How WTC (9-11) got me into blogging
Coin collection is my passion…
One day I was looking around online for different gold and silvercoins and have found the ‘WTC coins’ on Ebay… but it wasn’t that easy.
The reason behind my research:
I wanted to know where these coins come from and whyhad nothing happened to them when the towers fell. The WTC bombing is a very big deal to me I would say and it changed the way I look at life.
So I decided to dig into the “coins” niche on the Internet…
Lots of folks, just like me, were looking for answers;it was a high demand but low supply niche…
I know this because I could see questions about the coins at Yahooanswers and in various other coins forums. But there was not a lot of information to be found. So I though why not build a website that covers the whole topic and give people the information they’re desperately looking for.
I’ve built my website in 2 weeks and the way I gathered the content was simple:
I previously talked to everybody that had anything to do with the coins, from coins dealers that originally got the coins to sell to the people behind the coins.
They had the information I needed and that’s how wtc911coins.com got started.
After putting it all together I started thinking about getting traffic… I got into SEO and added
the All in one SEO plugin on my blog; this gave me the option to include meta tags, headline & text description in the sidebar for the main page, as well as on each blog post I would create.
So I was set. The first place I went was in the coin forums and I was looking to answer the questions I had seen about the coins; this started a flow of traffic to the site and people where very impressed about the size of the site and the information available.
In the beginning this site got over 50 people a day and now it increased to 500-600 visits. The success of the site came when I started adding Ebay auctions in the mix; the money started to come in from people bidding on the auctions straight from my site.
The categories are crucial:
To add more punch to the site I gave each ground of coins it’s own category so the WTC $5 gold would have its own category and so on.
I also secured a photo of the year the coin was found and the number of each coin that was found if the information was available from the coin dealers.
I think the tipping point came when people on the Internet started talking about the coins and they would always refer others to my site without me having to do anything.
This would generate a lot of traffic and that is when I realized that I had build an Authority site without even knowing it. The traffic now to the site is still up and down a little bit, when I make a new post I can get up to 3000 people in a day in to look at the post.
Normally there are between 1,200 and 1,500 people in looking around in a day.
I got two kinds of visitors to my blog, the first kind is people that are interested in coins and are collecting coins. They come to look at a specific coin and to see what the population numbers are on that coin. The other group of people are people looking into the WTC and what happent they will come in a see all the coins found there and hopefully it gives them some hope when they look at the beautiful coins.
There are some incredible coin pictures on the blog made by a coin dealer in California call Miguel he has become a great friend doing the wtc coin site and his pictures has made a big different on the site.
How to make money with a blog:
The earnings on the site come from Ebay Partner Network.
I can recommend this to everybody wanting to make money online; it works very good and the structure that Ebay has setup with people buying after being to your site in the next 7 days works out very good. There is always ways to improve your earnings with changing your advertisement around and I do test out a lot of changes to make the most of what I got.
I’ve also started to build several other sites following the same structure; one of my other coin sites can be found at http://www.first-spouse.com
I really like the dash in domain names as I feel like Google looks at each word as a key word and it helps me in the serps I think. (not being an expert at this, but it feels like it)
The simple formula that I use to rank in Google and get free search engine traffic is easy:
Keyword research, SERP and blogger connections. Blogger connections is giving other people that visit my blog the option to comment and interact with my blog.
About the Author:
Jacob Power is a former IM newbie who tried creating a few Internet niche sites just to find real success 2 years later when he unlocked the KEY to getting traffic to his sites; he owns the niche coin blog at http://Wtc911coins.com and other secret sites.
Related Posts:
- The Power of Keywords in Images to Gain Traffic
- Putting Yourself Out There
- How I got 12,228 unique visitors in 4 months.
- How I Doubled The Traffic To My Blog
- How to Invite Quality Link and Traffic by Getting Involved
It’s a very interesting way how you can create a niche blog that you really have interest in. I think that is the key point when we want to start a niche blog or business in the internet, we must at least some interest or knowledge on the subject
Great post. Can you tell me what “blogger connections” is? Are you referring to a specific program, or just the natural connections that happen when bloggers link to each other?
