As we near the time for June’s income report, I guess I should I get May’s out on the interwebs.
May was an exciting month and as the same time disappointing.
The Penguin Giveth and The Penguin Taketh
The Taketh: Like many other people with online sites, April 24th hit like a ton of bricks. My #1 site (own product site, not adsense) was slapped backed in the rankings by Penguin. The site dropped from the #2-#4 range to the #28 – #32 range. The site has recovered a tiny bit now (around #22). However, the difference between negligible as hardly anyone gets to the 3rd page of search results in Google.
Because of the seasonality of the niche, it’s hard to estimate the traffic drop off as May and June are historical the lowest traffic months any way. However, looking at March and April from 2011 vs 2012, site traffic dropped 26% in April 2011. In April 2012, traffic dropped 65%. My analysis is that this slap was a result of my anchor text being to heavily concentrated on a couple of keywords. I’m not sure if my 20 BMR links had something to do this this as well.
One major culprit was PDF scraper sites (about 50% of my links). I have my free PDF just sitting out there because early on I noticed I was getting backlinks from PDF sites. The anchor text used on the backlinks was the title of the PDF. I updated the title on the PDF to now be a generic Click Here.
The Giveth: Now for the would’ve could’ve section. After Penguin, 1 of my 7 sites made a jump from an average of #10 to now #1. It was a gradual climb and hit #1 around May 20th. It’s still there and I now have that rejuvenated feeling since it’s making some money. This site was launched on 1/20/2012. For 3/19 – 4/24, the site earned $1.84. For 4/25 – 5/31, the site earned $13.01 (600% increase!). June has been even better.
However, part of me is wishing I would have taking action like Andre and Mike and built several sites. They were hit by Penguin as well, but both positively and negatively. They have since had a mini explosion of income with niche sites. Check out their May reports here: AndreGarde.com and MikeFromMaine.com
Income Breakdown
My total revenue for the May was $140.85 (down 48% from April, $272.38). This reduction is directly related to my SERPs dropping for my product site. Also, seasonality caused some of the drop as well.
- PDF eBook – $37.64 ($150.56, (75%))
- Android Apps – $66.05 ($114.86, (42%))
- Adsense – $37.16 ($6.96, 433%)
Expenses for the month totaled $251.64
- Apple Developer Annual Fee – $107.96
- Unique Article Wizard – $67.00
- SEMRush – $33.30
- TextBroker – $18.88
- SocialAdr – $17.00
- e-Junkie – $5.00
- IMTalk – $2.50
Looking ahead for June – I’m cancelled UAW and SEMRush and I will not have any content writing expenses. This will knock out about $120 per month. Also, the Apple Developer Fee is annual so next month’s expenses should be minimal. I think I may have some domain renewals.
May Net Income/(Loss): (110.79)
YTD Net Income/(Loss): (434.28)
I’m not really liking that YTD number. For 2011, I lost $162.42, but that includes a $550 purchase of a MacMini in late December. August/September will be the true indicator of how things will be for 2012.
June Happenings:
On June 9th, I launched my first iPhone app and sales have been slow (worth time of year for this type of app). I plan on submitting two more for approval before the end of the month. I’ve been slowly updating my product site directly as well as creating and adding content to some Web 2.0 properties. My adsense site that was totally bombed by Penguin is up for renewal within 30 days. I’m leaning toward not renewing and either adding that site’s content to another existing site or buy a new domain and start from scratch (with the same content). For the life span of that site, I made $42.29 in adsense and had $70.13 in expenses. Almost broke even.
