Hey there. It's 5AM here and I am just about to head off to my day job. I am running behind in assigning tasks to my VA for the Niche Site Duel. In fact, we have done very little to work on the site since we put it up. The one exception is that one VA is still rewriting the articles on the site (a few every day). There is no real strategy there — just trying not to spend too much money on the site all at once.
Most of the traffic on the site is probably coming from people like you who are reading about the duel and then directly typing in the URL. So, don't be too impressed by the traffic stats below. However, I will show the traffic so you can get a sense of what is going on.
What is interesting is that I am starting to see some traffic from organic search (but just a trickle).
And finally, I am seeing one or two clicks on affiliate links. That is really interesting since I have not even set up the affiliate IDs correctly yet. Man, I need to get busy here. Of course I have no idea if these clicks are coming from real visitors. I suspect that the visitor that was searching for Silverhill Guitar Knobs was a real visitor, however. That is pretty neat – and it a natural effect of organic search. You always end up ranking for stuff that you had no idea you would rank for.
That's all for now — I really need to get on the road to work. More on this later.
Happy to answer any and all questions about the site, the data, or the strategy. Just leave your questions below.
Hi Mark , hadn’t been on your blog in a while and just came across this challenge. Very neat idea. I love reading about your approach to this, building the site w/ minimal time investment and outsourcing most of it. This model would make it very easy to scale this and turn it into a pretty profitable little business.
If you can, it may be interesting to see you document how much time you personally have invested in this.
Susanne
P.S. Hope to see you again in Jan. at NAMS.
Great idea — time and money need to be documented. So far, I have spent far more time messing around with documenting the process and writing blog posts than I have spent on the site. I spent about an hour on keyword research and about another hour checking out the affiliate offers in the space. I spent half an hour buying PLR and about another hour giving instructions to the VAs. I need to spend another hour or two looking at the site and writing instructions to the VAs today. So, let’s say 5 hours of time so far.
As for the cost — less than $100 total so far I think. I will have to document that in more detail.
Thanks,
Mark
Awesome. I’m looking forward to seeing how this pans out and how quickly you recoop your investment. $100 really isn’t all that much for a new little stream of income.
Me too! I agree that $100 is a pretty small investment in the grand scheme of things.
And yes — I do have a NAMS ticket for January. Now all I need is permission from my wife to attend! 🙂
Wonderful. Looking forward to seeing you again.
If you’re already getting traffic for Silverhill Guitar Knobs maybe they have a affilate program that you can tap into.
Are your VA’s using an article spinning software?
Thanks for the update!
Definitely – I use TBS http://www.masonworld.com/recommends/bestspinner
Mark,
You always talk about your VA… i was wondering…. do you only have one VA working for you ?
I always have at least one full-time VA offshore (I have 3 right now but am shrinking that later this year). For content, I have a part time writer and a part time transcriptionist. I also have a part time web designer and a part time perl programmer “on staff”. For part time VAs, “on staff” means hourly rates are agreed ahead of time and they just bill me as work is completed.
So, if I want to do something, I just enter the task in my project management software and assign it to a VA.
What project Management system do you use ?
Interesting following the progress as it happens, shame we can’t filter out visitors from this blog to get a sense of the ‘real’ effect your work is having but it’s going to be fascinating to watch anyway.
Well, we will get some idea by splitting out organic search traffic versus direct traffic. I need to add the blog to my Google Analytics account so we can get some good data.
Hey Mark,
I’m a new reader here (originally heard of your site from the podcast with Pat), and I’m a fellow niche site duel participant. Glad to see you are getting some traffic, but like you, I’m also seeing most of my traffic from people just curious about the niche site duel.
Oh, and here’s a kick in the pants you need – Set up your affiliate link!! It takes 2 seconds, and who knows, you may be missing out on sales right now. 🙂
Best of luck,
Eric