When it comes to building and developing niche sites, everyone can have their own approach.
Some may choose to build and maintain their site long-term to create a steady source of monthly income.
Others might sell their site to earn a substantial amount, then invest that money in other growth channels or build a new, larger site.
Or, simply use the money from selling the site to buy an expensive item they’ve been wanting.
As for me, I fall into the second category.
To be honest, even though I’ve sold many sites, I’m still “addicted” to the feeling of listing a site for sale and hearing that “ting ting” sound when the money hits the bank. :))
The following story is from Thế Anh, a student from my niche site K9 class, who recently sold his first niche site for ~$22,000. This will give you a more concrete look at this MMO (Make Money Online) model.
This time, it will be from his perspective, as a beginner, rather than mine as in previous case studies.
OK, shall we begin?
Here’s the young man, Thế Anh.
1) Can you introduce yourself a bit?
I’m Thế Anh, a student from the K9 course.
I was born in 1999, and I’m currently working at a marketing company.
2) When did you start working on Amazon niche sites, and what made you choose this model?
Previously, my boss encouraged me to attend Duy’s class.
I saw the potential in this model, so I decided to pursue it.
3) Can you talk about the niche you chose for your site and why you picked it?
I worked on the topic of (censored).
At that time, I didn’t have many research skills, so I used the spreadsheet with potential niches from Duy.
Duy Nguyễn’s note:
In the draft Thế Anh sent me, he specified the niche he chose.
But after consideration, I decided to censor that information so the new owner of the site can comfortably continue developing it.
4) How long did it take before your site started generating income?
It took 4 months before my site began earning, around $15 -> $20 per month.
5) What was the traffic and income of your site at the time of the successful sale?
As of April 24, 2022, my site was making $1,030/month from Amazon.
It had around 800 visits per day.
Three months prior, it was earning about $800 -> over $900.
Before that, it gradually increased from $50 -> $250 -> $350 -> $530 per month.
6) Did you build the site using a brand-new domain or an old (expired/aged) domain? And why did you choose that?
Initially, I bought an old domain for $49.
After violating policies and getting banned twice, I 301-redirected to a new domain.
I bought the old domain hoping to save time building the niche site.
Duy Nguyễn’s note:
I was aware of Thế Anh and some other students getting banned from Amazon.
The issue was that when signing up for accounts, I had advised everyone to use their Facebook profile link temporarily, then update it after setting up their website.
However, it seems that over time, Amazon no longer approved of that method, so new accounts created this way by K9 and some K10 students were suspended.
From then on, I made a note for future classes that everyone should only sign up for an account after their website is ready and has at least 4-5 content articles.
For K9 and K10 students whose accounts were suspended, I provided guidance on how to bypass the issue, and they managed to do it.
7) How much did you invest in the site, and what were the average monthly costs to maintain it?
Throughout the process, I invested nearly 50 million VND.
Most of the money was spent during the months I ramped up when my income began reaching $50/month.
For about 6 months, I invested 5-7 million VND per month on average.
8) Can you share how you chose keywords for your site?
At first, I looked for weak competitors, with traffic in the thousands on Ahrefs, and competitors I could realistically compete with.
After identifying a few, I used Ahrefs to export the keywords they were ranking for and focused on those.
This usually gave me a few dozen keywords. Then, I used Ahrefs’ “competing domains” feature to filter more competitors’ keywords to expand further.
9) How many articles did your site have at the time of sale, and how much did you invest in content? What was the average word count per article?
I had around 170 articles.
Each article costs about 200,000 -> 300,000 VND.
The average length was about 1,800 words per article.
10) Did you build backlinks for your site? If so, what methods did you use, and how much did you spend on backlinks?
I only used a shared PBN (Private Blog Network) with classmates from K3 and K9.
However, I used it sparingly, only utilizing 6 out of 18 domains.
Duy Nguyễn’s note:
In earlier classes, I taught how to build a satellite site system using PBNs.
Afterward, I usually had everyone form groups of 5-7 people to create a shared PBN system of about 5-10 sites.
Over time, though, maintaining the network became difficult as members came and went, some doing a good job, others not.
Additionally, using PBNs incorrectly could increase the risk for the site during Google updates, so I no longer shared this link-building model in later classes.
11) Which monetization channels did you use for your site, and what was their proportion?
100% of my site’s income came from Amazon sales.
Duy Nguyễn’s note:
A general rule is that a niche site with multiple income channels usually gets a higher valuation (higher profit multiplier) when sold.
This is because the site will have less risk compared to one that relies 100% on a single income source.
It’s a bit unfortunate that Thế Anh didn’t (or wasn’t able to) set up Ezoic or Adsense for his site.
With 800 visits/day, even conservatively at $10-$15/1,000 visits using Ezoic, the site could have earned an extra $240-$360/month.
This would have increased the site’s value by $8,400 – $12,600 (since it was valued at 35x the monthly profit of the last 6 months).
12) What challenges did you face while developing the site? If any, how did you overcome them?
I thought the beginning was the hardest part.
I got my account banned twice and had to use my family’s information to register.
I had to 301-redirect my site to a new one.
At that time, I neglected it quite a bit because there wasn’t any income.
But luckily, later on, when I checked Google Analytics and optimized things, I saw a significant increase in the following months, so I pushed forward.
13) If you had to pick the three most important things when building a niche site, what would they be?
I think they are Consistency – Sufficient Investment – Patience.
Most people get discouraged when they spend money and don’t see income yet, or when they face many problems.
I think people should consistently publish content.
If you want to be safe, follow Duy’s guide: 80% informational articles + 20% best/review articles.
And patience is crucial.
Sometimes, people give up just before they’re about to succeed without even realizing it.
14) If you were to start over, would you do anything differently to get faster results?
I would focus more on content development rather than waiting for each individual sale.
Duy Nguyễn’s note:
This is especially true for niche sites built on expired/aged domains.
Those domains already have some backlinks and authority.
Your job would be to select keywords that match the topic and level of competition and produce content as quickly as possible.
Building additional backlinks could come later, for truly competitive keywords.
15) Has building and successfully selling a website had any positive impact on your life?
It’s honestly a substantial amount of money for me.
It’s given me a broader perspective on making money.
16) What lessons did you learn from selling your site?
Too many to count.
But the main thing I learned is to stay calm in every situation.
17) Do you have any advice or tips for beginners who want to start with Amazon niche sites?
You need to anticipate what you’ll have to do, the money you’ll need to spend, and the risks you might face.
There will be times when you feel frustrated, but think about the income, the moment you sell the site, or when you get your investment and profit back. That will motivate you.
Duy Nguyễn’s note:
Remember, building a niche site is also a form of investment and business to generate cash flow.
And in this world, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
So you need to have the mindset that you’re investing to create an asset, not expecting to get something for nothing.
That way, you’ll see that waiting for your niche site to develop isn’t that unreasonable or unpleasant.
Conclusion
Thank you, Thế Anh, for sharing your case study.
I hope this small case study gives you another perspective on the (build – rank – sell) model of Amazon niche sites or niche/authority sites in general.
Remember, nothing worth having comes easily or without effort.
But if you dare to try and don’t give up too soon, you can do it too.
Thanks for reading this far.
See you in future posts.