Rugs USA is not messing around!

As you know, I’ve been on a quest to create new streams of income by building small niche sites outside of Saving Money Today.  Part of the fun I have is using Market Samurai to scour the net for keywords that I can build a niche site about.  Yes, this really is fun for me and you can call me a nerd if you want to…just remember I’m a nerd who is continuously increasing his online earnings. 

Anyway, during one keyword researching session I found one hell of a keyword!

rugs usa

It may not seem like much, but trust me you could make a killing if you worked this one right.  Let’s look at the numbers…

According to Market Samurai, rugs usa gets about 145 searches per day.  That’s not the greatest, but it’s not bad. Especially when you consider the Estimated CPC for the keyword.  (CPC is short for Cost Per Click, which is the amount that advertisers are willing to pay each time someone clicks on their ad.

Before I tell you the estimated CPC for rugs usa, you should probably sit down.  Are you sitting?

Ok, according to the Google keyword tool, the Estimated CPC for the exact match keyword phrase “rugs usa” is…

$3,080.96!!

Don’t believe me?  That’s cool, I don’t blame you.  I’ll wait here while you go check it out for yourself.  Or better yet here’s a screenshot I just took…

rugs usa

Now before you start going crazy with images of yourself swimming in a giant money bin like Scrooge McDuck, you should know that it’s very unlikely you would actually see that amount per click.

First of all, that is just an estimate.  Market Samurai actually shows a much lower amount of $1306.98 (still pretty damn impressive though, and a lot better than those 5 cent clicks you’ve been getting!

Also, the CPC provided is the amount paid to be the #1 ranked advertiser in Google’s search results.  The prices can be very different for the content network, and that’s the amount that bloggers get paid on.  I suspect that Rugs USA is bidding an absurd amount to protect their brand as many other keywords with the highest cost per click are also variations of brand names.  But whatever their motives, it’s obvious that Rugsusa.com is not messing around!

Still it might be worth taking a glancing blow at the keyword.  The top 5 sites currently ranked are very strong and almost insurmountable without a heck of a lot of work.  But the bottom half of the top 10 is much weaker.  It might be possible for an established site to sneak onto the first page with a decent article about rugs usa.   And if they did, they’d be able to learn the true potential earning power of the keyword with the highest cost per click.

One of my goals for 2011 is to double the amount of revenue that I earn online.  Part of my strategy for achieving that goal is to build one new mini-niche site each month.  I’m talking small sites that are designed to make money with AdSense and/or affiliate programs.  I’m targeting small markets and keywords with relatively low competition so it shouldn’t take too much to get them ranked and earning.  I don’t want to spend a ton of time working on them because this blog is still my first priority and I don’t want it to suffer.

As a firm believer in income diversification I’m continuously looking to develop new streams of income. I already have a handful of niche sites up and running so I know this strategy is viable if done right.  And if I can stick to 12 new sites a year my revenue should really pick up.

So far I’ve registered a handful of domains and built one new site which I officially launched at the end of January.  It’s been up for a month and has made me $10.89 so far.  Not exactly enough to retire on, but it’s early.  It currently ranks near the bottom of the second page in Google so it’s not seeing much traffic, but it is still getting some clicks.  With a little work I should be able to get that one ranked near the top for its main keyword and then I should see some nice income.

The plan has always been to build each site by myself from scratch using XSitePro (I love WordPress for blogging, but it’s just overkill for small static sites like these).  But after reading a few posts from The Financial Blogger and seeing how much he spends to grow his business, I decided to try taking a shortcut by buying two already established websites.

Now before you get all excited, these are tiny sites that I bought.  They target very specific keywords in rather small niches that don’t get a lot of traffic.  In other words these sites will add only a few drops of revenue to my income streams.  But let me explain my thought process a little so you can understand why I bought them.

