How Jason Mills Makes $3k+ Per Month From A 6-Month Old Blog With 41 Posts

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Today's guest on the Niche Pursuit podcast is Jason Mills. Jason chats with Jared about aged domains and blog creation. In particular, the focus is on an aged domain case study website he started six months ago, which currently earns him a monthly income of over $3000 with only 41 articles live.

Jason shares the entire process from the start of the case study. He talks about niche selection, the metrics used to determine what makes a good aged domain choice, and what goes through his mind when deciding on a suitable domain.

They discuss the first month of the case study, the indexation issues he experienced, and what he did to overcome these problems when getting started.

Jason details keyword research and how he decides what type of articles to write for the blog. He shares his monetization methods, which involve private affiliate networks and highlights the ups and downs of using these networks. You get to learn how he finds good affiliate programs and how to spot the ones not doing so well.

Links & Resources:

Jason's Twitter Account @nichejason
Jason's YouTube Channel — The Affiliate School
Aged Domain Case Study Playlist on Youtube

Episode Sponsored By Simple Texting

Watch the interview:

Read the transcription:

Jared: Welcome to The Niche Pursuits podcast. Today we're joined by Jason. And we're talking all about age. Specifically an age domain case study that Jason launched, uh, exactly six months ago to the day. Fast forward to right now, in the last month of earnings, were over $3,500 and he's doing this with only 41 articles live.

So we dive into the entire process that Jason has gone through. To grow this site to where it is today. Niche selection and age domain selection. I'll tell you that a lot of his success started by picking a very, very monetizable niche and one that he had some experience with. Before we talk through the metrics he used to evaluate.

What makes a good age domain and what he is looking for in one, we talk about the first month and a lot of the indexation issues he had and what he did and didn't do about it to get it off the ground. Get into some of his keyword research, or at least how he vets what types of articles to write. We talk about, uh, obviously his monetization strategies.

They're very good and as you can tell, this isn't a site that is monetized by Amazon. He's using a private affiliate. And a private affiliate program. So we kind of get into some of the ups and downs that come with basically going with private affiliate networks, how it's pretty easy to, to find ones that don't do well and, and what to look for.

And an affiliate program that does do well. This site, obviously, is really doing well. I mean, even for an age domain, that's a really quick startup. And even with some of the recent Google updates that they've launched, it's continued to do really well. Jason has, um, a YouTube channel that he documents a lot of his other websites on, and he has put together a playlist specifically for this aged domain case study.

He has reopened it up where he actually does give us access to the domain name itself. You can. Plop it into an SEO tracker. See all the keywords you can go peruse the website itself and look around. He's made it available for a couple of months. So if you're listening to this podcast, uh, in the first few months that it's been released, hey, see it through and you'll get great access to see this age domain in real life.

And so head on over to this YouTube channel to, to find more about that. In the meantime though, enjoy this great interview with Jason about his, uh, his success with, uh, with an age domain. Did you know that texting is the most convenient way to reach your customers? We talk a lot about email marketing here on the podcast, but I often hear many of you say, Hey, I don't really even open a majority of the emails I get.

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Jason: All right.

Jared: Welcome back to the Niche Pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Baumen, and today I am joined by Jason Mills. Jason, welcome. Thank you. Thank

Jason: you for having me, Jared. Pleasure to

Jared: be here. You know, it's great to have yet I, uh, I'm super excited for what we're, we're gonna dive into, but before we do, so I just added some of this like blue back lighting up lighting and you're like my second or third recording since I added it and I have already met my match.

I think yours definitely out does mine. I love the, the back lighting on the bookshelf. I think I'm gonna have to add it to my shelf or bookshelf back.

Jason: Yeah, I like it. It looks good. Um, yeah, very similar color scheme going on there. Um, yeah, it looks good. It's

Jared: a very blue, It's gonna be a blue theme podcast.

For those of you who are watching today on YouTube, I mean, I don't wanna bury the lead, but I'm super excited for today because we're focusing our conversation on one website. And one website that you've created from an age domain and specifically one website that is going very fast in terms of its growth and success.

Before we get into it, give us some background on you and, uh, your journey into, uh, affiliate marketing website, creating

Jason: Okay, sure. Affiliates, I've been working on probably four around. Re maybe four years. It's something that I've been aware of probably since the age of about 20. Clearly I'm not 20 anymore, but it's , but it's not something that I really got into properly until about three or four years ago.

I first started kind of getting into seo. That was the, the kind of my initial foray into the, the online world. Um, and that was purely off the back of, I, I started a, a fancy football. Blog and it was just giving out tips for fancy football. So fancy soccer if you're in the US and uh, and, and essentially, yeah, I was putting tips out each week.

It was getting some traction and as that started to happen, I wanted to learn more about how to generate more traffic. And that was what first got me into learning about seo. And so I was, and at that time I was a teacher. So I was a secondary school teacher, uh, teaching drama and media studies, and I, I was kind of at a point where I had to either commit career wise or I had this opportunity to explore this online world that was still fairly new to me.

Uh, and, and yeah, so the, the fancy football blog. I, like I say, I've kind of learned a little bit of seo, got a bit of traction with that, got a, a membership going to on it, so it was generating a few hundred dollars a month. Nothing major. Got a bit, I did a podcast to go alongside it. Um, it, we got a sponsor for the podcast, which brought in a couple of thousand dollars a year.

And, and, and that was, like I said, that was where I kind of honed my skills as it were, and, and, From there, I started to dabble in a little bit of client work. So predominantly, well, it started off a bit of graphic design, a bit of website design, uh, and then I started to realize that the money was in search engine optimization with, you know, high higher ticket clients retainer.

So I kind of got to the point. I couldn't do both. I couldn't do, I couldn't continue the teaching and service these clients to the best of my ability. So I, at that point, I sold the fantasy football blog. Mm-hmm. and not, not a huge sum, I think it was about 14, $15,000. But it was a, a nice little sum to kind of put away.

