. Looks that it’s not that easy to earn a significant money fron internet.
Hi Greg, it’s that amount from the new network of sites I build last november and the money is spread out over about 4 sites. It’s definitely not that easy to earn money from the internet. It takes some learning, but I do think anyone who’s motivated enough could do it. Thanks- Lisa