This week’s deals feature an off-market site owned by The Website Flip in the renewable energy niche, an Empire Flippers site in the food & drink niche, an Investors Club site in the gaming niche, and a vetted aged domain in the elections niche from Odys marketplace.
For domains, we share findings on 4 aged SEO domains and 6 branded domains live at GoDaddy auctions.
Off-Market Site: EcoWut.com
Summary
Niche: Renewable Energy, Environment
Source: The Website Flip
Revenue: Monetized via Ezoic Premium and Amazon Associates
- Last-3-month average: $329
- Last 6-month average: $317
- Last 12-month average: $370
Listed Price: $14,800 (~40X of L12M average)
AHREFS
Due Diligence Dashboard
Growth Blueprint
Highlights
- Traffic diversified across top pages (the highest page is at 12%)
- High RPM niche (around $30-37 EPMV on average)
- Content is simple to outsource at 3-5 cents per word
- One writer included with the site (3 cents/word)
Setbacks
- Site was set to “noindex” after migration in late May to my server. This was the cause for the traffic dip in late May and early June. The traffic has recovered.
- Buyer needs to take over Ezoic Premium contract
Easy Wins
- Add more content to the site. I added 1 article after taking over the site.
- Perform CRO on the pages with Amazon affiliate revenue stream
- Add Google EAT such as author boxes, about page, social profiles, etc.
Takeaway
The renewable energy and environmental niche have strong display advertising RPMs. This site hovers around the minimum $30 Ezoic EPMV to a max $37 EPMV since I’ve acquired it. The EPMVs will peak even higher in Q4 2022.
I liked this niche because of the high display ad revenue potential, and the ease of outsourcing content since most people can write on these topics.
The major easy win here is to keep publishing content. There aren’t many opportunities for improving conversions as the majority of traffic goes to informational content.
Since acquiring on May 20, 2022, I have not done anything to the site. It took me a couple of weeks to get the site onto my Ezoic account thus the drop in revenues, plus during migration, due to my lack of oversight, the site was set to “noindex”. This caused the traffic dip which has recovered.
The site is better off in someone else’s hands who wants to build out a site with high display ad revenue potential, and in a growing niche.
Note: The seller must take over the remaining Ezoic Premium contract if they want to keep the site on Ezoic.
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Aged Domain: ElectoralMap.net
Summary
Niche: Elections
Source: Odys Global (see listing here)
Age: 2008 (14 Years)
Listed Price: $2,510
AHREFS
Backlinks: New York Times, Bloomberg, The Verge, Vice, Buzzfeed, and more.
Site History
This site used to be an informational site about predictions of upcoming national elections and the results of past elections. It featured simple interactive maps of the United States with election data points.
It received many links from high authority news sites that referenced its information and maps. It still has well over 400 referring domains.
Here’s what the site looked like:
Growth Blueprint
Elections are a popular topic each fall during Q4 when advertising spending and RPMs increase. There are also related topics that are less seasonal such as congressional maps.
A similar site that focuses on election topics is 270towin.com. It consistently gets over 500k monthly organic traffic (AHREFs) throughout the year and spikes higher during election season.
There are many opportunities to combine a geographic keyword modifier with an election topic. This allows for easier scalability by duplicating a topic across 50 states or many cities. Geographic-based content could be created inexpensively through programmatic SEO.
Here’s what I would do:
- Add an interactive US states map to the homepage to match the original site. You can use a WordPress plugin like Interactive Geo Maps
- Recreate pages from the original site (there were only around 35 pages according to AHREFs)
- Add attractive charts and graphs that illustrate election data to attract natural inbound links (check 270toWin.com for inspiration)
- Find low competition keywords that can be duplicated across multiple states or cities (e.g., “Chicago congressional districts” has a KD of 4 and a volume of 300)
Monetization of this site would be primarily through display advertising. The goal would be to get approved by a premium display advertising network like AdThrive or Mediavine. 270towin.com uses Freestar for display advertising and sponsorships.
