Review: Micro Niche AdSense Course

Yes, I’m back from the dead. Actually, I’m back from buying and moving into a new house while still trying to sell the old one and doing some renos on the new one. The old one sold and the major renos are out of the way for now (getting pricing on a kitchen makeover, though, so not done yet!) and my life is returning somewhat to normal. Today I want to review an ebook/course called Micro Niche AdSense Course, which is one of the very few AdSense-related products I heartily recommend. Let’s see why.

How To Make Money With AdSense

Every once in a while I find the time to stop by the WarriorForum’s section on AdSense. There I discovered an interesting post by Warrior member “XFactor” about his technique for making money with AdSense. You should go and read the thread, as it’s full of real-life advice. I made a few posts to add to the discussion. Be warned, it’s a long, long thread with almost 1600 replies to XFactor’s original post, so it will take a while to read through it.

The gist of the thread is that you can make money with AdSense using completely free search engine traffic by carefully targeting low-competition product-related keywords with simple websites and some well-planned but easy article marketing. The fundamental steps are:

1. Locate a keyword phrase with a decent level of exact phrase searches per month (using the free Google keyword tool) and low competition when a phrase search is done using Google (not many competing sites and/or the top 10 has many not-well-targeted sites listed)
2. Register a domain containing that phrase
3. Build a simple website around that domain using content you rewrite based on product descriptions and other material found elsewhere
4. Write and submit articles to one or two well-known article directories that link back to the site
5. Repeat the process with another phrase

None of this is really new, of course. In some ways, this is the “bum marketing” technique adapted for AdSense. You’re building a whitehat “virtual real estate” empire using a very focused technique.

What I find interesting was XFactor’s assertions that he’s tried everything under the sun, including lots of “blackhat” stuff, and this for him was the simplest, surest and safest way to generate a recurring income.

The Micro Niche AdSense Book

XFactor’s thread generated so much interest and he was getting so many questions about the specifics of his technique — most of which he quite happily answered right in the thread, by the way — that XFactor decided to create an ebook based on his experience. The Micro Niche AdSense Course, almost 100 pages long, is what he came up with. I’m jealous, I must admit, because I wish I’d written it myself!

The subtitle of XFactor’s book is “The Exact Steps That I Use To Earn $300 to $400 Every Day With Google AdSense”. And that’s what you get. The chapters are:

1. The Perfect AdSense Niches

XFactor explains why product-focused low-competition niches are the way to go with AdSense as to opposed to focusing on high-paying but extremely competitive niches. He gives several actual examples of niches he’s used and shows how writing content for those niches can be incredibly easy.

2. My Keyword Research Approach

How XFactor does his keyword research and domain registration. To speed things up, he uses Micro Niche Finder (MNF), but you can do it all with some elbow grease or different tools.

3. Creating Your Website Content

Using product descriptions and other easy-to-find source material to build your website content. Easy to do, even if you hate writing, and lots of content to work with.

4. My Highest Converting Template

XFactor shows gives you a complete HTML site designed using the same template he now uses for his new sites. It’s fully compliant with AdSense terms and conditions and is very simple to replicate for your own sites.

5. Getting Ranked & Making Money: Simple Article Marketing

XFactor gets his sites to rank by submitting articles to a few major article directories, mostly EzineArticles. But he doesn’t submit articles related to the topic of his site, he submits articles that are about topics that interest him and are therefore easy to crank out. The articles aren’t a source of traffic, they’re a source of high-quality, well-anchored links to the sites. If you’ve chosen a proper keyword phrase, all it will take is a few articles to get your site into the top 10 spots on Google for that phrase.

6. Putting It All Together: 7-Day Action Plan

Here XFactor runs through the same system he uses to find and launch new sites, basically putting everything discussed in the previous chapters into a simple checklist system.

7. Growing Your Business

XFactor’s final thoughts on making money online and how to adapt to changing times.

Along with the ebook you also get access to a live version of a site built using XFactor’s template and some training videos. Everything you need to replicate his system. XFactor also updates the material when he makes changes, and he emphasizes that you should test different approaches yourself to fine-tune the system for your own needs and skills.

Testing It Out

I decided to test out this system before writing a review. I followed the 7-day action plan and built two sites using two very different keyword phrases I had found with a bit of investigation using the AdWords keyword tool. Each site was built using a PLRSiteBuilder version of the template and linked to from articles on EzineArticles and GoArticles. After a couple of weeks, one ranks #7 for its phrase (NOT in quotes, by the way —) and the other ranks #9 (also not in quotes), with no work beyond the initial article submissions. (I didn’t even do the full 7-day plan, BTW, just submitted a couple of articles each per site.)

The results are very encouraging. The average CTR for both sites is 16%, which means it’s actually more because that includes my views of the sites. I’d say 20% was more accurate. On some days the CTR was as high as 50%. The eCPM numbers were exeedingly good, averaging about $75 and generally hopping between $45 and $300 on a daily basis. Of course, those are eCPM values, not earnings. Actual earnings are not huge so far. One site is earning about $30/month, the other $2/month. My niche choice for the latter had too few searches, I think, so I’m not sure it’s going to increase much. I can see the other one increasing to the $100/month range if I can move it up into the top 5 or so.

Are these two sites exciting in and of themselves? No, not really. You can’t quit your job based on these numbers. But I’m not losing money on them, and I don’t really have to do any extra work on them once they’re up.

This is where volume and luck comes into play. I’ve discussed this topic many, many times before. There are two important factors required for small publishers to make money with AdSense:

• Lots of small sites (see 172 AdSense Sites = $5000 per Month and Why Multiple Sites Make Sense); and
• Decent amounts of cheap/free traffic.

If you have 100 sites earning an average of $3/day, that’s $300/day, which is nothing to sneeze at. But you won’t see those kinds of numbers until you build up your “empire”, because it’s hit-and-miss in terms of niche selection. That’s why having a “fire and forget” system is ideal.

Is Anything New?

I really like this course, if it’s not obvious by now, but I also want to point out that it’s not a breakthrough or anything. The broad strokes are out there for free. If you feel you need specific details, get the course, but otherwise just study that WarriorForum thread and take action.

XFactor is very upfront about all of this, by the way, and he also makes no guarantees that his system will make you any money. But it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a “sure thing” with AdSense if you’re willing to put in the work.

I especially like the whitehat approach he’s taken, because you don’t have to pretend you’re an expert at whatever niche you’re focusing on. Or do fake reviews of products and services you have never (or would never) buy or use.

The article writing is easy, as is the site building. A few hours of research and writing per site is all you need to do before moving on to the next one. And everything can be done with free tools and sites — all you need pay for are the domain names (get them cheaply with free private registration from 1 & 1) and the website hosting (get a cheap reseller account to host them all for one low price).

Bonuses!

Full disclosure: I was one of the first people to sign up for XFactor’s affiliate program. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve been excited to promote something related to AdSense that wasn’t my own creation.

If you’re interested in purchasing the Micro Niche AdSense Course, I’m offering some cool bonuses to anyone who purchases it through my affiliate link.

The first bonus is a new tool I’ve developed called (imaginatively) “Find Me A Domain”. This software tool, which runs on your PC or Macintosh, was something I developed for my own use with the course, because finding a good domain name is always such a chore. This tool is simple to use and I may sell it separately if there’s interest. You give it a list of keywords (it will even read spreadsheets downloaded directly from the AdWords Keyword Tool) and it finds the best available domains for those keywords using the criteria in the course.

The second bonus is my own version of XFactor’s template, but this one is done in more modern HTML with CSS. There’s also a PLRSiteBuilder version of it included.

The bonuses will be ready later this week.