If you are currently annoyed, angry, frustrated, feeling utterly miserable and helpless – about having a website recently dumped down the Google rankings, then perhaps you can now take at least some heart from what I’m about to tell you. Listen up…
I set up a website around 9 months ago now. It was an MFA (made for AdSense) site – quickly set up the site, quickly added some content, quickly started the backlinking process, and voila – job done – a few top ten rankings within weeks, literally! And this was an EMD also (EMD = exact match domain name to a half decent keyword phrase in this particular case), although the kwd that the exact match is to only gets around 600 or 700 searches a month in Google according to Google stats, so the ranking of the EMD would hardly make me a millionaire over night.
Well, as it happens, the rankings did appreciate rather quickly – in fact, this niche has become popular over the past couple of years or so, so I was in fact surprised at just how quickly the rankings did materialize. I think in its hay-day, the website had about 6 of the 8 kwds I was targeting in top 10 and that came about within around 10 weeks of me buying the domain name. Yup – that was surprising!
Mind you, there was only one higher end kwd phrase with around 10k global search a month in Goog (according to Goog stats), where in the main, the rest of the kwds attracted anything between 500 and 3000 searches a month. So even though AdSense pays fairly well on this niche, the competition is still not particularly high end due to a fairly low geared search volume on the whole.
Okay, so there I was, happily moving up through the rankings for all my kwd phrases after only about 10 weeks, and the income was appreciating in tandem. Nothing huge by any means, but for example – one week may have seen 8 bucks, the next week saw 11 bucks, then then next 15 bucks and so on – you get the idea – the rise in income was gentle, but it was a definite rise all the same and ROI (return on investment) was good and looking better all the time.
But guess what – around about week 12 – 14, Goog did what they do and dumped all my rankings. The only ranking to stay in the top 30 was the EMD keyword phrase. All the rest plummeted out of the top 100. Thus the penalty was fairly harsh – site wide, as opposed to page or kwd “wide”. The site was of course still indexed in Google, so things could have been worse, but they were bad enough.
And yeah, I probably deserved it – I’ll come clean. I got greedy, and I wanted more, more, MORE!!! And I got a bit slap happy with my backlinking processes I guess. Silly boy – never learn!
Okay, so I gave up on it for a bit. Then I returned to it and did some light Blog Blueprint linking (4 to 10 posts/backlinks every third day of the week) to the EMD – for about 3 weeks, and that was 4 months ago. And yes, the EMD was bobbing about – between 9th and 20th in the generalized Google rankings (according to Scroogle that is).
The odd day still saw the site making a bit of income (particularly more recently when the EMD kwd phrase seemed to be appearing in top ten more often than for a long, long time), but mostly there was nothing at all, and none of the other kwds besides the EMD were interested in climbing up. In fact, that’s not entirely true. I remember seeing perhaps 3 of my previous 8 kwds gaining top 50 rankings but that was about it. I thought the domain was a gonner, I really did. Thus I stopped backlinking to it entirely about 3 months ago.
Woops – I remember I did do some SocialADR work on it a good while back to, but again, nothing much came from that – Goog simply were not going to love me any longer, boohoo!
However, I checked my traffic stats today and suddenly there’s life on what was a previously dead domain.
And yes – I have made some income on AdSense today from this website – not a lot, but a single click thus far. If I remember, average click through is around 10 – 12% which is nothing great, and I could probably do some testing and improving on that. On the other hand, it ain’t too shabby either.
And yes – I checked my rankings in Scroog and I’m back in top 15 for most of my kwds with a good few of them in top 10 again, and my EMD in 3rd according to the database that Scroogle uses, and according to the Google US database also.
Remember – I’ve not backlinked to any kwd phrases for the past 5 months other than the EMD kwd phrase. And I’ve not backlinked to the EMD kwd phrase for just over 3 months now. But Google have seen fit to re-rank my site once more. A site that they initially dumped almost entirely from their top 100 rankings some 5 to 6 months ago now.
That’s pretty much half a year of penalization to face, and I’ve ever since been thinking about setting up a fresh site and doing it all over again within the same niche – except this time, making sure that I avoid the Google castigation of course!
Obviously I’m going to want to push my re-gained rankings, right? But I surely do want to take it very easy, much as I am now doing with the high end Google project site, which is still sitting comfortably in the rankings, but not doing a whole lot quite frankly. But that’s fine – no rush after all!
So what am I going to do? Did I hear someone say “use Build my Rank…”? You got that right! I’ll let the new-found rankings sit for a couple of days, then get all my previous kwds that I wanted to rank back into BMR and I’ll set the links to 1 – 3 per day. No other backlinking for now! Otherwise, it makes sense to begin building out the site and adding in fresh content in the hope that Goog keeps on loving me and the site that’s returned from the dead 
The moral of the story is…
It would appear that indeed, even the harsher penalized websites do come back in the rankings in Google (not if your website was de-indexed though), and they come back strong too. Nothing new there – most of us are somewhat aware of this fact. But I thought I would let you read about my own findings just to cement your belief in this, because sometimes its easy to refuse to believe this any longer – or to forget that it actually can happen, and you just give up entirely.
Or you simply don’t have the patience to hang around for months whilst Goog do nothing other than merely tease you.
But the fact remains – GOOGLE WILL RE-RANK YOUR SITE, EVEN AFTER A REALLY HARSH DUMPING!
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{ 138 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Jo
Ah, ok i thought your were going to define a process to pull them back
Ive seen this happen ove rthe last coupleof years as well. Particulary early on i bought multi years domain reg so (and still do sometimes) when i screwed a few up there was not point in deleting them and after 5-6 months they tend to come back. That is if the penalty was becoause of agressive backlinking. Sometimes i think its beccause those old spammy links die off.
My input would be to potenial use the manual scheduler to create say 20 post in 30 days with some random patterns to the posting. But ive not yet looked at how randomthe 1-3 is. but it probably does have a pattern to it.
Glad its back. tickle and stroke carefully. Would love to see an update in 1-2 months time.
steve
Hey Steve, I have defined a process and I’m going to sell it to the market at large for half a million US. The process — sit and wait. Think I’ll make my half million?
This post is more for folks who have not yet gained first hand experience in seeing their domains rise up again after Google has smacked the living daylights out of the rankings, and also for those who’ve forgotten that rankings do in fact re-materialize if you decide to wait it out. And furthermore – at least we are aware that Goog still do this, and they’ve not changed the positioning of the goal posts entirely which they could well have done.
My update in a couple of months time will be from my new beach house – I’ll be making so much money from this domain that I’ve already planned my beach house move! I’m in the money man, and I can sense I’ll be filthy rich before you can say Jack Daniels or something like that.