2-Year-Old Food Site Making $2,534/mo on Empire Flippers
Summary
Niche: Food & Drink
Source: Empire Flippers (see listing)
Profit: $2,169/mo from Amazon Affiliate, Display Ads, and other affiliate programs
Asking Price: $99,793 at a 46X multiple using a 12-month average
AHREFS
Growth Blueprint
Highlights
- Evergreen niche
- Solid EAT
- Ranks for both informational and commercial keywords
- 300+ articles give the site great topical relevance
- 800+ email subscribers
Setbacks
- Slight downtrend in earnings & traffic
Easy Wins
- Add exit-intent pop-ups to increase affiliate revenue up to 5%
- Add product tables on money pages to increase affiliate revenue up to 10%
Takeaway
This business is a great content website and can particularly appeal to an owner who has an interest in the niche – many adults do. The well-written and designed content make the site look better than most content sites, which has helped it attract some strong backlinks.
Unfortunately, the site is on a slight downtrend in terms of its traffic and earnings. Ad RPMs, which the site depends on, are down across most ad networks so its natural the earnings have gone down a little, but an investor interested in growing the site will have strong foundation to grow upon.
There are a few instant wins around CRO that can improve the affiliate earnings by up to about $200/month. While this isn’t life-changing it’s a nice increase that the new owner can use to develop content further and build up the site.
We recommend a new owner take a medium-long horizon on it. There is not a lot of opportunity for flippers.
6-Year-Old Gaming Site Making $2,364/mo on Investor Club
Summary
Niche: Gaming
Source: Investors Club
Revenue: $2,364/mo from Display Ads (98%) and Guest Posts (2%)
Asking Price: $98,650 at a 41X multiple using a 6-month average
AHREFS
Growth Blueprint
Highlights
- Growing traffic
- Great content with plenty of room to expand
- Strong, naturally acquired links
- Traffic goes to a diverse set of pages – top 3 pages gets only 15% of the site’s traffic
- 600+ articles to optimize and prune for better rankings
Setbacks
- Some content is not evergreen
- No Google EAT
Easy Wins
- Testing out another ad network can improve revenue up to 10%, or about $250/month
- Adding pop-ups to VPN software, which does well in this niche, can generate up to an extra $500/month
Takeaway
This is very strong content in a large tech niche, with plenty of quality content. Unfortunately, not all content is evergreen and this site is best served by someone who is passionate about the niche and is willing to be hands-on.
A more involved owner who intends on growing the site, as opposed to going for a quick flip, can be rewarded handsomely due to the quality of the site. With plenty of content opportunities, a new owner can publish plenty of affiliate content to increase and diversify revenue.
There are a few setbacks, but we’re not too concerned about them. The first, as we mentioned earlier, is that there is some content that is not evergreen. A new owner will want to address this by prioritizing evergreen content. The second setback is that there is poor EAT – again, this is something a new owner will want to address, and doing so can just take an hour or two.
Overall, this is a great opportunity for someone who is willing to put in the work and grow the site. We don’t recommend this site for someone just looking for a quick flip or someone who wants to be relatively hands-off.
🚀 4 SEO Domains & 6 Brandable Domains
SEO Domains
- DadLabs.com: This was a site providing resources to expecting, new and veteran fathers started in 2007. It has a DR of 34 ranks for 4 keywords in the top 100 positions. Backlinks from WashingtonPost, BusinessInsider, Huffpost and NYTimes.com.
- ParkGrillChicago.com: The site for the Park Grill restaurant starting in 2006. It has a DR of 42 and is ranking for 49 KWs with Backlinks from CBSNews, TripAdvisor and NYTimes.com.
- MIHeadlines.com: This was a Michigan news aggregation site started in 2012. It has a DR of 31 and is ranking for 32 KWs with Backlinks from Wikipedia, DailyMail and NPR.org.
- BookmarkStar.com: A social bookmarking site active from 2017-2019. It has a DR 52 and is ranking for 48 KWs. Backlinks from Office and ZenDesk
