In this lab, we examine a site that has been sold and see how we can replicate the results (without all the guesswork.)

The Site – ThePrepperJournal.com

Flippa Listing - https://flippa.com/8321733-theprepperjournal-com

Date Sold - 13^th June 2017

Price Sold For - $159,000

Age of Site When Sold – 4 years

Details – I'm adding this site this month as an example of what an easy long term project can provide. It was 4 years old when sold but with a $159,000 price tag and that's not including what it has made during those 4 years. When sold it was making $6,000+ in profit every single month.

It promotes information for preppers and survival tips and has 1198 articles on the site.

Keywords Targeted – It targeted all types of prepper and survival keywords.

What My Plan Would Be To Clone The Results – I would set up a brand new site using a domain name that has 'prepper' or 'prepping' within it. I would then create 1,000 word content posts that target relevant keywords and place Amazon native ads and other monetization on each page. I would most likely need to have 1000+ posts on the site to become more of an authority in the niche but these can be added on an ongoing basis.

I would consider it to be a long term project. Therefore I would try and aim for 3-5 articles every week. That would be 100-200+ a year. Once the site starts making an income, I would reinvest the profit into more content and potentially hire a virtual assistant to post the content to the site.

Potential keywords I would target:

prepping

preppers

prepping supplies

prepping food

survival prepping

emergency prepping

prepping gear

and other related long tail keywords found during research.

I would use social, Web 2.0 and PBN links to rank the site over the course of 24-36+ months. I would heavily focus on getting topically related and thematically related backlinks..

The aim would be to get to $5,000+ per month in profit and then sell for $100,000+

The Sniper Lab is all about creating small 3-5 page websites that target buyer keywords with an Exact Match Domain (EMD).

You simply browse the Amazon marketplace to find products, then put those into the Google keyword planner and see what searches come up. Find one that gets 250+ searches a month that has a .com available domain and you're good to go!

You can use a free keyword tool like this one to get more accurate search volumes than the Google keyword planner now gives you.

These are really simple sites to make and each can make you 4 figures in profit when you sell them. They make great additions to add to your Amazon empire.

This video has more information:

(Click the fullscreen icon to enlarge the video)

Here are some domains you can use right now (each one is available as I'm typing this and has a clean history):

10gallonbrewkettle.com – 590 searches/month
blueteakettle.com – 480 searches/month
15gallonbrewkettle.com – 480 searches/month
antiquecopperteakettle.com – 320 searches/month
bestelectricwaterkettle.com – 320 searches/month
antiquecastironkettle.com – 260 searches/month
8gallonbrewkettle.com – 260 searches/month
bestwhistlingteakettle.com – 210 searches/month
bestwaterkettle.com – 210 searches/month
20gallonbrewkettle.com – 210 searches/month

These will obviously be snapped up fast by members but give you an idea of what to look for. A new list will be added every month.

Recent Google Update

Around 10 days ago, it appears Google has rolled out an update which affects Exact Match Domains. The good news is that it was a very positive update that has seen EMD domains rise up the rankings.

There are many suggestions as to why they have done this but the main one being that legitimate businesses that use an EMD as their domain name were just not ranking for it, even though they were doing good SEO. So Google has now lowered the filter to allow EMD's to rightfully rank for their term.

This is of course great news for us affiliates, as it makes EMD's even easier to rank and we can create small sites to flip time and time again.

Let's Talk Content

I've been guilty of this in the past, so I want to address it here.

Website content is far more than just wanting to create 500 word articles and hoping they will rank and make you lots of money.

Google factors in so many more variables these days than just how many links an article has pointing to it. They look at how long someone stays on the page, where they go after, do they stay on the site or immediately visit another one. All these factors tells them whether an article is the best answer to a search term.

So here's where we need to be going with this information....

We need to make our content is informative, engaging, useful (and full of keywords and LSI terms).

Instead of thinking that 500 words is enough, think 2,000 should be your minimum instead.

Add in useful images or infographics to make your visitors read them.

Add in videos that are related to your topic which will add an extra 2-3 minutes onto their time on your page.

Break your content up into easy to read bites of information. Use bullet points, lists, and short paragraphs to stop them from scrolling through.

And as touched on above, don't base your content around 1 or 2 keyword phrases. Add in lots of LSI terms because you'll rank for those too.

By creating your content this way, you'll not only rank with fewer links, you'll rank for more keywords, serve your visitors better, get a lot more visitors, get natural backlinks and ultimately you'll make more money from every article you create.

Questions that have been sent in this month:

Q – Do you post new articles to PBN's to keep them fresh?

A – Personally I don't and I know lots of other people who have successful 5 figure per month websites that don't either. If you want to update them then sure, it might help a little. But it is not necessary to do so.

Q – What hosting do you recommend for money sites and PBN's?

A – Whilst I have a dedicated server for some money sites, I use basic reseller hosting for them too and also all my PBN sites. Sites like Hostgator, Jaguarpc, Host9 that offer accounts with addon domains for $8-$12 per month are all fine to use. Sites like Easy Blog Networks are still currently fine for PBN's but spreading things across other hosts is probably safer long term.

Q – Do you ever buy sites from Flippa and develop them?

A – I don't ever buy sites from Flippa. I much prefer to just build them myself as I am in full control and know exactly what has been done to it. Buying sites from a public auction site does pose a few risks. The main one being that people can see what a site is making, what the keywords are, how much content it has and basically know exactly how to beat it.

That's why I prefer to snipe/copy sites from Flippa for that exact reason.

Have a question? Send it in - tony@zonbootcamp.com