Website Investing from Investing.io

In this episode, Avi talks to Mohit Tater, one of the operators for the Empire Flippers (EF) Capital Fund. They discuss his investing background and the various sites he has acquired. They also dive into the operations of EF Capital, and how Mohit works with his team to run a bunch of sites.

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Approach by EF Capital

* Mohit has had a relationship with the team at EF Capital for some years. This led to EF Capital approaching him to see if he’d like to join them as an operator. That's no surprise, considering Mohit’s extensive experience in the website investing field.

* At the time, EF Capital were looking for 5 operators for their first batch of sites. Two operators would run FBA businesses and the other 3 would handle content businesses. Mohit was among those running content businesses.

The Deals

* At the start, each operator had around $1-2 million, and they set out to raise an amount equal to that.

* EF Capital (EFC) would then tap into their investment network and raise money for the 5 deals based on what the 5 investors set out to achieve. EFC determined how much money they would raise based on what each investor was doing, and their goals. 

* Currently, Mohit's fund is complete, and he is now looking to acquire around 5 different content sites.

Operations & Profit Splits

* The content operators may only acquire sites from Empire Flippers. This means they are searching for viable sites in the Empire Flippers Marketplace. 

* Mohit will then operate these websites and online businesses with his existing team.

* The net profit is apportioned 3 ways: 60% goes to investors, 30% to the operator, and the last 10% to Empire Flippers. This distribution ratio also applies to any capital gains when a site is sold. 

* Empire Flippers handles all communication with the investors. The operators don’t necessarily need to contact the investors, and Mohit may not know them. This allows the operators to run their businesses and websites freely and easily without having to worry about establishing and maintaining investor relations. 

* Empire Flippers essentially takes care of all investor relations and management, and raises the necessary capital for the operators. The operators then handle all business operations.

* Mohit put down 7% of the $1 million capital raised, which is $70,000.

Mohit’s Plan

* The plan for the future is to have bigger raises, with the next step at $2 million. This will allow the operators to be involved in larger deals and to acquire more businesses. 

* What’s important now, however, is to initiate the whole process and get a foot in the door. 

* Dividends will be paid quarterly to investors, starting in Q3 or Q4 of 2021.

* Mohit has a team of 18 people to help him run the different content sites. Most of the team is remote, with an office in New Delhi. There are 2 tech people, 5 site managers (with great SEO experience), 5 junior SEOs, 4 writers, 1 HR, and 1 SEO project manager. The team also has a few interns. 

* Mohit prefers his site managers to have prior experience handling a site. He leans towards people who run and manage their own sites. However, Mohit admits that it is difficult to find people like this. 

* He often looks for people with good experience, but who have hit a plateau and are looking to grow further. Mohit provides them with the avenues for learning and sharpening their skills. 

* In terms of acquiring sites, Mohit says that he isn’t looking for any niche in particular. 

* The businesses will be sold in around 2 to 3 years on the Empire Flippers marketplace, with EF taking a commission from those sales.

Resources

* Website: blackbookinvestments.com

Guest Info

* Mohit’s email: [email protected]

What did you think?

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Cheers,

Juliet

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit investing.substack.com

In this episode, Avi talks to Freddy Lansky, owner of Points Panda, about the pros and cons of SBA loans, and why he’s currently thinking of starting a fund instead of taking out an SBA loan. 

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Starting Out

* In 2010, Freddy started a business called iChess with his business partner. The business focused on selling chess courses and videos online.

* Together, they scaled the business to just over 7 figures. In 2019, Freddy's business partner bought him out.

* After taking a few months off, Freddy started a new business called Points Panda, which began as a product tie service. 

* At the same time, Freddy used his funds for an affiliate blog in the credit card and travel hacking space. Due to travel restrictions resulting from COVID, the business model tanked.

* Later, Freddy thought about buying a business. He ended up thinking about putting up a fund of his own, after getting offers for SBA loans.

SBA Loans

* SBA loans are usually between $300,000 to $5 million. Typically they are provided by  banks, and supported and backed by the government through the Small Business Administration. Their terms are usually very good, considering that they are government-backed. These days, the interest rate is generally at 6%-7% over terms of 10 years. 

* These days, it's easier than ever to get a loan for an online business through these SBA loans. The market is at an all time high, but Freddy says that there are pros and cons. Around 95% of businesses on the major brokerages are either not SBA eligible, or the sellers don’t want to deal with SBA. This is often due to the huge amount of paperwork and due diligence required from banks. It can take months to close. 

* Banks also don’t like extending loans for Amazon FBA businesses because they regard them as too risky. Also, despite having low interest rates, you can have high multiples and debt service payments. 

* You usually sign a personal guarantee, which means that banks can go after your property if you default on your loan.

* Freddy says that good SBA loans are hard to find unless it's an off-market deal.

Fund Thoughts

* To address these issues, and after talking to investors, Freddy is thinking of putting up a fund for online businesses as an alternative to SBA loans. 

* With funds, you might have less risk and you can source deals faster when compared to SBAs. However, Freddy says that the cons of going this investor route is that you may not keep the majority of equity. There would be a need to ensure that more passive investors won’t gang up on you and remove you as the operator. 

* Right now, Freddy is stuck choosing between whether he wants to go majority debt and a little equity to investors, or the other way around. He is more in favor of setting up as a fund or as an operator for someone else's fund. 

* Sourcing good investors who understand the business and have your back is very important. Finding them can be tricky. Interestingly, Freddy usually finds good investors in online forums and Facebook groups. These people are generally realistic investors who are looking to diversify.

* EF Capital is a good model for a fund. In terms of payments, it gives 30% to the operator, with the brokerage taking 10%.

* Freddy is currently preparing and figuring out the best way to go about this. If it fails, he can always go the SBA loan route.

Guest Info

* Find Freddy inside the investing.io community

* Freddy's email: [email protected] and [email protected]

What did you think?

Did you enjoy this episode or do you have a question?

Please leave a comment to let us know.

Cheers,

Juliet

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit investing.substack.com

In this episode, Avi talks to Stacy Caprio, owner of Her.CEO. They discuss Stacy's previous website purchases, and her case study on acquiring an expired website listing on Flippa. Stacy grew this site’s ad revenue 4 times in 2 years, despite not creating any content and being fairly hands-off in its operation.

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Buying Expired Listings

* Stacy’s 3rd website purchase was a pair of sister sites. These became the first sites that made a profit for her. She purchased them on Flippa, after searching for expired listings that no one had bought. 

* Stacy searched for expired listings because she doesn’t believe in artificial increases in listing prices. You can definitely find a diamond in the rough by looking for distressed sites.

* Stacy was confident in her purchase, thanks to her previous experience with online marketing and SEO. A big motivator to search for expired listings is that she likes finding sites in which not everyone sees potential, and which are undervalued.  

Growing A Niche Site

* Stacy bought a site for $6,400. At the time, it was making around $240 a month in profit. 

* Over two years, Stacy increased the ad revenue by 4 or 5 times. She added another ad network, as well as placing a static ad on the site. 

* Stacy did not add any content or links. She was very much hands-off on the site, since it was a forum dedicated to a particular niche. Here, users were the ones generating the content.

* The downside to owning a forum is that you can’t control what people post, and this may lead to various copyright issues where you could face liability.

* Prior to the above purchase, her first 2 sites were making little profit, and weren’t breaking even. 

* Stacy eventually dropped these sites because she became discouraged by how little they made.

Purchase Criteria

* Stacy’s criteria when purchasing a site is the purchase price. The price must be good,  relative to your plans for the site. Another thing she considers is the plan for the site. This includes an SEO plan with keyword research, and how to restructure it to get the most traffic to the site. 

* She also likes to buy smaller sites with little traction and with good RPM. Once purchased, she does the SEO work to improve the site and generate more traffic and profit. 

* Stacy prefers buying sites that are in the same niche, or are relevant or connected to one another, thereby creating verticals. This allows her to easily support them, and give the sites a quick link or a boost in keywords. 

* However, Stacy admits that this could be considered borderline gray hat SEO. 

* She also warns against creating double content for your sites in the same vertical, or linking to your other site because Google could recognize these moves.

* Stacy places prime importance on RPM, because this means more meaningful interactions and engagement with site users. 

* When it comes to e-commerce, Stacy recommends optimizing your site for sales first, including getting a good conversion rate.

Guest Info

* Her.CEO: https://www.her.ceo/

* Stacy’s email: [email protected]

What did you think?

Did you enjoy this episode or do you have a question?

Please leave a comment to let us know.

Cheers,

Juliet

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit investing.substack.com

In this episode of the Website Investing podcast, Avi talks to Jen Anderson about how she became involved with online businesses after her time in the financial services world. We also hear how Jen has grown her businesses and the techniques and tools she’s honed to achieve results. 

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The Beginning

* Before getting involved in the online world, Jen worked in the financial services world. She worked at Citigroup and also linked up with multiple startups. She was reasonably active in the financial markets and was big on investing. 

* Jen eventually bought real estate and a few websites. These assets did really well, especially the websites, considering that she didn’t come from an online business background when she purchased them around 2013. 

The Learning Curve

* Through self-learning and networking, Jen learned the ropes of website development and online business. Information wasn’t as readily available back then so it was a struggle.

* One of the 3 websites she bought was in the sports niche, and she is still growing and developing it today. When she bought it, it wasn’t making any money, and she used it to test and learn everything about website development. 

Further Acquisitions

* Jen then started to look for other websites to acquire. Being an entrepreneur at heart, she committed to buy small websites at first. These were under $100,000 and generated at least $1,000 per month in profit. 