And allowed me to kind of make the jump from employment into essentially self-employment. So I had a little bit of a buffer in terms of cash. Um, I mean, we'd just moved house and we'd taken on a bigger mortgage. And, and to be fair, the wife was fantastic. And she said, You know what? If you don't do it now, you never will.

So, so I did it and like I say, started off predominantly with client work and. Kind of two or three years into that realized that, okay, I'm, I'm getting pretty good at this SEO thing now. Why am I just working for other people? Why don't I stop my own projects? Yep. So that's, and that's kind of where the, the affiliate story started really.

You know,

Jared: they say not to go full time, but the same time that you make a crazy. Uh, you know, uh, I like what they call a financial move or, uh, a life changing thing. So you, you were basically moving house, uh, upgrading the mortgage and also deciding to go full time at this. The, um, was it a quick turn up, like when you went from selling the football website to doing client work?

Was that a quick turn up? And, and the reason I ask is I bet there's a lot of people thinking maybe they're a secondary school teacher as well, and they're kind of thinking about that transition and trying to underst. Maybe if affiliate marketing is my end goal. Does doing client work in the meantime make sense?

Jason: Yeah, I think so. Uh, I think those, I would say the transitional period was probably around two years in, in total. So from when I started the blog to when I, maybe even longer than that, maybe two and a half years. But the way I looked at it was it was a period of time where I could, I could learn new skills and I, I even took.

Uh, writing gigs on, on, I don't think it was Upwork, but there were, there were some, there was some online platforms that I became aware of where you could, you could sell your wears, so to speak. And, and, uh, yeah, I, I got a few writing gigs, and again, it was obviously working for other people, but. It's on your terms, you know, freelance, you can do it at the time that's convenient to you.

So, I mean, it was, it was crazy at the time. It was, it was mad. I mean, I, I, I remember we, we were recording podcasts actually in, in my office, at school. , I mean, af we, you know, you'd finished the day of teaching and then there was a couple of guys in, in the PE department, the sports department, and, and they, they've come down.

We, we, we'd all kind of huddle around. In fact, it was this microphone. It was this microphone that we used. So I would take the microphone with a laptop into work and then we'd sit in the office and, and get around the mic and, and, and record a podcast, which was, was mad. But it was, all of those things that I did of have contributed to what I now do with the affiliate websites, you know.

From the, the graphic design, you know, designing the podcast cover, you know, you look at it with a featured image, uh, just the, you know, learning WordPress, which obviously is quite a, a task in itself. And, and I made tons of mistakes, but, It, it, yeah, it allowed me to cut my teeth. Mm-hmm. , but the, yeah, the time period was probably about two, two and a half years.

I, I would say. Uh, and, and, and then, yeah, the, like I said, the, the last six months of that I was starting to take on client work. So there was about six month period, uh, where I did it. But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't advise, you know, leaving a full-time job and increasing your mortgage and, you know, kind of jumping into the unknown, but I.

I always kind of had this backup plan that if I needed to, I could do some supply teaching. So it, it was, it didn't feel like such a huge jump, but it's, Yeah. Looking back it was a bit silly . No,

Jared: it's good. I mean, you know, everyone responds differently too, right? I mean, some people need, Yeah, to kind of jump off the cliff and build their wings on the way down.

As a mentor of mine used to say other people do better when they can plan and for. I think you're right. Like, you know, hearing that it was a two and a half year journey, , you can tell a story in an elevator pitch in 30 seconds, but the reality is that there's two and a half years behind it of hard work that went on to the point where now you know, you are now where you're at with basically your full-time job being, uh, website building.

All right, so where are you at right now with your portfolio and uh, obviously we'll talk. This one site today, but yeah, I know it's not your only site. And, um, and, and maybe fill us in on, on on those details. Uh, fast forwarding to right now. Yeah, sure. So

Jason: I still have this client serving business, and, and until around 12 months ago, I classed that as my main business.

Uh, and I've just got a handful of clients doing that now. So that's, but, but what's happened now is I've got this second business, which essentially is my, which covers my entire portfolio of affiliate sites that, that are mine. And, and, and that. Superseded the, the income that comes from the client work.

So, so now I class that as my main business. Uh, and, and, and so yeah, in, in, in that side of things I've got, I've got seven or eight affiliate projects that I'm working on. So they're all separate, um, separate websites. Uh, like I say, they all, they all kind of fall under the umbrella of one limited company, uh, just for the kind of, uh, just for accounting purposes and, and things like, Um, but they're, they're all mine.

And, and, and that is where probably 75% of my time on a, a day to day basis goes now into those affiliate sites. Uh, and in, in, in terms of income. I, I set a goal at the start of this calendar year to hit 20,000. Dollars per month, and I just hit that in the last month. So I was really, I didn't think I was gonna get there.

And, and, and part of the reason why I've been able to get there is because of this website that we're gonna talk about today and the fact that it's just, it's flown in the first six months.

Jared: Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you one more question before we dive into, into this website. How did, because this is a common problem, how did you balance having client.

Having servicing clients while also growing your own websites. A and I ask from a time standpoint, how did you make sure that you were delivering for your clients month in, month out, but yet still carving out enough time to grow your own site? You're not getting too sucked into the client work, but also not putting all your efforts into your websites and not serving your clients.

Jason: I think the thing is, you, you have certain clients that that take up a lot of time, and I had a lot of smaller clients that I would be servicing, so they'd be on retainers of maybe $300 a month and they were taking up a huge amount of time. And so what I've, what I've done over time is, as some clients have, have faded away, I've just not replaced them so very much in the early.

