Christmas Stats Update

December Adsense = $286.47
December Amazon = $7.78
Other Affiliate $$ = $79.87

Total AIS = $374.12

I don't think I'm going to hit my goal of $500 from adsense, but it has been a great month so far. I'm way up from last month.

I few people have my article script. Hopefully I'll get some good feedback.

Article Script

I guess if I can't even give it away, theres no chance on me selling it. :( No one commented that they would like to check out the RSSG Article Script. I've added it to all of my sites and will see how they do.

Article Miner

Inspired by a recent post on Burt's Blog (http://osworld.blogspot.com/2005/12/ais-sites-need-articles-get-article.html), I decided to write a quick article miner. It was actually a lot easier then I thought, and works great. I only have it setup to get 10 articles per keyword, but I believe that will be plenty.

I made mine to work with RSSG and findarticles.com. Other article sites could be added fairly easily, but I didn't take the time to do so.

I'm not sure what Article Miner does to the HTML or to the text in the articles. Does it change words, or redesign HTML so that the article appears to be original? I'm thinking about adding this functionality, but I doubt changing the article text would be allowed due to copyrights.

Let me know if you use RSSG and want to BETA test the script (its really rough). I'll only allow an AIS regular (I have to recognize your name) to test the script. I think I'll sell the download for a few bucks once I refine it.

RSSG and more.

The RSSG site that I experimented with a few posts ago got indexed by Google and made $2.25 today. I am suprised by this, because as I stated in my first post about this site, I spent only a few minutes gathering keywords for an old domain that wasn't doing anything. Who knows if it will make that type of money consistantly, but I think I'll try to find a true niche, research keywords extensively, and see what type of difference that makes. I've also found a way to use my 'questionable' techniques described below in an 'unquestionable' way that I feel good about. It hasn't made quite as big a splash as last weekend, but I've made $8.36 today using that technique. Overall I've made $11.69 from adsense today.

My goal is to make $500 on adsense this month, which is a stretch, but still possible. I'll need to average about $20 per day on adsense for the rest of the month.

I didn't join Burt's challenge because I didn't feel that I had anything to contribute. I'll be following closely though, and will hopefully be able to learn a lot from the other contestants.

I'm also looking forward to the release of Chemo's new shopping cart. His blog has been a little stale recently, but you can read about his project here: http://oscommerce-chemo.blogspot.com/

I made $89 today from adsense.

Is it ethical to create a page offering services or products that you are not actually able to provide, if you never actually sell those products? For example, someone could setup a page saying that they have this year’s hottest Christmas toy, an apartment in a great location, or can provide eye surgery, etc. Then provide no way to check out, an email address that will never be responded to, and no contact information. Monetize the page using adsense. Frustrated shoppers will click on familiar Google ads with hopes of finding the product or services they desire.

Pages like this work, see my last few posts. However, I’ve decided not to proceed any further with those types of pages because I didn’t feel good about them. I received a ton of emails from users who were excited about the services/products that I was falsely offering. Reading these emails is what made me reconsider this type of marketing. Its not like I scammed anyone out of any money, just a few moments of their time.

So I ask you the question, is providing false hope to a consumer unethical?

Busted!

I made $82.54 on the new website in the last two days ($17.24 today), before being taken off of the website I was advertising on. At this point I'm unsure if I've been banned, or if I can advertise again on this site. If I can keep the ad up on the site for a day or two at a time, I should be okay. Otherwise this good fortune was short lived....

Adsense Explosion

The new site ended up making $65.27 yesterday (all from adsense) in just half a day of existence. And its made $10.66 in adsense today.

Best Day Ever

I had a new idea, registered a domain this afternoon, and setup a few pages with adsense ads. My new idea produced $43.91 in adsense revenue in the last 8 hours. With a few hours left in the day I hope to top $50. I'm not sure how long it will last like this, but I've tried to multiply my immediate results by 10x (10 versions of the same thing). The domain cost me less than $3, no cost for advertising or software.

Burt's Challenge

Burt is running an AIS challenge, with a $100 cash prize. The challenge starts on 12/16, so check out the rules and enter here: http://osworld.blogspot.com/2005/12/burts-challenge-will-you-accept.html

RSSG Site

Taking a lead from Baldy, I decided to try to setup a RSSG site. I downloaded a general free template from the web and changed it to work with RSSG. This Automotive Tools domain name was purchased on a whim a while back, and I haven't done anything with it. This is the first keyword list generated site that I've attempted, and I think you can probably tell that I'm not very good at putting together a good list. I used Web CEO to get some keywords (remember I'm only using free tools), but only spent a few minutes on the keywords. If it seems like Google eats this site up quickly, I'll then start worrying about good keyword lists. Let me know if you like the layout of the site, or if you think it sucks.