* Jen eventually bought an FBA website on Flippa for $50,000. She took on the business full time and hired a VA to help it grow substantially. 

Growing Sites

* Jen ran a lot of Facebook ads and affiliates, as well doing a ton of SEO work. She also put up a Facebook community which grew exponentially. 

* In 2018, this site initially made $2,000-$3,000 a month in 2018. At the time it was sold in 2020 it was making $8,000-$10,000 a month. It was purchased at $50,000 and sold 2 years later for $225,000.

* The paid advertising world wasn’t an easy one to learn. But, with the help of free resources, Jen got the hang of it for her websites. 

* Admittedly, Jen made a lot of mistakes at first, especially with Google, pay-per-click, and unnecessary SEO.

* Jen bought another website; this time through Empire Flippers. The site is a 'mommy' blog, and Jen still owns the website today. She’s used the site to learn and practice her SEO skills, and it continues to grow. 

* She is not afraid to make mistakes because she learns along the way. 

Other Activity

* Jen has a channel on Clubhouse called Buying Businesses Club. Here, she chats with people who are interested in buying businesses in general, not just online businesses. 

* Funds are on the rise now, and Jen says that if she were a newbie, she would definitely invest in a fund. 

Resources

* Facebook Group: Women Buying Businesses

Guest Info

* Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/anderjen/

What did you think?

Did you enjoy this episode or do you have a question?

Please leave a comment to let us know.

Cheers,

Juliet

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit investing.substack.com

In this episode of the Website Investing podcast, Avi talks about expired domains with Adam Smith of Niche Website Builders. They cover how to acquire expired domains, how to efficiently build websites with them, and why to use expired domains. They also discuss the different steps and principles used by Niche Website Builders to build these websites and make them successful. 

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Expired Domain “Sniff Test”

* They use several tools for a five-minute sniff test to gauge domains. One of these is SpamZilla, which finds many sources to buy expired domains. It also filters them using different metrics such as UR, DR, trust flow, organic traffic, and many more. 

* The metrics used depend on the purpose of the domain. Looking at the metrics, you need to determine whether the domain looks good, and is a good fit for its purpose. SemRush is a valuable site for doing quick sniff tests using their categorization of backlinks.

* Adam mentions that once the sniff test is passed, you can use the Wayback Machine for the domain. You can see multiple snapshots of each year to determine whether a site or domain is really good. There are cases when outbound links to unwanted sites exist. 

* Adam says that you shouldn’t worry about whether or not a website is in the index or if it’s been 301 redirected to another site. What matters is that the link profile is checked and the links are still alive. It's usually still better than having a fresh domain.

First Steps

* The first thing to do - sometimes even before buying a domain - is to think about the keyword plan or the content plan for the domain. Some niches are more competitive than others so you want to consider if the domain is powerful enough to compete in that specific niche. 

* The keyword research done by Adam and his team is proprietary. However, he mentions that it involves looking at competitors in the same space or niche, figuring out who the weaker competitors are, and analyzing how the outliers with good organic traffic are doing this. 

* Content plans are built around uncovering and reverse engineering the content from outliers who are performing really well in their niche. 

* There are things you can do to increase the chance of success for your domain. In terms of site structure, you want to ensure that your homepage passes as much link juice through to the rest of the site as possible.

* Starting out, try to cover only a small sub-niche, keeping the click depth of a website really low, i.e., everything only two clicks away from the homepage. You can check the best pages-by-links report using Ahrefs. You want to keep these links for two reasons. One is that they’re good links and you want to keep them active. Two is, there’s a chance that these links might 401 if you leave them.

Handling Links

* There are two options for tidying up the links. The first option is to take the existing content and keep it on the website. This is the riskiest, but may be mitigated by hiding these pieces of content from the website navigation so you can’t get to them. The second option is rewriting the content in your own words or repurposing the content.

* As a rule of thumb, Adam says that any old page with more than five links pointing to it should be recreated, and anything with less than two links is redirected back to the homepage.

* One thing that differentiates an expired domain is how all the old redirects are handled. Apart from this, the steps are the same as for setting up a new site.

Adam’s Approach

* Adam has been building out sites on expired domains for his own personal portfolio, but still builds domains or sites on fresh domains for clients.

* Adam compares his website building approach to a horse race; he doubles down on the ones that are doing the best. 

* A typical worst case scenario seen with expired domains is that they act like fresh domains. This means that they have a sandbox period and revenue coming in after three or four months of the site going live. On the other hand, there are outliers and sites that grow insanely fast from the start.

* If everything goes well, traffic typically shows within the first six weeks so Adam suggests waiting a month or two to see traffic. You can check Ahrefs and SemRush to see the increase in the number of keywords indexed which points at the right direction.

* There’s no commonality between sites that perform like rocket ships from the get-go, versus the sites that sit and don’t take off so well.