And, and I still do. I still, with my client work, I still make sure that I deliver. But yeah, it's, the focus now is on those who I consider to be the key clients, the clients that I want to work with. So I'm very picky and choosy on, on who I work with. And I will occasionally still take on a new client, but I've tried to, as much as possible, unless it's a referral from an existing client, I pretty much don't take on client work now because from a time point of view.

It's, it's just not worth it. But then at the same time, the affiliate space can be very lonely if you are working solo. So I do like to, you know, still have that 20, 25%, uh, time allocation to client work where I can check in that, you know, they'll, they'll give me a call and, you know, even reporting and, and stuff like that.

And, and, you know, those are the guys. If, if they weren't there three years ago, I wouldn't be doing this now. Mm-hmm. So I still kind of feel like I have that moral obligation to, to work with them and, and, and, you know, on those projects that are longer term, it's, it, it's not, um, it's not as time consuming to work on them because they're, they're kind of running a bit more like clockwork now.

Mm-hmm. because of the processes and everything else that's gone before. So, Yeah. So it's not, it's not a massive.

Jared: Yeah, it's a good balance. It's a good balance. Good for people to hear how to, you know, how to frame up kind of balancing multiple things. Well, let's, uh, I mean, let's dive into this, this, uh, why don't you bring us up to speed in this website.

It's, uh, I caught wind of it on your YouTube channel, which by the way, um, I love your YouTube channel. Uh, I'll make sure we get that in the show notes. I'll tell you a quick story about it. I, um, I, I, I, my family and I, we bought a trailer, travel trailer this summer, early summer, and, uh, I had, it was about six hours away the, the one we had identified, and I had to just take it for the team and drive up and back.

My wife had our kids for the weekend and I drove up and back and in one day and picked it. And I binge listened to. I proud of probably almost every one of your videos are darn near close to . Oh, no. So I, I spent a day with you on a Saturday driving up and down. Wow. But, um, it's great. It's a great, uh, great YouTube channel and you have gone through an age domain case study on this channel.

That's where I was really, um, intrigued to learn about. Why don't you bring us, uh, give us, set the story and set the stage for, for this age domain that you started working with. And, uh, and, and, and we'll dive into the whole nuts and bolts of it throughout the rest of this. I. Sure. So

Jason: it came about because of the YouTube channel, I suppose.

Uh, I, I, I interviewed a, a guy who owns a, a marketplace for age domains, uh, a company called Cert Names. And he, we did the interview. He was, and I was just trying to pick his brains really on, on age domains. I'd never done an age domain project before. Uh, so we did the interview. It went really well. And then about two weeks after that, he, he reached out to me.

He said, Look, he said, What if I give you, A domain of, of your choosing, will you run it as a case study? And he didn't necessarily want me to disclose the URL or anything like that on, on the case study. And I said, Look, yeah, more than happy to do it. It was something I, I'd wanted to do anyway. Uh, and, and actually rewinding slightly, I, I had just bought an age domain , uh, which I'd found.

Using spa zilla. Uh, and it was a GoDaddy auction and I picked it up myself for 3000 US dollars. Uh, so I just started it said the timing wasn't perfect cause I did, I wouldn't have chosen to start two age domain projects at the same time, particularly not knowing. Exactly how it was gonna work. So, but I thought, do you know what it, you can't look a gift horse in the mouth.

It's free. So let's go on and, and try it and do it. So that, that, so I went on the, on, on their marketplace, had a look, and, and I, I'd looked at this domain. About six months prior. So I know for a fact that this domain had been sitting on that marketplace for a good six months or so, and that was a slight concern because I thought, Well, it's just been sitting there with the old content, Nothing's gonna have happened with it.

Is that, is it gonna be a bit stagnant? I don't know. But anyway, I went for it. And the, the pro, the whole process was very smooth. If I had bought it, it would've cost me 3000 US dollars. So the same essentially. Yeah, so essentially the same as what I'd paid. It had some really good back links. It was in the niche.

Well, it was, it was closely related to the niche that I wanted to take it into. It wasn't exactly bang gone, but it was close enough and yeah, so took ownership of it and started publishing content and, and, and. And, and that was the beginning of it, really.

Jared: Let's, uh, let's share with everyone where the site is at now so they can kind of get their mind around how long it's been.

And then we'll kind of unpack the details. I already have some questions for you about, you know, niche selection and, and how you evaluated this domain specifically. But, um, you know, catch us up to where it's at right now, and then, then we'll go from there. Sure. So,

Jason: I mean, it is, it's, it's, it's amazed me. It really has.

Cause I've never had a site that's performed this quickly before, so it's the. Since I took ownership, it's been six months. Okay? Six months, pretty much to the day. Pretty much six months. And it's last full month. It did three and just over three and a half thousand dollars in commissions. So it's purely affiliate.

Purely affiliate commissions. Now it's not with, you know, crazy amounts of traffic. It's, I just pulled the data today. I don't think I sent you this, actually, Jared. So it's done 5,628 organic hits in the month. Of all of, well, the last month mm-hmm. , and then, like I say, three and a half thousand US dollars.

So it's, it's mad. It's mad. I can't think of another word to describe it. I, I, I just can't. I just, yeah, I couldn't have done that with a fresh domain, particularly in this day and age and, and even in the first month or so, it still had its issues with indexing and things like that. Initially stuff started to get indexed.

Then suddenly stuff. It wasn't getting indexed and this was all documented. And I was thinking, Oh, okay, well at least this is gonna make me look genuine on the, the YouTube channel, because I'm just gonna go once

Jared: and all. It's good to have some failures. You know, You look like a real human.

Jason: Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. It tanks, It tanks and, and so be, but it, and and, but then that lasted about a month and then all of a sudden it was just one day where everything just suddenly something. It was like something clicked. Everything indexed and I say everything, There's still not a huge amount of content on there.