AIS and More

Its been a wild month. I settle on the house that I bought later this afternoon. Add that to being away for the holidays, and you get a blog that hasn't been updated in a while. Right now, I'm sitting with 20 sites. Here is my income breakdown for November:

Adsense: $22.97
Affiliate Sales: $182.37 (all on one site)
Chitika: $0.80

Total = $206.14
Cost = $20.00
Profit = $186.14
Avg Per Site / Day = $0.33

Although I'm doing a little better then before in the search engines, I am still barely listed. I've decided that I just need to wait a few months before making any decisions on what to do. I doubt that I'll be able to get to the 100 site mark by the end of the year, but I hope to atleast get 10 more sites, and average $1 a day on each of 30.

Google Analytics

I signed up for the new Google Analytics service, at http://www.google.com/analytics/. I integrated it into a few of my sites, but won't really be able to check out the data until tomorrow. I have no need for the e-commerce functionality that the Urchin software provides, but I think I'll integrate the full functionality into osCommerce and release a contribution when I have some time. Hopefully in the next few days.

Lack of Updates

I apologize for the lack of posts to this blog, I've been really busy. I just bought a house, and have been preparing for moving. So far this month, I've only made $7.66 on adsense. I am still having a really hard time getting indexed, and am pretty disappointed in my sites in general. I haven't spent a huge amount of time on them in the last week or so, but I really thought I'd be indexed by Google by now. Most of my sites have the index page in Google, but no other pages.

I'm pretty happy with the way my Chitika / Adsense / Amazon / osCommerce integration turned out. Most of the pages really work out with the Chitika ads, but on approx. 5% of pages Chitika displays a completely unrelated ad. The ads are being generated by feeding the product title as a keyword. It seems that when Chitika doesn't have a related product, it just displays something random. Not the best, but as Chitika grows, this percentage should lower. You can see that page here: www.1800plussize.com

I've made $73.01 from an affiliate on my one site that is indexed. As for the person that asked about NPB sites... I still have not paid for any keyword list or software. My only costs are for hosting and domain names.

Indexing problems

I'm still having a ton of trouble getting my sites indexed. I am averaging around a $1 a day total for all my sites. One bright note, my 1 site that is indexed has made $27.00 this month in affiliate sales. I've slowed down on creating sites, and will be focusing on getting the current sites indexed.

Please point me towards articles or forums that will help me to learn about getting indexed faster.

13 Stores Up.

I now have 13 sites up and running. Each site now takes me about an hour to setup. My daily adsense income is about $2 per day. Most of the sites still haven't been indexed. If anyone has any tips to get indexed quicker, besides developing backlinks, please feel free to share them in the comments.

I finished my Chitika integration project, and may start using that site as a template for all of my sites. I think the site looks really good. I submitted it to the search engines today, and probably won't see results for a few weeks.

I made enough from 1 affiliate site last month to pay for my hosting fees. I haven't figured out my exact costs/earnings, but I believe that I am in the black. Since I did not buy any software to create my sites, I believe that I am the only 'AIS Challenger' to be on the plus side of things. So I guess I'm in the lead now, but we'll see if their larger daily profits will over take me in time.

Chitika eMiniMalls and osCommerce

I've been messing with Chitika's new eMiniMalls a lot lately. I built an osCommerce store that looks exactly like the eMiniMalls, with eMiniMalls mixed in, but that can be indexed by search engines. I'm not completely finished with it, but it should do fairly well.

If you haven't done so yet, sign up at Chitika.com

Affiliate Sales

My one site that has been indexed has made me $35.24 in affiliate sales this month. Now I just need to multiply that by 100.

Mini Mall

I started to work on my version of the Mini Mall.

You can see it here: http://www.airpurifiers-reviews.info/minimall.php
This took me only about 20 minutes to do. It is searching Amazon.com for the keyword "ipod", and returning the top result based on the Amazon pmrank, which is Amazon's promotional rank.

It still needs a lot of work, but basic functionality is there.

eMiniMalls

The official Chitika eMiniMalls page can be found here: http://www.chitika.com/

Jensense has mentioned it in many posts, and claims that many people are making more from eMiniMalls then Adsense when featured on the same page.
You can read what she has to say about it here: http://www.jensense.com/archives/chitika_eminimalls/index.html

There is also a page devoted towards setting up eMiniMalls with adsense without violating your Google TOS. It can be found here: http://www.eminimalls.org/

Need to find time...

I've been working hard at my regular job, and am in the process of buying a house. I haven't had much time to do anything. I've been making around $5 a day between adsense and affiliate earnings. I still am barely in any of the search engines.

