Welcome to part 4 of my semi-evil niche blog business experiment. I want to give you a short overview about my current progress with my niche site and what I’ve recently done for it.

It seems my little project is slowly picking up pace, although my earnings from my niche blog are still quite small. So far around 350 links were automatically sold via the great link selling service called TNX. The downside, each sold link is currently only worth 6 points and 1,000 points are worth $0.95. So basically this comes down to earnings of around $2, and I know that this is anything but  something to live from.

But on the other side it’s also worth to mention that my auto blog is still very young and therefore still ranked at the lower end when it comes to earning points via TNX. A Pagerank 1 webpage for example can easily earn you 100 to 500 points, per single link sold! Now I’m waiting for my backlinks to kick in since they will dramatically alter my ranking and therefore my earnings.

Oh yes, backlinks! Since I’m somewhat lazy when it comes to link building, I’ve done some outsourcing again. 4 days ago I ordered 2,000 directory submissions (PR 0 to 6) from a guy on the DP Forums. Today he sent me the final link report since he’s already done with his job. Awesome service! You can find his thread and more details by following this link. I paid him $28 for this service and I’m now waiting for 2K fresh backlinks pointing to my blog.

The traffic of my niche blog is increasing too, which clearly reflects in my Alexa rating. The only thing that lacks behind is my advertising revenue. I recently installed some advertising blocks from SpeedyAds (a good alternative to Adsense and such), but so far only earned some 10 cents or so. Well, seems I have to wait…

In general I love seeing my blog get filled with fresh content everyday. Several hundred posts were automatically published since I launched the site some weeks ago. And it’s worth to mention that I currently only use some Google News RSS feeds as my source for new posts (beside some articles frome EZA).

I’ll update you when my backlink campaign (hopefully) kicks in!

Cheers,
Querblogger

Read Part 1 of the semi-evil niche blog business!
Read Part 2 of the semi-evil niche blog business!
Read Part 3 of the semi-evil niche blog business!

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!

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!

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!

Today I want to present you another nice money maker called Amazon Mechanical Turk, which is kind of different compared to simple Paid-to-click sites and such. The service has been around since 2005, but so far I had no time to test it by myself. But some days ago I gave it a try and made some easy cents…

Amazon Mechanical Turk is a so called crowdsourcing service, meaning that a group of people has to fulfill an assigned task in order to solve a problem. Most times it is used to solve problems where machines, especially computers, reach there limits.

For example let’s assume the task is to translate a book from Chinese into English. With help of computers it’s indeed possible to do the translation, but the quality is most likely very bad (as most computer translations are today). But what about 100 or more people, knowing both languages, doing the translation a bit at a time? The quality of the translation should be way better than a computer one, for now humans are more intelligent as any computer in the world…as yet.

Ok, but what about making money with Amazon Mechanical Turk I hear you ask? No problem, read on!

By signing up with MTurk, you become a so called worker, meaning you are able to fulfill such tasks a stated above. The tasks are called HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) and at the time of writing there are around 15,000 available. Each time you have completed a HIT, you get paid a small amount of money ranging from some cents to several dollars. As a rule of thumb, the more difficult the HIT, the more money you will usually make. To give you some examples, I will tell about those HITs I personally have done already on Amazon Mechanical Turk to earn some money.

The first thing I’ve done, was to write a short article about registry cleaners. The person who requested the task seems in need of content for his/her personal website. So I only had to write about what came into my mind, the only requirement was to include the words “Registry Cleaner Windows XP” within the article. Writing that article wasn’t too difficult, it earned me $0.50 within only 5 minutes work.

The second task was to tag images. For each task I got paid $0.04. All I had to do was to look at three images and describe, in short words and tags, what was visible on it. If there was text, I had to write it in a special field below the image. This task was even easier than writing that article, but it paid far less (although it was more fun). The good thing is, that you can do each task after another, until you finally feel bored about it.

The last task I’ve done so far, was giving other websites a Stumble. I had to stumble 3 or 4 websites to earn another $0.05, easy “cash” for only some seconds work.

All in all, after only half an hour working for testing Amazon Mechanical Turk, I made $0.67 (yes, it’s peanuts…). But there’s more earning potential there, I have seen many task that pay $10 an up, most times you have to write a product or website review (much like writing sponsored posts).

I think, MTurk is a great service for earning some bucks online. You definitely won’t get rich from completing those HITs, but it’s enough to buy you at least a beer per month If you are an US citizen, you can cash out the earned money directly to your bank account. For international members there’s only the option to get an Amazon gift card.

I will use MTurk whenever I have some time (or get bored from the usual work), maybe I will make some bucks within the next weeks. Until then, have a look at Amazon Mechanical Turk and find out by yourself if this service is an option for you.

Greetings,
Querblogger