This is the August 2020 update for the Operator <> Investor partnership on website in the Wellness niche. Details of the partnership structure and intro to the website were covered in the last update here, and the archives can be found here.
How’s the Partnership Going? Awesome! 🔥
It’s been more than a month for the partnership. You are most likely curious how it’s holding up. In short, awesome!
- I am not involved in day-to-day
- Operator asks high-level questions only. He handles the day-to-day
- The investors (myself and one other) provides our systems, structure, industry contacts, and the Operator does his thing
Investors are truly hands-off. I did not log in to the site all month! Love it!
Most partnerships fail due to money at the end of the day. As long as you work out the structure around money management, you should be good to go.
The Operator is happy because (1) he has a large share (50%) in the business, and (2) is able to learn from two seasoned veterans that have done this numerous times. Win-Win!📈 Highlights
- Overall traffic is up ~31%!
- Revenue was $338
- 2 new articles added
- Optimized top-ranking pages
- Formatting posts to look better
- Switched from AMALinksPro to AAWP for Amazon links
📊 Traffic Stats for August
Here is a comparison between August and July 2020:
The quick win improvements really pushed the site up. I discuss those in subsequent sections.
Here are the AHREF results:
💰 P&L in August
- Revenue: $338.42
- Costs: $0
- Profit: $338.42
The site had no costs as we focused on stabilizing the site.
Revenue Streams?
If you have been following me, you know that I HATE to be monetized by just one source…
This site currently has the following sources and breakdown by percentage:
- Amazon Associates USA: 85%
- Private Affiliate Network #1: 5.93%
- ShareASale: 8.67%
3 revenue sources with Amazon being 85%? That’s scary to me. It will take time to diversify though. It’s in the gameplan.
Profit Split?
Technically, our agreement with the Operator states that any profit each month is split between the three of us (50% to Investors, 50% to Operator).
However, we collectively decided to re-invest the profit proceeds back into the site for future months.
A win in my book! When your Operator is aligned with the growth strategy and is willing to forego a salary, that means you got the right person on the job!📅 August Improvements
The first month after acquisition is basically spent on fixing up the mistakes the previous owner made.
This includes anything from on-page fixes, plugin removal, theme changes, and monetization changes.
Improve On-Page
The Operator spent a ton of time optimizing each and every page generating traffic. The optimizations included:
- Using Google Search console, each page was analyzed to see what keywords could be added
- Remove any unnecessary formatting
This took the most amount of time for the Operator.
Stabilize Earnings
We prefer to use AAWP plugin. The previous owner used AMALinks Pro.
The AMALink product boxes and tables look extremely ugly on the site. This was definitely reducing click-through rates.
The operator immediately switched every link, table, and product box with AAWP shortcodes.
This took ton of time as there were many product-based articles.
Content Audit
Most first-time website creators, whom we purchased the site from, just write content and disregard SEO. This can be a good and bad thing.
The good is that the website is more natural.
The bad is that there are many articles that do not get traffic, and just bloat the website.
The operator did a content audit to do the following:
- Delete pages (move to draft)
- 301 Redirect to relevant other pages on the site
- Repurpose and rewrite
We utilized AHREFs Google Sheet template to get this done.
Cleaning up a site with bloated content can put more focus on the content that really matters.
🚄 Optimize Site Speed
I personally took care of this to add WP Rocket and ShortPixel. These easy changes immediately increase page speed and user experience.
I have a set of specific settings I follow with these plugins to get the best results.
🆕 New Content
It was a busy month with just getting the site stabilized.
We were only able to add 2 articles at a total word count of 4,500 words.
What Can Be Improved in September 2020?
The Operator is working actively to do the following in September 2020:
- New Content: The plan is to find writers, perform keyword research using AHREFS, put together outlines, and post articles. The goal is to add 10-15 articles to the site.
- Pinterest growth: Operator will deploy a Pinterest strategy to consistently pin using Tailwind
- On-page SEO: interlinking of content is crucial and will be a large focus
September will be the month of continued growth🤞. Content will be the major focus.
Wrap Up
Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions.
This is turning out to be a good partnership.
