Upping the Stakes: Revealing Income Reports!

In my post a couple weeks ago I hinted that I was going to walk you through exactly what it takes to rank high in the search engines. I told you I was going lay out each step of the way so you could do exactly what I do and start making money online.

UPDATE: I’ve decided to take it a step further!

Once a month I will do a blog post showing you exactly how much money I make off of SEODagger.com, and – more importantly – how I make it (the affiliate sources, etc).

Not only will I show exactly how I get top search engine rankings, but also how (and how much) I earn doing so. More importantly, you will be able to watch over my shoulders as I do it and ask questions. I will not be holding anything back. You’ll be getting the real me, and everything I will be sharing with you will be as transparent as possible.

The challenge I set for myself is to rank and monetize this blog to have it generate a full-time income in less than 2 years. Is it doable? Absolutely. Will I pull it off? I suppose you’ll have to follow along to find out 🙂

The majority of my current income online is from sniper sites that either promote my own products or affiliate products. Creating those isn’t hard. Ranking them isn’t all that difficult either. The big challenge however is to scale and fine tune them to a point where they make a full-time income.

Being a Niche/Sniper Blogger isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!

So I suppose I’m looking take a new direction in the way I do business online and I invite you to come along on the journey.

You can make a full-time income off of niche sniper sites. I have done it and I also know of other people who scaled single sniper sites to replace their full-time incomes, but here’s the thing: Google is giving more and more of it’s free traffic to authority sites (AKA big sites that have a lot of relevant content on the given topic) by ranking them higher by default – making it more and more difficult for small sniper bloggers to make decent incomes online.

It certainly isn’t what it used to be. If you have dozens of targeted sites though (like I do), you’ll probably still do alright for now. But why not future proof yourself as much as possible and establish an authority site in your niche of choice?

Also, affiliate products get discontinued all the time. Unless you have your own product, basing a whole sniper site on one affiliate product is extremely risky. I’ve had more affiliates kill their products on me than I’d like to admit. It always hurts – especially if you put time, energy, and financial resources into it.

Lastly, the sole purpose of sniper blogs’ miserable existence is to tap into an easy source of targeted traffic and convert it to make money. This results in many of them being built on topics their owners couldn’t care less about. At least that is the case for 90% of the niche sniper sites I own: I couldn’t be bothered to actually turn them into something more than cheap-content sites.

Why the Change of Heart?

While preparing to put together a “how I rank” guide for you, it suddenly hit me: It’s been done a dozen times before. In fact, the guide of all guides that kickstarted the sniper site phenomenon was Google Sniper (by Georgie Brown). My methods obviously evolved from what he was teaching back then, but still, it’s nothing new. In fact, as I just explained, it’s getting harder and harder to make that strategy work today.

So, why not create an authority site and document – in front of your eyes – exactly how I rank with it? Why not show exactly how I make money with it, how much I make, and how you could do something similar?

This would certainly beat creating dozens of tedious (of no interest to you) sniper sites, would it not?

Which is why I’m taking you along on my journey to make this site – which is currently unprofitable – profitable. Not just that though. I will show you exactly how to scale the income from it to where it will – within a couple of years – make me more than my niche sites.

Before I go any further though…

I Have a Confession to Make!

I have never created an authority site for myself before. I have always been more of a sniper site guy and they have done well for me. I’ve gotten really good at creating and ranking them, but truth is: Sniper sites are on their way out while authority sites are here to stay.

Could I not just focus on building out my sniper sites? Probably, but here’s the thing: the majority of my google sniper sites are on topics I know absolutely nothing about and frankly have no interest in learning about (or to even pursue for that matter). The only reason I created them was to make money. It’s hard to truly focus on something you care little about. Which is why it’s time for me to focus my energy on this site – a topic I’m passionate about – and scale it to a point where it will bring in a full-time income.

Don’t get me wrong: I will keep my sniper sites and will make sure they continue making me money. I will use them to test out different SEO strategies and will also use a handful of them as live case studies – all of which I will share on here.

Another Silent Motivator

My wife owns ONE blog. Instead of focusing her energy on 30+ sniper blogs (as I am), she focuses 110% on that one blog. It’s on a topic she’s passionate about (cooking) and – as a result – she loves working hard on it to make it a success. Needless to say, it has established her as an expert in her niche and is now making her significantly more money than she used to earn working 3 jobs in Canada.

It didn’t happen overnight. It took her years to get to that point, and I know it will take me a while too, but hopefully by applying what I have learned from building my sniper sites and from helping her build her authority blog, I can do it in a shorter time-frame.

However long it takes though, I am up to the challenge of making it work!

What will I blog about? How about the exact techniques and strategies I use to rank my sites in the search engines and how I make money off of them. The stuff that really matters. No fluff… just pure content!

SEODagger.com already has some content on it (90 posts to be exact) but I don’t really make any money with it. I never cared to make money off of it either. Since most of my income came from niche sites (other blogs), this blog was more of an outlet for me than anything else.

Needless to say, I never optimized or monetized it properly, but that is going to change!

Starting October 1st 2015, I will start focusing on making this blog profitable. I won’t try selling you stuff through it, don’t worry. What I will do though is share everything I know when it comes to SEO and making money online, and where appropriate, will link to products or services that I personally. If I ain’t using it, I won’t be linking to it or recommending it.

It is my personal belief that if I fail at making money with this site, it is because I have failed to provide the value my readers are looking for. Hence, my focus will not be trying to make a quick buck, but rather: providing as much value as possible. If you see me do anything but that, please call me out on it 🙂

Having said that though, I have set financial goals for this blog and they are as follows:

• Make $1000 from SEODagger.com between October 1st & December 31, 2015
• Make $25,000 from SEODagger.com between January 1st & December 31, 2016

Neither are unrealistic goals in my opinion but I know to achieve either of them I will have to uphold my end of the bargain and provide a ton of value. I am totally prepared to do that!

Why Am I Doing This?

My preferred method for learning is by following someone’s example. As such, I believe the best way for me to teach is through leading by example.

Also, I hate accounting. I love checking my stats a few times a week but hate doing the accounting side of things. Meaning I only ever take a close look at how much a site earns me when it’s tax season and no one thinks about making sites more profitable during that time. In fact, it’s probably the last thing on any tax paying citizens mind.

So, taking a look at the raw numbers every 30 days or so will be a good habit to get into. This approach worked really well for my wife’s site and I know it will do the same for this site. The more often you adjust your sail the less time is wasted floating about aimlessly, right?

Why Share Income Reports Though?!

Sharing is caring. It sounds corny but I’ll keep saying it, hehe.
In all honesty though, this transparency concept is not new. In fact, after Pat Flynn started publicly sharing his online earnings back in 2008, a lot of big name internet marketers started doing the transparency thing – sharing their monthly income reports – and became a lot more respected in their niche as a result.

People love finding out how much someone successful is making and exactly how they’re doing it. I have no idea what will happen with this project (will it succeed? will it flop?), but I am super excited to begin this journey with you.

In Conclusion:
It is new to me, so if you have any hints, pointers, or experiences you can share, please let me know. All feedback is greatly appreciated!

Wish me luck 🙂