How To Build Blog Making $100+ a Month on Autopilot Under 3 Weeks – Part 2
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Simon learned how to build blog with wordpress in 5 days, and felt confident creating posts, pages, installing and configuring plugins and we were ready for the next step – Content.
Content plan was to publish 6 posts during first month and 4 posts per month thereafter (18 posts total). In general, 4 posts per month is a minimum posting requirement for product-based niche blog to stay alive in search engines.
Where do we get content?
If you guessed article directories, you were right. It’s the easiest way to get content for a blog and get blog off the ground when you starving for a good content. I can hear screams – duplicate content penalty, don’t do it!!
Let me give you a simple answer – duplicate content penalty is a myth. Somebody yet have to prove it’s a real thing. How do I know? Because I am tracking and testing everything. About 1.5 month after Simon’s blog was up, we looked at stats for a post on Simon blog and original ezinearticles.com article. Simon post was getting more traffic then original article!
Anyway, back to Simon’s blog content. Out of 18 posts, 3 posts had to be original and written by Simon from scratch, and remaining 15 were taken mostly from ezinearticles.com. Point of interest here – you have to be smart about publishing content. On niche blogs you can get away with about 20% original content and 80% re-published. But, first month of new blog is VERY important and you want a ratio of original/re-published content to be 50:50 (mainly to satisfy search engines).
Simon got homework to find relevant content in article directories and write 3 original posts. After 4 days he was back reporting progress and his blog had 18 posts, one post already published and 17 scheduled 4 month in a future at pre-defined intervals. Note: we disabled blog ping feature until a launch day, again mostly to satisfy search engines – we wanted to have at least 3 posts published.
Lets fast forward a little bit. Next steps after content plan were marketing, link building and traffic plans. They included a mix of usual techniques like social bookmarking, commenting on related blogs, making Squidoo lens, submitting 2 articles into article directories based on Simon’s original content and few others. Note: submitting original articles is a great strategy for new blog to get high PR links back. And we needed as many links as we can get for offsite SEO.
Then we spend few days putting together maintenance plan for the blog and making sure everything was in order with plugins, content and eBay affiliate account.
Last day before the launch, we opened up a bottle of champaign, enabled blog ping and celebrated our accomplishment with few glasses (make sure you do celebrate when you achieve something with your online business).
Now, affiliate sale numbers. First sale came 3 days after launch, wow! Traffic was steadily going up and so are sales. But actual sales figures blow us away, we did not expect that. Projections per month were $12, $24, $48 and $100 with total of $184 at the end of 4th month.
Look at these figures.
August sales – $123.80
September sales – $175.39
We almost hit 4 month target in 1 month!
I was planning this case study to be 2 part series, but decided to extended to few more, especially after hearing from Simon recently.
Stay tuned… and share what you think about this experiment in affiliate marketing.
18 Comments
October 19th, 2008 at 2:29 am
Impressive. Sounds like it’s going just according to plan so far
Dennis Edells last blog post..So I’ve Started to Monetize - Link Love Style
October 20th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Wow, thats incredible! I’m not sure I agree with using article directorys to get articles, if you have a loyal following they expect to read your articles, not someone elses. But congrats and good luck, I hope it continues to go well for you
October 20th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
@Dennis - thank you. Project actually went better than expected, Simon’s goal for 4 month was reached in about 5 weeks.
@Webdesi3 - good point, I should have clarified it in the post. Article dirs are very good for niche product blogs (combined with about 25% original content), not your flagship blog. After all, how many articles one can write about iPhone…
October 20th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
MUCH better then expected, great job.
Dennis Edells last blog post..Blog Revamp Update: Done - WOOHOO!
October 21st, 2008 at 5:28 am
Impressive on both the details and the end results. The fact that you share with us the earnings stats makes it looks like a child’s play.
Anyway, with regard to the content from the article directory, do you keep the original author’s link? I presume you don’t, do you? In any case, this is one of the best case studies I have seen in a long time.
Yan
Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..A - Z Blogging Guide for Beginners
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:39 pm
thanks Yan.
It’s really not as hard as one might think when components and plan are in place. But it was nice “surprise” as our goal for first month was $12.
in regard to articles, yes, you have to keep original author’s link as described in article directories TOS.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:29 pm
How was the money made? Affiliate Program? Clickbank? Adsense? CPA?
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:39 am
I would certainly hope so.
Dennis Edells last blog post..Don’t Be Like Jack…
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:19 am
@Conrad - money were made thru eBay affiliate program (not selling items on eBay, but serving eBay auctions on the blog) and phpBay Pro plugin. This pluin allows to easily integrate eBay item into the blog - read review here.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Wow! Excellent results for such a new blog. Are you going to reveal the blogs URL, so we can copy, i mean check it out. LoL.
The Ebay affiliate program is one of the best out there aimed at general consumers. You did a good execution here.
As for gleaning content from article directories? Fact is there are lots of really good articles on Ezine. It has really evolved into a good portal. Yes, i can see it working on a niche product blog. Relevancy is key.
Looking forward to Part III.
Missy.
Missy (from G34 Media)s last blog post..AppLoop: Make An iPhone App From Your Blog
October 24th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
thanks Missy. I cannot reveal blog URL now, maybe in a future. First, I have to check with Simon and, secondly, blog has PR0 as of now and it would not be fair to Simon to invite competition into the niche he researched.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
And then, here’s part 2, already in progress. That’s a neat business plan, with the most important word being “plan”. Good job all around.
Mitchs last blog post..Growth Revisited
October 27th, 2008 at 12:18 am
thanks Mitch!
October 31st, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Nice post Max…was just curious does this end the series or is there more? I just found out about your site thru missy and will have to come back here more often.
October 31st, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Max one mroe question when you say launch what did you mean buy that I was a lil confused about that part…..did that mean have link to ebay on the site after you built traffic from the submitted articles to the directories?
Desmond
November 1st, 2008 at 1:04 am
Great stuff man!
I’m not a fan of using content from directories, but I will definitely rewrite relevant content from around the web on niche sites that I build, and insert my own researched keywords strategically within the content.
Even if it’s a site that I plan to sell, I don’t do well with not having unique content.
But I do understand where you’re coming from completely! Having a good mix of ezinearticles and unique is smart - and I agree with you about the duplicate content issue, as I’ve yet to see any concrete case studies or evidence backing this theory up.
Elijahs last blog post..Blog Report For October 2008
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:17 pm
thanks Elijah! Content is always an issue, unless you are professional writer with Dragon Naturally Speaking software dictating 100 words a minute :-). Article directories are there for a reason and authors WANT us to grab articles and re-publish - more links to their sites and blogs. It’s a win-win situation for everybody.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
@Desmond - I am planning one more part, will see how it goes…
Sorry for confusion with launch. By launch I meant turning on blog ping (it was turned off before the launch) AND all accounts setup and active (such as eBay affiliate), all product pages ready and filled with products, and at least 3 posts published. Idea is not to ping any services until everything is ready and there is content and products on the blog.