Welcome

What Is So Great About This Blog?

The only chance this blog has of succeeding is to be different then the 100's of other 'How To Make Money Online' blogs.

What makes this blog different:

• This blog is about a website. It discusses and analyzes the creation, maintenance, and performance of howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com.
• All claims are backed up by actual data. You will not see claims like: 'post comments because it increases traffic'. This blog will show, by using actual data, how much traffic posting comments has brought to howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com.
• There are no false claims of how I made 1000's of dollars a day using a secret system. With this blog, lies and exaggerated claims are impossible because howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com reveals all of its stats.
• Being a webmaster is not always a sunny day. This blog discusses the real trials and tribulations of being a webmaster. If this blog/website are doing poorly then you will see traces of tears in the posts.
• This blog has no advertising or selling of any kind. It is simply information and entertainment. The website howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com does all the money making, not this blog.
• Most blogs expect you to follow their advice on the assumption that they are an authority on the subject. This blog expects you to look at the data and decide for yourself.

All Posts Are Written With The Following in Mind:

• Honesty.
• Mix information with entertainment.
• The visitors time is valuable. Provide clear and original content.
• No claims without data to support it.
• One day this blog and the website it discusses will be successful.

Enjoy!

Can Jesus help me make money?  I am a little rusty with my recollection of Jesus stories, but I think I remember the gist of a few of them.  There is the one about how He came across a man who had been sleeping in a cave for days.  The man refused to talk to anybody, eat, or even breath.  Jesus miraculously convinced him that he better get up and return to work otherwise he will not be invited to the office Christmas party.  And there is the inspiring story of Jesus informing a couple of down on their luck fisherman, that the real money is in the ‘personal self help’ industry.  These two fisherman went on to become leaders in the field.

My problem is traffic.  It has stayed steady around 50 visitors a day for a couple of weeks.  I post to forums and make comments on other blogs.  This gets traffic, but always around 50 visitors.  I cannot seems to get anymore. I read on other websites that they receive thousands of visitors a day.  How do they do this?  Jesus help me.

Actually I have an inkling of what the problem is.  This site gets no traffic from search engines.  Last month only 11 visitors found the site via Google.  All the rest were through forums, and bloggers checking who left a comment on their blog.  I need more search traffic. How to increase traffic from search engines?

Writing Posts For Google Or For People

This Sunday morning while everybody was at church I was doing research about increasing search traffic. I found plenty of articles which argue that to get lots of traffic you need to write for Google, not for people.

There are two ways to write a post.  First one is to write for people.  Make it interesting.  Offer some advise.  Make the reader feel special.  Reading your post the visitor will feel good about themselves and they will think you are a great person.  They will keep coming back for more and they will tell their friends.  That’s great.

Writing Posts for Google

The second type is to write the post for Google.  Google is a machine.  It does not know what words mean.  You can not make Google smile or feel good.  Google takes the words on your post and creates statistics.  What words are used, how often are they used, what words are used the title, what words are bold.

By using certain words in your website and by using them in a specific way, you can get Google to place your website at the beginning of search results.  If your website is at the top of Google searches then you will get more traffic.  More traffic is more money.

Your website does not need to be interesting.  It does not need to make readers happy.  It simply needs traffic.  Google brings you traffic.  Once the traffic arrives visitors will have a look around; and find the material repetitive and useless.  Then quickly becoming bored, they click an ad just to get away from your site.  Jesus hallelujah.

How To Get Search Traffic

The trick is to create a website in a very competitive niche.  Which means a niche that lots of people search for.  A good example is “money”.  Every month 30,000,000 searches are done for the term money.   If you can got to the top of search results for money you can consider yourself a millionaire.  But most likely you will not get to the top of search results with that word alone.  No matter how well your content is geared towards making Google happy.  There is too much competition.

So what you need to do is combine the very competitive keyword with another keyword.  A word with less searches and therefore not as competitive.  For example , “Jesus”.  The term “Money Jesus” is searched 6,600 times.  Now you have a chance of getting to the top of search results for “Money Jesus”.  How?  Make Google think your post is perfect for people looking up the term “Money Jesus”.

Google with rank you higher in searches if you:

• Have the keywords in your title.
• The first sentence has your keywords
• You do not use the keyword too much. Google will think that you are making the post simply to please Google. There is lots of debate about what is ‘too much’. So to be safe do not use keywords ‘too much’.
• The last sentence contains your keywords.