Time for bed – I’m a dead-beat
lol to sit and wait. I know a hippy thats sat and waited for around 15 years smoking pot and doing not a lot. A great grandfather passed away one day and left him £750,000 (at the time $1.4million) so it does work !
Did not want to give an impression that it was not a valuable insight Jo. It is. I also agree its cool that the lago has not changed completely!
Sleep well and get more rest.
steve
Wow, sounds great! There’s hope!
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..How to stay productive during tough times
Yeah well I hope there is hope :p My newest project was moving along so nicely and yesterday everything except the EMD got slapped to 500+.
The culprit? Backlinking my anchors too quickly. I did it knowingly and with some trepidition as I was sure that is what happened to a previous site of mine some 6 months ago. Sure enough, within hours of doing it my rankings all but dropped off the face of google.
Time for a new project I guess. I’m kind of bummed out though lol
Jim recently posted..Tassimo Single Serve Coffee Makers
@jim
Have you checked its serps again today? if not do so tomorrow. Ive seen a few that do a sudden bounch down and back..
If you check ing MS did you see all the backlinks drop off as well?
best of luck.
steve
Good for you Joseph. Some do bounce back and others never make it out of the “sandbox”. Any specific tips/tried methods on reviving a zombie?
Sunil from The Extra Money Blog recently posted..5,000+ Readers: I’ve Reached the 5,000 Subscribers Milestone! Thank You
@steve
I hadn’t actually checked to see how many backlinks I had to be honest. However, only ahref.com actually shows any now…everything else I checked has a zero. Is there some signifigance to that?
Heres hoping it comes back in the next day or two
Thanks for the advice Steve!
Jim recently posted..Keurig Single Serve Coffee Maker Reviews
Steve, I know a guy whom I met when working in various warehouses in central England who had the same philosophy as your hippie mate. Intelligent guy so I said to him one night – “why you working here cos you obviously don’t need to since you’re an intelligent sorta guy”. His answer was along the lines of… “my parents aren’t going to be alive forever, so I’m figuring I’ll be worth at least half a million (UK pounds) when they do depart the world. May as well just wait it out…”. LOL! In this day and age in the western world, there’s no longer any guarantee to that game play since old monthly fees involved with folks homes eat into the inheritance big time, along with that whopping tax they place on any inheritance also. What is it now in the UK – 40% tax on anything above 300k UK pounds or there-abouts.
Yeah, I think its a valuable post because so many folks suffer from the same fate – the Goog dumping – and don’t know if their sites will ever truly return to former glory.
I did sleep well, thank you kindly sir!
There’s hope indeed Cristina, just as there is hope for the Eurozone in this huge mess of an economy we currently have to get through. I was reading about how folks over in Europe were generally feeling with regards taking on the Euro. I get the impression that the only “happy party” are Greece, whilst everyone else – particularly the Germans, are thoroughly anti- the Euro, including the Spanish. Well, I digress…
Thanks indeed for the tweet on the post, and I hope things are going well for you in Spain!
Jim, that’s very similar to what happened to this particular site – dumped way down the rankings with exception to the EMD.
Did you say that you think backlinking to your anchors too fast was the probable reason for your demise? I’ve never seen that before. Are you very da very sure about that?
You feel bummed out? No worries – when new year’s eve comes along, that’s the time for refocus and resolution about your online (and offline) stuff, all the more so if you’re already merry on the alcohol of course
Sunil, normally I don’t have the patience to even monitor a site that’s been dumped way down the rankings (although I may change that thinking from now), so this is one of the few that I was in fact watching out for any life since it does have decent potential.
Any tips for the revival of the dead and buried? Hmmm… as mentioned, I did gently backlink the EMD kwd phrase, but other than that I left the website well alone, and did not even add any fresh content – I kinda thought what’s the point if no one will ever see it. I think the best thing to do is to just put the site up on the “dead but waiting for rejuvenation” shelf and move along. If it is a niche/sub niche that was making decent income before its demise, I’d be inclined to start a fresh domain in the meantime, and thus potentially have two domains in the future working in the same lucrative niche.
On the other hand, if its a niche that lends itself to the social scene rather well, it may well be worth considering trying to generate traffic that way. This is something that I will be exploring all the more during the coming year, and have in fact already begun to do so, since I’m no longer entirely confident about relying on the Google monster to help me out all the time.
Happy festive season Sunil!
Joseph
I came back last week, Joseph
Things are not ok though.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..How to stay productive during tough times
Are things better than they were though Cristina? Good to have you back again, although I thought you may spend a bit more time in the warmth of Spain. Fiance may not be overly happy about that idea though I guess.
Sigh of relief ay Jo.
I’d absolutely say that yes, it was the anchors that caused the downfall. I sometimes put my anchors into a small open linkwheel. Then I use social bookmarking like SocialADR and SocialBOT (Pligg sites) to ensure indexing occurs.
Last time I didn’t use a linkwheel, this time I did, however both times immediately after trying to index my tier 1 anchors, I got slapped.
It is my opinion that Goog uses traffic in their algo to determine if backlinking velocity is fishy. In this case, getting NO traffic to an article, and maybe 10-15 a day to a young site raises a flag when said article gets 50 decent quality backlinks. Obviously this is just conjecture, but it does make sense, even to your own project.
How can you get ‘x’ amount of backlinks to your site/pages when your traffic is a mere fraction of the total backlinks?
In the future I will take a more patient and cautious approach…I’d rather wait an extra month to get decent rankings than risk getting slapped again!
Any insight on this topic is very welcome
As for New Years… I don’t do resolutions, I would never remember them anyway thanks to the whiskey. LOL
Jim recently posted..Senseo Single Serve Coffee Makers
Yeah Kurt, if you can be patient, then there’s life in dem der websites that had their life whipped away from them!
@jim
I believe that Link Veloicty and Link Diversity are metrics that google bot can use. It doesnot always result in a penalty and you can definetly grow a site quicker than you might imagine. Id say you were just to rapid and to narrow on you methods.
Steve
hmm…
I only used SocialADR (about 5 submissions every 2-3 days), blog-blueprint (3-4 a day, about 50% to inner pages never more than 50% main anchor text) and then added a squid lens and 3 articles (article rich, goarticles, and ideamarketers).
I then bookmarked the lens and 3 articles and suffered my fate. I did the articles and lens starting on the 21st to yesterday…
I agree there isn’t much diversity, so would you suggest I broaden it a bit next time?
Jim, was this on a totally fresh domain in a lower end niche? I would not say you need to broaden your linking early on as this is very nicely broad – much broader than I make it in the earlier weeks, although I was fairly broad with regards the domain which is the feature of this particular blog post.
