Ok Everyone. I am restarting to concentrate writing at my blog once again.
Basically during my last stint as blog writer I really lost the focus because at times to me it seemed bragging talking about how big I am and how much money I am going to make and all that. Also lately there had been a surge in make Money Online blogs. Anyone with a bit ebook reading used to claim themselves as Gurus and start giving tips for online money making. Also I got tired of people bitching at my blog about quality of the net and all that.
So in new incarnation of my blog, I am going to set a few records straight.
A> It is MY blog and I will write about the things that work for me.
B> I am very good in peeling the skin of any site / technique. So I will post more and more technique about how people are using the net to generate traffic / money.
C> All that I willl provide will be information. I do not endorse any stuff.
D> Some of the stuff that I talk about may fall into certain grey area of traffic / revenue generation. If you have any issues with that, I suggest you not waisting your precious time at my blog.
E> This blog is different than any other blog, because without emphasizing on just one specialized way of making money online, I will act as undercover agent and will disclose how people are generating traffic / making money.
F> I am not an innovator nor I have a vision like Einsteen. However I am good at duplicating how stuff works and how to produce something at mass scale. If you see something of interest on net, feel free to share it with me at nitin@omsolutions.net
G> Our focus has now totally changed. We no longer work for clients and writing programs for clients. So no client / programmer stuff.
H> Most of the stuff that you will read here, you might have read somewhere along with 1000 different ideas. However here we reverse Engineer the stuff that is working and then we will post case studies of working methods.

With these words I am starting new phase of journey for our blog.

Nitin

Getting traffic through ezine Article submission is probably the only idea on which may be 90% SEOs of the world agree upon. It indeed does require some pain. The methodology is quite simple. Write good content article (at least 450 words) for the specific niche of your site, submit article to different article sites, put link to your web-site in footer of article. That’s all. Enjoy free traffic from Article sites and enjoy some link juice through backlinks.

Again as most of you by now know that we go by experiment and here is another experiment. We did write articles for many of out sites, but never tracked direct revenue generated by these articles. To us, writing a good article and submitting articles to 25 Article sites cost 10$ (we charge 25$ to our client for this service). So here goes the experiment.

We just launched a mortgage site. I have setup my content writer to write five articles a day specific to Mortgage. Then our link team will submit these articles to 25 article sites. This activity will go on for 2 weeks that is fifty articles. Overall cost to us is 500$. It will be interesting to observe how much money is made in direct revenues. I will keep you all posted about it. Also here goes list of article sites.

http://www.1888articles.com
http://www.articlegeek.com
http://www.articlewise.com
http://www.articleblotter.com
http://www.articleselections.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.article-hut.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.webpronews.com/submit
http://www.articlehub.net
http://www.articlepile.com
http://www.submityourarticle.com
http://www.articlegear.com
http://www.articleshowroom.com
http://www.articlenetworks.com
http://www.articless.net
http://www.promotearticles.com
http://www.articlerich.com
http://www.articleblender.com
http://www.article-hangout.com
http://www.article99.com
http://www.articles4free.com
http://www.articlewiz.com
http://www.articleuniversity.com
http://www.ezinesarticle.com

Nitin Tripathi

Finally started making pennies. This week with 10 sites made 2$. Lol I am not excited, but its good to see sites started getting some traffic.

Now is the time to really move on to adding content in all fifty sites of alpha-1. Also for initial ten sites, the coming weeks will see lot of back links and lot of direct traffic through Web 2.0 link strategies. As said earlier the mission is to make $50 a day by end of October.

One thing that I would like to clear at this point of time, all the link building will be as ethical as it is possible. I understand a school of thought where in all type of link building is spam and all type of link request is considered spam; I can’t argue with those people. For them whole web is spam. Other than that all our sites are going to get links through link requests, article submissions, blog writing etc.

So far in initial 2 weeks, we got close to twenty links for our initial pool of ten sites. For now all traffic that we get is direct traffic from links as most of the sites have very less content (may be 5-10 page each) and they don’t have lot many back links to rank for each and every term. Right now traffic from Search Engines is zero. Overall the top traffic site is getting fifteen visitors a day. Please don’t preach about good content sites getting tens thousands of visitors a day. We have a few sites that get traffic in thousands, however specifically for this project, we are focusing on building 5000 content niche sites.

Indeed one of the biggest problems we are facing is erasing the footprints.  To erase the footprints, you can never have one fixed strategy. If you have a fixed strategy, then you are leaving footprints again. I will write a separate blog on erasing footprints once we have 500 plus successful running sites.

Nitin Tripathi (http://blog.omsolutions.net)

Sorry for being late in reporting the progress. From this point on I will submit a weekly blog on the progress till we start really seeing some action.

First week has indeed been very hectic and full of chaos. We created Ten web-sites mostly focused in Real Estate. Now comes the time of handling over the sites to Content Writers.

We got two new content writers on board. Content writing is not really everyone’s cup of tea. I personally provided two days training session to these guys to do the content writing. This session started all the way from beginning of web to the current style of content writing. I showed and explained them how to write catchy news, articles and content. Despite our best efforts, one guy was total dud. He was writing the articles that will make you yawn. On Car Insurance, he was writing articles like “Avis is offering 20% discunt on cr rantal”. On refinance he was writing articles as “Cosumre creeeedit card no way  make dent in ur pcket beware” Basically lot of spelling mistakes and full of irrelevant content. Many of the times I had to ask him, how can you write so bad. So finally we have to show him the door. The good side of the story is other guy groomed up real nice. Now he is writing 5-6 articles a day and most of his articles are good. So by now we have 10 sites ready, each with 2-3 good articles.

Moving onwards this week a few more new sites will be made. By the end of the week, we will have current 10 sites ready to be shown to the world. So at week 3, we will start doing Web 2.0 Link Building.

Again we already have a team well familiar with Web 1.0 Link Building. However this project will focus upon Web 2.0 Link Building techniques. I will write another blog about Web 2.0 Link Building.

So basically in summary things are moving, future seems bright and we are inching towards the target.

I thank all of you for head up, support and advices. Critics are always welcome.

Nitin Tripathi

Business sense and some fine details of 5K site projects

First off the 5K-Alpha-1 project is in process and going on smoothly. Once the alpha phase is over, I will update all of you.

I really enjoy reading your comments. At times, It gives me some ideas about the things which I haven’t really thought about.
Now I will answer to some of the valid points raised by a few commenter.

1) Business sense of making 5 K sites and profit ratio

First off please keep in mind that my most of the staff (not all) will work from our development office in India. Much of the US staff is part-time / interns. Wages and running expenses of 5K sites are 2.5K a day. How do we know it - Well we are in almost same business since last 5 years and even currently we have a staff of 100 people doing various projects for our clients and for us as well

2) How to manage a team this big

Each and everyone may have different ideas, but here is the way we manage our team. As I mentioned even currently we have a team of 100 people, which in itself is a sizable team. We always have very small teams running their shows independently. That gives them a sense of freedom and even working for a bigger organization, they still have their independence. We have a Technical Leader in every 10 to 15 staff, which assists them in case team needs technical assistance. We have project managers who are from non-software backgrounds. The PMs are strictly admin people and they take care of admin related issues of teams assigned to them. We have made our corporate culture in a way so that everyone takes care of their own stuff. All Team Members send their daily status to Technical Leader, Project Manager and to me. Before assigning project to team, I myself create huge documentation mentioning each and every single minutest of the detail. PM’s role is to make sure that the documentation is being followed.

In the current project each slot of 50 sites is allocated to a team of 3 people. A few slots of 100 sites will be allocated to a team of 4 people. Overall 6 PMs will be there. Every Team will have at least one experienced person who has worked in similar projects with us for at least 3 months. Each site will be updated with fresh articles / content at least once a week. Each web-site will be given 2 hours a week time by team. Server maintenance, reporting, configuration etc will be taken care by Technical Leaders.

