Affiliate Site Case Study – Month 5 Update
February 2020
We’ve had some pretty decent growth over the previous 4 months and things show no signs of letting up.
This month, organic traffic increased by 20.11% and earnings are up 96.66%.
We’ve also increased our referring domains and rankings have improved across the board.
Let’s dive straight in and take a closer look…
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Written by Terry Daine
affiliate-site-work-to-date
Affiliate Site Work To Date
Since Survival Front’s inception, 5 months ago, we’ve put a lot of work in.
We’ve seen improvements across the board in:
- Rankings
- Traffic
- Earnings
Let’s take a brief look back over our results so far…
We’re quite pleased with the progress we have made in the first 4 months of our Survival Front journey (October 2019 – January 2020).
We invested a huge amount in this initial period, as we always suspected we would move the needle a lot quicker if we did – which is exactly what happened.
Over this initial period, we had one of our team working on Survival Front pretty much full-time.
So, as you can see, there was a lot of time and money invested into this site and a hell of a lot riding on its growth.
Luckily, it paid off and our average month-on-month growth in earnings over this period was a whopping 210.83%.
Monthly Progress: Recap & Summary | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Time Period | Organic Traffic | % Change | Earnings | % Change |
Month 1 (October 2019) | 85 | – | $0.85 | – |
Month 2 (November 2019) | 187 | +120% | $5.61 | +560% |
Month 3 (December 2019) | 401 | +114% | $15.54 | +177% |
Month 4 (January 2020) | 552 | +37.66% | $32.06 | +106% |
We produced a ton of content – an estimated 406,000 words, to be precise.
And acquired a respectable number of links – a total of 51 referring domains.
We also produced a brand new, hand-coded affiliate site theme from scratch and significantly improved speed and performance, plus reduced our reliance on third-party plugins.
And, we earned a grand total of…wait for it…
$54.06!
At the 4-month point (January 2020), we estimated that Survival Front was worth between $833.56 and $1,025.92, based on a multiple of 26x – 32x its monthly revenue.
All in all, a pretty decent start, if I do say so myself…
Check Out Survival Front's Month 5 Case Study Update!
rankings
Rankings
The nice upward trend in rankings has continued this month and we nabbed ourselves our first few 1-3 spots in Google’s SERPs.
While there have been some fluctuations (as there always is in rankings), overall we’ve remained pretty steady and ‘in the green’.
Let’s jump straight in and take a closer look…
Remember I said we had remained ‘in the green’?
Well, what I meant by that was that we’ve seen our keywords increasing more than decreasing, and upwards movements are green – hence the term…
On desktop we had 33.33% more keywords increase in position than decrease.
On mobile, the difference was even greater with 45.36% more keywords moving up than down.
Not too shabby.
Keyword Movements | |||
---|---|---|---|
Desktop | Mobile | ||
Increased | 136 | Increased | 141 |
Decreased | 102 | Decreased | 97 |
As I said in the introduction to this chapter, we finally have pages ranking in positions 1-3 in Google’s SERPs.
However small this achievement may seem, it’s a milestone nonetheless, and indicates to us that we’re doing something right in ‘Google’s eyes’.
So far, we have the following number of keywords in positions 1-3:
- Desktop: 2 keywords
- Mobile: 6 keywords
Desktop Keywords (Positions 1-3)
- Keyword: folding survival knives
- Position: 1
- Volume: 10
- Traffic: <1
- Location: UK
- Keyword: best survival poncho
- Position: 3
- Volume: 100
- Traffic: 12
- Location: US
Mobile Keywords (Positions 1-3)
- Keyword: survival poncho
- Position: 2
- Volume: 250
- Traffic: 41
- Location: US
- Keyword: survival ponchos
- Position: 3
- Volume: 10
- Traffic: 1
- Location: UK
- Keyword: scaxe3
- Position: 3
- Volume: 20
- Traffic: 2
- Location: US
- Keyword: best survival poncho
- Position: 3
- Volume: 100
- Traffic: 12
- Location: US
- Keyword: survival poncho
- Position: 3
- Volume: 30
- Traffic: 3
- Location: UK
- Keyword: friendly swede fire starter
- Position: 3
- Volume: 30
- Traffic: 4
- Location: US
Don’t worry – I won’t list every single keyword we rank for as these updates progress (as I hope there will be a hell of a lot more).
I just think that our first few are worth a special mention.
Another key milestone achieved.
