3 Month Update – Niche Site Case Study Part 2

Fridays with Vicky 34

In this niche site case study part 2 we will take a closer look at the first 3 months.

We will dig deeper into traffic, rankings, and earnings.

When first starting your blog your main focus should be to create quality content on a regular basis.

You want to get a solid content base for your site so that your readers get value and enjoy their visit.

If you missed the first part on how to set up your niche site for success, you can read that post here.

WHO Is Your Visitor?

To do this you need to know WHO your main target group is. I like doing a ”visitor profile” and in this case, with this case study website it looks like this;

• Female
• 35+
• From the US
• Interested in health
• …

By doing a ”visitor profile” you know who you are targeting and who you are writing for.

This is information that you can get by doing research online. I like to read through the targeted product reviews on Amazon to get a picture of WHO the person is purchasing the products I will be promoting. I also go on niche forums to see who hang out there and ask questions about my specific topic.

In the 6-month case study update, we will be digging deeper into Google Analytic to evaluate the ”visitor information”. You can get a lot of valuable information about your visitors using Google Analytic, so make sure that you have that installed on your site.

 

What Did I do to Get Traffic the First 3 Months?

Content Creation – the main focus the first months is to create good quality content that will create value for my visitors.

I focus on a ”Top 10 review” page that will link to 10 different in-depth product reviews.

When this is done I can create helpful content on relevant topics to link to the ”Top 10 review” page.

Outsourcing – I also found a writer so that I can outsource some of my content writing. I will create the main pillar articles myself such as the in-depth reviews. I will then have my writer create content on long tail keywords, to point to the ” Top 10 review” page.

Headlines – I also focus on creating eye-catching headlines so they stick out in the search engines and get clicked on. To create eye-catching headlines you can use different methods. Here are a few examples:

• Top 10…
• 5 Ways to…
• How to…
• Why You Should….

For more info on writing headlines visit my post 5 easy ways to write a catchy headline.

The frequency of post submission – Personally I find the WordPress scheduling feature being my best friend. This allows me to submit my posts ahead of time and schedule them for a specific date and time. This makes it easy to plan ahead and submit content on a regular basis. I can also be ahead of the posting schedule by a month or so.

With this site, I submit blog posts twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays.

Keeping this schedule will allow me to submit 104 posts yearly, over time the site will grow steadily.

I do have plans in the future to add at least one more post weekly. I don`t want to take on more than I can handle though (since this is not my only site).

Find a posting schedule that will work for you! That might be posting ones a week or ones daily, this is up to you. Go with something that will work for you long time though.

Social Media  – I did set up a Twitter account for this website. I tweet some of the posts to get the word out there. I also use Pinterest to pin the pictures on the site.

YouTube – I am a big fan of using videos to get traffic. I created a couple of screen-cast videos but this is definitely something that I want to get in the habit of doing more of.

 

Traffic Result after 3 Months

What I`m looking for here is a positive trend, we want the curve to go up.

• March 310 users
• April 410 users
• May 1046 users

It’s a good trend with increased users so I`m happy about that.

Here are some numbers for the first 3 months:

Avg. Session Duration 1.19 this is ok for a new site

75% bounce rate. I`m not too concerned about that either. Some of the traffic goes directly to the in-depth reviews and if it does I want them to click through to Amazon. If they do that means that they bounce off the site after only visiting 1 page.

My goal was to reach 1000 visitors, so that goal I met, good start.

What Did I do to Get Rankings the First 3 Months?

To be honest I`m not too concerned about the rankings when first starting out. This is not something I spend a lot of time checking. This is, of course, important over time, but if you submit helpful well-written content with value it will rank.

Here are a few additional things that I did to improve the chance of good search engine rankings.

Use of long tail Keywords – I use long tail keywords. These are keywords with lower search volumes but they are often easier to rank for. Having lots of long tail keywords rank well for you, will over time help you increase traffic. I use this keyword tool to find my keywords.

Use of internal links – I link between the content on my site. If the content is relevant to posts and pages, I link them.

Link out to other authority sites in the niche, outbound links – Linking out to other authority sites, will benefit you. This is something that proofs to the search engines that you want to provide value by giving your visitors more relevant information even though it`s not on your own site.

