Niche Site Project #2 (Month 6 Update)

April 2022 Niche Site Summary

I’m under 6 months into my first niche site project and just surpassed 28,000 pageviews in the last 30 days.

But just 6 short months ago, I barely knew what a niche site was.

The Back Story

I have been receiving a steady stream of text updates from my identical twin brother Mike over the course of about a year, sharing pieces of his niche site journey with me.

“I just made my first dollar online!” was the first text that caught my attention.

And then a period of silence, followed by “Just hit publish on article #100 and had my first 100 dollar day yesterday”.

And finally, a steady stream of updates as Mike’s niche website EXPLODED past half a million monthly pageviews and over $670 a day in earnings.

Up until this time, I had told myself all of the usual things:

  • “I have a full time job that often occupies 60 hours a week of my time – I’m too busy.”
  • “I don’t know anything about building a website, SEO, or how to code.”
  • “I’m just not a technical person.”

But here was my identical twin brother, with all the same “constraints” in ADDITION to a new born baby!

And he was not just going through the motions of building a niche website, he was CRUSHING it.

And so, about six months ago – I JUST STARTED.

What I have come to find, is the amount of free, comprehensive resources available in this space is astounding.

There’s a ton to learn and I suspect the learning never ends, but its ALL out there.

I have now caught the bug – the same bug Mike caught nearly 2.5 years ago. Earning money online is not only attainable, it’s inevitable if you follow the process and consistently execute.

So now, I want to share my niche website journey with you. Because you never know…maybe you’ll catch the bug too.

Welcome to Niche Site Project #2!

April Progress

First, it’s worth emphasizing that you need to be disciplined with your publishing schedule.

No, this DOES NOT mean you need to commit to publishing 100 articles a month.

But, if you are serious about seeing results, it DOES mean you should commit to a monthly publishing frequency.

So how many posts should you publish a month?

This is only something YOU can answer based on your life and circumstances.

You’re 40% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down. So, write down your monthly publishing goals!

When I started out, Mike and I challenged each other to publish a minimum of 10 posts a month.

We’ve kept each other accountable so far…

I have now published a total of 112 posts, with a total word count of 184,074 and an average word count per post of 1,644.

I write all of my own content and I have not yet ventured into the world of hiring freelance writers.

In part, because I want to understand this world inside and out before I consider outsourcing any of the work. But also because I want to continue to publish high quality, evergreen content that is built to last.

April was a STRUGGLE.

Since starting my niche website in November 2021, this has definitely been the most challenging month.

Coming off a 41 post month in March, I had every intention of keeping the momentum rolling into April, but life had other plans.

Work picked up in a big way, with multiple 70 hour work weeks leaving little time for my site.

This is where having my minimum monthly publishing target written down came into play.

I genuinely believe, that without it, I would have cut myself some slack and said “there is always next month”.

But instead I was able to carve out some early morning time (4am – yuck) and manage to get 12 posts published.

The numbers may not reflect it, but I am proud of what I was able to accomplish in April despite all the challenges.

Traffic

From March (11,455) to April (28,284) the site had a 146.91% increase in pageviews.

Google Analytics – April 2022

  • Users: 22,692
  • Sessions: 25,786
  • Avg. Session Duration: 1:02
  • Pageviews: 28,284
  • Avg. Time on Page: 10:24
Niche Site Project #2: Universal Analytics - Audience Overview (April 2022)

Google Search Console – April 2022

  • Total Clicks: 22,900
  • Total Impressions: 384,000
  • Avg. CTR: 6%
  • Average Position: 12.2
Niche Site Project #2: Google Search Console - Search Results (April 2022)

Earnings

No earnings to report, as I decided to not monetize my website just yet.

Every free second I have has been poured into content, with the aim of achieving 50,000 sessions and monetizing the site with Mediavine display ads straight away.

The timing of when to start monetizing your site will vary for everyone. For me, it all comes down to the ROI on my time.

I can either sink time into the process of starting with one ad service, only to (hopefully) quickly change to another.

Or, I can use that time to churn out more content, and accelerate my trajectory towards 50,000 sessions.

For now, I choose content.

Historical Data

Final Word

The ability to hold the 30,000 foot view and end goal in your mind, while simultaneously breaking down the necessary steps to get there into small, actionable steps is a SUPERPOWER.

When you’re overwhelmed, it is usually because too much of your mental bandwidth is being spent thinking about the end goal.

So, write down your small, achievable niche site goals and JUST START.

And another thing…

There is nothing glamorous about waking up early in the morning, for months on end, to write 1,500 words that you have no guarantee the world will ever read.

But, DISCIPLINE equals FREEDOM.

So, spend the time to truly understand your ‘WHY’. Why are you doing this? To what end?