* A phenomenon of expired domains is that these sites may have metrics that look good, have due diligence and proper checks performed, but there is still no way to tell how they will do.

* Adam recommends his company's services as they are flexible and tailored to the level of experience of the client building the site. The client may be as involved or as hands-off as they like.

Guest Info

* Website: Nichewebsite.builders

* Niche Website Builders Facebook Group

What did you think?

Did you enjoy this episode or do you have a question?

Please leave a comment to let us know.

Cheers,

Juliet

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit investing.substack.com

In this episode of the Website Investing podcast, Avi talks with Kevin Jourdan about how he built DotMarket.eu to buy and sell businesses online in the French market. They discuss the similarities and differences between the French and English markets, and how the French market lags behind the US by 1-2 years. 

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Starting Out

* Kevin built his first website in 2012. He learned from NichePursuits.com and watched a bunch of courses, gaining valuable tips and insights along the way. He went on to build and buy various niche websites.

* After buying and selling a few websites on Empire Flippers, he noticed that there was a big opportunity to create a similar platform in France. This led to the birth of DotMarket.eu for the French market.

The French Market

* Kevin says that it’s easier to rank websites in France because there is less competition there.

* Though the English and French markets are very similar, the French market is often late in terms of content resources. Some English articles are only translated to French a few years after they were originally published. 

* In terms of monetization, the English and French markets are pretty much the same, but options in the French market are limited. For example, it is difficult to find recurring affiliate programs in many niches. 

* Only a few niches allow for recurring affiliate programs, such as casinos and dating. 

* There is little competition if you want to sell online. Amazon is the only way to sell in France, as they have the best conversion rates and reach. 

* When choosing a niche in France, one effective strategy is to look to the US market. France is usually slower to adopt, and many business ideas from the US pop up a year or two later in the French market.

DotMarket Strategy

* DotMarket.eu was created to make it easier and safer for buyers and sellers to meet up. It boasts vetting and valuation processes, contracting, and migration processes. 

* DotMarket.eu is tailored to buying and selling businesses online; including websites, e-commerce, and SaaS marketplaces. 

* To set it up, they had to find the right balance of both buyers and sellers. This was quite difficult, as they needed to convince and educate French sellers that selling online is possible. Many owners didn’t even know that they could sell their websites. They continue to educate many French website owners about selling as a viable exit option.

* DotMarket.eu just reached the 7-figure mark in valuation of websites sold.

Valuation and Sale

* To list a website on DotMarket, the website must be valued at a minimum of €10,000 for affiliate and content sites, and €25,000 for drop shipping and e-commerce sites. They do not accept starter sites, sites that have been hit with a penalty or sites that generate profit mostly from ads. 

* It takes an average of 45 days to sell a business on DotMarket, although SaaS and e-commerce businesses can take 3-4 months to sell. 

* Content sites are popular and sell quickly, sometimes within 48 hours. 

A Growing Market

* A lot of sites in the French market are made by people who did not consider selling them (or even know that they could). These sites don’t have the same optimization strategies in place when compared to a site owned by someone who was looking to sell it from the get-go. 

* DotMarket's business model charges the buyer 10%, and the seller 3%.

* DotMarket has partnerships with Flippa, MicroAcquire, and other platforms. Other marketplaces help supply buyers for businesses listed on DotMarket that are more difficult to sell. In return, DotMarket provides listings for French and European buyers on their platforms. 

* The goal for DotMarket in 2021 is to expand in the French market, and possibly open in the Spanish and Italian markets. In the future, they would like to open up in several other European countries too. 

Guest Info

* DotMarket.eu: https://www.dotmarket.eu/investor

What did you think?

Did you enjoy this episode or do you have a question?

Please leave a comment to let us know.

Cheers,

Juliet

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit investing.substack.com

In this episode of the Website Investing podcast, Avi talks with Ron Stefanski about his various YouTube projects. These projects include 'The One Hour Professor' which features some of his courses on blogging and SEO. They also speak about how Ron's YouTube channels complement his blogs, and his recent website sale, which was his biggest ever asset sale. 

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Selling A Website

* Ron recently sold a website he’s been building and growing since 2014. At one point, it had 250,000 visitors a month. The niche was negatively impacted by COVID, Google AdSense issues, and fierce market competition. Due to these issues, Ron decided to sell it. 

* He felt that his heart wasn’t in growing and keeping the website anymore. He had other interests and passions that he wanted to focus on instead. Those reasons led him to sell it recently for a mid-6 figure value.

* The more focus that you have on your website, the better. 

Growing on YouTube

* Ron has a bunch of YouTube channels that he runs along with his wife. 

* Before they were married, Ron's wife already had a YouTube channel with around 2 million subscribers. Ron helped her manage the channel, and in the process, learned a lot about the technical and SEO aspects of YouTube.