Yes it was a relatively fresh domain…just under 2 months old.
The reason its so discouraging is that so far 50% of all my sites get slapped LOL
Jim recently posted..Keurig Single Serve Coffee Makers
Jim that ain’t too bad if you’ve only got 2 sites
I take it however you have more, in which case there’s something not quite right I suspect, LOL! Sounds like this…
too much too soon in low end niches with fairly low competition.
Any truth in that statement would you say?
Has to be right. I get a bit impatient and try to get my Tier 1 anchors indexed to soon I guess. My New Years resolution, if I am to have one, will be to calm the hell down
Jim recently posted..Best Single Serve Coffee Makers
Yeah, I think that a wise NY resolution to make Jim. A 50% success rate at getting slapped in the rankings is a very high success rate indeed, LOL! Oddly enough, I feel that congratulations are in order
Very interesting indeed, I have not had that hard a penalty yet, but i have not gone too crazy on back linking either. It’s always nice to see traffic coming back to a site that seemed dead in the water floating belly side up.
Matthew Gannon recently posted..Strawberry and Banana Trifle!
Its nicer if its making some decent income Matt. And is it? Well thus far traffic is a bit lower than I would have thought considering the newly found rankings, but there’s now an inclination to improve upon that of course. Income today is a bit on the low side too, but nevertheless, that’s income that has not been around for months now so I’m not going to be complaining one way or the other!
Joseph, just curious, I always see you using BMR etc but never heard that you are using SENuke or similar tools. Any comments on those tools?
I’m not too fond of SENuke, Harrison. I have used it in the past and I outsourced the work, only to have 2 out of 3 of my sites dumped out of the Goog rankings with a gusto! Mind you, the third site went on to do very nicely in the rankings – what to make of this, I just don’t know!
I sense its only really a decent tool for either working on outer tier sites that link back to the money site, or on things like YouTube videos which can be ranked unto themselves. Furthermore, a while back, Seth Godin “banned’ SENuke from using Squidoo as a platform for their semi-auto generated content. I’m not now updated on the proceedings there, but if Squidoo ban something then it must be “bad” cos Squidoo are far, far more lenient than that Hub Pages set-up. Mind you, I’m open minded enough to realize that there’s a place for most (or many) backlinking tools, so I would consider outsourcing SENuke-ing again when the occasion was appropriate to do so.
@harrison – Senukex is a tool. If used incorrectly (which most people do) its a rough and ready mass link builder. And the cause of many a downfall. Used correctly its a sharp peice of kit but the learning curve is steep. Many things are not obvious and the documentation has been almost no existant. So you end up running huge hits of links instead of targetting correctly. BAcklinks genie is a better tool if you have limited time to learn. However the advantage of senuke is its unlimited domains, backlinks and projest. only really restricted by the power of the computer it runs on.
@Jim – blimey thats not go 50% yikes how many have you built. As jo says if its only 2 well thats not an issue but even if its only 5 your process is certianly not great. 1 in 10 might be ok i guess.
@Jo – the problem with senukex and hub pages etc is that its so easy to create endless numbers of anchorlayers people get caried away and literally nuke sites and eventually they get fed but. Even wordpress was blocking nuke for a while. To be honest if i was hubpages squido or wordpress I’d ban it. In fact google bot should really as lots of people use the same patterns in senukex
SENuke, Steve – I never could get my head around it, but then its nothing new and folks know I’m techie shy to say the least. I found support to be on the poor side, but that may have been only my experience. Support has to be top notch with this sort of tool as the learning curve can be very high indeed. Support on Backlinks Genie is absolutely excellent, and as you say – using Genie is so much easier to use than SENuke. Over and out for now – the red wine is beckoning.
Traffic is still a bit lower on the site than I would have thought, given the newly found rankings. Nevertheless, with 16 page views (how dismal) so far today, there’s been 3 clicks (18.75 ctr) for a total of $6.48. You might say I’m happy that this site is back up in the higher end of the Google rankings
Hi Joseph,
Patience really is a virtue. I’m glad for you that there’s light again at the end of the tunnel. A good thing to start the new year bright and hopeful.
For those of us who haven’t yet experienced being slapped by Google, this is a lesson to remember. Take it slow and easy.
But in case we forget, remember to sit and wait because there’s still hope. Nice to hear!
Theresa Torres recently posted..Happy Holidays: Holiday Season in America
Hi Jo
Well thats a very health CPC or is that typical of what you achieve?
To many of my oldest domains were slected when i didnot understand cpc
Ok these days and I should probably put down the old ones but there old firends now and do there best
steve
Hello Theresa, many thanks for taking the time to comment! Yeah, its always nice to see a site that was previously dumped and making almost no income at all, suddenly regain life and start to add to the bottom line all over. I’ve still to do any backinking – thought it wise just to sit tight and wait for a while rather than rush in with backlinks guns a-blazing!
All the best Theresa!
Joseph
The only domains I hold onto now are the ones that do relatively well Steve – all the rest get dumped since I’m not one for holding onto those domains that make me 10 bucks or so a month. I’d much prefer to have 10 domains that make me 500 a month each.
The AdSense day ended with a CTR of 15 % where yesterday I think it was around 12%. Quite happy with that but probably a little room for improvement nevertheless.
I haven’t experience it yet.. Your story is a reminder to all marketers online. There’s no other way than implement everything in a right way.. Moral Lesson: Be patient
David recently posted..24 Hour Electrician Woollahra
Joseph,
Your becoming quite like a weekly soap opera with these regular Google cliff hanger changes but such is the life and times of an Internet Marketer. I love reading about the progress/and setbacks so thank you for the transparency and I wish you a successful 2012.
Mark
MK recently posted..Don Draper or George Bailey who would you rather be?
Hi David, thanks for sharing your thoughts! A big part of success online comes from being patient, so you are absolutely right about that!
Regards
Joseph
Yeah Mark, I rather enjoy the melodrama of it all
No doubt there’ll be much more to come during 2012 and I bet you just can’t wait for it, LOL!
Thanks to Matt Gannon for the retweet on the post!
I went ahead and deleted all of my Tier 1 anchors, or redirected the links to a squidoo page. Next I will put a few new links to my site and a few to the remaining Tier 1′s that don’t point to my money site.
So we shall see where we end up with that.
Perhaps in the weeks to come the penalty will be removed since the reason for the penalty does not exist.