Uh, I've, there's, there's 41 pages on, on the site at the moment, so it's not a massive website at the moment at all. Uh, so, and, and about 63% of it I did the math is, uh, is like commercial type content. The rest of it is either info content or like your. Navigational pages like your home, about us, contact us, privacy policy, stuff like that.

But, but yeah, now stuff's getting indexed. Like I say, I couldn't be happier in terms of the revenues that it's, it's, it's making, uh, and, and I just, it'll be interesting to see how that goes over the next, you know, 4, 5, 6 months.

Jared: So the overarching question I can't get around, and I'll probably ask this in three or four different ways throughout the interview, but like maybe, do you have a sense of what has made this site so successful?

I mean, you have a another age domain. Site that you're working on. I'm guessing it's not quite as wildly successful as this. Most sites would never be this successful. Like do you have a sense for what has made this so successful at the gate?

Jason: Well, well, the, the other age domain is not as successful as this one, but that's around the 500, $600 a month mark.

So it's still making money, which is still a very

Jared: reasonable for us, you know, six month old site.

Jason: Yeah. And that one's probably a couple of months old, so that one's about eight months. Okay. So, you know, like I. I'm not saying that what's happened with this site is the, is necessarily the standard, but in terms of what I've done, I suppose I've put more focus into this one because I've ran it as a case today.

I, I've put it out there and obviously there's that accountability factor, so because of that. Yes. And I think the other thing is I've, I've stayed extremely tight with the niche, so I've not, I've. Trying to make it too broad. It's in, it's in, it's in like the health and wellness niche. Mm-hmm. and, but it's in one very focused area Okay.

Of that niche. So it is, I suppose it's a Y M Y L site, but, I think part of the, the reason for the success is because of the, the, you know, I've stayed as close to that ne uh, as close to the niche as I possibly can, whereas in other age domain site, it's also in health and wellness. But it's a, it's a, I've gone broader with it.

Mm-hmm. .

Jared: So the hyper relevance. Yeah. That, that, that could very well be. Yeah. Let's talk about how you picked this niche. I mean, picking a niche, picking up, uh, a niche to focus on is often a big stumbling block for people. It's, you know, a lot of things to evaluate, a lot of things to look at. When you bring an age domain into it, there's an another added layer of it.

And now you're also trying to, you know, uh, vet the age domain that you're looking at the website. Um, how did you go about picking. Not only the niche to go into, but then vetting the age domain that you selected.

Jason: Okay. So the niche I was, I was already familiar to an extent with it. Um, I've got other sites that are, that are UK based websites that are in the same niche or.

Actually, they, they are broader sites, but, and they, and they focus on this niche as part of the site, Okay? Mm-hmm. , but because this one was targeting the US and, and worldwide, I suppose I could, I, I knew I could go tighter in with the niche because there's, there's more search volume. It's a, you know, it's bigger country.

So, Yeah, I suppose I liked the niche, but on top of that, I suppose more importantly than that, it was that the commissions for the products that you sell are, are very high. They're 50, 60% commission. I was

Jared: gonna say, clearly this is not a, an Amazon just looking at the numbers. No, no, no, you're not, you're not sellings

Jason: on Amazon here.

Absolutely not. Some, some of the, there are some links that go to, to Amazon, but purely because that's the only place that sells the product. Uh, and, and typically they're not the products that I, I am recommending because they're not as good. Uh, and, and also like, obviously the commissions are much, much lower.

So Amazon, it makes pennies e each month, but that's not the aim. Yeah. The aim is these, these other bespoke programs that are, they're really good programs, uh, and the, the products are. You know, they're, in fact, cause I've got, I've got a couple of writers that work on the site and, and, and one of the writers uses the product or one of the, the main products that we promote.

He uses himself because he believes so deeply in, in, in the product. So it's, and, and that really helps because he's super passionate about these products and when he comes across products that are not as good or, you know, they've not. You know, the, the ingredients in them are not as good or he feels they're not as good or, or they're not as well backed scientifically.

He just calls them out and, and he's super passionate about the product he, that we want to promote. And it just so happens that we do get 50% commission on that. So it, it. Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a good situation to have. Hmm.

Jared: So interesting. With the, with the domain itself, was there mm-hmm. , a certain number of, say, back links you wanted, was there, um, any other checks you went through or being that it was just such a good niche match for what you wanted to do, maybe you didn't pay as much attention to that cuz you had found an each domain that had some history that was very niche.

Jason: Yeah, the key for me with the back links, I'm not too concerned about the number of back links. I, it's, it's authority and relevance and, and traffic with those back links. And they're my three main metrics for any kind of back link, uh, building, you know, that, that I do, it's relevance to me is the number one.

And, and, and, and then if you, as long as the site's got some decent traffic, uh, and, and you know, if it's, if it's high authority, even better. And, and this site had a mix, so it had, it had some super high authority, uh, back links. It had some, it had the relevance and, and they all had traffic. You know, of course there were back links there that, that were irrelevant.

Yeah, but not that many actually. And it was, I think, I think. The site used to be, um, it was, it was a tech startup, but for an app that was very closely linked to the niche. So, Okay. It had, it had per, it had perfect back links. I couldn't have asked more. And, and then the other thing is that I always look for is, is, is branded back links, the, you know, so the, the name of the brand going to the homepage.

If you've got those, then you've, you've already kind of got that brand built for. And, and so that's half the challenge. And then, I mean, I've not built many back links to these sites, so I think I've built seven back links to it so far. Uh, but you can be a bit more aggressive on the architects with those because you've got all that branded architects going in.

So it's, it's a perfect situation that it did have a few links going into specific pages. So old inner pages on, on the website, uh, but not many. So that, that was helpful because I didn't have to do a lot of redirect or I didn't have to resurrect a lot of old pages and then pass the link juice that way.

