I Bought A Website for £22,375. Here’s Why

Why Did I Buy This Website?

Let's address the elephant in the room.

Why on earth would a sane person drop £22,375 on a digital property?

Here's a few reasons I can think of:

• Revenue: First and foremost, the blog was already generating £816 per month;
• Alignment with my interests: The website is in the technology niche and the content consists of product reviews. I love gadgets;
• Professional background: At the time I was working for a digital marketing agency. This is where I learned key web development skills and developed my digital marketing knowledge. I felt comfortable investing in something I was familiar with;
• Risk / reward: I had been looking at buying websites since 2008 (when I started University). Sometimes in life you need to take a risk and I am a risk taker. 

Now that we've determined why. Let's look at the return on investment and financials.

Website Investing ROI

The return on investment that you get with digital properties is better than anything else I can think of. Except maybe popcorn at cinemas.

Not only is the ROI good, but the investment is safe if you know what you are doing. 

Let's break down an example.

But this is not taking into account the expenses of outsourcing tasks, marketing tools and web related (domain, hosting, plugins and themes).

Information About The Website I Bought

Here's more information about the site in question.

It was this listing summary, a video chat with the seller and discussions with the EmpireFlippers team that led to me acquiring this digital property. 

But what work would be involved to sustain and grow the revenue?

Let's take a look at my approaches and marketing gameplan.

Marketing Approaches

This was a project I was undertaking in my own time, alongside having a full-time job. 

As such, I would have to concentrate my time to the marketing gameplan on the most effective areas in order to make the biggest difference to the bottom line.

Here's a few approaches I used.

The Pareto Principle (80/20)

Originally, the Pareto Principle referred to the observation that 80% of Italy's wealth belonged to only 20% of the population.

I came across this theory in the book 80/20 Sales & Marketing by Perry Marshall (and foreword by Richard Koch), highly recommended.

Anyway, using Google Analytics, I quickly identified that 20% of my website posts were generating 80% (or more of the revenue). It then made sense to laser focus my efforts on this handful of posts.

And it worked a charm. These are the pages that made the most money because they already dominated the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

Now onto how I got help.

Outsource Where Possible

Taking over a digital property like this was going to be time consuming. Essentially, I would be doing all the tasks that a small marketing team would.

Using Freelancer websites such as Fiverr, PeoplePerHour and Upwork I would outsource the tasks that were repetitive and long winded. 

This would then be noted as a website expense and recorded in the profit and loss figures. 

Test & Measure

It's fairly simple, test it out over a predetermined amount of time and measure the success.

Once you have tested and measured, you can continue to enhance and optimise.

The Marketing Gameplan

This was the first time I had ever acquired my own web property generating consistent revenues and it needed a coherent, structured marketing strategy.

Here are a few elements of my gameplan that led to success when selling the site.

SEO Strategy

Increasing traffic via the organic channel was something I was confident I could improve. And I did.

When I acquired the website in May 2018, it was generating 30,000 sessions on average per month. By 3 months, I was able to increase this by 15% and 6 months 36% increase.

Finally, when the asset was sold, it was generating 51,610 page views which represents a 62% increase from when I bought it.

This is how it looked in a snapshot.

The SEO strategy entailed the following:

• Link building
• Keyword build out and comprehensive keyword research (this made everything that followed easier)
• On-page SEO (original site was lacking)
• Site changes which led to increased speeds (SEO is crucial)
• Content creation with rich SEO tactics
• Other SEO tips I've written about before.

So I don't risk boring some readers, I won't go into too much detail about the strategies. I'll reveal more in my newsletter instead.

Next, let's look at the branding potential.

Merchandising, Design & Branding Overhaul

One of the main reasons I purchased the website was the branding potential.

It was clear that the property could do with a bit of a brand renovation and design work.

Here's the before and after. (The images are clickable and will expand to full size)

There were a lot of changes over the course of 10 months of ownership , here are some of the key ones:

• New theme installation - Lightweight and optimised for page speed and schema. This decreased page loading times from 6 seconds to 2.5 seconds on average.
• Logo redesign - It makes a difference. Believe it or not, the same logo cost me $5 plus fees on Fiverr.
• New brand identity and colour scheme - Keeping all marketing materials the same colour. Consistency is key.

Affiliate Diversification

Using Google Analytics, I was able to segment my audience data by geographic location. The below is for illustrative purposes only and you can find the report in the Audience > Geo > Location dashboard.

After a while, I noticed that I was receiving clicks from Amazon Canada, Spain, France, Germany and UK yet I was only monetising Amazon USA.

So using GeniusLink a link localisation tool which notified me where the clicks were coming from I was able to increase monthly revenue by 20% overnight. 

I still use this tool on a day-to-day basis on my other affiliate sites.

Marketing Tools

Every digital marketer will have a range of tools they use on a daily basis. Marketing tools attributed massively to the success of this site.

I will make a point to do an expanded post on this, as it deserves a post of its own accord. Also, the tools will be mentioned in detail in my newsletter (I've never revealed this before).

In the context of this post, there were few tools that have high monthly expenses so that would've been taken into account in the profit and loss figures.

Content Creation

It was my intention to create the content and rewrite existing content myself.

Using a solid foundation of keyword research and personal experience with some of the products, I hashed out a decent content strategy for 3 months at a time. 

Full disclosure, the was the most difficult part for me as it was difficult to balance with a job and a new baby daughter. This led to me outsourcing content on a few occasions. My advice is to create a well structured brief on what you expect if you want the output quality to be decent. 

Conclusion & Key Takeaways

Passive Income Doesn't Exist

If it sounds to be good to be true, it usually is.

Websites are often sold on Empire Flippers and Flippa with the tag "passive income" and that they only require 2 hours to maintain per week. 

While I'm sure sites like that exist, in the world of SEO, if you neglect a website for too long it will degrade and you will lose authority. Learn from my experience, you will lose traffic and revenue this way.

As a new dad and still working full-time, I found it difficult to consistently update the website. As a result, I lost some traffic potential. This was OK to me because it was an experiment and a side hustle.

Which leads me onto my key takeaway number 1.

Amazon Affiliates Risk

For those that don't know - Amazon's market share is 38%. The #2 retailer is Walmart with 5%. Amazon is the most profitable option for affiliate marketing like this.

Straight up, with my website I was Amazon's slave. All of my eggs were in this basket.

They also have a history of changing commission rates drastically and have done so as recently as April 21st 2020. 

Anyway, this leads me onto key takeaway number 2.