100k Dollar Niche Site Part 2
Ok so in Part 1 of 100k Dollar Niche Site I started writing about one of my relatively new sites that I started building approximately 4 months ago. The site has enjoyed some decent success considering it’s age and the amount of link authority that it has built so far. Still a lot of potential here, in fact so much potential that I wanted to smack my head against the wall.
We analyzed some stats in the first posts and you will kind of see why after we’re done with this post. Below are my December stats for the bike trainer site.
December Revenue – $1600 Earnings Per Click – $1.10 – Think EPN would pay me that? Me either. Unique Visitors – 4719 Earnings per Visitor – .34 cents
Like I said in my last post, I originally thought I had done pretty well in December, and I still do, but I wanted to show you WHY ranking well is SO critical to a niche site builder. Niche site building got perverted in the early days in my opinion. What I mean by that is there used to be a lot of proponents (myself included) of if you build enough sites that make a few bucks, you’ll STILL have a lot of bucks.
I am trying very hard to wean myself off that theory because as you will see, a few sites could yield you some pretty serious cash. It’s your call but my strategy has been to throw a LOT of lines in the water and see what gets a bite. What I mean is I try a LOT of niches, and when I find one that works then I will build that site out to be more than just a run of the mill ordinary niche site. So both concepts have value, how you put them to best use is your call.
Let’s Dig In and See What’s Up
If you recall from the first post, on average a #1 ranking in the search engines will yield approximately 42% of the searchers clicking through to your site versus one of the others on page 1. It’s a bike trainer site, so I picked 4 basic keywords to use for this example. They have decent search counts and moderate competition. These are NOT the only good keywords for this site, in fact, there are at least a dozen or so keywords that have similar or better search counts. We’ll talk about them soon enough but for now, let me blow your mind with just FOUR stinking little keywords.
Now let me clarify that NONE of this math is an exact science. The 42% multiplier would vary by search engine somewhat and could even vary from niche to niche but even if the percentage is 30% or whether it’s 50%, the concept of what I am talking about remains the same. That concept is that ranking well for some reasonably decent keywords is HUGE!
You can see my current rankings for these 4 basic keywords to the far right in the image above. We’re ranking “ok” but the best ranking is page 2 and goes downhill quickly from there. A page 2 ranking will earn me almost nothing for clicks and that has proven to be true for these particular keywords, I am getting almost no traffic from these 4 keywords, I am getting most of traffic from longtails or the domain keyword.
So if you look at the numbers above, you can see that if I were to obtain a position 1 ranking, these 4 keywords alone could be expected to produce approximately 18k dollars in one month. We know each visitor is worth about 34 cents and if we use Google Adwords search volume to estimate search counts, then 18k suddenly looks easy.
Where From Here
So all of this makes sense to this point, at least I hope it does, but where do we go from here? If you look at the Google search trends for this site, the season is pretty much over. Bike trainers sell well from October to January and then traffic starts to fall dramatically after that until next year. This makes sense, this is a cold weather, daylight savings time driven product.
My task is not to celebrate making a few bucks and move on to the next site, which is what I would have done a year ago, but rather to build this site all summer long while it’s not making any money so that I can KILL this niche next winter. I will write one more post in this series and that will be to take the Top 10 keywords for this niche and see what that potential is….I’ve already done it and it will BLOW your mind.
So the question is this…could one simple little niche site make 100k dollars in just 3 months time? We’ll see in part 3 of our Rank Big or Go Home series.
Check Out Part 3 of the 100k Niche Site Series.
Great post. Just resubscribed because I like where this series is heading – can’t wait for more
Just with your calculations, they are probably quite overestimated, as you have to look at how targeted your traffic is. I assume you currently get most of your traffic from long tail keywords such as “minoura mag 850 review” or “buy minoura trainer” which is a lot more likely to bring about sales then someone who is searching for the broad term “bike trainers”, so with the traffic from these more competitive keywords, each visitors will probably be worth less.
@Simon – Welcome back.
Simon you could be partially right but I will tell you why I think I am still pretty close. The #1 keyword BY FAR for December was Bike Trainer Reviews, the exact match domain keyword. This is very much a broad keyword and in fact, the top 5 keywords are ALL broad, information seeking keywords and the site still converted well.
Could those 4 keywords be slightly less targeted? Sure of course, but there are a LOT more that I haven’t built on yet that are VERY targeted so I still think that the sample size was large enough that it will average things out.
We’ll see…right now I don’t rank well enough for those 4 keywords I used in this article to know how well they will convert. I am going to target them all summer, as I said in the article, and make sure that I am at LEAST top 5 next year. I did a few calculations on a couple of my higher traffic sites and the percentages from the first post are pretty close…..which tells me Top 5 will yield OK results, but #1 is where it’s at.
