95% ROI in 6 Months! We Were Investing $50k in the Automotive Niche

Mark
✅ Case Study Update: 95% ROI In 6 Months ✅
Back in November, I shared a case study on how we were investing $50k to build out a few content websites.💰
I shared the initial results from Site 1, which is in the automotive niche and was built on an aged domain.
Below is an update on Site 1, with December and January's figures included.
Any questions, just shout – happy to share everything we've learnt 👍
Summary Stats
Site Launched: June 2020
Investment to date: $5,949.16
Income to date: $1,620.74
Estimated site value: ~$10,000
Return on Investment (ROI) to date: 95%
Costs to date
Domain: $22.16 (aged domain)
Hosting: $250 (WPX)
Content cost: $4,500 (@4.5 US cents per word for 100,000 words. Bought from our content team)
Links: $700 (we've bought 10 link insertions and 5 guest posts)
Citations: $20
Social Profiles: $7 (Fiverr)
VA for posting: $450
Total Cost: $5,745
Income to date
We only added affiliate links in late September 2020.
October 2020: $167
November 2020: $715.30 (Black Friday went well!)
December 2020: $215
January 2020: 523.43
Total Income: $1620.74 💰
Traffic to date
July 2020: 217 sessions
August 2020: 755 sessions
September 2020: 2,467 sessions
October 2020: 7,034 sessions
November 2020: 10,097 sessions
December 2020: 10,254 sessions
January 2021: 11,558 sessions 📈
I shared these initial learnings when I posted in November
Niche choice is critical – for us, the criteria was not Amazon, the average sale price $100+, 30+ day cookie, high converting affiliate partner (checked using Commission Junction stats), and decent commission 8%+
Good aged domain (make sure to do your due diligence)
A detailed content plan for 80-100 articles takes a solid day or two to create, but it's the foundation of your site structure – think carefully about scalability and silos
Good content makes all the difference.
If the domain is good, your content solid, and your site structure silo'ed and interlinked correctly, you don't need a lot of links to rank. Although Ahrefs shows 189 referring domains, most of these are citations and coupon sites. Hence our DR is 2!!
New learnings (January 2021)
Make sure to test multiple affiliate partners. We have tested three partners. Two have had really poor conversions so far. For example, see the screenshot below of Affiliate Partner A vs Affiliate Partner B. As you can see Partner A has driven 14x more commission than B, despite B sending 1/3 as much traffic as A. Switching out partners that aren't working is critical.
Due to the poor performance of Affiliate Partner B and C, we've switched them out for Amazon. The switch was completed mid-January 2021 and the results are promising.
Negotiating higher commissions from partners is one of the best ways to scale revenues. For example, we are currently on a standard 7% commission with Partner A. Partner C offered us more than double this (15%). As we get larger we will approach A to negotiate higher commissions, using C as the benchmark. Don't negotiate too early. Wait until you have some leverage in terms of the traffic and sales volume.
Plans going forward
We've identified a number of affiliate links that point to out of stock products. We're going to get our VA to check and updated links to point to brand category pages instead of individual product pages – this will solve any out of stock issues.
We're testing an email capture pop-up. It has a hook centred around getting a coupon and is already performing well.
Once we get to a consistent $10,000 of monthly referred sales to Partner A we will be negotiating an increase in commission, ideally to 15%
As traffic continues to grow we will look to implement programmatic advertising with Mediavine or AdThrive.
Current Valuation
It is very difficult to value a new site, but after 4 months earnings we would estimate this site is worth: $10k
Goal
Our goal on this site is to take earnings to $10k a month and value to $300-$400k.
I'll be updating this case study in a few months. But you can follow along here • https://bit.ly/2Miv0xB
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Umair
Why are you not focusing on Pinterest traffic and ad network monetization?
You can earn more than 1000$ only from Pinterest traffic,if you monetized website with ad network and also generate sales from Pinterest traffic because Pinterest users mostly USA based.

Mark ^✍️ » Umair
This niche doesn't lend itself well to Pinterest. But we do use Pinterest for other niches in our portfolio and it's a solid traffic source. Thanks!
Umair » Mark
Yes.
You are saying right.
I think these niches and some other niches are the best for Pinterest
Beauty
Home decor
Gardening
Yoga
Health
Fitness
Fashion
Dating
Travel
Gadgets
Kitchen accessories
Weight loss
Dating etc etc
Justin » Umair
what's the strategy for Pinterest?
Umair » Justin
Pinterest is a visual search engine.
We bring a very large amount of traffic on our website through Pinterest.
We optimize Pinterest pin and rank in Pinterest search engine.
If someone search keyword in Pinterest search engine,then our pins show on top result of Pinterest page for relevant keyword.

