The 1k Niche Property Project – Month 10 June 2022
Welcome back to the 1K niche property project, we’ve officially wrapped up month nine of this project and I can safely say I’ve never been more excited by The change in a website’s analytics In such a short period.
The Goal:
If you’re not already familiar with the goal of this project, let me quickly get you up to speed.
The 1K niche property project is designed as a case study to see how long it will take us to build a brand new niche property from zero articles, zero visits, and $0 in revenue to a place where it can generate $1,000 per month in recurring income.
This site is not designed to be a perfect case study, we’re testing a few different things along the way, but it should serve as a guide to seeing what it takes to successfully build a niche property.
Along the way, we are documenting every step of this process and every penny that we spend so you can have a realistic idea of what it takes.
The History:
Now that you have an idea of what we’re doing with this project, let’s take a quick look at how we got to where we are today.
Way back in September of 2021, we decided to build a niche site as a case study.
Instead of building the site from scratch, we decided to work with our friends over at niche website builders to purchase an aged domain (a domain that was used for a website previously and can theoretically help you rank your content faster) for this project.
From there, we chose a domain that they already had access to. (Essentially eliminating much of the niche selection process for this project) and we worked with them to build the initial site and initial batch of content.
The initial site build and 44 articles that we launched with the site took about 2 months to complete and that took us to month four of this project where we began to see our first traffic growth.
At this point, we were seeing about 21 visits per day from organic search, the type of traffic we like to rely on most for these types of sites.
As we moved into the fifth month of this project, we knew that the initial 44 articles published on the site were not going to get us to our goal and so we decided to publish an additional 22 pieces of content using the remaining ideas we have from the initial keyword planning session.
Additionally, we sell our traffic jump from 21 to 35 organic visits per day.
In month 6 of this project, we published an additional nine articles and we saw another jump in traffic from 35 to 48 organic visits per day.
In month 7 of this project, we published a few additional pieces of content and saw our traffic nearly double going from 48 organic visits to 83 organic visits per day.
In month 8, we publish an additional 16 articles and saw another positive growth from 83 visits to 94 organic visits per day.
Last month, month nine of this project, we published an additional 20 new pieces of content bringing our total to $117 articles.
Additionally, we saw a massive increase in the total number of keywords that were being indexed and saw a substantial traffic increase from 94 visits per day to 193 visits per day coming from organic search alone.
The Activity This Month:
If you’re at all familiar with the term hockey stick-like growth, that’s probably the single best way to describe what has happened during month 10 of this project.
If you are not familiar with the term, it’s typically used to describe a business that finds its market and is growing rapidly.
Essentially, the incline of the graph is such that over a short period of time it begins to look like a hockey stick with a flat base and a long handle.
The short version of that explanation is simply to say we’re seeing massive growth.
Let’s dive in and take a look at what has happened with the traffic and keyword rankings over the last month.
Traffic:
We’ve been saying for the past few months that the large increases we’re seeing in the number of keywords that are being indexed for the site, and more importantly the number of keywords ending up on the first page of Google, this month seems to be when we start to see the payoff.
While this month didn’t see the single largest percentage increase in our traffic, it did see the single largest increase in the number of visits.
Overall, we have finally passed the 10,000 per month page mark that we use to determine when we want to place ads on the site.
I mentioned at the end of last month that I believed we would hit this mark within 6-day weeks and was floored to learn that we reached this mark about 3 and ½ weeks after the last post.
Not only are we averaging 352 visits per day, but we are seeing over 337 visits per day from organic search alone and it is showing no signs of slowing down.
In fact, the last 2 days have brought us 489 and 494 visits from organic search respectively.
If that traffic level holds consistent for us, that means we will see about 15,000 sessions in month 11 of this project without accounting for any additional keywords or traffic coming from newer posts.
Keyword Rankings:
You probably know by now that I love to use keyword rankings, the number of keywords we rank for on Google, and where we rank for them in the search results, as a potential indicator of future traffic.
If the last few months of keyword ranking increases for us or any sort of bellwether for the increase in traffic we’ve experienced this month, we haven’t seen anything yet.
While the last few months of keyword ranking growth have been fairly impressive, they can’t hold a candle to this month’s growth.
Not only are we seeing large growth in our overall keywords, but this month saw the largest growth in the keywords at the top of page one(Google positions one through three) so it’s the largest percentage and overall growth this month.
We went from 45 keywords in position 1 to 3 to 191 keywords in this same position 30 days later.
That 324% increase has set us up to continue seeing the level of growth that we saw this month and it’s showing no signs of slowing down.
For me, one of the best things about this growth is that we haven’t done anything fancy.
We aren’t actively building links, we aren’t posting 25 times per day on Instagram and Facebook, we are simply adding good quality content that people are already searching for and we are being rewarded massively for it.
Content Creation:
From the large traffic increases that we’ve seen over the last few months we’ve concluded that we should accelerate our content creation even more than we have in the past few months.
Last month we published 37 new articles( most of which were published in the second half of this month, meaning they had very little if any impact on the large traffic growth we’ve already experienced).
These posts were a good mix of truly question-based content and other niche-related content, such as best-of lists, that we know our audiences are already searching for.
This feat would have been a bit challenging if we were producing all of the content ourselves, but since we use freelance writers to create our content, creating more than one post a day just requires a little bit more work on the keyword research front.
The Money:
Like every month up to date, this section isn’t the most fun to read, but I promise that’s ending this month.
As I’m writing this, Scott and I are talking about the best way to monetize this site, meaning next month’s report will contain our first income for this site.
Keep in mind that while you don’t need to wait to reach the 10,000 visits per month mark to monetize the site, we typically like to because it helps strike a balance between the user experience, overall site growth, and actual revenue potential.
Expenses
Outside of the first month of this project, this month has been the biggest hit to our wallet due to the creation of 37 new pieces of content. As we’ve mentioned previously, the average article for us costs around $45 and so with that in mind, our total cost for this month rings in at a hefty $1,655.
Month 10 Expenses: $1655
Earnings:
Since as of the time of this writing, we have yet to implement ads or any other form of revenue generation on this site, month 10 rings in at a $0 on the earnings front.
That being said, the minute that I am done writing this post. I’m going to be implementing ads on this site which means this is the last time we should ever see a zero in this column….fingers Crossed.
Month 10 Earnings: $0
Net Earnings
Month 0 Expenses: -$9,000
Month 0 Earnings: $0
Month 1 Expenses: $0 (Zero Additional)
Month 1 Earnings: $0
Month 2 Expenses: $0 (Zero Additional)
Month 2 Earnings: $0
Month 3 Expenses: $0 (Zero Additional)
Month 3 Earnings: $0
Month 4 Expenses: $0 (Zero Additional)
Month 4 Earnings: $0
Month 5 Expenses: $945
Month 5 Earnings: $0
Month 6 Expenses: $405
Month 6 Earnings: $0
Month 7 Expenses: $360
Month 7 Earnings: $0
Month 8 Expenses: $1080
Month 8 Earnings: $0
Month 9 Expenses: $900
Month 9 Earnings: $0
Month 10 Expenses: $1,655
Month 10 Earnings:
—————————————Month 9 Net: -$14,345
That’s A Wrap:
I’m sure I’ve said it before but I’m going to say it again, growth like we are seeing on this site, is why I’m so excited about niche properties and this model in general.
While this is not a get-rich, quick, or overnight success type of business, creating consistent content that your audience is already searching for is an easy path to building a site like this given enough time.
I can safely say that of all of the niche properties that I’ve worked with, I’ve never seen hockey stick growth quite like this and I’m extremely excited to see where this takes us over the next few months.
Make sure to check back next month to get an update and if you’d like to learn how we got to where we are, make sure to check out the full 1k Niche Property Project Archive here.
