Mini Site Case Study Update
Last October I made a post: Buy for two years income and repay yourself in one
A 2 page website/minisite had been purchased for $7000, based on about 2 years income at the time, the great thing about this site was it could have done with 10 minutes work on the on-page SEO, no major surgery. It already had a lot of backlink work done and was ranking semi-well but with a little on page work I thought things could be improved a great deal.
The site is zero maintenance, I had hoped it would pay for itself in around a year and I’m glad to report it pretty much did that, as of October 28th 2008, 13 months later the investment has been paid back.
This means every day from here on in is pure profit, it’s doing $20 per day. On top of that if it was to be sold as a zero maintenance site even on 2 years income it would be worth around $14,000 twice what was paid for it.
The current exchange rate also helps, last year $7000 was about £3685
Doubling the value would be £7370 however if I was to sell in USD for $14,000 today that would be worth £8774 with an improved exchange rate.
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Can’t believe that post was over a year ago! I guess that means I was lurking for 13 months.
Great to see the site is now in profit and was good to re-read the SEO checklist. Still so relevant today.
Are you able to let us know the url?
I know shocking really, I only realised last night that it’s just past a year, time flies! the site is eprintable dot com
Yup, time flies gentlemen. We’re already coming to the end of 2008 and I keep on asking myself what the hell happened to the year.
Lol… that was exactly what I though. I also remember that post clearly. A year passes fast.
Still a good catch. Congrats Scott.
Mikael’s last blog post..Topic Research Just Became Easier
Nice follow-up, congrats. I’d guess many people who use it will create personal calendars so may be worth pushing appropriate affiliate products or something like this (no it’s not an affiliate link
)
Thanks for the follow up. That’s a great income from a site on a daily basis. Until you rank in the top 5 on a search engine, I’ve personally found that the Adsense income is pitiful. I’m still barely getting $3 a day currently, as it’s taking a while to rank for key terms on 3 of my main sites.
Dan
Dan @ PowerDosh.com’s last blog post..Available .co.uk Domains and some ideas…
Congrats, I’m currently selling quite a high maintenance site, you’ve tempted me to invest in a zero maintenance site with the takings, going to head over and browse the classifieds now.
Dave Marshall’s last blog post..Web Developer at Hoop Associates (London)
What sort of link building work had been done on the site? $20/day is quite respectable for adsense income, I would think it could sell for even more than that.
Justin Cook’s last blog post..What to do when you’re dropped from Google’s index
None Justin, that was all done in advance of me buying it so a little on page seo and that’s it.
cool. well done.
nothing quite beats search engine optimization and search engine traffic, for having a particular site be profitable, even when there’s a change in ownership.
$20 a day? wow.
kouji’s last blog post..solar power battery chargers
That’s great!! 7k+ in 13 months from zero maintenance site. congrats.
Your original post inspired me to buy a few websites. If I recoup my investment in two years, I consider that a good investment. My stats so far are one very profitable purchase (percentage wise), two profitable purchases, two laggards that need some work and one complete disaster.
The big lesson I have learned from the experience is don’t stray too far away from what you know.
There is always an element of risk, the more you buy in the larger the risk, I think the quality of the sites generally listed for sale isn’t great and the better deals would be approaching site owners and enticing them.
Nice site. How much traffic is sent to your mortgage calculator site out of curiosity?
The two niches don’t seem to go together that well, but I’m sure it’s still helping that site earn some money right?
Mini-sites are rapidly becoming very popular.
I think the mention about the currency exchange rate is a good one. For example the revenue I earn from affiliation that gets paid in $$ is now worth more in ££ so profits are rising nicely in that revenue stream. Selling websites to those across the pond will also help get more ££ even if the website has the same $$ value
It’s a huge advantage with the current exchange rate. Although it wasn’t that long ago when it was the other way around. Considering a US bank account so that I can change money over when the going is good.
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The GBP has just fallen to a six year low against the USD, good news for those in the UK using Adsense. Very nice result with the mini site, it’s all pure profit from now on
Congratulations Scot, a nice income stream for a zero maintenance site. No doubt it looks even better with sterling falling rapidly against the dollar!
Well done, I think you have done well to project your return and succeed in what has been a tough financial year, well done.
Great result Scott, thanks for posting about your “adventures in domaining”, your articles are both inspirational and educational for a newbie to the field
Cheers, Jon
Jon’s last blog post..Salon Websites – Google Search Engine Optimization Guide
Heh, I’ve never really thought about buying and improving sites before. This has got my brain ticking
Sounds like an awesome way to keep adding to my asset list just like a house or stocks but with much greater returns and far less investment
Thanks man!
– Tim Robinson
I was just wondering which keywords is the site optimized for? It ranks 7th for “printable calendar” and 9th for “free printable calendar”.
But i don’t get how around 74k monthly searches of “printable calendar” translate into around 59k page impressions per month with the site being ranked seventh on the first page of google.
The traffic has to be non-organic or from referring sites?
Thanks and Regards,
John
Just organic John and links from other sites, no PPC is done on any of my sites. 11% is direct, 46% Google 11% Yahoo. 45k visitors in the last 30 days. From analytics search sent 31,339 total visits via 3,118 keywords.