I am so happy I didn't dump that site...

Gerardas Norkus · Joined: 22 Nov 2005 Posts: 7

Hi,

I can tell you how I nearly dumped one of my sites that currently earns me good AdSense revenue.

2 years ago I signed up with Ken Evoy's Site Build It (SBI) and started creating a web site related to music lyrics (I am not sure if I can include the URL here, so I won't). Ken advises to build a site about your hobby, what you love to do, etc.

Well, soon I realized that I am not targeting a niche but my site covers nearly all music styles and artists... I created maybe 20 or 30 pages and started with something else.

In a few months I decided that this site won't work and I want to start another site with SBI. Luckily, I saved all music lyrics files to my computer and transfered the site to my own web host, where I host all my sites. And I forgot about the web site...

About three months ago I checked traffic statistics of all of my web sites. I noticed that my music lyrics site often searched by all major search engines. I had 468x60 AdSense banners on the site and I was making ~$3 per day.

So, I decided to change the AdSense format and colors and do a little testing and tracking...

I am so glad I noticed that my site was receiving free traffic from search engines and I decided to test different AdSense banners...

Soon I was making $5, $10, $20 per day. I started adding more content and my revenue still increases!

As you can see it is very important to finish what you have started before you can say that it doesn't work... I am so motivated to work now!

Good luck!

Rosalind Gardner · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 9:36 pm Post subject:

Gerardas,

That's an AWESOME story!

It goes a long way to illustrate that we should always work a project through to the end before giving up, or before we start something new. (I'll take my own advice one of these days... too many ideas, too little time.)

I think that's why it's so important to be passionate about your site's topic. Passion will keep you going when the thrill of learning HTML has worn off.

And I feel that for the purposes of illustrating an example of an affiliate marketing site, including your site URL within a post is more than fair.

Do be warned however, that in doing so, you run the risk of increasing your competition, or having your site copied.

That's why I stopped publishing information about my own affiliate sites, with the exception of Sage-Hearts.com. Sage-hearts.com been ripped off more times than I can count.

That said, the affiliate managers of the programs I promote are aware of the problem, and notify me immediately when new copycats show up. I'm very fortunate in this regard.

On the other side of the coin, once you're 'ensconced' in the engines, the copycats will have a hard time getting better rankings than you do in the SE's, so it might not be too much of a problem.

Thanks for sharing!

Cheers,
Ros

Gerardas Norkus · Joined: 22 Nov 2005 Posts: 7

Hi Rosalind,

yes, you are absolutely right that we should try to create sites on the Internet with themes that we are passionate about.

As per URL of my site, here it is:

http://www.a-z-music-lyrics.com

There are lots web sites related to music lyrics on the Internet, so I am not afraid of too much competition. You cannot avoid it anyway...