Updated 2026: This post originally promoted a free video I created about building AdSense mini-sites based on Josh Spaulding's $5 Formula eBook. The video, the eBook, and the mini-site strategy itself are all artifacts of a different era. But the underlying concept of building small, focused websites that generate passive income is worth examining, because versions of this strategy still work today.
What Were AdSense Mini-Sites?
In the late 2000s, one of the most popular strategies for making passive income online was building small, focused websites designed to rank in Google for specific keywords and earn money through Google AdSense advertisements. The idea was simple: find a niche with decent search volume and high-paying ads, create a small site with five to ten pages of content, optimize it for search engines, and collect AdSense revenue when visitors clicked the ads.
The “empire” part came from building many of these sites. Each individual site might earn only a few dollars per day, but if you built fifty or a hundred of them, the income added up. I was doing this myself and had built several mini-sites using the methods described in Josh Spaulding's $5 Formula, which outlined how to create these sites for minimal investment.
Why the Mini-Site Model Declined
Several factors contributed to the decline of the AdSense mini-site strategy:
- Google's quality updates. The Panda algorithm update in 2011 specifically targeted thin content sites. Many mini-sites were exactly the kind of thin, low-value content that Google decided to suppress.
- Higher quality expectations. As the web matured, users and search engines both developed higher expectations for content depth and quality. Five pages of basic content could no longer compete with comprehensive resources.
- Ad blindness and declining click rates. Users became increasingly adept at ignoring display advertisements, reducing the revenue potential of AdSense-focused sites.
- Management overhead. Running dozens or hundreds of small sites created significant maintenance, hosting, and content update challenges that offset the passive income benefits.
What Replaced Mini-Sites
The core insight behind mini-sites was sound: find a specific audience with a specific need and create focused content to serve them. That insight evolved into what we now call niche authority sites. The modern approach differs in several important ways:
- Fewer, deeper sites. Instead of a hundred shallow sites, build one or two sites with comprehensive coverage of a niche. Depth beats breadth in modern SEO.
- Multiple revenue streams. Do not rely solely on display ads. Combine affiliate marketing, digital products, sponsored content, and email marketing to diversify your income from each site.
- Real expertise. Google's E-E-A-T guidelines reward content created by people with genuine experience and expertise. A niche site built by someone who actually knows the topic will outperform generic content every time.
- Content that serves readers. Build sites for humans first, search engines second. This was always good advice, but it is now enforced by algorithms sophisticated enough to tell the difference.
The Bottom Line
I do not regret building mini-sites. That experience taught me keyword research, basic SEO, content creation, and monetization fundamentals. Those skills transferred directly to everything I have done since. The strategy evolved, but the foundational skills remained valuable.
If you are considering building niche websites in 2026, do it. Just build them deeper, better, and with more genuine value than we did in 2009.
For more on building online income streams, subscribe to the Late Night Internet Marketing podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Hey Mark – Good stuff – I look forward to the video very much.
Let me be a little transparent here with my question. I’ve got two decent niche blogs up – neither is great, but neither is crap either. Those two blogs are presently making me less than a penny a day – combined.
I don’t get it. I’ve got good unique content on both, I’ve got some syndicated content on one – but it’s good. One uses your NAT mortgage theme, the other is one that Garry set up for me. Traffic is decent, but not great. I do quite a bit of social bookmarking on both. One has about 15 article links back to Ezine Articles.
The mortgage themed site can be found with a similar question in the forum section here – and the other is in my link. Thanks Mark!
Kent — $0.01 is not great. I think we can agree on that.
Are you saying that you are getting real traffic, and that traffic is not converting to clicks, or are you saying that your clicks in the mortgage niche are not paying decently. Or both?
My reaction to http://www.buyhomeblog.com/ is that it is a very nice site, but that it is not well-optimized for AdSense. On an AdSense mini-site, you generally want AdSense to be the only way off of the site. So if you are seeing a low AdSense CTR, you might consider a larger (square) ad block in the posts and ditching the CPA ads in the sidebar.
Where is the traffic coming from?
