Meet CopySean Making $10K Monthly

I met Sean on a blog comment and conversation. I was very impressed by his monthly online income and the way how he drove traffic. I’m sure that you will be inspired by his success too.

1. Sean, I am very excited to have you here, would you introduce and tell us more about yourself?

“My name is Sean King and I’m a 21 year old dude making a full time income from my dorm room. I never expected to become an “entrepreneur.” Growing up, I thought this required you to either invent something awesome or build a giant and thriving business. Luckily I stumbled upon making money online in October 2010 and have since found awesome success with one website.”

2. Awesome to see you have success in such as a short time. How did you get into this Make Money Online business?

“During my 3rd year in college, I heard that the founder of a popular site was making money online with a silly website. I thought I could easily recreate a similar website with a different concept and make some side money. This led me to study all I could about “making money online” and opened my eyes to a new world. I found that hundreds of thousands of people were making money in all different kinds of ways.”

3. Sure that you are a fast learner. Why do you do what you are doing?

“I’m sharing my journey of how I am able to make over $10,000 at CopySean.com because I learned countless of free information to get me to where I am today. I believe that you only need one hit or spark of an idea to become a success. I’m hoping that my journey will show that every success story is different and there are so many unique paths to “making it.””

4. I visited your blog and you do have an interesting journey. What is your 1st Successful Mindset to keep you going?

“For some reason, I always knew that I would make it someday. For me, it was just a matter of getting through all the failures as quickly as possible. Having confident in myself was one of the most important factors because if you don’t even believe in yourself, who will? I saw other people making a killing online and I knew that if I put out my 100% I would be able to achieve the same. ANYONE and EVERYONE can do the same. The hard part is actually going out there and just DOING IT.”

5. Very encouraging. From your blog, I know you are into Dating/Relationship niche? How did you stumble upon and approach this niche?

“This past summer, my friend was using dating websites to meet new people in person. I met several of these people and found that dating websites no longer have that stereotype attached to it that it did years ago. I found a market of desperate people who wanted to make friends and meet potential partners. When I launched my site, an overwhelming number of the audience were women, so gradually the site morphed into a dating advice site for women, but from a guy’s perspective. It sounds crazy, I know. But it just goes to show that you can build a success niche in almost anything! Uniqueness and creativity is key.”

6. How do you rank and do SEO on your niche sites?

“I don’t do any ranking or SEO. I have a very large audience of women who love my content. Every blog post I have (I only update once a week) averages over 1,000 Facebook Shares so my growth is very natural. I don’t rely on Google at all. However, I’m starting to see many of my keywords climb the rankings because I have a hunch that social media is beginning to play an important role in SEO.”

7. Very impressed to know your FB traffic especially after all the Google Panda and Penguin in April. How do you do it and do you have any tips to us?

“Use images! Images on Facebook get shared like crazy. I also include a watermark of my site’s URL on every image so I get a lot of direct traffic from people who see an image and type the URL into their browser. Another tip would be to actually use the words “like” and “share” when posting an image. For example, my status will read: LIKE if you agree with this.”

8. Do you have any suggestion about building Facebook Fans pages? Especially for those Adsense and Amazon Niche Site owners?

“To be honest, unless your adsense and amazon niche site amass a huge following and gets lots of traffic, I don’t think that Facebook Fans Pages should be your number one priority. It definitely depends on the content of your site, but most sites I see can only generate maybe 1,000 fans at most. I know most bloggers stress the importance of social media, but I believe that you should only be present where you are seeing actual results. And then going all out on those methods. If I were to create an adsense or amazon niche site, I wouldn’t focus my efforts on fan pages.”

9. Great feedback. By the way, what was your biggest success online?

“My biggest success online was creating an authority website that grew a loyal following on it’s own and then releasing an eBook that was a hit with my audience. I will never forget January of this year when I made $15,000 online for the first time.”

10. Do you have any “failure” lessons to share with you?

“Before my current authority site, I went through many, many, many failures. Failure is inevitable as an entrepreneur. It’s bound to happen. The key is to realize that you WILL fail until you finally find the one project that works well for you. Take each failure, learn from it, and bounce right back up. The word “fail” has such a harsh stigma to it, but in the entrepreneurial world, we all fail and it’s really nothing. No big deal. Just move on!”

11. For those newbies, what would you suggest for going into this business?

“I would suggest learning as much as you can from free content online and brewing up several ideas. Different approaches work for different people. You will never know which approach works best for you until you go out and do it. I’ve tried an adsense site, niche site, email newsletter site, etc. But found that an authority site works best for me. Just go out there and start something! The best teacher is experience!”

12. Any inspiration and encouragement to share with us here?

“If you have the drive and motivation, you will succeed in anything you do. I grew up in a very, very poor family with a single mother. I wanted to provide for and support my mother and sister more than anything else in the world. This crazy obsession made me have no other option but to succeed online. Find what drives you. If you think you have what it takes then go out there and truly give it your 100%. If not, you may be able to find some success online, but it will take you much longer and you may never reach your fullest potential.”

After Thought

I am very into Amazon and Adsense Niche Sites these days. Sometimes it’s great to meet others doing well with other models. With Sean’s Authority Site approach, it’s about to identify a niche and target audience, create great content to solve their problems and serve them really well. Create a community and let your fans share and drive you “free traffic”. I was very impressed and this is something creative to me.

I do Facebook LIKE and Twitter Tweets to do backlinking to my niche sites. This Facebook Fans page traffic is something new and totally awesome! I love to explore this approach with my upcoming Authority Site Projects too.

Feedback

Do you have any questions for Sean? Please feel free to check out CopySean.com and leave your comments here.

MMO Monthly Report April 2012

We are stepping into Q2 2012(April to June) and I’m thankful that April was over. It was a tough month regarding to the niche site traffic and my online income.

This is my 7th month really into this Make Extra Money Online business – I mean thinking and acting on it on regular basis.

I love writing this kind of income report for journey and sharing my experience. I’m more than experienced than I was a year ago. Let us learn and grow as a community together.

My 3 Lessons in April

1. Be Flexible about my business

Google had some new Panda and Penguin algorithm update and hit some of my new niche sites badly. Many of those new ones were in 20’ SERP in April and now are all out of 500+, probably sent to the sandbox.

Unexpectedly, my Adsense Income was double up. It was a pretty bad month in March and I didn’t expect it went well and hit another $100 Mark month finally.

Niche Site Traffic is pretty dynamic. Some keywords that are ranking today, may not rank tomorrow due to the competition and Google Algorithm change.

After Penguin update, I was sitting back and kind of like in a “reactive” mode. What could I do next? How could I maintain and even grow my business to the next level?

I don’t agree on those making money online fast, hit and run business model. I’m looking for a long term and passive income still making me decent extra income a few years later. All my hard-work today still pays off a few months later.

2. Being Focus and Productive is Not Easy

In April, I was “planning” to add in more content and built a few new niche sites for testing post-panda (After Blog Network being deindex update in March.)

Indeed, I added only around 10 articles to my best money making niche sites and some new ones.

I felt I didn’t accomplish much.

Also I didn’t hit my weekly blog post goal and only added 3 blog posts here in April.

Setting your goal and accomplishing “something” could be totally off.

Indeed of setting goals, I think it would be better to set schedule and stick with it, either outsourcing, posting, or backlinking for my niche sites.

Sometimes I am “working” online, and waste time on reading emails, blogs, twitter, and Facebook. I really like setting 25 min time-box, and focus finishing tasks these days. Check out this FREE desktop app at Focus Booster

3. Get to have Life Balance

Although my income was getting a little lower in April, I felt this was a much more well-balanced month regarding to work-load and how much time I spend on this business.

Being honest, it was about 1-2 hours a day which is kind of what I like to do online. Working too much doesn’t mean working smart.

Also things happen, life priority shifts and I focus much more at my full-time job (kind of satisfying to get more done there indeed). Family thing happens and I treasure much more time I spend time with my kids these days. They just grow fast and my “online business” is not totally the top priority.

I enjoy working and growing this business as this is “mine”.

Better Life Balance = More Productive = Happier Life = Enjoy more what I do online.

In Jan and Feb, I was very stress-out as those are the first months that I am “fully” involving in this business. I started blogging on weekly basis and trying to maintain my online business for 4-digit a month.

It took more than I could afford regarding to time and energy after 9-to-5 and family commitment.

Sometimes I just need to sit back and relax. Refresh my mind, and Have a fresh eye.

I was over-working from Jan – March. April was going slower than I’d like, but I feel my stress level went down as well.. which is great.

I get to enjoy life and this business journey. I love Spring and summer is approaching earlier than I thought this year.

I’m thankful that this Online Business is not my full-time and any extra income is bonus.

