Hi.

I actually have lots of sites with different types of monetization. Some sites I have are pure Adsense, other sites have Adsense and eBay listings, some are just eBay listings only, some only promote PayDotCom products, etc. I also have some sites that promote an affiliate product where I drive traffic from PPC rather than organic search engine traffic.

I like to explore different combinations and strategies to see what brings me the best returns. Also, I think it’s always a good idea to diversify since you never know what will happen to one of your profit streams.

For example, there is always the concern that Google may cancel your Adsense account. If that happens and all your money is generated from only Adsense then you’d be in sad shape.

That’s why I’ve tried to diversify not only in the type of income stream but also in the business model as well. Instead of just making money from Adsense and affiliate sites I’ve gotten into list building. (Wish I had gotten into it sooner!) That’s a hedge against changes in search engine technology. Again, if your business model depends only on search engine traffic and that goes sour then your business will fail. With some of your income coming from a list then your business can still survive.

There is a danger, though, of over-diversification and spreading yourself too thin so I’m in the process of picking out my best domains, business models, and profit streams and just focusing on the winners. There are only so many hours in the day…

To me, making money on the internet is a lot like dieting — it’s highly dependent on the individual. For example, some people will swear that they can lose weight by eating a high protein diet. For others, a high protein diet will do nothing for them.

For me, link wheels didn’t work out at all. Others will swear by link wheels and can show it will make them a ton of money.

I think each person just needs to find out what strategy is most in line with their type of thinking and what gives them the best results. Once they can find a profitable pattern then repeat it to multiply the income.

That’s what I love about the internet. The cost of repeating a working pattern is practically nil so once you can find a working model you’re in really good shape!

Wendell

If you have time? another question…

Thinking about your strategy after submitting my questions, it occurred to me that you might be monetizing domain names with your blog for adsense, but it seems now that you are an affiliate marketer with a landing or squeeze page, driving traffic through your techniques. This was my first poor attempt at IM and am realizing a domain name simply directed to an affiliate page is useless as far as ranking. Landing page first.

Have you ever tried to monetize a blog with adsense only and drive traffic with purchased, targeted traffic or blasting an ad to ffa sites or a double opt in email campaign?

I have been following Howie Schwartz for a few months learning about IM. Your ideas are very similar to his, as well as many others I am discovering.

I like the adwords tool you recommended. I never knew that so little revenue is generated by Google on each keyword, but mulityply that by thousands of terms and you get their billions each year.

Thanks again for your time,

Kirt

Hi. Thanks for your excellent questions. Here are my thoughts:

Q: It seems few people use quoted search terms so why is a quoted search term of value? There are some terms I have been searching that quoted only brings a few thousand pages, but unquoted brings a million or more. Are these still worth going after?

A: To a certain extent the quoted search string gives you a better idea on your competition since the quoted string is an exact match while the unquoted string is a broad match.

EX: A search for green widget hammer will return phrases that contain those search words such as:

My green grass was very tall so I got out my lawn mower. However, the widget on it was broken so I needed to bang it with my hammer.

I like listening to Green Day so much I installed a music widget on my blog. MC Hammer sounded cool too.

On the other hand, a search for quoted “green widget hammer” returns pages just with that exact phrase. Chances are pretty good that you are competing with other green widget hammer sales sites and not people who install music widgets on their blogs so they can listen to Green Day and MC Hammer.

While many people use the quoted search string as a competition indicator, I personally don’t use it. To me, I really don’t care how many other sites are using my search term. It can be 100 or 100,000,000 sites. I just want to know if I can beat them so I’m at the top of page 1.

Overall I don’t feel the quoted search string is the best indicator of competition. I think backlinks and PR of the competition are better indicators.

I mention it in item 3) of this post: http://www.onlineprofitpatterns.com/blog/profit-pattern-example-3-plus-summary-table/

Q: Also, do you analyze your search terms for monetization, ie sponsored links?

A: When I first starting doing Adsense I of course wanted those $25 clicks for “mesothelioma.” After some reality adjustments I’ve found that the amount you get per click isn’t always accurate so when it comes to Adsense I usually just look at whether or not the keyword has good traffic and if I think I can beat the competition.

Most of my monetization is from either Adsense, PayDotCom, Clickbank, or eBay listings. Lately I’ve been looking into CPA just to get some diversity in monetization.

Q: Have you ever considered or do you use hub pages, squidoo lens, article marketing too?

A: I’ve tried to create several link wheels with hub pages, squidoo, blogger, and other free blogs. That strategy really hasn’t really worked out for me. I’ve only tried it a couple of times, though, so perhaps it just wasn’t a good keyword selection for me or perhaps Google is able to detect the link wheels and have discounted them.

I’ve also had some limited success with submitting to RSS feeds and some social bookmarking sites. However, article marketing has by far given me the biggest bang for the buck for my sites.

Hope this helps.

Wendell

Thanks for the info. I have been studying this type of marketing and found no reason for quoted and unquoted keywords. It seems few people use quoted search terms so why is a quoted search term of value? There are some terms I have been searching that quoted only brings a few thousand pages, but unquoted brings a million or more. Are these still worth going after?
Also, do you analyze your search terms for monetization, ie sponsored links? I also have been running the search terms against the keyword search tool of google’s and find some with “not enough data”, but yet there are sponsored links on the terms. Do you know why this is?

Have you ever considered or do you use hub pages, squidoo lens, article marketing too?

Thanks,
Kirt

Hi.

The Google link: command is notoriously inaccurate so most people use the link: command from Yahoo instead. Many people also use Google’s free Webmaster’s Tools to get a more accurate view of their backlinks.

One product I like is Jon Leger’s WebCompAnalyst. It makes it very easy to check out the backlinks of the competition. One-stop shop.

I certainly give more weight to the backlinks and the PR of the specific page first, since that is the page that I’m actually trying to beat.

However, I also consider the backlinks and PR of the root URL since that is typically going to pass along some juice as well to the other pages.

I don’t have a fixed formula for when I shy away from a site with high root backlinks or PR. I check if the majority of the top 10 sites have that same pattern.

If only 1 or 2 sites have high root statistics and the actual page I’m trying to beat is relatively low, then I’d probably jump in and try to beat them. However, if 5 or 6 of the top 10 sites have high root stats then I’ll go look for other keywords that are easier to beat.

Wendell

Great post. This is something i was looking for online, because most of the SEO experts talk about keywords and research way too broadly.

I had tested one of keyword phrases before i found this page, and I must agree with your patterns, for now.

it has less than 10k results in qoutes
it has 125k in broad (here i couldn’t find it that low as in your example)
backlinks competition was all lower than 30 (I have only 2 backlinks to my post)
allintitle: was less than 500
as of page rank average: it is a little bit higher, but I have managed with PR 1 of root domain to outrank all of those PR5 and PR2, I would say i had on top 10 places PR3 on average.

All I wanted to ask you is this:

for Backlinks of Competition
Using the link: command in Yahoo

I am using a command for google and I just wonder do you check the link command of top 10 pages for full url that is listed for certain keyword phrase, or u basically check it for root domain only and keyword to see the amount of backlinks?

I would ask you the same for PR, do you check root PR or post PR of top 10 pages to determine the real competition ?