jono.me

freeblogtemplates.net now

// January 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // freeblogtemplates.net

Even though I sold the freeblogtemplates.net site a while back I am still keeping an eye on it to see how the site is progressing – and since the new owner hasn’t got around to removing my Google Analytics code so I can still see what traffic it’s getting.

The new owner has done something I wasn’t willing to do, which was stop posting to the site altogether. Not a single post has been added since I sold it.

You always hear people say search engines like frequently updated blogs so I was keen to see what the effect was.

Traffic wise it’s dropped by more than 50% since the new owner took over the site and stopped posting.

SERP wise, for the term “free blog templates” it’s #9 in google.com and #147 in yahoo.com. Previous SERPs had it at #7 in google.com and #1 in yahoo.com. So a massive drop at Yahoo but not so much as Google. PR has remained unchanged.

The drop in SERP at Yahoo has meant that instead of getting 1,400 visits from Yahoo the site now only gets 209. Despite only dropping 2 positions Google from my targetted keywords, traffic from Google has also dropped from 2,410 to 1,445.

Adsense earnings which were never great have remained the same, however the WordPress plug-in I used for displaying ads is playing up. It had a function allowing you to “donate” a percentage of your impressions to the plug-in author. It was set to 1-3% but it appears to be taking one of the two ad spots most of the time – meaning Adsense wont be getting seen as often as it should.

Nothing conclusive however still very interesting to see the effects of not updating the site.

Going, going, gone

// November 13th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // freeblogtemplates.net

A couple of weeks ago I decided to see what interest there would be for my freeblogtemplates.net site.

To cut a long story short, it was sold – for $150. I am pretty happy with the amount I got for it considering it’s revenue was minimal, however considering the time I had spent on it it was probably not great!

In the end it was a learning exercise which only cost me $7 for a domain name – so making more than 20 times the amount I invested is pretty good!

It was a bit of fun to develop and it was good to offload it for some money rather than have it dwindle away and be worth nothing.

I now have to decide what project is next…

Rising through the SERPS

// October 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // freeblogtemplates.net

In my last post I said that www.freeblogtemplates.net was position 3 on Yahoo.com and mid-way through the 2nd page on Google.com for the term “free blog templates“.

For the past few weeks I’ve sat at # 1 on Yahoo which is great, however Google is really the one I want to crack.

As of today I am position # 7 on Google and it is gradually climbing. I was at number 11 for a while (ie. top of page 2) and then I moved to number 10 and now it’s number 7.

This is without any targeted link building either – this just appears to be natural. The site does get links through link backs and people deciding to link to it, but I haven’t done any promotion of the site besides one or two links on other sites I own.

The site managed to get a PR2 in it’s first update too.

So far this month, 91% of the traffic is coming from search engines (53% Google, 32% Yahoo), 6% from referring sites and 3% direct.

So my little experiment in to SERP continues.

Since my last post I have also added Blogger templates but finding good quality templates for Blogger is a little more difficult than WordPress. The Blogger page is pretty well visited so I think my assumption that people using the term “blog template” could be looking for Blogger rather than WordPress was probably right.

I have also started putting ads on the site. I initially started with Adsense but I have now added some additional affiliate ads – targetting bloggers. I’m also using a “stripe ad” which runs across the top the page. Am getting some adsense clicks, but no affiliate sales yet.

Will try to update a little more often on this site as it will be interesting to have a full history of it’s progress.

Update, 25 August

// August 25th, 2008 // No Comments » // australianwebmaster.com, freeblogtemplates.net

I missed the update last week.

AustralianWebmaster.com is getting frustrating as it seems to be hovering around much the same traffic level, however it’s probably to be expected as I haven’t done much marketing lately. Something I need to address.

It’s coming up to my three month anniversary of running the site so I want to send out another e-mail newsletter to all members. There are a few new options I want to add before I do that so got plenty to do.

I have also been working on another site the past few weeks, it’s freeblogtemplates.net. I bought this domain a while back and uploaded some templates and left it. It was a very keyword rich domain name which I was surprised hadsn’t been bought – I don’t normally go for a .net but I thought it was too good to pass up.

Only recently have I started to update the content. About once a week I go around and find some really good quality WordPress themes and then schedule them to post every couple of days.

I am getting some really good search engine traffic. Google seems a bit up and down – the site generally comes in part way through page 2 for the search “free blog templates” but the listing dissappears every now and again though. Yahoo is a lot kinder and sending through some really good traffic, I’m in position 3 on the first page at Yahoo.com.

I don’t advertise on the site yet, I am concentrating on building it for a little while before I do. It’s probably coming close to that time now.

I also want to add Blogger templates. Most WordPress users would use the term “theme” rather than templates, unlike Blogger users who do use “templates”. I think supporting both platforms would really help.

Other than that, I will keep adding content and see how it goes.

I also bought another site this week but it’s going to have to wait a few weeks before I get to it. It’s setup on Joomla so it’s a bit daunting at the moment. I will just keep an eye on it’s traffic and adsense revenue to understand it a bit more.