How I Made $500/month Using SEO Source Wave’s(Alex Becker) Methods in 80 Days with 98 Dollars
Hello everyone, today I am going to give you a brief report on how I managed to make a $500/month niche site in 80 days and 98 dollars. It all started out when I decided to start a niche site after reading Pat Flynn’s niche site duel. In fact, I went with 2 niche sites. One was an anime site while the other was a gaming site. I begin both sites right around June 2013.
Keyword Research
This probably took about 2 days of intense research before I came to a conclusion to the keywords I wanted to target. The method I used to find my keywords were taught mainly by Alex Becker from Source Wave and also Spencer Haws from Niche Pursuits. I also want to stress that this is the most important step out of the entire plan. A well researched keyword is a must. This will be evident as you keep reading.
Step 1: Finding Your Niche
I highly recommend you find a niche that you are at least moderately interested in if you plan to write all the content yourself. Otherwise, you will struggle to produce content when you are not passionate about it. If you outsource your content, then the niche can be anything. Once you find your niche, you will want to narrow it down to something more specific. For example:
Gaming(big niche) -> Moba Games(sub-niche) -> League of Legends(focused niche)
Pets-> Dogs -> Different Dog Breeds -> Siberian Husky -> Siberian Husky Puppies for Sale
The idea is to narrow down to a very specific niche that targets an audience that are looking for just that. In my case, my sites dragoncityegg and animelike specialize in something very specific. dragoncityegg.net -> A resource for Dragon City players on Facebook. animelike.org -> For anime lovers that are looking for new anime to watch. Here were the keywords I came up with for both sites: 
Keep in mind that when you check the top 10 competition for your specific keywords, ask yourself the following questions:
- Can I provide better and quality content than them?
- Do I see myself writing content for these keywords?
- Are the the keywords I am targeting located in the competition’s title and url?
- Do they have any strong backlink profile?
If you say yes to the first 2 questions and no to the 3rd and 4th question, you got yourself a potential winning keyword.
Hosting My Domain
Once I was done with the keyword research, I bought both domain names and installed wordpress. My host is Dreamhost and Bluehost. The total hosting fee + domain name would be around $80-100 total for the year.
I also installed the following plugins:
- All in one SEO – This allows me to customize my title and summary for the page.
- Google XML Sitemap – This notifies Google about my site whenever I publish anything and my site gets indexed quickly(usually within a few days).
Creating Content
I spent at least 2 hours a day for the first week in creating the content for both sites. I would say I spent a minimum of 22 hours that week(June 9th to 16th).
On Page SEO
For on page SEO, I used the “Silo” method to create my pages. It would look something like this:
The idea is to link all your pages so that the robots can crawl your site easily and also pick up all the links from each page or post. It has helped me rank both site’s pages with ease.
Backlinking
I didn’t start backlinking until week 2. The strategy I used was this:
I started making mini links by creating free websites to my main site using the following:
Free Subdomain Sites
- blogspot.com
- wordpress.com
- tumblr.com
- zimbio.com
- weebly.com
- wikidot.com
- yola.com
- blogster.com
Writing Sites
- Hubpages – You will need a 700 word article here for a backlink.
- Squidoo
- Bubblews – An excellent place to build backlinks for your site.
- Ezine Articles
- Goarticles
PDF Sites
- Slideshare
- Docstoc
I created animelikecodegeass.blogspot.com, put some content and used an anchor text such as “anime like code geass”. You don’t have to put too much content. As long as you put some words in there you are okay. I spread out the link building over a week. I would build roughly 1-2 links a day.
The next step I did was to create more backlinks to my Web 2.0 sites using wiki links and book marks. There is an easy tool to do this. I used Social Marker. What social marker does is that it lets you submit your links easily in 15 minutes. I highly recommend that you use it.
I didn’t use any expired domains to boost my rankings. Apparently, this above method is time consuming and only works for non competitive keywords. If you are trying to rank for “credit repair”, this method will be useless. I do intend to use expired domains to rank for my future niche sites that are more competitive.
