16 Proven Money Site Strategies that You Can Implement Today + Your Questions Answered

16 Money Site Strategies from Hayden

Today’s post is going to outline 16 key takeaways that you can implement in your online business right away for faster results.

Each of these takeaways are exactly what I am doing right now with my approach to building money sites and SEO in the current Google landscape.

The lessons learned and what you can take away right now, but before you race off, I’d like toinvite you to ask myself and my team members ANY QUESTION you like and we’ll be available for the next 7 days in the comments of this post to help and respond.

But first, let’s get into the post!

#1:Build in Batches

As the old saying goes, there is safety in numbers. In the online world, there is also efficiency and in many cases, predictability in numbers.

A core part of our money site strategy is to build-out batches of sites at the same time. In our case, that can be up to 20 sites at any one time, but my personal opinion if you are someone that is working online part-time, is to build in batches of 3-4 and try to aim for sites in a related niche.

Building in batches allows you to order content simultaneously, link build two money sites with single PBN articles and perform repetitive tasks in succession for almost certain improved efficiency for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th time you repeat the task.

Furthermore, building in batches spreads your risk. Rather than blindly pouring the equivalent of 4 small sites worth of content into one big authority site from scratch, spread your risk by first poking the niches with a handful of smaller sites.

#2: Launch Small, But Big Enough to Identify Winners

We launch our smaller sites (niche sites) with around 7500 words of content in the first month.7500 words spread across say 3-6 pages on a site is a perfect Minimum Viable Product for a niche site that is built in a niche you are not familiar with.

We chose 7500 words as it is a sufficient volume of content to rank (test the niche), whilst being a small enough time and/or financial investment to write-off if the site does not perform.

Speaking of which….

#3: It’s a Waiting Game

There’s no doubt that new sites are taking longer to rank than they did 12 months ago. Greg wrote a post to this effect a couple months back that documented our experience and our pursuit of workarounds for the 4-6 month lag-time between launching a site and ranking on page 1 continues with our Experiments and Testing division.

#4 Add content to Winners

If you have managed to get into the habit of consistently building out new sites each month (which I do recommend, certainly until you find some winners), you will eventually refine your skills to the point where you do have some sites that are making decent money.

We are currently case studying a hypothesis whereby we set-out to add content to sites within proven niches where we could generate short-term revenue within 45 days of adding the content plus ongoing passive income and additional site value purely through long-tail traffic on proven high RPM sites.

Let me illustrate our findings at this early stage:

One in particular is a site in the finance niche that I believe is highly relevant to most part-timers online given its size as what we define as a Niche Authority Site (up to 200 pages maximum size). Let me show a mini case-study here (a NichePursuits.com exclusive actually):

The niche: Finance
The market: Google Australia
Site launched: January 2014
Pages of content as of July 8th: Just 4!
Potential size of site: around 150-200 pages
Pages of content added between 9th and 15th July: 24
Earnings (Adsense) from new content added in 30 days following July 9th: $78.59
Boost to site value from earnings on content added (20x multiple): 20 x $78.59 = $1,571.8!

The 24 articles added averaged approximately 1000 words in length. At a price of $10 per 1000 words, the price of the content was $240. If we were to sell the site right now, we’d have madeover 5x the investment back within ONLY 30 days, even after broker fees.

None of the pages added were link built and none were ranking any higher than page 4 for any keywords of note. The money is all from long tail keywords (HINT, HINT)!

Furthermore, there is no way that the same amount of content when added to a fresh domain would have generated anything close to $78.59 in revenue.

#5 Brandable Domains even if only a Niche Site

The site above was also a great learning lesson on domain name selection; we messed up. The niche is broad, but we made the mistake of thinking too small with the domain selection.

We now have a site that has RPMs of consistently around $100, which means new content would in all likelihood pay for itself within 60-90 days of being added on long-tail traffic alone, but we can’t build it out to its full potential (301 redirect is an option, but not without issues).

We are now completely avoiding EMD and PMD domains, instead opting for generic and brandable domains.

Generic domains have far more appeal to buyers and more scope for site growth should they prove to be successful. So why limit yourself with a narrow domain?

#7 TLD Tip

In countries where the country TLD is restricted (e.g. Australia and Canada where you need to be a local resident to register a .au or .ca domain), we simply look for a .com and target the site via Google Webmaster Tools to the target country. This increases the pool of potential buyers down the track as opposed to a situation we have currently with a number of .au sites that are worth well into 5 figures, but are going to be hard to sell to non-Australian residents.

