D509
Newbie
- Jun 22, 2016
- 27
- 16
I'm going to preface by saying one thing. I want to thank everyone here who has gave back to this community. I want specifically point to the stickied posts by t0mmy, shezboy, and Greywolf in this section. They helped me tremendously with their no BS approach for what to expect, so again, thank you.
In 2016, after reading all the tips I could find on niche marketing on BHW, I decided to give it a go. I decided on a specific seasonal niche to go after. While doing some market research I came upon a product that was very hush hush. I'm not going to name the product, but you may end up guessing what it was. Part of the products marketing was that it was going to be a secret with a big reveal. Seemed like a good mark.
I checked the logical domain name for the product. Registered, but not serving any page yet. I thought that was odd for a very well known company's product that was to be released around Christmas. Productname.net was already taken and being setup to be an affiliate site like I was intending to but it was pretty weak in conent. I then purchased a very close domain name and began setting up a WordPress site as an "unofficial fan site" with news etc.
I spent a little time on graphics making it look appealing and then manually scraped all the information I could find on the product, which wasn't much other than a hand full of preliminary marketing photos and cookie cutter descriptions. Still, I made the most of it and made the content stretch.
While I was waiting for the site to be indexed I threw some social signals at the site. Thats really about the extent of it. The site was quickly indexed and within the month I was already sitting in the #1 serp spot. While this was going on, the actual company's website started serving up a simple "Coming Soon" teaser page.
So I'm sitting high and mighty at the #1 spot. What's more, other URLs from my site are sitting in the 3 and 5 spots. I've got front page domination. One problem though. People are catching wind of this product and coming to my site looking for where to buy it. It's not even available for preorder on Amazon yet so I'm trying to push ads for other popular items that are available now. I make a few bucks this way so I'm happy.
Then something funny happened. I guess I believed that I was really running a "fan site" for the product and using Google-fu I actually dug up a super secret reveal picture of the product that was hosted on some Italian retailer's holiday prep guide. I happened to snag the picture before it was removed and posted it on my site as the big headliner.
The next day I started getting a crazy traffic spike. I dug deeper and found that 80% of the traffic was coming from two major cities. I had a bad feeling. After more Google-fu I found that city 1 was the product company's HQ and city 2 was the company's representing legal firm.
In a panic, I pulled the picture and put a post in its place saying, "I'm sorry, someone with (company) has asked us to remove the picture we had posted". Of course no one had, but I'd like to imagine the confusion that it created in a board room somewhere. I never heard anything about it and the traffic from the company dropped, though they were still obviously keeping an eye on me (and I on them).
Once the product was available for preorder on Amazon people were already going ape for it. By November I was getting 2000 visitors a day. By December it doubled to 4000. I was making some coin. I couldn't believe it. This only happens to people on BHW that I read about and here it was happening to me.
Just before Christmas it happened. I got a DMCA notice from the company through my hosting provider. I'll admit, I got spooked. I thought about transferring the site, but I didn't know to what means they might go after shutting down my affiliate accounts. I had all this money in sales built up that I would need to wait to get paid out. I complied with the DMCA in order to secure my affiliate earnings. Mind you, this is a HUGE name brand company with lawyers that drive cars that cost more than my house. I still think its kind of funny because I was literally one of their biggest online revenue sources, but whatever.
In all, I ended up netting about $4800 from the site in a few months time. Not too shabby. Paid for a couple mortgage payments, power bills in the winter months, and Christmas gifts for my kids.
I hope my story inspires others and someone might be able to learn a thing or two from it. Again, thanks to those who inspired me to try.
In 2016, after reading all the tips I could find on niche marketing on BHW, I decided to give it a go. I decided on a specific seasonal niche to go after. While doing some market research I came upon a product that was very hush hush. I'm not going to name the product, but you may end up guessing what it was. Part of the products marketing was that it was going to be a secret with a big reveal. Seemed like a good mark.
I checked the logical domain name for the product. Registered, but not serving any page yet. I thought that was odd for a very well known company's product that was to be released around Christmas. Productname.net was already taken and being setup to be an affiliate site like I was intending to but it was pretty weak in conent. I then purchased a very close domain name and began setting up a WordPress site as an "unofficial fan site" with news etc.
I spent a little time on graphics making it look appealing and then manually scraped all the information I could find on the product, which wasn't much other than a hand full of preliminary marketing photos and cookie cutter descriptions. Still, I made the most of it and made the content stretch.
While I was waiting for the site to be indexed I threw some social signals at the site. Thats really about the extent of it. The site was quickly indexed and within the month I was already sitting in the #1 serp spot. While this was going on, the actual company's website started serving up a simple "Coming Soon" teaser page.
So I'm sitting high and mighty at the #1 spot. What's more, other URLs from my site are sitting in the 3 and 5 spots. I've got front page domination. One problem though. People are catching wind of this product and coming to my site looking for where to buy it. It's not even available for preorder on Amazon yet so I'm trying to push ads for other popular items that are available now. I make a few bucks this way so I'm happy.
Then something funny happened. I guess I believed that I was really running a "fan site" for the product and using Google-fu I actually dug up a super secret reveal picture of the product that was hosted on some Italian retailer's holiday prep guide. I happened to snag the picture before it was removed and posted it on my site as the big headliner.
The next day I started getting a crazy traffic spike. I dug deeper and found that 80% of the traffic was coming from two major cities. I had a bad feeling. After more Google-fu I found that city 1 was the product company's HQ and city 2 was the company's representing legal firm.
In a panic, I pulled the picture and put a post in its place saying, "I'm sorry, someone with (company) has asked us to remove the picture we had posted". Of course no one had, but I'd like to imagine the confusion that it created in a board room somewhere. I never heard anything about it and the traffic from the company dropped, though they were still obviously keeping an eye on me (and I on them).
Once the product was available for preorder on Amazon people were already going ape for it. By November I was getting 2000 visitors a day. By December it doubled to 4000. I was making some coin. I couldn't believe it. This only happens to people on BHW that I read about and here it was happening to me.
Just before Christmas it happened. I got a DMCA notice from the company through my hosting provider. I'll admit, I got spooked. I thought about transferring the site, but I didn't know to what means they might go after shutting down my affiliate accounts. I had all this money in sales built up that I would need to wait to get paid out. I complied with the DMCA in order to secure my affiliate earnings. Mind you, this is a HUGE name brand company with lawyers that drive cars that cost more than my house. I still think its kind of funny because I was literally one of their biggest online revenue sources, but whatever.
In all, I ended up netting about $4800 from the site in a few months time. Not too shabby. Paid for a couple mortgage payments, power bills in the winter months, and Christmas gifts for my kids.
I hope my story inspires others and someone might be able to learn a thing or two from it. Again, thanks to those who inspired me to try.
