Mid-Month Expense Report for May 2012 – Things Are Under Control

Written By: Mike From Maine - May• 15•12

Expenses

ManageWP: $147

Pingler: $5

Aweber: $20

Social Adr: $94

Ezarticle link subscription: $30

Free Jing and ScreenCast Subscription for
easily explaining things to workers : $10

Whoosh rank tracking subscription: $100

EZarticle spin credits: $120

Copyscape: $0

AMR/UAW outsourcing: $0

Odesk writing and outsourcing: $495.52

Domains and hosting: $164.91

website creation outsourcing: $0

Header: $0

Flippa: $29

Total expenses: $1215.43

So far this month my expenses are under control. If things continue on as they are I’m set to record a small profit this month. I’ve slowed down my website creation process a bit so I’ll probably only have about 30-50 new websites created this month.

I consider this month to be a time of reflection before selling a bunch of sites in June. I should have some nice revenue proof for a few sites after this month is over, so I’ll be able to put them up for sale on Flippa. If you are interested in purchasing some sites with revenue proof before I put them on Flippa send me a message at mike@mikefrommaine.com .

Posted in Mid-Month Updates | No Comments »

Going, Going, Gone! – First Niche Site Sold

Written By: Mike From Maine - May• 09•12

I’m happy to announce that my first site for sale went on Flippa yesterday. It sold for $102. This is less than I expected, as I was hoping for about 10 to 20 times monthly income for the site ($18/month times 10 or 20 is $180 or $360). It’s okay, though. It went to a nice buyer who I think will really benefit from the sale since he can easily make the expense back in a few months without any work. It’s also good for me as I will be able to build my reputation as an honest seller of quality websites on Flippa. A win/win situation.

What kind of profit did I see on this sale?

The website cost me $29 to make. I paid $19 to Flippa to list the site and then $10 for the success fee. From the site’s initial completion to sale it made $40.60 in Adsense. Therefore I made $102+$40.60-$29-$10=$103.06. Not too bad. Now I need a lot more sales.

Why did this site sell for only 5 times monthly income?

I have a few theories on this:

1. I’m a new seller on Flippa and no one really knows who I am on there. I don’t have anyone vouching for me as a seller and without this social proof I think it’s very difficult to get a high price.

2. It was a fairly new site. It only had two months of income proof, and the first month’s income was quite low. I think next time I sell a site I need to show at least two months of STABLE income. No one wants to buy a site and then see the income drop off.

3. It was a low-earner. For my next sale I will put together a package making more than $100/month. I think this will get more attention and draw in more bidders. Plus, with a $100/month earner I’ll be able to justify paying $50 to Flippa to get it on the Featured Sites page.

4. April was a bitch of a month for SEO. After the Panda and Penguin updates people are running scared. There’s a lot of talk about the end of niche sites and people’s adsense accounts getting closed. I think we need a month to settle down and get back to work. Niche sites are still going strong, but the game has changed a little bit. We need to change with it.

Why do you think it only went for 5 times monthly income? I’d like to hear your comments and advice in the comments below. Thanks!

Posted in Websites For Sale | 9 Comments »

Revenue Update For April – Profit on the Horizon

Written By: Mike From Maine - May• 04•12

Expenses

ManageWP: $147

Pingler: $5

Aweber: $1

Social Adr: $94

Ezarticle link subscription: $30

Free Jing and ScreenCast Subscription for
easily explaining things to workers : $10

Whoosh rank tracking subscription: $50

EZarticle spin credits: $480

Copyscape: $25

AMR/UAW outsourcing: $360

Odesk writing and outsourcing: $2,097

Domains and hosting: $1,577

website creation outsourcing: $22

Header: $198

Content Domination: $17.30

Total expenses: $5,014

Revenue

WPGoldmine commission: $9

Text link ads: $95

Private sale: $140

Adsense: $2,268

Total Revenue: $2,512

Total Profit: $-2,502

How can I say “profit is on the horizon” when I lost more this month than any other month? The reason is because my hard work is starting to pay off. I’ll point out why:

1. The sites I made 3 months ago are starting to rank in the search engines.

2. I had 4 $100 Adsense days in April.

3. My total Adsense went up $468 from the previous month, even after some older sites got hit by the lovely Google Penguin Update.

4. I have my first website on Flippa to start building trust as an honest website seller. The site I’m selling is HERE

I’m going to keep trucking along. I’ll also be releasing some more sites for sale on Flippa in the near future. Stay tuned!

Posted in Mid-Month Updates | 6 Comments »

Website For Sale On Flippa

Written By: Mike From Maine - May• 02•12

I’m excited to announce that I have my first niche site for sale on Flippa https://flippa.com/2736424-18-last-30-days-227-uniques-no-work-1-no-reserve

This site isn’t making a million dollars a month, but it’s a solid example of a niche site making money with Adsense. It’s also a great opportunity for someone to buy a website that is already earning money and build on it.

Anyway, I’m not going to try and sell it to you here…the Google analytics and Adsense proof should do the selling for me.