#8 Foreign SEO is worth pursuing

Greg and I have built plenty of profitable sites in Australia. I’ve previously ranked sites in the UK, Canada and Mexico along with many other countries. Although foreign SEO is not guaranteed to deliver results, those non-US markets are overall easier to rank sites and can often deliverhigher Adsense CPC and therefore deserve your attention!

Let’s have a look at just one example:

“Best SUV” > this keyword passes our internal keyword research process as a target keyword and it certainly gives you an idea of how you can find vast differences (and opportunities) through thinking outside of the US.

“Best SUV” Google Australia: 1900 exact monthly searches, $24.55 CPC

“Best SUV” Google UK: 2900 exact monthly searches, $7.12 CPC

“Best SUV” Google US: 33,100 exact monthly searches, $2.94 CPC

Key points:

Australia has high CPC and far lower competition (as evidenced by the lower PA and DA of the top 10 pages compared to US and UK) and if you ranked high up on page 1 for “Best SUV”, including long-tail traffic, would easily surpass 4 figures per month in revenue.
UK has solid CPC, a level of competition that would make it borderline as a main target keyword for a page as per my KW research method (that uses a similar logic to Spencer’sLong Tail Pro software).
US has far higher search volume, but far lower CPC with big authority sites (High PA and DA, plus lots of Linking Root Domains) dominating the top 10 results.
The safer bet, and probably the more lucrative option, is targeting Best SUV in Google Australia.

#9 The Smart Money is in the Long Tail

It has never been more apparent to me, as evidenced by point 4 above, and also the site I’ll reference below, that taking time to carefully plan your pages so that you target as many long-tail keywords as possible is the path to faster traffic and faster revenue.

One of our Internship graduates (Matthias) who is currently living with us in Valle De Bravo noticed a nice little uptick in traffic earlier yesterday for one of our partner sites:

Nice result, but the actual traffic is not the important aspect here, its where the traffic is coming from

A number of LONG TAIL KEYWORDS that were not the primary target on the site are the key traffic drivers right now. The site would be getting more traffic from the 90 search volume term in position 2 than the 4 larger search volume terms at the top of the image combined!

I am yet to prove the theory with a documented case study, but my gut feeling is that groups of 10-15 <500 monthly search volume keywords are more profitable to target than 1-2 main short-tail keywords with far higher total search volume.

#10 Predict Year/Date KWs and Work Into Articles

Each of those keywords above that are ranking in position 2 contain the year 2014 in them.

This was a site built at the start of 2014, and Matthias’s strategy when arranging keywords on his main page was brilliantly simple in it’s execution.

He simply looked for searches of “best {product} 2013″ which revealed over 3000 monthly searches. Common sense meant that he could realistically expect similar search volume for “best {product} 2014″ and apply the same rationale to all the related KW variants such as “top rated” “best selling” “highest rating” and so on.

Matthias worked the year 2014 into his title and also strategically throughout the page.

Using this exact strategy right now, for any KW where there is a year attached, you can look at 2013 and 2014 search volume and then target 2015 in your articles to get the jump on next year. Sites are taking 4-6 months to rank anyway, so cut your losses on 2014 search terms and get ahead of the curve for 2015 to enjoy a full 12 months at the top of Google!

#11 Resourceful Pages Rule

Without question, the best way to create pages today is to target as many keywords as possible on them and make your main pages as resourceful as possible. If you look through many affiliate site keywords such as “{product} review” or “best {product}”, you will notice that the majority of pages that are ranking for the short-tail keywords have 1500 words of content as a minimum and often much more.

#12 Bonus Tip on Resourceful Pages & Ranking Long Tail KWs

Use the Table of Contents Plus plugin (or something similar) to target your lower-competition, long-tail keywords in the anchor text of the table of contents.

Ensure that you have at least 250 words of content relevant to the target keyword of each section. To avoid explaining this in 1000 more words, if you are interested in a strategy to rank long-tail keywords, view this post on our blog that covers the single page site structure, and apply the same principles to your main articles on your sites. It works!

#13 Niche Sites Are Not Dead

Myself, Spencer and others are currently on a parallel path of turning our attention to authority sites. But for all the information we are sharing on the topic of authority sites, I want to point out that niche sites can be both profitable and the best starting point.

In fact, my suggested approach to building niche sites is a 3 pronged approach.

