This post doesn’t really have a main point, but first I wanted to celebrate getting my highest Adsense day on Wednesday:

This is in British Pounds and works out at around $14 USD (I cut out all the clickthrough rate info etc from that image). I know it’s not huge, but it’s the highest I’ve had to date. Earlier in the month I’d also reached a new high which was £8.81. It’s always good to know things are going upwards, though my Adsense does fluctate a lot. Still a few days out of every month I fail to even reach £1.00.

My Clickbank has also picked up a little, making around one sale a week. Here’s what it looks like right now:

Again, not fantastic but better than a couple of months ago. I have decided I don’t really want to focus on Clickbank though (I’m already very picky about the products I promote there – some look like complete junk to me), so my next sites (whenever I get round to them), will probably be based on Amazon.

Trying to Put Together the Perfect Amazon Reviews

Although I haven’t started any new batches of sites (I don’t want to leave things unfinished as I always seem to!) I do have this hot product site that I keep talking about. I am adding blog posts to it etc but I want to have one real main review on it to which I will build links.

I want to create a review as in depth as possible. I’m kind of fed up of the whole mindset of building crap to get people to click on Adsense ads because they’re desperate to get away from your site (like I’ve said before). Instead, I want to do a lot of research, write a review that beats all others in there, and leave the visitor clicking on my Amazon link to buy.

So I’m using the Amazon information, the Amazon reviews, and the manufacturer’s website to write about the main features of the product. But I’ll also look into it in a bit more detail, finding out what people are looking for in this type of product, and how the specific product I’m reviewing matches up with expectations and so on. I know it’s going to be time consuming, but it’ll be a very long review and hopefully very trustworthy. I’m also hoping it’ll help with traffic from long-tail keywords.

So writing that review is my plan for now! And I’m also going to check out the Info Product Killer updates (by the way, the price of IPK is going up from $37 to $77 later today, so if you want it, get it now).

Just a short post as I’m really looking forward to relaxing with a glass of wine

I just put up my earnings page which I’ll update every month. Nothing spectacular yet, but I already know July’s going to be a lot more focused so I’m hoping that’ll make a difference!

In other news, I registered a couple of new domain names the other day and setup Wordpress on them today. They are very much “hot” product niches, meaning that a lot of people will be buying the products in the coming months. I’m really hoping I can capitalise on this, but it does take a bit of focus off my other niche sites so I think I’m going to outsource a bit so I don’t let things go too much.

Talking of hot topics, I kind of want to start some Halloween/ Christmas sites but I’m worried I’ll lose focus too much if I do. Hopefully I’ll get some time later this month!

I’ve had quite disrupted work times recently so I’m glad to get back into the swing of things – only for a little while though (see below). A lot of client work on top of this means I had to abandon my writing challenge since last week, and I also fell behind on keeping up with other people’s blogs as well as my own. But I’m still going to keep pushing the passive income side hard. In fact, now that I’ve got quite a lot of content for my niche sites, I might start a new challenge. I’m thinking of doing daily article marketing but I still need to think more about where my time is best spent (any ideas will be gratefully received).

I actually have some planned time off coming up next week! Going to try and get out and do some nice things in the local area, and maybe also go for a trip to London (I was there this weekend too actually). If the weather’s not good then I might work a bit, but I’m going to try to treat it as a little ‘holiday’ as I won’t be going on holiday at all this summer and probably for a while.

How Things Went in May

In the spirit of the new direction of this blog – in that I’m now focusing on writing about my passive income efforts rather than my client work – I thought I should post how I did in May.

Day 1 of really stepping things up was May 10. I should have kept up with how much I’ve written for my niche sites, but I haven’t. An estimate would be around 100 blog posts for my niche sites and then a few bits of article marketing. Sounds good when I write it out here

On the downside, I got slack at posting up all the blog posts I’d written, so I really need to get round to that. They’re not going to earn any money unless I post them up! I also need to start marketing my sites. The last few weeks have simply been about getting the sites setup, and I did fall short of my goal of 20 new sites. Not too far short, but again I haven’t been keeping track of it. I could go and count them up but I’ll save my time for something more productive.

Earnings in May for Adsense went up. It was roughly $130 (I say roughly because I actually earn in GBP rather than USD). This was about $15 more than April so not much. I’m really hoping it’ll move up a little quicker in June though.

My earnings for Amazon were awful. I always have sales trickling in from HubPages and also from niche websites. In April I earned $107 and in May I earned $6.78!! I haven’t been pushing Amazon though so I guess I should either put more effort into it or prepare for the fact that my earnings may just stay lower.

The Amazon drop is why my total earnings are less in May than April: May’s total is $240 (including a few other affiliate sales).

Plans for June

As you can see, my passive income earnings are far from great (bear in mind I do work full time online but it goes without saying that client work, not these passive earnings, makes up the bulk of my income).

In June I’d love to put in more time into my sites like I did for a large portion of May. I’m going to make myself do it, though I will be taking a bit of time off like I said before which could disrupt things. I still have a bit more setting up to do of my new sites, but after that it’ll be a plan of action for marketing.

I decided to write this post as a response to a lot of questions I’ve been getting asked lately about blog flipping. Selling niche blogs on Flippa.com is one way I make money on the internet. It helps bring in the money quickly and regularly, and I work on my own sites around the sites I sell. I’ve worked really hard at it and I have a 80% success rate out of 62 listings.

I’ve written about this before, so I’ll point you to these posts:

• “My Blog Flipping Journey” is a post I wrote back last October when I hadn’t been flipping for too long, but contains some tips to get started,
• I also wrote a review of Michelle Adams’ flipping course. Whether you’re thinking of buying a course or not, you might want to check out the post for some info about the earnings potential and what I’ve earned from selling purely startup sites.

And in the rest of this post I’ll just answer some of the questions I got that weren’t answered in those previous posts.

About the Sites I Flip

I sell startup sites. Sometimes I’ll only have had the domain for a week before I sell the site (I always at least make sure it’s indexed in Google). What this means is there are no earnings and no traffic stats. These sites are far lower in value than sites that have earnings/ traffic, making other features such as unique content and a good design more important.

• If you have a site with a proven track record for earnings, a “pretty” site doesn’t matter as much.
• Although people tend to say sites with earnings can get about 10x their monthly earnings as a final selling price, I’ve seen them go way higher. People often use a $1 no reserve auction to drive interest – it’s risky but I’ve seen it work very well.
• For the lower end startup sites I sell, that no reserve model doesn’t seem to have quite as much potential.
• I also believe the reason why I am very successful at selling startup sites and some sellers aren’t is because I go the extra mile for my customers and I think they can see that.

Time and Money

If you want to get into flipping then the good news is that it doesn’t cost too much. I recently found I could get domains for $6.95 from Netfirms, then the Flippa listing fee is $19, and the success fee is 5% of the final sell price. If I outsource writing, then it’ll add a little more to the cost but I either use Human Rewriter or oDesk to keep costs down. (You also need website hosting – I use a Hostgator reseller account that costs $25 per month).

• When you first start flipping, you’re probably going to get a lower return on your time. Everyone has to learn and you’ll need to setup the whole site, spend time crafting a good listing (very important) and then do the transfer and customer care afterwards.
• I save time now by using a listing that is pretty much the same for each auction just with the details changed, I’ve done so many transfers that it can take me just half an hour, and I even developed a member area for my buyers so I barely have to answer any questions any more.
• On average the whole process takes me about 3-4 hours per site and they sell for $197. I see this as a good return for my time. Then again, I worked very hard developing my systems.

Selling Other Kinds of Sites

Based on the time it takes in theory I could make blogs and flip them all day long and make a fantastic salary. But I don’t think it works like that – you don’t have unlimited ideas and you’ll get fed up if you churn out site after site. I’m working on keeping sites for a few months and selling them when they have some traffic/ earnings. I will also sell off sites that don’t work for me. I know it seems as though sites like that wouldn’t have any value but remember buyers on Flippa are all looking for different kinds of things.

Some Other Tips:

1. For startup sites premium themes can make a lot of difference. I use Woothemes pretty much 100% of the time.
2. Make sure you never copy anyone else’s listings. I know it seems obvious, but people do seem to copy because they see other sellers have success. This might work for a while but you’ll get reported and some buyers will notice.
3. Go out of your way for the buyers – I believe this is what has made me successful on Flippa.
4. Use unique content – it sells better, especially for startup sites.
5. Be honest with Newbies. Some think all they have to do to make a fortune online is buy one startup site on Flippa. Of course it’s not true so I always honestly tell them that.
6. Use bonuses if they buy using “Buy It Now”. I’ve had a few buyers tell me this was the reason they chose BIN rather than making a lower bid. And offer to do the transfer for them. I know this holds a lot of people back but it’s honestly not that hard! I can’t explain it all but any good site flipping guide will have it, and you’ll find it for free on websites.
7. Experiment with (a) the time of day you list your sites (b) which day of the week you list your sites (c) how long you want your auction to last (I usually use 3-7 days) and (d) which prices you use. It takes time to get a feel for what works best for your sites. The time you list is important as you’ll get most views in the first few hours and last few hours of your auction.
8. Don’t give up – It’s overwhelming at first, but once you get all the processes down, like the transfer, listing setup etc then it’ll be a lot easier and a lot more profitable than those first few flips.

I do recommend Michelle’s eBook: How to Build and Sell Niche Blogs. She is the one who taught me to do this in the first place, and she is a great teacher with good values.

I hope this answered the questions. This has turned into a really long post – I just wrote whatever came to me so I hope it all makes sense.