Their seems to be a little bit of hipe around Chitika's eMiniMalls. You can use them on a page with adsense, as long as you disable context based content. I believe it is a pay-per-click service. I've decided to create a affiliate enabled version of the eMiniMall. I will then rotate between the actual eMiniMall and my affiliate version, and see which one produces more income. I won't have much time to work on it until the weekend, but it should only take me a few hours to reproduce. Perhaps someone with an NPB adsenser site with a lot of page views per day would be willing to try the same test. I'm not currently getting enough page views to get good data. Write a comment if your interested.

No Adsense Clicks Again.

I made $1.85 from an affiliate today, but no adsense clicks. I must be doing something wrong. I have started to look at some NPB sites to figure out what my sites are lacking. 2 more sites are up and submitted.

Yahoo! small business is selling dot com domain names for $2.99 a year. I've been using namecheap dot info domains ($2.88/year), but registered a few dot coms to see if it makes a difference.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/

2 New Sites

I finished 2 more sites today. I now have a total of 10 sites. I've spent approximately $50 so far. I've made $7.91 in adsense revenue, and $8.59 in affiliate revenue. I'm still way in the hole at this point, but I only have a small percentage of my pages in the search engines.

I shared some information with a online friend, and he will hopefully help me to improve my sites. I'm not a very good template/graphic designer, and could use all the help I can get.

No AIS Yesterday

I made $0.00 in adsense and affiliate money yesterday. My sites continue to get slowly added into the search engines. It seems that MSN and Yahoo add sites to their search results fairly quickly. Adding an RSS feed to My Yahoo seems to get a site listed almost immediately.

Todays Adsense

No affiliate sales today, but I made $1.07 on adsense, from 2 clicks on 2 different sites. One of my sites received 149 impressions, and it doesn't have any pages in Google. Although with only 1 click, it has a CTR of 0.7%.

I need to start tweaking adsense position and layout on my pages but find it hard to do before I start getting steady traffic. I've setup channels on each site, for each ad placement, but do not have enough data yet to make any real determinations. How much traffic is enough to make these types of judgements?

Slow Growing Pages and SEO

According to the Google Patent:

[0039] Consider the example of a document with an inception date of yesterday that is referenced by 10 back links. This document may be scored higher by search engine 125 than a document with an inception date of 10 years ago that is referenced by 100 back links because the rate of link growth for the former is relatively higher than the latter. While a spiky rate of growth in the number of back links may be a factor used by search engine 125 to score documents, it may also signal an attempt to spam search engine 125. Accordingly, in this situation, search engine 125 may actually lower the score of a document(s) to reduce the effect of spamming.

Supposedly, Google likes a page to grow slowly over time in size and backlinks. I am going to setup one of my sites to gain 100 pages per week until the max number of pages is met. I’ll add backlinks to this site slowly as I have time.

Officially Indexed by Google

One of my sites now has 13,200 pages showing up in Google. One other site has the index page showing up. So 2 of 8 are officially in.

Unfortunately the site that has 13,200 pages was the first one I made, and I am not too sure the 'niche' that I chose was a very good one. I didn't do any research before building that first site. I basically used it as a test to write the scripts that create my pages. I don't think it will do very good as far as adsense goes, but.......I produced $171.83 worth of sales for one of my affiliates. I get 5% of the sale, making me $8.59.

I didn't do much online today. I got a few more incoming links, and tweaked some things on the existing pages.

I made $0.39 from adsense, and $8.59 from the affiliate, making my daily total $8.98.

My monthly AIS total is $15.24.

5 More Sites Created and Submitted

I created 5 more sites today, using the FREE software that I wrote. I've decided against using any paid for site creators or keyword lists. I still don't have even 1 page indexed by Google, but hopefully that changes soon.

I've created over 100,000 unique pages so far on my 8 sites. Google has downloaded sitemaps from all 8 sites. They've crawled around a few of the index pages, but haven't begun indexing the entire site yet. I wonder if Google keeps track of sitemaps under 1 Google account, or from 1 IP address. Does multiple sitemaps from 1 user raise a red flag to Google?

I've purchased two more domain names, but I will probably not set them up until later in the week. I've set up a link exchange manager on each of my sites, so that I can start getting some quality incoming links. I think I will focus on increasing incoming links to all of the sites tomorrow.

I made $0.41 today, on 1 click. That brings my monthly total to $6.26.

$1 A Day Challenge

I've been following Baldy's blog and his Quest to earn an average of $1 per day on 100 sites. Barefoot_boo recently joined the challenge as well. I decided to compete and started this blog to track my progress against Baldy and Barefoot_boo. I've made $5.85 on adsense this month before starting the competition. They are both using Niche Portal Builder and Keyword Avalanche to build sites. I've decided to use only programs that I create, open-source software and free keyword research tools. We'll see which is a better path to take.

My cost per month = $20 for hosting + $2.88 per year for each domain name registered.

I created 3 sites today.