It, it was, it was fairly low maintenance to get it set up. I think there were, I think there were two or three pages. Two of those, I, I resurrected the content and then built internal links to where I wanted them to go. And then the other one was a redirect, but then on top of that, obviously doing the due diligence on, on the age domain.

So just making sure that it hasn't been used for anything else, so that it hasn't been used as a, a PBN or um, Or, you know, as a link farm, there's a guest posting site or, or anything like that, or it hasn't been used as an affiliate site and been penalized so, and everything checked out. So for that, I just used way back machine.

Uh, and, and yeah, ev that all checked out. So there was, there were no, no concerns. And the, the pages. Were live, were all still indexed, and some of the pages that weren't live were still indexed. That was another good sign. Okay. Google's happy to keep the, those indexed so that, that they were all kind of ticks in the box.

Really.

Jared: I was gonna say, uh, as I bumped my mic here, you know, you kind of went through and it, it sounds like a, a perfect scenario and not. Age domain or building on an age domain can't work if, you know, one of those metrics is a little off or something. Like, it's always just a, a bit of a, of, of a relative thing you're trying to come up with there.

But it really, it sounds like the perfect scenario. Did you, do you keep the brand, if you will, like this, this used to be an app and now it's your website and it's, it's kind of just a, a review website. Like did that transition well or did you tweak the brand at.

Jason: No. So I did tweet the brand a little bit.

Um, so the, the website, uh, was, was kind of initials if you like, and then, That, I think that was the name of, of, of their, of their app. And I just changed what those initials stood for. Mm-hmm. . So, yeah. Uh, and, and that was, that was as far as it went, really. I did, I did pay homage to the, the ex, the old app and the startup company.

So I think within, within one of the pages or the abouts page, it, it, it mentions that this used to. Uh, a different brand or a different site. Uh, but, but yeah, that's, that's as far as it went, really. Uh, obviously the name of the, the, the URL worked. It wasn't, it wasn't perfect, but you know what? Even if I was starting a, an affiliate site from scratch, I would go with a brand anyway.

I wouldn't be looking for partial match domains or anything like that. Mm-hmm. . So to have a brand name and, and then it, it kind of forces your hand and you just have to be creative. It didn't take me that long. It probably took me 10 or 15 minutes just to think, right, what can this letter be and what can this letter be?

And it it, and it worked. It.

Jared: That's great. Okay. Well, uh, let's talk about the, the initial build out and you, you kind of teased a bit like it had a, had some indexing issues. How did you go about the initial phases of the site? I'm gonna guess keyword research and these kinds of things, but it's particularly from an age domain standpoint, you know, uh, what was your plan of attack and what were your top priorities to, to get going with?

Jason: Sure. So I already knew that there were certain products and certain keywords that I was going to want to target because I was familiar with it. Mm-hmm. . But because I've not worked on this niche in the us there were, there were other products that I'd not come across. So I started to quickly come across products that.

Were not great products, but there was good search volume for them. So these might be ones that were promoted on Amazon or they might be on like late night infomercial ads. And I dunno if they still do those, but if they do, then they might be on those. So sometimes you know that that throws a additional opportunity.

So I quickly realized that there's a real opportunity here to target these keywords. And then suggest an alternative product because these products were not brilliant. Uh, they wouldn't have made commercial sense to necessarily promote because they, they might not have an affiliate program or they, they're on Amazon, so what's the point?

But to be able to review it genuinely and then. A better alternative that then makes more money for, for the site. It just made sense to do that. And some of these, I mean, there's one product, there's one review product that has almost 15,000 searches per month. And it's a, it's a review keyword. It's not even the brand.

I mean the, the brand gets about 90,000 searches a month. But the review, you add review onto the end of the brand and it's like 15,000. So, It's, there's massive traffic opportunities there, and I didn't necessarily know that they existed at the beginning, so it started off, I always start the same, I always start with just the basics.

The, you know, obviously the homepage abouts, page, contact, all the, the nuts and bolts that you have to do. I don't necessarily build a bank of content out at the beginning. There's nothing wrong with doing that. Mm-hmm. , I just, it's just, I tend to. You know, publish as I've got the content. Uh, and, and I, I tend to write the, you know, all those nuts and bolts kind of pages.

I'll do that myself. And then I always as well, I always try and write a couple of pieces of content myself, you know, the commercial stuff. But I was lucky because I already had this writer who is brilliant in this niche, so, I, Yeah, I tasked him and I, I just said to him, I said, Look, I said, I've, I've got a new size.

I really wanna kind of hit the ground running. Cause he's, you've obviously already working on these other projects that I've got. Right. And I'm suddenly going, Oh, can you do an additional 50,000 words, um, a month? And he, but he, he was excellent. And as long as he knew in advance, I mean, he was, he was doing his masters at the same time.

So he was. You know, we, we knew that the three months into the project he was gonna have to take a month out cause he had to get this done and he was, he'd got a book being published and all this sort of stuff. So, um, so it just meant we, we, I mean, again, like I said, it's not massive. It's, there's 41 pages, but it just meant we, we really.

Tried to hit that commercial content as much as possible in those first two or three months. And it, again, like I say, it wasn't huge. It was probably 10 to 12 pieces of content per month. Uh, and, and like I said, the first month or so didn't index, but then suddenly it, it started to, and, and, and, and now stuff index is pretty much the same day.

Um, and, and, and, yeah. And that was it. In terms of the process of getting stuff set up? Yeah. All the basics, like getting the right plugins in, and I, I just use Rank Math for that. I tend to switch between Rank Math and Yost. Uh, I don't think it makes any difference, but, um, yeah. And then like affiliate link cloaks, plugins and, and, and stuff like that.

Yeah,

Jared: we had, uh, we had, uh, actually somebody else from the uk, uh, Ted French on a while back, maybe a year or two. He had talked about, uh, we had focused on a site of his that, um, he had built from an age domain and he went through a different process where he restored the, some of the original pages as they were waiting.

