Project Pepperoni Case Study: Beginnings | Skipblast

Project Pepperoni Case Study: Beginnings

In November 2021, I started a new site on an Odys domain as a sort of test site.

I originally purchased the domain from Odys in August 2021, not really knowing what I was going to do with it.

The plan I came up with was to do a site build that’s not exactly my typical way of doing things.

I know that this is the strategy that some people use, especially a lot of new site builders, so I think you’ll still find it interesting.

And I think it will be easier to replicate for most people.

Regardless of how this one turns out in the end, it’s been a fun little project so far that I’m excited to share with you.

**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

How It Started

Why “Project Pepperoni?” Because I like alliteration and this site is in the food/cooking niche. (Persimmon was the first “p” word I thought of, but it just didn’t sound as good as pepperoni.)

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So, here’s the beginning stats for this case study…

  • Domain source: Odys (this link gets you a 100 USD/EUR welcome bonus)
  • Cost: $1000
  • RDs at time of purchase: 80
  • DR at time of purchase: 16
  • Date of purchase: August 2021
  • Niche: Food/Cooking
  • Budget: Don’t have a limit, but I’m trying to keep spending as low as possible
  • Strategy: Target exclusively low competition keywords, mix of informational and buyer intent. Monetize with ads and affiliate.
  • Income goal: $500/mo would be cool, but I have no idea what the potential is for this site.

When I bought this domain, I was interested in testing the power of the cheaper domains that are sometimes listed for sale at Odys.

My expectations for how a site build on this domain would do were quite low because it doesn’t have many referring domains and the DR is rather low.

However, the links that are pointed at this domain are mostly very niche relevant.

The Plan For This Site

I normally build sites that have room to cover shoulder niches, but this domain is hyper focused on a single narrow niche.

That means that I am limited in how I can grow the site, but I’m confident that I can find plenty of keywords.

Instead of building out this site with a keyword plan based on the topic cluster strategy (like I normally do), I decided to just use whatever keywords came out of the LowFruits keyword tool.

As you can see, my plan isn’t really much of a plan at all.

  1. Find relevant keywords with LowFruits
  2. Write content based on those keywords
  3. Wait for the magic to happen

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You should know that I’ve never built a site in the food/cooking niche prior to this one, but I do know that the RPMs are good – though I’m not certain about this niched down topic.

I actually have approached this site with the expectation that it would not perform all that well.

As a result, I have written all of the content so far myself.

How It’s Been Going

The first content for this new site went live in November 2021, and currently there are a total of 15 posts on the site.

That’s it – just 15 posts.

Those were all live by mid-December and the content started ranking and getting traffic almost immediately.

december 2021 analytics

I wasn’t even checking the analytics for this site in December because I wasn’t expecting it to already be getting traffic.

Then in February, this search console email popped up in my inbox and reminded me that I’d even started this little test site.

Your January Search performance

I decided that it was probably a good time to check analytics and see what’s going on with the traffic coming to this site.

Here’s what January traffic looked like –

Analytics Jan22

Pretty nice month-to-month growth, eh?

And remember, only 15 live posts for this site.

Here’s what February traffic looked like –

Analytics Feb22

This growth is bananas, right?

Especially since there are still only 15 live posts on this site.

I haven’t yet monetized this site, other than a few Amazon affiliate links.

And it’s not made any money yet, but I’ll likely put Ezoic ads on it once I get a few more posts live on the site.

With so few live posts, I think Google would likely give it that “low value content” slap if I tried to put ads on it now, which is why I’ve not monetized it yet.

Hope you’ll find this case study interesting, and in the interim I highly recommend signing up for LowFruits to find some easy keywords.

And if you want to get an email when the next update comes out, get your booty on my email list.

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