These are the tips that I have been able to gather on the Internet.  Are they true?  Do they work?  Who knows.  This is simply what a lot people think that Google likes.  Of course, Google does not reveal what it likes.  If it did, then there would be a lot of crappy posts  on page 1 of search results.  The only way to find out if its true is to try.

Traffic vs. Morality

Something about creating a website specifically for Google just does not feel biblical.  It feels wrong.  True, I need traffic and will do almost anything for it.  But writing posts simply to trick Google into sending me traffic -  that is not right. I have to ask myself, is that something Jesus would do to make money?

There are two types of visitors.  Those that love your site.  And those that have never heard of it.  The first type visit and visit again.  They read your content because they are entertained and inspired by it.  As soon as their RSS reader alerts them that there is new content, saliva begins to form on the lips.

Then there is the other type.  It is their first time on the site.  They are not sure what they are doing there..  They were looking for something and somehow ended up on your site.  Just browsing.  Ready to hit the back button on the slightest whim.

The Regulars

Almost unanimously it is agreed that the first type is better.  A loyal visitor.  That is why it is always suggested that you provide a RSS feed on your site.  Make it easy to subscribe.  A big RSS logo – on the top of the page.  For visitors that do not know what RSS is, have an email subscription option. 

Another popular suggestion is to have  a news letter subscription.  That way you can get their email address and constantly remind them to come visit your site.

This sounds like good advise.  The more times they visit the more visitors you have.  And it feels great to know that people are returning to your site to read what you have to write.  You are like the friendly bartender who has many loyal patrons that keep coming back because they enjoy your advise.

I agree.  Return visitors are good.  People like you, they like your writing. That feels good.  And you can rely on them to keep your visitors stats high.

The problem with return visitors is that they know your site.  They know what advertisements you have and where they are.  They have seen them before.  Maybe even clicked on one of them – a long, long time ago.  But they are not going to do that again.  They are on your website to read the content.

If your website’s revenue  is strictly through advertisements then return visitors provide little value.  They just read the content.  They do not make you money.  In fact, you can argue that they cost you money, since they take up bandwidth.

The One Time Drop In’s

For a website with advertisements the best visitor is the first time visitor.  She knows what she wants.  Something to do with –your niche here-.  She finds your site, stumbles around a bit.  And then suddenly, sees an ad describing exactly what she is looking for.  She clicks on it and is taken away.  She will probably never return – but her purpose has been served. 

For a website which revenue is derived from advertising – your focus should be more on attracting new visitors and less on returning visitors.  The bartender who focuses on getting more customers will be better off then the bartender who keeps chatting with the regulars.  An empty bar with three chatter bugs is not going to pay the bills.  You need new people coming in and drinking lots.

Regulars Are Great For Affiliate Sales

So why is there so much emphasis on getting visitors to return?  Because return visitors are good for websites that sell affiliate products.  If you are trying to sell a $100 product, a first time visitor is not likely to purchase it.  You need to build trust with the visitor.  They need to feel like you know what you are talking about.  To convince them of these things you need them to keep coming back.  To keep listening to you.  Then after the tenth visit you might convince them to buy the $100 floor mat.

Please Come Back

This website makes it revenue from advertisements.  Therefore first time visitors are preferred.  But since I am not sure where this website is heading, I better continue making these posts so that my visitors keep returning.

I am not a social butterfly. I do not enjoy going to house warming parties and commenting on the beautiful red rug. I do not care that my friend’s Facebook status is “Gone to store for apples.”

I had a Facebook account, but after a few months stopped using it. Too much information about things I do not care about. Why do people spend so much time exchanging the minutia of everyday events. Should I care that my friend went to British Columbia for a vacation and that he saw a moose. Should I look at his 22 pictures of the moose eating grass and be entertained? I do not understand it.

Now there is Twitter. Exchange even smaller bits of information. It is so easy to do that you will get details like, “feeling hungry, thinking of eating a carrot”. All day you can watch these little bits of unfiltered information scrolling across your screen. When I first heard about it, I thought that it was a ridiculous idea. Nobody will use it.

Not only are people reading these little packets of non-info. They also enjoy writing them. Lots of them. “I found a dime under the bed today”. Before I started this website all these social networks did not concern me. They are a success – great – but does not concern me.

But now it looks like I need to use them. On every blog about increasing traffic you read about how vital the social networks are to traffic. Sign up to as many social sites as you can and start building your network.

