You may or may not know that I recently launched a new niche site case study project about model trains. I just wanted to give a quick update on the progress it has seen. I launched the site back on May 24th of this year, and it is part of a Google+ Niche Site Community that I am part of. You can join that community here.
Anyway, the idea of the project is to share the process of building a niche site. It all starts with things like keyword research, choosing a domain name, choosing a hosting platform, and setting up the site and choosing a wordpress theme. I also created a brief video about how I do keyword research and the tools I use. You can watch that video here:
I am doing all the reviews myself, and the concept is just to add a little bit of personalized content before the details that I am pulling directly from Amazon. My goal from the beginning was not to set this site up necessarily the way it should be or could be (I actually am the founder of an Automotive SEO Company that is in the middle of a redesign, I am the sales guy, not the technical talent) but how the typical niche site builder would be able to do it. I am not using any of the outsourced labor that I have on staff either. This is just my own work.
Now that the site is up and running, I wanted to share some details and statistics.
Site Stats:
- Launched 5/24/13
- 6 posts so far – As you may know, I feel the sweet spot needs to be 15 posts to measure ROI
- 122 Visits – This is weak, must be the copywriter’s fault!
- Pages Per Visit – 1.45 (site needs more pages)
- Average Time On Site – 1 min 6 seconds
- Bounce Rate – 77% (this needs to be way lower, but I just don’t have enough content)
- 8 Total Traffic Sources – Only 19 visits from Google Organic (#3 referral source so far)
- 7 Keywords – Target keyword is “Cool Backpacks” and is #2 keyword. “Not Provided” is #1
- Majority of traffic is english speaking, with 70% being US based. This is good.
- Amazon Product Clicks – 33 Clicks – No Sales, thus no ROI
These are good and bad numbers. Im not surprised to not be making any money yet, as I really don’t have enough content to generate enough visitors. At the end of the day, what I need is more visitors. The good news is, about 25% of the visitors are visiting Amazon (33 clicks from 122 visits). What it will likely need is about 3 thousand visits a month at that pace, to get me about 15 sales. 15 sales of about a $25-$30 backpack will get me about $25 per month, assuming I make 6% commission on that. If I am making that, then I will “occasionally” add more content, but will likely have to have someone else generate it to make the ROI work for me.
At this point, this site is still a baby in my eyes, so it isn’t feeding itself let alone running on its own. I always have the option of switching this to an adsense site too… as I would have already been making money if it was. But I wanted to use Amazon for this one, as I think just about anyone can make money with adsense and I wanted to demonstrate how to make money using Amazon. Once this thing reaches 15 articles, I will evaluate whether to put it on auto-pilot or develop it into an authority site. Until then, I still have a ton of work left.
How do you think it looks so far? What suggestions do you have for the site to make it better for viewers?