* Ron has a channel called the 'One Hour Professor', which he’s had for around 5 years. It's only since 2020 that he started to focus on it's growth. He also has a website for the 'One Hour Professor'.

* This YouTube channel has videos and courses on how to grow and develop your website. These days, he releases a video once a week.

* With a YouTube channel, you get to be more personal with your audience, as they are able to actually see you on video.

Traffic & Income Generation

* His main focus is the website, so he uses the channel as a new way to get traffic and open up to a new audience. 

* Some people prefer to sit down and read a whole blog post, while others would rather watch a video. What Ron does is uses the transcriptions of his videos and turns them into blog posts. This is how his channel complements his blog so well.

* Taking blog content and making it into a YouTube video can be tricky. If it is personality-based, be sure you are personal and sincere with your audience. You need to sit down and not be a robot in front of the camera by simply reading stuff on your videos.

* Building a channel without you as a brand or personality requires some script, which a voice-over would read. You also have to get creative with editing. 

* Ron has 2 channels like this which he co-owns with his wife. The premise is that there is no personality tied to it. Rather, it is focused on videos about different topics or products. 

* YouTube channels can become a real passive asset. Ron says that the wider the niche, the better. 

* You can profit off of your channel not just through display ads, but also through affiliate marketing. Many channels do this and are successful with this method.

* Ron doesn’t focus much on subscriber count. He focuses instead on view count, because, at the end of the day, views are what matter. 

* Ron and his wife are thinking about adding another channel by the end of this year.

Resources

* Courses on how to build a YouTube channel or blog: https://www.onehourprofessor.com/courses/

Guest Info

* Website: https://www.onehourprofessor.com/

* YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/OneHourProfessor

What did you think?

Did you enjoy this episode or do you have a question?

Please leave a comment to let us know.

Cheers,

Juliet

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit investing.substack.com

In this episode of the Website Investing podcast, Avi talks to Eric Hochberger, co-founder of Mediavine, about the development of third-party cookies and how this completely changed display advertising.

They also discuss the efforts of several browsers - like Google Chrome - to remove these cookies to better protect individual privacy.

What does this mean for advertisers who have relied on them for years?

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📝 Show Summary & Insights

Third-Party Cookies

* Before the advent of third-party cookies, advertisers had to buy an ad slot on a webpage, in real time. To do this, they needed to know who they were bidding on.

* With third-party cookies, this process was eliminated.

* A third-party cookie is essentially a way to store things in a browser. It allows you to stay logged in to a website, even though you’re on another one. It also allows websites to track which websites you’ve been to.

* Display advertising has been tremendously shaped by third-party cookies, as advertisers are able to hyper-target their audience, giving them better results than ever before.

* In recent years, advertisers have been willing to spend more money on display advertising due to the great results these cookies provided. 

Individual Privacy

* Today, we see consumers and companies working to better protect individual privacy by removing third-party cookies. 

* Several browsers, like Safari and Firefox, have already removed them. Google Chrome, has yet to do so.

The Privacy Sandbox & First-Party Data

* According to a Google study, this move could drop ad rates by 60%. This now puts pressure on the advertising industry to change their behavior and look for alternatives. 

* Eric believes that there are two prongs to solve this: the privacy sandbox and first-party data. 

* The privacy sandbox is an initiative to create an industry-wide standard for all browsers, for a privacy-centric way to track anonymous segments of users. Individuals would then control which data they allow to be tracked.

* On the other hand, first-party data involves data owned by the publisher, who obtains users’ data from logged-in traffic or from subscribers. Email addresses, phone numbers or similar data are safely rehashed into anonymous data. This data is then handed off to advertisers to use for audience targeting. This gives more exact targeting and better results too.

What’s Next?

* We can’t predict what will happen a year from now. So much could change in the meantime. 

* Ad rates may drop less than expected, and other alternatives may come up to address this shift. 

* Eric and Mediavine are working on Grow.me which offers a set of tools to help publishers get more users to log into their websites. This allows publishers to collect more first-party data in the long run. 

* Grow.me is currently available in beta for Mediavine publishers. Those publishers just need to opt in and enable it. It will be available outside of Mediavine in the future.

* When someone is purchasing a site and applying to Mediavine, a background check and vetting take place to verify that the applicant isn’t shady, and to ensure that Mediavine will have a good relationship with them. 

Resources

* Grow.me: https://www.grow.me/

Guest Info

* Mediavine: https://www.mediavine.com/

* Email: [email protected]

What did you think?

Did you enjoy this episode or do you have a question?

Please leave a comment to let us know.

Cheers,

Juliet

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit investing.substack.com

In this episode of the Website Investing podcast, Avi speaks with Mo Mullah about acquiring, building, and optimizing websites for sale. They discuss the strategy Mo used to turn a niche site - purchased for $2,700 - into a $24,000 sale.

Read the notes below - or listen now!

