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Niche Site Project 1: Pets

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This is my main website. It is based on a specific type of pet. This site already has almost 400 posts and could very easily accommodate over 1,000.

Because it covers the whole “type” of pet, there is a seemingly infinite number of keywords I could target specific to each breed of pet, each type of sport the pet participates in, genetics, nutrition, accessories and more.

I have owned this domain/site for over 10 years and I do believe that once I started adding good content, that helped me rank sooner than what a new site would have. It wasn’t until 2019 where I finally “figured out” how to blog, so my overview stats for that site will start there.

Blog Income Progress

ProjectMonth StartMonth ## Articles AddedTotal # ArticlesWords PublishedPageviewsTotal Earnings

Site In Review

Having not done an update on this site here since March of 2021, it’s definitely time to take another look. As you can see by the tables above, this site hasn’t been getting much content. That is more from lack of focus on my part and not at all due to lack of available content.

I had briefly considered selling this site earlier this year. Mostly because I’m not as inspired to find keywords for it as I used to. I ultimately decided to hold onto it for at least another year so I’ll need to come up with a content strategy to boost rankings.

Overall the site is down. In fact, it’s down 16% over the same 30-day period last year.

The site has some seasonality in Spring / Summer which but, because the growth was so fast I don’t know for sure how long the “season” lasts. You can see a big jump from March – April last year so I am anticipating the same this year but we will see.

When comparing this year to the previous period, I can see there haven’t been any major issues with the site. That tells me that doing some basic work can help get things going back in the right direction.

Goals for this site for the rest of 2022 would be:

  • Content Updates on 10% of posts
  • Add 100 new posts
  • Interlink all posts (currently interlinking is sporadic and most posts don’t have them)

March 2021 Update

Overall this site has a TON of content and I’m not focused to much on new posts but rather I really need to go in and do a content audit to update old, underperforming posts.

Jan 2019 – March 31, 2021

Thanks to BloggerPlot I can see that I get on average 371 pageviews per post for content that is 12 months old or older. No doubt that average would increase by trimming and refining old content.

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MY NICHE SITE PROJECTS

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14 Comments

  1. hello April,
    Greetings from Vancouver, BC Canada

    I have a labor job and need to drive load and unload everyday and basically im living pay check to pay check.

    I found you on You Tube with Project 24.

    My question is Im struggling with organic traffic, I have a 2 years old site and having around 10,000+ organic visitors in the health niche.
    Just wanted to know : How to Find great Keywords for article topic? It is my problem ever since.
    DO you have some samples on a great keyword on any niche and maybe i can analyze it?

    Maybe use Ahrefs and find Questions with 0 competition?

    My adsense revenue now is $110 per month ( very stable ) and Amazon associates $80 ( but it is dropping for some reason maybe the COVID19 ?? ). My hosting is WA Hosting which does not support Ezoic, shall i move to siteground or bluehost hosting and switch to EZoic?

    1. Hi Francis, I would highly recommend reviewing the Income School videos on Search Analysis. They have a free one on their YouTube channel. I use the search analysis method they teach and the overwhelming majority of my traffic across all sites is organic. It really does work. As far as revenue, I feel like you would make so much more with Ezoic that it would be well worth switching. I use BigScoots Hosting for all my sites.

  2. Hi April
    You know what I find strange… You were adding content and in April and May 2019 and your income dropped. And then suddenly in June 2019, your traffic went from 3,794 to 10,698, and that’s when your income shot up. But your traffic shot up by about 7,000 pageviews in one month… How is this possible? Did you maybe start to use Pinterest during that month?

    1. Hi Natalie,
      For the March 2019 income, $69 of that was Etsy. Someone made a huge purchase on Etsy using my affiliate link. At that time the site was still monetized with Adsense so the ad earnings from month to month were pretty low. As far as traffic, I had been running Pinterest the whole time. You are correct though I had a pin go viral in July and that helped boost my Pinterest account overall I think. The first month traffic inverted and Organic beat Pinterest was October 2019. Here are the details of the progression:
      Month – Organic – Social
      Jan 2019 – 274 – 2035
      Feb 2019 – 228 – 1682
      Mar 2019 – 344 – 429
      Apr 2019 – 521 – 362
      May 2019 – 568 – 1234
      Jun 2019 – 778 – 5953
      Jul 2019 – 2318 – 16591
      Aug 2019 – 4609 – 14444
      Sep 2019 – 7834 – 13534
      Oct 2019 – 10901 – 9546
      Nov 2019 – 13310 – 10843
      Dec 2019 – 16229 – 9484

      1. Thanks, April, for the feedback. So in most months, most of your traffic comes from social. Can you recommend a good Pinterest course?

        1. In the beginning most traffic came from Social, after October 2019 the traffic inverted and now I am about 75% organic and 25% social for this site. My other sites are around 90% organic. My tools and resources page has a link to the courses I recommend 😀

  3. Hi April,

    Great going and very inspiring to see your progress!

    I’ve started a blog last year and it is picking up well with organic traffic but I’m finding it difficult to add more content alone. I tried few writers from different places like Upwork etc but the quality was not as expected.

    Could you help with any recommendations here? If you have a go to place for your best writers etc which might help me.. I’m looking for a long term writer to collaborate with me on my blog..

    Many thanks!

    1. Hi Sai,
      You just have to keep trying and testing writers. I’m going through another round of hiring now. I started with 15 applicants that I assigned a test article and I think I have 3 that made it to round 2. It isn’t easy to find good writers but once you do it is so worth it!

    1. No link building right now. I haven’t really had trouble getting organic content to rank. Very occasionally I’ll see something in HARO that is relevant to one of these sites but even that is only a couple of times a year at most that something comes up and my submissions don’t always get accepted. If a post is not ranking I’ll reevaluate that post after about a year.

    2. I see on Fiverr you can pay for link building. An SEO can add your URL to directories and other high authority sites. I believe this is whitehat techniques. And it’s not too expensive.

      1. Link building can be white hat if done organically. Using a service like you find on Fiverr is a good way to get a penalty. I don’t do it and it isn’t necessary.

  4. Hey April,

    I’m not asking a question but just wanted to thank you for posting about your journey. I found you on Project 24 You tube channel and came here to find out more.
    Massive congratulations on your personal success with your sites. It’s an inspiration to me if I’m honest. I am standing on the first step of my blogging journey and am very excited to get started in a tough (but do-able) niche
    Thanks again
    Mike

    1. Thanks Mike. I am glad you are finding the site useful! I’m in a couple of tough niches too, in my experience it’s all about being patient and staying the course.

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