Nice post and good story. Niche is the way to go.
What he seems to mean by “blogger connections” is the ability to leave a comment or a pingback to your blog. If you’re big on blogging, you’ll know that the ability to engage your readers in a discussion results in longer stays, more ad revenues and repeat visitors. Especially using the “subscribe to comments” check box. This is an additional plugin for WordPress, but the rest, including commenting, is included. Thanks for the article.
We have a combination site that uses Joomla and WordPress. Our site is a nonprofit. We have a difficult time getting it to monetize. We have a few bloggers on the site that blog regularly. Get 250 visitors per day. The E-bay partner sounds really good. We have had the Amazon with some books on it but have yet to get any commissions after 6 months even Amazon sends e-mail in surprise of this.
I was wondering what ways we can make our nonprofit site more effective. What do we need to do or change to make people want to donate or buy something from our site?
It’s interesting to read your story. I really like how you created success out of a hobby, something that you were really interested in, but at the same time you saw the opportunity (lots of questions on Yahoo Answers but not many answers). I think the key to your success is that you, like so many others, sought answers, but were more proactive in talking to everybody who had to do with these coins. You did all the work, then you freely shared what you had learned. By giving and sharing, you ended up also receiving. Well done, and thanks for sharing your story!
I love it how you turned your interest into income, rather than ‘seeking an untapped niche’ that you had no interest in like so much of the advice we get from so-called gurus.
Inspiring story!
Good story and a wonderful idea, I will do the same actions
I got the story like most of you guys by email yesterday, I made the story a few month back and I am glad that it did see print. Thanks for all the comments about the story it makes me feel good about the site.
I think Answering a question that nobody else has answered online is the key to the success of the site and that is what has made the site so popular.
thanks again.
Jacob
Good story. I wonder how much traffic you received from this article and the email sent out from Max Blog Press. I think this is a smart way to build on your web traffic also.
Hey, Jacob.
Thanks for the interesting post on starting an authority site. This type of site has been on my mind for years. It is funny though how you focused on obtaining good content first and then categorized your content before any search engine optimization. I am beginning to think that this is the way to go.
I must admit, going to others to find content was and is not the first thing on my mind; this just goes to show you that starting an authority site on niche content does not have to be that hard!
Sincerely,
Daniel Tetreault
Webmaster/Marketer.
I don’t know I was not really thinking about SEO when I made the site so the categories was not done before after all the content was in. As with everything Google takes its sweet time so I guess it worked to my advantage. Its funny how the water never boils when you look at it. What I mean by that is other sites I have done after wtc911coins that I have tried my best to optimize for certain keywords like “First spouse gold coin” has never listed very good in google but I have done alot to make this work but it never did. Wtc911coins list in google for all kinds of terms like wtc coins but that is what you get extra from an Authority site I guess without even trying. My point is do it because you are interested in it not because you see a potential money maker.
As to the traffic coming from the article here I can now give you guys some stats and I hope other people will share their storry with Maxblogpress and other similar sites. Yesterday I had 374 people comeing from here and today about 100.
Best
jacob
Can you tell me what plugin you use to integrate Ebay with your wordpress site – it looks great and I have been looking for a good Ebay plugin to use on my site.
Thanks
Very interesting post-yes it all comes down to traffic-I have tried everything I can get my hands on,Phpbay pro works very well for me on my doggy blog-not great so much for internet marketing-I get a lot of traffic writing good quality articles with lots of free information-And believe it or not Craigs list has given me some good hits,however you have to really think your ads out and which country and area to connect with-Again great post.
Thank you for your post. I will try our idea.
This was a great initiative and there is a lesson to learn.. passion on what you are working on is the key to success.
I have embarked on article writing and this has helped my site have back links. Last month it was approximately netted $1,255.6 from $123.0 by <a href=”http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.lifeonthenet7.com” website out look
Thanks for the good quality article!