My main site's 2019 - Less than ideal
Last Update: Jan 21, 2020
I'm constantly seeing people ask if there's anyone here making money without promoting WA. Well, I'm one and I've been doing so since mid-2015. By early 2016 I was earning a "full-time" income entirely online and that hasn't changed to this day.
Although I hit a bit of a lul in spring 2017 and have been effectively beating a dead horse since then, let's take a look at my main site's 2019 - be forewarned, it's not very impressive.
This site is in the consumer tech niche, primarily focusing on PC hardware and things of that nature. Over 97% of its revenue comes directly from Amazon and so we'll just focus on that.
In terms of traffic, this site saw a total of 432,089 unique users resulting in 697,060 pageviews throughout 2019. From January 2019 to December 2019, it saw a traffic increase of roughly 30% that's been remaning relatively steady.
Those 432,089 users cumulatively purchased a little over $1.25-million worth of items, I was credited for the $1,056,413 that shipped resulting in $33,940 USD in commissions - low percentage niches aren't the best, trust me.
As I don't utilize paid traffic methods on this site (anymore), the bulk of the operational costs come down to hosting which is only about $600/year. Maintenance comes down to spending 30-minutes to an hour/day answering comments and another 1-3hrs/day updating old content/writing new content. Weekly, there's typically less than 15-hours invested into it.
That all said, I'm growing bored of this site and would now prefer to have the extra capital to move onto other projects, so I'll probably be selling it at some point this year. Once that happens, I'll put together another short post outlining what I learned during the sale/transfer process.
In the meantime, I'll be working on a couple of other sites that have been on the backburner for way too long.
Recent Comments
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Do you have ads on this site because of you do, especially if it's mediavine, would your site be earning roughly an extra $1k per month?
If So, essentially $4k per month is still a solid amount and should sell for very good amount of money I'd assume
Not right now. But, I've run AdSense in the past and have strongly considered both Mediavine and Ezoic over the past year. Mediavine/Ezoic likely wouldn't be another $1000/mo, probably another $100-$200ish though. AdSense will bring in maybe $50/mo if I put it up with my current volume of traffic.
This site should get at least a 30x multiple on L3M earnings. I'm trying to push for 32x but it's unlikely. I'm ultimately hoping for somewhere around $100k but we'll see what happens.
Aight fair enough, at this point you have a lot of experience and should hopefully be able to get a new niche site that's up ans running with the money made on the sale.
All I can say is best of luck on that cuz starting a new site is always a little daunting
It's all about mindset when it comes to launching a new site. It also pays to have a plan in place for content, etc.
Here's how this site started: 1 Month Old Site - First Commissions
Fantastic and thanks for sharing this. Yes it is very good to see a post by a different person who is earning a good income "now" from a niche not relying on WA referrals. So I think there is a lot of value in you sharing this.
I do have a question... what happened in 2017? Are you saying the site used to do even better and something happened in 2017 to decrease traffic? Or you focused on other sites that didn't take off or just "life happens" stuff (completely get that)?
No problem. Glad I could add some value.
I wish I could tell you what happened. One day the site was consistently earning $200-$400/day (sometimes more) and the next it was earning more like $100-$150/day and has remained that way since. Nothing I do seems to change anything for better or worse. In 2018 my traffic dropped WAYYYY off, but I kept earning the same amount I had been since after the drop in 2017; I'm still earning about the same amount now even after a sizable traffic increase throughout 2019. I really have no explanation for it as I don't understand it myself.
Here's a post I wrote in Dec 2016: December 2016 - $8968 Here's another I put together about Cyber Monday 2016: Cyber Monday - 559 ordered items
at least you can put the experience of creating this site into whatever you do to choose to go forward. You have the principles of making a site that pays (maybe not enough) but it does make a profit and you can take this forward. Best of luck with your new projects
Exactly! In hindsight, I should have sold this particular site a long time ago. Oh well, just another learning experience :)
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Great post Branton! This actually excites me...to see some folks like you make money in this business of affiliate marketing etc.
Congratulations on the sale and the best to you on your next venture.
Joe