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Niche Site Project 2

<a class="txt-link" href="https://www.nichepursuits.com/author/spencerh/">Spencer Haws</a>

By Spencer Haws

Last updated: October 12, 2020

When you buy something through one of the links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

 

For my second Niche Site Project, I am coaching a student through the site building process.  Having a student ask lots of questions and sharing their progress along the way is great way to learn from a different perspective.

The goal of the project is to build a niche site that ranks in Google and is making $500/month or more after 6 months.

After just 4 months, the site earned over $650 in one month.  After 5 months (January 2014) the site was earning over $1,400 in one month!  We have exceeded our goal faster than expected. See the income reports below for updated earnings.

Many posts and updates were written about this project.  However, below is the final summary given.

The Final Update for Niche Site Project 2

What Happened to Niche Site Project 2: aPennyShaved.com?

The first niche site project was such a fan favorite, that I decided to do a second project with a twist.  In the second project, I wanted to coach someone else on building a niche site.  I wanted to prove that we could start from scratch again and build another successful site.

After getting lots of feedback and opinions from Niche Pursuits readers, I finally picked Perrin Carrell as my student!  (Perrin has since now became my full-time employee for a couple of years, but has now gone full-time on his own).

The project went VERY well this time.  The site aPennyShaved.com quickly ranked #1 in Google for one of our chosen keywords, “best safety razor”.  However, we continued to do additional keyword research and content creation, and the site began ranking for thousands of different keywords.

By March 2014, the niche site project site was earning over $2,000 per month.

This was more money than Perrin had every made (by far) from any of his sites.  As a result, we started to get a little bit nervous about sharing everything so publicly.  We stopped providing earnings updates after March, because we were kinda hoping people would “forget” about it.  We were nervous about someone doing negative seo on the site like someone had done on BestSurvivalKnifeGuide.com.

Even though we stopped sharing earnings reports, the site continued to grow in earnings…a lot.

In fact, at its peak in August 2014, the site made nearly $4,000 in one month!  Perrin and I were doing lots of happy dances privately, and we hoped the gravy train would continue.

PBN Update

However, during the project we had jumped on the Private Blog Network bandwagon and that eventually proved to be our downfall.  I wrote about this PBN update extensively, and swore off ever building another single PBN link.  (And for the record I STILL have not built or even been tempted to build another PBN link).

That PBN penalty came crashing down on aPennyShaved.com just like so many other sites.  Here is what the penalty looked like before and after on aPennyShaved.com:

2015-11-10_1004

At the end of the day, we shot ourselves in the foot with our own link building strategies.  We did everything right in terms of keyword research, strategy, and content production; however, as soon as we tried to take the easy route by using PBNs the fun eventually ended.

Lesson learned…big time!  As a result, Perrin and I have steered WAY clear of any type of link building strategies that could be considered against Google's terms of service.

Overall, the project was very successful in terms of earnings for Perrin.  In fact, in 2014 alone, the site earned over $22,000 in Amazon revenue.

1447178864806screensave

Recovery Efforts

Obviously, the loss of income hit Perrin like a ton of bricks and he honestly went through a bit of depression.  Luckily I pulled him back from the brink and got his head straight again. 🙂

Perrin tried all sorts of recovery efforts including disavowing links, restructuring articles and affiliate links, removing affiliate links completely, and many other things.  Despite his efforts, there has been no sign of recovery in over a year.

As a result, I'm calling the project officially over!  I don't plan on making any additional updates on this project, unless by some miracle there is a turn of events.

However, you will be happy to know that Perrin was able to move on, build a new site, and that NEW site is already earning over $2,000 per month and is growing quite well.  And obviously we did all this with no PBN links!  

Overall, the project really was a huge success both in terms of earnings for Perrin and as a training ground for people trying to build their own niche sites.  I've had TONS of people email me and tell me that as a result of this project they were able to start a site, rank in google, and continue to earn good money from it.

Having said all that, the Niche Site Project 2 is now officially closed!

9 Comments

<a class="txt-link" href="https://www.nichepursuits.com/author/spencerh/">Spencer Haws</a>

By Spencer Haws

Spencer Haws is the founder of NichePursuits.com. After getting a degree in Business Finance from BYU (2002) and an MBA from ASU (2007) he worked for 8 years in Business Banking and Finance at both Merril Lynch and Wells Fargo Bank.

While consulting with other small business owners as a business banker, Spencer finally had the desire to start his own business. He successfully built a portfolio of niche sites using SEO and online marketing that allowed him to quit his job in 2011. Since then he’s been involved in dozens of online business ventures including: creating and exiting Long Tail Pro, running an Amazon FBA business for over 3 years and selling that business, founding LinkWhisper.com, and co-founding MotionInvest.com. You can learn more about Spencer here.

Want to learn step-by-step how I built my Niche Site Empire up to a full-time income?

 

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    9 Comments

    Conversation

    Amin
    August 10, 2015

    that was really awesome !
    very interesting story about online business !

    Daniel
    August 27, 2015

    I read all the articles under your Niche Site Project 2. And all I can say is Awesome. I learned so much new things in the couple of days which I didn’t learned in months. Thank you very much.

    Spencer Haws
    August 27, 2015

    Thanks Daniel…glad you enjoyed the content!

    Tessah
    October 26, 2015

    I’m curious how has this site been doing in terms of ranking and income wise after the PBN post (post update#25). You mentioned about your recovery plan for this site. Did it help the site? Thanks in advance.

    Gershy
    November 16, 2015

    Just thought I’d let you guys know – I’m sure you already do – but a lot of the amazon affiliate links from “easy-azon” are not working. – http://www.apennyshaved.com/best-electric-shaver/ I know Perrin is trying to recover this.

    Under “Reviews of the 5 Best Electric Shavers”.

    Daniel
    November 18, 2015

    This is great! It really motivates me to read your articles. For someone like me who is starting, it’s always helpful to read something like this. I try to follow your steps in some of my projects. I hope to have results soon. Thank you for your blog.

    Zain
    December 8, 2015

    Dear Spencer,

    Hope you are doing absolutely fine. I am a regular reader of your niche pursuit blog and i am also following along your new NSP 3 project as well. I quickly wanna ask you one question about NSP 2. Here it is

    Question: Do we write articles on low competition mystery keyword or other secondary long tail keywords with fewer monthly searches ?
    Comment: For instance my Mystery keyword is “Stylish Men Haircut” which i am gonna try to rank for and i have various variations of long long tail keywords relating to mystery keyword, then on which one of these i would be writing hundreds of articles ?

    Nigesh
    April 3, 2016

    Helped a lot.

    Thanks Spencer

    Interview iq
    September 23, 2016

    Nice write up and some good tips.

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