Happily for my bank account one of the 50% that aren’t penalized sites suddenly ranks in the top 10 for 11 keywords it didn’t this morning
I also came up with what looks like could be an excellent adsense niche and a completely different “business plan”. So my run-in with penalties may pay off in the long run
Jim recently posted..The Origin and Evolution of Coffee
11 kwds in the top ten Jim – that’s great! Hopefully you’re seeing some decent income from your efforts there!
Hey, that’s it – you learn from your mistakes and build on your previous experience – that’s the key with this type of business (or probably any business for that matter). If you can learn from your mistakes and build on that, then you will inevitably be “coining it” (making very good money). That’s why its vital to never give up no matter what comes your way!
Good news for me too — the high end project – my main kwd (450k search globally each month) has risen from 31st to 17th today, which is the highest its ever been. All I’m using right now is BMR at 1 – 3 submissions per day and all is looking pretty decent – traffic levels are climbing on the site, although income is still low. The site is being monetized by AdSense (once more) and a couple of Clickbank products. No CB sales, which is typical so it seems, but if I can get the biggie in top ten, then I’m sure that will change simply due to traffic flow.
Hey Joseph. I bought your ebook back in November 12, and I haven’t read it until recently. So I started reading it a few days ago, and realized that it was the same thing as that in Pat Flynn’s post! So can I get a refund? My paypal email address is tonychou9@hotmail.com, and my unique transaction ID is #90699181FG2768237. Thanks.
Hey guys, I have something weird to share. My site was sandboxed last week but came back after 2 days. But I don’t think I should happy with this because the main keywords that I am targeting is not my front page. Instead, Google select a page that I never build backlink for.
I generate some backlinks to my front page in the hope that Google will change its mind. However, the funny thing is Google again select my second keyword page and not my front page.
This scenario also happens on my second and third targeted keywords. What happen to my site?
LOL – I’ve emailed you about that Tony. Wise to go through the Clickbank channel to get the refund, which is pretty easy. Thanks for your purchase anyhow and I wish you success!
Joseph
Are you sure your previous ranking pages are not still in the sin bin Harrison? Sounds a bit like you’ve got a “keyword wide” penalty still hitting on those previously ranking pages. If that is the case, chances are good it will be lifted fairly soon I would suspect.
@jo – I can’t believe people…
@jim – it’s a dance variant. You’ve completely listing ranking for the keyword on the URL u are targetting. So google is showing the next best URL it can.
What I’ve seen in marketsamuri rank tracker before is all the baclinks for that keyword on the original URL have dropped but the links still count to the overall domain.
So it will come back eventually. Either leave alone or do gentle link building
this is another example of agressive link building or high velocity/low diversity
regards
Steve, I think that’s an @Harrison on the dance variant
@Jo – you are correct my mistake !
Have a great 2012 everybody its going to be epic
the comments on this one is great yet again Joe.
And just to lend a bit of credibility to your article. I had the EXACT same thing happen to me. Went too crazy with backlinks directly to my main site, Goog dropped the rankings. Waited a month and deleted all the crappy backlinks I’d made (blogs and 2.0s) and I ranked just great for everything.
Brendan@ Gi Reviews recently posted..Black Eagle Predator Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Gi Review
Hey guys, I hope everyone is ready to bring in the new years in the right way!!!
2012 will be a great year, I have a feeling
Stick to your plan, scrap it if it don’t work, but the main thing to do is….WORK.
We will get to the top with all of our projects if we stay focused and work hard to reach our dreams.
@luke +1. A few of us feel the same. Its going to be epic or a disaster
work hard and stay focused and hopefully it will be the former.
cheers
Happy New Year, guys!
To a 2012 full of success for all of us!!
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..How to stay productive during tough times
I agree 100% with all of you great folks! Happy New Year to you all, and I wish you the greatest success!
Jim recently posted..Keurig Single Serve Coffee Makers
Yeah, happy New Year to everyone. May 2012 be a wealthy year (in many respects) for you!
Didn’t even notice Steve. Have a great year also!
Brendan, that’s really interesting! The only problem being that if you can’t find all the crappy links that link to your site, you gotta hold on in there for the longer haul. I think on this particular site, it may have been “paid for” links from a directory that sunk me – Google came sniffing on my site with a human reviewer, followed back some of my backlinks, saw that I’d paid for some directory links, and bam – bye bye for 6 months dude! I’m just guessing about that though – no hard and fast evidence to prove it.
Hey Luke, that’s funny – one of my New Year resolutions late last night was to do LESS WORK and make more money doing so. I find that with me doing more work, it kills off my creativity. So less work is the order of the day for 2012. All the best to you sir!
Steve, work less and stay focused more – does that sound like a good exchange for 2012?
@Brendan: Congratulations on coming back from your penalty! That is exactly what happened to me and I deleted said “crappy” backlinks.
If I come back and rank in 1 month I will be beyond happy
Thanks for sharing your experience!
Jim, I think that means you’ll be “delirious”! I’ll be routing for ya!
@Jo
You know what I wish i could write profound things but instead you’ll have to put up with a ramble
“work less and stay focused more” – thats super epic awesome cool. we should all learn from that.
For me being the way i am. I have four states of existent
Asleep (:-)), Bored, engaged, flat out and screaming
Asleep – i love sleep, the mind can wander and discover endless things.
100% focus on SEVERAL probably unachievable goals. If they dont feel unachievable they aint goals for me. – Ferrari 458 is one such thing, but not importnat. Enough money to do asleep and engaged is the real target 
Bored – this is dangerous if im bored it leads to drink drugs and nothing that good long term
Engaged – being with people that are interesting to me. Or leanrning new things. or being in beutifull places. (a nod to donald trump “surround yourself with beutifull things” with out the things bit)
Flat out and screaming – none of the above
So im flat out and screaming for the next year. Unless one of my projects hits pay dirt and then … Just set new targets.
Sure stay focused, work smart and quick, enjoy the sun and life Jo.
2012 feels good. Theres light at the end of the tunnel. Now then As long as its not a train comng towards us (:-() were set.
Best of luck to one and all…
Steve
Golly Gosh Steve, obviously you were NOT on the heavy boozing last night after all or you’d never be able to write the ramble
You touched on the emotional bits and bobs and that’s one thing that does “concern” me just a tad. If I were to work, say – 5 hours a day, x 7 days a week, then that’s 35 hours. Now compare that to what I used to do just a couple of months or so ago – 12 hour days for 5 days in the week, and 8 hour days or there-abouts for the weekend – giving a total of around 75 – 80 hours a week.
Now I’ve got a short-fall of 40 – 45 hours a week – what the heck to do with all that time?! Sit and think up good business ideas? I doubt it somehow.
