The Extremely Long Update and Passive Income Game Plan That Got Deleted
…1,200 words into my last update and game plan to gear up an intense remainder of the year for building 18 new niche websites and 40 new Hubpages, my post disappeared.
Well, it didn’t vanish into thin air, but after importing all of the old posts from FlippaChick.com onto this blog, it just so happened that it completely wiped out my current MySQL database for this blog. In other words, all of my posts, comments, settings, etc were gone.
Fortunately, I have a daily backup of any and ALL WordPress blogs/websites that I run (that are of importance), so I was able to recover the posts and comments without too much trouble – but it was a complete time sink that resulted in about 3 hours of lost time.
Unfortunately, in the end, my 1,200 words update (which by the way was nowhere near completion), has vanished and unfortunately, will never be back.
Honestly, I’m too tired to even try to type everything I wanted to discuss in that last blog post that never saw the publish button, but for the sake of updating this blog – since it has been a good 50 days since I last posted anything remotely related to my passive income journey — the following is what has happened in my absence and will happen for the remainder of the year.
I’m Passively Poor Now…
As I write this blog post today, I am the proud owner of ONE (1) website that currently makes me money. Between June and up until a few weeks ago, I sold off my entire network of niche websites. In addition, another website which made the bulk of Adsense income without me touching it just so happens to have been taken back by the owner of the product I’m promoting.
*Word to the wise: Registering trademarked domains is no longer a path I’m willing to take – no matter how good the keyword is. Having to surrender your domain name when you receive a “Cease & Desist” letter is not fun – especially when you paid upfront for the domain and it makes you money!*
(end rant)
…getting back to the story at hand, as I write this blog post, I am quite passively poor seeing as though 80% of my passive income was sold upfront for its long-term payout. In the grand scheme of things, a lot of this was done to get rid of virtual web properties I had no intention of ever adding more content to, but in addition to that, I sold a great deal of websites simply because I could not handle the upkeep and they were in all honesty — boring. The niche websites that did peak my interest — well they were sold in order to finance my upcoming project to build 18 new niche websites – which I might add – has been cancelled/buried/86’ed/scratched/burned as well.
I stand behind my reasons in my previous post of not building so many websites, so from here on out, there are 8 new websites that I plan to get off the ground, only two (2) of which I believe can be great “authority” websites. (The others…we’ll they’re great domains in great and potentially profitable niches so I’d like to not let the money spent on domain registration go to waste.)
In the long run, I plan to put all my time and effort into building the websites with the most potential for success (or potential to be great authority websites) into something more than a 10 page website. Eventually I would like to be able to dropship a few products or be a “go-to” resource for more information on the product(s) each website is promoting.
With that said, there are a few plans I have in store for the remainder of this year to help increase my passive income earnings.
HubPages Experiment Completion
A few months ago I was inspired by Dave’s wife who basically spilled her secrets to Hubpages success that allows her to buy all the shoes she wants: build Hubs around popular products and then backlink like crazy.
After reading that brief post, I was more so intrigued about how to build enough backlinks and on what scale. Dave pretty much outlined his and his wife’s method for success in the following comment:
“[S]he (and I ) does postrunners first for a few weeks, maybe a few a day, to ease in the hubs then it is an all out attack using backlinks philippines, a 200 submission, and 100 spins on backlink solutions. Plus continued postrunners. Gotta put the work in for the good stuff.”
For that reason, I decided to go ahead and sign up for The Keyword Academy to give the PostRunner system a try. In all honesty, I really wanted to give Unique Article Wizard a try so that I could “drip feed” links/posts, but due to the fact that the 30 days for $1 trial was no longer available (…and I certainly will not sign up and pay for a full month’s worth of service if the learning curve will take a great deal of time), I decided to go ahead and start using the PostRunner system to my advantage.
I won’t bore you with what the Keyword Academy is or how the Post Runner system works, you can find that here via Dave’s blog or register for yourself here, but I will say that since the first month is $0 (FREE), it’s definitely worth a try since link building via as many different IPs and websites is necessary if you want links that are diverse and links that actually stick.
My goal for this experiment is to try and build at least 2-5 Hubs per week, with my final Hub being completed at the end of September so that even the final one will have enough time to age and gain some traction – and hopefully a top spot in SERPs — in time for Christmas.
