Income Report December 2012
This month has been so many things, Great for spending time with friends and family, it even started out great with my earnings. Come December 20th Niche Site #1 got hit with a penalty, And traffic went away completely.
Niche site #1
The month started out amazing, I was making more than last month, I was even on course to making >$15 from just AdSense alone. Then the Google Penalty hit. Traffic stopped completely, And all hope was lost.. Then I stopped acting all confused and decided to look further into what happened. The only thing that went on recently with the site was a new post I created, which linked to 2 more Amazon products I was trying to promote, other than that, nothing changed on the site.
I used both Google Webmaster forums, and the Warrior Forums and asked the experts to shed some light. And the answer I got back was what I feared. With my lack of content, and potentially the increase in Amazon link; My site had been penalized as a thin affiliate site. I removed the latest post, and changed the Theme on the site, and so far I have gotten some traffic back. No where near what it was, but at least some has come back.
For now I plan on leaving the site as is, I am not building any more Links or writing any more articles (the topic was not interesting to me to begin with). I will leave the site sit, and if traffic comes back to more than 50 Visitors a day I will put AdSense on the site again, but until then the site will just remain dead.
Niche site #2
With all the going ons and information I gained from the penalty of niche site #1 I have learned that I need more, better content on sites. Previously I thought that as long as you had more than 400 word in the post it was not considered “thin”. I don’t believe this is that case anymore, and All future articles and posts I put on my Niche sites will be over 700 words, But I will be aiming for closer to 1000+ words per post.
Since I no longer have a site ranked well or earning I have a deep desire to build one again. That will lead me to focus more on the second niche site and hopefully get it ranked and earning early on in 2013. Hopefully since this is a topic that I am genuinely interested in the content will be of higher quality and quantity. If not by the end of January, I would like to see some traffic (more than 50 unique visitors per day) coming in from the site by February.
Pocket change funding
Earlier in the month I made a post about how I plan to Fund my online business with the change in my pocket. I have decided that Both the change, and the income will go towards my site and expenses such as hosting, software, and any educational products or classes I may need/want. As of December 31st I have cashed in all my change and have a clean Slate to start with. I will be including any and all expenses regarding my business on the Monthly income reports starting January 2013, As well as how much change has been saved up, and how much I have sitting in the “savings” (money that is left over after paying expenses that I will be saving to use for more expensive things such as software) for the business.
Income Breakdown
AdSense: $6.73
Amazon Associates: $1.04
Total: $7.77 (lucky?)
Conclusion
I have learned so much this year from Including that Procrastination can keep you from meeting your goals, Poor quality sites will not work, and that nothing worth your time is ever easy. You need to work for your goals, and you get out of anything, what you put into it. These things (I hope) will help me to work harder in the coming year to both increase my income, but to also share with you the results I get from my experiences, Better helping you with your own Journey in Internet Marketing.
