My Passive Income Online Blog

Today I decided to take a look at the performance of my AdSense sites, in order to better understand which sites are performing well and why. Also, some of the domains are coming up for renewal, and I need to know whether they are all worth keeping or not.  I started building AdSense sites just over a year ago, initially on free blogger sites – although I soon switched over to creating WordPress sites on my own domains.

To evaluate their performance, I wanted to look at the total amount of earnings each site had. Since some of the AdSense sites also have Amazon products on them as well, I included those numbers as well. I decided that if a site earned over $10/year, I would probably keep it. Most of these sites range between six months and a year in age, and given that they have aged a bit now, I’m also interested in how well they will perform once they start receive consistent backlinks now (thanks to my new VA).

Based on this data, I created the following table for the fifteen AdSense sites I currently have:

Knowing a bit of the background of these sites, will probably help the analysis a bit.

Sites #1-3: These were the first sites I built, and they were based simply on the advice to build a site about something you love – in my case, gardening. For these blogs I did NO keyword research – I just picked a gardening topic I was interested in and wrote a blog about it. Blog #1 has been a strong performer. It holds the #1 slot for its keyword term, and because of the high post count it receives a lot of traffic for other long tail keywords as well. All of these blogs perform much better in the spring and summer months than in the fall and winter ones, however.

Site #4: At the point that I built this blog, I had learned how to check and see how many monthly searches there were for a keyword, but I still didn’t know how to analyze how competitive a term was. It might be interesting to try to back link this blog actively now,  since if I could get to the first page it could potentially bring in some nice revenue given the large number of searches. Now that it is nearly a year old, the age might help it respond better than previous back link attempts.

Sites #5 and #6: These sites were the first WordPress sites I built, and I still was a novice at keyword research. In retrospect, I chose poorly in terms of the keywords I was targeting. However, site #5 has been a good performer, in part because it gets a lot of traffic for other terms due to the high number of pages. Site #6 ranks high for one certain long tail keyword that is bringing in occasional amazon sales. The main keyword is probably too competitive to put much effort into ranking for, however.

Lucky Site #7: This was the one of those keywords that you find and think, “ooooh, this is a good one.” The main reason is that it has a very high CPC, and even though the monthly exact searches are only 1000, the competition was also very weak. I now own the #1 spot for this keyword, and it brings me at least $5/day. I wish I had a lot more like it!

Site #8: I think I chose poorly in terms of the main keyword for this site, but I rank #1 for my secondary keyword which brings in some nice income each month.

Site #9: This site was developed right after learning about the Xfactor system, and the site is pretty much built on those principles – although the exact search count is a little low. I was able to get an .net domain with the exact keywords, and it has been on page one pretty much from day one (starting out in #7, I think). It performs well despite being a bit “thin”. This site definitely testifies to the power of the Xfactor method, but also makes me a bit nervous because it is so weak on content.

Site #10: I had high hopes for this site, but it got “sandboxed” soon after creation – probably as a result of some aggressive backlinking efforts on my part. It is just now reemerging after being MIA for several months. I think it has a lot of potential  given the high search numbers. It has a very low AdSense CPC, but it was bringing in some good Amazon revenue before being put in the sandbox. Hopefully I can get this one onto page one in the next couple of months.

Site #11: Despite not yet ranking high for its main keyword, I get occasional hits on this site from random long tail keyword searches which are paying off nicely – mostly through Amazon.com. It is a product related website for an item that sells for over $200. I’m really looking forward to getting this onto page one of Google!

Site #12: Not a very good choice in terms of keyword research, and it is barely holding its own. I think if I can get it to page #1 it will do pretty good, however, since although it doesn’t have a high number of searches, the CPC is quite high (usually over $1 per click). It has been moving up gradually over the past few months, despite being nearly ignored, so I think with some consistent back linking efforts it may hit page one soon.

Sites #13 and #14: These are two winter-product related sites that never really got off the ground in time for last winter’s shopping season. I have hopes for next winter, however, if I can get them to page #1. Site #14 is the only site that has yet to earn its keep, so to speak, but it’s only 7 months old as well, so it still has time to perform. Both these sites need a lot more content as well.

Site #15: Another high CPC site that has yet to perform, and it is in dire need of more content. The exact search numbers are a bit on the low side as well. I’ll add a few pages of content and set up some drip feed campaigns for this one, and see how it’s doing in a couple of months.

There are some interesting points that stand out for me. First, although my keyword research skills were very bad in the beginning (or non-existent for some of the sites), many performed surprisingly well – mostly because they were able to rank high or dominate a niche, usually as an “authority” type site. Second, in general those sites with more pages performed better – although this was not always the case. With proper keyword research, you can rank high with just a few pages, but it may be risky given the current climate where Google is deindexing many poor quality websites. Third, having a high CPC sometimes can be better than having a high number of monthly searches. The low search numbers may mean the competition is also relatively light, since the low number of monthly searches may keep it under the radar of your AdSense competitors.

After looking at these results, I do have a better sense of what I want when doing keyword research and building my new AdSense sites. I’ll talk a bit about that in my next post!

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