Thus, the thing to consider now is – how to fill in this extra time in such a way that I still feel that I am in fact adding good value to my life (the days turn to weeks, the weeks turn to months, and the months turn to years oh so quickly, so we MUST be using out time in the best way we can, right?) and still being productive in one way or another. And how will this enhance my ability to be even more focused than before?
I know – more sleep, more drink, more cigars… hmmm…. it could in fact all add up to this, which is not a good idea! More thinking to be done!
@Jo – indeed. I dont know ahts happened but had two tins of 6x (beer
) and got a head ache! wierd. so ornage juice and then woke up fine this morning 
well this is the thing Jo if you have free time what do you do with it. Sure family firends etc. Ive found that with some cahs there always things to do. Plus relax read more walk more its all doable.
But the question that should be ask is “if your making more free time or giving up working (applies to others), what are you going to do with the free time?”
My guts says you should be more effient on the day to day stuff suach as JV and nice sites and go do mind maps (or whatever) on how to grow things like memebrship sites, training, enhance the ebooks, guest blogging. Longer term strategic stuff.
The old (and i hate it) work on not in the business. (thats poo to me I work on, in and around my business
and delegate happily tasks)
happy thinking and planning. Decide on your REAL goals (mines independence not the ferrari) and go for it, even if thats drinks a few beers and relaxing after 6pm.
cheers
Steve – 2 tins?? OMG – you light weight, you!
The walking thing – I like walking, and did a fair bit of it when in England and Scotland but the problem with it here in Malaysia is that its too hot to go any further than a few hundred meters.
As you say – cash makes it easier to have fun times.
Guest blogging? LOL – no motivation for that. I do think this year will be more of a year for ebook creation since I’ve got a good few ideas I wanna test out and then formulate an ebook around if the concept proves successful. In fact, I should really start on the first ebook of the year already. And I do want to learn more about this product launch game plan and how to improve on that.
Real goals? Hmmm… I’ve achieved my main goals I guess so one of them which is never-ending is to push the income upwards, as would be a goal for almost all internet marketers. More income provides for more life choices after all, and having the freedom to choose is a wonderful asset in life, is it not.
Okay then – its gone 7pm and maybe its a wise move to grab a beer and watch a movie. Catch up with ya later, sir – have a very fine New Years day in England!
@jo
Well i dont mean guest blog commenting. Its a great way to feed customers to a launch a usefull article for the blog owner feeding into your new offering
The heat is the only thing i dont like about that part of the world its so draining. Just walking to a bar before 8pm is a strain
So then tomorrow you can draft the ebook outline ! There mnoney in them there ebooks and above as passive as it gets after the 1st few months. Especially cool if you can link in a couple of affilaite offers.
Yep cant drink these days ten years ago i set a record with a pal of min eof 14 pints of 6x and 4 shots of wiskey then on to the local cury house and 4+ more drinks. then up at work at 8am… oh to be 40 again lol:-)
HAve a good evening
Working more hours doesn’t mean work more. Resting is part of the creative process.
I learnt that the hard way while in University. You gotta work really hard but you also have to know when to take a break. A weekend, an evening, a tuesday. Whatever. But stop for a second and have some rest.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..How Twitter can help you rank your site
@ Cristina – Your so right – most of the time I would agree fully but right now i dont.
Heres something written by Greg Jacobs (wpmange)
“That is your directive for 2012. OBSERVE, DECIDE, ACT
Enjoy the coming year, it is going to be the Year of the Dragon
and will hold massive amounts of prosperity and advancement for
those that are willing to mount the back of the Dragon and ride her to new heights.
…just dont let go.”
If your going to ride the dragon (thats so cool) then its flat out and screaming im sorry to say.
And I always hold this quote in mind
“George Bernard Shaw : Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people”
Ive been unreasonable with my own goals and time my entire life
But im not unreasonable in my expectations of others.
But its fair to say my health has suffered at times.
Luckily were all different and add flavour to the mix.
Steve
Steve, guest blog article writing you mean? Yeah, that thought drains me as much as the thought of walking more than 200 paces outside the front door. In fact, I used to walk to the 24 hour grocery store really early every morning but one morning a guy approached me and said that it was not safe to do so as he had been robbed only a couple of months previously in the same area. That’s about the only exercise I used to get, and now even that’s gone.
The ebook – I thought that through and changed me mind, already. I wanna work the system before I actually consider selling the methods cos I reckon I can make a whole heap a cash from this. I’ll document each case as I proceed in preparation for making up an ebook. I’ve got a further ebook idea however, but I’ve got work to do on the system before I can even contemplate selling the concept.
I suppose having the ability to consume so much alcohol in such a short space of time is a good ability to have (in terms of the fact you still have really good health), but actually putting that ability to use is not such a wise move, so you may as well just stick to having the 2 and then moving onto orange juice. I had a total of 6 pints of Guiness on New Year’s Eve/morning this time around, over a 6 hour period, so no records broken there. But then no record hangovers to deal with either, thankfully!
Hope your afternoon is successfully productive!
Hey Cristina, I never did manage to take much rest whilst in University – not in the last year anyhow. It was all about working hard, not working so smart. But these days, with regards to my own business, its much much more about smart ethics because I’m now aware that less work means more creativity, which can be a huge bonus in this sort of business. In the earlier online business days, the amount of time I wasted due to the fact that I did not think things through properly is almost immeasurable. Gotta cut down on that and ensure the minutes are spent more wisely.
Hope you are well and dealing with the short days once more!
Steve – regards the George Bernard Shaw quote – Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.
Therefore, progress may depend on unreasonable people, but unreasonable people are also thoroughly responsible for what can be construed as regress also. Mind you, although I personally spent the vast majority of my life trying to mold myself to the world, it rarely worked out well – I’ve given up
“Mind you, although I personally spent the vast majority of my life trying to mold myself to the world, it rarely worked out well – I’ve given up”
-Exactly – time to become unreasonable
Your right about regress possibly but it goes with the terriotry.
Regress is part of (so called) progress, I should think. But who’s to judge progress? Progress to one person is regress to another.
Time to become unreasonable. LOL – most of my previous employers would say that I was thoroughly unreasonable. But then, their reasoning was regularly unreasonable to me, so again – who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong, other than the guy or gal with the whip who slaps the slaves into shape each day at work. And often it was the case that just cos those slave drivers were good at sucking ass of the bigger bosses that they’d gain any power in the first place. Maybe enough for now
Hi Joseph
Glad to hear you bounced back. This has happend to a few of my websites where they disappear for a month or three and all of a sudden reappear in the same ranking as when they got slapped.
Your blog is outstanding and the fact you reply to comments makes it very special in the IM arena! Keep up the great work!
Dave (from Waikiki)
Hi Dave in Waikiki, thanks for your very positive feedback – much appreciated!
