I am taking the opportunity to take a short breather from the stultifying job of all out content creation to take a step back to see how things are progressing. Here are a few realisations and observations I have made that some may be able to relate to.

The realisation of the progress that I’ve made with my niche marketing business only recently hit home to me when I was going over my earnings in my head while out for my daily run. Running is a great opportunity to clear the mind, consider how things are progressing and come up with plans for future opportunities.

Anyway, what occurred to me was that it wasn’t all that long ago that a disappointing Adsense earnings day for me was around $2.00 for the day while the average over an entire month was around $4 - $5. Nowadays, a disappointing day is when I only earn around $7.00 with Adsense and my average earnings sits at around the $14 - $15 mark. The exciting thing for me is that I didn’t even notice the progression. My feeling is that, over the time it has taken to triple my daily earnings I’ve felt as though I haven’t really been working as hard on my sites as I could. Actually, I should correct that to say I haven’t really been working as effectively as I could.

Over the past couple of months I feel as though I have picked up some very valuable resources that will allow me to work more effectively. This involves keyword targeting, building solid links and focusing on goals to build on the momentum I have already created.

Momentum Is a Powerful Force

The statement that momentum is a powerful force is hardly earth shatteringly original but it is appropriate when it comes to niche marketing. Once you have done the hard yards of establishing your web-site(s) and they have taken a precarious perch somewhere in the search engine rankings things start to get a little easier. Suddenly you find that you no longer have to work your butt off just to rank in the first 100 pages.

The idea of massive action is part of the force of momentum. Creating content is the bane of a lot of internet marketers’ existence but it is also the unguarded secret of success. Those who can squeeze out 10 articles per day every day are the ones who are going to progress at breathtaking speed. It’s only after you have seen the results of taking massive action that the drive to repeat it will bite.

Finding a long-tail keyword in the stats is now the catalyst for a new mini project to improve the site’s ranking for it. A flurry of posts related to the long-tail can cement yourself up towards the top of the rankings so that you dominate that keyword. Momentum will make the job of producing that content so much easier.

The Money Is In the Long Tail

One of the mistakes many beginners to internet marketing make is to assume that the way to successfully ranking for their keyword is to concentrate solely on that one keyword. For the vast majority of us, this keyword is by far the most difficult to attain the number 1 ranking for. Yet it’s the one those with the least experience will target.

Doing it this way is the arse-about way of attempting to make money on the internet. It may seem to be most logical to try to rank for the word or words that have the greatest potential, but those keywords are chock-a-block with competitors also trying to rank for it…and they’ve probably got a lot more experience and a lot more resources at their disposal.

So what’s the clever way to attack it if you’re just beginning? Quite simply, start at the bottom and target the search terms that nobody else wants. These are the long tails and the fact is, this is where the real money is at. But nobody knows it. Nobody has woken up to the fact that the easy way to make big money online is to chase the seemingly worthless keywords.

This isn’t to say you won’t be targeting a high value keyword – you most certainly should and that keyword should appear somewhere in the domain name of your site. It should also appear in the site title, the post titles, page titles, tags and what not. But when it comes to specifically targeting a keyword go for the long tail that, according to the Adwords Keyword Tool, is only worth 0.05 per click and only has 140 searches per month. Even more important is that the number of competing sites is low. A thorough and well-researched post about this under-appreciated, unwanted keyword should put you somewhere towards the top of the rankings. 5 or 6 links could be all it takes to get to #1.

What this actually means is that you’re on the board. You’re ranked and you will get traffic. The numbers that you get are going to be miniscule to start with but they will start to trickle in. When the trickle starts you can check your stats to find out what search terms were used to find your site. This will give you a bunch of new long tails to target. Either add the exact long tail to your existing post or create a new post expanding on the long tail. A few more links and you may have just expanded your site’s net to a few more visitors per month. You should be able to see how this is going to go from here.

The fact is that if you keep adding content to your site based on the traffic that you have already received you are effectively making your site more authoritative. Your knowledge of the subject is bound to grow, the range of long tail keywords that you rank for expands and your traffic improves from a trickle to a flow…and you haven’t directly attacked your main keyword.

But in reality, you have attacked your main keyword and you’ve made tremendous strides towards ranking highly for it.

The Role of Massive Action

The key to finding success with this method of building your site is massive action. It is a simple concept in theory but incredibly difficult to put into practice, particularly if you are new to the game and have absolutely no proof that what you are doing is going to result in earnings. What has been left out of the long-tail process outlined above is the length of time you can expect all of the steps to take. The truth is, it varies but generally it takes months for your hard work to take effect.

In the meantime the true hard work has to take place. That’s the massive action that has to be taken using a leap of faith that all of that action will bear fruit.

The usual path goes something like: a flurry of action writing 5 or 6 posts that get published on your brand new website. You then write 5 or 6 more articles and use them to send links back to your site, maybe from an article directory such as EzineArticles.com or a similar site. By now you’re a couple of weeks down the track and there still seems to be no visitors to speak of. As a result you have ceased creating content because the wind has been knocked out of your sails. All of that work has been done and you’ve got nothing to show for it.

What you should have been doing after writing the first 5 posts and the first 5 articles is build another 5 articles the next day, then another 5 articles the next day and another 5 articles the next day. One of those articles would be posted on your site, the rest would be posted on other blogs, article directories or the many other free content sources that are available that will take your content and give you a link in return. “Massive” is a relative term and will mean different things to different people. As long as you take action every day you can be sure your online portfolio will progress.

It all comes down to the following simple equation:

E * (content + links) + time = success, where E = every day.

My Goals Going Forward

The most important part of the process of building up a niche empire is to set a bunch of goals, write them down and then work like buggery to tick them off one at a time. Without a clear set of goals I have found myself drifting along, unsure what to do next. I have also made the mistake in the past of setting specific short-term monetary goals, which is a variable that is largely out of my hands.

These days I set myself goals that I have complete control over. Specifically, I have been setting myself a daily goal of a certain number of articles that I want to complete. The number of articles I make sure I publish is at least 8. Of those 8 articles I try to write at least 6 of them for linking purposes and the rest for adding new content to my sites.

It’s all about momentum. By ensuring I complete this content creation each day, I am comfortable in the fact that my sites are growing in authority.

On top of these short-term daily goals I have still have my overall monetary goal drawing me on. It is a long-term goal that continues to focus the mind. It is also a target that is starting to look just that little bit more realistic.

With every article I write and every link I build I can sense that I am making real progress.

Around June last year I decided to take part (in my quiet way) in my own personal Hubpages challenge. The going trend was to post 100 Hubs with the aim being to make some money off them. Before the challenge was mentioned by Courtney Tuttle of The Keyword Academy, the favorite use for Hubpages was as a strong link back to your own site.

My stated personal challenge was to build those 100 Hubs and report on the success or otherwise of my attempt. The truth is, I have only managed to get halfway through my goal of creating 100 Hubs. In fact, I now have 51 Hubs published largely due to the fact that I have been unbelievably busy building content and links to the sites that I own (and that I am getting to keep all of the revenue I make).

I have been reading reports from other people who have taken part in the 100 Hubpages Challenge saying that their revenue and their Hubpage traffic has dropped off considerably. They go on to admit that apart from some very basic link building they have done nothing to promote their Hubs. Consequently the revenue they have made has dropped dramatically. Personally, I think that comes down to one of two factors. Either poor keyword choice or neglect.

So after…let’s call it 6 months, the scorecard for the Hubs that I have built is as follows.

No of Hubs = 51

Average Page Impressions = 1370 per month

Average Revenue = $43.95 per month

So I’m getting a return of almost $1 for every Hub I published per month. Unlike other people, I haven’t experienced any drop off if revenue over the last couple of months. In fact, the visitor numbers are just starting to kick higher again which prompted me to write the last 3 Hubs in the last week or so.

Using Hubpages to test for promising looking niches is still a solid way to use the tool and it is providing an income stream that is very reliable. Far from being the bust that some people are claiming it to be, I can still see a lot of merit in using Hubpages to make some money. At the very least the $40+ I’m making can be reinvested into buying some articles for my other niches or another 5 or 6 Hubs.

Hubpages is not going to make you rich (unless of course you right a crazy number of Hubs) but it still has the potential to pull in good revenue figures. As for talks of penalties and other such nonsense, well, once again it’s proof that it’s a good idea to steer clear of forums in which IMers lounge around and spread their conspiracy theories to one another, passing their paranoia off as fact.

So, as far as I’m concerned my personal Hubpages challenge is still not over, not by a long shot. I am still planning to make it to 100 Hubs although I am not placing any priority on writing the content for each Hub. My number one priority remains the niche sites I own, after all, they’re the ones that are making me the money.

The progress of my personal Hubpage challenge has been as follows:

My Personal Hubpage Challenge Introduction
My Personal Hubpage Challenge After 1 Week
My Personal Hubpage Challenge After 1 Month

So we’ve just had another example of corporate America bullies trying to step on the little guy in a bid to run him out of town before he even had a chance to make an honest buck. The Hansen Beverage company, owners of Monster Energy Drink have issued a cease and desist order on micro brewer Rock Art Brewery for their Vermonster beer. The claim is that people will confuse the two products – one is an energy drink and the other is a beer, remember.

This kind of bullshit tactic from large companies is the kind of thing that can get a lot of people pissed off very quickly. It’s a poorly thought out action by a bunch of corporate executives who obviously have their heads so far up there own arses that they have no idea about their own market.

