This is the first of many websites I will build up to earn at least $100 a month. Now the obvious goal is to earn even more than that, but the point of this post is to help you learn how to make money by investing some time into building up a profitable niche website. So if you would like to learn how to truly make money off of websites by seeing real examples, than I highly recommend subscribing to my full RSS feed. I first mentioned my intention to build mini sites that earned at least $100 monthly income back in August so I’m pleased to showcase the first of several websites that I’ll be chronicling on my blog. So again, if you think this will help you please subscribe to my RSS feed.

History of the website

My video game fonts website has been around for a long time actually. In fact, I first created it nearly two years ago. So the site I had created was based off a simple free HTML theme from OSWD – a great resource if you’re looking for free themes. (You can tell at that time Google hadn’t even banned images next to ads yet.)

The look changed again in mid 2007 when I migrated it over to WordPress so I could take advantage of a text link program that required the website to be PHP based. (I don’t use them anymore.)

Recognizing Key Problems

One of the primary problems with the site was the way the fonts were set up. If you go back to the previous 2 year old example you can see that the fonts were listed in bulk on a page like A-G, H-M, N-R and S-Z; however this was killing me in the SERPS! (I’ll address this later in the post.)

It also didn’t help that both versions of the site didn’t look that nice either, but again I’ll get to that later as well.

Launching the new GamingFonts.com

I spent several hours creating the new video game fonts website using one of my wordpress themes as a starting point (Guthrie-Red). This is a theme you can purchase for only $29.99 (If you use the $10 “kickoff” promo code at the checkout screen. This promo is only good until the end of September).

Before I discuss the site in more detail, please Check out the new look if you haven’t already. As you can tell the site looks a lot better than before! Throughout the rest of the post I’ll go into all of the changes I made and provide reasons for why I did them.

Various Money Making Methods

Google Adsense

I’ll start with this section first. I set up the website to display a 468 x 60 Adsense image only banner which is below the header and above every post on the website. In the right hand column I opted to use a 160 x 600 wide skyscraper Adsense image and text ad. I then display a 300 x 250 inline ad on the very first welcome page of the site only. There is nothing out of the ordinary here, although I did specifically choose to make the 468 x 60 ad image only to help reduce the amount of text ads that could display at one time which is key to help prevent visitors to become blind to the ads. It’s also important to note that I chose the ads text color to be the same as the links elsewhere on the site. In my experience with my other websites this style has proven to perform better; however, I will be re-evaluating that in the future.

phpBay Pro (Read about it more here)

The next thing I did was find a way to provide relevant products for each font. So I found this plugin that is very similar to BANS; however, the most important difference is that it integrates seamlessly with WordPress. The phpBay pro plugin is incredibly robust and would take too long to describe all of it’s features in this post. In fact, I’ll discuss this plugin in a later post, so for now just look at the Nintendo Wii Font page to see what it can do. As you can see there are Wii related products displayed right in the post that link to eBay items. Of course anytime someone clicks one of those items to buy something or signs up as a new user to eBay I would be paid.

Affiliate Programs

The affiliate banners are a test. I don’t feel as confident about their success and I may even adjust these in the future. You can see these affiliate ads in action by scrolling to the bottom of the post. You’ll see a 468 x 60 banner ad (one of five) that display a related affiliate offer. I know these are at the end of the posts, but I’m interested to see if I have any clicks/conversions.

Reducing bounce rate and increasing page views

So one of the ways I am helping to reduce bounce rate, which at the same time will increase page views was by implementing a nifty random font feature. I customized the default tabs offered in the theme to include a spot that displays a new random font on each page load. This image also links to the font’s page when it is clicked. This will be an easy way to help drive more page views as people may happen to be looking at the home page and immediately see a font they want to download. Or they may hop over to the Grand Theft Auto font page and see the Halo font randomly displayed. So the point here is that this feature is in a prominent position and visitors can immediately see what the random font will look like.

Spreading the word

In addition to using the Sociable wordpress plugin, I also am trying just a simple email to a friend image in the upper right hand corner share tab. This is more of a test. I honestly didn’t know what else to put in that corner but at the same time I’m interested to see if people use it.

Improving SEO

One of the ways I’m improving the SEO of the website is by creating individual font pages. This is obviously something that was lacking in the last two site designs and was primarily left out due to laziness at the time I updated the site. With these new individual pages, not only can I provide more relevant ads for each font the search engines should really love it too. I also installed the All In One SEO plugin. In fact, I even set up custom descriptions and keywords on a page by page basis as a way to further improve the SEO of my content. Lastly, I installed the a sitemap plugin and submitted this to Google Webmaster tools.

Conclusion:

Overall, I made a number of changes to the old design by building a new site based off of one of my wordpress themes. I set up more relevant ads while at the same time making it easier for users to find fonts (just click a font on the right hand side of the page). I also took big steps forward in improving the SEO of the site. I’m now working on getting more links to the site. So if you own a video game based website and would like to exchange links please contact me.

I’ll provide another update within the next few months and provide an earnings report as well. So remember to subscribe to my full RSS feed for more tips on how to be successful online. I’m always sharing what works and what doesn’t in an effort to learn more and help you.

What do you think of the site? What else do you recommend I change?