Deconstructing Profitable Adsense Sites – Part 1

Posted In Blogging | 7 comments

A while back I wrote a short tutorial on how to find guaranteed profitable keywords using Flippa, which got me thinking…

What is it that make these sites profitable? And can you replicate the success? In other words, is there still opportunity there for you?

So, in this series on “Deconstructing Profitable Sites” we’ll take a closer look at some profitable AdSense sites that are being sold out there. While we’ll look at some of the larger sites, most of the sites we’ll look at will be smaller ones that make $50 – $200 or so per month since I think these types of sites are easier to build (and attainable, even if you’re brand new to blogging).

In this post we’ll look at a very simple and small “Made for Adsense” blog:

 

Vermont Castings Grill Parts

VermontCastingsGrillParts.net is a simple blog that PROVES you can make money with tiny blogs…

This is a simple 3 page site built on a WordPress platform (3 pages of content that is), with a custom header image. It’s a typical Micro Niche Site and is less than a year old (domain records show that the domain was purchased in January, 2011).

(I teach people to build similar blogs over at SuperSimpleBlogging.com)

The original owner of this site was making approximately $200.00 per month in AdSense revenue from this site in July and August of this year (in 2011, before he flipped it).

According to the owner’s Awstats, it was getting approximately 1500 unique visitors per month (so about 50 unique visitors per day):

It’s also interesting to note that according to SEMRush the site gets over 50% of its traffic from the primary keyword: Vermont Castings Grill Parts, which is also in the domain name. This site ranks #1 for this term in Google, and #2 in Bing (and Yahoo).

This site uses a simple 2 column layout (which can be easily replicated using a theme like the Socrates theme).

You can also see that the homepage has an AdSense block just below the header and also one in the sidebar (nicely featured in a colored box).

Once you click through to the actual content page, it removes the AdSense below the header image. Instead it inserts a typical Medium Rectangle AdSense block and wraps the content around it (this is good practice), while retaining the AdSense block in the sidebar.

I should also mention that this site also has the following pages: “About”, “Privacy Policy” and a “Contact” form (created with the Contact Form 7 plug-in), which ALL sites should have.

Note: I also like to add a TOS or Disclaimer to my sites. 

 

Deconstruction

Let’s take a closer look at this site:

This is a seasonal niche, since it deals with barbecuing (a summer time activity for the most part). This means most of the traffic and revenues comes during the summer months. While you should consider this when building a site, it should not stop you from building out a site in the niche (I have dozens of seasonal sites, with several in the barbecue niche).

This site uses an Exact Match Domain Name for the keyword Vermont Castings Grill Parts, which is surely one of the primary reasons this site is ranking high in the search engines.

While I personally don’t endorse the use of “Trademarked” terms in the domain name, it can be a very quick and easy way to get rankings and earn revenue. The downside is that you may get a “cease and desist” order from the company or their legal team asking you to shut down the site… it’s a trade off between earning some potential quick revenues and getting the site shut down… eventually (it has happened to me more times than I care to admit).

I say this because the site only has 33 backlinks according to Yahoo Site Explorer, which would be extremely easy to beat (without doing much work at all). Especially since, according to the owner, the links are composed of primarily blog comments, social bookmarking, web 2.0 properties and profile links (I presume links like “Angela’s Backlinks”).

About the Content

As for the content, you’ll see that while it has been optimized to include the primary keyword, it uses little to no other on-page SEO such as keywords in title, links to home page from interior pages etc.

Also, if you skim the content, you can see it is “low quality” content (probably outsourced to a non-native speaker of English). The word count for each of the content pages of this site is only slightly over 300 words (312, 312 and 313 respectively), which shows that you don’t have to have 500 word article in order to earn money using these types of long tail keywords.

Note: For what it’s worth, I’ve found that I can rank for MORE keywords when I post longer articles on my blogs… and recommend you focus your content to be around 400 words or higher (remember, more content = more potential traffic / rankings).

What About Traffic?

If you take a quick look at the Google Keyword Tool, you’ll also find that the exact match search volume for this keyword is 1,600 (for global and local search), and that the average CPC is $0.97:

 

But, is there an opportunity for you to build a site in this niche?

The short answer is “yes”.

You could do this in several different ways (I’ll cover a couple).

The first thing you would want to do (since you already know the owner of this site was making money in this niche) is to see if you could compete against this same keyword.