The website

The website that I’m selling is http://www.blackmoldpictures.net/. All the content is unique, including the images and video which I made myself. The header was made for me by designer, Alex. (if anyone is interested in his work let me know).

The keyword “black mold pictures” gets 1000 searches per month and has a CPC of $1.55 .

So there it is. I’ll be writing about my experience with Flippa in a week after the auction has finished.

Posted in Websites For Sale | No Comments »

How I use ManageWP to keep over 400 niche websites organized

Written By: Mike From Maine - Apr• 30•12

ManageWP

ManageWP doesn’t have an affiliate program yet, so I there’s no real incentive for a lot of people to promote it. When their affiliate program gets rolled out I think you will start hearing a lot about how great their system really is for anyone who has a lot of websites.

I currently have over 400 niche websites. They all have at least one page of original content, about page, privacy page, and sitemap. Each of these sites has links built to them using EZArticleLink, Article Marketing Robot, Unique Article Wizard, and SocialAdr. Each site is an exact match domain with a .com, .net, or .org extension. They all have at least 880 exact match local searches in Google and at least a $1 cpc. And I manage all these sites on ManageWP.

What is ManageWP?

ManageWp is a way to organize all your websites in one place. It makes it really easy to install updates and make changes to multiple websites at one time. For example, recently a new version of wordpress came out. If I didn’t have ManageWP it would have been a real pain in the butt to update 400 websites. But all I did was click a button and they were all updated. It a life saver!

So this is how I keep my websites managed. I’m able to see them all in the dashboard on ManageWP. Also, I don’t need to login to each individual website when I make a change. With the dashboard on ManageWP I just click on the website and the wordpress admin panel is opened for me. It’s sweet!

I was going to create a video, but I think they do a nice job in their explanation below:

Posted in How To Build Niche Websites | 2 Comments »

My Date With A Google Penguin

Written By: Mike From Maine - Apr• 29•12

google penguin Last week everyone was talking about the new Google algorithm Penguin update. I thought it only fair to give you an update of how it affected my websites.

First the bad news: I got slapped. I think most people who create a lot of websites did. When you have over 400 websites it’s only logical that at least a few of them will be affected. Unfortunately some of my big earners got hit. Which ones? My sites that I made over a year ago got hit. Why? Because I build a shitload (technical term) of links to them with the same anchor text. Stupid, I know, but I was a newbie at the time…I didn’t know any better. At least those sites made me a relative shitload (still technical) amount of cash before losing their rank in Google. Oh well. The good thing is that they are not deindexed. Some of them just lost a few spots in the rankings…some took a nose dive. But it could have been a lot worse.

The Good News: My new sites that I’ve been making this year were all fine. Actually a few of them gained position in Google. I think this is due to the fact that I’m doing good keyword research, smart link building, and not hammering them with too many links. I’ve learned that too many links can be a bad thing…especially with niche sites. They don’t need the kind of link building that coveted “money” keyword phrases need in order to rank in Google.

So that’s my date with a Penguin. It was indeed an uninvited and unwanted guest, but I’m still standing tall and my system still holds true. Until next time, sweet sweet Google Penguin.

Posted in Setbacks | 4 Comments »

First Flippa Auction Coming Up!

Written By: Mike From Maine - Apr• 27•12

flippa I’m excited to announce that I’ll be selling my first website on Flippa next month. I’ve decided to start off by selling a solid site that’s ranking on page one position one (at the time of this writing) in Google. I really want to sell sites that are of great value and can help people out who are looking for a starter website that is already earning money. I want to build a completely trustworthy profile on Flippa so that my customers will be able to buy from me with complete confidence. This is my goal.

What’s the website? I’m not going to reveal it until it’s up on Flippa. I’m a little sad to see a money making website go, but I think this is what I need to do in order to get some more revenue back into my business. I’m simply spending too much money, and though my Adsense income is increasing, I need a bit more cash to play with.

Are any of you interested in buying my sites? Please let me know in the comments below.

Posted in Marketing plans | 4 Comments »

Answers To Some Link Building Questions

Written By: Mike From Maine - Apr• 24•12

I got an email from Daniel Neubauer with some link building questions about Article Marketing Robot, SocialAdr, EzArticleLink, and Unique Article Wizard. I’ve answered them in the following post and I hope these answers can help you too.

1. When do you start backlinking on your new domains/sites? And with what do you start SocialAdr or EZArticleLink?

Some people wait a week before starting to add backlinks to their sites. Other people wait a month. I don’t wait. I immediately start. Why? Because most of my links take time anyway. My EZarticle links go out a few links every day. My Unique Article Wizard links go at 30 per day. The only one I fire out is the Article Marketing Robot links. They go all at once.

2. When do you start with EZArticleLink backlinking?

I submit my original article to them to have it spun. Once it is spun then I immediately start the links coming in.

3. How many articles do you submit for approval for each project/site? How do you drip feed them and how do you schedule them?

