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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It seems like the thing to do if you have a blog about making money online is to write reviews of other sites and charge them for your expert knowledge. I’m not sure about how much of an expert I am but I quite the like the whole idea of reviews because I think that everyone, not just the site’s owner, can benefit from a site review. I like seeing different points of view and it’s also interesting learning about other site’s stats, earnings and what the webmasters’ questions and concerns are.

So in the vein, I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon and do a (free) review. I’ve never done one before so the plan is to answer a few questions, say what’s on my mind, and give a few ideas of what I would do if it were my site. Maybe I’ll be spouting a load of rubbish or maybe I’ll come up with some useful advice… who knows!

GoBackpacking.com

I got an email the other week from Dave Lee, the guy behind Go Backpacking, with some questions about how to earn more money with his travel site and blog. He got in touch because he’d seen a post on my earnings and felt that his website should be doing better than it is. I’m not sure he realised at the time that I have more than one site to earn that amount, but I agree that his site should be able to earn as much as Travoholic.com which also focuses on the backpacking niche.

Site Background, Traffic and Earnings

Dave started his site back in 1999 and added a blog in 2007. He had a forum but disabled it a few months ago because he was sick of spammers. The site is PR4 and has an Alexa ranking of 119,000 and his Technorati ranking is 46,088. He gets 2,000 visits a month and 4,000 page views and has 113 RSS subscribers to his blog. He ranks really well across Google, Yahoo and MSN for the terms ’backpacking around the world blog’ and ‘backpacking blog’.

His earnings were pretty bleak at first, bringing in about $130 over 10 months with Adsense which, at the time, was his only earner. He now earns about $150/month almost exclusively with Text Link Ads. I just thought I’d point out that Travoholic.com only earns $70/month with TLA and about $100/month with Adsense so already you’re not far off earning what I do. In the past I’ve sold a lot of links through Digital Point. If you’re looking for some extra cash, troll through their link sales forum looking for buyers or post an ad of your own. It can make your site look spammy but if you hide the links down in the footer it’s not so bad.

Dave’s Questions

Because I’ve never done a review before and need my hand held a bit I thought I’d get Dave to let me know some specific questions so here goes:

How appealing or unappealing is my theme (in particular, the light grey sidebars on the blog)?

I don’t really find the theme to be either appealing or unappealing. It doesn’t stand out to me as a great design but it looks organised and serves its purpose. More important is having a good navigation system that makes it easy to get all around the site. It took me awhile to find his categories section and without this, navigation is pretty difficult. I would move this drop down menu to the right hand column somewhere above the fold (probably above the fold) to make it easier to get around the site. The overall look is fine and everything seems to work although this latest post ‘GoBackpacking Needs Your Vote’ seems screwy with all the content being pushed way down to the bottom. I think it’s something to do with polls. It could probably stand to load a bit quicker, too.

As for the website part, this looks pretty old school and could probably use an overhaul at some point. The navigation could be better though. At first it seems like the links on the left (the ads) are your navigation menu which isn’t a good thing. Group things together into sections: travelogues, planning, articles etc.

Is the advertising (banner, text links, new “partners” page) too much, too little, or just right?

He mentioned that affiliate sales have been non existent so I would find another way to incorporate affiliate links into the site because what he’s doing now isn’t working. This is something I have yet to master but I can go so far as saying that the World Nomads ad on the left sidebar probably isn’t going to cut it. As for the ‘Partners’ page, we’d all love to think that readers will support us by remembering to come back to our site whenever they need to by something that’s on sale but in reality I don’t think this ever happens so I’m dubious about the point of pages like this.

Try to incorporate affiliate links into your posts but not in a way that looks like an obvious ad. Do it so that you’re adding valuable content. For example put reviews of gear that you’re using that has come from REI or talk about the benefits of World Nomads insurance in your own words and why you chose them over the others. Avoid sales speak and be honest.

What could I do to increase the stickiness of the site, and get people to stick around, comment, and come back for more?

Stickiness is something I used to obsess over. I wanted to start a great forum and create a wonderful community but I gave up. I came to the realisation that my sites have useful content that people need but once they find it, they move on. I get a lot of search engine traffic and my content doesn’t change that often so having repeat visitors isn’t that important because they’ll just bust me for being lazy and rarely updating.

For my blog, on the other hand, I love the sense of community and the instant feedback that comes in the form of comments. I want readers to keep coming back and the only way I can think of to do this is by writing stuff they want to read. It gets drilled into everyone’s heads and is annoying to hear all the time but writing great content is the best way to keep people coming back. Learn as much as you can about an area and people will keep returning to your site because they’ll see you as an expert. Become an authority on whatever subject you’re writing about.

But if you really have your heart set on creating a sticky site, try to think of useful online tools that will keep people coming back. I’ve had some success with this on my London site with a London prices tool and a photo area guide. Forums are great for getting people to come back to your site but they’re very difficult to get going and, in my experience, they’re more hassle than they’re worth. Blasting spam takes up loads of time and forums are not known for being good earners. I’ve tried allowing users to submit photos for one of my niche sites which created a bit of stickiness because their friends would come back and comment on them but it was short-lived.

What I Like

• I’m not too keen on asking for donations but I do like the idea of people getting you to do wacky things on the road and then contributing once you’ve completed their request. Making this a focus by giving the section it’s own page and more promotion is something that I think will make your blog stand out. The crazier the things you do the better. This concept has been done well over on The Savage Files and was something that I was considering adding to my travel blog when it’s up and running.
• I think the site has a lot of potential based on the real estate it’s sitting on alone. The domain name is fantastic and I have a hunch that, because it was created back in 1999, it should do well with Google. Try experimenting by writing some articles aimed at popular keywords and see how they do in the rankings.
• I like the incorporation of photos and videos. They add not only to the aesthetics of the site but are also relevant and well done. The written content is really good too.

What I Don’t Like

• In amongst the latest blog entries are posts about previous trips. These are entertaining but I find them a bit out of place in the blog area. I’d prefer to see these posts re-written into articles and placed on the main site. Or even take each trip and create an archive area to put them in chronological order, keeping them separate from recent posts.
• The site isn’t consistent from page to page. Sometimes the Google ads have different backgrounds, some pages still have a link to the message boards… stuff like that. Create a template that is the same across the entire site. If you can get it to look like your blog, even better.

So there ya go… everything you ever wanted to know about my opinion on GoBackpacking.com! I think it’s important to note that I neglected my site for a few years while I was travelling and only started to see results once I got back into it in a big way. That has meant hours of work each day but it has all started to pay off so it’s been worth it. Stick with it and try to get as much content up as you can on the original website before you start travelling and then focus on the blog once you hit the road. Good luck!

Does anyone else want to chuck in some comments for Dave or give me some feedback on the review itself so I can improve? I’ve enjoyed doing this so if anyone else has a travel-related site and wants a review done for the low, low cost of £0.00, drop me a line.

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