Yeah, they do tend to bounce back to life, and my own site is doing relatively well, with some of the kwds actually still climbing upwards, whilst others are planted firmly. Making money every day – not a whole lot by any stretch of the imagination, but it all adds up to a very positive return on investment which is key to success.
Best wishes Dave!
Joseph
Jo,
You said that you think you can improve on the adsense CTR. How would you do that? Do you have any past posts about it?
I searched around your site and didn’t see anything.
I thought that 10+% was quite good (that’s where one of my sites is now) and I’d love to improve mine above that.
Tips?
JP, I can’t claim to be an AdSense master by any stretch of the imagination! Even though I did buy a number of glossies in the early days explaining the ins and outs and read up about it on various forums (including John XFactor’s who is indeed something of a master at AdSense income generation).
The site that I wrote this particular post about – click thru rate over the past few days since I wrote the post currently stands at a rather healthy – I’m having to guess since my stats are not refreshing properly – about 18% – 20% ctr I think. That’s with only a single AdSense block right at the top of the post – large rectangle option. And that is taking the number of unique visitors into account rather than the number of page views.
I’ve tried AdSense in the sidebars on many occasions and found it to be either second best to the big block at the top, or utterly useless.
Another good one is the strip along the top of the page, just below the header graphic – I’ve rarely used that since it does not work with the WP plugin I use, but I have heard it works well in general.
You can play around with colors too though – sometimes making your ads blend in well with the text on the page works well. Sometimes making the ads really stand out works better. I’ve not done much split testing on the whole but when you think about it, it is easier to do than having to gain a whole lot more rankings to potentially see the same end result. In other words, its perhaps wise to optimize your webpages for your current traffic, than it is to go out and slave labor over getting new traffic to your webpages in an effort to increase AdSense income.
Keeping the webpage nice and simple is a bonus. Even to the point of not having a graphic in the header. A friend of mine never uses any graphics on his pages – not in the header, not any place. Further, he always uses text at the bottom of every webpage that is bolded out and says something like “Click here to return to the top of the Page”, and that of course is where his AdSense block is so he is heightening the chances of getting that much desired click. Not sure about the coding he uses to do that, but no doubt its pretty simple to find out how this works. His methods do work – he’s just sold a website that he’s only been backlinking for a mere 3 or 4 months for over 4 grand – lucky devil!!
Hope that is useful to you JP!
Joseph
I beg your pardon JP – Page CTR on this website is currently standing at 14%. Still none too shabby with only a single adsense block on each page.
Hey Joseph,
I concur with what you’re saying.
I followed the Fast Google Rankings Project posts and tried a few Fiverr gigs – my Google rankings bounced from top 10 down to 900th or lower – and back again within a few days. And it’s happened repeatedly, four times or more in about six weeks. Every time I get someone to upload a video or presentation etc to various sites it drops then bounces back near the top again, like a cork.
I think the trick is not to blink and keep going. Although I regret the Fiverr gig that added my site feed to 100 RSS directories – the rankings drop for a few days everytime I add a new post now. Oops.
All the best.
Thanks Jo!
That link at the bottom idea is brilliant
I might try that when I get some time!
I too recently switched to removing my header and it bumped by CTR up a few percent. It also improved my page load-time.
@Mungo
Would you mind sharing which gigs you’re using?
Thanks!
14% that’s not too shabby at all!!!
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Interesting findings Mungo, thanks for sharing! What I’ve seen so far since “the big Google return” is – not a whole lot. I’ve decided to keep things very slow for now, but if I don’t see much movement then what’s the point of that – may as well dump a ton of backlinks on the site and enjoy the bouncy ride, as to sit doing nothing much for weeks and weeks. At the end of it all, in a year from now let’s say, the key is to have those high rankings, so in the meantime, although it would be nice to achieve good rankings, its not imperative to do so.
Hope things go well for you Mungo!
Joseph
Hey JP – yes, nice idea to add that little link at the bottom of the page – it surely must catch the occasional extra click to say the least! Interesting to learn about the lack of a header graphic improving page load time – that’s something to consider, no doubting it!
Jo
Not too shabby Matt, providing the return per click is also decent, and in this case fortunately it is pretty decent – average per click is around $1.60 or so – not too shabby either, really.
Hey Jo,
Just wondering. Are you still outsourcing content creation? Let me know if you have a spot to fill
– Sam
I do Sam, yes – I’ve got a writer in the Fils who takes care of most of that for me. Either that, or I tend to go a little higher end and pop the job on Odesk. What’s on your mind?
Offering the brains of me and my whole team at your service
I can’t email you. It’s bouncing back with error!
Re the email issue Sam – no worries – its probably cos my inbox is over-flowing. Your service is content creation, or other add-ons also?
Hey Jo,
Article writing including BMR articles. Then a complete niche site package. I am not sure if I should list down my rates here. Where can I email you?
– Sam
You can get me at joseph@josepharchibald.com Sam, thanks in advance!
Jo
@JP
Here is a list of the gigs I’ve used:
smithallen – upload pdf or slideshow to 25 sites
Jedimarketer – uploading video to 15 sites
Jedimarketer – turn 3 articles into spintax to use with AMR
Jessyica (who is brilliant, btw) – 20 manual bookmarking submissions
Jessyica – 10 unique comments on site related blogs
allisont150365 – 4 good Build My Rank posts (there is a guy called umairiqbal who will do 5 for $5)
jjumpm2 – submit site feed to 100 RSS directories
robinh84 (slow but sure) – submit 5 urls to 50+ bookmarking sites using BMD
And I used directorymaximizer.com for directory submissions.
I have to say at the moment I might not be any higher up in Google rankings for the $80 or so I’ve spent – but I saved many hours of tedious work.
Time will tell and it might be worth keeping up the link velocity for a longer period.
Mungo recently posted..How to Find The Best Antivirus Software to Keep Your PC and Data Secure › Bitdefender Antivirus 2011 with Tuneup 3PC 1Year | Best Antivirus Software
@mungo
Are you saying that having run all those services you got zero change in serp? and at a cost of $80? thats not so good surely?
or am i missing something?
Thanks
Hey Jo, sent you a mail!
Yeah, got that Samuel. I’ll get back to you early tomorrow morning S.E. Asian time. I’m chilling with a beer or two right now so I’m a bit wobbly
Just don’t drink too much vodka =))
No, not on that horrible vodka – its Danish Stout tonight and a pint of Guiness at the bar a little earlier (for breakfast
).
So what are you still doing online?! Go and have a blast tonight, Jo!
@samuel – whats your website url?
