I guess my rant is this: build quality. Use ads in a way that provides value (like a magazine) and not a way to earn money (like the papers or TV). This is what will keep your site around forever, I think.

Great piece.

One thing I do have to say ‘for’ the small sites. They are much easier and faster to rank and earn from. While eventually the large sites will rank and really be good, for fast income, there is nothing ‘faster’ than niche sites that start earning me money effectively from week 2 after I’ve put them up and started promoting them. After 2-3 months I was selling a site for $1000 on the site flipping market. Sure I would start another site, but for me for several months this was my full income, a good one at that, I might say. A typical SBIer will NOT start earning $1000 after just a few months.

But for the long term, while my small sites keep earning, I’ve joined SBI and I’m working on a big site that will eventually outperform those. At some point, when the big site will start earning me, I will sell all my tiny sites and then keep only the big one. That’s the plan, anyway. So you see, it’s not a small thinking really, it’s one of the ways to do internet business, is all

Marika

Another problem is that when Google updated their algo last summer, many people had their sites drop drastically in the SERPs. I’m not sure Google really wants 5 page sites, or “Made For Adsense” sites clogging up their search results. And from what John said on his forum, he has since built all of his sites out to 100 pages or more, so even he has gone in a different direction at this point.

And lastly there were some promises made, and not kept regard the author of this book to people in the forum. I’m sure he means well, but taking people’s money and not delivering anything in return is a tough way to make a good name for yourself as an Internet Marketer.

I’m an SBIer from 2004, and I’ve gone back to following their system of “keeping it real” and building large authority sites that work with Google, not against it.

In your last post I think you are thinking small. If you build 100 niche sites to bring in 20 visitors each, that is 2000 visitors per day approx.

That is a lot of work building 100 niche sites. Same process over and over again. If your 100 niche sites each have 5-10 pages, then that is about 1000 pages.

If you built one site with 1000 quality content pages on one topic and got 1 or 2 links per month to it, I would guess you would make about 5x more revenue and about 5000 visitors per day.

Plus there is the issue that small, focused niches might never get to 100 visitors a day. For those that have never done a tiny niche, you might be surprised to find out that many have a max of 10-20 visitors a day. This is why the Xfactor system relies on setting up many small sites (some people have as many as 100 such sites, or 50, etc) which all together will pull in the weight to get $100 visitors or day or more. And each one of them have Adsense up from the very day they start the site. It’s not weird, it’s just another way to make a living, which also works quite well.

Btw, before joining SBI I didn’t realize it was you but you’re my main competitor for one of my small sites. Yours is also a niche site but you’ve grown it quite bit in the meantime. Got lots of ideas on how to grow mine based on yours actually (no, not copy, just ideas for tier 2). I was totally surprised to see one day in the SBI forum that one of YOUR sites was THAT ONE! So without realizing I’ve been ‘following’ you long before I knew who you really are
Small world, eh…

Marika

I just takes longer.

Second, it’s impossible that another site comes and overtakes me. I get found for 40,000 keywords, some other SBI sites get found for 100,000 keywords per month. How are you going to overtake me?

If you beat for 25 keywords and push me one spot down do you think I’ll even notice? I don’t think you really realize the power of a big site.

And Google cannot ever change the algorithm so much that it would affect me significantly. A high traffic site has thousands of links.

There is not way that they would not count. But on the other hand, your small niche sites have probably just a few links. They are much more vulnerable to any changes of algorithm.

And since they’re all based on the same system, you actually have all the eggs in the same basket. One algo change will affect all your sites. A big authority site doesn’t even flinch on algo changes.

I would agree that authority sites are the way to go but it’s a bigger investment in terms of time and money and by then a big dog can come in and eat your lunch. Also, who is to say that G wouldn’t change their algo to go against your site? I’ve seen big sites get dropped off their primary index before with no reasons at all. Would you agree that is having all your eggs in one basket?

Your really a refreshing voice of reason within this internet marketing world of ours.

Its really quite sad that this is the first time in a long time that I’ve seen someone who:

1.Honsetly reviewed a PRODUCT, not just make somthing up by looking at the salespage.

2.Analyzed it and gave me tips on how to implement it in a better way using his own experience.

So big ups, I’ll be picking this course up in a couple of days through your link, I’ve been looking at it for a couple of months anyway since i feel like getting a introduction to adsense.

Ive only done an affiliate-site so far, however not profitable yet (not enough traffic) so i pay my bills by doing webdesign for local buisnesses.

Would you mind taking a look at my site and see if there is anything i can improve upon?

All the content is original, and the keyword research in my mind is actually quite good (made some mistakes, first site and all )

specifically i think my question is:
“Big fat affiliate links” vs “in content links”

My guess is in content links might have lower CTR but they may actually have higher conversions? More trust factor i mean.

And also im trying to figure out this backlink thing, is article marketing the way to go? What do you recommend?

anyways, thanks for a great blog and i will be coming back for more

To your continued success,
Martin

I bought and tried 20 plus domains. It’s quite a trickle of income.

I have since to focus on mega sites that can grow traffic over time. Building mini sites are really riskier and costlier in my opinion.

I hope you will take Tomaz’s advice here because I think i honestly think that is more enduring.