💰 $10k/month sites, best AI niches, and Twitter drama

Welcome to Niche Site Digest!

Here’s what happened last week:

• 👴 John Mueller calls out the niche site owners

• 🎤 Ex-Forbes employee shares their SEO strategies

• 🤖 8 niches perfect for AI content

• And more…

Let’s dive in!

Can you say shots fired?

John Mueller is again having a go at the niche site builders. This feels uncalled for, as he’s lumping in all low-quality sites with niche bloggers producing fantastic content. Jamie had a good rebuttal.

The difference between SEO Twitter and niche site Twitter right now:

Sure, Forbes is a massive brand. And they have resources none of us are likely ever to have.

But surprisingly, they also seem to use the same strategies we are using to rank our niche sites.

I definitely recommend you give it a listen - you’re bound to get something useful out of it.

If this continues for much longer, Semrush Sensor might fry out. Surprisingly, not a lot of people have been complaining about ranking changes.

What about you - have your sites been impacted?

Send a reply to this email and let us know!

🔍 Site Spotlight

In this section, we dive into the Flippa marketplace and pick one site to analyze - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

This week’s choice is Mom with a PREP - a niche site in the survival niche.

At a glance:

• Niche: Survival

• Traffic: 28,689 pageviews/month

• DR: 39

• Monthly profit: $914/month

• Asking price: $35,000

• Multiple: 38x

Now, would we buy this site at this price?

Absolutely not.

Here’s why:

• It has lost over 30% of traffic since July of 2022. And the traffic has been steadily decreasing since March of 2023. To put it simply, the long-term prospects are not looking good.

• It has over 460 articles but is only generating around 29,000 pageviews or about 63 pageviews per article. That is absurdly low and is a clear signal that Google doesn’t like this site that much.

• Ahrefs estimates that their top page is getting around 40% of the total traffic. If they lose that position, you can say goodbye to your revenue.

• Finally, their low traffic (below 30k/month) means that the new buyer won’t be able to add it to Raptive (prev. AdThrive) even if they have an account with them. You’ll have to move the site to other ad networks and make far less money per visitor.

Now, if you put a gun to our heads and force us to buy and improve this site, here’s what we would do:

• Have an active Raptive account. Only do this if you have an account with Raptive. You’ll be able to onboard the site with 30k traffic and should keep the revenue as is.

• Improve the site design. The site is ten years old and looks like it. This won’t directly impact revenue, but it will improve UX and is generally a good practice.

• Improve EEAT. With the recent Google push towards expertise, photos from https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ won’t work. Improve the About page and include authors for each article.

• Do a content audit: Now is the time for the most laborious part. You need to go through all articles and divide them into several categories. Next, you’ll do the following:

  • Delete subpar content: If the content isn’t ranking and bringing in the money, just delete it. If it has links be sure to redirect those.

  • Update old content: when it comes to remaining content, you’ll want to update it and improve it. Be sure to add custom graphics and other unique content to show Google there’s real expertise behind the site.

  • Publish new content: Finally, you’ll want to publish new content that is topically relevant to your remaining content on the site. Google already likes you for that content, so new content should have no trouble ranking quickly.

Could this work?

Yes. This site is 10 years old, has a good backlink profile, and is in a lucrative and growing niche. However, the risks are also great, and because of that it gets a hard pass from us.

Featured Snippets

• 🤖 8 best niches for AI: Looking to start a new site using AI? From spirituality to education, Diggity covers the best eight niches in this quick video - definitely worth a watch.

• 📈 Case study - $10k/month in one year: The owner is doing an AMA on Reddit sharing their strategies for getting there in a record time.

• 📄 PRO TIP: Hiring writers? Here’s a tip - have them begin and finish their work in a Google doc. That way, you can see all revisions and edits and make sure they’re not using AI. Is it perfect? No - but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

• ✍️ Indexsy tested 28 AI writer tools: Koala AI comes out on the top. (Disclaimer: Surfer AI was not tested as they were the sponsor of the video)

• 📉 Ezoic fires 28% of their workforce: Ezoic CEO shares the open letter to his employees. Apparently, they overexpanded during Covid and now have to cut back.

• 📝 Search Guidelines summarized by AI: a great thread about the ten practical steps you can take to improve your site based on the Search Rater guidelines.

🛠️ Tool of the week

Koala AI wins this week’s tool of the week.

Not only is it the best AI writer tool (check Indexsy’s review above), but it is also surprisingly cheap, starting at just $9/month.

That’s it for today - see you next week!

Niche Site Digest crew