Steve, my personal site is at samuelfaith.com but there is nothing there yet. You can mail me at sfaith at samuelfaith dot com. Would you like to get my rates? I can email you back with samples too.
– Sam
I have so many “blasts” these days Samuel that I thought I would take a break from that tonight and do a little fiddling around online, as you do…
@stevewyman
“thats not so good surely?”
Yes, I know! None of this seems to have done any good at all. Several gigs got my site dumped to the bottom of the top 1000 (as Market Samurai reports it) then everything bounces back more or less where it was after few days i.e. various pages in top 10 or 20. Overall neither up nor down.
I’m not sure where to go with it now, but I’m not prepared to spend as much as I have been doing.
All thoughts gratefully received!
Mungo, I would suggest you either tone down the backlinks very much, or you stop altogether for now and see what comes of your rankings. Either way – you are reducing your investment and in the meantime you can probably better assess how to proceed and how to heighten our return on investment. With my high – end fast ranking project, I’m merely popping a few BMR links a day to it and otherwise, I’m happy to let Goog decide where it belongs in the rankings. Mind you, I’ve now added some extra pages which I am very keen on getting rankings for, but that’s something of a different matter.
Best wishes Mungo!
Jo
I’ve been doing a lot of backlinking with fiverr too.
I started out on a new site with just BMR. It shot up the rankings and then got hit and gets no traffic from goog.
So, I started doing the 40 day challenge anchor layer strategy. While using fiverr gigs (UAW, AMR, etc) to link to the anchor layer.
So far, my site hasn’t moved up…
BMR has been 1-3 posts/day.
I’m thinking about adding the video submission idea.
Hi JP, difficult to judge this as its often very much down to a case by case scenario but it does sound like too much too soon. I think if I were in your situation, I’d spend time on other sites or another part of my business in order to move the focus off this particular site you mention here. I’ve found in the past that often its the case that no matter how hard you try (and how much money you dump down the investment tubes), Goog simply don’t want to play ball with you on re-ranking of a website. Therefore, its wise to just leave things alone and let things settle before taking further action. The site I mention in this particular post – I’m just gonna link to it very slowly for the next few weeks. The temptation is to try harder to push the rankings up faster since its making income every day and I want to progress that income rather a lot more than it is now. But I know if I do that, then the chances are heightened (all over again) that Goog will dump me. I best be patient!
Regards
Joseph
Thanks for your response Jo.
I’ll exercise some self control with the backlinking for a while! At least the Google penalties don’t seem to last long if you over do it. It’s been a lesson I guess.
Cheers
Dunno about that, Mungo – on some of my sites that get a penalty, I’m up and running with them again within a couple of weeks. With others, it can be months and months before Goog let me off the hook. The former is often caused by a very minor “mistake” whilst the latter can very well be caused by thoroughly obvious backlinking aggression.
I wish you well Mungo!
Joseph
Hi Joseph
I had a site that was sitting in 3rd place of google , it was getting about 100 unqiues a day and making a few quid in amazon sales.
I was building 2-4 BMR links back to the main domain only and have done since the start of december.
The main domain just disapeared from the serps with some of the other post pages down in the 600′s
Would you say i was building to soon or was it too many links to the home page /main keyword ?
It was a little victory as ive never had a website third before in google… its still 1st in yahoo and bing but driving almost no traffic.
For F’s sake! I put up a page on another website, and within 20 minutes it was ranked 40 for the primary keyword. Then I waited a few days and slowly added a few backlinks…the first time I used the exact match keyword BAM! Dumped beyond 1000.
I went over the page, and I obviously “over optimized” (best guess) for the main keyword, and because of that there are a few combinations that maybe are extreme.
Thats why I’m still a noob
I de-optimized my page for those words now, and will add an extra few hundred words content. I really hope I can drag it out of its penalty
On the plus side at least it was only the single page, not the site.
Hello Ian, not easy to figure out what went wrong here. Were you varying your anchor text much at all Ian? The problem is not due to the fact you were going too fast with the backlinks, nor that you’ve done too many BMR posts without variation on the link types. But it may well be that you did not vary up on the anchor text quite enough. Interesting about the Yahoo and Bing traffic – that sucks!
Hope you can bring this around Ian, as I’m sure you can if you are patient.
Regards
Joseph
So, I’m back to noob status :p
I have a site doing ok as far as rankings, though barely any moneyflow yet. I put up a great new page that was indexed and ranked 40 within 20 minutes.
A few days later (I learned my lesson on backlinking too soon) I gave one main keyword link and the site dropped a bit. The next day I gave two links with phrase match and POW! my page is not showing in the top 1000. Over optimized I guess
I’ve de-optimized the page and I’m going to add a few hundred words fresh content (already 1000 words though) and backlink with no matching keyword a few times and see just what happens.
Glad it was only a page and not the whole site this time
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You got caught up in the spam folder Jim the noo’b'- don’t know why that’s happening so regularly now. Your guess is as good as mine as to why you were dumped down for this particular kwd phrase – but its nice to see you are keeping up with your previously placed target of 50% Google dumpings
Well done sir!
Jim, are you trying to get my blog de-ranked in Google by spamming it with non-unique content, LOL! Either that, or you are on the whisky and you forgot that you already posted this comment about half an hour before
LOL ya sorry about that Jo, I thought maybe I messed up the first time. Turns out I’m a spammer
Jim recently posted..Keurig Single Serve Coffee Makers
I’m happy to accommodate this type of spam Jim – its the useless ‘how I love your blog post, keep it up…’ that niggles me somewhat
Joseph thanks for the reply… It’s the first time I’ve ever done back linking and I am just using BMR but I think I’ve made my first big mistake!!
I have just been using the same keyword and a link back the homepage building 3-4 links a day…. Won’t do that again..
I am hoping one day the site will spring back for now I think it’s lesson learnt and move onto the next attempt!!!
Yeah Ian, that seems to be your problem. You gotta mix up the anchor text, cos if you don’t, after a while, Goog will catch up with you and bang goes your rankings in Google. I’ve seen this before, and once you start mixing it up, your site will pop back up – Goog tend to be fairly lenient in this respect, which makes a nice change!
All the best!
Jo
Hey Joseph, Hope all is well. I know I have not been over here in a little while now. Have been busy working on my sites and my day job. I did get to read this post though as it was sent to my email and it is very interesting indeed. Thank you!
Regards
Hey Casey, all is indeed well sir, yes, and thank you! Good to know you’ve been working your sites – I hope that’s showing dividends for you! Its high time I posted something new on here cos its been a couple of weeks. Ah well – when I have something to say, I’ll say it, and not before. I’m not one for serial blog posts, unless there’s something to be shouting about, as you know.