Check out our full ranking movements below…
Ranking Group Movements | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Desktop | Mobile | ||||
Ranking Group | No. of Keywords | Increase / Decrease | Ranking Group | No. of Keywords | Increase / Decrease |
101+ | 48 | -11 | 101+ | 48 | -10 |
51-100 | 60 | +11 | 51-100 | 42 | – |
11-50 | 199 | +10 | 11-50 | 204 | +13 |
4-10 | 34 | +19 | 4-10 | 43 | +22 |
1-3 | 2 | +2 | 1-3 | 6 | +6 |
All in all, as far as rankings go, a very positive month this month.
We’re still seeing green across the board in the majority of ranking groups and our priority going forward is maintaining this trend.
Let’s wait and see what the coming months have in store, but if the previous are anything to go by, we’re in for one hell of a ride.
Check Out Survival Front's Month 5 Case Study Update!
traffic
Traffic
With rankings performing so well this month, you won’t be surprised to hear that organic traffic increased, too.
There is a lot of room for improvement in non-organic search traffic, but as of right now, that’s way down on our priority list.
Anyway, let’s dive straight in…
Overall, traffic this month dropped by a huge 41.32% compared to January.
This month (February) we had 1,024 total visitors to Survival Front, whereas, in January, we had 1,745.
But this data is extremely unreliable as a growth metric.
Even if you discount the fact that January had a couple more days than February, there’s another, even bigger factor at play here.
Niche Affiliate Empires.
We’ve spoken about this before, but the group is massively skewing our data figures when it comes to total traffic, as significant numbers of people are visiting the site from the Facebook group.
In fact, we drove a total of 598 users from social in January, compared to just 70 this month – a decrease of 88.29%.
The truth is, there’s not much we can do about this.
We’re aware of it and, as we’re focusing predominantly on organic search traffic, we’re not too fussed either.
In fact, every acquisition channel on Google Analytics (excluding organic) dropped in February compared to the previous month.
Take a look for yourself…
Traffic Overview | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Traffic Type | Current Period | Previous Period | % Change | ||
Organic Search | 663 | 552 | +20.11% | ||
Social | 70 | 598 | -88.29% | ||
Direct | 209 | 482 | -56.64% | ||
Referral | 103 | 138 | -25.36% | ||
4 | 50 | -92.00% |
Clearly, though, there is a positive to take away from the data shown above.
Organic traffic increased once again – this time by a cool 20.11%.
While 663 organic users doesn’t seem like a big deal, we have to remember that this is only month 5 of the project, using a new domain.
It’s all baby steps, but we’re pretty damn happy with what we’ve achieved this month.
In fact, if we breakdown organic search even further, we see that users, new users, and sessions were all up on the previous month.
Breakdown: Organic Search | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Acquisition | Current Period | Previous Period | % Change | ||
Users | 663 | 552 | +20.11% | ||
New Users | 629 | 512 | +22.85% | ||
Sessions | 782 | 708 | +10.45% |
You’ve probably heard me bang on about the ‘tipping point’ on a number of occasions now – I’ve discussed it in a number of the previous updates.
But for the readers who may not have seen the previous blog posts, let me briefly recap.
A large part of our strategy in building and rapidly growing niche affiliate websites is our ability to plough significant investment into them initially, while seeing ‘limited’ growth, prior to hitting a ‘tipping point’ and reaping the rewards thereafter.
We generally hit it hard for the first few months, prior to pulling way back on our resources, and reassessing where we are.
This site is no different.
From October 2019 to January 2020, we invested significant resource (time and money) into Survival Front.
Spoiler Alert: From this month onwards, we plan to scale down our operations quite significantly, wait for the ‘dust to settle’, and see where we’re at, prior to re-focusing and re-investing.
Up to this point (February 2020), we’ve seen positive, consistent growth, but nothing on the level we expect to see in the months ahead.
Personally, I think at some point over the next 2-3 months, we’ll see growth trends upwards of 100-200% month-on-month (or maybe more), while Google ‘catches up’ with the work we’ve put in to date, prior to it slowing way down.
In essence, we’ll have hit our tipping point and growth will become exponential.
And, when the slow-down does occur, we’ll know it’s time to re-invest once more.
Check Out Survival Front's Month 5 Case Study Update!
earnings
Earnings
As you’ve seen from the previous two chapters, rankings have improved and organic traffic has increased.
But what about our most important metric, earnings?
Yeah, you guessed it – we’ve seen some great growth there too!
Let’s take a closer look…
This month, we had a total of 48 ordered items, 1 returned item, and our conversion was 9.66%.
We also drove over $1,100 in revenue – you’re welcome Amazon…
Revenue & Earnings | |
---|---|
Clicks | 497 |
Ordered Items | 48 |
Shipped Items | 48 |
Returned Items | 1 |
Conversion | 9.66% |
Shipped Items Revenue | $1,138.13 |
Bonus | $0.00 |
Total Earnings | $63.05 |
The best part?
