I was thinking to make a case study on this for a very long but did not actually go for it. Although now the site is not doing as well as it was a few months back, the reason is Google Core Update which was there a few weeks back.
Anyway, the site is recovering and hopefully, I will be getting much better results if I do optimize some more things in it. Here’s the case study of Amazon Affiliate Site that I scale from scratch to up to $500+ per month.
Context of the idea and site
I started this website as a side project to make money via Amazon Affiliate. Earlier, I did planned things for this but did not focus for the first 6 months. Later on, when I started to work actively on the website, I started to see the results, and eventually, the site started to grow on its own without doing much.
Niche: Gadgets/Electronics
Age: Almost around 2.5 years at the time of writing this
Hosting: HostingSpell
Total posted articles: 192
The rest of the things we will get into that in detail ahead.
Niche idea
I did get the idea without looking a lot. There was this gadget just in front of me on my desk. I searched for the same on Google, Amazon, Google Trends, Ahrefs, etc. to see how much growth and volume it does have.
Then I searched for the niche websites which are directly targeting this niche specifically. There were around 5-7 websites that were targeting this niche but most of them were not so active. Looked at their backlink profile and it was not that heavy on links. Thus, I thought I can cover this topic coverage and went for the same by looking at the reviews, product price, and everything else that we look to check niche profitability.
Content Writing
I planned the whole site structure of Informative articles and Commercial articles as I have an interest in the product. I started writing the content by myself. I had my own unique style of writing content which was not matching the content writers out there.
I tried out a few content writers by paying them extra but yet it was not working as I thought. Thus, most of the content that is written on the site has been done by myself. Later on, I kept one writer (yet I am still not satisfied with the quality of those.)
I tried even by giving extra super details for writing content for each and every headline and yet I was not getting the results. Thus, I settled by writing some of the content by myself and then getting some written from the agency.
The bad content I think did hurt my site in the long run. Especially when the last core update hit my site.
Stats
Here is the Google sheet that I prepare for all of my websites which has extensive stats data of the website. This clearly gives us the idea of how often I was posting the content and the results I was getting.
Earnings
Here’s the curve of earnings that I made with this site.
I made around $500 from Guest Posts on the website. Google Adsense is approved on the website. I tried it for a few days but I was not getting a good amount from Google Adsense and it was affecting the Amazon Affiliate site as you see in the curve in the last 2 months, that’s because of AdSense.
Expenses
I have spent overall around $500 on this website to do everything which includes: Domain name, hosting, backlinks purchases, Plugins, Guest posts, writing, etc.
Product Reviews
The best thing about this was. I got the actual products from various companies to review them on my website and that was some great stuff that will surely add much value to this website.
I still do get many offers for reviewing their products. As I was busy, I did not have the time to do it, but I will start reviewing those products back again.
Thus, the total product that I have made using this website on the side is approximately $3000 – $500 = $2500
I don’t think that’s a huge amount for this long period site, but as it was the side project, the numbers are good enough I guess.
I can scale this site up to $1,000 per month without a lot of effort now.
Final Words
This was a short and sweet case study on the Amazon Affiliate site. Although the amount is low, as it was a side project I think it is a success. With many tweaks, updates, and optimizations I surely can increase the numbers of this website.
Hopefully, you will get the update on this case study soon as I focus on this back again and scale this.
Until then, peace!