Thanks Mark. Agreed on the buyhomeblog site – it gets very good traffic for a 4 month old blog, but I am looking to build some cpa and other income streams there. Probably should re-think the adsense ctr there.
My mortgage blog gets roughly 20 visitors a day. I ask a specific NAT question about it on your forum, with the link to it, which is http://www.mortgagemade.com. CTR rates on it are very low too.
Traffic source.. well, I have not installed Google analytics, which I should, but I would assume most traffic is through Google since the site is totally article driven. Maybe I misunderstood the question.
Thanks again – great video btw – just finished it. Highly recommended.
Building mini-sites is certainly in my business game plan. I will check out this offer and see if it is something that will be helpful to me. Thanks Mason!
Hi Mark,
I only read the report in the last week and just viewed your video yesterday. One thing that I am confused about is Josh says to use broad match in the google tool, but you say to use exact match.
I hope Josh is correct or else all of my work this week is for naught. My numbers are wonderful with cpc and with google with Josh’s version, not so much with yours. Which is correct?
Thanks for the video, you did a great job!
You are right — it is broad match that we are recommending. It was an error that we only caught this morning. I am editing the video tonight.
Thanks!
Hi Mark,
The link is dead for me each time I tried since yesterday. Couldn’t you just send me a direct link to my email, otherwise the 72 hours will have gone soon
Thanks in advance
Hubert
Hey Hubert – Having some trouble with ScreenCast.com. There is a direct download link on the page at the bottom. Is that working for you?
ScreenCast is working on this issue. Will let you know when it is resolved.
Hello Mark and thanks for your guidance. I finally put up a site and not one click. Don’t know what the trouble or the problem is. I wonder if you please take a look and let me know what I should do to get more traffic. I followed the Joshe’s rule and placed 6 articles on to the website and the other 20 scattered all around, including 10 submitted to EzineArticles.
Just don’t know what the problem is.
Thanks
Michael.
Hi Mark,
Sorry but I don’t see any link
Hubert
If you go to the link that was emailed to you (the long ugly one), then you should see it at the bottom of the page. Let me know if you cannot find it.
Hi Mark,
Just to let you know the video link is not working.
When will that be fixed?
I’m looking forward for that.
Cheers
Luis
Luis — everything is working now.
Hi Mark,
Just to let you know the video link is not working.
When will that be fixed?
I’m looking forward for that.
Cheers
Luis
Luis – it worked fine for me just now – maybe it was down for a bit.
Hello Mark,
With the link you sent me I can see it, but no download available
Is it possible to get a download link
Hubert
Hi Mark,
This time it worked perfectly.
Thanks for all your time
Hubert
Thank you so much for clarifying that point Mark, I really appreciate it. Eases my mind a bit : )
The video was a really good idea, it makes it much easier to understand for those who prefer to watch than read. The two together make an awesome product!
Thanks again
Michael – my two cents…. – Your Ezine Finance articles should get approximately 100 views each – over time (allow 6 months or so). If they don’t – something is amiss with your keyword placement or strategy, or writing.
You should also be getting around 1 in 10 at least to click the URL in your resource box. I have the same problem and need to re-do my resource box to provide a compelling reason for someone to click it. Beyond that – I share the same struggle of getting a better ctr to the ads themselves – I think I need to strive to more closely follow Josh’s game-plan.
Hi Kent thanks for you input. Since I’ve already put 10 articles through the Ezine and the rest through about 50 directories do you thin I should keep the writting and placing new articles or do you think I should stop and just wait for the 6 months?
regards
Michael.
Michael – see what kind of traffic you’re getting through Ezine Articles first. Are any of the articles on your site on Ezine Articles? I couldn’t find one to check it out.
Thank you so much for the great video. I read Josh’s $5 mini site ebook a while ago and have put up a website as suggested. Am still busy submitting articles to directories. I’m doing so every couple of days. What happens when all the articles are in the directories. What’s the ongoing ‘maintenance’ on the site so the traffic keeps coming? Also, could you please give me a link to the directories that are recommended.
Thanks a lot, it’s great that I now have another ‘take’ on things from the video and audio interview.
All the best
Sandra
Hi,
Great work on the video Mark.
