I got an email the other day from Melanie asking for tips on jumping from $250 in monthly Adsense income on to something bigger. She’s been following along and has seen me push my income up pretty considerably in the past couple of years and wants to get a piece of the pie so she can pack it in, pack up and hit the road while earning online.

Sites, Traffic and Earnings

Melanie actually has three websites and since she’s focused on increasing her earnings as a whole, I figured I’d review them all together and give some suggestions for areas where I think the income could grow.

She has two sites about dogs, All About Yorkshire Terriers and All About Labradors and also a site about Andalucia just to mix things up a bit. The dogs sites each get around 250 visits per day and the Spain site around 60 to 100 unique daily visitors. With a total of 550 to 600 visits across all her sites she actually gets more traffic than I do on my eight sites combined. The trick though isn’t how many people you get to come to your site, it’s how to get the people who will do what you want them to do - click on an ad or buy something. But with those traffic numbers I think there’s a lot of untapped opportunity.

Currently her sites are earning a steady $250 per month with Adsense but that’s from the dog sites alone with the Spain site not earning much at all. I earned $250 a month with Adsense as well up until about January this year so I can understand the frustration with being stuck at that point.

Melanie’s Questions

I asked Melanie for some specific questions to give me a starting point for the review so here they are:

Would you advise me building more sites around the andalucia site? I feel this one might be the money maker, what would you advise?

I wouldn’t! Not yet anyways. The Andalucia site hasn’t really earned anything yet so I don’t think it makes sense to keep building similar sites until this one proves that it can earn. I’m not saying that it doesn’t have the potential to earn, just that you shouldn’t create copycat sites until you prove that it can make you some money.

I know a lot of your sites are travel related, what could I add to the site that could push up my affiliate sales?

I know that affiliate programs are the way to go but I haven’t done much about it on my own sites so I’m not sure I can offer too many suggestions in this area. I can say that getting visitors who are in the buying mood is the most important thing so if you notice that you get people from search engines looking for ‘accommodation in andalucia’ then put an accommdation booking engine on your site etc. If you don’t have anyone finding your site in a buying mood then try to write articles with specific keywords in mind like ‘online hotel booking andalucia’, ‘books about andalucia’, and so on.

Would you suggest going for direct links?

I’m all for direct link sales, it’s what pushed me out of my $100 a month rut. But at the time I discovered them, I had a really old, PR5, DMOZ listed, general backpacking site that seemed to be attractive to a lot of people. Your sites are only PR2 at the moment so hitting up the Digitalpoint forums probably wouldn’t be too fruitful since all people there seem to care about is PR.

Approaching companies directly who care less about PR and are more interested in access to your very targeted traffic is an option. I know nothing about the pet industry but for your Andalucia site maybe approach hotel and hostel owners or tour operators to see if a monthly link would interest them. If there’s a lot of competition between them then you might have some luck. I’m not sure this sort of thing would bring in that much money so it might not be worth the time but I guess you won’t know until you try.

My Suggestions

• Scrap SBI - Melanie is paying $299 per year per site for some product called SBI. I have no idea what this is but she tells me it’s a great way for people who don’t know anything about HTML or building sites to get a site online easily. Paying an individual to build a site for you is also a great way to get a site online and I doubt very much that a simple site will cost $299 if you look for someone on eLance. Even if it does, it won’t cost you per year, it’ll be a one-off fee. Plus since the sites are already alive and kicking, if you do a bit of research into HTML, FTP and all that fun stuff, its just a matter of copying the source code and uploading to a separate host which Melanie might be able to do on her own and save a bundle.
• Build more dog sites - Assuming each of those dog sites are earning $125 a month with Adsense, that’s more than any of my individual sites bring in and to me that says you’re onto something. They both get a decent amount of traffic and converting it into Adsense clicks seems to be working well so why not stick with the formula and crank out a few more? You’ve got a template that works so just buy a few more domains, research some more dog types, plug in the information and all of a sudden you have a bundle of sites with earning potential. As an added bonus, having a network of several dog sites and linking them all together will allow traffic to pass between them and make each site stronger.
• Linkworth/Text Link Ads - Melanie actually emailed me more recently to say she read about Linkworth on my blog and had just sold a link for $11/month on one of the doggie sites. It might not seem like that much but all of those little bits ad up, especially when they’re locked in on a monthly basis. I look at Linkworth, TLA and Adsense all as being predictable month on month earners. They may take a while but earnings in these areas tend to keep creeping upwards with little effort and having a predictable monthly base earnings level is a big confidence boost. TLA are a bit more difficult to get enrolled in with PR2 sites but the traffic numbers might compensate for that and it’s worth a try. Even if they reject the sites, sending an email off a month or two later asking them to reconsider has worked for me in the past.
• Search for relevant affiliate programs - There are loads of different companies out there with tonnes of affiliate programs on offer. Clix Galore, Affiliate Future and Trade Doubler are the only ones I’ve joined with very limited success but also with little to no true effort put in. If you can set aside the time, there are bound to be some programs well suited for your sites so choose those without being tempted to sign up to everything that might be remotely connected to your themes. For example, avoid general travel affiliates and look for ones directed at Spain specifically. Or even better, join hotel booking sites but only list the ones in Andalucia, each with it’s own page and maybe a writeup of some kind. Instead of just putting affiliate links on every page, write specific pages for each and load them with keywords you think people in the mood to buy would use.
• Sign up for 103 Bees - I think blindly adding affiliate programs to a site is a waste of time. You want to be able to get people to your site who are in the right frame of mind to buy whatever it is you’re promoting, it’ not enough just to have that general traffic passing by. An excellent tool for learning what people are searching for when they find your site is 103 Bees. It used to be free but now I think there’s a small fee but it’s worth it for getting ideas on what sorts of articles people are looking for and also seeing how well new articles you write with keywords in mind actually end up doing.

Summary

I think all of Melanie’s sites are really good. They’re packed with information, complete, easy to navigate, focus on niche areas, are attracting search engine traffic (which I think is the most important for earning online), and they’re just really good resources on their respective topics. On the other hand, I know that having all of the eggs in the Google Adsense basket is scary and Melanie knows this too. But I think sticking to what is working rather than building off of the Spain site is the way to go for now, at least until that site starts performing.

Does anyone else have any comments or suggestions for Melanie? Do you agree with me or think I’m a crazy fool? Comments are welcome and if anyone else would like a review, drop me a line. That cost $0.00. Bargain.

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