SEO Experiment

I have been reading a lot about search engine optimization and have been learning a lot lately about the subject. I would, therefore, like to try an SEO experiment. The experiment will actually involve trying to get ranked for the keyword phrase "SEO experiment". When I search for that keyword phrase using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, I find that there are only 320 monthly global searches for the phrase and the CPC is only $0.05. Also, when I type the phrase in quotations in Google itself, I find that I am competing against 23,800 other web pages.

The bottom line is that I don't have to worry that anyone will be reading this blog and try to outearn or outrank this particular keyword so I can use it for my SEO experiment to illustrate the principles of search engine optimization that I am learning.

Identify Keyword Phrase to Target

I have already done this as explained above. But if you are starting out, you want to go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and start typing in keywords that interest you. Make sure the synonym box is checked so that you can get several other ideas at the same time. You are looking for keywords that have a minimum of 3000 searches per month (or 100/day) so that if you get to the front page of Google, you can count on some traffic each day. Then search for your specific keyword phrase in quotation marks in the Google search engine to assess the number of webpages you are competing against. The fewer pages, the better.

For my keyword, I am looking at about 10 searches per day and competition of just under 24,000 other pages. I have also downloaded SEO for the firefox browser from SEObook.com which will tell me the Page Rank of each site on the Google search results. The top result for the keyword I am targeting has a PR of 1 with the next 3 having a PR of 0. That should be easy to compete against.

I intend to make this post the focus for my SEO efforts. In subsequent posts, I will go into how I will be doing my search optimization efforts in a step-by-step fashion. You may choose to do this for a particular article or your own blog or website. My purpose is to do this as a "dry run" to learn and make mistakes before developing my own niche site. Tomorrow I will post the next step in the process.

Until then.

Featured Writer at Xomba!

Hello, everybody. I am very excited and want to share with everyone here that I was accepted as a featured writer on Xomba in the Money & Investing section of the Business category. And now, my first article has appeared on the front page of Xomba. Go there and take a look before it disappears. Here is a link to the actual article in case it moves before you get there:

Money and the American Dream

I am hoping that the exposure will be one way to help boost traffic and eventually earnings. I am required to post at least one 300 word article every two weeks which should be very easy given the amount of writing I can do and my passion for the topic. Since Xomba has proven to have the potential for earnings, this will be a great way to start getting more articles onto the site.

Xomba also seems to show up well in the search engines. I was searching Google yesterday for one of my articles on HubPages, and the link that I had posted on Xomba actually showed up above the HubPages article by about one full page. I was impressed.

Traffic at HubPages Down

Speaking of HubPages, my traffic there the past two days has been down significantly. I don't understand it. I suppose it is just random chance, and I shouldn't be so hyper looking at the traffic results so often. I should just keep writing more quality stuff. Here is my latest article on HubPages:

Michael Vick, Pete Rose, and Ethics in Sports

The cool thing is that traffic at this blog is getting better and increased over 100% in the past 30 days. It won't take long at this rate, and I will be getting more traffic here than over at HubPages. I suppose that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. I would like to see this blog do well especially since it has the potential to help and encourage people.

Well, that is all I had for now. I mainly wanted everyone to know about Xomba and encourage everyone to go for it. In case you didn't know, I am not a professional writer but was still accepted. Yippee!! Until next time.

My Online Income Quarterly Earnings Report

Here is the moment that we have all been waiting for! The official numbers are in! Be ready to be amazed and shocked!

Ok, maybe it's not quite that dramatic. But I sure am excited considering the fact that 4 short months ago I was earning absolutely zero, zilch, nada online. It has been a lot of work but I can say that I did it all. I built it all from scratch. So without further delay, Kidgas's online income report for the 3rd quarter of 2009!

(and I know there are four months...since I started at the end of May, I didn't want to have just one month in the second quarter or start doing this monthly. This is the only time that my quarterly reports will have 4 months.)