I have a question regarding the method … do you have a recommended time frame for which you post the website and all of the articles? I would be afraid that if all links are posted too quickly, there’s a chance of getting sand-boxed right out of the gate.
And based on experience, if you follow the plan, how soon after you finish the recommended article marketing do you generally reach the targeted potential of the site? I know there are no definitive timelines, but a ballpark would be great, ie – 2 weeks, 2 months, 1 year …
thanks again for promoting Josh’s method – I think he’d done a great job of giving mmo beginners an easy and attainable method for starting out.
@Maureen — Yeah, Josh is great.
The website is only going to have 5-10 pages total, so there is no issue there. You can do the entire thing in a day.
For articles, my experience is that approval and indexing times vary so much that this is not an issue either. I guess if you did all 25 articles to 50 directories in one day that might be an issue, but I have never seen any problems.
Certainly, if it takes you a week or two to get it all done, then there is no issue that I have ever seen or heard about.
@Sandra — Thanks!
@Michael — If you are not getting traffic from EZA, then you need to ask if your EZA article is ranking for your target KW. If it is not, then there is something amiss with your keyword research.
If it is ranking and there a few views, then your article title and desc may need tweaking.
If you are getting view and no clicks, then you need to work on the call to action in your resource box.
So, which is it for you?
Thanks,
Mark
Mark thanks very much for your input. Josh suggested a lady to work with the writer I will show her your comment and see if we can pint point the problem.
Kind regards
Michael.
I will be sending some traffic to your site. Thanks for the videos
Hi Mark:
Could you please let me know what the ongoing maintenance of the site is? What do we do after the site is up and all 20 articles are published in directories. Thank you.
Sandra
Sure Sandra — that is up to you. If you want to grow the site, then you can attack new keywords, increase content, etc.
If you just want to leave it alone you can do that too. I recommend that you add some content or some back links once/month in maintenance mode.
Ultimately, you do what you need to do to get the results that you want, which will vary depending on what your competition is doing.
Thanks a lot Mark. Just yesterday I watched the video and idea is really very good. I am going to implement it for my new blog. Hope I will get the result.
@Chandan — great! Good luck!
Hi Mark, in your experience, for the articles that make to the first page of google, do they typically stay there for months/years or do they fall off after a few weeks. If the later, do you then have to keep churning out new articles just maintain the traffic for these keywords? If so, I can see this as being very time consuming. I guess what I’m wanting to know is how to keep your articles from falling off the first page. Is it just a matter of giving your articles some extra link juice? Great video by the way! 🙂
Hi Mark,
I’ve built the site exactly as per Josh’s method. I also usually get on page 1 of google for the keywords. Also I have kept aggressively doing article marketing, even though the site has been up since March – so 2 to 3 articles per week using Josh’s method and I have bought AAS too. The URL is the same as posted here. March got me $1.96, April $3.61, May $41.54 and June and July $27 each month. Traffic is around 300 visits per month. Any ideas what I can do to increase my earnings? Should I just leave it alone and just do an article a month and let the site mature? Any comments would be appreciated.
Thanks a lot
Sandra
I would like to know when using micro niche finder what competition numbers do you look for SOC
Baron — like most things in life — it depends. The colors are not bad. If your result is green, you can usually win the keyword easily IF the competition has few backlinks with that phrase in the anchor text.
Mark,
Do you know of any good software tools for tracking all of your websites?
Is there an ACID TEST for building a site to be monetized? The sooner one knows a site is NOT going to be profitable, the sooner one can begin building one that IS. I’m looking for a rule of thumb here, not necessarily a scientific algorithm.
Thanks for the video and ebook download. I read it this afternoon and am already putting Josh’s instructions in place. Will let you know how it goes.
Hi Mark,
Should the article lengths of all 26 keywords selected for the $5 minisite be approximately 300 words?
Looking forward to your reply.
Regards
Julian
Yes, since most article directories have a 300 word requirement, that is recommended. EZA has a 400 word requirement if you want to use 4 words in your anchor text in your resource box (I think) — so longer is recommended for them in that case.
Hi Mark,
Which hosting provider would you recommend for the $5 dollar mini sites?
