Website Investing Case Study 1 (The 9 Months Update)

Hey everyone! Happy New Year! It has been awhile since I last updated this blog. Yes, life caught up to me and I’ve been busy (Excuses…) but here I am with another post on my website investing case study 1 (WICS1). This time round, it is the 9 months update. Wow! Time flies very quickly. I can still remember the adrenaline rush when acquiring the website for $11,878 and now, 9 months has passed by.

Well, without further ado, let’s begin our 1st MELEPAK session in 2021 with my 9 months update of WICS1.

A Short Recap Of WICS1

In my previous update, I shared that the site was making $2100 in September and traffic was an average 10k users/mth. In addition to that, last quarter see a boost in content as I was focusing on having lots of content. I published 40+ post; in addition to another 24 that has been scheduled. SEO-wise, I bought a couple of guest post from Dennis of SerpTrust. (**If you are looking for quality yet affordable guest post, check out SerpTrust. The best thing about them is you can choose the site(s) that you want a guest post on as they share them with registered user. You can register by clicking here.)

That’s a short recap of Q3 2020 update. For a more detailed version, you might want to check out these post:

• The Acquisition
• The 3 Months Update
• The 6 Months Update

The 9th Month Report

Now that you have a little background of this case study, let’s move on to the actual report. As per previous update, I will share 3 things:

1. Earning Report
2. Traffic Report
3. Content Report

So let’s begin…

Earning Report

Earning has been great for the past 3 months. On top of the increase in traffic thus earnings, the holiday shopping season also help to boost the earnings. I expect the earnings to drop in the next 3 months in the 1st quarter of 2021.

Ok before I share the exact earning numbers, do take note that all this is in SGD but actual earnings is in USD. I am using Google Currency Converter to get the exact numbers.

4th Quarter Earnings for 2020

• October 2020 – $2998.76
• November 2020 – $2134.19
• December 2020 – $3196.45

And here’s the December 2020 screenshot as proof of earning:

As you can see, the site’s earning has continue the momentum from Q3 and continue to increase (alhamdulillah). Although it is not a surprised with the earning as it is the shopping season, I am still happy with it. Let’s see what is the earning in January and 2021 Q1 for a clearer picture of the growth.

Traffic Report

Traffic increased consistently over the last quarter. In 2020 Q3, the average user per month is about 10,000 visitors. Well, in Q4, the average visitor per month is 15,000. (Yay! Met my goal set in Q3) The exact traffic per month is below:

• October – 13039
• November – 14325
• December – 18030

As you can see, the traffic is increasing gradually. Hopefully next quarter, it will continue to grow. Check out the traffic screenshot below:

Content Report

For Q4, I slowed down the content creation for the site. Mainly because I focus on other websites that I owned and started. (Started 4 more sites in Q4!) But for the whole 3 months, I’ve managed to create 15 new articles (total word count is 20,000) for the site. Hopefully the new content will start to rank in the next few months.

Overall Earnings & Expenditure

Since 2020 has ended and it is the new year, let’s look at the overall earnings and expenditure so far for the site. Check out the table below:

Overall Earnings

From the table above, you can see that over the course of 9 months that I bought the site, it has earned $18000 from Amazon Affiliates. If we are to spread this over a year, this site earns about $1500/mth in 2020. Not bad for a side hustle ya? (Alhamdulillah)

Total Expenditure

The total expenditure that I’ve spent on the site in 2020 is $18,583 based on the table above. BUT I really need to keep track of my expenditure for my side hustles. I still have not figure out a proper system to keep track of them as such, some of the numbers are estimated and I try to overestimate the expenditure so as to ensure that I am on the safe side. But $18k is fairly reasonable estimates.

Comparing both the earnings and expenditure, you can safely say that I’ve breakeven my initial cost and expenses. In fact, in January 2021, I should be in the green. BUT more importantly, I still own the asset (website) and if I were to sell it, it can be sold for 34x the 3 monthly average earnings which equates to $94,384 ($2776 x 34). So the sale price is pure profit for me. Not bad for a 9 months work. (Alhamdulillah).

What’s next for 2021?

If you have been following this case study, you would know that my original plan was to flip the site at the end of the year for a profit. And getting $90k profit is definitely great.

But after looking back at the numbers and the trajectory the site is on, I’ve decided to hold on to it for a little longer to see if I can grow the traffic and earnings even further.

One of the main reason for this change is the traffic number. As of December 2020, the site is getting 27k pageviews per month. That is 3k short of the requirement to join Adthrive Ad Network. By joining the network, I would add additional monetization to the site which is display ads. I estimated that I can get at least $700 more per month from display ads. That is an additional $23k value when I sell the site. (Yes! I can join Ezoic now to have display ads but I don’t really like how it slows down my site)

What this means is that you can look forward to my 12 months update and even 15 months update for the site. I do plan to sell the site eventually but let’s see how things are in June 2021.

Wrap Up

To wrap up this update, I hope you have enjoy all my updates for this case study. I must admit that since the circuit breaker is over, it is getting harder for me to find time to write more post here on MELEPAK blog. I am already juggling my fulltime job and side hustle and family. So pardon me for the lack of updates and new post here. I have a lot of post on draft but just don’t have the time to sit down and work on it. But I will try my best to do it. In fact, I am thinking of starting a new case study here. (I enjoy writing about my website side hustles more than anything) We’ll see.

With that, thank you for joining me in this MELEPAK session. I would love to read your comments and thoughts about this update. Please comment them below. Take care and happy melepak!