I highly suggest you to take a break from your Online Business. Have a refreshing view about how to go forward!

Online Income Report in April 2012

1. Amazon Affiliate ($237.82)

This was a bad month that I couldn’t hit 7% commission rate and shipped fewer than 110 items totally.

Some of my high traffic pages (~50 a day) were impacted and ranked out. You could tell that my conversation rate dropped. I could claim it was a tax filing month and people wasn’t in the mood buying online especially on my niche sites.

I enrolled Azon Commission Classroom in early April. Learned some new tricks and am pretty involved in the forum. I learn the best by watching training video and watching Case Study – how Jeff and Dave made some sales on a 10-page product review live site. Unfortunately, this is closed.

I highly recommend Niche Profit Course which have helped me to build my Amazon Niche Site Empire. It comes with Azon WP Theme that I have been using on my Niche Sites and you could check out Chris’ mini niche and authority Affiliate site Case Study – they are the models I have been following along these days. Check out my $11K Amazon income proof here.

2. Google Adsense (~$120)

Since many online folks got their Adsense Account Ban, I hesistant to post the traffic trend chart and specific number of my Adsense Summary Report.

One of my niche sites hit $100 Adsense in April. I’m going to grow it even bigger and add 2 articles a week on this Adsense site this month.

Google doesn’t like Thin Content Niche sites, and as a long term business, I am operating as an Adsense Publisher. I know this site is in decent paid CPC niche and people are looking for the information that I could provide.

I didn’t move fast enough for my Adsense Case Study as planned. All the Panda and Penguin keep me panic to react.

As April 1st, I have hit $1,000 Mark as Google Adsense income (I have accumulated this income from the last couple months.)

Adsense definitely works and one of the easiest ways to make money online. I’m testing and trying to grow it on monthly basis.

3. Affiliate Income ($195.54)

My Affiliate income didn’t do great as in March, which is kind of expected as I haven’t really promoted any Affiliate offer lately. (I only promote what has been working out for me just that there are too many spams out there.)

I’d like to focus more on my Core Business (which is Amazon and Adsense Niche Site), scale it BIG, provide a lot of values on my blog, and help others to succeed too.

Meanwhile, I’m exploring other Affiliate Network as diversifying my income stream.

CJ.com is my next. It really takes time to dig into it.

My Game Plan in May

My bottom line is to increase the traffic to my various niche sites. For Amazon Affiliate, driving more clicks to Amazon.com; for Adsense, more ads impression.

My to-do list:
1. Add 12 posts to my big Amazon Affiliate Site and 10 posts on various ones
2. Add 8 posts on my big Adsense Site and 10 posts on various ones
3. Work on my Azon Theme Niche Site (It’s a brand new.)
4. Work on my First Authority Niche Site (Will blog about how competitive this keyword and my approach is.)
5. Finish up my mini-site work for my Adsense Case Study (Have a follow-up post)

I will be out for 2 weeks vacation in June. Yes, I will be in Asia and I love to think outsourcing more and hope I could have more “done” in June when I’m on vacation. I will spend more time with my parents back home and just chill out.

Adding Content

After all Panda and Penguin update, I reflect and am lucky that 2 of my sites are not impacted much regarding to the traffic and income. They are just “low” enough that I don’t feel hurt. ☺

Update after update, Google just wanna honor more “authority” style sites. I heard the algorithm hurted some legit ones too which is another story.

I ran out of niche site content ideas. I’m thankful to get a copy of Erica Stone’s Niche Site Master and following the blueprint & 10 templates to add more “informative” posts to my Amazon Niche Sites. Those new pages should get more longtail keyword traffic.

Also I got Jamie’s Amazon Mind Control. This guide has listed out the 4 visitor buying thought process and I gonna create new Product Review posts with different approach. Highly conversion pages are what I need to grow my Amazon income. (I have been creating product review posts most of time but some are just not converting.)

The goal is to increase traffic to my niche sites by adding new fresh content and getting more longtail keyword traffic. I’m telling and proving to Search Engines that my sites are being updated and deserve for higher SERPs.

Backlinking

Be honest, I don’t have much to tell except that I’m testing out SocialAdr these days. This is a great service that I am paying $17 a month (the Lazy Free account) and have other members do social bookmarking for me.

It’s like having “outsourcing” workers doing social bookmarks across diff networks and working for me.

The work is so minimal that I really like and sort of passive. If I see good return, I may upgrade to the higher level one later.

I simple set up 10 url across my niche sites and let other SocialAdr members social bookmarking them on their accounts. You may have shared some of mine there already. I love receiving emails like this:

Google loves this kind of social signals as they are coming from different accounts and ip addresses. That is a lot of effort to get my niche site content shared socially. I do ping.fm another free service you should try out too.

I’d suggest you to register a Free Account at least, you could earn some free credits with 5 mins work a day. (The pain was the initial account creation and sign-up process; anyway, it was a free account, why not?)

The SEO world is not falling, just that I really don’t know what and how Google loves these days. At least I think Google wanna honor bigger and authority sites based on my recent analysis.

SEO Afterthought

I have been reading a lot about Penguin Update and how this really impacts other Internet Markets. It really hurts those “thin” niche sites as well as some other Authority Sites.

After all, I don’t care much how bad the impact is. It’s all about how much traffic you get from the search engines, and social media.

I think the best way to be less dependent on Search Engine Traffic is to build a community page through Facebook and other Social Media. Get decent traffic from other source instead.

We shouldn’t have relied on GOOGLE too much. I’m learning how to drive more traffic from various sources. GOOGLE could snap your Search Engine Ranking BAD one day, but if you have great content, people follow and come back!

My Own Product Niche Blog

To diversify my income stream a little, I finally have my own product. Yes, I acquire the Azon Theme PLR right and I could sell it directly.

The site is still under construction and I’m writing unique related content and even out-source some of those. I hope this Niche product blog could help other Amazon Affiliates too.

I will blog how I customize Azon Theme and have decent conversion. Stay tuned.

New Authority Site Project

Creating new niche sites with thin content like those 1-3 pages one just don’t click. (For me, it’s not interesting and kind of dry for me. I enjoy getting more Adsense clicks, but not the work.)

To “test the water”, I am focusing to build my first (10-20 pages) mini Authority niche sites and throw in some “testing” money on Fiverr in May.

I prefer working on those over 5000 keyword search volume niche. Let them age and grow them big as 30-50+ pages.

I rather create new pages and rank them, instead of creating another new domain name and let it rank in 3 mos (it may not get any traffic after a few months though.)

I plan to find some long-term “winners” and make this kind of project as reproducible process.

Thank You

For this IMT Community, big thanks and loves for all the retweets and regular visitors. Your support & visit traffic helps me move forward and continue providing values. I can’t GIVE what I don’t have.

I’m working hard and gaining some momentum, being a better Affiliate Marketer, and share more tips and news with you guys on regular basis.

I realize blogging is NOT my thing.. I rather work on my niche sites, than on this blog, but I love contributing and helping others to accomplish your goals online.

Sharing and Feedback

How did Panda and Penguin impact your Online Business? Do you have any plan in May? Let me keep you accountable too.

Meeting Adam 23 year old affiliate

1. Great to have you here. Adam, would you introduce and tell us more about yourself?

“Hi Kent, My name’s Adam and I’m a 23 year old affiliate. I’ve been affiliating for a little over 2 years across the gambling and finance industry and have gone from $0 up to more then $7,5000 per month.

Recently I’ve been diversifying into non-affiliate streams of income (pre-paid advertising and adsense models) in addition to developing my own affiliate blog at AffiliateFYI.com.”

2. Interesting to meet you a young talented one like you. How did you start your Affiliate marketing?

“During my 2nd year of University I found some summer work writing news and reviews for other affiliates. By the end of summer, I earned $2,000+ from writing and my employer motivated me to set up my own affiliate website.

For the first 6 months, I really had no idea what I was doing. I went for the typical “large portal” approach in affiliating, only to find out that I was targeting a poor niche with zero conversions. Eventually, after around 1 year, I started developing a couple of other niche websites which started to make me a little bit of money (e.g. $500 per month) and I went on from there.”

3. Nice start journey, why do you do what you are doing?

“ First of all, I really enjoy managing my own business, being a creative and developing new projects. It’s really fulfilling when you see a new project start to make money after working with writers, designers and coders, not to mention the research required to start a new project and find a new domain to develop.

I originally took a gap-year after Uni (graduated June 2010) just to see what I could accomplish in 12 months as an affiliate. I set a target of $1,000 per month by the end of my gap year, however I quickly achieved this after just a few months.

