Today’s Authority Business Blueprints features sites will feature one off-market deal brokered by The Website Flip (hobby niche), two deals from Flippa, one from Motion Invest, and an aged domain from ODYS Global.
Let’s get into the growth blueprints!
Site for Sale #1: ClassroomDIY.com
Website Summary
Type: Existing Content site
Niche: Hobby
Profit:
- July 1-13: $707
- L3M: $1,840
- L6M: $1,368
- L9M: $936
The site earns revenue via Amazon Associates and 3 other affiliate programs.
List Price: $45,144 (33X)
AHREFS
Due Diligence Dashboard
The site was run through The Website Flip’s Due Diligence dashboard. Here are the L12M metrics. June 2021 had a dip in traffic due to the Google update, however, the site has recovered in July 2021 as shown in the second screenshot.
Here are the last 30 days showing recovery in July 2021 update:
Growth Blueprint
Highlights:
- Site built in August 2020 on an 9-year old aged domain obtained from ODYS Global
- Monetized by 4 unique affiliate programs
- Quality backlinks from high-DR niche relevant websites
- Good mix of informational and commercial content
- Growing traffic month over month on average
- 190 articles published with 265,553 words total
Setbacks:
- Traffic reduced by ~10K page views in June 2021. However, in July Google update, the site has now recovered.
Easy wins:
- Add Ezoic display ads immediately (eventually move to Mediavine as it’s high paying in DIY niche)
- Add callout product/service boxes in high-traffic pages
- Improve call-to-action buttons (e.g., red/blue coler, larger button size)
Takeaway
This site is in the hobby and DIY niche. The site was rebuilt on an aged domain (see Archives). The seller did well to preserve topical relevancy. The previous domain discussed topics related to DIY projects.
The aged domain was rebuilt in August 2020. A large amount of content was added to the site in May 2021, which will start to rank in the next 3-6 months.
A major highlight of this site is that Amazon Associates is 35% of total revenues. The site is monetized with 3 other affiliate programs that earn the remaining 65%. This is a well-diversified site.
As for easy wins, Ezoic can be added immediately and at an assumed $15 EPMV, this can add an additional $300-$350/mo revenue stream. Improving the conversion rate optimization on the high-traffic pages will result in more revenues as well.
Interested? View P&L, screenshots
For full details, view the current P&L, and all screenshots here.
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Blueprint #2: Archareer.com
Website Summary
Type: Existing Content Site
Niche: Business Services
Source: Flippa (see listing here)
Revenue: $236/mo via job posting sales, portfolio/resume templates, Amazon Associates, and Creative Market Affiliates
AHREFS
Due Diligence Dashboard
The website has been put through The Website Flip’s due diligence dashboard. Here are the results:
Growth Blueprint
Highlights
- Traffic is well-diversified across top pages
- Site sells premium job postings, and their own digital products
- Quality backlinks from UMass, Procore, Jobstars, and other niche relevant domains
Setbacks
- Slight downtrending traffic month-over-month
- Seller target product-focused buying guide (e.g., /best-palm-sanders). This does not match topical relevancy and all should be removed.
Easy Wins
- Add Ezoic for a boost in total revenues
- Reduce the price of job listings to entice postings; currently at $69 but may benefit from a reduction
- Add callout boxes through informational articles to promote digital products
- Add exit intent popup to promote digital products
- Add sticky sidebar widget to promote digital products
- Add new content targetting keywords related to buildings in specific cities, best architecture, etc.
Takeaway
This is a career site focused on the architecture niche. The dedicated job board attracts firms looking for new hires. These firms are willing to pay the $69 fee to post a job on the board. On top of that, the owner has created a set of 3 portfolio templates that can be used by architects to showcase their work to clients/employers. These sell for $18 each.
This is an excellent site to build a true brand in the architect career space. There is room for growth with new content to be added targeting the following topics:
- Top architectural buildings by city
- Top universities for architecture by country
- Best jobs in the fields
As for easy wins, implementing Ezoic will provide a good boost to revenues. Due to being in the education niche, the RPMs will be much higher than other types of sites. I anticipate an additional $150/mo from display ads.