3) Why not build a few sites with huge content

Yes why not. We have done it in the past and we may do that in the future. I am not saying no to it. However the current project that I am talking about is building 5K small sites Building small number of sites with huge content and building huge number of sites with huge content, both have their merits and demerits. I just love the merits of both of them. But again the current project is about building 5K small sites.

4) What happens if Internet changes and revenue model for sites get changed?

I haven’t yet disclosed our revenue generation model. But overall it won’t be dependant upon just a single stream of revenue. It will be a mixture of Content specific ads, CPA ads, selling our own Programming/support services, selling our own products / contents etc. So even if Internet dies down, at least we will have clients using our services.

5) Isn’t it link farming

Link farming is very relational term and everyone can define it to suit their own benefit. My definition of link farming is Wikipedia definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_farm).  No, none of our sites will link to each other. None of our sites will specifically be made to benefit other sites owned by us / others. No, none of these sites will have just links. Again all these sites will be content sites and sure they may have a small related link sections of may be 20 links max.

I do agree with comment of Keith. If sites that we make will be spam, they will sure enough die down. You can never build a sustainable business model out of spam (though indeed you can make quick bucks). If at all I have to build 5K spam sites, I can build 5K sites each with 1M crapper content in 2 weeks. I don’t have to work for a year with a team of 300 people.

Nitin Tripathi

First off, thank you all for your comments, criticism and appreciation. I will quickly answer a few questions. Having a few sites with more content or have more sites with niche content is always debatable topic. I personally had success in past with both strategies, so am not against either of them. However for this specific project, our strategy is plain and simple. Build 5 K site with niche content. We had mega content rich sites that used to make 1 K a day and we had our success with highly SEOed keyword oriented small sites (which most of visitors will term as crap) as well. However this project is different. It is to build 5 K sites with original content mostly. Indeed a few sites may eventually do even 100$ a day. But I had set a very realistic target of just 1 $. It is because of my personal belief that you should never miss any target at all. With good content site, it is hard to miss 1$ a day target. Isn’t it. Sure more money, more happy I am. So anyway, here is the official start of project 5K.

To begin with, we have divided the project in different phases. First phase of the project is called 5KAlpha. This phase will involve building, maintaining and managing 100 sites. By the end of September the development phase will be over. Then the site will be handled to maintenance team that will include One Content writer and two part time webmasters. In the development phase, I am working sixteen hours a day along with a web designer. Each and every single strategy user id/ passwords are well documented and backup taken.

Alpha phase is further divided into Ten sub-modules. First submodule is 5KAlpha1. This module consists of building Ten blogs. The blogs is specifically targeting niche segmented area in mortgage market. Here is a sample time-line for phase 5KAlpha1.

- Day 1: Ordering dedicated server for 5KALpha phase, find out 100 niche sectors, register 10 domain names for 5KAlpha1, configure and setup domain names. Responsibility - Nitin
- Day 2: Build 5 sites for 5KAlpha1. While building the site, along with graphic keep on writing one article so that blog has at least some presence. Responsibility – Nitin and web designer
- Day 3: Build 5 more sites for 5KAlpha1. While building the site, along with graphic keep on writing one article so that blog has at least some presence. Responsibility – Nitin and web designer
- Day 4: Content writer start writing Article for all 10 sites of 5KAlpha1.
- Day 5,6,7,8,9,10 : Content Writer keep on adding the content.
- Day 11: Two webmasters handed over the responsibility of adding features to site and start building the links for the site.
- Day 12,-19: Content writer, webmasters work on the 10 sites of 5KAlpha1.
- Day 20: Add content specific advertisement to sites. Responsibility: Nitin / Webmaster
- Day 21-365: 5KAlpha1 being managed and maintained by two webmasters and one content writer.

Today we are running into Day 2 of 5KAlpha1. 5 sites already have been completed. On Day 4, development team is going to start another batch of 10 sites for next phase of project.