By the end of my gap year, I was earning close to $5,000 per month, which is around £38,000 per month in the UK. I think the average graduate salary is around £25k, so I made the strategic decision to continue working on my business and see what happens. ”

4. Very cool! What kind of niche are you going after? Any special affiliate program or network are you focusing?

“I’ve made a lot of my money in the gambling industry, which includes online poker, casinos, bingo and sports betting.

In the last 6 months, I’ve diversified more into finance niches including Forex, banking and precious metals. Although I’m still growing my gambling affiliate network, I’m making a conscious decision to try and develop high quality, information sites on premium domains on more of a CPM/CPC business model. Sites such as StudentBanking.co.uk are an example of this.

Recent niches I’ve made some domain acquisitions in include mobile gambling, mobile recycling (selling your old mobile phones) and binary options.”

5. You do have interesting niche that I haven’t explored. What is your 1st Successful Mindset to keep you going?

“ First of all, SEO is a very new industry in which a number of young, ambitious people are making a lot of money online. I’ve seen pretty big growth in income over the last year or so, and I like to think that this will continue if I work hard.
I’ve also seen what other affiliates my age have accomplished – some of them on my Skype earning $20k – $50k per month. There’s literally no limit to what you can achieve or do online.

Of course, I think it’s wrong to be solely motivated by money, but I just like managing projects and being in charge of my work day.”

6. How do you rank and do SEO on your niche sites?

“I rely on competition analysis and my existing contacts for the bulk of my SEO campaigns. This is what gives me an edge over my competitors. Never underestimate the value of making contacts and friends in this industry. I like to think I’ve built links where others can’t.

Most of the time I look for very high quality sites to source links on, mostly in blog posts. I also outsource a small bit of SEO to a close friend who runs his own SEO Company. I don’t use any automated link building methods or tools. I’ve always found these a very unsustainable, short-term form of SEO.”

7. What was your biggest success online?

“It’s hard to track down my “biggest success” because my revenue growth over the last 12 months have been divided pretty evenly across 10+ sites.

The single, biggest turning point in my opinion was when I bought an exact-match domain for $300, which I developed, added some content and links to, and was then making $300 per month just a month later. This is the first ever-decent income stream I was making. Since then, this site has gone on to earn me more then $10,000 in the last year and I haven’t even updated it or touched it in the last 12 months.”

8. Do you have any “failure” lessons to share with us?

“I’ve had plenty of failures in internet marketing, ranging from website penalties, sand boxes and investing $x,xxx on premium domains, only to find they were penalised when I bought them.

I’ve also developed my fair share of sites that didn’t make any money. Sometimes it’s just a bit of luck whether a certain site will go on to make you a lot of money. There’s one site I recently developed and invested probably $2-$3k (eBookReaders.co.uk) which has barely made me $20 per month.
I justify these failures by having success elsewhere that makes up for them.”

9. For those newbies, what would you suggest for going into this business?

“It seems like a lifetime since I first got into affiliating, lol. I wouldn’t know where to start!
I was quite fortunate because I was still studying in my final year at University whilst I was developing websites and learning about SEO. By the time I finished University, I had the confidence to take a gap year developing my own business and apply everything I’d learned without any financial pressure. By the end of that 12 months, I was doing OK for myself and could justify continuing for another 12 months.

My top tips would be to develop a high quality site with excellent content in a growing niche with high CPAs and little competition. But make sure you still have other sources of income before you delve straight in to the affiliate industry – and try to get affiliate mentors to help you out. I know it usually takes brand new affiliates around 12 months before they start earning money from their websites, so you need to be patient and not be tempted by the short-term solutions that black hat SEO offers.

SEO is definitely starting to favour high quality white hat websites more then it ever did, and a lot of people are going to get left behind in future Google updates.”

10. Any inspiration and encouragement to share with us on IMT?

“I don’t think the SEO industry is ever going to die and I think links will always play a huge role in the Google algorithm for the next 5-10 years, which should give some people confidence.

I’ve seen plenty of affiliates my age start to make a good living (e.g. $60-$100k per year) after just 2 years. Some of the people my age I know are also making $250k+ per year. One of my previous writers from 2 years ago is now working with a partner and is making close to $1 million per year. This just goes to show that there IS money in SEO and affiliating. You just have to be patient and be willing to put in the grind, and then make smart re-investments in your business in order to get to the next level.”

11. How do you interact and work with other Internet Marketers? Are you active in social media? Do you have any tips for our readers?

“I keep in contact with lots of other affiliate marketers, coders and designers daily on Skype. Like I said, I think good contacts and relationships are a key part of affiliate marketing. I went to my first affiliate conference at the LAC last January, which was really fun and interesting too.

In the past I havn’t been active enough in social media, and this is something I am definitely making my target for the rest of 2012. The problem is that I think getting a core following, or list building, is more important then social media per say. For example, would you have rather build active list and following of 500-1,000 customers, or 500 likes on your Facebook wall?”

12. How do you diversify your business? Are you going to create your own products or do offline marketing etc?

“These recent Penguin updates hit a few of my sites hard, and have taught me a very important lesson. From now on, I’m going to be working with a partner in London, just as a form of insurance (e.g. having experience as a Marketing Director and managing writers on my CV) and extra-diversified income. I’ll still be developing my own business at the same time. ”

13. Do you have any short and long term plan for your Affiliate Marketing business?

“My short term plans are to get settled in London and work out of my partners office in London. My other plans are to either restart or fix my penalised sites.
My long term plans include a complete overhaul in strategy (focusing on building an authority site, investing lots of excellent content, high quality links and list-building, rather then small sites with tons of low quality links).

I also want to write a quick word about SEO and internet marketing post-penguin. It’s very scary when you lose some of your sites overnight, but I’ve realised that I always had this coming. SEO is by no means over and there are some great opportunities now that a number of big players in the industry have gone. Build a great site focusing on content and long tails, avoid buying low quality links, and you should have a lot of success. Investing in high quality content and high quality links is also a zero risk strategy.”

After Thought

It was very inspring to meet Adam. I wish I learned about IM when I was in college 10 years ago.

I admire his energy, out-of-box thinking, and willing to take risk and dedicate to try/test out (like taking a year off college). Also being patience is the key. You can’t just buy a “PUSH-button” software to make millions online.

Thanks so much, Adam! Your story is very inspiring and motivating to all of us. Get working on your Online Business today, it’s never late!

Sharing

Do you have any comments and questions for Adam? Please feel free to leave here.

Learning and Following Niche Site Masters and Buddies

After the Panda Update 3.4, my main money-making site traffic sank to ~150 daily traffic. It was about 300 daily 2 months ago.

I’m back to Zero.. Learning and on Action Taking Mode these days.

Also, I just grabbed this Azon Classroom training for $20. The training video quality and content is awesome. The core value is in the forum and community that I am pretty active getting involved with. I could have direct access to Jeff and Dave, who are making great Affiliate income from Amazon. Also I picked up some new tips that are new to me and I could execute on my Amazon Niche Sites.

I treasure education a lot as they help me become a better niche blogger and marketer. I run and take actions with some tips that I have learned recently. They will make me money..

Also I buy plugins and services. They not only save me time, but also make me extra money. For example, I bought an Amazon plugin and I just checked recently. It made me $200 Amazon Commission last couple months. ☺ Crazy enough, if you don’t try, you never know if it works or not. $20 was an awesome investment as an education. I am making way more than that from Amazon some days.

Niche Site Masters you should know

Regarding to free education, these are the guys that I look upon on regular basis. You could learn a lot of great tips and improving your business. These are something that I had love reading last couple weeks.

These guys are making their full-time income from home. Although they have different scale and time working on this business.

1. Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income

I have been following him since 2010. It’s awesome to see his growth. His income reports are always inspiring to me. I hope I could grow my brand as great as SPI.

2. Spencer Haws from Niche Pursuits

I got to know Spencer from Pat’s Niche Duel. Spencer has been providing a lot of great and free values on his blog. His LongTail Pro is my favorite keyword research tool and is running on my Desktop most of time.

3. Adsense Flippers

Joe and Justin are rocking and I love their podcast shows. They are very strong in their progress – outsourcing in Philiphiss. I have been learning so much on growing my Adsense niche site with their tips. Check out their recent release FREE
Building a Niche Site Empire guide here. It’s in high quality and one of the best FREE ebook you could have online.

4. Chris Guthrie from Make Money On the Internet

Chris is my first mentor making money with Amazon Affiliate. His NPC has helped me to make my first $10K online. He has various online business and I’m following his footprint on building Amazon Affiliate niche sites.

Niche Site Buddies that I interact with

These are Niche Site Buddies that I contact, follow, and learn practical tips from them. Their income reports keep me motivated too as we are walking along together. The list is growing, join the band!

1. Wesley Chasing Pace

Wesley is a real deal and I’m excited to see his Amazon Affiliate income growth last couple months. His dream house is very motivating.

Recently, he had an interesting post about what type of links convert the best? For me, anchor text and product image links convert the best. I love to test out those “Buy Now” buttons too.

2. Eric My 4 Work Hour Week

Eric is an tax consultant and has been working on his “4 Hour Workweek” since Feb, 2010. He has many interesting case study for Amazon and Adsense that I have been following. Passive income is hard work and you could get some insights following his blog .

This is an interesting one that he “unveiled” some of his top earning niche sites.

http://www.my4hrworkweek.com/a-detailed-look-at-my-top-earning-niche-sites

3. Andre Garde

Great to get to know another Online Daddy and Family Man – Andre Garde. Awesome to see your Adsense growth in March. Hard work pays off.

I picked up some tips about Buying high PR domain from his post How to buy a high pagerank domain

4. Mike from Maine

I’m very impressed with Mike’s aggressive Niche Site expense and his Growth. I was wondering if I shall scale up my niche site creation like that. Anyway, I’m still fine-turning my business process and love to catch up with Mike’s journey too.

How nice! Mike had his $100 Adsense Day recently. Congrats!

5. Tom from Leaving Work Behind

Would it be nice to be your own boss and leave work behind? Don’t get me wrong. I still enjoy doing software and my 9-to-5. It was nice to meet from UK. He quit his job and working on his online business – a full time writer and various online business.

Also he had a lot of success with guest blogging and growing his blog traffic.

6. Adem from UK

Adem was very cool and I got to know him from my blog comments. He has pretty profitable Adsense profile and he writes the niche site content himself.

Thoughts

From all these follows, I learn that this business is pretty dynamic. You can’t just follow ONE set of how-to and rule to succeed. Everyone has his/her own process, investment, business models, and focus.

I’m trying to figure out my Own way and process too. If you wanna grow big, you should have those in place while figuring out the How-To.

After all, niche selection, keyword research, creating content, driving traffic, and conversion are the CORE of Online Niche Site Business. You can’t go wrong if you master these skills.

I’d say working on this Online business behind the screen could be boring and dry sometimes. Let us motivate and learn from each other along the way.

As Internet Marketing and SEO Landscape evolves, so do my education and keeping up with other IM buddies.

Note: I am behind on my blog post these weeks, sometimes you just need to push the “publish” button and enhance along the way.

Sharing

Do you know of any Big Niche Site guys I should follow. Are you willing to be my Niche Site Buddy too? Join me at IMT Facebook

March was over. It was slower and worse than I thought. Also there was Google update de-indexing “private blog network” especially BMR and Panda 3.4 worrying this IM industry and myself.

I was a little bit “panic” – how it would impact my niche site traffic and income mind going-on last 2 weeks. I was hesitant to take any actions like building too much backlinks and stuff. I was kind of “passive” observing the impact and how other bloggers react.

I’m glad that it was over and I could start from fresh in April again.

Learned Lessons in March

1. You should have multiple Online Income Streams and Niche Sites.

Some of my Amazon Niche Sites got ranking slapped and you could tell from my Amazon Income. Also some of my niche site fellows got Adsense Site Banned. It tells me that it could be happening to me and you should always have some backup plans. I was very sorry for those guys as Adsense is part of their major online income streams.

What is my action item? Yes, I gonna explore CJ, Clickbank, and EPN opportunities in Q2. (I will have more update in the next post about my game plan.)

I need to block out time to focus exploring in Q2. If I work on multiple projects, it would kill my productivity and becomes NO focus given I only work 1-2 hours online a day.

Building and ranking new niche sites do take time. Google wouldn’t honor and give you massive of traffic right the way.

From what I see, a few sites that I have built back to Jan… comes out of Sandbox (500+ ranking) and start getting some traffic. This is pretty nice and telling me that I am doing things right in Google eyes. I wish I had built much more new sites early in Dec and Jan…

Start planting your seeds today. If you wanna make profit out of niche sites, you won’t get Amazon and Adsense checks as I do right the way. It does take patience and right skills.

2. Working on many things means NO productivity and FOCUS.

I was working on other Amazon Niche Sites to grow my Amazon Income (They are higher ROI projects for me); and wrote 4 blogs posts on this blog; and built various backlinks etc.

Early March, I was focusing and working on my Adsense Case Study and building out some new niche sites.

My goal was:
1. Spend $500 totally
2. Spend 3 hours each site
3. TO make $100 a month out of Adsense totally.

I did pretty good and built 4 new sites in March. Will have more updates on those later. After First 2-week focus, I realize it’s out of my capacity and finding good and profitable keywords really takes time.

I am thankful that I just got Keyword Blaze Pro at $17 (First 5 hours after launch)

You may have heard about SEOockpit which is $77/month. I was “tempted” to get something like that to help me find High Profitable keywords and save me time.

I’m in love with Keyword Blaze Pro as this is a server side solution (It runs fast behind the scene.) Once I identify some potential keywords, I will double check in Competitor Analysis Module in LongTail Pro (which is my Number One tool) running on my Desktop all the time.

I’m positive that I could find more Winning Keywords in April and cut out the time doing keyword research. lol

Instead of building all 8 sites per my Case Study in a month, I’m spending time and working on this Case Study in 3 months.

The goal is not to “waste” $500 quick. I need to get it right, have right process and schedule in place, and add another $100 Adsense monthly income.

In my Adsense case study, when I reach my income goal, I will just repeat the same processon regular basis.

Once I have that “project experience” in place, I should be able to outsource, streamline and build & rank 8-10 sites in a month.

Also I am behind on my serial of Adsense How-to and Process blog posts. ☺ Need to get my blogging schedule in place and make it happen.

3. Work Less means Working More.

In March, I spent more time “thinking” about my to-do list and they occupied my mind – but I didn’t make all happened. It wasn’t productive as I wish.

4 Hour Work-week is a mind opening book to me. I am 30% done and the 80/20 rule rocks and like a baseball bat hitting my head big time last week.

Sometimes we work online and look very busy. Am I productive today? Hell no and sometimes I am reading on other blogs, too much tweets, and spending time on FB. I know engaging with your audience and do social is important. It’s part of my Online Branding.

What do I do make me productive? Adding new blog posts and building backlinks do. They are time-consuming, but they are the CORE of this business and how this process / model works.

I feel great publishing this post and other Niche Site posts today.. everyday.

March Online Income

1. Amazon Affiliate ($290.83)

Amazon income was the lowest in the last 6 months. A reason is my niche site traffic went down(due to Panda update), and people are not “spending” much and busy with filing tax. I forsee that it will go in this pace for another 2 weeks before April 16th Tax File Deadline.

As you may see, I have some good Conversion Rate (>10%) on Amazon. I wish all 192 shipped items were at $100 priced. That would be like 192 x $100 x (7% commission rate) = $1,344 income stream from Amazon.

Well, reality is reality. Those $100 items that I promoted didn’t sell well in March.

Also I had some “high-priced” items returned and it hurt.

Another surprise, I don’t have any niche selling Jewelry, but someone bought “10k White Gold Diamond Cross Pendant” through my links. This is way better than a click from Adsense.

That’s why I love doing Amazon Affiliate comparing to Google Adsense as you are awarded by driving traffic to Amazon. Amazon is just converting and promotes/sells stuff to your visitors.

Per Niche Profit Course, I should have aimed for those $100 or above items to promote. Yes, I am building a few one that is in high price tag and more evergreen product niche – that people buy on regular basis (not seasonal – like those just selling hot in Christmas only.)

Many readers email me about how I start and do Amazon Affiliate, and I highly recommend Niche Profit Course as this is my blueprint and I have been following this for a year and received my $11,000 check from Amazon. [Note: the income result varies, all it take is picking right niches, writing good review content and driving traffic to make profit.]

Yes, I’m building some niche sites these days and working on my second $10,000 goal. It’s just slow moving up the ranking and traffic these months.

2. Google Adsense ($63.45)

I wish I could get back to those $100 level as in Jan. I had many $0 days as you may see in the chart. I know a few of my income sites have $1 or $2 a click.

I will spend more time adding content, building backlinks, and growing the traffic on my existing winner sites. Focusing too many sites means NO focus.

I am happy for that 20% growth, but still this is a small portion of my Online Income. Anyway, every pennies add up.

To grow this income, it’s not only about number of sites, it’s about the Page View Traffic on Daily basis. I will talk about my Q2 Game plan later.

3. Affiliate Income ($427.82)

Affiliate marketing is killing this month. This is by far the most growth and best month that I have regarding to the income source. This is pretty surprising.

I only promote what I do and use on my niche site business and I am thankful to all my IMT fans and those who buy through my Affiliate and Discount Links. Your support keeps funding this site.

Kindle Book Give Away

I’m still working on The 4-Hour Workweek of Timothy Ferriss that I started last month. This is really eye-opening to me and I’m reflecting on this slowly. In order to work less, one needs to set priorities, cut out those “bothers”, and automate the process.

In April, I gonna give away 5 copies of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill [Kindle Version]. This is a classic and I read good portion of it last year. Once I am done with 4HWW, I will go over this again.

I wanna have more discussion and sharing over this book with you guys. Yes, I am going to give away 5 copies – Kindle version so you could read on your computer, iOS and Android devices anywhere you like.

Just answer the question on the Contest Page here and I will do Random Draw and pick the best answer ones by April 15th 10:00 PST.

The Give-away winner will be announced on April 16th!

In Marketing Tips Facebook Fans Page was launched on April 2nd with new Timeline. This is a Fans page for those want to profit from niche sites.

We will have discussion, tricks, and news sharing here. The goal is to learn and help each others profit from Niche Sites.

Please feel free to post your blog posts related to building niche sites on the Fans Page too. (Those good ones will get promoted and shared.) It’s a community and hope we could motivate and help each others along.

2012 Q1 is over. I will have another blog post about the summary and my Q2 Game Plan next.

May you all have a great April.

Discussion

How did you do in March? Did Google Update impact you much? Let us encourage and reach our business goal along the way.

Epic Quotes that Energize your Niche Site Business

I love to share my favorite quotes and mindset motivating and energizing my Niche Site Business. Are you almost giving up your Online Business? Are you frustrated and disappointed by the outcome and going no-where? They help me to think and reflect about what I am doing and why. They keep me going.

Niche Site Business is a dynamic and competitive one. Search Engines on-going optimizes their search engine result for their benefits and end users.

Last week, Google just de-index and sink some blog networks especially BMR for reasons, so do some niche site owner traffic and online income.

Online business could be stressful and hard to start with. I was a newbie a year ago and pulling my hair out just to figure out piece by piece.

Today, I am more experienced than I was.

Hope these quotes help you move forward. This is a fun business!

Dream

For me, my niche site business is a dream that I could make extra money for my family. It would be nice making “passive income” when you are in sleep or traveling.

Indeed, there is a lot of work up-front, but it’s a DREAM and I am working on and making it true.

Positive Mindset

Don’t say “I can’t” to yourself. Nothing is impossible.

Say “I CAN”.

Many times, I say “Wordpress is just too hard”, “SEO is just hard”, “I can’t compete and rank this keyword”.

Those just become part of you.  Go and unlearn yourself. Nothing is not learnable.

All of us have New Year Resolution and Goals. I set mine as $100 a day goal for this year.

Goal Setting is great, so what? Take actions and follow through your plan. Sometimes, we need to go extra miles to accomplish some tasks.

All it involves is DISCIPLINE and DEDICATION.

Could I wake up 30 mins earlier and stay late to finish that task today?

Consistently, I am looking for the niche and keywords. You can’t wait when great ideas come.

Who knows, you may have the next big niche site idea making you thousands a month.

Success

Sometimes we don’t know why and what our purpose is doing this damn Online Thing. J

If you haven’t checked out my WHY you make money online post, you should.

Know your purpose and your success will come along..

I have pretty strong “purpose” and why. They keep me working extra hours on daily basis.

Everyone when I build a niche site, I have hope that it will be a successful one with decent traffic and Ads or Affiliate income. Sometimes, we just have guts feeling and go ahead with it. It would apply to any Online Business and life too.

If you don’t take actions, you will never know what will happen next.

What if I didn’t take NPC, what if I didn’t spend time figuring out the steps, I wouldn’t have made my first $10K online.

Overcome Failure

How many times was I discouraged? Even today, I was “discouraged” by some niche site traffic and income.

Keep moving and Success is there waiting for you.

Don’t Fear to be failed. You failed on one niche site, doesn’t mean that you are a Failure.

Many many times, some of my niche sites just sink and don’t  even have traffic. Some are still in the sandbox, ranking at (500+) for my targeted keywords.

So what? Does the “frustration” keep you away from creating the next Niche Sites?

Does your traffic drop keep you away from the next Success?

Problems arise in every business and life no matter where you are. Be positive and solve them as opportunities and guidelines.

Google has many Algorithm updates. Many times, it hurts and sink our niche site traffic; at the same time, they are guidelines about how to drive better and quality traffic.

You Can and Do it

Sometimes you don’t need to have perfect steps to move things forward. Do what you can together and you will grow through the process.

One year ago, I hated blogging and didn’t even know how I could earn couple hundreds “passive income” on monthly basis.

Does “I can’t” stop you today?

Do what you can today, maybe the publish button to post a blog post.

We all worry about tomorrow. Why not take good care of today first? What you do today matters.

Niche sites don’t grow traffic by itself. What you are working on does.

Above are great reminders and hope they help you to FOCUS and keep going today.

Sharing

Which one is your favorite here? Do you have any quotes to share with us and help us motivated?

If you like what you’re reading, kindly LIKE and Tweet
and even re-pin them. Thanks!

Note: I acquired all my images at iClipart.

3 Lessons I learned from my $11,000 Amazon Associates Income in the First Year

On March 14, 2011, I pushed the “Buy” button and took my first step to learn how Amazon Affiliate works and tricks to earn a paycheck from Amazon.

As one year anniversary, I’d like to reflect about my first “success” and let you know my 3 learned lessons. Hope it inspires you to take actions on whatever you are doing.

It’s a little bit history about what happened to me before taking Niche Profit Course.

Early 2010, I was spammed by Make Money Online ideas.

I finally bought my first domain name and started this blog early July 2010, I wrote about 5 posts in a few weeks with “excitement”,  my passion faded out and I gave up, It was just hard to blog about blogging, without making a dime online.

2010 was over and all the sudden I stopped all Online Business Activities except bought a few $7 training here and there and reading some blogs.  I would say it was a good break after the information overload after long period of time.

I was a little bit frustrated and wasn’t determined to success.  It didn’t work out for me.

Is there any real business model out there?

Early 2011, I learned about Niche Profit Course from Smart Passive Income Podcast Session 10. I saved up some money. On March 14, 2011, I finally took the courage and bought NPC. I finished watching the video in a week.

Then did my product research and bought the first niche domain name within a week. I was slowly creating content and building up the traffic. It wasn’t very successful. I had my first sale which was $1 in May.

I almost gave up because the commission rate 4% is just too low for me. Then I built a few more as experiment. Honestly, I didn’t really trust the model and I just wanna get the best out of $77.

Tell you the truth, I didn’t make $1000 a month for 11 months straight to make this income. Most of the sales were coming in from Oct to Feb.

Many of my niche sites are slowing down and sales dropped recently. Traffic and Online Business is very dynamic. I’m ramping up a few and building new ones on monthly basis. I’m still working on my second $10,000 these days.

I’m not selling you a Making Million Online Dream. I’m doing this part-time after 9-to-5 as many of you guys do.

These are the BIG lessons that I have learned through the process and hope they are inspiring to your Online Business no matter what you are doing.

1. Focus on Execution persistently

Building Amazon Affiliate Niche Sites is not a rocket science.  It’s just a series of business processes that involve time and dedication to complete.

No matter what you have trusted and picked such as Adsense, Blogging, or creating your own information product, serving offline clients, get focus on your plan and don’t be tempted.

Winners never quit.

Break down your goal as tasks and attack them one by one. Many times I had some great product niche ideas, but didn’t take the actions.

Many times, I have some dreams and goals, but didn’t even start implementing them. And you?

Sometimes, we are overwhelmed by how “big” the project is and don’t even finish a few tasks in the list.

I learned to just break down the tasks into 30 min truck and finish them by one. They don’t need to be perfect to move on. You could always go back and re-visit them.

2. Don’t let blockers and failures stop you

Many times, we are blocked by some tasks that we are not familiar, and then STOP such as building my first WordPress blog, Writing my first Product Review Article, or even A backlinking task.

Don’t let the “blocker” to block you.  Google is your friend and you could find tons of free information helping you solve the problem FREE. You could outsource to Fiverr.com or oDesk.com (Anywhere that you could get help to unblock yourself.)

“Failures” come and goe. They are my best teachers. The first few Niche Sites didn’t work out for me. As today, some have a few visit a day (Low Traffic). Did those “failures” stop me building the next niche sites?

NO. I think the first niche site was tough and took me time to complete. Also I lost the motivation to add in new content and grow the traffic.

Don’t fear to fail.

On June 26, 2011, I got an email from Amazon that my Affiliate Contract is terminated due to the new tax law in California.

“As a result, we will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law becomes effective.”

The sky was falling as I was making “some money” back to June 2011.

During July to Sept, I shifted all my focus on Adsense and grew my Niche Site Traffic. Sometimes you just need to have a backup plan and different income stream.

Thankful that Amazon re-activated my account on Oct 3^rd and the traffic and sales kept rolling in.

Yes, I had high peak traffic and Affiliate Sales in Nov and Dec 2011. I shipped hundreds of physical products during the shopping seasons.

If I gave up on building niche sites and driving traffic during the “down time” from July to Sept, I wouldn’t have had that “sudden” success.

3. Saying NO to Noise

I am a WSO sucker and IM junkie and you could tell how much Information, Training, and Software products I bought via WSO last year. Hundreds of Dollars! This is just a portion of my purchases:

For me, education is precious. I treasure about it, but I learned that I don’t need to know perfect steps before taking any actions.

Trust me. Saying NO is one of the most difficult lessons I have in my Online business.

I got to say NO to Offline Marketing, Creating my own product, Make Money Blogging, and various Make Money Online Ideas so I could focus on my core business.

Many times, I was just distracted and browsing around the web, and reading other blogs, tweets, or Facebook Activities instead of “completing my tasks in to-do-list”.

Instead of Saying YES to all “shiny objects”, I filtered out hundreds of email offers and “free stuff”.

I was just head-down on executing my niche site process, get it done one by one such as writing product reviews, adding new content, backlinking, and driving traffic.

I didn’t have thousands of dollars to invest in the beginning. I did most of stuff myself and using various free resources. When the business picked up, I spent hundreds and investing in various software saving me time and helping myself being more productive.

Like I said, you don’t need another training to make money online.

You may have read various free information and bought many trainings and business ideas. Didn’t you? Just pick ONE that you trust and focus on execution on daily or weekly basis.

Your next success is a few miles away. Are you willing to run an extra mile?

After Thought

Be honest, US $11,000 after tax is not much to me. I’m just thankful to make some extra money for my family and I could re-invest thousands into this business.

I am not a guru at all and I was just a hard-working student and followed the success one. One year ago, I knew nothing about Amazon Affiliate.

Many readers have asked what the best Amazon Affiliate training is and if there is any discount available? Be honest, I don’t have many to compare and I don’t have answer.

I only know what works for me.

Indeed, Niche Profit Course [my affiliate link] was all I had to start with and it’s my blueprint and foundation about my niche site business process.

Niche Profit Course is being sold as a discount price – $30 on WSO. Unfortunately, it will not last long as it has been on the market for couple months and this offer will be gone per Chris.

This is a no-brainer price comparing to $77 what I was paying a year ago.

You will not only get a series of high quality video training, but also the Azon WordPress Theme, which is converting, and I’m using it on most of my niche sites.

Chris showed 2 Real Examples, which is gold-mine to me,  that I have been following and trying to replicate the success.

If you decide to get it via my Affiliate link, it’s greatly appreciated. You will access my 8-week NPC action plan in Email Series as a bonus. You will get my to-do list and motivation tips as an appreciation. Just forward your receipt to me and I will send you.

Sorry, NPC is not a push-button Information Product and Make Money Fast Scam. Amazon Affiliate is a real business. If you are not committed to put in time executing the steps and doing your best, you may be disappointed.

After all, go and take actions on any information product that you have on your hard-disk, commit to success, focus, and say NO to other noise.

Sharing

What have you learned in your success? Any questions about my Amazon Niche Sites are more than welcomed.

15 Sources to Find Keyword Seeds for Building Niche Sites

Do you have hard time to think about Keyword when building your Adsense Niche Sites? A year ago, I didn’t have any clue and hesitant to even start and buy my first keyword domain name.  I’m unveiling some of my best tips and hope they could help you create tons of “keyword seed” to build this Adsense Niche Site Empire.

Today, I’m starting a series about this Adsense Niche Site Business Process and How I approach my Case Study.  A year ago, I made $0 from Adsense and was seeking out free information and tools helping me to make my first $100 Adsense paycheck.

This post is sort of my combined notes collected in the past.

What is Keyword Seed?

I call it a Keyword Seed as like a seed helping you to gather hundreds of potential keywords to go after and rank for. For example, “Insurance” could be a keyword seed. This is a high CPC but very competitive though. Once you plug it in Google Keyword Tool, it will let you to have another 800 potential keywords to decide building niche sites on.

I spend time thinking about Keywords on daily basis and these sources could help you brainstorm keyword seeds

1. Google Trend

Do you know everyday, there are thousands of new terms being searched on Search Engines?

Google Trend tells you what is hot and people are searching.

2. TV Ads

Advertisers are paying millions for TV ads daily, that means there are demand and return for them. Those keywords are people searching online.

3. Thinking about Expensive Services

This is sort of like reverse engineering thinking..

What legal and medical services do you pay for hundreds and thousands? I am sure that there are service providers bidding on the Adsense Ads.

What kind of keywords are they competing for to get their Return of Investment (ROI)? Those could be your seed keywords such as DUI lawyer and Dentist as example.

4. Magazine Racks

There are tons of magazines and readers. There are niches. Check out the Advertising pages and you will get ever-end tons of keyword ideas.

Grab something that interest you such as Fitness, Beauty & Parenting Magazines when you go grocery shopping this weekend.

The potential is unlimited!

If there is a demand, there should be supply – your niche sites.

5. Consumer Report

I am also on Amazon Affiliate and I subscribe to Consumer Report. A lot of germs there and I will talk more about how Consumer Reports help me pick product niches.

Some Products pay extremely high CPC like HD TVs and Computers. Think about what expensive and high demand products that people are buying on daily basis.

6. Local Newspaper

I haven’t explored this local niche approach yet.  I have found many local business advertisers and there are market for sure.

I heard that Local Advertisers are not very “skillful” and they pay higher cost for those CPC bids.

You may be able to find some germs in those Free Community Newspapers too.

7. Walmart and Home Depot

Just open your eyes when go shopping in your favorite stores. There are tons of keywords flowing everywhere. Are you aware of those?

Walmart and Home Depot are my favorite stores to shop at. And you?

I love doing my niche keyword research and field trips once a while. Also you could catch up your product niche and trend. There are always new models coming out on annual cycle.

I read an interesting tips… The “sub-niche” products are at the bottom of shelves. They may not be most-demanded ones, so they are not so competitive either.

8. Evergreen Niche

Money, Health, Relationship, and Hobby are ever-green big niches if you haven’t heard about. 10 years from today, people are still looking for those solutions and information.

You can’t go wrong if you could dominate some related and high researched keywords

9. Problems

This is like end user search pattern that you need to be aware. People just type in their “questions” or “problems” in Google. Like “How do I make money online fast?” or like “How to sleep better?”.

When people have issues and problems in lives, they look for solution and they go Google. Those could be your seed and Longtail keywords.

10. Movies and TV Shows

I enjoy watching action movies and love stories + comedy type of movies. Sometimes I watch Disney movies with my kids. I picked up a few keywords while enjoying the entrainment.

Check out your favorite TV shows and sure that some money making keywords flowing around.

11. Glossary

This is a very powerful tips that you can’t miss. One of the best tips I have learned last year. Search your keyword + glossary in Google and you will find a lot of germs.

For example, Real Estate is a huge industry, do you know there are tons of words that you may not have heard of such as: “subordinate financing”, “sweat equity” etc.

Check these out and you should be amazed some of those have very high CPC such as “escrow account” – 4,400 Local Monthly Search – $11.01 CPC” on the search network bid.

Hop over this example and see if any keyword you could pick and compete.

http://www.realestateabc.com/glossary/

12. Flippa

Yes, I always check out those high-paid Adsense and Amazon Niche Sites being sold or sold out on Flippa. They could be very inspiring about what could be selling and making hundreds and even thousands a month.

Check out these Flippa Auctions – High End Over $1000 a month ones

A few times, I could snap the ideas and pick related keywords to go after. Also you could do reverse engineering of what other selling sites are and why. (I may talk about how, so you could learn from real samples.)

13. Browsing web Around

Yes, I always encounter new vocabulary when browsing around and reading for fun.  I love checking out yahoo.com, aol.com, and  msn.com content network, they always have some interesting news and ideas catching my attention.

14. Talking to your friends and relatives

I love talking to my co-workers and friends. Everyone is different and have various different hobbies and interest.

By knowing others, you would learn what they care and what their problems are. Most Likely, they google search those information on daily. Yeap, you get some new keywords almost in every conversation.