Results
Here is the traffic report for both sites:
Dragon City Egg
I started placing adsense on both sites when they hit about 200 visitors a day. Apparently, my anime site doesn’t convert into adsense clicks. 95% of my income comes from dragoncityegg.
Update July 2015: AnimeLike.org is no longer around but DragonCityEgg.net is still going strong and earning to this day. Also, here is an interview of a $16,000/month earner with Adsense.
Conclusion
There you have it guys! This is how I got it to $500 a month. Hope this helps anyone who would like to start niche sites from scratch with very little investment.
Related posts:
I noticed on your website you have Swag Bucks as your referral program! I suggested P2S earlier I think Swag Bucks is about the same thing. How are you doing on Swag Bucks with your earnings? I believe you only mentioned your Google Adsense earnings.
Also, great article! I’m glad to know that I don’t have to spend money for expired domains. Ick.
I tried using P2S, but I didn’t get any referrals. I think it has to do with making a sales page. I wouldn’t mind switching if I knew how to navigate P2S better.
The Swagbucks earnings are rather small. Like $3 since I put it on. Lol.
Kenny, I’m thinking of making a niche site. Do you feel like having another one too? Let’s both make a niche site like Patt did. How about it? And how about we will make our sites on blogger (blogspot) platform? Hehe what do you think? Challenging right?
Ah, well I would take on your challenge, but not on a blogspot though! I rather do buy a domain.
If you make a general guideline for the challenge I would definitely consider it! 😀
hey man. I’m not remembering how do I get here. but your information is like goldmine to me. do you recommend blogspot platform with custom domain? because I can’t afford hosting fee lol 🙁
If you can’t afford the expensive hosting, you can try 1 dollar per month hosting. This won’t break the bank. Blogspot is okay but you have no control over it, just keep that in mind.
There you have it. Nice method, I’ll follow your method too 🙂
asd
Hey! It’s me again awaiting your September update, haha.
I’m trying to do exactly what you did with my own game website for another Facebook game that I am currently playing, and I’m several days past the 2 week point. But I have a question: for your backlink strategy, how many Tier 1 websites do you have? I see in the picture there are three tier 1 websites linking to the main website, but I was guessing that was just used for illustration purposes.
I’m asking because I don’t know how you’re distributing that 1-2 links a day. Are those 1-2 links Tier 1 links, or Tier 2 links, or is one a tier 1 link and the other a tier 2 link? I have no clue!
Right now I have about 6 Tier 1 links consisting of Bubblews, Webs, and Blogger sites, and my Tier 2 links are also Bubblews, Webs, and Blogger sites. Is this good or bad?
Thanks!
Well, it doesn’t really matter too much how you link it. Since you have 6 tier 1 links, you can use social marker and build tier two links to your 6 tier one links.
And yes, you can inter link between the tiers. Just don’t overdo it. I usually build the tier one links first for the first week of link building. Then the next week, i proceed to use social marker on those 6 tier one links. After all the building, if you choose a low competition keyword, your site should rank for those in the top 20 of google after 1-2 months.
What you have is fine. Just use social marker on your tier 1 links and you are good to go. 😀
Hey, how do you deal with trademarked names in your gaming niche sites? Best, mike
Make sure you have a well written privacy policy and also a disclaimer at the footer of your site.If a particular name is trademarked,I will not use it in my domain name to avoid any lawsuit issues.
Nice! Were the subdomains such as wordpress, weebly, etc used as tier 1 backlinks? also how are your rankings now?
They are doing well. And yes, weebly/wordpress are tier 1 links!
Hey, Congrats! I have a question. When building first tier links did you use proxies or VPS? And did you buy backlinks to first tier? How do you see it now after updates? Are you still getting the same amount of money and traffic? A lot of question LoL.
Thanks. Site is doing $1000/month now. As for the first tier, I just used manual building. I did not outsource to anyone else.
Tkanks for answer. But then how about first tier…do you use VPS or proxies? Or you just sit in front of your computer at home, connected to your internet and building it? 😉 Do you use the same article and spin it? Again a lot of question but it would be a great help if you could tell this things. I go for an other niche so don’t worry about games. I don’t even play games 🙂
I dont use any VPS or proxies, just straight manual link building. This site was built with just paying the domain name, hosting and free tools.