Another option is to simply have a look at some of the other related keywords in the Google Keyword Tool:

Using the screenshot above, there is one keyword in particular that immediately jump out at me:

Vermont Castings Parts

With this keyword, Vermont Casting Parts, you could replicate the original site and focus around the keyword Vermont Castings Grill Parts to compete directly with the site in question. The bonus here would be that you can also pick up some additional traffic from the keyword “Vermont Castings Parts” if you pick up an exact match domain with this keyword.

By the way, with “replicate” I don’t mean copy it word for word… I mean optimizing your site around the same keyword phrase… not CLONE the site.

You could also choose to build your site around Vermont Castings Parts, which gets more search volume according to the Google Keyword Tool, then build a page of content around the “Vermont Castings Grill Parts” and be able to rank on the first page for this keyword relatively easily as well (with some well placed backlinks and on-page SEO).

By the way, at the time of this writing there are still exact match domain names available for the phrase “Vermont Casting Parts” in both .net and .org:

This would mean you should be able to rank on the first page of Google relatively easily (if you manage to pick up the Exact Match Domain). I can say this pretty confidently because the pages ranked #7 and #10 for this phrase has the keyword PLUS a suffix in the domain name… and has no backlinks pointing to the site according to Yahoo Site Explorer.

Another option is to find a keyword related to this niche WITHOUT using trademarks, such as  a domain name centered around “gas grill parts” (or something similar). I have sites using very generic barbecue / gas grill domain names that target very similar keywords (and still able to rank well with them).

You can see that finding niches and near guaranteed profitable niches can be pretty easily by spying on your competition. You just have to take a little bit of time to see what they are doing and simply make a better site… with better content and better links.

Source: Flippa.com

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Leave A Reply (7 comments So Far)

  • Chuck

    Another great post Steven.

    I think the whole point of this exercise is not that we should necessarily jump into this niche but rather how to use it as an example to create our own profitable niche sites from the ground up, the anatomy of a profitable campaign so to speak.

    In terms of competition, it’s not the quantity of the competition that matters so much as the quality of it. It doesn’t matter if there are 1 million competing pages, if your optimization is solid and stronger than that of those on the first page, then you have the potential to outrank them.

    Chuck.

  • http://www.extraincomethod.com Kent Faver

    Thanks for the wonderful deconstruction Steven – very good example of how we should be researching these niches. Having said that, I agree with the orginal commenter. This is a classic example of how to flip a website for a profit to an unsuspecting person who has more money/credit than common sense. These types of sites always pop well early and never last. Also notice the months of the year – grilling websites make 75-95% of their money in the summer months.

    • Steven

      Hi Kent,

      Yes, you’re absolutely right. This is a seasonal keyword and you will definitely see the spike in the summer months (this particular one tops out in June).

      However, I don’t think it should stop someone from building a site in the niche… While you may see it earn little in the winter months it will make up for it in the summer months. :)

      All the best,
      Steven

  • Mike

    Hi buddy,
    Nice information you gave, but what do you think about the competition! for the term “Vermont Castings Parts” it has the high competition! and if you check out the trends then you will see that it s going down for that particular keyword!

    Thanks for the example. It does generates good idea and that’s the bottom line isn’t it

    Regards

    • Steven

      What do you mean by “high competition”? If you’re referring to the 850,000+ sites in Google when typing in the keyword, then I don’t think that should stop you from building the site.

      Why?

      Because there are already 2 sites on the first page of Google using the trademark + a suffix in the domain (like this: vermontcastingspartspro.com – incidentally this is also a one-page site), with NO linking activity to the page. This indicates to me that it should take hardly any effort at all to rank.

      The trend is going down because it’s heading into winter. As I mentioned in the article, this is a seasonal niche. So you will see most of the revenues come in during the summer months (if you check Google Insights, you’ll see that the keyword spike in June).

      /Steven

  • http://IMdeanmartin.com Dean Martin

    While you’ve done a great job of deconstructing the site – this particular one is a poor example.

    Using a trademark in your domain name can indeed get you a lot of search traffic but your income stream will immediately cease when the company owning the trademark forces you to abandon the domain.

    • Steven

      Hi Dean,

      Yes, you’re right. As I mention in the article, it’s really a trade off.
      While I don’t endorse the use of trademarked domain names, it can be an easy way to some quick profits, and I think people definitely should know that this method works.

      I still have some very high traffic, high revenue trademarked domains… that I’ve had for years. And I have to say I’m glad I built them since I’ve earned tens of thousands of dollars over the years on these types of domains.

      But I’ve also had domains that I’ve only had for weeks or months before receiving a “cease and desist” order from the company (asking you to shut down the site).

      If you’re risk averse, this is not the way to go…

      All the best,
      Steven

Steven
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