Fortunately, there has been a big enough outcry about this case that a few people with more than your average online experience have picked it up to make sure that everyone will know just what sort of company the Hansen Beverage company is. At Blogger Illustrated Allyn has pointed out his outrage in his damning post about Monster Energy Drink in no uncertain terms.

To pick on a small company who obviously isn’t in the same market completely stinks and deserves the bad rap that is going to fall upon it. Already people have decided to boycott Monster Energy Drink over this. I hope Rock Art Brewery decides to fight this and, if there is any justice in this world, that Hansen Beverages takes a big hit in the only place they’ll notice, their bottom line.

If you want to show your support for Rock Art in their fight you can buy a t-shirt by visiting the Rock Art Brewery website. Fight the good fight and a big F-you to Monster.

I haven’t posted here for a while because I’ve been hard at work, but someone has called for help and I felt compelled to spread the word.

I recently heard a story typifying the exact reason why it is strongly advisable to keep your Hosting and your Domain Registrar separate. This story involves a Hosting company called Dreamhost that did the dirty on one of their customers and have turned his IM life upside down. He has posted his own scathing Dreamhost review which is well worth the read to give you an idea about the dangers that are out there in the online world and the unscrupulous bastards who think they can walk all over the little guys.

Essentially what Dreamhost did was suddenly pull the Hosting out from under the guy citing the use of a Wordpress plug-in on his blogs as the reason for the termination of service. The problem was that there was nothing in the company’s TOS stating that the plug-in was not allowed and, when asked why no warning was given before cutting him off, all he received was a terse reply indicating that their decision was final.

The only domain he could not get back was the one he had registered with Dreamhost. When he tried to transfer the domain to a new host he was unable to verify the domain because it was locked into Dreamhost’s name servers. And he couldn’t access the name servers because they had locked him out with no warning.

Don’t wait until you suddenly have problems with your hosting service. It happens and probably more often than you think it might. You don’t want to lose the site that you have poured hours of hard work into just because some unfeeling nobody decides they don’t like the look of it.

You just don’t want the hassle of having to chase this type of thing up. IM is hard enough without having to take precious time out to deal with imbeciles.

Get even more advice about keeping your Hosting and Domain Names separate.

I realised today when I posted my latest Hub that I am now 1/3 of the way to reaching the 100 Hubs that has been so arbitrarily arrived at as the ideal goal to reach. I’ve latched onto that number too, only because it was conveniently arrived at by someone else (and people are going to use it when they do a search, heh).

Anyway, I’m muddling through my own personal Hubpages challenge at my own pace. I don’t need anyone else to tell me how quickly I have to get it done. After all, they don’t know how many other sites I am also working that pay me a lot more money from a lot less work right at the moment. It gives me faint amusement when I read about forum regulars pleading for clarification of the “rules” of challenge. I swear I wonder how some people manage to take a dump without crapping their own pants.

I think my keyword selection has been reasonably sound in terms of bringing in reasonable Adsense revenue. Someone else has already mentioned that from their experience you shouldn’t really expect to get a clear idea of how much money you’re going to make from your Hubs until you’ve published at least 70 of them. That gives me some time to wait before I have to concern myself over what’s actually coming in to repay me for my effort.

My Current Backlink Plans

My Hubpages challenge is progressing differently to a lot of other people’s in ways apart from the speed in which posting is taking place. As well as posting Hubs on a regular basis I’m also making sure on getting my links organised early on in the process.
When I write a hub I also try to write an accompanying EzineArticle of 250 to 300 words plus three or four Keyword Academy articles of 125 to 150 words long. I’m also trying to add four or five InfoBarrel articles that will link back to my Hubs. Finally, I am throwing in a few of my own blog posts with two or three linking back to my hubs. All up, I reckon I’m able to get around 10 or so back links for each hub that I’m submitting. That’s 10 links spread over five or six days without a lot of work or effort.

Reporting My Hubpages Progress

My original plan was to report my progress during my hub pages challenge but I’ve heard plenty of horror stories when people start revealing their successes. Suffice it to say I’ve made some money through my hubpages challenge already, possibly more than I was expecting, definitely enough to motivate me to write plenty more.

So 100 Hubs is now merely the minimum number of hubs that I’m aiming for. The Adsense placement on hubpages’s is very good and converts quite well, well enough to be consistently bringing in revenue for me at a click through rate of over 7%. I’ll take that any day.

It should be highlighted that the majority of work going into my hubs is keyword research as well as the part that I dislike the most actually typing it all out. But as of today I may have solved by typing problem because I have taken possession of a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. As a matter of fact the last half of this post so far has been written using Dragon, I’m still very much in the training stages but so far so good producing content and I don’t have to type to do it.

I expect that over the next few weeks my proficiency with the product will improve dramatically and so will the rate at which I produced new articles and hubs. And it will largely come down to how quickly I can research a niche and transform it into a coherent piece of work based around the keywords I’ve chosen.