TheRandomForest.com

Before I embark on a long journey and start creating hordes of websites, I am optimizing and aiming to earn consistent income from a few that I already have.

The aim is to create a solid structure for 3 or 4 different styles of site so that I have an instant template that can be translated to accommodate any new ideas. If you can create a fairly low maintenance site that earns around $1 – $2 a day then you have a decent back bone to build upon.

First up: 3D and Digital Wallpapers

For the past week I have been working on a site that was started about one month ago. The site 3d and Digital Wallpapers was initially thrown up with a few posts and was left almost idle until last week when I decided it would be the first template to finalize.

Assessing what I had

Until around 5 days ago, there was absolutely no income being generated. I am now earning around $1-3 in Adsense and about $3 in affiliate links per day. It has surpassed my expectations and looks as if it could possible grow further, with a little work.

The website is a simple concept. I source wallpapers and background images from around the web and republish them as a blog post, providing a back link to the source.

It was already getting ranked well in Google for a few long tail keywords. I used and am using Micro Niche Finder to uncover these, please see my guest post on BrentCrouch.com for more information “Micro Niche Finder Review – Find Long Tail Keywords – Keyword Research” but none of the visitors were converting into Adsense revenue.

The site was also very messy and the header took up almost half the screen of my 12″ Macbook. I redesigned the header, rearranged the sidebars a little and added email subscription. In this case I used Feedburner as I do not intend to reach out to the subscribers.

The layout and a few glitches still need attention.

Optimizing potential earnings

Looking over my stats it materialized that there was a big problem. The visitors were mostly arriving via Google image search so, most likely, were never actually visiting the site itself. After searching the web I came across some Java code that redirects people to the actual web page of the image, when they click on it from Google Image Search.

If you want to do the same, to redirect traffic from Google Image search, then just install the following code just before the </head> tag, I put in in my Wordpress Header.php file.

<script language=”JAVASCRIPT”>
<!– Hide from old Browsers
if (top != self) top.location.href = location.href;
// Stop hiding from old browsers –>
</script>

This code instantly increased my visitors and the visitors time on my site… Also, like magic, Adsense earnings started to appear.

After realizing I had no idea where the Adsense earnings were coming from it was time to start tracking each ad. Luckily this website uses the SEOAdMax Free Wordpress Theme from Garry Conn. This theme is built in a highly user friendly fashion so adding the Adsense channels and customizing the Adsense units is very easy. I am now in the process of monitoring each unit and “cutting away the fat” to create optimum Adsense earnings from this site style.

Next up was working out what to do with the affiliates. A great new Blogging buddy, Mattaw from Money Bites, referred me to a new Affiliate Network (new to me anyway!) called Marketing Leverage (If you want to join, I have added my affiliate banner at the end of the post). They have lot’s of little affiliate programs, some very dubious, but other pretty damn good, and many get you money just for the user signing up with their email address.

After searching around I came upon an affiliate called Smiley Central. Everyone has seen the banners around for “cute animal smileys”, well that is them. The thing that attracted me to them was that you got just under $3 of commission purely for someone installing the toolbar, no details or even email required. They also have a strict no spyware or adware policy.

To make sure it was legit, I downloaded the tool bar (not through my affiliate link, you will get banned for that!) to give it a test run . Strangely I actually quite like what it can do, so have no problem promoting it:

(I have not included my affiliate link here)

I need to optimize the positions of the banners a little more but I am still managing to get about one commission per day. Pretty good, I think?

I also need to break my ‘Adsense Checking’ addiction… does anyone else have this?

What next for this site?

The traffic is doing pretty well for a new site and I have had a little boost from Social Networks, such as Stumbleupon. I need to keep the traffic at least steady and ideally increase it.

Now I have the basics sorted the rest is easy. I will spend the next week or monitoring, changing around and adding new content. Then assess it’s readiness to be turned into a template for image driven sites. This will then be my first template ready to start rolling out to new projects.

What next, as a whole?

I am close with this first template, I hope you liked the detailed run down of what I did. I will report back soon about the other templates that I will be working on as soon as I have any progression, or revelations.

• Blog About Animals and Nutrition Health Store are both going to be looked at in the hope that i can come up with the perfect standard blog style template.
• Condom Size Chart is going to be my first static website template but I will still be using Wordpress to run it.

Let me know if you have any comments, opinions or help for me. I appreciate it a lot.

Oh and here is that Market Leverage Affiliate banner, I strongly suggest you join, they are extremely friendly and I have been having personal contact with my affiliate manager via GChat.

My final optimized templates will also be available to all subscribers as a free download.

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