If I can only get Top 5 then I need to make sure my post titles and descriptions are very compelling so that I can try to earn that click at a higher rate. In any event it will be fun.
In Part 3 I am going to analyze the Top 10, maybe Top 20 keywords to see what they are worth using my math….I know it’s going to be big. Will they change the conversion? Maybe….but I plan on finding out for sure.
@Bill – I stand corrected
You’re 100% right about number 1 being where it’s at. I have two sites targeting the same keyword, one ranking at number 1 and the other at number 7 or 8. The site at number one received 50 times more traffic from that keyword last month, so it just goes to show that you shouldn’t stop at just position number 5 or something similar, get to number one and don’t stop working until you get there.
Hey Bill,
You make it look so easy, lol.
I need to focus more on individual sites than doing the howitzer approach or putting up a hundred niche sites. Guess it’s about time to go through my portfolio and figure out which ones have the most potential and focus on fully developing them.
Good luck!
Daniel (syns0r)
S’up Syns….believe me I am not trying to say it’s easy and I don’t profess to have the answer yet but I spent the last 30 days trying to figure out how I scale my earnings but still make them passive. have hit a threshold that I cannot seem to break through with more sites and I am expensive to maintain….lol…..but passive income is my absolute priority as I am not about writing for dollars or building sites for people or site flipping or any of that. I want 100% passive income but as the portfolio of sites has grown, it gets harder and harder to manage and focus and have an SEO plan for that many sites…I am sure you share my pain.
If you’re like me..the old plan was build out a site, hit it with a few links to get it ranked and indexed and then move on to the next site. I have dozens of these kinds of sites where some produce and some don’t. The answer was right in front of me though and I didn’t even know it. I went through my portfolio and found that 80% of my earnings come from 20% of my sites…Pareto was a smart guy…..so knowing that I started looking to see what I was leaving on the table with a few of these sites that did produce well, but maybe were capable of a WHOLE lot more.
The data backs up what I am saying….but you know I am a pretty fact based kind of person so I’d rather prove it to be true…and collect 100k a year off this site at the same time.
It will be an interesting experiment…I have a summer oriented site that I am going to dust off and get rolling with here soon. The problem is once you hit page 1 it gets MUCH tougher to move up a position, as you know. Preaching to the choir here I guess.
We’ll see how it works out. When I post the Top 10 (might go Top 20) keywords post….even if I am only HALF right….it’s a mind blowing number.
I’d be willing to bet you have several candidates too.
Ya, I know what you’re talking about when you say passive income. I have stopped BANS modding, site builds, etc to focus on my own passive income. Rich still builds some WP sites for people trying to get accepted to ePN, and he is milking it for all he can until it dries up, lol.
Lookin at my epn stats (yes, most of my online income is still coming from ebay, argh) it also reflects the pareto principal. But, I still think some non-earning sites have potential, so I will check em all out and see their potential and go from there. I have a couple of good high paying seasonal niches (spring-fall) that I am starting a link building campaign for so hopefully they will pay better this year as a result.
Your math/spreadsheet is definitely an eye opener and gives us all a goal to strive for. I can’t wait to spend a day and dig into all my sites/domains for the diamonds.
Great breakdown Bill, and it makes complete sense!
The one thing you said that hit home for me… was forgetting about all these different niche markets, and finding just one or two to dominate.
Around May-June of 2008, I built 5-6 sites all around one market, today… I am firmly embedded throughout the top 10 rankings with 4 of those sites, for 15-20 different higher volume phrases, and each is used as a springboard for the others (Separate hosts, domain owner info etc)
I also have to agree with Dan – you make it look easy! I’m sure you can agree also that “Finding” that profitable niche takes a lot of work, and you DO end up dipping your toes into several different niche markets along the way.
I have put weeks of work into one niche that should have rocked out of the gate… and produces less than expected results, but hacked together a puked up PLR site in 4-5 hours that rocked the house for 6 months! Made no sense…
Looking forward to the resy of this as well…
Mark
Lol thanks Mark. Anything looks easy when you’re looking in the rearview…..I am sure ALL of us have a LOT of turd sites we’d never show to ANYONE.
Your “housecleaning” post (selling the sites) was kind of the tipping point for me, I’ve kicked this idea around and around but never found the motivation to break my existing routine of knocking out site after site after site but that post actually made me at least investigate.
Without the proof to back it up, I have no idea how it will work but the theory and the math makes perfect sense. Proof is in the pudding. I know that I am going to spend the next 6 to 12 months working on different revenue streams and building the hell out of about 5 or 6 of my sites and truly make a rock solid push to rank #1 for 10 to 15 of the better keywords and just soak up whatever longtails come my way.
You are absolutely right about that EPN. I think the best I have had in the last 2 months is a .14 EPC. Compare that to the .34 you are getting per visitor and it is absolutely no contest.
Curious if you found a good affiliate program for this?
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