Pijus
Wow pls join me in this particular post.
And pls update me whenever you update this case study.💟

Mark ^✍️ » Pijus
Sure, you can follow this case study and more here: https://tasket.net/case-studies/hermes/
Project Hermes: Automotive Affiliate Case Study | Tasket
Pijus » Mark
thanks man 💟 I have a question.
Where did you find good age domain or where did you buy this kind of age domain.
Pls give some tip's or any resources.🙏
Mark ^✍️ » Pijus
We bought the aged domain from GoDaddy auctions. We weren't too concerned about the backlink profile. Just wanted a decent aged domain that was niche-specific and had a clean history.
Pijus » Mark
OK! Thank you.

Alex
Very interesting case study – thank you for the update. You can't beat the fundamentals; strong links + comprehensive content plan.

Mark ^✍️ » Alex
Indeed – everything boils down to the fundamentals!
Benjamin » Alex
No links actually, other than the 10/15… We have 1 link for every 10 posts. 🙂

Trần
Thanks for sharing. What is the percentage of informative article/ money article?

Mark ^✍️ » Trần
100% money pages at the moment – we may add informational content when we start link building at scale.
Trần » Mark
that sounds amazing as many pros told me that we should maintain 30/70 or at least 50/50 for money article/informative articles for better Google ranking.
What is your average keyword postion ranking of those money page?

Meakin
Interested in how you came up with the $10k valuation if you don't mind me asking.

Mark ^✍️ » Meakin
Sure… it's pretty arbitrary at the moment as the site is still very new and only has four months earnings. But generally content sites like ours are valued at 25-40x average monthly profits (ideally profits are for the TTM). In our case I've just estimated an average of $400 a month profit and multiplied by 25. I actually think we would be able to get closer to $20k now.
Meakin » Mark
interesting. Is that based on valuations on Flippa etc?
Mark ^✍️
Flippa and pretty much every major brokerage in the market – Empire Flippers, FE International, Investors Club etc.

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Mucha
says a few sites, but only 1 is mentioned, and no where near the return of 50k, what did I miss here? And a site worth 10k, is far from 300-400k. Also wondering what I missed here.

Mark ^✍️
Hey Mucha
we haven't starting monetising the other sites yet. Will be adding case studies for the other sites in the next few months though. So far we have only invested just over $15k across 4 sites. The current valuation is after 6 months (ie from launch to today). We are planning to reach the $300k valuation within 24 months (ie. July 2022).
Mucha
Interesting, I'm surprised your not further along but I suspect that may be due to the fact your starting from scratch. I do something similar myself but I invest 50k – 100k in established, under optimized assets. I routinely apply my SOP, optimize, and scale them considerably within a year, often exceeding 4x my initial investment.
Mark ^✍️
Yip, these are from scratch on aged domains. I'm also doing a buy vs build case study but obviously the economics are different.
Mucha
Ya definitely diff. I've done both, but find its best to skip the first two years if I can.

Trần
Thanks for sharing, what is keyword position now?

Mark ^✍️
The case study is up to date through to the end of January. We have 100s of ranking keywords.

Canlas
how many info post vs affiliate post (best x for y) etcc?

Mark ^✍️
All affiliate content – no info articles yet
Canlas
Mark and with just only 10 links? and where do you point the links? Homepage?

Peter
Hi Mark. Can you explain your ROI calculation? From my understanding its way off.

Callum » Peter
This! invested 6k, site "worth" 10k doesn't = 95%?
Nor does invested 6k, made 1600 = 95%?
Peter » Callum
that's what I'm seeing as well Calum. That £10k is also imaginary until its sold so can't be classed as ROI.
Callum » Peter
Only way I can square it is if he isn't counting the 4.5k invested in content since their in house team was "paid" for it, but generally its just in the same pot?
Peter » Callum
agree. It would have to be accounted for irrelevant of in house or not.
Mark ^✍️
Hey guys, here's how I calculated ROI: ([Estimated Site Value + Income to date] – Invested Capital) / Invested Capital. It could be argued that the site's value isn't realised yet, and hence can't be used in the ROI calculation. However, I can guarantee you I would get an orderly queue of buyers at $10k if I put it on the market today.
Mucha
This is accurate, you can basically take any site at X MRR (monthly recurring revenue) and multiple by 32x as a base calculation. There will definitely be buyers in our around this range.
And new sites, with unestablished revenue metrics are based on perceived value. However those with experience can quickly calculate a more realistic value by taking traffic / 1000 * CPM rate.
So more than reasonable.
Peter
That's a fair enough explanation. I just couldn't see how you were coming to the figure.

Jesse
How is the quality of the content? Where did you point your back links to, inner pages or home page?

Mark ^✍️
Content quality is very good. We use our internal team of writers who have all been trained on how to write affiliate SEO content – see: https://tasket.net/services/content-writing-service/ Links are mainly to the homepage with a few to inner pages. 👍
TASKET.NET
Content Writing Service for Affiliate Marketers | Tasket

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