The Information:

Site: Codename: Nectar
Domain: two letters + Exact Match Domain dot com

Keyword: Two Word Product
Exact Monthly Search Volume: 33,100 Global | 27,100 Local
Google Contextual Targeting Suggested Bid: $1.41
Adwords Competition: ~0.20

Experiment:

There isn’t an experiment on this one so much as just showing how to get this done properly and efficiently and spending the least amount of money possible to maximize profits. I’ll outsource very little on this one except for some annoying link building whose price will be very negligible.

Expected Revenue:

This is not going to be a walk in the park. Page one will be no thang, but the top 3 is going to be tricky as there are some brands up there. This term has some nice long-tails that’ll bring in quite a bit of extra revenue as well.

• 33,100 exact monthly searches x 40% of the searches in the top spot / 30 days per month = 441 visitors per day
• 441 visitors per day x 2% click through rating = 8.8 clicks a day
• 8.8 clicks per day @ $1.41 x 68% revenue share = $8.43 per day or $253.12 per month

Now, this will fluctuate greatly since the CPC will dance around depending on which ad is being clicked, and the CTR is probably going to be higher than 2% at number one. We will see though. To put the inability to estimate revenue in context, I have a site at 4,400 exacts per month at #1 with a 3-4% CTR that is currently pulling $300 a month. This will grow as the long-tails come on in. You never know. Each niche is different.

The Competition:

I’m going to let the pictures speak before I do. The first is from Market Samurai and the second is from SpyFu.

The conundrum is this:  #1 is Wikipedia and 2-4 are brand’s top level domains.  The other’s are all inner pages of brand’s top level domains.  However, number 8 is a piece of crap micro niche-site someone made for one of the long-tails and it popped up there.  This is why I’m willing to take a risk on this one.  None of these other pages are really SEO’d except number 8 and 10.  The others have a nice level of link juice flowing around and the top 4 have quite a bit of links straight to the page.  I ain’t skurr’d!

According to SpyFu, the CPC is a about half of what Google is reporting.  Google is probably reporting the max bid, where as SpyFu actually shows the floating three month average (I think).  It’s more accurate.  There aren’t many advertisers, but the daily search volume is so huge that there will be clicks based on sheer volume.  They may not all be related to the page either.  The interest-based ads may make me more money on this one.  We shall see.

The Journal:

Day #0

I purchased the domain a month ago or so, but only yesterday did I get the nameservers pointed to the right place since I was waiting on changing hosts.  MySQL databases are live, the add-on domain is a go, and I installed and designed a theme on WordPress.  My lady had already written a home page and another article for this site, so I slapped them on there and spruced them up a bit with more text and some images.  I installed a buttload of plugins, tweaked up all the on-page SEO, and tossed Adsense on there.  It’s ready to rock and roll!

• Completed: Entire site set up w/ theme, plugins, on-page SEO, ads installed.
• Content: Homepage with about 700 words and an article with about 700 words.
• Expenses: $7.50
• Indexed: No

Day #1

8 A.M.: A quick “site:URL” shows that the site is now indexed.   6 P.M.: Finding the site ranking at #144 for the term we are looking at (and ranking for others).  Very nice.  I suspect it’ll fall back quite a bit over the next few days.  I’m going to start this party with a small Top 20 social bookmarking campaign in the next few days.

• Indexed: Yes
• Rankings: #144 (+∞)
• Expenses: $8.85

I got a good bargain for 20 High PR posts ranging from PR 2 to PR 5 so I snagged it and pointed all of it at this domain with the same anchor.  I hope that doesn’t sandbox the domain, but we’ll see.  I await the report.  Rankings are stable.  Still waiting on the Top 20 bookmarks as well.  Should see some dancing after all of these links are complete.

• Rankings: #143 (+1)
• Expenses: $28.85

Day #3

I got the report for the Top 20 Bookmarking today and pinged them beaches.  I also slung about ~2,400 blog comments at them by accident.  I meant that to be around ~250, but I started watching Lost with the lady and forgot what was going on!  I’m not going to ping the comments and hope they drip in naturally and don’t get the bookmarks banned or bounce the site too bad.  We’ll see how that goes.  I actually saw the rankings crawl up to #142 at one point, but right now it’s back to #144.

• Rankings: #144 (-1)

Day #4

Well shucks.  It bounced out da atmosphere.  It’s all good.  I’d call this normal.  No new links or content.

• Rankings: #1000+ (-∞)

Day #6

Today I received the report for the 20 High PR Blog Posts deal.  They are set to drip in over the next four days, which is a nice bonus.  I’ll wait until Day #11 and hit those with a ton of blog comments.  No new content yet.  I’ve been hammering out content for Codename: Gryphon.  I’ll make my way around to adding content here as I creep up in rankings.

