The “Profitable Niche Site” Case-Study (October 2019 – Update 6)

Welcome back to my “Profitable niche site case study”.

This is the 6th updated since I first started this case study in May 2019.

Unfortunately, October was not a good month for this case study.

Although much progress was made with regards to content publishing, this month was plagued with multiple Pinterest suspensions (which have effected my traffic significantly) and also;

My flagship site for this case study suffered some drops in rankings (and had a few refunds on products sold).

Let’s get into the nitty-gritty and see what the key takeaways of October 2019 have been for this case study.

october case study update

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Niche Site 01: STSP (Name & URL TBA)

  • Pageviews in September 2019: 6,883
  • Pageviews in October 2019: 5,541 (a decrease of 20%)
  • Earnings in October 2019: $114.15 (a decrease of 50% from the previous month)
  • New Posts Published in October 2019: 11
  • Total Posts Published: 51
  • Total Words Published: 101,992
  • Average Word Count Per Post: 2000

Thoughts On October 2019:

I’m not sure what to make of October for this website. I published 11 new in-depth articles targetting very specific low-competition keywords but as you can see above – the traffic dipped.

What happened?

Well, my trusted Ahrefs tool shows me the keywords which were bringing most of the traffic went down in the search engines.

Truth be told – I don’t really mind as these were not my “money pages” and even though traffic dipped, the income from the main affiliate program I am promoting actually increased (I earned $89.40 last month vs $114.15 this month).

(Last month I had a company that paid me $100 for a sponsored post so that is what helped the income go over $200).

Overall, I am very happy with how this site is doing mainly due to the conversion rate I have for the products I am promoting.

In October, I’ve had 153 clicks and 5 sales, which brings it to an above-average 3.2% conversion rate.

I also had two more sales happen this month, but unfortunately – there were some refunds involved which brought the number back down to 5.

I’ve also worked on some keywords this month targetting high-ticket items which were always my main target with this website, we’ll just have to wait and see how these articles perform in the coming months.

My Plan For November 2019

One thing I’d like to do for November is to publish more content since I’d like to then take December off.

I’m currently at 51 published blog posts with this website so if I can get it to 70 by the end of November, I’d be happy to put this site to the side for now and let those 70 posts mature, rank and hopefully bring in traffic (and income) before I make my next decision.

Niche Site 02: TSCC (Name & URL TBA)

  • Pageviews in September 2019: 3,627
  • Pageviews in October 2019: 3,195 (a decrease of 11%)
  • Earnings in October 2019: $3.55
  • Posts Published in September 2019: 0
  • Total Posts Published: 80
  • Total Words Published: 115,611
  • Average Word Count Per Post: 1445

tscc analytics

Thoughts On October 2019:

This was one of the sites that got the hammer in the lastest sweep by Pinterest to ban accounts they deemed “spammy”.

Unfortunately, this site got hit with a suspension two times this month but I’ve now managed to get it back (with Pinterest admitting it had made a mistake with both suspensions).

I didn’t publish any new content on this site as I’m focused on building the remainder 8 websites in this case study (more on this below), but I will be looking to add 20 more by end of the year to be able to start off the new year with a perfect 100.

I’ve also tested out some AdSense ads this month, and in the few days banner ads were present on the site, it made a whopping $3.55 (sarcasm).

My Plan For November 2019:

The overall goal for this website is to get it on a premium ad network starting off with Ezoic once we hit 10,000 pageviews and then move on to MediaVine and hopefull AdThrive in the future.

The 20 more posts I want to publish would allow me to kick-start Pinterest again with some fresh content which I’m hoping would get me to my 10,000 pageviews goal – although it’s doubtful I’ll be able to publish 20 new posts this coming month.

An Update on The 8 Other Websites In This Case Study

Although nothing too exciting is happening here, the other 8 websites from this 10 website case-study are doing quite well.

More content is being added (although not as frequently as I wish) and some websites are starting to get some decent traffic as well.

Unfortunately, I can’t be doing an update on each website at this time as there’s not much to report.

I would much rather focus on the two main websites for now and continue growing them to become the money-makers I plan them to be.

I’ve stated publicly many times that I expect these sites to be making at least $1,000 a month with a goal to have Site One (STSP) earning $3,000+ per month by end of year 2020.

Final Words

Thank you very much for reading this 6th update.

Sadly, there’s nothing too inspirational for you here but I did want to publish this update to show you that challenges will happen and nothing ever goes according to plan in this business.

However, now that “most” issues have been sold and we’re now heading into the 6-8 month milestone – which is typically when the real magic starts happening with affiliate websites – I can not wait to see how this month (November) will play out.

For December I don’t have much planned as every year I scale down from work to spend time with my family, so ideally I’ll be able to publish most of my content needs and be able to have a relaxed Christmas.

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PSS: If you’d like to see the previous case-study updates, you can find them all linked here: