As you can see from my earnings page, I’m still in the beginning stages of making my niche blogs work well for me. Up until May I only had a few blogs that I created last April/ May without really properly thinking about what I was doing. So I jumped in when May hit and made about 15 new blogs .

I’m starting to question the way I’ve done these blogs. They are helpful and useful to visitors which I feel is absolutely essential, but the affiliate products don’t always provide the clear next step for what my visitors will do when they leave the site. They’re an option out of many, if you see what I mean, and won’t be the logical next step for many of my visitors. E.g. Writing a blog post about learning to speak Spanish and then recommending an online course for it in the last sentence. Although the online course could be very useful, many people don’t look to the internet as the primary way to learn, and many will just be casual readers to begin with.

Compare this to an Amazon niche site. People are searching for “review of X”, “X specifications”, “where to buy X” or “X compared to Y” and you give it to them, in detail, everything they’ve been looking to know in one place. You give them what Amazon would have told them and more from your research. I feel that it’s much more logical then that the buyer would click your link (though nothing’s guaranteed).

So this is why I’m questioning a few of my sites (though I know they still need time and I’m not giving up). The good news is the new sites I talked about in my last few blog posts are more around the second line of thinking, so I’ll put my theory to the test.

Basically I want to have a few good standard pages when I have product sites – specifications, prices/ release dates if necessary, and an overview of what the product does. In some cases it may also be relevant to have a page comparing it to other models/ makes of that product.

I bought Info Product Killer last year and decided last week that I’d use this method for my Amazon sites. It won’t be 100% the same, as I’ll be using Wordpress and my own idea of the way I like it to look etc, plus I’ll be adding more unique content than they suggest, but I’ll make use of some of the very good and unique advice that IPK has to offer. Coincidentally, IPK have opened their doors again today for the year (it’s aimed at getting sites ready for Christmas but works all year) – and I’m quite annoyed because they’re charging less than I paid! It’s now only $37 – check it out here.

(And in other news I’ve got a lot less time to work due to flat hunting, ringing agents, going on viewings, trying to make extra money for fees and so on! Hopefully I’ll find a place soon, at the moment I keep dreaming about flats!)

I thought I’d write a little more about getting into a “routine” that helps me to make sure I’m constantly moving forward and sticking to my challenge of 10 blog posts every day.

I’ll start by saying that I use so many different methods for productivity. It probably shows something about the way I work that one productivity method can work perfectly for me for a few days or weeks before it completely stops and I need to change things again.

Setting Blocks of Time for Writing

The main system I tend to use is setting blocks of time. I have a program, the Action Machine, that sets timers for fixed lengths of time and notifies you when the timer runs out. You could do the same with a kitchen timer – it has the effect of helping you to focus as much as possible until it “pings”.

First, I set a block for research. Doing research in bulk for batches of five blog posts is something that’s come to work for me. I have quite a few authoritative sites that I call to for my research, sites that I know I can trust for accurate information (which I believe is important). For health niches this is vital. If you’ve got a different sort of niche, maybe this isn’t as vital and you can get a bit more creative.

Then I write my blog posts in batches of five. With the research done beforehand, I usually find writing very quick, especially as I generally follow a set layout for posts:

• Intro paragraph containing the post keyword,
• First subheading and point,
• Second subheading and point,
• Conclusion containing the post keyword,
• Then, if relevant, a few sentences pre-selling the affiliate product.

What’s Really Worked for Me These Last Two Weeks

All the things I mentioned above are things I’ve been doing for a long time. And they do work, but you need an extra ingredient. It’s the mindset that always comes and goes, making some days more productive than others.

Ever since I set myself a goal of 10 posts per day – a tough goal that would challenge myself – and posted it here in public, I’ve had so much more drive to get things done. I feel like setting something challenging has helped, and it’s also given me reassurance that, no matter what the results are from day to day, I do know that I am slowly building my business with everything I’m writing.

The most important thing is that the challenge is making it a “habit” to work hard for my business every day. Whether that’s writing or other marketing and site building tasks, I am going to try as hard as possible to keep the momentum going without fail.

Update for today – completed my 10 blog posts and now need to upload them and go back and work in some pre-selling paragraphs into previous posts.

Quick update about the last few days: I forgot to post yesterday, but I was working hard and got my posts done. Over the weekend I also managed to write 15 blog posts! I didn’t plan it but I was very happy I did. I even enjoyed the beautiful weather (a bit too much – got sunburnt so I guess it’s good it’s getting a little colder again). Unfortunately today I travelled on the train to visit my parents and didn’t get work done. I’m writing today off – I’ll start afresh tomorrow.

As for what this post is about, I decided to post about my niche blogs and where I’m at. This will help me and also help anyone who’s following my progress.

Blogs Started Last Year: 6 blogs: two in the “green” niche, one self help, three health blogs. I don’t think my keyword research was perfect by any means. This is where my passive income comes from at the moment (not much I might add). All these blogs have between 40 and 60 posts and mainly earn from Adsense though they are niches that in theory should earn from other sites but just don’t.

Blogs Started in April: I stepped things up a little in April but still wasn’t working properly like I have been for the last two weeks. I set up 7 new sites but I have only just promoted them a little. A few are ranking well but get little traffic ( I just need to push them up further on page 1 and I’m confident I can). One gets decent traffic but isn’t converting so I’m still working on it. Above all these sites don’t have enough content so I’m still working on that before I 100% focus on marketing.

Blogs Started in May: Since I started my challenge to “step things up” I bought a lot of domains, though many of them have been sites to flip. 7 are sites I am planning to develop properly and have set up with at least 5 posts each (that’s just to start). Again I am working on a bit more content before I market properly. I will probably buy a few more domains before the month’s out but not start working on them yet.

Other domains: I do have “X Factor” sites that I never finished, so they’re also on my to-do list to fill out with content. I also have 4 other domains with the potential to become authority sites that I’m waiting to develop.

The niches I picked are generally in topics I find interesting. Quite a few are health niches, but the main niches I really like are green living and also certain hobbies that I have. I know a lot of people say don’t do what you love, do what pays best – but I do have to do what I love to make sure I put the effort in and actually make sure these sites are useful.

As you can see, I never really had many sites before. I don’t know why, but I constantly wondered why my progress was so slow until literally this month I thought “it’s because I haven’t been working at it!” Those first 6 sites were almost learning sites,  I didn’t even look for “exact” searched keywords on them, one of them doesn’t even have any kind of keyword phrase in the domain (not that this is always a bad thing), and I didn’t even market them properly. Why on earth did I expect so much when I didn’t put in the work?

This is why I decided to take action each and every day. I know I may seem crazy working on so many sites at once, but I have a virtual assistant now working to help me, and you’d be surprised at how fast you can move forward writing 10 blog posts per day. I’m just going to continue blog posts for a little while then I’m going to go full on with article marketing.

It’s so odd – even though this blog is a year old (and I have been working online for nearly two years now) – I only really feel that I’ve started my real passive income journey this month. It’s so exciting!