• Backlinks: 20 High PR Blog Posts dripped over the next four days
• Rankings: #1000+

Day #8

I ordered a High PR posts package that allowed for three URLs, so I chose a penalized domain I have, this one, and the one from Codename: Titan.  It’s only 10 urls, but these bad boys are all PR4+ domains.  I’m getting concerned that I may be over doing it on this domain since it’s so young.  We’ll see though.  I’m hoping this “not ranking” ordeal is just a giant bounce and not a crazy sandbox.

• Backlinks: 10 High PR Posts
• Rankings: #1000+
• Expenses: $36.35

Day #10

Today is the fourth day of the 20 High PR Network package.  All of the articles should have been dripped in, so I link checked today.  It all checked out.  The rankings went from out the atmosphere to #89!  And this is with only 13 of the 20 pages indexed right now.  So there will still be some additional juice love to come!  I love it!  Going to sling about 1000 backlinks to those 20.

• Backlinks: ~1000 comments to 20 network links
• Rankings: #89 (+∞)

Day #12

Check this out… Got the report for the 10High PR Network package, plus I’m sure (haven’t checked though) that the other 7 pages of the 20 High PR Package have indexed.  Plus I got a review package for five High PR blog comments including PR 5, 4, and 3′s.  Well guess what this did?  I checked the rankings this morning and the site was ranking at… dun dun dunnnn! #14!  Frickin’ aye!  So I’m going to shoot some backlinks to the pages in the reports I got back to flow more juice through there and that’ll probably push it on to page one.  I hope it sticks, because it just climbed a freaking mountain.  I gotta start throwing some content on there.

• Backlinks: 5 High PR blog comments
• Rankings: #14 (+75)
• Expenses: $39.35

Day #20

I haven’t touched this site with links since the last update, but I did just add a page of content.  And the rankings are…

• Content: 1 Article
• Rankings: #11 (+3)

Day #23

Slung another article.  Outsourced others.  Gonna pick up a little harder on this one since there will finally be more than just a homepage.  I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of this in the top spot as a one pager.  Rankings stable without change.

• Content: 1 Article

Day #29

When I woke up this morning and tracked all the homepage’s rankings of my various sites to find that this one tanked to #283.  After having just added five articles, I rechecked the rankings.  It moved up quite a bit to #57 but never recovered.  It’s okay, considering I haven’t done much backlinking yet.  This site is begging for some social bookmarks.  I’ll get on that soon.  I also just slung about 500 randomly anchored comments at the homepage and inner pages to get some anchor text variation in there so when I don’t need to worry about it when I really start hitting it.

• Content: 5 Articles
• Backlinks: ~500 randomly anchored comments
• Rankings: #57 (-46)
• Expenses: $54.35

Day #30

I be slangin dem backlinks, boyeeee.  Plus added an article.  Whut up.  Rankings fell dough.

• Content: 1 article
• Backlinks: ~500 specifically anchored comments, ~200 article submissions, ~800 wiki blasts
• Rankings: #248 (-191)

Day #34

I just ordered what will total to about 35 High PR comments of PR 2-6.  That should do some big thangs.  I will also be adding a boatload of content that I will backlink which should funnel some juice to the homepage as well.  We have almost fully recovered the rankings as well.

• Backlinks: ~35 High PR 2-6 comments
• Rankings: #24 (+224)
• Expenses: $59.35

Day #36

I got the 35 high PR comments from a couple days ago and also got an additional 30 or so from another provider.  I have a ton of content to add as soon as there is time.  Rankings stable for the most part.

• Backlinks: ~30 High PR comments
• Rankings: #26 (-2)
• Expenses: $64.35

Day #40

In the past four days I probably tossed around 2000 comments at the home page.  Today I added 14 articles that were ready.  Rankings have slid back a bit, but nothing drastic.  It’s getting to that point where I need to start pushing quantity.

• Backlinks: ~2000 comments
• Content: 14 articles
• Rankings: #33 (-7)
• Expenses: $109.35

Day #47

Nothing has been done added except content in the past week which did happen to see a boost in ranking.  Small but I’ll take it!

• Content: 5 articles
• Rankings: #31 (+2)
• Expenses: $125.35

Day #64

Big thangs here!  In the downtime, I added about 10 articles or so.  A couple days ago I built 800 wikis, 100 articles, and backed all that by 10k comments.  I also got 366 blog posts on unique domains scheduled.  And that jumped us way up the rankings!  It was sitting at #13 for a few days, and now it’s at #5!

• Content: 10 articles
• Backlinks: 800 wikis, 100 articles, backed by 10k comments, and 366 blog posts
• Rankings: #5 (+26!)
• Expenses: $180.35

Day #85

I’ve added about 6 articles and have been submitting some posts to a network I’ve joined.  Nothing major else has happened.  I’m getting ready to start juicing up the inner pages to help the homepage.  Should add to the overall traffic and income quite a bit.  Been seeing some regular earnings on this one now.  Moved up a spot.

• Content: 6 articles
• Backlinks: Random network posts
• Rankings: #4 (+1)
• Expenses: $198.35