We smashed our previous month’s earnings out of the water!
Get ready for it.
Another ‘sales guru’ headline…
“Double your earnings in just 30 days!”
And that’s exactly what we did.
Well, almost.
Earnings in February increased by a whopping 96.66% on the previous month, culminating in us earning a cool $63.05, compared to $32.06 in January.
Comparison: Earnings | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Current Period | Previous Period | % Change | |||
$63.05 | $32.06 | +96.66% |
Again, while these aren’t huge figures in and of themselves, the growth trajectory is pretty awesome to see.
There’s no denying that we still have a long way to go if we want to hit our end goal of $100k monthly recurring revenue across our entire affiliate site portfolio, but we will get there!
And it’s my guess that Survival Front will be instrumental in us achieving that goal.
And, here’s the thing…
There is literally no other case study out there that goes into as much depth and detail in how to go about building and growing an authority site as this one does; and certainly not to the degree of following the site, month-on-month, as it grows to the point of earning tens of thousands of dollars per month.
You have front row seats!
So don’t miss a trick and make sure you’re signed up to the Niche Affiliate Empires newsletter if you want to get early access to all of our strategies, processes, and inside knowledge.
Check Out Survival Front's Month 5 Case Study Update!
link-building
Link Building
Link building is going to play a huge part in our growth strategy going forward.
With content production slowing right down, outreach is certainly something we’ve been focusing on this month.
Let’s dive in and see how we did this month…
Link building.
It’s a tough one…
No, really.
It’s often rated one of the toughest parts of the entire SEO process.
It’s time-consuming, costly, and downright boring.
But acquiring high-quality, highly relevant backlinks is essential for anyone who is serious about competing in the niche affiliate website space.
Sure, there are the low-hanging fruit (low competition) keywords that you can target initially, but if your niche is even semi-competitive or you’re looking to start competing with the ‘big boys’ in your industry, a strong, natural-looking backlink profile is a must!
We started off relatively slowly with link building, as we focused on ‘fleshing out’ Survival Front and ensuring that it had tons of high-quality content.
But, since, we’ve slowly started to ramp this up.
In fact, we acquired 26.31% more links in February, compared to the previous month.
This isn’t a major victory for us, as we try to focus on relevance and quality, over quantity.
Nonetheless, it’s always nice to see that upward growth trend.
Link Building: Progress to Date | |
---|---|
Time Period | Number of Links Acquired |
Month 1 (October 2019) | 3 |
Month 2 (November 2019) | 17 |
Month 3 (December 2019) | 12 |
Month 4 (January 2020) | 19 |
Month 5 (February 2020) | 24 |
Total Number of Links Acquired | 75 |
So far, in the 5 months since Survival Front’s inception, we’ve acquired a total of 75 referring domains.
Again, not bad going considering the amount of content we’ve produced, as well as all of the other work we’ve put in to date, such as theme updates, etc.
While we’re going to continue building links and promoting our content assets going forward, we’re always conscious of the fact that too much growth, too quickly, doesn’t just bring reward, but may also bring risk.
We often ponder on whether we’re too risk-averse in our approach to link building, but, as we’re all about building long-term, sustainable digital assets (brands), we’d rather be overly cautious than overzealous any day.
Here’s the truth…
We’re not going to overtake the ‘big players’ in the survival niche any time soon when it comes to referring domains, so our plan is to build steadily and minimize the risk.
FYI, here are our current top 10 competitors as determined by Ahrefs:
- Secrets of Survival – 874 referring domains
- Survival Fortress – 545 referring domains
- Best Survival – 229 referring domains
- Bug Out Bag Academy – 245 referring domains
- Primal Survivor – 926 referring domains
- Survival Skills – 88 referring domains
- The Bugout Bag Guide – 546 referring domains
- Uncharted Supply Co – 544 referring domains
- Geek Prepper – 518 referring domains
- Outdoorsman Toolkit – 47 referring domains
Check Out Survival Front's Month 5 Case Study Update!
affiliate-site-strategy
Affiliate Site Strategy
Throughout this post, I’ve discussed how we plan to scale down our investment in Survival Front going forward (and in reality, that started this month).
But we’re not simply going to sit back and do nothing.
Let’s take a look at our revised strategy going forward…
Before I go into too much detail about what we intend to do going forward, let’s first take a look at what we won’t be doing:
Mass Content Production
While we may produce content over the coming months, this will be infrequent and nothing like on the scale you’ve witnessed so far.
We’re constantly researching and analysing Survival Front’s progress and competitors, and as such, we intend to produce content when we deem it will have a significant impact on our results going forward.
Content production – be it roundup reviews, single product reviews, or info posts – will be even more targetted going forward.