Blueprint #2: TattooSet.com
Domain Summary
Type: Aged Domain
Niche: Tattoos
Source: ODYS.Global
Age: 2009 (12 years old)
Listed Price: $5,350
AHREFS
Backlinks: This site has notable backlinks from MTV, Complex, Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan, Huffington Post, Top Inspired, Flavour Wire, and more.
Site History
This site featured inspiration for men and women on different kinds of tattoo ideas for different parts of the body.
Here is a snapshot of the past site:
Growth Blueprint
Overall, the tattoo niche has many topics to cover. Some example topics include tattoo examples, tattoo schools, tattoo careers, tattoo DIY, etc.
If I were to build out a tattoo site, this is what I would do:
- Matching topical relevancy with old site I would add listicle content (e.g., 230+ Buddha tattoos…)
- Add content on how to get started as a tatoo artist
- Sell a digital product from Clickbank or create one
The site would do well with display advertisements, digital products, and affiliates. There are also online courses and training programs that can be promoted. Overall, a good niche to enter.
Blueprint #3: BarkVA.org
Website Summary
Type: Existing Content Site
Niche: Dogs
Source: Motion Invest (see here)
Revenue: $10,978/mo via Amazon Affiliate, $25K in June 2021
Listed Price: $411,305
AHREFS
Growth Blueprint
Highlights
- Built on a 16-year old age domain that used to be a dog rescue and owner finder service based out of Richmond, VA
- Historically the site has kept the same topical relevancy
- New owner bought as an aged domain and recreated the site as content site but kept the old adoption pages
- Earning $10K per month on average over last-6-months
- June 2021 is $25K of earnings
Setbacks
- Seller is re-using information from previous brand (e.g., phone number, adoption concept, etc). This may be a red flag long-term and should be fixed.
- Second aged domain, MeetYourDog.com, being redirected to homepage directly. I prefer using a Press Release redirect instead to minimize risks.
- All top traffic pages are commercial buying guides; site needs diversification
Easy Wins
- Implement display ads with Mediavine or AdThrive
- Link images in product comparison tables to Amazon
- Link images in product reviews to Amazon
- Add product callout boxes
- Add links within content to Amazon
- Implement other affiliate programs like Chewy
- Improve interlinking of content
Takeaway
This is an example of the power of aged domains. The seller acquired this domain, ensured topical relevancy as best as possible, and added content. The domain in the past was a dog adoption service and the new owner recreated pages on the new site to ensure relevancy.
While the seller has done well with the site, as a buyer, it can be rather risky. With only a 7-month horizon of data, primarily buying guides ranking, and a $400K price point, it’s a difficult buy.
There are many easy wins on the site that can significantly increase revenues. With over 120K pageviews in June 2021, using a premium display ad network will bring in an additional $2,000+ per month at a $20+ RPM in the pet niche. The site’s buying guides are also not highly optimized; a few small tweaks will increase clickthrough rates.
My Thoughs
I build sites on aged domains (e.g., my dating site is an aged domain from 2004 and is going strong for over 3+ years now). If this site was around for 2 years, had diversified traffic to different types of content, placed more effort to showcase Google EAT, then I would say it’s a great asset to potentially acquire.
At this stage, the seller is selling because they know they need to invest a ton of effort to transition this niche site into a real authority site in order to protect from Google updates. They want a quick exit to move on.
🙅♂️ “Too Good To Be True” Sites
FishFinderHub.com – Listed on Flippa
From the Flippa listing page, this site looks like a site with minimal red flags. It receives 13,000+ page views per month earning about $650/mo on average. However, after reviewing the Google Analytics data, the top page (i.e., Best Fish Finder) receives 46% of the total traffic. This is extremely high risk due to the article being of commercial intent thus bringing in most of the revenues. If that page gets beaten by competition or penalized by Google, the site will have a significant decrease in revenues. Buyer beware!
Check out the Due Diligence Dashboard showcasing the high traffic concentration to one page.
Wrap Up
These blueprints lay out the high-level strategies to accelerate your ROI after the acquisition. Of course, the real effort is putting all of this into practice.
For more resources, make sure to read the following guides:
