The Little Site That Roared
Or 'An Old Site Refuses to Die'
This is another of those posts that shows patience is a virtue. And not to expect immediate success. Making money takes time for most people.
+++
Sometimes you give up on a site and pretty much forget about it. Which is what happened to one I made just over 2 years ago. And around year ago, I gave up on as I didn't think it'd do anything.
So, no content has been added for well over a year. No backlinking was done.
The domain renewed automatically ( I remember cursing myself for not setting it to manual. ). But I updated Wordpress and plugins every 3-4 months but that was about the only time I even looked at the site.
+++
I had an affiliate program on it but had forgotten about it - as it hadn't really made any money.
So I only looked at the site a couple of days ago because I got an email from the affiliate program asking if I wanted paying or not.
Turns out I had $178.34 in commission due to me.
Which was a nice surprise. But not really enough to get me too excited and dreaming of a buying a new car or booking an exotic holiday.
+++
The thing that did get me excited was that 80% of the commissions came in the last 3 months.
( For the first 23+ months of the site's life - including the first 6 months when I added a total of about 50 posts, that works out at just over $1 / month in income. And there was a big fat Zero / Nil / $0 for the first year. )
+++
So I decided to look at the keyword tracker and see what the reason was for this . . .
93 Keywords in the Top 10. Which also surprised me.
These are all long tail ( low hanging fruit ) keywords. The type WA training tells you to target.
+++
The thing is, it can take some time for them to bear fruit.
And that's what happened in this case. Around 100 KWs have been bobbling around the bottom of Page 1 for the past couple of months. With a handful in the Top 3.
But it looks like that's their limit for now.
+++
Therefore, I need to give it a shove to get them up into the Top 3. So I'll try adding content and see if that does the trick.
Because now, instead of thinking what a waste of time and effort making the site was, I'm thinking about if the fact that if I can get $50-60 / month with just a few KWs in the Top 3. Then imagine what having another 50 or more up there could do for the earnings.
:-)
+++
If you're in a similar situation, you've made a site, written what you think is good, unique content and yet don't seem to be seeing any results. Give it time.
Stop working on it by all means. But don't kill the site.
Leaving it online costs virtually nothing & whilst not all sites will turn out to be profitable, yours might.
That's worth betting a $12 domain name renewal on.
( And if you are thinking of killing it, let me know. I might buy it off you. )
Recent Comments
24
I can attest to this, I have experienced the same thing one before. Whatever you do, don't kill your site.
That sure is interesting! I guess we never do know what is going to work for sure!
Thanks for sharing.
Sheila
Hi Ian
Really enjoyed reading this post as I pressed the delete button after 2 years of building up a site. I got to my 50th post and had enough. My analytics were telling me that all the visitors were dropping off right away and I made less than £10 from Amazon and the same from AdSense.
I got many first page rankings but no one was interested.
I understand the message of your post by telling people not to give up on the brink of success, as patience and dedication will eventually deliver the results and rewards.
But it's been a valuable lesson to me in which direction to move, I'm intent on not flogging a dead horse anymore and now concentrating on my musical passion now.
Cheers Ian
All the very best
Pete.
That is amazing and a nice wee surprise.I am surprised that you did not get a renew reminder from your domain host.
Hey Ian, that's awesome news. I thought if you don't add anymore content to a site it will eventually die? Great to know that it's alive and kicking :))
I think it depends on the competition & also having an older 'aged domain' helps with authority which google likes to see.
Years ago I made a site about scuba diving on the island where I lived. Once the site was made, I didn't update it - this was in 2004. It was made using Microsoft Frontpage. It stayed top of all the searches - annoyed all the dive companies who spent money making fancy sites that never knocked it off the top spot in Google searches.. ( In the end one of them bought it off me. )
See more comments
I agree with this. I started my first website in about Feb 2014. I made my first sales in August 2015. About a one year wait. And about 80 posts later!