We will, of course, update you on any future content, however, this will be pretty sporadic, at least for the immediate future.
Social Promotion
Whether it be Quora, Facebook, or any other social platform, we’re going to be dedicating pretty much zero resources to it going forward.
At this stage of our journey, we believe that the highest ROI will come from focusing on organic search and, in particular, growing our authority.
Therefore, social is at the bottom of our priority list at the minute.
We’ll revisit this in the future no doubt, as our brand becomes more established, but for now, there’s just so many other areas that our time and effort would be better invested.
Development and Theme Updates
There are many improvements we want to see incorporated into our custom affiliate site theme, such as; ads integration, changes in the way our single product reviews function, eCommerce integration to allow for easy adoption of the dropshipping model, and much, much more.
We also intend to further develop the theme to allow for licensed access.
However, we also need to be realistic with our time management and development capacity.
These improvements are coming, but they likely won’t be rolled out until around June 2020.
In addition, public use of the theme on a licensed basis won’t come until further down the line – if you want access to it before then, the only way is via our done-for-you affiliate site service.
So, although we’d like to further improve our theme right at this minute, unfortunately, it’s just not realistic with Survival Front (and other internal site) growth, the development of our brand new automated link building SaaS tool, and client work (which always takes priority).
Our Affiliate Site Growth Strategy Going Forward…
In one word; links.
While we’re continuously running CRO tests to improve conversion rates and optimizing for on-page, our focus going forward will remain on link building.
Again, we’re not going to kick the arse out of it, but we’re looking at maintaining our current pace.
What does that look like in practical terms?
Well, around 15-20 links per month.
This phase of the project is all about maintaining an element of growth, while reducing project resources, in order to recoup some of our investment to date.
And a steady trickle of high-quality, topically-relevant links should do just that.
As with anything we do, we’ll keep our input and output under continuous review and will, of course, make adjustments where required.
If that means dialling it down a little further in the short-term, then that’s what we’ll do.
Similarly, if we feel that we need to ‘up the ante’ and increase the number of links we’re building each month, then we’ll not hesitate to do this.
Check Out Survival Front's Month 5 Case Study Update!
Summary
So, all in all, another pretty phenomenal month for Survival Front.
Growth continues and things are moving along at a fairly rapid rate, which is why we’ve made the decision to stop and take a breather this month.
We want to let everything catch up, prior to plowing a load more resources into the project.
Therefore, we’ll be continuing this strategy of ‘marking time’ going forward, at least for the next couple of months.
Essentially, we’re sitting on the investment we’ve already made and recouping some of those ‘losses’, waiting for the ship to steady, then cracking on at full steam.
Monthly Progress: Recap & Summary | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Time Period | Organic Traffic | % Change | Earnings | % Change |
Month 1 (October 2019) | 85 | – | $0.85 | – |
Month 2 (November 2019) | 187 | +120% | $5.61 | +560% |
Month 3 (December 2019) | 401 | +114% | $15.54 | +177% |
Month 4 (January 2020) | 552 | +37.66% | $32.06 | +106% |
Month 5 (February 2020) | 663 | +20.11% | $63.05 | +96.66% |
Total Earnings To Date | $117.11 | |||
Estimated Flippable Asset Value (26x – 32x) | $1,639.30 – $2,017.60 |
5 thoughts on “Affiliate Site Case Study – Month 5 Update”
Do you know the total spend up to this point?
We’ve just published all the investment details in our month 6 update.
You can find it here: https://nicheaffiliateempires.com/affiliate-site-case-study-month-6-update/
Wow. You’ve convinced me not to try this. It really looks as though you need a team and at least 5K to get started. Glad I found this first.
You really don’t need a team to succeed at this. One person alone can achieve this, and, in fact, we’ve only had one person in our team working on this.
You can also do things much cheaper by finding decent outsourcers for things like content.
It’s a pity it’s turned you off, but it’s not for everyone. It takes patience, commitment, and investment.
Like with anything worth doing.
I feel you may be missing the bigger picture in terms of the ROI on building digital assets. It’s a compounding effect.
We fully expect this asset to be worth $200k plus and earning $8k to $9k per month at the 12 month mark, with an investment of only around $30k in total.
That’s a pretty phenomenal return on investment.
But as I say, it’s a long game and takes hard work, dedication, and consistent action.
That’s not to say you can’t bootstrap a site like this, you can, and many do.
We’ve just published our month 6 update that shows some fantastic growth: https://nicheaffiliateempires.com/affiliate-site-case-study-month-6-update/
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I went back and read all the updates, and except for the linkbuilding, I think that I could do this – but over an 18-24 month period, and investing all the sales back into content. I’m looking forward to the Month 7 update, and especially to the release of your theme.