Merry Christmas my Fellow Readers!

Christmas is here and it’s time to let go of the daily online work, at least for the next couple of days. For the next days to come I will not publish any new posts here on TMME, but rather spend the time with my family and friends by celebrating christmas. So don’t expect any new information from my side (although there’s still enough to report about).

In the same breath I want to thank all my fellow blog readers and wish you a merry christmas too! Thanks for all the participation here on TMME, I really appreciate all the comments posted in the last year. I’m feeling good by knowing that at least some people are actually reading my blog and finding my posts useful. ;)

Special thanks also go to my friend Tiberius who’s finally started his new personal blog called the Wallachianblogger.net! Feel free to check out his blog and give him some nice comments, I’m sure you’ll like his writings a lot (especially if you’re interested in the daily live of a Romanian guy).

Ok, I’ll see you next year, and I hope that it’ll be the year that’ll change my life! ;)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Your Mr. Querblogger (have I ever mentioned what my name means in English…?)

Posted on 23rd December 2008 by Querblogger in The Making Money Experiment - Tags: ,

The semi-evil niche blog business – Part 3

Welcome to part 3 of showing you my progress with my automated niche blog. It’s rather a short update than a complex follow-up post, but I think there are some things worth to mention.

As I already told you in the last post, I have ordered a custom blog header from a guy on the DP forums. Today he finally got ready with it and I’m just done implementing it (which in fact was as easy as substituting the current header file with the new one). I think he did good work, especially for paying him only 7 bucks!

Beside the header, I’ve also implemented some link selling code from TNX, a great link broker I’m using for several months now. You simply have to include their code and the rest is up to their spider which crawls your pages and automatically ad text links from people willing to advertise on your site. You don’t have to do anything beside waiting for your points to get credited in your TNX account (1000 points are currently worth $0.95, a PageRank 0 link gives you 6 points). So far over 100 pages of my blog are indexed and I think the first links will be sold within the next days. Let’s see…! :)

Another thing worth to mention is the increase in my Alexa rankings. Slowly but steadily the rankings are climbing. But to be honest, this is mostly because I personally visit my blog quite often to work on it (e.g. managing the posts, design, comments…). And since every visit counts towards these rankings, it’s only a matter of time before one will see the rank increasing. The good thing is, that this will also increase the value of links sold on my blog posts and pages!

Ok, nothing more to see for now, but more post will follow!

Bye bye,
Querblogger

Read Part 1 of the semi-evil niche blog business!
Read Part 2 of the semi-evil niche blog business!
Read Part 4 of the semi-evil niche blog business!

Posted on 21st December 2008 by Querblogger in auto blog,blog,wordpress - Tags: , , ,

The semi-evil niche blog business – Part 2

Some days ago I reported about a nice niche blog business model that I’m currently about to implement on one of my niche sites. Now, 6 days after that, I’m almost done with creating my first auto-blog, or let’s say “news” website. I took me quite some time to fiddle around with all the different plugins, themes and other stuff that’s necessary to create such a site. But now I think the most difficult part is done and I’m ready to add some monetization to my site.

Ok, now I will reveal my dirty little secret and tell you the name of my niche news site (that’s something I don’t do quite often). The site is called Water-Fuel-Guide.com and it deals about water powered cars, alternative energy, gas saving devices and such stuff. Hey, it’s a niche I researched with my keyword tools and found it to be profitable, that’s all what really counts ;)

All in all it took me a total of around 10 hours to create that site. It could be done much faster (let’s say one hour), but since it was the first site I established based on this method, I had to put more time into it.

The blog is already filled with nearly 100 posts, with most of them coming from Google News feeds that get pulled in automatically several times each day. I’ve also added some articles from EZA and I’m planning to add even more.  It’s also worth to mention that I’ll always link back to the original posts and articles that get published on my blog (I will also pass full link juice to my sources). I’ll also only show excerpts from the RSS content, since I won’t behave like a spammer that blatantly steals other people’s content. Everything I do is syndicating the content from those feeds and provide my readers with a source of fresh information on the choosen niche.

Right now I’ve hired a designer who will create a header for my website. He charges only $7 per job and his portfolio looks promising. He should be ready with the header within the next 2 days. I’ll probably also use some submission service to get some valuable directory backlinks. There are people on the DP forum offering 100 submissions for $5, quite affordable too!

The next step is to add some more monetization streams. I already implemented SpeedyAds and 4 advertising spots where I link to some Clickbank products. But the main goal will be to sell text links with this blog, for these two main reasons. First, the blog will have a huge amount of posts where I’ll be able to place some ad spots. Second, due to the huge number of posts and the pinging that’s done each time a new post is (auto)published, the blog will receive PageRank and hopefully high Alexa ratings. A higher PageRank means more earnings from selling links! :)

The ultimate goal I have with this blog is selling it once I build up a visitor and revenue stream. Since website prices are usually based on 6 to 12 times the monthly revenue, even a monthly revenue of only $100 would give me the chance to sell this blog for at least 600 bucks! This wouldn’T be all too bad for around 10 hours work, or am I wrong? ;)

Ok, back to work now. More reports on my progress will follow soon!

See you,
Querblogger

Read Part 1 of the semi-evil niche blog business!
Read Part 3 of the semi-evil niche blog business!
Read Part 4 of the semi-evil niche blog business!

Posted on 15th December 2008 by Querblogger in auto blog,blog,wordpress - Tags: , , ,

The semi-evil niche blog business – Part 1

Yes I know, this post title sounds a bit strange. Anyway, I came across a nice and easy online business model that’s capable of bringing in some good bucks each day. And I want to share it with you because I think it’s quite an easy method to make money online. The original idea is from Keith Kogane, a fellow Warrior on the Warriorforum. You can read the thread describing his online business model by following this link.

Let me put the whole business model in a short list (I know you like lists):

  1. You choose a niche that gets good search traffic while having a low competition
  2. You set up a WordPress blog and get a keyword rich domain
  3. You have to install a bunch of free WordPress plugins (described in Keith’s thread)
  4. These plugins will pull fresh content for your site via RSS feeds from blogs and other sources (you have to search for such feeds by yourself)
  5. Your blog gets automatically filled with new content each day (mostly excerpts with backlinks to the original posts and articles)
  6. Each time new content is added to your blog, different services will be pinged. This will massivly increase your backlinks and rankings over time (think about selling links and such)!
  7. A plugin substitutes certain keywords in the content with your affiliate links, offers etc.
  8. You monetize the blog with different methods like selling advertising space, text links or contextual ads
  9. Rince and repeat. The whole blogs runs nearly maintenance free.
  10. Optional. Keep yoour blog for a month or two and later on flip it for some hundred bucks.

Ok, got the basic idea? Looks like you have to create a splog, huh? Well, calm down. We won’t actually create a spam blog, but more a news site tailor made to your choosen niche. Rather than filling your site with useless content, you’ll provide relevant content to your readers in a compressed format. Please note that you’ll also give valid backlinks to your original sources and most times only show excerpts of the content!

After setting up your news blog, you’ll slowly see an increase in your rankings. This is because of the many backlinks you blog receives from all the different auto posts. Each time a feed item gets pulled and published on your blog, different ping services (you can feed WordPress with whole lists of them) will be contacted which in return will give your site a backlink, many of them. And this is really the secret sauce of this whole business model, higher rankings mean a higher earning (and selling) potential! Once your blog sees its first Pagerank, you will see an increase in your earnings from selling text links, advertising space or ad banners. And the best thing, once your blog is set up correctly it needs next to no maintenance at all while pulling in some nice cash month after month.

Such automated news blogs, as I would call them, bring in between $1 to $50 each month (depending on your choosen niche and skills to set up such blogs). So you see that the idea behind this business model is not quality (although you still provide value) but quantity. The more sites you create with help of this method, the higher are your earnings. And this only works because of the fact that, once created, such auto blogs need nearly no maintenance. You could set up 100 of such sites and probably need only work for some 10 hours per week to keep them up to date.

Feel free to read Keith’s whole thread to get a better idea of this business. I personally have just started to transform one of my under-performing niche sites in a fully-automated news blog. So far I’m fiddeling around with getting the right feeds, setting up the plugins and the whole layout of the site. Since it’s the first time I’m creating such a blog, I think it’ll take me some time before it’s set up correctly, but I hope that I’ll later on don’t need too long for this task. Let’s see :)

Cheers,
Querblogger

Read Part 2 of the semi-evil niche blog business!
Read Part 3 of the semi-evil niche blog business!
Read Part 4 of the semi-evil niche blog business!

Posted on 9th December 2008 by Querblogger in auto blog,blog,wordpress - Tags: , , ,

My First Clickbank Check!

Today I received my first check from Clickbank, a small piece of paper worth $350. The check was sent last wednesday and I’m amazed how fast it was delivered.

The money was made during my last months’ work on different niche sites that I own. I must admit, these sites are not the best money makers that I have, but they still generate some small bucks here and there, regardless if I promote them or not.

Now I only need to receive 2 extra checks before I’m eligible to receive funds via direct bank deposit, which is even faster and doesn’t involve taking the check to my local bank. Clickbank requires one to get at least 3 checks in any 90 days period for verifying measures. Once the third check finally arrives and the money is successfully banked to your local account, you can enter your bank details and Clickbank will pay you on a weekly(!) basis.

All in all, this Clickbank check was a nice christmas surprise and it’s definitely good for buying some gifts from it (my family demands this…). And yes, I could have posted a nice payment proof showing my huge CB check (e.g. like Jeremy Shoemaker did with his check from Google), but I think nowadays it’s way too easy to fake such stuff and it therefore doesn’t really make sense to show you at all. But you can trust me that Clickbank is a paying company! ;)

Now I’m lucky. What else should I say?! :D

See you,
Querblogger

Posted on 2nd December 2008 by Querblogger in clickbank,Earnings,niche marketing - Tags: , , ,