50 amazon sites challenge progress report #2

Here is an update on my 50 amazon niche sites challenge. If you are new, you can refer to all the articles and "how to make money from amazon" guide in this resource page: amazon site challenge.

Let's look at the progress of the 4 sites that I started towards the end of November. The biggest news is that I am starting to see some money, although the amount is not signficant. In total, I earned about USD29 for these sites. Not surprising, these earnings came from sites that are either purchased or aged. It really goes to show that making money online takes time. If you are not willing to wait for your site to mature, then do what I do: start buying websites to make money, rather than building them yourselves.

In terms of cost, I am happy to  keep the cost of building a new site to under USD40. The reason why it is so cheap is that each site only has 1-2 600-1000 word articles on it, which cost me USD5 to outsource. Including USD10 for the domain and another USD5-10 for backlink packages, the total cost will be less than USD40.

The reason I am putting so little content is that I want to see which sites can give me the best ROI. My strategy is very simple. If a site that has little content and crappy backlinks can bring in traffic with its exact name domain and good onsite SEO, then it means the competition for the keyword is weak and I will can put more resources to develop it if the traffic converts. This is the most accurate way of telling whether your keywords has strong or weak competition. All other tools are just estimates and not as reliable as real data like what I have gathered for my sites.

The only major expense was a USD57 backlinks package that I bought from Warrior Forums for the wine site. I am willing to put in the investment because this site has high conversion rate as can be seen from its revenue. Hence, I felt justified to spend more money to increase the traffic for the site of which one way is through more powerful backlinks. Another will be to add more content to it.

Site	Niche	Created	Cost	Monthly Earnings	Monthly Visitors	Type
1	Toy	Jun 2011	155	8	220	Purchased
2	Appliance	Nov 2011	25	NA	8	Self Written
3	Wine	Nov 2011	67	21	299	Aged
4	Appliance	Nov 2011	30	NA	NA	Self Written
5	Bicycle	Dec 2011	25	NA	NA	Outsourced
6	Home	Dec 2011	20	NA	NA	Outsourced

Another good news is that site#2, which is a completely new site is already starting to see search engine traffic despite being only a few days old. If you are wondering what is the secret to getting traffic to your website or blog when they are new, it is all about keyword selection. All I did was to pick a very low competition amazon keyword and optimise the site around it. I paid 2 fiverr gigs for some very weak backlink packages to get them indexed.

Below is the traffic level for site #2

Click to enlarge

All the current traffic comes from long tails and goes back to my point that learning how to write good SEO copy is crucial if you want search engine traffic early. It is not always about backlnks. This site has crappy backlinks but I write the content in such a way that maximises my potential for longtail traffic. 

For Dec, I have already build 2 more sites as can be seen from the table above. Site #6 is now already on page one and I have installed analytics today to see if it has any traffic. You will get to hear more about its performance in the next report.

Overall, I am quite happy with the progress. I though I wil only start this challenge in Dec but I have already 6 sites up. The only thing now holding back is the keyword selection. It is not easy to find amazon keywords that have search volume, over USD100 products and have exact name domains. I managed to find a few but I need to get more if I am to hit my 50 amazon niche site target.

Hope you enjou reading this progress report. If you have any questions about how to have an income from amazon, please leave them in the comments.

Posted in: How to make money with amazon