I think you are talking about EZArticleLink. I submit one article for each website. They have their own drip feed schedule. For UAW I drip them out at a rate of 30 links per day.

3. EzArticleLink seems to be very very strict when it comes to approved articles. So my question is how do you include the keywords 1-3 in your article that the article text still flows?

I simply find a place where the keyword sounds right and place it in there. I’ve never had any problems with this. They only really have a problem if the keywords are just thrown in there in the middle of two paragraphs.

4. Do you just use one keyword (the main keyword) in each EzArticleLink article or do you diversify your anchor text? If yes, do you submit more articles each using one of the diversified anchors or do you place three different anchor texts in one article (keyword1, keyword 2, keyword 3)?

For the 3 keywords one of them is the main keyword and the other two are secondary keywords. This is good as it looks odd if all the anchor text links coming to your site are the same.

5. When do you start with AMR and UAW blasts? Are these blast directly to the money site or do you build web 2.0 buffer sites in order to not get penalized or slapped by Google?

I do an Article Marketing Robot blast immediately. I let the Unique Article Wizard links go out at a rate of 30 per day.

I don’t use buffer sites.

6. When do you add Google AdSense on the sites?

I add Adsense to the sites as soon as I have content on them.

7. How do you track your visitors? Do you still use webmaster tools or Google Analytics?

I use Google Analytics to track my visitors. I also use webmaster tools to make sure I don’t have any big errors on my sites.

I hope this helps you all out a bit. I love answering questions about how I make money on the Internet, so if you have any more questions please ask in the comments below or email me at mike at mike from maine dot com

Posted in Questions and Answers | 1 Comment »

How To Use Contest Domination To Make a Business

Written By: Mike From Maine - Apr• 20•12

Contest Domination

I used to buy a lot of shiny objects like Contest Domination when I was first getting started in Internet Marketing. But this is the first thing I’ve seen in a long time that has really caught my eye. I can think of all kinds of things that I could do with this plugin. What for example?

*I’d like to be clear that if you buy this plugin through my affiliate link I do make a commission and I’d like to thank you in advance. I have also bought this plugin, so I would never promote something that I don’t use or truly recommend. Ok, now on to the ideas!

1. Create a website that gives away something free every day

There are lots of things you can give away. You could reach out to different companies and have them give away a product in exchange for free exposure. You could do this in the Internet Marketing niche, electronics, makeup, iPhone apps…the list seems endless. You could make money through affiliate links on the website, plus you’d have the people on a targeted list where you could sell them related items over and over. I think it could work.

2. Give away your service

A lot of us are creating something online. Some of us are article writers. Some of us make headers. Some create niche sites. Why not give away your service for free and in exchange create a list of people interested in that service? A great example would be someone like Alex in the WP Goldmine forum. He makes headers for $5 a piece. I’m sure if he had a contest giving away a few headers that people would join. And how many new customers could he get out of that? I bet it would be a big return on his investment.

3. Give away money

Ok ok…maybe not exactly money…I think that may be illegal as it could be seen as a lottery. But how about a niche site? I’m thinking about giving away a site that’s been making a certain amount of money for the last few months. The going Flippa price for a website is about 10-15 times monthly revenue. So if I give away a site that makes $10/month that prize would be worth $100-$150. Would that be worth it for you to sign up? Let me know in the comments below.

If you think I’m onto something here you can pick up a copy of Contest Domination HERE. If you use this plugin and Aweber together then you could really build a list that is Google-proof and quite profitable.

And please chime in if you have any other ideas to use this cool plugin in the comments below.

Posted in Shiny Objects | 2 Comments »

Mid-Month Expense Report For April 2012- Still High But Seeing Results

Written By: Mike From Maine - Apr• 16•12

Expenses

ManageWP: $115

Pingler: $5

Aweber: $1

Social Adr: $94

Ezarticle link subscription: $30

Free Jing and ScreenCast Subscription for
easily explaining things to workers : $10

Whoosh rank tracking subscription: $50

EZarticle spin credits: $360

Copyscape: $0

AMR/UAW outsourcing: $360

Odesk writing and outsourcing: $1,320

Domains and hosting: $1,241.36

website creation outsourcing: $0

Header: $0

Total expenses: $3,586.36

My expenses are still pretty high, but that’s only because I’ve absorbed some of the expenses from last month’s high expenses into this month. The month of May should see a significant reduction in expenses.

Seeing Results

I’m very confident now about my process as I had my first $100 adsense day this month! My average daily income is rapidly increasing. I used to be quite happy with a $50/day…but now if I’m not at at least $80 I am not satisfied.

But, Mike, you’re spending a lot of money!!!

Yes, but if I decided to sell my website portfolio today I could easily get $20,000-$40,000 for it at 10X to 20x monthly income (at $2,000/month) on Flippa. I’ve invested less than $12,000 to make these websites. So if you forget about the monthly profit I’ve made from Adsense then I could get a 100-300% return on my investment. Not too shabby.

Posted in Mid-Month Updates | 4 Comments »

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