All the best Casey!
Jo
As any internet marketer would know rushing out a number of backlinks in short space of time gets you the harsh goog slap. I’ve gone through it a million times and don’t want to go through the heart ache any more.
Nice article BTW.
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Hi Helen, thanks for your comment! I think the proverb “there’s more ways than one to skin a cat” comes into play here (I’ve no idea where that saying came from – how odd! Apparently it dates back to 1678, but that’s besides the point). With some niches you can get away with upping the backlinking velocity fairly early on, where with others, even if you sneeze in the wrong direction, you could be dust.
The problem with sites that have been penalized heavily is that Goog don’t let you push things as hard as you really need to in order to gain better rankings. If you try to, they can wave their almighty wand, and kazzam – you’re dust all over! Tricky game to be playing, but adventurous all the same.
Joseph
HI Joseph,
May I know your strategy to maintain your top ranking web site? I have 2 web sites which were number 1 in Google. Now they dropped to 2 and 12.
Yes Harrison – here’s my newer strategy for such websites – sell ‘emz! Get rid of them! Fast! I just don’t trust Google any longer (as if I ever did) so I’d prefer not to take more risks than is absolutely necessary. I just sold another site in fact, mainly because I was afraid that Goog would dump it and my whole investment would be lost. Let someone else take the risk, is what I would say.
Wow!! so now you are building sites to sell? how you are going to judge the price?
Yes, the more recent stuff I’ve been working on is fairly likely gonna be sold at auction. How to judge the price? I tend to use x 12 monthly income. But I’ll probably place the buy it now price as high as x 20 monthly income. Thus for a site that is making say – $150 a month, I’d expect at least $1800, and for the BIN price, I’d raise that to $3000.
I see. You always have some inspired idea for us. Basically the site you build is for Adsense right? Do you keep any sites which you don’t want to sell? If do, how do you decide which web site you should keep and sell? OMG, I have a lot of questions,
PS: Joseph, you should write a blog post here, telling us all about site flipping.
Hi Harrison, with regards to writing a post about flipping sites – I’ve not actually done it enough to claim to be a top notch seller. I’ve sold about 12 sites in all. I have actually started writing a post on my most recent sale, which was completed only a few days before.
Are the sites I build MFA’s (made for AdSense)? Some are, but most are not. The one I just sold was earning Amazon income – a teeny commission but fortunately the site was receiving decent traffic flow, and conversion to sale was okay.
Other sites that I’ll be looking to sell in future are mostly CPA-based.
I do have a jv site that we’ve just gotten around to setting up which is AdSense based and I’m hoping to sell that for upwards of $6000. How do I know how much we can get for this site? Its a niche I’ve already worked in and its a proven top notch AdSense earner (cpc is not that high – about $1.50 or so), but ctr is good). Many of my AdSense sites have flopped fairly badly, but this niche is a really good one, so I may even set up some more sites in this particular niche which target different kwds.
That is cold. Which marketplace you go to sell your sites? Do you start your selling process once the site ranking at the top spot or in the 1st page of Google Search? Do you give traffic and income report while selling your site? How much month you take from starting a new site to the stage you can sell it out? Maybe the fastest one that you have made.
I use Flippa. Its costly but its probably got the highest amount of “hungry” site buyers.
My most recent site I sold I had for only 2 months, but I bought it from someone else and felt it time to sell it on since I was not interested in the niche and the sales were not rising – they were falling – time to bail out! But generally that varies – some are much older, and I just feel its wise to sell up, others are much younger and may have been part of a sell up plan from the beginning.
Yeah, traffic and income reports and often I mention what kwds are ranking where in Google US and the search volumes for each.
The most recent site I sold – I made about $400 from 5 and a half hours work. I outsourced the backlinking, did not add any new content. All in all, a $400 profit on just over 5 hours work is pretty decent for most folks. Can’t say I was totally excited by that though since I thought and planned to make more. But I can’t complain too much
I just wonder what you are doing in those 5 and half hours? I thought you outsource everything
I think that $400 is not net profit as you have spent some money in backlinking. Last question from me, do you need a new JV? Hehe. Really wish to work with you and learn from you
I fiddled around with the site when I first got it – changing over the images and the monetization. 5 and a half hours at most, which includes the auction write up and site transfer.
No – $400 profit in total. The income from the site paid for the outsourcing each month.
Do I need a new JV? Not right now, no Harrison – sorry to say. I’ll let you know if I change my mind on that, and thanks for asking.
Hi Joe, do you still build web 2.0 backlinks? I can’t feel any effect from them.
Is it a must for us to generate some kind of income from a site before we can sell it? I would like to give “site flipping” a try. But don’t know where to start. Any idea for me?
Hi Harrison, yes, I still build web2s to link to my site. They are a good way to pump up the link juice – just whack them with a ton of backlinks and the link juice passes through to your money site. Takes a while to see the effects however, but it does work and works well.
Is it a must to generate any income from a site before selling it? No, its not, but it surely helps. I think if you can prove that a site has a lot of potential, then you can get a good price for it. One site I sold not too long ago – it was making only about 20 bucks a month but I got 500 US for it simply because I placed a “spotlight” on the potential.
Where to begin if you want to flip some sites? Same way you would if you wanted to keep the sites long term, but keep in mind that you are gonna be selling up. When I start building any site, I want it to earn a profit, so that’s the same thing if I want to sell it after 3 or 4 months. I need to know that I can rank my kwds fairly quickly too, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I go low end on the search volume – I tend to go higher end and look for a weakness within my competition.
There’s lots more to add to this Harrison – I could write a whole eBook about it
Put it this way though – I tend to find that return on investment is very good with site flipping – it can be a very lucrative business model indeed, and I’ll be doing much more of it this year myself.
I see. For web20, are you building plenty of it or just 1 site with 1 set of web20(wordpress, blogger…..) ?
I think I should sell my first site and gain experience from it. This is the best way to learn.
So when will your flipping ebook ready?
How about the design of the page? I think you are not selling your sites with the plain thesis black and white layout. Do you outsource this?
I build up plenty of Web2′s and link back to my money site if the site/webpages is/are proving hard to rank. Then I smash my Web2′s with a ton of backlinks, much in the way of the Warrior Forum 40 day challenge.
Yes, selling a site just for the experience is a good way to learn – you can read so much about it, but then you need to put your learning into practical use.
Quite often I sell my sites with no images and no header. For AdSense in particular, this is a decent philosophy as you don’t want any distractions to the ads other than your article. In fact, that’s why a sales page should convert far better than something like a blog – because the sales page is entirely devoted to making the sale and has no other distractions for your reader.