A Topic You Care About

Anybody involved in internet marketing for any length of time has heard all the rules. One of the biggest I’ve heard is it’s best to be involved in a niche you actually have some passion for. You know, if you care about it content will flow and you may even enjoy writing for it when the rest of your projects seem like nothing but a headache. Sounds good,huh? I mean we all need a sanctuary when our days are stressful. Some place we can just be ourselves and write about stuff we truly care about.

But what if that passion niche has yet to make you any money? It may be that you started it long ago before you knew what the hell you were doing and “just writing” was not making you any money. As you’ve gone along in the niche you’ve continued to use it as a place to do your best writing. So damn the money right? Not so fast.

A Niche Without Money?

I’ve got a blog in a niche I adore that I started way back before I really understood keywords or backlinks or article marketing or anything. I just wrote about things that I thought other people who enjoy the same pursuit would find interesting while maybe learning something. I picked a foundation product to base the site around loosely but tried hard to make it about the subject. Not just a load of affiliate links with wimpy content. I’ve since discovered I greatly misunderstood the niche and even though the site gets a good amount of regular traffic it just doesn’t make any money.

What Say You?

What do you do in this case? Try to sell it? Revamp it with what you’ve learned since? I don’t know. I’ve got a couple sites that are much smaller and make much more money that I am in the process of revising content and backlinks on. Trying to focus more on the terms people come looking for me for while trying to develop my authority for keywords I’d like to be known for. It’s a lot of work but fixing a site that’s already making money is a lot easier to justify than trying to fix a site that makes nothing.

Have you had this experience? Do you currently have sites that you love but make nothing? The biggest problem we all face is what? Lack of time. How do you look yourself in the mirror and say you’re doing everything you can to make money when you’re spending time with these time stealers? I am grappling with this very issue right now and I’d really like to hear from you about what you’re doing about it. Selling them? Fixing them? What?

Here’s my problem: selling them and really doing well means I will have to spend a bunch of time learning Flippa or some such service but revising them could take months. Keep in mind, I’m talking about sites that have PR, visitors,commenters but just no sales. I’m actually thinking about pulling my affiliate links for the site’s main product to see if it becomes more active. I’m also doing regular site marketing now which was nearly absent for the life of the site.

Please tell me how you’re dealing with these sites in your portfolio now? Leave a comment that says “selling”, “revising”, “deleting” or any other one word phrase that describes your approach. I’ll post the results after you weigh in. Of course, if you’d be kind enough to elaborate I’d love that too.

Giving Props

I wanted to pay tribute to somebody who has been instrumental in shaping my internet business.  I’ve followed a small group of internet marketers. Some of them I’ve lost interest in as they seemed to have lost their way. Such is also the case with Lynn Terry. She was the first person who provided me help with my internet marketing business when I was both penniless and clueless. Now, I believe both of us have come full circle in our businesses serving the people that helped make us successful.

Namely, you. Those who want to learn the tips and inside scoop on what works and what doesn’t without being buried in a sea of offers and spam.

A Bumpy Ride

I can’t remember exactly but I think it was 2008 or 2009 when Lynn, a then admitted hater of high-dollar affiliate programs, started actively promoting one of those programs which will remain nameless. I’m thinking it was at least two grand and I was confused. I understand that it was probably a great program and that she certainly paid money for it and didn’t get review access to it. My question at that time was is she trying to move out of the struggling internet marketer niche or has she just lost her way? All I knew was that price tag seemed completely incongruous with the Lynn Terry I had ‘grown up’ with since 2007. With the daily barrage of email and work coming my way, it only took a blink to put somebody off the most watched list and onto the someday list.

Still, I never deleted her from my daily feed.

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Posterous Support

As part of the Challenge, I set up a posterous account to tie together seven sites for posting articles relevant to a niche I had build a site around. It was easy to set up and worked marvelously. I could get content out to my network sites that contained a link to an article I was reviewing and just one link back to my main site. I set it up exactly as Ed Dale had recommended and it helped me get ranking for some long tail keywords fairly rapidly and retain them.  I wasn’t using it for spam and I recognized that some of the sites were no-follow but I was willing to be able to post to seven sites at a time with unique, useful content.

Then, last month, it just stopped working.

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Crowd Mountain Money

I participated in a joint venture site that reviewed Michelle MacPhearson’s Crowd Mountain and received compensation for links that resulted in sales.  It was always just a little money so I didn’t pay much attention to it.  When she re-launched in April of 2010, the money jumped up and up until July I got paid what I was owed.

Then, everything got weird real quick!

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Are You Doing The Challenge This Year?

This year’s Challenge by Ed Dale and all is an exceptional step by step guide to getting up and running on affiliate marketing.  I highly recommend you take a look at it even if you’re a seasoned pro.  There’s something for everybody and it’s completely free!

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