What can be learned from these stats?

I haven't created blogs for all 24 contestants but I have targeted them all one way or another with either new blogs or using some of my older existing blogs that cater to this niche. The results vary from decent to crappy at this stage of the competition and the two blogs I have shown you fall into the "just alright" and "crappy" categories.

The Asia'h blog had an okay bump after the show and is still getting traffic today - not huge traffic but enough to work with as far as monetization goes. The Amy Davis blog isn't getting much for traffic at all and hasn't generated a single click yet.

Using all of my sites as a barometer, Asia'h is the fifth most popular Idol. Amy sits near the bottom of the pack along with, Joanne Borgella, Garrett Haley, Colton Berry and Chikezie Eze.

Note: I wrote everything above before the elimination last night - I didn't finish the post as I figured I would wait and see who got sent home. Needless to say, I wasn't surprised to see who was eliminated - 4 of the 5 with the worst search results.

It's now Friday morning and you can see that Asia'h is still pulling in a steady stream of visitors.



There is a slight problem with the Asia'h blog though - in spite of the traffic I have only received 2 clicks since Thursday morning. The reason has to do with her name. The Adsense bot keeps changing the ads on the blog - one minute I get related American Idol ads and the next I get ads for everything from Asian Airlines to a fertilizer spreader. My attempts to fix this have been stymied and here s why..

A Tale of Two Bots

The main Google Bot is responsible for catagorizing my blog and ranking it in the serp's. I have targeted the keyword "Asia'h Epperson" and the bot has me ranking number two in the serp's for this term. see below...



This is good as the only site that outranks me is American Idol's own website. The problem is that to achieve this I have had to use Asia'h's name in all the prominent locations - URL, page title, post titles, H tags etc. The downside is that the Adsense bot uses these same markers to determine the ads it gives me and because her name is Asia'h the bot keeps thinking that it must be a misspelling of the largest landmass on Earth and I keep getting "Asia" related ads. To fix this I need to change all the markers to "American Idol" keywords but by doing so I risk losing my position with the main Google bot. If I eliminate the keyword "Asia'h" I will get relevant ads for the show but I may lose my ranking for "Asia'h" in the process - most annoying.

Another problem is that the people searching for Asia'h aren't looking for "Photos", "Pics" or "Celebrity" stuff in their keywords - notice the terms people used to find Amy Davis - few though they were I could zone in on what they were after just by looking at the search query keywords they used. In Asia'h's case the people are simply looking for general info as they are only using her name in the searches. This makes it hard to monetize the site - if people are looking for something in particular you can optimize your content to get the Adsense Bot to give you ads related to it.

The most popular contestant is a guy - and the people searching for him are quite interested in his "photos", "does he have a girl friend", his "birthday", his "myspace page" etc. The point being you can learn a lot by what keywords are used to find your site and then optimize your monetization accordingly. I have no doubt that the people searching for the "GUY" are a young girls - my own 6 year old daughter has mentioned how "cute" he is several times... lol. I know this contestants audience and need to find ads that young girls will click on - something I readily admit I have had problems with in the past. If any of my female readers can suggest what 12 year old girls would be interested in please let me know. I am after all just a "Guy" and am clueless to the inner workings of half the planets population in spite of living with three of them...

Ok, some quick pointers.

All my sites combined have produced just over $100 in Adsense revenue in the last two days - Asia'h's blog started out well but has crashed and burned re: Adsense as mentioned above. None of the contestants are pulling in great numbers - nothing even close to what Antonella Barba, Kelly Pickler, Sanjiya Malakar or Chris Daughtry did in past years but the season is still young and anything can happen.

I have received approx. 6500 visitors in two days to all my "American Idol" related sites. $100 sucks for this amount of traffic. My Kelly Pickler site still makes $20 - $30 a day and it only gets about 200 visitors daily.

So far I have shown you how to get quick, free traffic from Google. The Asia'h blog is not making money yet although it does point out the advantage of using Blogger - I spent maybe an hour total creating it and adding content - it was free - it allowed me to get the perfect URL asiahepperson.blogspot dot com - it has made $26 for the effort and I have 600 or so people visiting it all in 12 days. How many of your 12 day old sites have 600 visitors - remember I have not submitted this to any social networks. 80% of the visitors are from search engines - 20% are from other sites linking in.

BTW - I have mentioned the importance of trying to get the perfect URL in the past. Aside from it helping you get Top Spot in the serp's when all other factor's are equal between two sites, it also has some "Link Capturing" benefits. In this case my URL has led people to assume the site is either Asia'h's own blog or that it is an official fan blog. Check out this radio station - http://www.kissin925.com/pages/694105.php Kissin925 dot com - website (I don't want tolink to it or the jig will be up if they read this) or better yet the LA Times Link to my Blog Pretty cool I think for a free, 12 day old blog. Okay - that sounds like braggin' - I'm not, pure horseshit luck is all but still pretty cool. Oh - having a link optimized for my keyword from the LA Times does wonders for my keyword authority - did you notice I now outrank youtube dot com in the search listings? I was ranked just below them until the LA Times link. Pretty damn cool...

Note: I hope you are getting my point with these lessons. Everything I have shown you with this short term blog can be done in any niche with any blog at any time. If any of you doubt my system of making money online just think of what I have just done with this 12 day old blog - I can't fake the results - you can check the serp's yourselves. I have a handful of links, how many does youtube have? It all comes down to SEO. I outrank youtube because I have the most keyword authority - not PR - not quality content - not because my blog is prettier or is reader friendly - or is popular with Digg and the social crowd. I attack every niche the same as this but in the case of long term blogs I write much better content.

This post will be enormous if I don't stop now. I will pick up with Adsense and other ways to monetize these blogs in the next post. What I have to show you won't just apply to these kinds of blogs but for everyone that has a niche blog already set up. In fact a friend has a blog that is in the "entertainment" niche like American Idol and since he has asked me what I would do with his site to make money I thought I would use it as an example. You can see Mike's new blog "PoP Critics" or "A Mike Life" - a Movie Review blog by clicking the link. I will show you what I would do with his sites and how to turn a buck on the traffic I am getting from Asia'h's blog.