I’ve been considering buying a small site for some time.  I had never done it before so I figured it would be good learning opportunity to walk through the process.  But since I don’t really have a ton of funds on hand to devote to it I wanted to start small.  So instead of looking for well-established sites that are already generating revenue, I’ve been searching for a diamond in the rough that has some potential.  In baseball terms, I can’t afford to spend like the Yankees Brian Cashman so I’ve been looking for bargains with potential like Brian Sabean or Billy Beane.

Anyway, I’ve been browsing Flippa regularly but haven’t found anything just right.  There are lots of sites on there that talk up their potential earning power without any real backup to support their claims.  And there’s also a lot of crap.   Many sites in the lower price range are just auto-blogs, which I’m not interested in.  I don’t want sites that will here today and gone tomorrow.  I want sites with real content that will continue to grow and rank well for years.

I also checked out some online forums before finally finding what I was looking for at the Warrior Forum.  The seller was offering ten sites in all but I only wanted two of them.

Here are the main reasons I chose to purchase these two sites:

• They were built with XSitepro, which is a plus for me because I already own it so adjusting the site would be a breeze.  In fact, they were built with the same theme too, one that I have seen before and I know for a fact that it does particularly well with AdSense.
• The prices were rock-bottom low ( I got both of them for only $35).  The seller was disappointed in their earnings to date and was just going to let them expire, so he was happy to get almost anything for them.  And although I don’t envision either of them turning into big winners I do think I can make them profitable pretty quickly.
• One site is currently ranked around 12 in Google for its main keyword, the other is close to 30.  That means they’re very close to the first page already.  If I write a few articles and get a few backlinks I should be able to push them onto the first page of Google and then the traffic should pick up.
• They both have estimated AdSense CPCs of $3-$5, so even if traffic is low I can still make a profit if each click earns a couple dollars.
• Both sites are focused on specific products categories which means I can also monetize with affiliate links.  I’m going to add some pages on specific products from each category and include Amazon affiliate links to them.  I’ve had some success with this method on another niche site I built.
• The content is decent, if unspectacular.  I ran both sites through Copyscape to make sure it was all original and I wasn’t completely turned off by the articles already written.  Like I said, I don’t want to spend a lot of time re-working these sites because that would defeat the purpose of using them as a shortcut.

So in the end, the sites I acquired were dirt cheap and have limited earning potential.  But buying them saves me the trouble of building them from scratch, and I see enough potential in them to take a shot.  I don’t want to share the specific niches these sites are in but I will give regular updates on their status as I hopefully build them up to be profitable members of my money-making team.

I’m sick with a fever and my daughter is home from kindergarten with pneumonia so I’m kind of kicking back my feet a bit and catching up on some reading.  This morning I was browsing around the halls of Reddit when I noticed this fascinating article from New Scientist that claims Google pulls in half a BILLION dollars each year thanks to typos.

I have no idea if those numbers are accurate but I wouldn’t be surprised.  There’s a whole industry that revolves around typed in domain names.  “Domainers” as they’re sometimes called buy up lots of lots of domains with no intention at all of developing them into a website.  Instead they simply leave them “parked” and when visitors arrive at them all they see are a bunch of ads. 

The whole business model revolves around domains that are either:

1. Typos of well known sites. If you’re trying to visit Copyblogger.combut forget a “g” you’ll be taken to a site that consists solely of ads.  If your site becomes big enough you’ll start to see copycats trying to steal some of your traffic like this too.  

2. Keyword phrases that naturally get lots of searches and potential type in traffic.  For example, let’s say you are going to a show in Manhattan and you want to find a nice place to eat while you’re there.  You might open your browser and type in a phrase like “restaurantsinny.com”.  If you do you’ll be taken to another site with nothing but ads. 

When you click on any of the ads on these sites the owner gets paid.  And if they’re using AdSense ads then Google gets a cut too.

Now, historically Google has always demanded that AdSense publishers deliver unique, quality content.  In fact you could be denied participation in the program if your site isn’t up to snuff.

But with the launch of Google AdSense for Domains the Big G seems to have changed its tune.  There’s no content at all on these parked sites yet they are allowed into the club.  I guess half a billion dollars is too good to pass up…even for Google.