How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with WordPress

I get a lot of requests like this but they are usually rudely worded and the people asking make it obvious that they aren't familiar with my site - a word to the wise, if you are asking someone for a favor don't start your email with "Dear makemoneyonline.blogspot.com" - it's not hard to find out my name - sheesh!

Anyway Caroline asked quite nicely and since I like her I would love to help her out. I do have one concern with her book though - it is more of a "wordpress primer" than a guide for "money making niches". Frank at OpTempo did a good review of her ebook and I hope she understands that I don't want to mislead my readers. Her book is quite good but the title is a bit misleading.

More moving on...

The Sandbox

Let me start by saying that no one knows the ins and outs of Google's mysterious Sandbox - it doesn't exist and yet it does. I can only give you my two cents based on my experience with building blogs.

If you start a new blog on any popular subject you will likely get sandboxed - you will get indexed, stick around on the serp's for a few days and then poof! - your blog will disappear from the index. This is the sandbox. If you continue to post and show that you are not a spam site Google will release you back into the index. This can take a month or it can take 6 months.

Is there anything that you can do to avoid it?

To a degree yes but as much as what I am going to tell you helps there are times I still get sandboxed. There are forces at work here that only Darth Vader understands.

Monetizing your Blog

The best way to avoid it is to not monetize your blog. A new site with monetization all over it screams "spam". If a site is not monetized it's likely legit - why else would someone start a blog and not monetize it unless they truly just wanted to impart their knowledge to the masses. Google loves fresh unique content and has no reason to sandbox a site that isn't monetized. The exception to this is starting a blog aimed at the taboo niches like "law", "online drugs", "loans", "adult" and the rest of the spammers favorite targets. With or without monetization these type of blogs are sandboxed.

How long do you have to wait before you can monetize the site?

This answer sucks but "It depends". I have found that waiting until you develop keyword authority is the best route. The faster you develop it the faster you can monetize and this depends on how many keyword anchored backlinks you can produce over a reasonable amount of time - say a month or two - and how much original content you can produce over the same period. I didn't say how fast you could produce the backlinks as this is a mistake. You have to appear natural and getting 100 links the first week to a new blog is not natural and this will get you sent to the sandbox as quickly as monetizing your blog will. Take your time and build up your backlinks slowly but efficiently - get proper anchor text for your main keywords - not just one keyword but several different variations of it. Again this is how a natural site would grow. If every backlink uses the same term - sandbox. Be smart.

How do you know when you have enough keyword authority?

You know when you start writing new posts optimized for your keywords and they are immediately indexed and you see a movement up the serps from one post to the next. I am not talking about PR - I mean keyword authority. You can have a PR0 and rank well on the serp's if all your backlinks tell Google that you are an authority for your keywords.

To understand this use this blog as an example. In the recent PR update I lost a point - I went from a PR5 blog to a PR4 and yet most of you know I just climbed onto page 1 of the serp's for "Make Money Online". I lost PR but gained serp rankings - this is because of my keyword authority.

Once you see that you have authority then you can introduce monetization on your site and usually this will keep you out of the sandbox - not always but most of the time.

Adding Outbound Links to Your Blog.

Just like monetization, if you start a new blog and pack a bunch of links on it to other sites you will get sandboxed. Think about this - why would you put links on a new site? You want to send backlinks to other sites and usually to your own. This is why spammers create thousands of sites - they use them to send links (keyword authority - not PR) to their anchor sites or money sites. The moment you add links to a brand new blog you are seen as a likely spam site - don't do it. Wait until you can monetize the site.

The best way to avoid the "box" is to take your time writing lots of original keyword rich posts and work on your backlinks - be patient, always think about how a natural site would grow and mimic it. You aren't going to have a lot of traffic in the beginning anyway so not monetizing isn't costing you anything. Be patient and be smart.

Where did my Post Go?

On a side note I have noticed a lot of people commenting about their posts being ranked well one day on the serp's and then suddenly vanishing the next day. This refers to established non-sandboxed sites.

This is completely natural and this is why. When you write a new post on any given topic Google jumps on it because it's fresh. Fresh content is prized by Google - it keeps their index up to date on all the latest news. If you don't have enough keyword authority to take you to the first (and sometimes the second) page of the serp's you will get listed on page 3 or higher for a few days and then drop down to page 90 as other newer fresh content replaces you. You will bounce around the back pages for a while until you build up your authority. More relevant posts on the topic will help your authority just like proper backlinks do.

If you make the first page (and sometimes the second) then you are an authority and will likely stay there until some prick like me decides to bump you out by any and all means at my disposal. Don't get complacent when you reach page 1 - always add backlinks in order to keep others from overtaking you. A couple of sites on page 1 of "make money online" got complacent and are now wondering who the ass with the cheesy blogspot blog is that just passed them by. There is never a finish line folks - it keeps moving away from you as you try and catch it.

I was going to yak about Adsense and Social Traffic today but I want to optimize an entire post around the topic so it can wait until next time.

A final comment. My email is as good as broke so please ask your questions in the comments. I have noticed that my emails are from all the beginners who find my blog through the serp's and that my comments are usually from friends and experienced bloggers. I suspect that beginners are too intimidated to ask "stupid" questions in public and choose to email me instead. Please do not be intimidated as there is no question too "stupid" to ask. Everyone of us started out as a beginner and we all had to learn the same way - by asking questions. I can guarantee that none of us will ever ridicule you for asking questions - ever. I am here to help and so are my readers who I have come to know as caring and decent bloggers. If you use the comments to ask your questions they will get answered - if you send me an email I don't know when I will get to it. Fair enough? Don't be shy as you will make a lot of friends using the comments - I have.

Till next time,