15. Keyword Research Package

I buy keyword packages on WSO ranging from $5 to $20. I bought many WSOs and they are just saving my time and be my inspiration. English is not my first language, I don’t even know some of vocabulary or usage exist.

You could even get those [FREE WSO] Keyword packages for inspiration too.

Summary

Open Your Eyes and be Sensitive to “Keywords” today. There are a lot of germs out there.

Don’t tell me you don’t have Keyword ideas anymore? Hope these tips inspire you to pick up a few winning keywords today!

Action Items

Go and find 10 Keyword Seeds this week. We will talk about How to generate related and potential keywords to build your Niche Sites next week.

Discussion

How do you think of Seed keywords? Do I miss anything on this list?

Do you know any creative ways spilling out seed keywords?  Please kindly share in this IMT community.

To be transparent, I am NOT here to “teach” you how to make money online. I am just an action-taker and read/learn how to MMO in the last year. Who said Making money online is easy and fast?

To document my journey and process, I’m here to INspire my readers how it is possible if you take actions and be patient persistently, it’s do-able. I’m doing this after 9-to-5, as a full time dad and husband (I wish those could be part-time and quit somethimes.

I structure this report a little bit each time. I would talk about my learned lessons, my numbers, how I reach my Annual Goal, and the game plan for March.

MMO Learned Lessons in Feb 2012

Feb is super busy and very stressful to me due to my work and personal life.

I’d say my full-time work was not satisfied, I wasn’t very productivity. I met my deadlines, but know I could focus and did better job.

I wasn’t “productive” and lost FOCUS on this Online Niche Site Business in Feb. I admit that I failed and it was a good Failure Lesson. I was very distracted by my Offline Passive Income Project (Will be touch on that at the end of this report.)

That is life, and we need to have good balance spending time at Full-time job(if you have one and it’s sort of part of me and commitment.) You get regular paid-check and you are tight to your job commitment – time and energy. Family is important too and they are my reasons working extra hour. (Hey, I woke up 4:30am this morning and working on this monthly report, could you imagine?) I do enjoy writing this now.

Regarding to my Niche Site Traffic, it sucked pretty bad in Feb. My Amazon and Adsense Income Sinked and Dropped more than 50% comparing to Jan.

It happens and Web Traffic and Demand is so dynamic. I didn’t forsee that it would drop and cut my Online Income HALF though.

As a lesson, be prepared, and FOCUS on maintaining your business and GROWTH. If you don’t grow your business, it would just be doing Backward. You can’t expect it would be maintained without doing anything and laziness.

Procrastination is my buddy and I have been procrastinating with a lot of great good ideas. No matter they are great or not, TAKING actions is the key to see if it works or not. Do you have a lot of niche and business ideas? Are they dotted down? Do you have any action-item plans to execute them?

I do have some ideas flowing in my head. I got to drop them down, and schedule to make them happen. Otherwise, they are just “dreams” never happening.

Feb 2012 definitely was a great month learning more about myself and this business. I’m sure that when I look back, it motivates me not making the same mistakes again. I could be just a better person.

Don’t let Failures stop you. Learn and Take away from it. Failure is my buddy and I love to fail fast.

Show me the Number

1. Amazon Affiliate Income ($412.81) (~60% off of $1,014.07 in Jan)

I’m not too surprised as I was monitoring this on daily basis.. which is not healthy. Just a few mins a day, but I could do other productive work.

In Jan, I saw the orders were slowing down and could tell that it won’t shipped much in Feb. Also I couldn’t and “failed” to hit Valentine’s Day Shopping Season.. I tried to rank a few pages, but failed. I didn’t start to rank them early enough. I learned so much that if I wanna hit the Shopping Seasons, I need to plan and act fast. This is how I hit almost 5-digit last Christmas Season.

7% Commission Rate for Feb is not too bad. I need to ship double volume to hit 7.5%.

$400 is good enough to fund my business for March and I gonna re-focus BIG time.

In March, I plan to add closed to 20 Product Review Posts and RANK them. You don’t need another new 20 Amazon Niche Sites to grow your business. All you need is High Traffic and Conversation Pages to make profit from this business models.
I’m super thankful to get AMASuitefor less than $20 and find some great products to promote fitting my Gold-mined Formula.

If you promote a $100 priced product (Have a well written and high traffic ones), get a sale at 7% commission rate everyday, that would be $200 a month, this is a simple formular comparing to what you think of as Make Money Online?

How about 10 High Demand and Popular products? that would be $2000 a month which is my current goal as for 2012.

If you haven’t made money from Amazon and want to test it out, feel free to grab this Killing Deal (70% off) NPC Training (I follow this blueprint making money from Amazon Affiliate) before it’s taken down. I got mine at $97 full price. And you?

2. Adsense Income ($53.27) (60% drop from $129.30 in Jan)

Yes, this is my first month not getting Adsense Paycheck since getting my first $100 Google Paid-check.

My Feb Adsense income dropped significantly, due to the traffic to my Adsense Niche Sites dropped almost half. I may have gotten Smart-pricing.

One of my money making ones dropped from $23 in Jan to $2 in Feb. The SERP of the keyword (Exact Match Domain) sinked from #3 to #14. (This is a five-page Adsense Niche Sites that I gonna replicate and build my Adsense Case Study around.)

As a side note, 336 x 280 and 160 x 600 Ads Blocks are my Favorites. I will unveil if you are interested later.

As clear as is, I should diversify My Adsense Sites, build a few Strong ones, and continue building up Micro-Niche ones to weed out the Winners. Stay tuned and I gonna have a series of blog posts about this and you will witness how I grow this on monthly-basis.

I will focus on growing this on DAILY basis - mentally and taking actions as well.

3. Other Affiliate Income ($179.44) +196% vs $60.58 in Jan

I got many emails from readers asking how I learned my Amazon Affiliate skills and what software and services I use on regular basis.

I haven’t hard-sold these as I just believe what I do and have.  I buy a lot of stuff on monthly basis – to save me money and make myself productive. Sometimes, I would just buy and promote if they are really helpful. Many times, I don’t even talk about cramp stuff that I get – I am not a smart IM buyer.

Thank you for your trust buying Niche Profit Course via my Affiliate link. As I said, this is my blueprint getting paid check from Amazon proved by my Monthly Income reports.

For those who are seeking the next Shiny Objects, you don’t need another new business ideas to make profit online. Just pick one whatever you have purchased, focus on execution, to get there. Anything would work, it just depends how you do it.

Offline Passive Income was my Distraction

I don’t expect to mention much about my Full-time job income and Offline Passive Income (whatever that is.) I just wanna touch on this and how it could be distracting, but I’m thankful to have this HAPPY problem to work on and solved finally.

I worked a lot offline on weekends in Feb. I spent more than 40 hours (A week of full-time work) working on my Rental Property – Painting the home, Clean-up, DIY Fixing the home, Buying stuff at Home Depot,  Open House, Working with potential Tenants, All home rental stuff… you could imagine.

I’m glad that it was OVER. The new tenants moved in couple days ago. As Rich Dad Poor Dad does, I acquire Assets - this is a case of rental property, it’s by far the best Passive and Residual Income I could have. I am doing Property Manager myself, but forsee it wouldn’t take me much time (comparing to this part-time Online business) and add couple hundred profits to my pocket.

Well, the entry cost was very high though.. 5-digit figure to start with for my case. (If you look for rental property to invest in, it varies. The process is just long and stressful in my opinion.)

I love my Online Business much more as you could invest and start today with as little as $10 for the Domain Name and Web Hosting.

One of my dreams or goals, is to make Good Online Income, to fund my Rental Income Business. Eventually, I would hire a Property Manager and hand over all the work to a trusted Real Estate Agent.

Sorry for my boring money theory, I don’t think it applies too much to my Fans.

My 2012 Goal Progress

1. Making $100 a day (In Progress)

I had a few $40 a day in Feb. Feb income was 1/5 of my $3000 a month goal. I need to play a catch up game to reach my annual goal.

A lot of times, people only care how much you make. I do care.. but more than that, I care more how much I grow and learn from how others grow too. Learning and Growing never ends.

Thanks for your interest and I hope my journal could help you grow as well.

2. I put in 2 hours average ONLY a day (√)

Indeed, I work much fewer than 2 hours a day online due to the offline distraction. Also energy wise was low as I was so stress out renting out my property.

It’s not about how long you work – it’s how much and productive you work.

3. I will spend $500 a month on this business (√)

I spent totally about $ $498.85 (my best estimate including new domain names from Namecheap, Hostgator Web Hosting, a few WSOs especially AMASuite, UAW, Fiverr, and Article outsourcing)

Highlight of my Spending Feb 2012

- I bought 2 PR2 and 1 PR3 Aged Domain Names. I am building out my own Private Blog Network Slowly. I will do a lot of testing, blog about this later and how it may help or not my search ranking of my niche sites. I think it’s one of the best Investment for my business. I paid monthly for UAW, but it’s always good to diversify my backlinks.