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📝 Show Notes

Mo’s Background

Starting Out in Email Marketing 

Mo started out with an email marketing company and stayed there for around 8 or 9 years. Throughout that time, he had several successful campaigns in different niches and earned a decent amount of money. However, due to a number of risks and downsides, such as the possibility of your account closing down, (which happened a bunch of times) he decided to look elsewhere for income. These accounts were closed because Mo would personally email people and website visitors, introduce himself and offer the option to stay on the email list or not. This marketing strategy caused a number of problems with ISPs, and was the cause of his accounts getting shut down. Because of this, he decided to diversify and get into SEO. 

Building Sites

Mo started building a site, instead of purchasing one off the bat. He did this because he wanted to learn the ins and outs of the trade, and how websites were built from the ground up. This site had tremendous success as a result of continuous finetuning over the years. 

Interest in the Niche

Another factor that contributed to the site's success was Mo's interest in the niche. When writing the site content, Mo knew how and what to write for a better audience reception. 

Creative Outreach Campaigns

Mo also made use of a large outreach campaign. This essentially involves guest posting and targeting the prospects that you’re trying to get a link from. This included figuring out who specifically would let him put a link on their site by finding a smart way to get into their inbox, and have them read and respond to an email. Mo would usually ask these prospects if they had any ideas that they would like him to touch on in the guest posts. Creative thinking is also involved so Mo would try going out of his vertical to collaborate. He'd attempt to integrate trends in his ideas and offers to prospects, to match what they wanted. Further, Mo did his research and due diligence to make sure that when he pitched a specific article, he’d be more or less sure that they would accept.

Acquiring and Selling Websites

After building his site, Mo decided to acquire sites. One of the sites he bought for around $2,700 was recently sold for $24,000. This was done in under 12 months, producing an almost 10x multiple. 

Choosing Which Websites to Acquire

From the beginning, Mo had a set criteria for acquiring websites. Firstly, he checked whether the niche had multiple affiliate opportunities so he could diversify on monetization. Secondly, he wanted something that was evergreen and not seasonal so that income was steady all year round. Lastly, he made sure that the site had a decent amount of content to work with and had traction. This was usually poorly written content. He then worked on the SEO for these websites and performed some optimization to return the optimal income. 

Updated Criteria and Quick Wins

These days his criteria has expanded to include one more aspect: CRO. He now checks whether a site has bad or neglected CRO. This enables him to optimize sites and get quick wins in the process. He looks for a site that doesn’t have comparison tables, or tables which are in the wrong place. Secondly, he makes sure that the site doesn’t have any call-to-action buttons. If it does have these buttons, he ensures that the colors stand out. Next, he checks if the site has only a few links within the anchor text. He also looks for images with hyperlinks on the site. 

Sticky Widget

Mo also likes to put a sticky widget on the left hand side of the website so that when users scroll down. they still have access to subscribe buttons or some kind of affiliate link. Mo has found some success with sticky widget on his sites, though it may be hit-or-miss depending on the niche. When it comes to Amazon affiliate links, Mo says that people usually skip them and just scroll down on the main screen. If it's not Amazon-related, Mo says that conversion rates are pretty good and even a little bit higher. He bases this on his experience and data gathered through the sticky widget. 

The Pet Niche

Getting Into the Niche

Mo decided to enter the pet niche because it had a variety of affiliate programs to apply to. These included Amazon, and others that could serve as backup in case the Amazon conversion numbers weren’t ideal. From his research, he found that the keywords he wanted to focus on were low competition and had relatively decent search volume. This stood out to him, and gave him confidence that it would allow him to rank.

Acquiring a Site

Mo acquired a site in the pet niche at around $2,700. Finding the ideal site was a bit tricky, since in ~2019, there weren’t as many marketplaces as there are today. Apart from that, one factor he had to consider was the element of trust. Is the website owner trustworthy? You’d have to build up some kind of relationship with the seller to make sure that what they're selling isn’t anything shady, or a scam or rip-off. These days, well-known marketplaces largely solve this problem for you. 

Previous Run-ins With Shady Sellers

Back when Mo didn’t have much know-how in the industry, he communicated with a website seller who sneakily tried to hide and mask PBNs and shady links. At the time, Mo was just starting out and didn’t know how links worked. Mo says that you definitely have to understand how links and link profiles work in order to detect shady deals. He mentions that these people would pay for links from a link service, but the link service had used very similar images, or even the same images on different websites. This also applied to the text, where the link service used similar text to accompany the images on various other websites. It became apparent that these links all came from the same provider. Avi says it’s good to check whether the links are on the home page, and whether the links are actually relevant to the site you’re acquiring, and to the niche. At the end of the day, it all depends on your risk tolerance, and whether you are willing to take on challenges like this when purchasing a site. 