I waited for those to get indexed and then changed 'em bit. I might be getting some of the details wrong, but that's why I wanted to hear from you maybe some of the details about how you did it and uh, Yeah. Sure. There's a number of ways to do it. I did.

Jason: Yeah. So I did that with a couple of pages, uh, you know, restored the content.

When I took ownership of the site, one of the things that this company did was to, they essentially rebuild the site. Uh, but it's not, it's not set up on WordPress. I think they just used the, the way back archive and, and. And push it up. So say it's there, but you can't really go in and and work with that.

Mm. So I was quite conscious of the fact that we were suddenly gonna go from a site that had 50, 60 pages to a site that had five or six, so that, that was a concern. Um, and that just kind of forced me to just work as fast as possible. Uh, and, uh, and yeah. But so like I said, there were two or three pages that were resurrected and.

And again, paid attribution to the original, uh, the, the original authors and, and all of that. Uh, whether they will be happy with that, I dunno. I dunno if I've infringed on any copyright. Hopefully not. Uh, but, It's, it's nowhere else. It's nowhere else on the web. It's the, the company I think folded and, and, and that was why the domain became available.

Uh, and then, yeah, and then there were two or three pages, like I said, that that needed to be redirected and, and that was it. It wasn't a huge, arduous task

Jared: at all. Yeah. Okay. So what did you do, if anything, about the indexing issues? I know, man, that's an issue that all of us over the past year or two have.

An issue with in some way, shape or form, whether with a new site, an old site, you know, in your case, an age domain site, like wait, did you do anything special to get around that or just keep pushing through it?

Jason: No, and I purposely didn't because. I know that there are things that you can do. I mean, what you, you mentioned the YouTube channel, and one of my best performing videos is actually talking about how to overcome indexing issues.

Um, but I purposely didn't want to implement any strategy like that. I just wanted to let this happen naturally. So I thought, and like I said, I was, I was fully prepared to just go walks and all and say, Look, this isn't getting indexed. It's six months. The age domain makes no difference, all the rest of it.

So I just thought, let's see, let's see what happens. And it, it was about a. It was about a month. Um, and, and actually one of the videos in the case study that I've done, it, it, it's me sitting there saying, you know, we've published this content, it's not indexing. Uh, and then about two weeks after that video, it suddenly happened.

So I created another video that said We have liftoff. And it just started from there. Okay.

Jared: Yeah. Let's talk about these articles that you're creating. Cause I'm kind of looking back over my notes. The site is generating, I think for, it's so niche dependent, so I don't want to categorize it, but I know a lot of people will hear, I think I wrote 5,600 page views in a month and 3,500 or plus dollars a month, and people will hear that and think, Wow, that's a lot of money per page view.

And then they would hear like 41 pages and think, Well, that's not a lot of page views for the number of pages, for the amount of money that you make. So clearly, Something to what is going on each of these pages that's allowing it to be so highly monetized with relatively few page views. Um, I, I mean, do I have that accurate?

And if I do like, maybe talk a little bit more about

Jason: that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, it's accurate. , um, it's, it's difficult to kind of quantify really. Um, what I would say is I, on, on any page that I have, I always just try and have a single, a single intended action for that particular, for that particular page.

So if it's a review, if it's a review page, Obviously the, the, the main focus of that page is to get the person to click and to buy if you's to buy this guide. Of course, there's going to be multiple links to different products, but one of the things that I've started to do, uh, and actually started pretty much from the beginning is, is to kind of almost give like a quick verdict.

Mm-hmm. up towards the top. So if it's a buyer's guide, it's very clear to the, to the reader which product. You know, we are recommending it's, this is the product, uh, you know, there'll be a, there might be a short in featured image, short intro, quick verdict. It's like a pop out box, call out box type thing.

And, and then obviously that will have a call to action in it, and then it goes into the rest of the content. So, you know, we'll have product one, product two, product three, and with each one just, just the basics, you know, images linked. Decent call to action, uh, and then, and then another verdict down at the bottom of the page and, and, and that, that's it.

Like, I don't think there's anything, I think that obviously the content matters a huge amount. I think, you know, and, and that was what I very quickly learned even more so with this site, is that my writers can write better than me, Particularly this one. Like I can, I can write, I can write, but I don't. The kind of scientific or the medical knowledge that my writers, that this writer has, you know, he's, he's a qualified personal trainer.

Like I said, he's doing a, a, his master's or PhD in a related field at university. So he just, he knows his stuff so he can write it and. It just comes across in, in a way in which you, you know, if I read his stuff, I wanna buy the products. So when I'm going in and editing this, editing it, and that is one thing that I have edited all the content on me.

So I proofread it, edit it. So there's obviously been a time element there as well. But yeah, I, um, he, he's con his content is, Good. You know, And that, that obviously is half the battle, It's half the battle. Uh, but yeah, that, that would be one thing that I would definitely suggest is one clear call to action.

I've never run ads. I've never run display ads on a, on a website because I just, I hate the distraction. I, I, I hate it when I'm on a site. Um, and when I look at other people's affiliate sites and there's, you know, they've got their button. Then their call to action, which obviously that is gonna make them more money, if someone clicks that and buys, then that display ad that's next to it, and then there's a display add underneath it, and then there's one in the sidebar.

And it's like, where do you want, what do you want the user to do? And then there'll be a pop up for an email or there'll be an email, subscribe, opting somewhere else. It's too much. Make it very clear what you want the user to do. And, and that's what I, that's the only thing I can attribute, you know, the, that high conversion rate.

And of course, what makes the difference with this site is just that they're high average order value. And, um, and, and the, the high commission. And you also get commissions on repeat orders too, so that that obviously helps. Oh, geez,

Jared: man. Well, it's such a good program. My question, I mean, and this might date, this might date us back to your other website where you caught onto this, uh, product, this category and whatnot, but I mean, how do you find.

