(Part of the Case Study: Earning With Micro-Niche Websites series)

So it’s been a few days since I added an update to our micro niche site journey.  My wife and I have spent the last week at a church conference in middle Tennessee so it’s been a week or so since I have done much of anything with any of our websites.

With that being said, our traffic is down on just about all of our sites. Except for our micro-niche sites!  Amazing isn’t it.  This making money blog traffic has been sporadic, especially over the last couple of weeks where church activities have taken away my blogging time.

Without the extra time spent creating content and marketing it, the traffic amount fell.  However, the traffic for the micro niche sites have actually grown without us doing anything with them.

Why?  Because they are ranking very high for their keywords which means that traffic is finding them with their current content.

While our traffic has fallen this month with the two church camps, our adsense earnings have continued going up.  For the last 4 months, we have had a steady increase in earnings per month.  As I continue to scale into more web properties we are seeing the earnings go up.  As they age and climb higher in the SERPS, I expect those sites that are solely for generating income will continue to do that.

Hopefully, in the next few months, we will be on our way to making our first goal, which is to pay our rent by working online.

Micro Niche Site Update

Site 1

This site is really in a bad keyword, as I’ve said before.  The traffic to this site has a really high bounce rate which means they are coming to the site and immediately leaving.

I could change the theme and move the ads around but I’m pretty sure this site is going to be a loss.  I’m keeping it for now just to see what happens over a couple months.  If the traffic doesn’t start converting, I’ll probably flip the site and try to sell it for as much as I can get out of it, which won’t be much.

Stats: 

Still ranking at #8 for a 2900 exact search keyword.  But the traffic is just not converting.  All the effort I put into this site to rank it is now being abandoned and focused on Site 2.  As I abandon, it’s falling in the rankings from 3rd to 8th over the last week.  Even at 3rd, it received little traffic and no clicks.

Future Thoughts:

Going to watch it fall from the rankings and see if any of the traffic it generates converts.   Then I’m going to scrap it.

Earnings: $0.00

Site 2

Site 2 is the one I am most excited about.  It’s steadily rising in the SERPS and gaining more and more long-tail keywords along with it.  Right now it’s ranking for about 43 keywords with only about 16 articles on there, and some of them were only photos posted by my wife.

As you can see from the graphic, I’ve got two keywords currently in the top 10 with 2 more getting closer.  I’m only tracking four of the more valuable keywords right now but will soon ad more.

The traffic has been steadily increasing every day for this site as it climbs higher in the SERPS.  The only problem I’m finding is to actually convert that traffic into adense clicks.

Even with a very low bounce rate, the traffic isn’t converting into adsense revenue.

I have tried two different theme and a number of ad placements.  To this point, it’s just a process of experimentation and elimination to convert the traffic into dollars.  The traffic is there, I just need it to click on the ads.

I have also added a couple affiliate links to the site.  These ads are not in the prime ad placements as I’m leaving the adsense ads there.  However, I picked products that had attractive banners for my target audience.

I did reveal this website to my subscribers list this month.  If you haven’t signed up for the newsletter yet, you should. They are the ones that are really going to get the inside scoop on the things I do.

Stats: 

Ranking the 2900 exact monthly search keyword is a little tougher than I thought.  I’m hanging out on page 2 for my main keyword but in the top ten for two other supporting keywords.

More and more keywords are getting ranked for this site as I add more articles.

Future Plans:

I plan on adding more articles every week and weaving in different types of monetization.  At the moment, we’ve only used ads.  Soon, we may try actually writing articles about products that we are advertising for and seeing if that increases the CTR.

Earnings: $1.97

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