Some Initial Snags

Mo ran into some traffic loss and potential revenue loss when he first acquired the site. During the first 4 to 6 weeks, Mo was busy changing the site links while performing his first ever migration. However, he noticed that page traffic was declining at a steady rate of 30-40%, and he couldn’t pin down the cause of the decline. Normally, this wouldn’t be a concern, but these pages were the top 3 pages on the site. As a result, the overall website traffic slid down, including conversions. Mo says that it may have been due to an algorithm update, or possibly due to the fact that he picked up the website from someone who had it in a portfolio and hadn’t touched it in a long time. Mo then reminds us that we should always be wary, and do as much due diligence as possible on the sites we wish to purchase, especially if these sites are in decline.

Turning Things Around

Mo did turn the decline in traffic around. He first completed a technical audit to make sure that the redirects and page titles were in order. He also checked if any page was significantly slower than others. More importantly, he ran the website through Ahrefs’ Audit Tool to clean up the technical aspects of the site. Their Audit Tool is amazing for this, and according to Avi, is very underrated.

Next, Mo did a content audit. He put all the content into a spreadsheet, and assessed which content needed changing or modification, and which could be left untouched. At the end of the audit, Mo deleted 10 to 15 pages that weren’t receiving much traffic. He also consolidated some pages to make the site leaner. 

Lastly, he performed a backlink audit by listing every link and making sure that none of them were suspicious, spammy or unrelated to the pet niche.   

Auditing is a great way to figure out what’s wrong with your website, especially when you weren’t the one who built it in the first place, and more so if the website has passed through several different owners. 

Keyword Research

Surprisingly, Mo didn’t perform any keyword research until about 5 or 6 months after he acquired the site. This is largely because many of the pages on the site were ranking highly, and other pages only needed minor tweaks to improve their rankings. Mo was only concerned with on-site SEO for the first few months, instead of creating new content. This is usually his strategy when acquiring a website: he prefers a site with existing content that doesn't need much work. He then optimizes the site and the content, instead of having to churn out new content during the busy first few months. Avi says that there is no point in creating new content when there is plenty of under-optimized content already available to you. 

Surfer SEO

When optimizing site content during the first few months, Mo made use of Surfer SEO, which is a very handy and inexpensive tool. At the time, it was relatively new and trendy, which pushed him to use it for his site. 

Adding Articles

Happy New Year everyone!

We’ve got plenty of big plans for this year and we’re kicking off with this enjoyable discussion between our Website Investing “voice,” Avi Silverberg, and Julie Adams from Serpdecoder.

Julie transformed from roles as a babysitter and SEO agency employee, to owner of a portfolio of affiliate sites - the largest of which makes $30,000 per month.

Sit back and listen to hear how she did it - or read the notes below.

EPISODE SPONSOR

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📝 Show Notes

Julie’s Background and Portfolio

Joining an SEO agency

Julie did odd jobs while in college, including working at a movie theater and babysitting on the side. Interestingly, the person she was babysitting for was the owner of a marketing company who offered Julie the position of content developer. Knowing nothing about the position or anything about SEO, Julie started work and learned the trade quickly through a combination of trial and error and talking with clients and colleagues. Five or six years later, Julie was managing all the company’s SEO campaigns, using a process she’s honed from practice and experience. At one point, Julie was handling a whopping 80 or so clients. She grew to love her work, and happily did SEO for 40 hours a week.

Building Her Own Sites and Moving On From the Company 

Learning and working on SEO for 40 hours a week prompted Julie to take her work home and do SEO on her own affiliate sites. Her first site was a motorcycle blog where she put out informational content and basically wrote whatever she wanted. Later on, she realized she could earn money by promoting products on Amazon. She failed at her first attempt and let that domain quietly expire. Soon after, Julie built another site in the outdoor niche. This time, she went into it with an income-generating mindset. This site performed significantly better and grew to around $1,000 a month. Julie saw the potential and decided to build a site once every 3 or 4 months.

With her own sites, she was able to experiment and do things that she normally wouldn’t do for clients at the company. This helped hone her craft even more. Julie's journey with affiliate SEO sites allowed her to earn a significant income on the side--more than what she was earning as an employee. After a couple of years, she sold one site for $34,000 on Empire Flippers and reinvested the money into her other sites. The goal was to quit her job and focus on her sites full time. 

Consulting Work 

These days, Julie doesn’t pursue clients. She works 100% with affiliates, and does a few consulting gigs. 

Growing Sites and Her Portfolio

Julie no longer focuses on building sites. She now focuses on certain niches and grows only those sites. Currently, her portfolio contains 6 or 7 sites, and these days she tries to build a site once every 6 months. Half of the sites in her portfolio were built from scratch on fresh domains, while the other half was built on expired domains. Julie says she feels safer starting with fresh domains, since she won’t be worried about the sandbox period. 

Working With Expired Domains?

Julie is generally open-minded and up to trying anything when it comes to building and growing sites. Usually, when she finds a niche, she starts searching for expired domains. However, if she can’t find one that looks appealing after 2 or 3 weeks, she starts with a fresh domain. 

When looking for expired domains, Julie takes into account niche relevance, the presence of spammy links (usually ones with Russian characters), and others. Also, she doesn’t take on domains that have been expired for longer than 3 years. As for niches, Julie looks at the offers first, without paying attention to the type of niche or even the keywords and SEO. 

Lastly, she loves looking for domains that were once local businesses. These domains usually have directories containing names, addresses, and phone numbers - all of which get picked up by Google. That way, it has a little bit of authority built in. Julie says that this is a great alternative to links, which can get pretty expensive.  

Amazon 

Working With Amazon Product Links

When it comes to Amazon products, Julie starts by looking at the cost of the product, how many reviews it has, and if those reviews are legitimate. She then checks if there is enough demand online to make it viable. Julie does this by taking the cost of the product and multiplying it by the number of reviews. If the value is over 10,000, it shows that the product is both expensive, and has high demand. According to Julie, this is a good baseline to determine the viability of a product and whether it is something she should consider. 

Getting Away 

Julie says that getting away (mostly) from Amazon is the best move she’s ever made. Back in March or April, Amazon cut commissions in the home niche. Coincidentally, this was the niche of Julie’s biggest site. It took a drop. Prior to the cut, the site was doing really well, and was on track for a flip at $200,000. In fact, it was appraised only one day before Amazon cut commissions. This prompted Julie to move away from Amazon and deal directly with product manufacturers. Now, Julie’s process involves looking for a 10% commission from 5-6 different manufacturers, and getting them to compete with each other during the negotiation. Julie says that you have to at least triple whatever Amazon offers. As an example, one of Julie’s sites used to earn around $4,000 a month from Amazon commissions, but now that she’s moved away from Amazon, that site rakes in around $30,000. All she did was speak directly to the manufacturers of the products on Amazon. More often than not, Julie says that they will offer you higher rates really quickly. 

Website Design

Keeping It Simple

Julie likes to keep things simple when it comes to website design. She says that simplistic designs do not equate to laziness. When it comes to copywriting, information can be presented to consumers in many different ways, and Julie likes to test different ways to evoke emotion with her content. 

Writing Content

Julie has worked with the same writer for over 2 years now. This writer understands Julie's style well, which means that Julie can quickly check the work and make any necessary edits. 

Using Nelio

Nelio is a great inexpensive WordPress plugin that allows you to take a page and make a carbon copy of it. After changing and tweaking whatever you want, Nelio makes the page canonical so that it won’t interfere with the index. Through it, you can serve a user either the original page or the copied page. It also has a handy heatmap feature.

Growing Sites

Biggest Site

Julie is looking to grow her largest site, which is currently making around $30,000 a month. Her ultimate goal is to cash out of the website and, eventually, retire early. What’s great about the site is that it’s in a niche that she wants to add additional sites to. When she does finally sell, she’d be offering an entire portfolio dedicated to that niche. This also eliminates any ongoing non-competition concerns. 

Monetizing Her Sites

Trying Other Models

Julie has begun email marketing. Though she doesn’t have an extensive list, she believes that email is a great monetization model. It involves an audience that she’s built, and which doesn’t have to rely on Google. Email marketing is also great for marketing flash sales. 

Ads vs. Affiliate Sales

Julie prefers affiliate sales since they earn more money than ads. This is why she doesn’t care about ads too much, and is more interested in where the clicks on her website are going. Avi says that a study shows that advertising on affiliate content doesn't really reduce the click-through rate on the affiliate offers, but this is also highly dependent on the niche and the type of audience. 

If Julie places ads on her site, it will most likely be on her informational content. That way, she would make some money off them instead of funneling them into the site’s buying guides. 

In the end, there are a hundred different ways to monetize your websites. But, if you’re already good at one monetization model, Avi says that it’s better to focus and double down on that model to get the most out of it. 

Investing in Her Sites

Profits 

The profit margins on most of Julie’s sites are around the 80-90% mark. She prefers to reinvest this into her sites every month, with around $2,500 spent on content and about the same amount on links. 

Finding Workers 

Hiring and Firing

Both Avi and Julie tend to hire and fire quickly in order to find the right person for any job they have available. In fact, Avi likes to hire 2 to 3 people at a time and then choose the best one from them. 

Finding the Right One

It is definitely hard to find the right person for the job. Julie likes to find people on Upwork, which has a ton of job hunters and freelancers. 

SEO

On-page

Julie says that there are shortcuts for on-page that are not really available for off-page. In fact, you can get a lot done on on-page if you have the right techniques, coupled with instinct and experience. There's a lot more to it than just using your tools. It also involves using your past experience - especially when new problems arise.

Tracking Changes

Page Watch