Building to Flip (BTF) Case Study (Update 1)

Hello September,

I’m writing to provide an update on the BTF (Build to Flip) case study. If you missed the introduction post, you can check it here: https://www.nichesitevault.com/building-to-flip-case-study/

In the introduction post, I laid out three goals for the site:

i) Pass the website through Screaming Frog to check for internal errors that I can easily fix.

ii) Go through all the articles on the site and determine the keywords they should be optimized for. Here, I will be using SurferSEO as well as Keywords Everywhere for keyword research.

iii) Come up with a list of at least 100 article titles that should be written.

At this point, I’ve accomplished goals (i) and (iii).  However, for goal (iii), I’m not optimizing my posts with Surfer SEO. Instead, I am optimizing them with SERPWoo’s Zora tool.

I’m still working on goal (ii).

Since the last update, the website has been seeing more traffic and earnings, with little input from my end.

I’ve not been building links to the site. However, I’ve been getting organic links from people linking to various articles on the site. This could be the reason why the site has seen a steady increase in traffic.

How are we doing? Well, the site is seeing an average of 200 visitors a day.

Here is how the traffic numbers look like on Google Analytics:

The 5000 visitors is about double the traffic the site was seeing in January. Before this case study, the highest number of visits the site had registered was 2,319 (back in July, 2018).

With the articles having aged on Google, I believe the site has started getting some love from G and this is why there has been an increase in traffic without any massive effort put on link building.

If you prefer to see the SEMrush graph, here is how the site has been trending over the past 6 months:

Now that you know how traffic has been looking like, let’s get to the earnings.

In the previous update, I indicated that I would be happy if the site reached total earnings of $2000 by the end of the year.

Well, it seems that my projection was way low. I should have aimed higher.

In 2019, the site earned a total of $1,127. At this moment, the site has earned a total of $3,790. 

I now have to revise my projection for the total earnings for the year. From the looks of things, total earnings should go past $5000 by the end of the year.

If you are interested in monthly earnings, here is a breakdown of the earnings for the past 8 months:

Current Website Value

What is the value of this website at this time?

Going by the industry standard of x24 to x30 for the last 3 or 6 months earnings, I can potentially sell this site at:

Average of last 3 months’ earnings x 24 or x 30: $18,000 to $22,000.

Average of last 6 months’ earnings x 24 or x 30: $13,000 to $16,000

It’s a good chunk of change…but my goals still remain. I want to take the website to $3500 so that I can flip it for $100,000.

So, I’ll keep working.

Things to Do

Without a doubt, I have not been putting a lot of effort on this site. This is because I am still growing my Project $100K site.

However, things are bound to change this month going forward. This is because I decided to stop all freelance writing work I was doing. I just don’t have enough time to attend to other clients’ needs while these websites need my attention.

Now I have some more hours to grow my affiliate businesses.

For this website, the plan remains the same. At the moment, my top priority is optimizing all the articles on the site with Zora.

After optimization, I intend to add some more content. My goal was to get 100 pieces of content posted on the site before the end of the year. I have four months to accomplish the goal.

Apart from this, I’ve realized there is a big opportunity for the niche on YouTube. As a result, I intend to start a YouTube channel for the niche and get some content going.

I have been researching on how best to set up a YouTube channel for the niche. The problem is that most of the products I’m reviewing are quite expensive. Therefore, I cannot afford to buy them to provide a review. I will have to come up with a way of improvising.

Another thing that has been on the works is sprucing up the website’s homepage to give it a more ‘corporate’ look than an ‘affiliate’ look. I believe the branding will be crucial in helping me forge partnerships (mostly to get free products to review (LOL!), as well as charging top dollar for guest posts!

Other random things I have in mind, in no particular order, include:

i) Set up an email capture form on the site to collect leads

ii) Create a lead magnet for my audience

iii) Create an auto-responder series that will enable me to monetize the subscribers

iv) Establish the site’s presence on various forums or social networks where the target audience hangs out

I’ll keep working on this site and will probably provide an update in the next four months.

Until then, keep grinding with your business.