Thanks :), and if I can dig dipper… what kind of tools do you use? It is my last question.. I guess 😉
Majestic SEO, Longtail Pro are my main tools. Picmonkey is for picture editing.
One more question came to my mind. Did you Ping all of your links including your money website? And how many days did you waited before doing that?
I don’t ping them anymore, since xml sitemaps will ping it for you. I used to wait a few days. Now I just build it whenever. It doesn’t matter anymore.
Thanks a lot 🙂 and best of luck!!
How many link do you use for rank your website?
about 20 total i think, its been a while
Can i use silo in authority site?
Depends on the keyword. Easy ones will rank quickly, usually within 2 months.
Hey since you use LongTailPro, can you tell me what “keyword competition score/KC score” did you get for you’re dragon website when you first stated the website, KC below 10 or.. KC below 20 ?
Awaiting you’re reply..
Thanks..
I didn’t get platinum, so I don’t know the KC score. However, it is very weak competition back then. Now it is more competitive because a few guys copied my methods and made it to the top 10.
Nice method, I’ll follow your method too to my site newbesttop10
I have a niche site music, and I will use these tips to power their rankea it here. very good at their tips
splendid’ll follow to the letter his teachings here in Brazil with a niche music. in your opinion this music is lucrative niche?
yes, music is a great niche to get into!
Hi There 🙂
Your info are very helpful to me as i am about to start implementing your backlinking methods for my niche sites. But as i am new to this i am confused on something. Please can you make it clear to me? You used Hubpages, Ezine and Bubblenews to backlink to your home page url. But then the other Digg, Stumble Upon, Fark, Facebook, Pinterest links you build, where they are linking back? to your Hubpages, Ezine and Bubblenews post or to your website home page url?
And a second question: About your web2.0 mini sites you said you wanted more backlinks to them and u used wiki ‘s and social bookmark what you did exactly? you post on wiki sites and you bookmarked the web2.0 mini sites or your niche site url home page? Sorry for asking all these but i am so confused:) Please make it clear to me ? Let me know as soon as you can dear friend 🙂
Martha
Social book marks go to your web 2.0s. You use social marker for that.
Getting PR links is the way to go now though. The method I used here is only for very low competition keywords.
hi can you record a video of this tips, please contact me at my email, thank’s for this post
awesome to see! SEO is where it’s at – just bring value, market value, and get them links lol
– I’m wondering if this keyword is good to go as “All these results don’t have my keyword in the title, url or description”.
– None of the top 10 results are root domain, all are inner pages only, and none have my exact keyword in their url too.
– Also I’ve checked the anchor text for each result, and none-of them seem to target my keywords its always partial keyword or some thing that is slightly related however its not the exact same term as I’m trying to rank for, then there’s also a few url variations etc for anchor diversity I suppose..
– So am I correct in understanding that these top 10 results have “an accidental rank”, because these websites have mentioned my keyword partially in their articles or some related synonyms while creating their anchor text or in their articles ?
– Does the PR of these pages matter as none of of the top 10 are optimized for my targeted keyword ?
PR matters, but it gets easier when you have a keyword tool to help you out such as Market Samurai or Longtail Pro.
I have both the tools Market Samurai and Long Tail Pro Platinum, however none of the results on top 10 have the basic concept of SEO (i.e) optimizing title, url and description done- also the anchor text backlinks which i monitored for all these top 10 websites are using are variations of my actual keyword and NOT my actual keyword, so can I rank using a new website ?
I follow alex too, hoping to get a clear resolution.
Is there an SEO course that you can recommend that I can learn everything that you just wrote.in this article?
Thank you.
Warmly,
Diane
I would recommend Source Infinitum, but it closed down. I still have the old PDF Becker wrote that I learned my trade though. Here it is: https://onlinefanatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Dream-Niches.pdf
Hi,
I am a java web developer who struggled to do seo.
I have many wordpress self hosted sites now.
