Today I would like to introduce you my latest experiment. I have decided to build a new website from scratch and make it profitable in the shortest possible time. Moreover I want to spend as little time on developing and maintenance as possible. In a one month time since today I will decide if I want to keep it and develop for continuous income or flip it.
My assumptions:
There are three factors will help me to decide:
- Traffic level & trend
- Income level & trend
- Expected return of investment period
As I want this website to get traffic and start generating income as soon as possible I am going to invest some money. If after one month time there will be no expected results I will sell the website to get invested money back.
Income source choice
I have decided that the website will targeted be to make money on two most reliable online money makers. I am already using Amazon and AdSense on other websites of mine and I can not complain. I know I can trust them to be always paid on time. Amazon links will be put in the articles body if those are accurate to the topic. AdSense will be added later if there will be some traffic that may generate some clicks.
Choosing the topic
I had a few ideas for the website niche and had to find which is most popular. I have decided to use the free Google Keywords AdWords tool. It has helped me to find a niche that has enough search traffic and earning potential. I have decided to build a blog about Android Tablets. The biggest problem in this niche may be high competition on the first pages of google. Fortunately thanks to mentioned tool I has found a highly searched phrase that can be used as a name of the domain. I hope it will help me to reach a first page of google for my keyword. I have chosen a domain name based on the "Tablets With Android" phrase.
Building the website
As I have built a lot of websites in my past it is not a problem and a big deal to build a blog based on WordPress in a few hours. I have decided to build and customize it by myself and fit with a layout to the chosen niche.
Content creation
This part was the biggest problem for me. Android Tablets niche is pretty dynamic. There is still something new happening. I could not just write a few articles that would be brining me search engine traffic forever. I have decided to subscribe to Google News RSS feed with the keyword "Android Tablets".
Then I have hired a freelancer (via this portal) that rewrites approved by me news in about 400 words for $1.75 per article. Project for choosing a writer has been posted and finished in about 24 hours. I got a lot of offers and picked a good quality to price. As a requirement I have stated that all articles must be rewritten by human (not an automatic software) and be easy to read. I am posting one article per 2 - 3 days to make a website live.
Traffic building
Here is the biggest part of the experiment. Previously I have always been building traffic and search engine position very slowly by adding just a few links to the website after creating it. Then I have been adding some more links here and there every few days. As this time I want to build it fast - I have decided to hire another freelancer (via same portal) to build 500 backlinks. I was charged $40 and got my backlinks in 5 days.
Currently I see a few hits from Google here and there but still have very low positions for my keywords. I know it takes days for a new website and I am afraid to be sandboxed for too much links in too short period of time. Anyway I am still adding a high quality content and I hope that it will bring a good results in a few next days.
Three days after adding my first articles and links my website got a position #22 and then even #17 for my "Tablets With Android" keyword. After adding new links it dropped to #79 and then it was gone for a day or two. Two days ago it appeared in the listing with the position #59.
And today I have jumped to position #9 for "Tablets With Android" and has appeared for a second well searched keyword that I was targeting - "Android Tablets" on #61!!
Adding such number of backlinks worked like a charm for my other well established website. It helped me to appear on page one of Google with a keyword that is most important for my niche - and I was not ranked for those at all before! This time I am still not sure about the final result. I am waiting for my rankings to be established but trends are looking very promising!
Total cost...
To build this website I have spent:
- $9.98 for the domain name at NameCheap
- $75 to hire freelancers - $35 for 20 articles (not all has been written yet) and $40 for backlinks
Total cost is below $85. It is a little more than a "beer money" but I hope it will return to me in the near future. If not I will sell the website for $100 on flippa...
What to expect...?
As this experiment is happening right now I am still not sure how will it be finished. I will post the update to the case in about a month. If you are curious about it and want to get updates just make sure to follow me on twitter, like my Facebook page or subscribe via RSS.
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“Then I have hired a freelancer (via this portal) that rewrites approved by me articles […]”
So, basically, you steal content?
Nope – those are mostly news articles that may be found on many websites already and are written for me from scratch (it is why I pay $1.75 per article – rewrites are under $1). You will not discover anything new in the technology niche. New Android Tablet with 10.1 inch display will be same device no matter who writes an article about it.
Hi Chris
I also built my first “AdSense Website” but I’m doing all this things by myself.
Good luck!
Thanks for the comment Robert. This is the first of my websites build the way I described. I am trying to build a good website with good content with as little effort as possible and see if I can get a return higher than the investment.
Hi Chris,
Can you talk a bit more about link building. How does it work? Who to hire? etc.
Cheers!
Sure. I will write a blog post about it soon.
We use this approach all the time, we have about 10 websites for various keywords, http://www.businessraterelief.co.uk is our most popular and has more than repaid the money we’ve invested in to it. Even if tabletswithandroid.com doesn’t work keep cracking away as you’re sure to stumble across a lucrative domain.
So just more filler (reworded) content on the web? It sounds to me as if you won’t break even. I think this post will out perform any of your regurgitated news articles, since it is a fairly unique post (and you are getting comments like mine that add to the overall content of the page). Tablet anything these days, is a pretty overcrowded niche. Anyway, it is an interesting idea and I will follow you on twitter to see the results, though I think you may get more traffic on a site such as hubpages but would be obviously sharing the revenue. Good luck
What requirements did you put in your job description for your backlinks? For example, did you require a certain PR, anchor text, and/or length of time the link will stay active?
I am also interested in your link building method. How your freelancer requirements looks like exactly?
Will try to answer that in next post.
Chris, I just want to let you know how much I appreciate this blog! I am new to internet marketing (just put my first resource site up in February) and I’ve applied for an AdSense account a couple days ago.
Have you come across any data on whether hyphenated domains are a good alternative if the straight (run together) .com name is not available? Some say that Google recognizes the hyphenated domains and others say they don’t.
Looking forward to reading about your results with your android tablets site.
Julie :)
Hey kreci,
how’s the experiment going so far? It seems as I’m reading this post you’ve over-estimated potential traffic. “tablets with android” has 1 million searches per month, but that’s the broad match in adsense. If you go with exact match (that is, how many people look exactly for “tablets with android”) you get a very modest search volume of 170 per month. How’s the traffic these days?
Anyways, it’s very helpful to see to see how you did niche research and development. Keep it up!
Hey, I’d be interesting to know how it all went too?