Project Cloudburst Case Study: Beginnings

For 2022, I want to try something a little different.

So, for the first time ever, I bought one of those DFY sites from Niche Website Builders (discounts here) with 100,000 words of content and a complete site build.

It’s an aged domain in a niche that I’ve wanted to get into for almost a year now.

In fact, I’ve been watching the aged domain marketplaces just waiting for the perfect domain for this project for all those months.

And it just so happened that Niche Website Builders had the perfect aged domain…with the catch that it was an entire site build package.

So, it looks like growing and flipping a DFY site is the new thing that I’m doing for 2022.

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

What To Expect

Unlike the ongoing Project Tartarus case study, I can’t give you as many initial details on this particular project.

Why?

Because if you’re like me, then you save all those emails from Niche Website Builders to check up on the aged domains they sell to see how they are working out for people.

And I don’t want to help any of you find this site right now.

So, here’s what I will tell you:

• lots of great niche relevant links pointing at the site
• some pages still indexed in Google
• I wanted to get into this niche after seeing a site listed for low six figures at a marketplace…with no link building done to the site
• Primary monetization will be ads
• I know absolutely nothing about this niche
• My income goal for this site is $5,000/mo

Overall, I expect big things from this site because the site that was in the marketplace that got me interested in this niche was making around $7,000 monthly.

And that site was built on a fresh domain with zero link building done by the owner.

A great thing about this niche is that it naturally leads to a lot of additional content from shoulder niches, which means this site could be HUGE.

In fact, I already picked up another aged domain to 301 to this site in a shoulder niche.

Hopefully I will start to see some decent traffic and income from this site soon, otherwise these monthly updates are gonna get real boring real fast.

Getting The Site

When you buy one of these DFY aged domain packages from Niche Website Builders, it includes the 100K words of content as well as hosting for one year on Cloudways.

I haven’t yet decided if I want to keep the site on their hosting.

On the one hand, I’ve basically already paid for it (est. value $120).  But at the same time, I have zero control over that hosting account.

So, I’ll likely move it to my own Cloudways account just for peace of mind.

The site also came with the following plugins already installed:

I will likely end up replacing some of these.

For instance, replacing Yoast with Rank Math enables me to delete the Custom Permalinks plugin by using Rank Maths redirections capability.

Not only am I not a fan of Yoast, I also like to eliminate plugins when possible.

I may end up replacing AutoOptimize with WP Rocket.

Though, since I plan on putting Ezoic on the site, I should just stick with AutoOptimize since WP Rocket doesn’t play well with Ezoic.

One thing that I found surprising about this process is that the domain was basically de-indexed for a couple of months while Niche Website Builders created the content and got the site design done.

I wasn’t sure if that would have any effect on how quickly the batch of fresh content would get indexed or not.

But alas, it seems to have had zero effect as the site hit page one for a 400 search volume keyword within three days.

Overall, I thought the team at Niche Website Builders did an AMAZING job with this site.

And I’m really excited to see how this site performs in the upcoming months.

If you want to keep track of this case study, then I recommend signing up for my email list below this post.

Or just keep checking back here each month for my monthly updates on it.

And, if you want to check out what Niche Website Builders (discounts here) has to offer, then click that discounts link.

Other Updates:

• Project Cloudburst Case Study: Update #1
• Project Cloudburst Case Study: Update #2

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.