Project Tartarus Case Study: Update #10

Another month down, and only a short while until this site (and case study) reach the one year mark.

Exciting times.

If this is your first time here, the I suggest catching up on the old updates first:

• Beginnings
• Update #1
• Update #2
• Update #3
• Update #4
• Update #5
• Update #6
• Update #7
• Update #8
• Update #9

Ready? Okay, let’s dive in!

**And as always, I’m an affiliate marketer and this post probably contains affiliate links, meaning I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links

Month 11 – What Happened?

This update covers the 30-day period ending on August 19th.

By now you should know how I spent my time for the month – content, content, content.

Traffic was up again, but at a much slower pace than before.

I’m looking at only around a 1K sessions gain compared to the previous period.

I have a feeling this is because the cheap writer I’ve been using is delivering content that is just so-so.

It may also be a result of my content production slowing down a bit in July due to me taking off most of the month.

For those of you interested, here’s what the weekly email from Ahrefs on new keywords looked like at the end of this 30-day period:

Content continues to index and start ranking pretty quickly, so I’m still pleased with that.

I just can’t get content up fast enough.

In the last update, I hypothesized that I need to do some fresh keyword research – so I did do that but the new content isn’t live yet.

This site is still monetized with Ezoic, a couple of Amazon links, and some other affiliate programs that I’m testing.

Seeing some promise with one of those new affiliates, but no sales yet. Here’s hoping for one to ring up soon!

Since the last update, this site earned $736.69 (in July 2021).

As you can see, that is quite the jump from the previous period – a gain of $261.

Of course I always wanna see more of an increase, but I’m still happy with things trending in the right direction.

This income came from:

• Ezoic
• Amazon

And the EPMV for this site got back on track, thank goodness.

That really just shows you how fucked the ePMV was last month.

So yeh, I’m still antsy to get this site on Mediavine or AdThrive and see what happens with the RPM.

In regards to backlinks, I just want to remind you that I’m not planning on doing any link building for this site anytime in the near future.

That’s the whole reason for buying an aged domain from Odys.

Month 11 Summary & Thoughts

Like in the recent updates, I’ve continued my push for more content on the site, albeit at a much slower pace.

I only managed to get up around 35 new posts on the site this time since I took a lot of time off.

But, I did do some new keyword research and am working on getting those new articles written and live.

Here’s how the last 30 days of this site looked:

• Traffic: 38K sessions (approximately)
• New Published Posts: 35 (mostly outsourced)
• Total spent this month: $10 for hosting and $723.74 for content ($16,489.81 to date)
• Per article average cost of outsourced content: $31.47 this month ($49.07 to date)
• Total published words to date: 404,946 (approx. – forgot to get a screenshot)
• Average word count per article (all): 1,188
• Income: $736.69 this month ($2,631.37 to date)
• Links built: 0
• New natural links: 0
• Initial Budget Remaining: $0 (I’m over-budget)

And, here’s a fun fact – if I sold the site right now for 35x of the last 6 months average monthly income ($412), then I’d profit around $700 (assuming no broker fees).

I’m not yet sure what income goal I’m looking for in terms of knowing when I want to exit this site.

I like $3,000 monthly average as my goal post since that is a six figure sale, but I just don’t know with this site.

How long do I really want to be in this niche?

I may see where the income is at in the 15-18 months mark to see if it’s a good time to sell.

But first, I need to gear up to start adding affiliate content to the site to get that revenue up, up, up!

Questions?

Did you miss how this case study started? Get caught up from the beginning here.

Shawna Newman

Hey, I’m Shawna. I make a living working from my laptop in places like London, Sydney, Dubai, Rome, Oslo, Bangkok, Las Vegas, Barcelona, and Amsterdam. I share how I do some of that on this website.