Uh, affiliate programs that convert so well pay so well and have such good terms is obviously we can all just Google in, you know, product affiliate programs and stuff, but it's very difficult to ascertain if they're gonna do well. And a lot of us have, me included, I, I've, wow man, I gotta get on this, a different affiliate program.

I can get, gotta get off Amazon. You throw up an affiliate product into some of your higher traffic page. That you think is a, a good affiliate program and you end up sending a thousand clicks there and one person converts. So, you know, there, there, there's always that trepidation, but there's the risk of just not getting anywhere with it.

Like how do you find this, these types of

Jason: programs? It, it really is trial and error. There's, I don't think there's, there's, there's any other way. I've got, again, on this particular site, I've got one, uh, affiliate program and it's a very well known brand. It's endorsed by celebrities. Uh, you know, and it just, I've not had a single sale.

Not had a single sale of this product. Okay? And, okay, it's not, it's not our top promoted project, but it's probably our third or fourth. So on most buyers guides, it's like it's number three or four in the list. We've got specific review pages for it that are fairly well positioned. It gets traffic, it gets clicks, It doesn't convert.

And okay, it's at the point where I'm looking at it and. Is there an issue here? Is there a technical issue? Right. But it's, But the program is registering the clicks. So now I'm starting to think, uh, is this a scam, ? Cause it just doesn't make sense. Okay. So yeah, it's, so, but you have to kind of go through that process and it's, it's, but that makes it very, very difficult for someone that's not entered in the, a niche before and hasn't tested these programs.

I mean, the one thing I would say, In all of all the sites that I've ever had that have promoted Amazon, Amazon has always converted pretty well. So if you are gonna go in with Amazon, you know you're gonna get a decent conversion rate if everything else is in check. And then if you've got other places where you can promote products and test out other programs, that's a good place to be because you've, you've got that fail safe of.

And then you've got that aspiration of, of trying a, a better program, but if it doesn't work, you can go back to Amazon. Um, but yeah, it, it, it, it's really difficult and I'm just so grateful with this one that the, the genuinely what I think is the best product does convert and has those good commission rates.

And, and you know, there are other, there are others, um, that convert pretty well, but they don't pay out as much. So there's one that's 30%. But they're a great, they're a great affiliate company. They reached out to me personally. In fact, they saw the, the, the affiliate manager saw the YouTube channel, saw the case study, and reached out to me.

In fact, he reached out to the, the company because he wasn't sure if I really was running the site. So the, the company that I bought the domain from then, Summit that the owner, he then emailed me and said, Look, um, this guy is interested, wants to, you know, sign you up as an affiliate. Can I pass on the detail?

So I, yeah. And, and so that they came to me, but it's 30% and there was not a huge amount of, of wiggle room there. Uh, but then when you do get these, these program. With these affiliate managers, you can definitely negotiate higher commissions and as the, as your traffic improves, there's definitely, I mean, again, not in this niche, but the same company, the same program.

Cause they, they have various products that they promote. You can get, you can get as much as 65% commission. Which is, you just think their profit margins must be huge to be able to offer that .

Jared: Wow. Yeah. I was gonna say, I mean, is, is your commission rate at this point, the standard one, or have you been able to leverage that up higher and get that to a point where it's a little bit, even a little bit better for you because you're using it across multiple websites, You've been with them for a while.

Jason: Yeah, it's, it's, it's just slightly above base. So, uh, but then what, what what will then happen is if you've got good traffic coming into your buyers guides, you have these companies that then pitch against each other. So they'll go, Oh, what are you getting? 60%? We'll give you 65. And it's like, okay, but then they're running a program as well where you get prizes, you get points and prizes.

Oh, we'll match that. We'll, we'll give you a, an iPhone every couple of months. And it's, it's just a, i, it, the, the, this world I would never have would've believed existed. Eight years ago. Mm-hmm. never. It's just

Jared: insane. I'm glad you touched on it from the standpoint of you don't know what you don't know, and I think that there's a tendency for people to, knee-jerk reaction is to go onto Amazon for their affiliate program.

Um, Me too. It's just so easy. Yeah. And then we hear interviews like this and there's gonna be someone who hears this and sits down tonight and says, You know what? I'm sick and tired of getting 4% on Amazon. I'm gonna find some other affiliate programs, and they spend an an evening a week. A month of free nights, they put that on their site, they wait a month and then they don't get the results.

And it's just encouraging to hear from you. Here's a really successful website that's converting like gangbusters with one affiliate program, but even on the same site, same product line is just ghosttown with a different affiliate program. And just gives that encouragement to be like, Hey, sometimes you gotta keep trying until you find the right one.

And then when you find it, figure out how to explore it as much as.

Jason: Absolutely, and I think a good sign with with an affiliate program is. Excuse me. If the affiliate manager is open to discussion, if they engage with you in emails or they want to get on a phone call or on a a Zoom, then that's a really good sign.

If you just get ghosted and you email them and there's no reply, that's usually a, in my experience, that's, that's a bad. A bad signal. Uh, and you know, I've even had some affiliate companies that have audited my site for me or a page, they'll look at a page and go, Oh, try this for conversion. And, and try that.

And, and, and that is really helpful because obviously they work with the, the top, top affiliates. Uh, and I'm nowhere near that level. But that's, then that's the other thing, like some of these programs, they have leaderboard. So I think on, on, on the one that I'm doing really well with, I'm 22nd on the leaderboard and I feel like I'm doing amazing.

Cause it's not just this site that I've got, I've got a few, you know, I've got multiple sites and, and the guys above me are so many points ahead of me, , like, they're like about 50 times more than what I'm doing. So then that makes me think, okay. If I'm doing this, there are guys out there that are making 150 K a month and maybe it's a publishing company, but it's, it, it's possible.

