This One Time At Science Camp…
I got started with websites about 10 years ago. Back then, I was an undergraduate student in engineering working for a Science and Engineering Summer Camp. I swear, it’s not as nerdy as it sounds. It’s mostly kids doing things like building bridges from Popsicle sticks and playing with robotic lego. Ok, maybe it is a *little* nerdy.
One of the projects was to build a personal webpage with very basic html, which could be hosted on our university accounts. Eventually, I turned this into a personal blog before blogging was cool.
Earning Cash with Niche Websites
Around 2006 I somehow stumbled across the website of Aaron Nimocks, who was blogging about niche websites and how they could be used to make money. From Aaron, I learned about concepts like key word research and how to make money using adsense. After a lot of poking around and testing a few different ideas, I started Tempurpedic Mattresses Reviews. I still own this site and it still makes a consistent (if small) amount of money every month. Over the past three and a half years, I’ve earned $1921 with this site.
Over the next year or so, I started a few of other sites including a Gnarls Barkley Fan Blog, but none of them were successful at all and I’ve since removed them. I was discouraged by these setbacks to say the least.
Buying My First Website
In late 2008 I re-discovered the SitePoint and Digital Point forums and found the forums devoted to buying and selling websites. In early 2009 I found an poker blog and ebook website that was for sale at the SitePoint forums. The site had started as a blog about a certain type of online poker tournaments (double or nothing sit and go’s) and the seller later wrote and sold a Double or Nothing Strategy Guide from the same site. I was particularly interested in this site for a few reasons:
- The Double or Nothing Poker Strategy Guide was selling fairly well. As I recall, the seller was making around $250 per month after only a month or two.
- The poker strategy ebook was selling for a very low price of about $9. I thought there might be an opportunity to improve monetization by increasing the price and establishing an affiliate program though ClickBank.
- The seller answered all my questions in detail and was easy to deal with.
- As time was winding down on the auction, the price had cleared the reserve but was only about 4 times the monthly earnings – a steal of a deal!
I made a bid of $950 fairly late at night since the auction was ending sometime very early in the morning. I remember that I had a lot of trouble sleeping because I was so nervous! What if I could never make money back on the site? Or worse, what if it was all a scam?!?
When I woke up the next morning, I booted up my computer and found out that I had ‘won’ the auction. Yikes! I crossed my fingers and proceeded with the transaction. The site transfer process went very smoothly and the seller was very helpful in getting me set up and transferring the domain over.
Optimizing My Website and Increasing Revenue
Over the next month or so, I made several improvements to the ebook including:
- I did a lot of research into Double or Nothing Sit and Go Strategy and wrote a second book of poker hand examples to go along with the strategy guide. This wasn’t that hard for me since I already had a very strong knowledge of poker.
- I increased the price from $9 up to $27 at one point before settling in on a price of $19.
- I established an affiliate program through ClickBank. This was a super easy way of increasing my sales.
So, how have I done? Well, my efforts increased the monthly net profits from $250 to about $320 and I’ve made $3244 to date with my poker ebook website. That’s a 341% return on investment in about 10 months and I could probably sell the site for nearly double what I paid for it since there’s a longer track record and I’ve increased net revenues substantially.
Follow Me on My Journey!
So that’s how I made over $5000 with my websites. It may or may not seem like much to you and I’m not about to quit my day job any time soon! My plan is to continue to acquire websites that earn passive income with the hopes of one day achieving financial freedom!
Follow me on my journey by subscribing to my RSS feed or checking back regularly!
