(The Entrepreneur Ridealong) Building An Audio Production Niche Site from $0 to $40,000

[This is the SEO journey of Umar Faizan, one of our participants in the Entrepreneur Ridealong series. For this series, six top-class SEOs will be sharing their website-building journeys on our blog. Follow along as they each start a site from scratch and attempt to grow it as fast as they can.]

TLDR;

SEO

Umar Faizan

Niche

Audio Production

Content Strategy

Informational content supported by affiliate content

Linkbuilding Strategy

Organic, email outreach

Monetization Plan

Amazon Associates, display advertising (80%/20%)

Target Earnings

$1,000 a month

Target Exit

$30,000 to $40,000

Welcome to this SEO case study/ridealong, where I will be building a website from scratch to sell on Empire Flippers.

I will detail the progress made regarding website design, content creation, link building, and other SEO strategies.

I won’t disclose the domain, but I will include the high-level niche.

Along the way, I will track key metrics such as traffic, rankings, and earnings. As well as documenting the time and money spent.

Through this case study, you will gain insight into the process of building a successful website (hopefully) and optimizing it for maximum value on a popular marketplace like Empire Flippers.

A bit about me before we begin.

About Me

My name is Umar Faizan. I’ve been building websites for 3 years.

I use various SEO strategies, which involve building a topical map by doing extensive keyword research, reverse silo structure, frequently & consistently publishing new content pieces (while updating old ones), shotgun skyscraper & different techniques to build links.

Now, onto the site I’m building for this Ridealong.

The Goal

It’s always a great idea to work backward and have a plan in motion. So, here it is…

The aim is for a $30K – $40K exit.

At a 30x multiple the site will need to be earning $1K – $1333 per month in net profit to achieve this exit target; at a 40x multiple, it will need to be earning between $40K – $53K; and at a 50x multiple, it will need to be earning between $50K – $66K.

Empire Flippers has plenty on?how to get a higher multiple, but quality content, high-quality links, and diverse traffic across the site help.

My monthly profit target is $1K, which is $12K a year.

The maths behind a $12K per year blog:

• $1K per month
• $33 per day

Monetized with affiliates only:

• 4 orders at 3% commission on $300 for each product sale
• 80 visitors per day at 5% conversion

Monetized with ads only:

• $10 RPM (revenue per 1,000 visitors)
• 3,300 visitors per day

Monetized with both (assume 80% affiliate and 20% ads)

• 720 visitors per day (or 22K/mo)
• $7/day from ads at $10 RPM
• $27 from 3 affiliate orders for $300 each at 5% conversion

Breakdown of costs:

• Software/Hosting: $400
• Content: $3K – $4K
• Links: $2K
• Virtual Assistants/Operator: $2160

Content will be the majority of my costs. This is primarily because I will hire writers for 90% of the work. I have a few writers that do $20 – $25 per 1K words.

Projected Results:

• Revenue: $22,500
• Costs: $7,560
• Profit: $17,100

Make sure to bookmark this page and come back to it for future reference. Hopefully, if you’re starting out or already have a blog making some revenue, this can spark some ideas to take your website to the next level.

My Niche Selection

This ridealong is about my website that will mainly be monetized with Amazon affiliate. So while choosing a niche, I consider 3 things:

1. Niche profitability (product pricing)
2. Keyword Opportunities (commercial/informational)
3. Shouldn’t fall into your money or your life (YMYL) category

Although, there are many other factors to consider such as the trend of the niche (seasonal, evergreen, etc), type of content, intent, target audience, and most importantly, the opportunity.

While finalizing the niche, I search for a couple of keywords to analyze the SERP and see:

1. What’s the age of websites that are ranking in top 3 (target is less than 2-year-old websites)
2. How strong the links are? (speaking of per-page and domain-level links)
3. How many articles have those websites published around my target topic?

My Content Production and SEO Strategy

Although I have built websites with most of their content around affiliate-type keywords (best X for Y), for this ridealong, I will mostly focus on utilizing the informational topics as supporting content for affiliate keywords and choose only those affiliate keywords that could bring in high-ticket sales so I earn more commission from Amazon affiliate.

I aim to find keywords to target the topic that can bring at least 250 – 500 visitors a month for each post. Otherwise, it’s just a waste of time and money.

The main part of my content strategy is publishing articles consistently week by week.

I follow traditional on-page SEO strategies but focus more on providing the best user experience to my visitors hence avoiding fluff content.

Since I run my own link-building agency, I follow the exact same strategies that we use for our clients such as Digital PR & links built through email outreach. For this website, I plan to produce content based on trends, facts, and stats in our industry to attract natural links.

How I’ll Set Up the Website

I try to get the website setup done ASAP without banging my head around super complex homepages built using Elementor—just simple pages while using a light theme, such as Kadence WP.

I try to get the author pages, about us page, and category pages built first. I provide as much context as I can for these pages. For my recent website, I am using real profiles and authors who are experts in that niche.

I test different CTAs across different posts to see what works for that specific niche. The VA cost mentioned above is for uploading the content; since it’s the same process that we normally do over and over.

For internal links, I prefer to use Link Whisper. It provides me with really good suggestions for internal link articles while I update previous posts every 3 months.

For heatmaps and to see user behavior, I use a free version of Hotjar and find out the factors that bounce visitors and then improve those elements.

I make sure to get regular backups using Updraft Plus, although my hosting provider takes daily backups.

Project Summary

I’m starting a new website in the sound production niche in June 2023.

I will mostly focus on utilizing the informational topics as supporting content for affiliate keywords and choose only those affiliate keywords that could bring in high-ticket sales so I earn more commission from Amazon affiliate.

I aim to find keywords to target the topic that can bring at least 250 – 500 visitors a month for each post. The main part of my content strategy is publishing articles consistently week by week.

I follow traditional on-page SEO strategies but focus more on providing the best user experience to my visitors hence avoiding fluff content.

Since I run my own link-building agency, I follow the exact same strategies that we use for our clients such as Digital PR & links built through email outreach.

To build the site, I’ll use a simple WordPress theme and try to get the author pages, about us page, and category pages built first.

I’m going to monetize the site with Amazon Associates and display advertising at around an 80/20 revenue split in favor of affiliates. Revenue will be generated in the following way:

• 720 visitors per day (or 22K/mo)
• $7/day from ads at $10 RPM
• $27 from 3 affiliate orders for $300 each at 5% conversion

Projected Results:

• Revenue: $22,500
• Costs: $7,560
• Profit: $17,100

Follow along my journey to learn how to grow a site from $0/mo to $1K/mo for a $30K – $40K exit!

Project Completion Targets