8 New Niche Websites
So my niche website empire is gone, but in all honesty, besides the passive income, I really don’t miss it at all. Sure, there were some websites that were aged (2 years+), but the money received upfront for their “estimated earning potential” is what allowed me to pay off existing debts and finance this next batch of niche websites that I want to start working on by the end of this week.
I have a lot in store for me and quite honestly, I almost had a panic attack just thinking about how I was going to setup eight new websites. Once I realized that: (1) I’m not Superwoman, (2) it’s “okay” to work on one website at a time, and (3) there is no need to rush to get these websites up and ranked by Christmas – which is the deadline I set for myself, then I calmed down a bit.
To prevent the onset of a panic attack, I’ve devised the following plan in order to get this next batch of eight niche websites off the ground. The following is my gameplan to prevent niche website burnout. It consists of the steps I’ll take to get one (1) website off the ground per week, focusing mainly on the basics/bare minimum to get content on the website(s) until each website has been established.
Day 1:
- Complete website structure (including product names/brands to promote) + logo + privacy policy page, contact information, and disclaimer at the footer.
Day 2:
- Write 7 pages of new content (home page w/product images, main info 101 page, and 5 reviews of 5 of the main categories or homepage products)
Day 3:
- Spin 3 articles of at least 300 words + submission
Day 4:
- Write 3 new pages of content
Day 5:
- Write 8 new Postrunner articles queued for submission to be drip fed over the course of 1 week.
Day 6 (Saturday):
- 3 new reviews
- (1) press release submission, Slideshare article or YouTube video for backlinks.
- Social bookmarking all pages across several accounts.
- 8 more post runner articles + set to drip feed over the course of 1 week.
- 2 or 3 queued PLR re-writes for MAS + schedule the posts
**A lot of this may not make sense to you the reader, but as time goes on, I’ll try to go a little more in-depth about how I setup my niche websites. **
Additionally, I plan to follow a strict game plan for backlinking my websites. A great deal of by backlinking efforts was actually inspired by Bay37’s guide on SEO strategies, particularly what he discussed in his “SEO Guide Pt.2″ blog post.
The following is a sample flow chart of how I plan to overtime build backlinks and properly link each of my websites:
To help me along the way, I decided to take James up on his Magic Submitter trial link which provides 30 days worth of access to use of Magic Submitter for $4.95.
When Magic Submitter initially launched, I got in early on the $45/month rate for the first 75 members, however, due to numerous bugs and features not working or prohibiting me from working efficiently, I decided to cancel my membership. Since a lot has changed over the course of 2 months, I decided to give Magic Submitter another try for the sole reason of me needing to automate a lot of what I will be doing – especially when it comes to utilizing more web 2.0 linkwheels and designing/programming the software to register at additional websites where I plan to acquire links, etc.
Ending Thoughts…
In the end, I should also note that this game plan is *not* a full-time / 8 hours per day game plan. Instead, each of the tasks assigned for the day must be completed within 2-3 hours – which is all I can dedicate to my passive income efforts at the moment since eventually I plan to return back to pursing my life’s goals which do not revolve around Internet Marketing.
Until then, my goal for building passive income in order to finance a lot of the things I want to do in the future is to also focus more heavily on these passive income websites (and web 2.0 properties like HubPages) as well as other non-passive efforts that currently make me money. For that reason, I’ll be limiting the time I spent posting to this blog.
One of the main reasons for me not continuing on with FlippaChick.com was because it was a total time-sink that didn’t pay off. In terms of passive income, I made nothing from the blog. It was a total “labor of love” so to speak. While I contracted work with private clients for web design projects, that is not considered passive income. The hours I spent writing and editing blog posts and creating and editing screenshots for the blog, in the end, was more than I was willing to spend to only make $0/month and lose out of time that could have been spent actually generating passive income while sharing knowledge.
For this blog, my plan is to continue to provide at least a weekly or bi-weekly update regarding how well each website is doing and what tips/tricks I learned along the way.
I’d hate to reach my $10k/month goal without blogging about the little things that got me there, so from here on out, I plan to be a little more transparent about the income from this 8 website experiment (*only*) since I am in essence starting over again.
There is a lot to be said about the challenges of making money online, but if there is any advice I can give to someone just starting out, it would be to stop thinking and overanalyzing and just get started. The more you obsess over the little things, the longer it will take you to reach the bigger end-goal which is substantial passive income to help you achieve a little bit – or a heck of a LOT – of financial freedom.