What About Inbound Links? – In this case, I did use a couple of social media accounts to build some incoming links. Other than that I have not done much actively to do any link building.

 

Ranking Result after 3 Months

The same goes for rankings as for traffic, I want to see a positive trend and curve. The more content I add the more rankings I want to get. Like I mentioned, good content will do that for you.

I use SemRush to check on my rankings. With you can do a certain amount of searches daily for free, so take advantage of that. They give you a great overview of your rankings.

As you can see we have a positive trend with the keyword rankings. It`s all free organic listings.

Another tool that I use to check rankings is Jaaxy.

You just type in your keyword and the URL of your site and Jaaxy will check your rankings. The great thing is that if you come back and check the keyword you can see the position change as well.

What Did I do to Get Sales the First 3 Months?

Content – the first 3 months I worked on getting good quality content on my site. I worked on a Top 10 review page, linking to in-depth reviews. This took some time to get all this setup.

 

5 Reasons Why I Decided to Monetize the site with Amazon:

Why monetize with Amazon? To be honest I`ve stayed away from Amazon for years. I always thought why to spend the time making a few dollars per sale when you can make a ton more promoting downloadable products for example.

1. I find that Amazon products convert well, very well if you send targeted traffic.
2. People are very familiar with Amazon and not afraid to open their wallets if they find the product they are looking for.
3. Amazon also have unlimited products to promote, which makes it nice for us affiliate marketers.
4. Send the customer to Amazon and get paid for everything they purchase within 24 hours. You will get surprised about some of the items they purchase.
5. The holidays are great for marketing physical products.

For this site and case study at least starting out Amazon will be the major monetizing method. If you want more benefits monetizing with Amazon check out this article – 6 benefits monetizing with Amazon.

 

Sales Result after 3 Months

So looking at the sales how many sales did this site generate the first 3 months?

Month 1 March

• 4 Sales (2 sales was from the number 1 in-depth review)
• $7.29

Month 2 April

• 7 Sales (5 sales from the in-depth reviews)
• $18.59

Month 3 May

• 6 Sales (3 sales from the in-depth reviews)
• $10.95

My goal was to reach 10 sales monthly by month 3, I didn`t reach that goal but at least I`m seeing some sales. That`s good since it`s a new site.

Expenses

Expenses Month 1

• Domain $10
• Hosting – shared hosting with my other sites
• WordPress theme $59
• Content outsourced 8 articles à $6 – $48
• Pictures for blog posts I pay $1/pic $8
• Tot: $125

Expenses Month 2

• Content outsourced $48
• Pictures for blog posts $8
• Total: $56

Expenses Month 3

• Content outsourced $48
• Pictures for blog posts $8
• Total: $56

In the Red After 3 Months

• Income first 3 months: $36.83
• Expenses first 3 months: $237
• Result the first 3 months: -200.17

 

Sub-niche 1 that I work with is geared toward the winter months, it`s a little bit of a seasonal product. So I`m not too surprised with the sales numbers. The traffic is going in the right direction, the rankings are going in the right directions, so I`m not too worried about the sales numbers going down.

Sub-niche 2 will be an all around year product to balance out the ups and downs with the seasonal sub-niche.

I`m excited to see how long it will take to get the site to making me some money. With any new site or business, you will have to be patient.

In the 6 month post, we will also take a look at conversions. I like to do that when I have a little bit more numbers to go on.

Goals for the 6 Month Mark

Content

• I want to continue submitting 2 posts weekly, content that I outsource.
• I also want to create a couple more pillar articles.

Traffic

• 1500+ visitors monthly
• Positive trend

Financial 

• Since I didn`t reach 10 sales monthly yet, I want to reach that goal

 

If you missed Part 1, How to set up your niche site for success you can read that here.

Now live… Part 3, 6 Month Update Is the Site Out of the Red Yet.

I hope you enjoyed this article, 3 Month update of this Amazon case study, read the latest update on the site here.

I would love to hear from you, feel free to leave a comment below.

Have a productive day and a great week!

See you next Friday,

Vicky