Nitin Tripathi

Target 5 K a Day Feedback and answers

Monday is fast approaching, when I will enter in actual implementation of what is going to be one of the biggest project of my life so far.

Before I go into my preparations, I will quickly cover feedback I received so far. A few people expressed shock that I will litter the web with 5000 sites. The people whose shock was genuine, my answer is no I am not building 5000 scrapper sites. I am building 5000 unique content sites that will be maintained and managed by 300 people. Its not littering instead it is contributing to web. The people who just express shock because of jealously for them here is my middle finger. Also I got suggestions from many people including some very talented and famous people on the net. Almost all the people opined that instead of huge number of sites; build lesser number of sites with more content. It is a debatable issue always. However my line of thinking is if a person is looking for “Reverse Mortgage” or looking for information related to HELOC, a big Finance portal probably won’t give him the right answer. Go to Bankrates.com and try to find out information about HELOC, it will be almost impossible to even find out the definition of HELOC. However if you have a small web-site that does not talk about refinance, that does not talk about Home equity, all it talks about HELOC, it better serves the purpose.

Indeed the way web is going (that is google driven), most of the strategies are being made keeping in mind likes and dislikes of Big G. Even considering that case, may be building lot many smaller sites is a better idea. It may happen down the road, no one has seen the future, if I build a big enough site and some of jealous people find out the site name (like a few people mentioned in phase 1). They may start doing blog spam for the site and then complaint to big G accusing us of doing blog spam. Big G will ban my mega site and I will be left with liability of 300 people who are dependant upon me for their bread and butter. It had happened to me in past and so am being extra careful this time.

A few people emailed me criticizing about me so obsessed in making money. Heck I am not communist. I am a thorough capitalist and any given point of day I would love to die with billion bucks below my mattresses instead dying penniless on street.:)

Hope it answers all the questions. Again everyone’s feedback is very vital for our mission and I will keep my level best to share the information with all readers. Closing the post with Barry’s favorite dialog “SHOW ME DA MONEY”

Nitin Tripathi

I will admit to the fact that a few years back we were making good dough through unique content. Later we lost our niche and lost most of our recurring revenue stream. However moving forward, I am setting my goal of making 5 K a day from 09/01/2008, which is 1 year from now.

I will keep on writing a weekly blog to update all of you with my progress and success so far. I am not going to write a new youtube, nor am gonna re-invent the wheel. All I will do is generate the revenue and traffic the way most of the webmaster generates, that is through unique and better highly targeted content.  The overall grand plan is build 5000 unique content sites, keep on updating them, keep on getting links for them and do everything under the sun to make each of the site making at least 1 $ a day. If I achieve this target, then even 100 K a day is easily doable.

I will start a pilot testing phase in this week. To begin with I have identified 50 niche sectors. We are going to build blogs for these 50 niche sectors this week. By the end of next week, the target is come out with 50 working blogs on 50 brand new domains. I am also recruiting a mini team to manage this set of 50 sites. The mini team will include a web designer, a content writer and a link builder. Once I am done with setting up 50 sites, this team will take the blogs from there to next level by adding new content and by making the blog visible at other places. My target is making 50$ a day from the pilot sites by October 30.

So gathering all my energy to move towards building 5000 unique target sites with a staff of 300. I wish myself Best Of Luck?

Nitin Tripathi

I have seen many tech forums around the web. Most of these are being maintained by volunteers. Taking one step beyond what’s available right now, we are proud to introduce our tech forum at programming.omsolutions.net Anyone can ask any tech question over there and the questions will be answered by our paid employees. You can ask questions related to programming, related to webmaster issues, related to HTML and design stuff. Sure don’t ask questions like “Design me a site like youtube” Instead a more appropriate question will be ” I want to integrate youtube video upload code from my site. Does youtube provides any API to help other websites integrate with youtube?”

We will keep on adding more features to our forum in due course of time.

Nitin