For me, I have this ridiculous dream that the profits from this site will single handedly cover the living expenses of the baby boy my wife Chelsea and I are expecting in October.

I know, I know it’s ridiculous…

…or is it?


keith headshot

Discipline = Freedom
Always Be Publishing #ABP!

24 thoughts on “Niche Site Project #2 (Month 6 Update)”

  1. Hi Keith,

    What a story you and your twin brother have. Encouraging and inspiring for lack of better words.

    Great stats on your 6-month journey. I’m starting my niche site journey today and my hope is that one day, i’ll document and share my success story with the two of you.

    #Godspeed.

    Regards,

    Kev.

    Reply
    • Thanks so much for the kind words Kev! Best of luck with you niche site journey…keep us posted with your progress!

      Reply
  2. Forget about the child’s expenses, you can earn a living from your blog. Once you’re successful with one blog, try to scale it further.

    Sharing this based on personal experience. Doing this full time since 2012, and living a dream life 🙂

    Reply
    • Thanks for sharing Rajesh!! And congrats on the long term success in this space…nice to know what’s possible down the road.

      Reply
  3. I wish you all the best. Writing your own article is far better than Outsourcing. Unless you are able to discover a sincere writer. Most of them just copy from other people blog posts and then change few words to make it unique on plagiarism software. And based on my experience, these posts don’t rank as they should.

    Reply
    • Thanks Emma – and I appreciate you sharing your experience with outsourcing. Mike has encountered similar challenges! For now, at least in the near/medium term, I plan to continue to write everything on my own.

      Reply
  4. The journey, the determination and the resilience that I’ve seen in both of you brothers chasing your dreams has been beyond inspirational!

    I truly wish that you achieve your goals and targets (and more) and continue to motivate people like me!

    Reply
    • This is absolutely the best kind of feedback we can get!! It’s what inspired us to start sharing our site journeys in the first place. Thank you – and go get em’!!

      Reply
  5. Keith, I love reading about your journey along with Mike’s. Congrats on growing the family! I know your efforts will soon pay off and help with a few diapers or many many 😉

    Reply
  6. Inspiring story. I am also working hard to achieve my goals. It’s now 5th month of my website. Using the KGR technique to find low competition keywords. keywords already started to come on the first page. Hope the situation will be better in a couple of months.

    Reply
    • Thanks for sharing and keep at it!! I find that my approach and my writing improves with every post. Keep spending the time on keyword research and I am confident you will hit your goals.

      Reply
  7. Hey Man! Amazing results so far. Question, are waiting to hit 50K unique users per month before you start monetizing with Mediavine?

    Reply
    • Thank you Rick! Yes, the plan for now is to wait to monetize until I get 50,000 sessions in the last 30 days (Mediavine’s requires this to get accepted). A big reason for this is wanting to spend as much free time I have as possible focusing on churning out high quality content. My best guess is I am likely 30-45 days away from being able to apply but we’ll see!

      Reply
      • Thank is absolutely amazing! Question, how do you go about your keyword research? Do you go after low competition keywords using ahrefs? Google alphabet soup? What is your process because i feel like you are crushing it and would love to learn how you do it. My problem is I go after zero search keywords to rank easilly but i am lucky to just get 20 visits a month. How do you go about it?

        Reply
    • Thanks Alexander! I have built zero links to date and instead I have picked up backlinks organically through high ranking content.

      Reply
    • Hey Rick – my traffic following the update has been all over the place and mostly down. Still waiting for the update to fully roll out to really assess the damage but early signs aren’t great. I will plan to share more in next months update and on twitter in the meantime (@patientpublish)!

      Reply
  8. Hi,

    This is a great progress in under 6 months. I would love to gain more knowledge as i am starting a niche site with 200+ posts goal.

    Are you doing any linkbuliding? If yes then how you did it in the past 6 months.

    How do your perform keywords research? Do you have any guide?

    Any help will highly appreciated!

    Reply
    • Thanks mate. I have built zero links to date and instead I have picked up backlinks organically through high ranking content. With regards to keyword research strategies check out my twitter account (@patientpublish) and Mike’s (@nichedown) for some detailed threads around this.

      Reply
  9. Do you follow a certain structure of research and formatting for each post? I am doing research on starting my own niche blog site and it is encouraging to hear that your posts are not massive novels in size. I am still not sure how the structure and flow of each blog post should look. Congrats on the success, keep it up

    Reply
    • Hey Tim – thanks for the kind words. Yes I do – check out my pinned tweet thread on Twitter (@patientpublish) for additional details. Best of luck with your site!

      Reply
  10. Great stuff Keith! I’m sure you’ll catch up to your brother in no time. I love the Jocko Willink quote of Discipline = Freedom. This is really inspiring to see! I’m going to start my own niche site this weekend and will be using your guys’ advice to help start out. Excited to keep following this journey.

    Reply

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