Final Thoughts:
Penguin really took I let Penguin take the wind out of my sails and I’ve kind of been coasting in a daze with regards to niche sites. One thing that I’m not doing is jumping on the “Scrap niche sites and build an authority site” bandwagon that is sweeping the IM blogosphere. Though, I admit, my product site is somewhat of an authority site. Many have proved that micro niche sites are still working. I think 6 months to a year from now, we’ll be hearing numerous people who paid over a thousand dollars to build a site with 50+ articles complaining that 5 page niche sites are still out ranking them. Unless it’s a topic that you are 100% passionate about, building an authority just to make money is a huge slog I don’t want to undertake. And the money risk is high. Building 20 niche sites and waiting 6 months to see which ones take off, then expanding the site by adding content – that’s seems like the more logical approach.
yo jason, what linkbuilding did you use for that number one spot site? is it purely socialadr? thanks
I did one submission on IMTalk, one UAW (about 100, started on April 8th and finished on April 26th), and SocialADR (finished with 205). It is a hyphenated EMD. So, probably not 100% accurate to say the site’s rise was due to Penguin. However, with IMTalk and SocialADR, it ended up at #10. UAW might have been the extra push it needed. However, on my other active campaign for another site, the site was ranked as high as #5 in the middle of May before UAW. UAW started on 5/25. It now ranks 19th. Again, who knows if UAW was the cause.
I half agree with you about the authority sites.
Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and the fact is they are pretty much an unknown quantity. People think that is what Google wants to see now but no one really knows.
And then there is the point that building a big site doesn’t automatically make it an authority site. It has to be good and get some kinds of recognition from the niche it is in whether that is social signals or links from other big players in the niche.
I am still pressing on ahead with my authority site as it is in a niche I am interested in and I am enjoying just focusing on one site. I spend about 3-4 hours of proper work on it during the week in which time I can write 2 good 1000+ word articles. I plan to do this to get to 100 article then start working on SEO/backlinks etc.
It might be a waste of time but I feel I no longer know what Google wants in terms of niche sites so I’m giving them a break for now.
Good luck with your app!
Thanks regarding the app! With authority sites, I think the key is that it’s a site you’re interested in (which is what you are doing). Also you make an excellent point, “building a big site doesn’t automatically make it an authority site”. think you have the experience to know what should work. I like the approach of creating lots of content and worrying about backlinks later. You may find many of those pages perform well on their own and don’t require any backlinks (saves you time and resources).
Yes automatic ranking is the ultimate goal.
We will see though!
Jason,
Thanks for the mention.
I think in this business you just need to keep pushing along. I know that Google will slap me around a little bit, but hopefully I’ll be able to bounce back.
Mike
Great point. I’m guilty of the wait and see mentality instead of saying F it and keep pressing forward. Reminds me of the quote, if you’re standing still, you’re moving backwards.
I am afraid of building links right now, I dont know which technique is really working. Everytime I build link, the ranking of my sites gets farther and farther away from top of serp. I followed those LB velocity, anchor text variation, etc, but it only made my sites dropped in ranking more deeper. I think building a site which you really care to add content and passionate about is indeed a better option.
You were getting SEMRUSH at $33.30/mo??? Nice! If you don’t mind me asking, how were you getting it at such a rate. I believe I’m paying $67 or $69 per month.
On another note. I use to use UAW, but I don’t anymore. I think they still work for really easy competition keyword though. Penguins been rough on people. You have to use link diversity or use high pr links.
Hey Josh! I got it through Flippa deals back in January. I thought it was just a 1 month deal, but it kept recurring @ $33. However, I just went to Flippa and now it’s two weeks free, then $69/month. https://flippa.com/deals. Also, I wanted to thank you for your post on the video with Tony Robbins/Frank Kern/John Reese. I had a lot of unfinished projects rolling around in my head for the last couple months. I watched that video and immediately spent the next 24 hours finishing/submitting 2 iOS apps and now am working on a Kindle book. I normally do buy into the “You can do it!” type speeches, but something clicked. It’s been less than a week, but I hope this sticks as I’m loving my focus right now. Looking back, I guess I should have done the neighborly thing and commented on the post, but I was so fired up that shut down all browsers etc… and drove right into Xcode.
Yea, that video inspired me as well and helped give me a boost. Glad to see it was useful, I was starting to think that no one bothered to watch it