Quarterly Earnings

Month Squidoo Adsense eHow YouData Total

June 2009 0 4.15 0 3.74 7.89

July 2009 0 6.94 0 .47 7.41

August 2009 0 20.85 13.76 .19 34.80

September 09 3.51 27.50 27.19 .60 58.80

Looking at the numbers, I would like to point out a few things:

• The total for the whole quarter was $108.90.


• I only have 5 Squidoo lenses. The majority of the earnings were due to someone ordering books off Amazon.


• Adsense includes HubPages, this blog, and Xomba.


• For the number of articles, eHow is by far the best earner.


• The earnings from writing content have increased each month.

I anticipate being able to continue to increase my earnings each and every month for the next quarter as well. As mentioned in my last post, I need to be making $80 per month by the end of each quarter to get to $1000 monthly by the end of 3 years. Right now I have a $20 monthly deficit since I almost got to $60 monthly. That is certainly OK since I am just getting started.

If I can generate an additional $30 monthly earnings in each of the next three months, that would put me right on track and mean that I would be making about $150 in the month of December.

It will take quite a bit of work these next three months. I will probably have to continue posting articles at the rate of 1 per day. Doing that would mean another 90 articles in addition to the ones I already have putting the total over 200. I would then be expecting that I would earn 0.75 per article per month on average. That is happening for me at eHow, and I suspect that with increased traffic can happen across all sites.

All told, it looks like I could be on track to meet my longer term goals. I just need to maintain the persistent and consistent effort that got me through these first 4 months. I hope that this information has been helpful and encouraging to you.

I am not a writer or internet marketer by trade. I started with no knowledge regarding making money online but have read all I can on the internet. I have made some mistakes and will make some more. My goal has been to develop an income stream without any monetary investment. Classic bootstrapping. I have done that and will continue to grow that income stream through good old-fashioned effort. I hope you continue with me on the journey and learn something along the way. Please feel free to share your knowledge with me as well.

Until next time.

Goals, Goals, and More Goals

I think you can figure out from the title that this post will be amount goals. First, I want to look at my longer term goals.

I would like to be persistent enough so that by the end of June 2018, I will be making $3000 per month online. Why this amount at this time? That is the time that my youngest will be 18 and leaving for college. I figure that $3000 per month should about cover college costs for her in 9 years. After that, I can add that figure to supplement my retirement income which will help out a lot in sure. At least it won't hurt.

Breaking It Down

Now to get there I figure that if I can get to $1000 per month in three years, and if nothing else, repeat the process two more times, I am set. So, the question becomes how to get to $1000 per month in 3 years. There are 12 quarters in 3 years meaning that I need to get just over $80 monthly in each quarter.

Obviously, it will be more difficult and move more slowly at the beginning since I am starting from zero. I will do my best to shoot for that goal, however. That means that ideally I would be at $80 monthly here at the end of September. I won't be there. I can just make sure that I close the gap and keep track of progress.

Amount of Content

If I can average $1 per article per month, then I would need to publish 80 articles per quarter. Realistically, I should aim for 80-100 in case I don't quite make that much. Also, I need to do whatever I can to boost traffic.

Ultimately, it is certainly feasible as long as I keep publishing something each and every day. Whether it is an article or a blog post is probably not as important as much as whether or not it is consistent. This leads me to the October content, traffic, and earnings goals.

October Goals

HubPages: This has become my primary site. The earnings per article are not as good as eHow, but I started here and some of my early stuff wasn't all that great. I think I am getting better. I have 90 Hubs. I want to have at least 100 by the end of October. I would also like to get to 10,000 total views. I am just over 6500. I think it is possible.

eHow: This is a great site for earnings. Per article, it is better for me than HubPages. The articles have become harder for me to write and motivation is tough. I am at 39 eHows. I would like to get one done tomorrow and add 10 more to finish at 50 by the end of October. I would ultimately like to have a minimum of 100 articles at each site by the end of the first year of writing. My goal for traffic has been met for September. I would like to get close to 4500 total views by the end of October. That will take some effort (feel free to stop by and send all your friends to my eHow articles. LOL)

Xomba: What a great site with a ton of potential. I have not utilized this site as effectively as I could. I will be posting more articles here in October. I have primarily thought of this site as a place for links. I think I am underestimating earnings potential. I will be writing a lot of stuff here over the next few months to see what I can accomplish.

InfoBarrel: I did finally get my first earnings for this site. I think there is also potential here as well. After hitting 100 Hubs, I will probably start working more and more on the other 3 sites to build up my article count. I don't have any particular goals in October but hope to add some more material.

My Online Income: I will continue to post 2-3 times per week at least. I am having a good time sharing my experiences and documenting my journey. Plus, this site is actually earning some money. More than I thought it would. Cool!

Real Assets: I will continue to develop this blog as well posting 2-3 times per week also. I can see that there is probably earnings potential here as well.

Adsense: I don't know that I can give out exact numbers, but I would like to increase my ad impressions by almost 50%. This may not be as difficult as I think if I work more on Xomba and InfoBarrel.

Overall, I am rather optimistic that I can achieve the majority of my writing goals. I will also be working on traffic and trying my hand at some SEO. I will see what happens. The bottom line is that I just need to keep plugging away, learning as I go. I think I can handle that.

Finally, I just want to say thanks to everyone who takes the time to come by and read what I have to say. I appreciate it and hope you are learning something. I want to make the time you spend here useful and productive. Thanks for reading.

Until next time--I can't wait 'cause it will be my first quarterly earnings report. Yippee!

Best Day For Earnings Yet!

OK, I usually don't post two days in a row, but I can't help it. I am just SO excited! I couldn't wait to tell you. Yesterday was an awesome day for earnings! I am starting to see some of the pay off for all the hard work. And the great thing is that it is for work that I already have completed. It has taken a few months but things are starting to come together. It is like a snowball picking up speed down a mountain. It won't be long and an avalanche of earnings will happen.

I am sure you are wondering what was so awesome. Don't worry. I will tell. Not only were earnings great, but the fact that they came from multiple sources was even better. I don't want all my earnings concentrated in one place in case something happens to that source. Be sure to read my great article (at least in my opinion) on writing for multiple websites since I know that it plays a huge factor in increased earnings.

So, back to yesterday's earnings, here goes:

• Xomba yielded $2.38
• eHow added $1.98
• HubPages was responsible for $1.95
• InfoBarrel gave me $1.48 (my first earnings from IB)
• This blog came in with $0.31

Can you believe it?! FIVE different sites provided some online passive income earnings yesterday. WOW! The total is $8.10. Imagine doing that everyday for a month. I know that won't happen again today. It may not happen again for awhile. But, I have seen earnings increase each month since starting. I am looking forward to posting my first earning's report in a few days.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the key is just doing one task per day. Only an hour or two each day can add up to serious money. If you don't believe it, check out this post by Lindsay who made $100,000 in a year with Adsense by spending an hour or two a day on her sites. It took 4 years but it takes the same amount of time for a college degree. If her post doesn't inspire you, you must not have a pulse. I find it interesting that I found her post yesterday.

(By the way, $100,000 per year is $274 per day. So I am already 3% of the way there with my $8.10 day.)

Anyway, just so excited! I am looking forward to more exciting days in the future. Hopefully sooner rather than later. Until next time.

Making Money While I Sleep

I have been excited the last few mornings because I am actually making money while I sleep. When I woke up today, I checked my Google Adsense account and had $0.03. OK, I know that you are thinking that 3 pennies is not a lot. And I agree. But the fact still remains that I made them while sleeping and without any clicks. The income was based solely on the number of views that I had to my sites. That, my friends, is true passive income! That is why I am so excited.

