January 2022: Niche Site Case Study Update

I’m working with Arielle Phoenix to grow her site and earn more! Check out the first update here.

🎧 This is the podcast interview with Arielle for Jan 2022.

This Month in a Nutshell

Earnings are going up and I almost crossed the $100 mark! Had it not been for that one returned item, I would have. Not to worry, there is always next month…

As I mentioned in the December report, going forwards, all of my attention is on Site 7. This month, I managed to publish 30 articles which brings it to a total of 200 posts. The average word count per post is 1,135.

At this point, 90% of the content is being outsourced. My EPMV remains disappointingly low at $7.43, but it looks like this site is going to make up for that with Amazon affiliate sales.

Results Snapshot

Earnings 

This Month: $99.64

Lifetime: $168.55

Ezoic Earnings Oct 2021-January 2022

January 2022 Amazon Earnings

It may not seem like much but that is a 157.73% increase from last month’s earnings.

Traffic

Pageviews This Month: 4,371

Lifetime: 7,615

Sessions This Month: 3,562

Lifetime: 5,799

I think the graph is pretty self-explanatory; traffic is going up! I’m not surprised at all by the percentage of new visitors, as the majority of the content is geared towards organic traffic and typically one-off search queries.

Expenses

This Month: $498

• approximately $15 per 1000 words,
• hosting,
• and, a percentage of the Ezoic Premium fee (of course, this is divided by 7 sites).

I spent less on this site this month as I had some loose ends to tie up with my other sites. I can see why focussing on one is important (especially when you do not have unlimited resources).

Activities & Accomplishments

Focus Area: Organizing my writers & planning my content

I am more organized since I stepped away from Plutio, which is what I was using to manage my writers. And since, have moved over to a simple Google Sheets document. This has sped everything up immensely and all of my writers can see what needs to be done and who is doing what.

I let them choose from the list which is a simple layout with post title, a link to the template document or outline, the word count range, and any other details. They just go in and put their name by the articles they want to write and the date it was assigned.

Each morning, I can go in and see any new articles and put them straight up.

Focus Area: Overall portfolio traffic

My overall portfolio traffic has increased and I am now on Ezoic’s Level 2 program; this also benefits the smaller sites in my portfolio.

Focus Area: Doing what moves the needle

This is the first site that I have managed to publish 200 articles on, and it is clear that adding more content is the thing that moves the needle! I am going to focus on hitting my publishing targets and exceeding them where possible.

What’s Working

• Editing: For now this is still working, but I can see it slowing things down in the near future. I am currently editing, formatting, and submitting all of the articles myself. 
• Laying out the exact topic clusters and number of articles for the month: Now that I am using Google Sheets to manage all of my writers, I am finding it easier to plan out the topics and workflow for the month.
• Topic clusters: While it is too soon to tell how well this is going, from an internal linking standpoint, it’s great! I find it much easier to interlink, naturally, so it doesn’t feel like I am forcing in anchor text primarily to create a link.

• Buyer-focussed articles: Originally I was concerned that not owning the products would have a negative effect or that my efforts would be in vain. I’m not doing any original research on the products, but I am not simply rewriting Amazon product pages either. 

  As the affiliate sales and conversion rate continue to increase with the traffic I am focussing on throwing more product focussed articles in the mix.

• Improving the articles I get back from my writers: I have recently begun going through the articles I get back from my writers and adding in H2s and an extra paragraph. This extra content is based on additional long-tail keywords I find that are related to the article which I can rank for. Sometimes these are in the form of an FAQ, other times, they are an existing section that could be further optimized to include those long-tail keywords.It is usually something like a 10-20 search volume keyword.

What’s Not Working

• Siloing: I always set out to silo properly and then find myself just linking the articles to any and everything related.

  I’ve been learning about silos for a while now and I think in order to successfully begin to pull them off, I’m going to need to plan them out beforehand and stick to them rather than just hoping I remember during editing.

  As I’m going to be segueing into related topics, I need to silo properly. It may work out regardless, but I would rather do it correctly as I can then repeat it and test further on future topic clusters.

• Writing: I like writing, I really do. But my time is better served in other areas right now, so I will continue to write the articles I like or find easy to knock out in 20 minutes (with the help of my good friend, Jasper), but anything that is costing too much brain power or time will have to be handed over.

On the Horizon 

Next Month

I am hoping to exceed my publishing target next month. Now that my time and resources can be fully applied to this site, this shouldn’t be a problem. I have my templates ready and waiting, so if need be, I can hire some more writers (something I actually enjoy doing).

It may be time to train one of my best writers for the role of an editor. I have two in mind for the role but I would need to do a few screen recordings showing them exactly what I do. The good thing is, once it is done, I can then use it for any future recruitments.

While I enjoy doing on-page SEO and tweaking all of the little things I feel make a difference, Tim Ferris would agree that there is somebody who can do it just as well or better than me. Editing and on-page SEO can be time-consuming when you are ramping up content!

Parting Thoughts

All in all, I’m excited about the trajectory the site is going in. It’s all looking very promising in all areas (well, except the EPMV department). The good thing there is, the traffic is really starting to pick up, so who knows, I might be applying for Mediavine soon and be looking at some healthier rates.

I’m hoping that my related topic clusters do not dilute the little authority I am starting to gain in the main niche. It is going to be very interesting to see how well these do in the coming months.