Comments on: A Reader Asks: “Why Can’t I Make Good Money Online?”

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 23 May 2011 03:27:10 +0000

Good article, and great comments guys. Educational stuff. [not the Joe in question]

By: MIchael Pedzotti

MIchael Pedzotti — Sun, 09 May 2010 14:36:01 +0000

Pat, has there been any progress or updates on how “Joe” is getting on after implementing all your good advice?

Michael.

By: Scott Lovingood

Scott Lovingood — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:01:38 +0000

Very interesting post. If he has two years worth of good content he could look at other ways to monetize his information. He could create an ebook of the Best of and let people download it for a small fee. Depending on his market, $9-$29 would be a good range to look at.

He could sell sponsorships for each subject he covers. Break it down into about 12 different categories and have each post on that subject brough to you by…. It would take more work but could help him develop revenue streams outside of adsense.

By: Spill Guy

Spill Guy — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:30:17 +0000

It’s too bad I couldn’t get to see Joe’s homepage. It would have been interesting to see what he is not doing right and see how he would change them. It also would have been good advertising for him. Too Bad Joe. Great Post though.

By: Deneil Merritt

Deneil Merritt — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:11:11 +0000

Having that much to say about many different topics. Joe can take each topic and make a niche blog for each of them. Also, I seen a site that cover many topics but had the topics on their own blog but all on the same site.

example;
domain.com – make money online blog
domain.com/travel – travel blog
domain.com/tv – tv blog

This seems to work for the person because they are making $9k a month.

By: Bluntmoney

Bluntmoney — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:38:29 +0000

I think you’re right about ads converting better for highly specialized niches, and I’d be curious to see Joe’s site too. My money-related blog is also all over the place content-wise. I got better Adsense results when I added an image ad to individual post pages. (Although nowhere near the results you get!)

By: DDFD at DivorcedDadFrugalDad.com

DDFD at DivorcedDadFrugalDad.com — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:38:06 +0000

I ran out of room in the previous comment for my P.S.:

The P.S. was to share the two simple things I did to get my traffic up. I decided I had to get more people into the site and I needed to have them move around the site once they were in. Here’s what I did:

1) Comment on other sites (Brings people in)

2) Include “Related Posts” in every post I did (Moves people around)

That’s it!

By: DDFD at DivorcedDadFrugalDad.com

DDFD at DivorcedDadFrugalDad.com — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:30:04 +0000

Joe is not entirely lost here. If he has a decent following he can spin off niche sites from his general interest site and carry some readers.

My plan was always to start a general interest, frugal lifestyle site and then create niche sites that take readers from and give readers back to the main site. I call it my “hub and spokes strategy”. It is already working with my new launch of DaddyCooksQuick.com. The new site has traffic patterns the old site had when it was 3-4 months old and the old site has experienced a jump in traffic.

My view is the general interest site will never be number one– I am 2-3 years behind well established sites, but in time, top 100 would make me happy.

The niche sites on the other hand, should be sites that you have a shot at top 10 as Pat implies.

I still have much to do on both sites, but I have worked to build traffic. A specific example, in February (six months old), DivorcedDadFrugalDad.com had a ranking at Alexa.com of more than 10 million and yesterday it was 937 thousand with my 7 day and 1 month averages pointing at about 500 thousand. My new site, a little more than a week old, already has a ranking of 1,4 million– because it is a niche AND a spinoff site.

I am already planning my next spinoff . . .

By: pfincome

pfincome — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 02:47:14 +0000

Pat – I would be really interested in seeing Joe’s blog! I had the same feeling about my site a while back and realized I was writing about articles all over the place. I have attempted to narrow my posts down to a few topics instead of being spread across many personal finance topics.

By: Dusty

Dusty — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:01:29 +0000

OK. Now I am interested in seeing what ‘Joe’ has to say.

If he has been writing for 2 years (and is still writing consistently), he must have something to say even if it is an overall theme (like CTB) instead of a niche type theme.

I agree with you Pat. He definitely missed out on the chance at a few new readers!