The backlinking strategy given as above works.
this i found after many trial and error and reading books and videos.
now I get leads frequently from my sites for freelancing and few sales in my affiiate sites. in short seo is learnable. make website and use 247 pinger kinda of sites to make google know of your backlinks.
regards
vinodh
Thanks, i’ll try
Alex Becker has a good course called Source Phoenix. If you google Sourcewave, you’ll get his blog which has a lot of free training.
Good luck
You mention PR and Becker talks about “buying” PR rated sites and using links from as well as “renting” links to cover the cost of them. Any Idea where to get some decent ones…..PR ranks of 2 or 3 ?
Thanks in Advance
Steve
The key here, I guess, was the awesome level of keyword research you did before plunging into this niche. You found a low competition niche with very high traffic potential, so that’s why even the basic link building worked! I guess you could use something like SAPElinks.com or LinksManagement.com for some more power if you need it!
Hi Kenny, congrats on your results. I’m currently going through the Source Phoenix/University trainings now and hope to have as much success as you.
Could you elaborate on your Silo structure a little more? Are you putting actual links in your content that point back to the home URL? Or is this just accomplished with breadcrumbs or menus?
Cheers!
Thanks! The silo is just linking everything to your homepage. Just make sure you also link out to your sub pages from your home page.
Just using one of your pages as an example, what qualifies as your link to the homepage on the dargon city breeding guide. I see “home” in the top navigation bar and a link in the footer. That’s it.
Hi Seefer, don’t worry too much about how to link it a certain way. They are just guidelines to help you out. Just interlink between your pages and you will be fine.
Hi Kenny,
I was in Beckers SourceRoi and did the same as you but local (The Netherlands). Which is the reason I only make 50 euro a month 🙂
But I have way less enhanced backlinks, so thanks for that info.
Cheers from Amsterdam,
Marcus
Yes. My newest site has mostly reddit links.
Thanks for the Update. Any Chance you’ll be posting an updated post similar to this one?
Good brief article for basic seo hope to make my first $500 soon 🙂
Hi thanks for the great article. I am new to SEO and have been watching Source wave. I m excited at the potential but a little overwhelmed at the level of tech skills required to monetize. Can you give me some advice on learning the trade and making money? Is it just master the basics like Becker says? How long did it take you to get to this position? Hope to hear from you many thanks ..
Hi,
great article in truest sense.
particularly I see that questions 3,4 has no as answer for most niche keywords and local keywords. for questions 1 and 2 also I have no as answer . mainly because I find it difficult to write unique content for niche sites.
will have to work hard. I have many self hosted wordpress websites.
regards
vinodh
thanks for revealing your back linking strategy
Hi Kenny, great article. I really like your style. How long have you been working on generating money through SEO?
I try to post in a similar style on our company blog. You may want to consider throwing adsense on this site, too. your old and new fans may want to click on the ads.
Kenny, I really like the article. I have been following Alex for a while now myself and have been able to implement many of his ideas to make money online. I have really learned so much about SEO from Alex and Gregory Ortiz. I am thankful to them!
Continued success to you!
Thanks for stopping by!
Hi Kim, it doesn’t matter as much if its upwards or downwards, as long as you link them well together. 😀
Hi Kim, I didn’t explain it correctly. So what I meant is that you don’t have to worry so much about how you link it, as long as you follow the format I used for this silo.
Hi Kenny, thanks for the guide.
It was something I was looking for.
I want to ask though, how do you actually make money?
Is it purely from adsense?
Yea, but I also use other display ad networks as well.
I have experience in ranking local sites only.no experience in niche sites.
will try and report.I am reading your other post on niche site guide
Hello,
Most people complained that they got banned using adsense on anime sites,Is your adsense still running or blocked ?
I have to change my strategy after this article.. thanks for sharing
Important information. Thank you very much for the words.
update your latest earnings pls per month….thanks
How are you doing on Swag Bucks with your earnings? I believe you only mentioned your Google Adsense earnings.
very interesting SEO is a great option to work on the internet, for those who have an extra income.
Nice
I had doubts but I liked the site
update your latest earnings pls per month….thanks
Learning more and more about SEO. Great article! Thanks kenny