So I haven’t done a post like this in a long time, however both Elliot’s Blog and Fusible posted revenue for some of their sites and I thought I would do the same. Where my revenue comes from has changed dramatically over the last two years. When I really started making money with my domains back in 2008, PPC was my one and only source of revenue. Now – across the board Affiliate Products represent a majority of my revenue both as PPC has declined and as I have improved at picking the best targeted products. I have 130 domain developed so these three are just a sample!
StimulusCheck.us
This site has seen a lot of targeted changes since its launch in 2008. At its peak, StimulusCheck.us outranked the IRS itself on Yahoo!
Purchase Price: $6.99
Pageviews (Since Jan 1st, 2010): 8,321 (90% Search)
PPC Revenue (Since Jan 1st, 2010): $768
Affiliate Revenue (Since Jan 1st, 2010): $1,143
Lead Gen Revenue (Since Jan 1st, 2010): $100 (recently added)
JuryLaw.com
This site has seen a lot of targeted changes since its launch in 2008. At its peak, StimulusCheck.us outranked the IRS itself on Yahoo! Now, with Affiliate products and lead generation the site still makes the revenue it did back when Stimulus Checks were hot.
Purchase Price: $128 (from Bido)
Pageviews (Since Jan 1st, 2010): 700 (48% Search, 23% Type-In)
PPC Revenue (Since Jan 1st, 2010): $234
Affiliate Revenue (Since Jan 1st, 2010): $400
Lead Gen Revenue (Since Jan 1st, 2010): No lead gen
CricketGames.co.in
This was the first site I ever hand-registered that got type-in traffic. Now, while it’s still not a high-traffic site, it gets about 15% of its traffic from type-ins and has very targeted traffic. Unfortunately this site is difficult for affiliate products since I don’t know of any Cricket equipment affiliates that will let me sell these products online. This is a great example of how a ccTLD like .co.in can be good for organic search and type-in traffic.
Purchase Price: $19.99
Pageviews (Last 3-Months): 1,100
PPC Revenue (Since Jan 1st, 2010): $250
Affiliate Revenue (Since Jan 1st, 2010): $100
Lead Gen Revenue (Since Jan 1st, 2010): No lead gen
On average my sites make about $30/month with some of my best bringing-in hundreds of dollars per month. It’s not about spending all year focusing on one site but about getting many sites out there while continuing to improve the best and most high-potential sites. This year I am focused on creating a strong portfolio with keywords related to Credit and Debt. This niche has strong lead-gen potential which is an area I’m really going to be putting more focus this year.
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Great post!
Are these WP minisites?
Also, do you write the content yourself?
Staggering figures especially for stimuluscheck.us
Keep up the good work
I thought minisites are dead but they are NOT!
Thanks @Daniel and @Suneedh for the positive comments!
@Yaron – these are not WP but instead custom templates I have built. I use WordPress but only on sites I plan to update regularly.
Nice results! I’m curious who your affiliate provider is. I can see a couple of your sites aren’t necessarily high traffic and yet still are generating affiliate revenue. Any comment on link-building efforts for these sites?
Thanks @Leonard! I use CJ, Adzoogle, Click Bank, and Amazong primarily as my Affiliate providers. For lead generation I use Leadpile and am experimenting with a few others.
It’s not the volume of traffic but the quality – even a few hundred hits a month can be very valuable if its targeted!
I’m bookmarking this post because it’s so badass.
Morgan,
Congrats on the success fr your sites … especially StimulusCheck.us (great numbers!!!). Obviously, a .us name can work, if used with the right keywords.
How do you choose which name to use for a website in that extension, and are you having any success using a website built on a .net or .org?
I am making mini sites through Morgan as we speak. Hopefully they will turn out nice as Morgan’s post above (revenue wise). Anyone interested in making mini sites should consider him as he is a great guy and easy to deal with.
Wow – when I hear how well you’re doing with that .us site, I kick myself for selling StimulusChecks dot-com a couple of years ago. Made a good profit, but probably should have held onto the revenue stream.
P.S. Under JuryLaw (above), you still have the StimulusCheck description.
Wow, JuryLaw has an ecpm of over $900!
Great job!!! Dot US are getting to be popular.
Awesomeness. Thanks for the inspiration, Morgan…
My grandmother used to say “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”
I believe that you have proven her wrong!
People continue to sleep on the .us extension. Please continue to do so.
@Tony – thanks! I think this is the first post I’ve written that has been labeled as “BadAss” – and I like it!
@Kfink – thank you Kevin!
Great that you share this info Morgan. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the costs to produce the content.
Hi Morgan, thanks for sharing this info! Great numbers indeed.