That scares me a little. I do not want to turn into a micro information junky. Spending hours exchanging small talk with 200 network friends. Small talking to 5 people at a cocktail party scares me. “How’s the weather?”, “Good” “Hows work?”, “Good”. Repeat 5 times. And now with Twitter I would have to do that 200 times a day.

Social Networks are Great For Traffic

Social Networks are good because you can send information through them very quickly. It is a very simple principle:

You know something (1 person knows)
You tell two of your friends (3 people know)
Each of them tells two of their friends (10 people know)
Each of them tell two of their friends (18 people know)

As this continues through the network more and more people know at a faster and faster rate. Simply by telling two of your friends you can get the information to hundreds of people in very little time. It just depends how big the network is and how willing your friends are to tell their friends. You tell them that you won the lottery and in no time all your friends will know.

The other advantage is that your friends do not have the same friends as you do. So your friends might tell somebody that you do not even know. Now suddenly it is in a network that you did not even know existed. People you do not know are receiving your information.

Networking sounds great. A great way to get traffic. It is. But I am not going to do it.

The First Step Is The Most Important

The most important step in the social network is the first one. Tell two of your friends. That gets the ball rolling. After that they tell their friends and on it goes.

The question is: why should I spend my time doing that first step? Other people will do it for me. If the website is interesting, if people want to pass it on to their friends then they will. I would have to start my social network from scratch. I would have to login everyday and chat with my network. Reading all the banter, and writing banter. Day in and day out. Lots of time wasted.

Let Other People Do the Social Networking

Instead of me doing it, there are people out there already with huge social networks. They enjoy exchanging information. If one of the people visit the website and finds it interesting then they will pass it on.

Currently I have 50 visitors a day. I am guessing that lots of them use Facebook and Twitter. At least some of them will find the website interesting and pass it on. Start the network process. Why should I spend my time starting the process when there are so many others that enjoy doing it and have much larger networks then I could ever have.

My small contribution to the increase in traffic via social network would be small compared to the abilities of my visitors. I would just be one out of many. My contribution small compared to the whole. Not worth the effort. I will focus on the website. Adding and improving content. Let the social butterflies with their establish networks do the marketing. They want to do it.

Of course, if my traffic does not increase, then I will register onto Twitter and tell my friends that “I just got back from the store. I am so happy. The apples where on sale.”

When you first start a website.  Do not monetize.  Do not put up any ads.  First get a steady traffic base and then put up ads.

That is the recommendation that you will hear often.  I heard it too.  But I did not do it that way.  From day one there have been ads on the website. 

Like B.F. Skinner’s piano playing pigeons, I need to be constantly rewarded to perform a task.  The pigeons learned to play a toy piano by being given a treat when they hit the correct key.  I make updates to the website when an ad is clicked.

For me to create the website, post on forums, answer emails, for months without gain would be very difficult.  Make an update to website, get a treat.  Make a another update, get another treat.  This is the way I operate.  Like a pigeon.

So I put three ad zones on the website on day one.  Graphic banner on the left, unit ad on the top, and text ad on the right.  The website has been up for 26 days with 517 visitors.  Here are the earnings results for the different ad zones:

• Left Banner Ad: $5.38
• Top Unit Ad: $2.50
• Right Text Ad: $15.83

You can see the text ad on the right is the clear winner.  The unit ad on  the top is far behind.  Time to get rid of it.

Too Many Ads Increases Bounce

Not only does it not make any money, it also makes the site look cluttered.  The home page looks messy  – smothered by ads.  This is a major turn off for a lot of visitors.  They think to themselves, “This guy is only concerned with making money.”  I am.  But the visitors should not know that.

The clutter of ads on the website might explain the high bounce rate.  Currently 50% of the visitors land on my homepage and without looking at any other pages they leave.  They come in, look at the mess, and leave.

So, I will remove the unit ad.  This will:

• Make the site look cleaner
• Decrease the bounce rate
• Increase revenue

How will removing an ad increase revenue?  By removing the ad, the page will be less cluttered.  The visitor will be more willing to look at the other pages instead of leaving.

More Page Views By Reducing Bounce

Lets guess that had the unit ad not been there from the beginning, the bounce rate would be 10% lower as a result.  10% of all my visitors would not have bounced off the site, instead they looked at more pages. 

• Total visitors is 517
• 10% of 517 is 51 visitors
• Average page views per visitor is 2.83

Therefore instead of these 51 visitor just seeing 1 page and bouncing off, they would see   2.83 pages.  51 * 2.83 =  147 pages.  Now all we have to do is subtract the 51 pages that the bouncers already saw and we have 96 additional page views.  96 more page views by reducing the bounce rate by 10%.

How Does That Translate Into Earnings?

• Total Page Views: 1445
• Total Revenue Ads (minus Unit Ad): $21.20
• Revenue/Page View: $0.0146

So we multiply 96 additional pages by $0.0146 and we have $1.40.  Because of that unit ad I lost $1.40 of revenue.  Does not sound like much until you consider that it represents a 6.6% of my total revenue.  Reduce the number of ads and increase revenue by 6.6%.

Today I removed the unit ad.  In a future post we will see whether the bounce rate has decreased and revenue/pageview increased.   It will.

Having a website means having content.  And unless you pay somebody to write it, you are going to do a lot of writing.  So it better be about something you want to write about.

This is the advise you will always hear.  Choose to create a website about something that you enjoy – something that you can write endlessly about.  It is good advise.  Nothing will kill a website like an owner who does not want to update it.  Who wakes up in the morning and thinks, “Oh God, what am I going to write about today.”

The problem is that what you like to write about might not necessarily be something that people want to read about.  A website is a partnership between the writer and the reader.  The writer agrees to write and the reader agrees to read.  If either partner does not fulfill their side of the bargain the website will fail.

You Love Writing About Gerbils

You want to start a website about gerbil care.  Your pet, which you lovingly call Tooku, is the best friend you ever had.   He listens when you complain about the world, he watches TV with you, he even lets you know with a cute squeak that it is around supper time.

You have been with Tooku for many years.  In that time you have learned a lot.  What he likes to eat, his favorite toy, how to keep his cage nice and clean.

Your going to write a website about proper gerbil care.

The website will be called “Taking Care of Tooku – Your Guide to Taking Care of Gerbils”.  It will be a great looking site.  Lots of pictures, tutorials, stories and even a video of Tooku eating a whole carrot in just under 6 hours.  There will be lots of content – you love writing about Tooku and how to take care of him.

So far, it looks like you have everything you need for a successful site.  Your love of the topic, and lots of content.

Problem 1 – Nobody Cares

But there is a problem.  Does anybody want to read about gerbil care?  My gut instinct tells me no.  But there is a way to find out.  Go to to Google’s keyword search tool and type in “gerbil care”.  What you will discover is that for the last month the words “gerbil care” have been searched for only 2,400 times.  That sounds like a lot.  But it is not.  In a whole month only 2,400 people care enough about gerbils to look them up on the Internet.  Compare that with the number of Internet users who care about carpet care – 33,100.  People on the Internet care about carpets 15 times more then they do about gerbils. 

Problem 2 – If They Care, It Will Be Only Once.

I cannot imagine somebody spending their Sunday morning on your site reading about gerbil care.  You could be the most entertaining writer and have the best advise.  But nobody, besides your mother who loves you, will want to spend too much time reading about gerbils. The few visitors that do find your site will just want to quickly find out if it is OK to feed their gerbil left over spinach.  They will not forward your site to all their friends, they will not make it their homepage.  They will quickly get the info and leave.  Completely ignoring your story about how you took Tooku to Disneyland.

Problem 3 – They Might Care, But Not Enough To Spend Any Money

People who do searches for gerbil care are not going to buy anything.  Your visitor is probably a six year old boy wondering why his gerbil has been sleeping for 4 days straight.  He is not going to click on the ad for ‘One size fits all gerbil boots’.  Nor will someone purchase your 156 page e-book ‘What to do when your gerbil is too fat to fit in the hamster wheel?’

Also consider that according to the Google Keyword tool the advertiser competition for the word gerbil care is low.  So if someone does click on the ad then you will get 2 cents.  Best case scenario:  everybody who searches for ‘gerbil care’ finds your site and clicks an ad.  You make  2400 * .02 = $48 that month.

It is Nothing Against Tooku

He is a great gerbil.  A real pal. He has taught you lots and you love to write about him.  But that is only half of it.  Your visitors need to care, but they don’t.  Your visitors need to spend, but they won’t. 

In case your wondering - no, I have nothing against gerbils.  I am just arguing that if you want a successful website you need to write about something that people want to read about.  For example, “Pest Control” which has 1,000,000 searches a month.