Even better than that--I had no ad clicks at all yesterday. Why is that so great? Because I made $0.28 just on traffic alone. That's over $8 a month without doing anything at all! That would be enough to pay for a Hostgator account and start my own niche websites. I am not quite ready for that yet, but I am learning. And this is only my 4th full month of writing online.

The more I write, the more views I will get. The more views, the more passive income. Not to mention the fact that as traffic increases, the odds of getting ad clicks will increase. Imagine what I could be doing with 10x the traffic that I had yesterday. Take the income from views and throw in some clicks, and I could easily be looking at $100 per month.

Just Get Going

It doesn't take a lot to make passive income online. You just have to get going. It starts out slow and simple, but if you are persistent and can make it through the first several months, it will start to pay off as it has started to for me.

In fact, I was getting so excited, I decided to start another blog. This one is a niche about investing in real assets. It is a topic about which I am very passionate. I figure I can easily spend 15-20 minutes every other day or so to write a post. Plus I can throw a few links to my articles on real estate and gold investing as well. If it is like this blog, in a few months I will be earning a few dollars each month. Then who knows? I think it is worth it.

You can check out my new blog here. It is called Real Assets. I will be making another post later today. Right now there is only one since I just started yesterday.

Til next time. Keep writing for that passive income. I may take a nap and earn some more money. Yippee!

Progress on September Online Goals

We are getting close to the end of September so I thought I would look back at the goals that I had set for September and review the progress made. With one week left in the month, maybe I can make a final push if needed. I think I will try to make a push this weekend, but don't know if it will be enough.

HubPages: The goal was for 80 Hubs. I am actually at 87 right now and would like to be at 90 by the end of the month. This should make up for my lack of progress elsewhere. The traffic at HubPages has been good. I am over 6000 views so far while the goal was for 5650. The biggest issue is that earnings might not even be as much as last month's. It has been slow on that front. Oh well, I will keep plugging away at articles and traffic.

eHow: My goal had been to get to 50. I am at 38. I found it hard to come up with good articles this month. I will focus and get 2 more so that the 10 less here was made up with 10 more at HubPages. The traffic is solid with 2200 views so far. That leaves 300 over 7 days to get to my goal of 2500. It should be close. I am happy with the progress except on the writing which is my fault. Earnings have exceeded last month and are close to target.

Xomba: I have completed links to all my eHow articles and will start on HubPages articles. Now I should see some of the impact on traffic since HubPages will track traffic sources to some extent plus I have Google Analytics. I have not written an article per day. Nor have I posted as many links. I have 10 Xombytes (articles) and 75 Xomblurbs (links) posted. That's not bad. I'm OK with it. Maybe I will increase those numbers by the end of the month. What started out as promising on the earnings front isn't quite panning out. But, there is a week left.

Shetoldme: I have posted some links to eHow articles. Still have some to finish. I am not spending a ton of time there since I am not even getting any ad impressions. I probably won't focus many efforts here because of that fact. It then becomes just like digg, and I don't spend a ton of time there, either. I don't expect to earn anything from this site, ever!

My Online Income Blog: Traffic is coming along. I have been posting at fairly regular intervals. I did get into another blog carnival. Every day in September has at least had 2 visitors and traffic is up 47% over the last 30 days. I am pleased with that. Furthermore, I even have some earnings from this blog.

InfoBarrel: I wrote 3 articles for InfoBarrel in the month so far. I really didn't have any goals since I wasn't writing at the beginning of the month. I decided to expand my horizons a little farther and see. I will include this site for the October goals and see what happens.

I don't know that AdSense allows you to talk ad impressions, but I have been paying close attention to those numbers since HubPages, Xomba, InfoBarrel, Shetoldme, and this blog all show AdSense ads. I can see how many impressions I am averaging per day and will set a mental goal for seeing these numbers increase by about 25% in the month of October. I will include a formal category in the October goals post.

That is all I had for today. It looks like for my final push I would like to go with 3 Hubs, 2 eHows and a little more work at Xomba but no firm numbers. Til next time. Thanks for reading. I sincerely appreciate it!