Crunching Some AdSense & 30DC Numbers

I recently admitted that I don’t really check my stats very much. Now that I want to do some more work building niche sites I decided to check the stats for the site that is generating income and see if I can make some projections from that.

Traffic v Income

During July (which is quite typical - nothing much changes from month to month), the site received just 1,345 page views and it generated at income of $19.45. That works out to be a value per page view of 1.42 cents. Now that by itself isn’t really a very useful figure but I have been drilling down to see where the income is coming from and what I can do to boost it in future niche sites.

Traffic v Google Ranking

As I started to look through the traffic stats for the site what I really wanted to look at is which keywords brought in the most traffic, and where the landing pages on my site ranked for that keyword. Here are the stats for my top keyword (based on Market Samurai tool - get it from the Thirty Day Challenge)

• Total searches per day:  217
• Estimated Traffic per day for the site in the number #1 spot: 91
• Estimated monthly traffic: 91 x 30 = 2,730
• My Ranking: #23
• My Traffic: 172 (6.3%)

So what that means is that the web page in the top position in the Google serps for that term should receive around 2,730 visitors per month for that keyword (other variations will bring in extra traffic of course). My page ranks at number #23 which is pretty low and that gave me 172 visitors which is just 6.3% of the traffic share.

But that’s actually not bad because I rank #23 out of 18,700 competing pages. People say you have to get on the first page in Google and while that would be nice, it isn’t essential. What is interesting for me is that I have done very little to rank - mainly just on-page SEO. I built a few backlinks via social bookmarking but that particular page only has 14 external backlinks which is pretty low. With a little effort, I’m sure I could rank better and get a bigger slice of the traffic.

Also, on that site I haven’t really optimised it very well - I created only one page per phrase and created about 5 different pages all targeting different phrases and they aren’t all that related. Imagine what I could do if the entire site is targeted towards a single phrase which is the keyword sniping strategy that I am using now.

My current site is consistently getting 25 visitors a day from those dire rankings so I’m sure I could pull in at least 100 visitors a day from a site targeting a phrase with similar numbers to the one shown above with more concentrated effort.

AdWords Values

When I started the niche site that I am analysing here I didn’t have Market Samurai to tell me how much my keywords were worth. Now I can see that I have chosen pretty poor keywords that have an AdWords cost per click of $1.00 or less. As an AdSense publisher you will usually earn a percentage of the AdWords value, perhaps 50% if you are not smart priced. My AdSense stats seems to verify those numbers.

Crunching Some Numbers

Now here is where the fun begins. I have a keyword phrase that estimates traffic of 91 per day for the number #1 spot. With my crappy #23 ranking in Google and a poor payout of probably less than $0.50 per click, I am making around $20 per month from that site. So let’s play with the numbers…

For my 30DC site, I found a rather nice niche. I have found not 1 but 10 keywords that not only fit the traffic / competition criteria, but also cost the advertiser between $2.98 and $5.97 with the average being about $3.50. There’s also 2 more keywords in that niche at just over $2.00 CPC.

I am building 2 sites right now - one is using the 30DC method and the other is using the keyword sniping method. So far, they are fairly similar but I expect that to change as we go further through the 30DC. Now for my AdSense site, if I can get 100 visitors a day and achieve a click through rate of 5% then I can expect 5 clicks per day. Assuming an average CPC of $3.00 that would be 5 x $1.50 = $7.50 per day. Multiply that by 30 days and that site would earn $225 a month!

Now what really gets me excited is the other 11 keywords that I have in the same niche! With each site explicitly targeting a unique keyword each one can get a similar amount of traffic. The highest of the keywords I have shows a daily traffic estimation (for the number #1) spot of 374. The sites will not overlap traffic wise and yet because they are all related I will find it a lot easier to write content for the new sites because I will have already familiarised myself with the topic.

So if I repeat the process a dozen times using keywords with similar payouts, that’s potentially 12 x $225 = $2,700! Now THAT gets me really excited!

And remember these are using fairly conservative numbers. If I could improve CTR by just 1% and get 6% that would work out at $3,340 - more than $500 difference! Of course all of these are just numbers, just projections but it seems entirely possible to me, easy even. The hard stuff is having the patience to actually do the work - that’s a lot of articles to write on one topic, and the patience to allow the sites to rank.

Being brand new domains I don’t expect them to start earning straight away. I launched this niche site in October and it got a little boost of traffic at the beginning for a few weeks then it dropped right off in December and stayed low until February when it picked up and has since stayed pretty level. So that’s 4 months for the traffic to stabilize.

The 30DC Monetization Strategy

The 30DC does not use AdSense. At this stage in the challenge we are promoting a single affiliate product but I know from past challenges that the ultimate aim is to find a good, profitable niche and then to develop our own product and thus retain 100% of the profits.

The key thing here is the price of the product. I have heard Dan (or it might have been Ed) say that just about any niche can become a $10k a month niche with a $97 product. But if you’re selling a $7 ebook you’re going to have to work a LOT harder to make the same money.

Now Ed’s magic formula is 200 visitors = 1 sale. From my stats above I’m not convinced I could get 200 visitors a day without doing a LOT of work but I’ll work with that for now. So assuming 1 sale a day of a $97 product that is $2,910 from one single website! However you wouldn’t want to go to all the effort of building a product just for one website so here is where related sites come into play. The idea is that you build a network of perhaps 3 or 4 sites that are related but not necessarily on exactly the same topic. However if the product relates to them all and they all produce 1 sale a day then you have a niche worth $10-12k a month!

Which is Best?

Looking at the niche I have chosen this year, I simply couldn’t imagine producing my own product in it. Plus, as I mentioned I’m not convinced that I could get 200 visitors per day either. However for my 30DC site I am selling an affiliate product that pays out $20 per sale which isn’t bad. If I got 100 visitors per day, and 1 in 200 bought the product that would be 15 x $20 = $300 which is a little higher than what I would expect from my AdSense site but not all that much. That’s why I’m building them both side by side!

So this is the strategy that I intend to use over the coming months… I’m starting out with AdSense quite simply because it’s so damn easy. I have no real desire to create my own product in these niches because that’s a truckload of effort that I just don’t want to go to. However, in each niche I will also test multiple affiliate programs to see if they pay better and while I’m at it I’ll test other monetization methods too.

If I happen to find a niche that does well with an affiliate program and for some reason I really feel as though I could develop my own product and charge significantly more than the affiliate program paid me then I would try it.

For now both sites are indexed but not ranking. Well the AdSense one is ranking but it’s somewhere around position 450 for the chosen keyword so it’s got a way to go yet!

Stumble it!