Step 1: Build batches of small niche sites (7500 or so words) at a rate of 4 per month. This is achievable if you are working 10-20 hours per week and are efficient. Keep doing so for a few months.

After a handful of months, you will almost certainly have identified a site, or hopefully sites, that are showing positive signs and making money. At this point you have two options, having identified a winning niche.

Option 1) build out the current niche site into an authority site, just as I outlined above in point #5 above.

Option 2) start an authority site from scratch and pour as much energy into it as possible to develop a nice, clean, white-hat authority site that will stand the test of time.

The key here is that your months of building batches of small authority sites will probably reveal multiple money-making sites, but it will prevent you from pursuing an authority site in a niche that you cannot break into.

When you are only working part-time online, building a failed authority site can kill 6 or more precious months.

#14 Adsense is Not Sexy, But it is Easy

It’s easy, simple and it pays. Sure, there are many instances of keywords/niches where Adsense pays lower than other monetization tactics. However, we’ve also had instances where direct-selling advertising on sites took longer to facilitate and delivered lower ROI for us that Adsense revenue.

The vast majority of our sites make money via Adsense. It is unparalleled for ease and time convenience, which is important if you are either short on time due to having a day job or due to juggling many online projects.

When your time is short, you need to weigh up the opportunity cost of fiddling with other forms of monetization vs just slapping up some Adsense code and watching the clicks roll in.

Adsense is the ideal form of monetization for if you are feeling your way through the SEO and niche site world. Use the convenience and devote your spare time to improving your skills on other facets of successfully building sites.

#15 Adsense Ad-Block Placement

Forget the sidebar, forget header ad blocks. Load your content area with big ad blocks. We usually go with a standard 3 ad blocks in the main content area; 1 towards to top (usually after the first or second paragraph to avoid being too top-heavy with adse above the fold), 1 in the middle and 1 at the end of articles. Quick Adsense is a handy plugin for this.

#16 ABT: Always Be Testing

Individuals like Spencer, Pat Flynn and so on are continually sharing information and their own experiences to help you walk the quicker path to success. There is no substitute for experience though and it is crucial that you Always Be Testing.

This does not mean that you need to be launching batches of 20 sites per month or even spending more than a few hours per week on it. Your ongoing testing could be on 1 of your 4 sites that you launch each month. And it could just be that you test one small thing on one site per week. By 12 months you have proven or debunked 52 things, many of which have probably been bubbling away in your mind for months to this point

You can read, you can watch, you can listen… but the best path to results is to DO.

To summarize the above, here are 16 take-aways that you can implement right now to improve your online success:

Build sites in batches for improved efficiency
Don’t be afraid to start a site with 7500 words of content and let it sit until is warrants more attention
Don’t be worried if your site isn’t on page 1 until 4-6 months > that’s normal
Add content to sites with decent RPM > the long-tail earnings may blow your mind
Choose generic, brandable and flexible domains over PMD and EMD domains
Buy .coms (or generic TLDs) and use targeting by country in Google Webmaster Tools for countries with country TLD restrictions
Foreign SEO is well worth investigating
There’s money to be made in long tail keywords
Use the Table of Contents Plus plugin to your advantage
Target keywords as low as 100-500 monthly search volume > they’ll rank quicker and probably with less links
Get smart with KW analysis to predict future year/month based KWs
Pay attention to the total word count of sites ranking in the serps. Chances are, most will be 1500+ words
Use small niche sites to test niches prior to entering with an authority site
Use Adsense
Place your Ad blocks in the main content area
ABT: How did I learn all of the above? Always Be Testing

We teach all of the above in our monthly Internships and Private Training Courses, if you’re interested.

Ask Us Anything

Now, before you race off, build batch of 4 Adsense niche sites, with broad and resourceful well-planned pages, targeting Google Australia, Canada or UK, I’m offering the NichePursuits community 7 days of access to myself and my entire, newly formed NoHatDigital (NHD) team toask anything at all that will help you succeed online.

Each of the 12 Interns in the NHD team have unique skill-sets, and to get your mind ticking about possible questions, below is a short list of the various areas of expertise within the team.

Finding expired domains / spam checking
Building PBN sites
PBN hosting options
Link building (not just PBN link building)
Affiliate SEO
On-page SEO
Flipping sites
Building authority sites
KW research
Systems automation
Data analysis
Project management
Software development
Alternate monetization (lead gen, direct advertising, directory sites, selling links)
Viral content
Foreign market (non-US) SEO
Local SEO/Lead Gen
Web development