Mm-hmm. , you know, there's enough traffic out there to make 150, 200 K a month. And that's what kind of drives you on, I think, to, to, you know, to improve. Wow. Cool.

Jared: What are your plans for this site? I mean, at 41 pages, I feel like you got some runway. You can, uh, you could keep going if you wanted to. Uh, you know, like what, what are the next six months to it?

One year.

Jason: Yeah, I mean, I want, I want to run it to the, the one year point at least, and, and see where we can get to. I, I always, it's difficult because with a, with a fresh domain, it, at least in my experience, the kind of sweet spot of where I think a site peaks is around three and a half to four years. So, but I think obviously with an age domain, I think, I genuinely think you, you, you probably saving yourself two years of, of work.

And, and costs as well with back link building, all that sort of stuff. So I think potentially the sweet spot would probably be around the 18 month to two year mark to, to look to sell the site, because then you're gonna have a good history of, of earnings, the site, obviously, from a buyer point of view, they want the site to be as stable as possible from a seller's point of view.

I don't wanna sell someone a site that's in decline, I want, you know, Or, or that's, that's risky. So, you know, we've all seen. Horror stories, haven't we? Of people that have bought sites for millions and then they've, they've, you know, bombed. So I don't want that to be this case, but yeah, I think there's, there's definitely scope.

There's definitely scope. I think the one thing I would say with this site is it's pretty closed into the niche that it's in. There is a, there is room for a bit of expansion, but because I've gone so hyper targeted, it, it is limited to an extent. Mm-hmm. . But the still, Yeah, I think, I think this could be.

Easily a 150 page site. Okay. Which, you know, let, let's say we, even if we three x the, the revenue from here and it gets it to 10 K a month, I'd be pretty happy with that.

Jared: Oh, at least fine. Yeah. I was, I was gonna, I was gonna see which way you went with it, cuz you talked at the beginning about how it's a very hyper relevant site and that's always a question, right?

Like when you kind of get to the end. A silo or a topic cluster, uh, depending on the site's focus, you kind of start wrestling with do I go into another silo, another topic cluster? Do I just try to keep it here? So, yeah, it's very interesting to hear which way you're gonna go with it. And you're probably still trying to figure some of that out.

To, to, to, to figure it out for the future. But yeah, that sounds like a very, very good plan. Wow. What a, uh, what a fun case study and a fun ride. And you're only six months in. I think it's great. Um, I I, I, I didn't give a shout out to your YouTube channel earlier. I'll, I'll mention it now. It's the affiliate school on YouTube.

You're on Twitter as well, right? Aren't, uh, recently started yet? Yeah. It's a new thing. . And what's your, what's your Twitter?

Jason: You know what, I had to look it up cause I wasn't even sure what it was. . It's uh, it's ane Jason Ne Jason, which I, I might regret that name, but It's okay. I chose it. .

Jared: So, um, and then, you know, talk about how, what have you been doing on the YouTube channel as it relates to this age domain case study?

Cause you got a lot of videos on there about some of your other websites, but, um, what can people find out about this one over. The process

Jason: really, I suppose, Uh, you know, there's some technical stuff, so some over the shoulder, This is me setting up a post. This is how I structure the articles. Uh, but yeah, pretty much it's the, the process of, you know, the.

From A to Z I suppose. Uh, I try not to leave anything out if, if, unless I have to. So I've been fairly transparent with it. Uh, although I know we had a discussion about sharing the site and, and I've kind of gone in two minds Initially. I've shared the site and I've kind. Uh, took some of those videos back down, but I think for people that want to see, I, I, I said to you, I'm more than happy to, to put those videos up for a couple of months, let people check those videos out.

I want to be transparent. I want people to see, throw it into a h r refs or something, or sim rush. Look at what it's ranking for, Uh, look at the traffic. You know, It's all, it's all there. And again, all everything shared in the case study videos, so the, the Google analytics and, and, and, and even screenshots of the, the earnings, just because I remember being that person sitting there and going.

That, that's not, that can't be real. And, and, you know, and, and like I'm nowhere near the level of, of lots and lots of affiliates, but I feel. The last 12, 15, 12 to 18 months has been a bit transformative and it feels very much like an upward trajectory across all the sites. And, and that's the idea of the channel really is to kind of document that process and to share it.

And I, I suppose it kind of goes back to my, my teacher route really is that, and maybe that's why I called it the affiliate school, you know, just, just trying to teach, trying to show share. That's the idea.

Jared: I, I, you mentioned that you had, uh, a background in drama and I can now see those effects with some of the production value and some of the fun things you do.

So that makes trying, it's really nice of you to offer to kind of reopen that up because you had pulled it down. And, uh, and that's not a permanent thing, but it's really nice of you to open that back up for people to, to, to go and check out. So if you are listening to this in the first couple months, we'll get all that in the show notes for you.

Um, and you can kind of just go binge watch like I did, although I didn't get to take part in the over the shoulder stuff because I was driving, but you know, the stuff that I could listen to I did. Um, and that's great. You know, it's, Uh, emblematic. It's such a cool little story like that, that you can tie a bow on cuz so many times we'll talk about a website, but we'll have, uh, we'll interview, you know, someone who's had this success but they've kind of gone in and out of it or life's come and other opportunities have come.

And, and, and this one just has such a really tight timeline that I feel like there's so much to learn from the process. And, uh, and it's really great talking about age domains because. Yeah, you said it like, it probably shortened 18 to 24 months off of the journey on this one. It's just fascinating.

Jason: Absolutely.

Jared: Well, hey Jason, thanks so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it. And, uh, we'll keep up with you over at your, uh, at your YouTube channel at until we talk next time. All the best.

Jason: Thanks for having me, Jared.

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How Jason Mills Makes $3k+ Per Month From A 6-Month Old Blog With 41 Posts

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