My 4 Hour Workweek

I realize the title of this post sounds like I’m about to try and sell you a product…the good news is, I’m not! I actually just wanted to share with you a quick story about how one of my niche sites landed on the first page of Google and received an ad click without me doing much of anything.

Although I uploaded a WordPress theme and added my usual plugins, this site was ranking on page 1 before I even added the content.

While you can’t plan for this in any way, I thought it might be interesting to take a deeper look at this site and the keyword that it targets to see if we can learn anything…

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Although this case study seems complete (the site is currently on page 2 for its targeted keyword, but on page 1 for secondary keywords), it’s actually just the beginning.  The purpose of this case study was not just to create one stand alone project.  After all, what good is one micro-niche AdSense site that will probably never earn more than $50 in a given month?

The exciting part of this case study was not the case study itself – I know it was helpful to a lot of people out there, based on feedback I received, but the excitement is yet to come.  This case study was merely a springboard to much greater things and hopefully positive learning experiences.

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As I’ve mentioned in the past, I think this is the most important step of the process. Despite all other efforts, if people can’t find you on Google, your micro-niche site is destined to be a failure.  Search engine optimization (SEO) is merely the process of tweaking a few things on and off your site so that Google views your site as more relevant for a particular keyword or keywords.

On-site optimization, although important, is easy (especially with various WordPress plugins out there).  Off-site optimization (primarily building backlinks) is more time consuming, and probably what will make or break your site’s rankings on Google.  In this section of the case study, I will show you what I’ve done with my site’s SEO.

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Now, we’re finally getting to the meat of the project!  Aside from traffic (which we’ll get to in the next part of the case study), content and ads are going to be the key ingredients to making money with an AdSense micro-niche site.

In this section of the case study, I’m going to walk through how I create my niche site content, including where my ideas come from and how I outsource the creation.  Once the content is added to the site, I work on ad placement, a critical task in optimizing the earning potential of a niche site.

Let’s get into it!

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Now that I’ve gone through the introduction and discussed how to research your niche site’s target keyword, we’re going to dig into some more detail with regards to how to set up and configure your site.  This is an area where there are many options and many right ways of doing it.

It’s important that you don’t get too caught up in any one particular detail – I know I’ve spent hours trying to tinker with one element of a site’s design, when ultimately, it’s not where I should initially focus my time.  There will be plenty of time to tweak the details once you’re up and running, and receiving real traffic (which is the right time to worry about little details).

Anyway, let’s dive in!

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It’s time to actually get to work on this project! If you didn’t get a chance to read the introduction, you can do so here.

Before we worry about hosting and buying a domain, we need to do our research.  Even if you don’t already have a hosting account, I still recommend doing research first.  There’s no point in paying for hosting if you don’t even know the basics of the site you’re going to build.

This part of the case study will walk through my entire research process, buying a domain, and figuring out where to host your site.  And yes, I will reveal the domain of my micro-niche site!

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I’m going to start this case study by pointing out the obvious: Making money online with AdSense-focused niche sites is probably one of the oldest methods around.  You can read about it in a million places – much of the information is free, but there are plenty of people looking to make money off teaching you how to create a profitable AdSense niche site.

With that said, I’ve decided to diversify my niche sites a bit, and start creating micro niche sites that are primarily monetized through AdSense.  To kick off this new project, I’ve decided to do one site in a fully transparent way – you will see everything I do and every tool I use.  By the time I’m done, you’ll be able to replicate my process exactly (whether you choose to or not is up to you).

If you want to jump ahead to the other sections of this case study, here are some links:

• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: Research & Initial Setup
• Part 3: Setup, Configuration, & Design
• Part 4: Content & Ad Placement
• Part 5: SEO / Backlinking
• Part 6: Plan for the Future

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It’s been a long time since I’ve done an official niche site duel update (although I track my progress monthly in my income reports), and there’s a good reason for that: My site has acted much like a ship that has sunk to the bottom of the ocean – it’s still there, but it’s not going anywhere.

Foolishly or not (it’s debatable), I’ve still continued to work on the site periodically.  What was once a promising niche site has now become a rehab project.  I expected the ups and downs early in the site’s life due to your standard Google dance, or whatever you want to call it, however I never expected that 9  months later I would still be trying to get the site in motion.

Anyway, let’s do some analysis…

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