I have monitored all of the reports from my affiliates for months and I just have not made money on this blog.  Problogger Darren Rowse said to aim your blog at a niche and I have, but it occurred to me the other day that anyone that comes to this blog already knows about SEO and doesn’t need to buy SEO Book or anything else I have advertised on here.

I saw this link in my RSS Feed – Make Money Online Blogs – Should You Start One and How to Choose a Profitable Topic. Just the title made me think. So, I thought I would do an experiment and create a blog on a bigger niche that many people were interested and measure the results. It launched on Friday- Sarasota Home Free. Google picked it by Saturday, which was cool.

Sarasota Home Free allows people in Sarasota to list their homes for sale for free. It is for “for sale by owner” sellers, not realtors. However, realtors can provide informational articles, buy advertising space and list some of the homes they are selling on designated pages.

I used the same theme as SEO Aware, just to make sure the theme wasn’t an issue. This new blog has a lot of pages. I tried to think of everything a realtor would want to see and I wanted to create an educational resource for visitors, because the information will continually bring in traffic. SEO was kept in mind with every page, post and widget I created. I also used AdSense everywhere.

The Results

Let me give you a little background on this blog. Since I started it in late April (I moved it in June) I have had 3 people click on AdSense links. I launched Sarasota Home Free on Friday.

Yesterday I had 344 impressions and 11 clicks. I have had about 800 impressions since Friday. I am already making money. With all of my affiliates I have made 3 times the amount of money I have made on this blog with in the last 4 months at Sarasota Home Free.

Additionally, the blog is grabbing placements on Google for Sarasota real estate related phrases. This amazes me, because Sarasota is all about real estate. All the realtors have web sites…it is an SEO’s worst nightmare.

People are sending me their properties and realtors are sending me articles. I even wrote one myself!

Darren Rowse is the Godfather of Blogging

Am I wrong? I don’t think so. Read his articles and follow his advice. You will create a great blog and make some money. SarasotaHomeFree.com may not be successful in the future, but it looks like it could do well. Advertising is a must.

Melissa- SEOAware.com