- I start enjoy blogging and communicating with my readers and other Niche Site Bloggers. To re-invest in myself and have good education, I spent $97 on How to Start a Blog that Matters of Corbett Barr. Blogging is not for everyone. It’s a lot of hard-work. This is the best Blogging Training that I have so far. Corbett support on the site is awesome. I got my response in day. Also I could read what other students ask too.

Stay tuned – I am learning and executing what I learn from HSBTM here and you would see a Blog that Matters in the near future.

I’m building this blog contributing values to the world and being helpful to others. Is it always nice to make extra income online?

It’s all starting from You and how possible it is to make extra income – starting with you. I’m not living off by my Online Income only, but at least it’s paying off a portion of my mortgage and monthly bills.

- I am in love and promote AmaSuite. It is awesome but a little bit pricey at $40 now.  I grabbed mine at $20 when it was launched. Can’t believe it was sold more than 4500 copies in the last week or so. Sorry to tell you that this WSO gonna be closed on March 7th and probably doubled the price at Clickbank.

The reason that I got it is to SAVE TIME doing my Amazon Product Research. To reach my Amazon Goal ($2000 a month), I dig out the best product to promote and gonna rank my reviews high in a few months.

4. Writing a Blog Post once a week (√)

I met my schedule to post at least once a week in Feb. Traffic picked up pretty well and I have 50 visits average a day. My bounce Rate is as low as 30%, that means my readers love to stay around which is awesome! Some data is from my browsers though.

To grow my blog traffic double, I plan to write 2 blog posts a week in March – one would be full of tips and how-to as a part of the series of my Adsense Niche Site Case Study, one would be a little bit soft and motivating to your Online Business.

5. I will have an Income/Expense Statement every month (√)

I keep all my expenses in ONE checking account and paypal account, so it’s so easy to do my book-keeping and do all my numbers in a Spreadsheet.

6. I read a business book every month (√)

I’m proud finishing up Midas Touch and it’s a great book talking about Entrepreneurship.

My take-away is Entrepreneurship is not easy, We shall think about building up a business instead of running a Small Business (what I am doing.) The business should have business process in place to scale up big.

It’s not about me. Indeed, the process could be hand over and even be able to transfer and sell to someone else.

I’m trying to knock down my process so I could “Educate” others how I do it and Make Extra Money Online Together.

I’m still figuring out my passion and mission and why I am doing what I am doing – Creating Niche Sites and Blogging about my business. I am happy for my Extra Income Online, and hope I could help others accomplish that too. (Sorry that it’s NOT a push-button business I am peaching here.)

Online Business is a Real Business and involves time, investment, and dedication.

In March, I am reading The 4-Hour Workweek of Timothy Ferriss. I’ve heard a lot of great stuff about this book, and I know it’s inspiring.. don’t know if I really could just work 4 hour a week Online.

March Game Plan

Focus, Focus and Focus. Focusing on my daily task will drive me forward – at least a little bit closer to my goal. A lot of times, I am just distracted by reading blogs, tweets, free information, or just “dream” about what to do next.

To get closer to my goal, I will add in More Content on my niche sites (Content is the KING), and build backlinks to maintain and grow my search engine traffic on daily basis. Yes, I say.. it’s a daily process.

The beauty of this online business is that my niche sites and this blog working 24/7 for me. Some of my online income from Feb is an outcome of what I was working on in the last couple months.

Some of my product review posts still rank and have traffic and sales via Amazon Affiliates.

I’m adding a lot more Product Review Pages and Rank a few Amazon Niche Sites that are aged (3-6 months old.)

Also I am focusing on my Adsense Case Study, at least I will be building 8 brand new niche sites in March.

Sharing

How did you do in Feb? Do you have a solid plan for March?

Do you have any productivity or focus tips to share? I look forward to hearing from you.

How $500 builds $100 Adsense Monthly Income Case Study

One of my goals is to have $100 a day Online Income in 2012. In order to accomplish that, I plan to grow my Adsense income as $1000 a month, that is around $30 a day. I haven’t focus much on building Adsense niche sites in the last two months yet.

This is my Case Study – Is it possible to invest $500 to build $100 Adsense Monthly Income?

I am not a “brand-new” guy trying to tell you how to make extra income with Adsense. I had some “success” and it’s time to scale it up big and fast. Writing this Case Study is to motivate myself to focus and Walk the Talk.

In case you don’t know me much, I have more success with Amazon Affiliate back in 2011, please feel free to check out my First Guest Post – $4,000 Month With Amazon In Under 1 Year (Student Results)

Below is my Adsense income history, I have been making $800 from Adsense last 8 months. That is almost $100 a month. A year ago, I knew nothing about Google Adsense and Niche Sites at all.

All it took is little steps, experiments, and trail-and-error. Is it possible? Sure it does if anyone put in effort, be patient, and persistent following a system and process.

I have been reading and learning from Pat Flynn, Spencer, Adsense Flipper, and Trent . If you don’t know all of them, you should follow their blogs.

They are my inspiration and I know this business models work. Each of them has different scale and capability earning from Adsense.

I’m committed to integrate and custom-make what I have learned from them and focus on growing my Adsense income on daily basis. Yes, I mean to focus growing it.  Everyday, I take actions to drive myself one step closer to my goal.

Is it possible? I have been thinking and planning about it this month while I was distracted by various 9-5 work, family, and offline income. It would be fun to make it as a Case-Study and unveil my plan, strategy, and action items. I am dedicated to build a set of 8 Adsense sites and have another $100 Adsense steam in 3 months.

It’s hard to find a FREE detailed step-by-step plan for this kind of information online. I hope my Case Study could inspire you to take actions if you buy in this.

When is the best time to plant a tree? Many said it’s 100 years ago. The next best time is today.

I’m building up new 8 Adsense Sites in March; Once I get used to the schedule, I plan to do it every month with some tune-up.

I love Micro-niche site approach as it’s the best to find the winner and scale up my site size smarter (You don’t want to work on something that is not your potential winner.) Failing fast is the secret.

8 Niche Site Approach and Break-down

- 2 Product Keywords (I will monetize with Amazon Affiliate links too.)
- 4 Information Keywords
- 2 Authority Site keywords (I will start with 10 piece content.)

My keyword criteria

- 1000 Exact Monthly Search with $1 CPC (My Minium Requirement)
- For the Authority Sites, I will aim for 5000 or above Exact Monthly Search keywords.

Since I am doing this as another part-time job beside my 9-to-5, I plan to do various outsourcing to accomplish my goals – not over-work online myself. How would I break down my $500 investment / expense?

My Initial $500 Investment break up:

How about Time Commitment?

Each site would take me around 3-hour work as:
1 hr  - main keyword research on average (It’s just a time-consuming process to dig out good keywords with decent search volume and low competition. I have heard about some paid services saving the time but I haven’t tried out myself yet and will do some experiment later.)
30 mins  – WordPress site setup including theme, plugins, and SEO setup
30 mins  – Content research and Outsource order
30 mins  – On-page SEO and post the content
30 mins  – Backlinking Order via Fiverr

In the upcoming 3 months, I gonna have weekly blog posts about my business process, schedule, income status, and let others know how these sites are doing.

I use paid services for productivity and saving my time. There is no way I could work less without them.  As future update, I will report my site SERP and Adsense income. This is a very exciting lessons for myself. I am sure that I will find some winners and grow my SEO skills and niche site experience even more.

In my experience, most of new Niche Sites would take about 3 months to rank and generate traffic. Meanwhile, I’m fine-tuning and document my process so I could outsource even more with full-time VA when my income reaches $2000 a month.

Adsense Case Study Ultimate Goal and Break Down

As an experiment, I’m focusing on spending $500 to build $100 a month Adsense Income for now.

My ultimate goal for Adsense is to make $1000 a month in 2012.

My break-down is as simple as to get 1000 Ad impression per day with many niche & authority sites and pages.  With 3% conversion rate, I will get 30 clicks a day.

Assuming that we have ~$1 per click, that would be $30 a day. With 30 days a month, that is closed to $1000 a month.

You may know once you have a set of niche sites making $100 Adsense a month consistently, you could flip and sell them out around 20x as $2000 on Flippa. Then, you could reinvest in this cycle and create anther set making $100 a month.

Sharing and Comments

Do you think $500 investment for $100 monthly income is worthy? Do you have any specific questions about my process so I could address in the future blog posts? Any suggestion to my case-study is more than welcomed.