Regards
Julian
I always recommend people start with hostgator — it’s inexpensive, easy to use, has good customer service and supports wordpress well.
Here is my affiliate link http://www.masonworld.com/recommends/hostgator if you are inclined to use it.
I think you can still use coupon code WordPress to get the first month for $0.01
Hi Mark,
One thing I noticed in the Spyfu research is that there are VERY few niches in the $1 – $9 range. I’ve only found 2 so far (not credit cards or mortgages lol – tried that before. Boring!)
Is there a lower limit that you consider to be worthwhile in terms of profitability – say $1 – $5?
Thanks for your input in advance 🙂
I definitely go for some sites in the $1 – $5 — I have one site, for example, that makes $3 every day. I am happy with that.
Hi Mark,
I came across a number of free article marketing spinning programs/software. Is there a specific free article marketing spinning program/software that you could recommend to assist with article marketing of my first $5 mini-site?
Regards
Julian
About a week ago, I put up the website and have been following your $5 a day techniques with 4 articles submitted. I’m starting to get traffic, but no click throughs – over 100 page visits and 0 clicks.
Help please?
Well, 100 clicks is a pretty small sample. Are you sure that your adsense ads are configured properly?
Yes, I think so – no clicks though. How do I check. Just 100 beause it’s new, but I figured I’d get some percent.
Well, I would certainly never recommend that you ask a person in another city to click one single time on your site. That would be against the AdSense TOS. So, I would never recommend that, even though it would confirm proper operation.
However, you should do a “view source” in your browser and make sure that your adsense ID is in the code correctly and that there is nothing in the code about “test mode”.
Thanks, I checked view source and it looks good.
I also – greatly – appreciate your warning me about having someone click on my site.
Yes, I think so – no clicks though. How do I check. Just 100 beause it’s new, but I figured I’d get some percent.
Hi Mark,
Do I need to add Contact and Privacy Policy pages as suggested in your video to my website? This was not mentioned or covered in Caroline Middlebrooks ebook and videos.
Regards
Julian
I definately would. Privacy is required by AdSense TOS, and contact is rumored to impact rankings (although I am not so sure about that).
Hi Julian,
I agree with Mark on this – the more “natural” your page looks the better. Plus bear in mind the human review factor.
I’m starting to work with the ideal of personalities for About Me pages. One per niche and just create a person that suits that niche. I don’t mean flat out lie about it but it definitely adds to the “feel” of any site overall. People are then dealing with a real person if you get me?
I like that idea. I don’t consider protecting your identity lying (neither did Mark Twain or Dr. Seuse). Just don’t lie about the products and you should be fine.
Agreed Mark 🙂
I just find that for the purpose of protecting my markets it’s easier to work with personas/pen names.
Plus if you’re passionate about the niche then the persona will come easily and be extremely convincing and downright honest 🙂
A little imagination goes a long way – without lying of course!
Hi Mark,
Regarding the $5 mini site, is it required for the targeted keyword phrase in the article to be exactly the same as the title? Example “get out of credit card debt” Can I use “7 easy steps to get out of credit card debt” as a title.
Mark,
When you test longtail keywords for PR on Google, do you search “with” or without “” quotation marks surrounding the keyword phrase? This would make a bog difference in the search results.
Thanks a bunch!
Definitely WITHOUT since this is how most people search.
Thanks for the quick response. That helps as I am doing some KW research right now.
Are you full-time IM yet? In your video you mention that you still have a regular job. Your site is a great resource and is much appreciated.
Hi Mark,
When submitting articles for the $5 mini site I noticed the following:
In the $5 mini-site eBook I need to submit the 1st Article to the top 3 directories and the 2nd to include the top 3 plus top 15-30 article directories and so on…
In your video about the $5 mini-site the 1st Article goes to the top 5 directories and the 2nd to include the top 5 plus top 35 article directories and so on….
In the your audio interview with Josh Spaulding the 1st Article goes to the top 5 directories and the 2nd top 30 -50 article directories and so on….
From experience which option of the 3 would be most favourable to promote a mini-site?
Regards
Julian