How Yoyao Hsueh Bought and Quickly Grew a Content Website from $20 to $6,800 a Month in 6 Months

Yoyao Hsueh bought a site for just $2,000 in mid-2020.  The site was making less than $100 a month.  After about 7 months, the site was making $6,800 a month!

He also bought a second website around the same time that cost even less than $2,000 and now it's making $5,000 a month.

How did Yayoa Hsueh increase the earnings of these sites so much?

Well, today he is going to share his story of buying 2 sites, what he did to grow the sites, and how much money they are making now.

He purchased these sites around the middle of 2020 and by the end of 2020, he's was seeing significant results.  The 2 sites combined are now making more than $10,000 a month.

During the interview, we discuss or mention:

• Where he bought the sites (one of them on MotionInvest.com). 
• The other one on the Flipping Websites Facebook group.
• The onpage strategies he applied – including building internal links using Link Whisper.
• Adding new content to the sites.
• Using SurferSEO to optimize content.
• How he did keyword research.
• The link building he did for his sites
• Matt Diggity
• Haro Outreach
• Shotgun Skyscraper links from Niche Website Builders
• Google May 2020 core update
• Niche Site Project 3 Videos

Overall, we dive into this really fascinating story of these 2 sites that he was able to buy and grow quickly.

If you want to follow along with YoYao, you can go to Yoyao.com.  On his blog he shares his income reports, his strategies, and much more.

Since we recorded this interview a couple months ago, the earnings on YoYao's sites are not quite a high…but still significantly higher than where he bought the sites at.  According to his last income report, the combined earnings of these sites were $6,581.

Watch the Entire Interview with YoYao:

Read the Full Transcript:

YoYao: Hey, thanks Spencer. Thanks for having me here a little bit. 

Spencer Haws: Thank you. Yeah, it's great to have you on the show. Um, we connected through my Facebook group, the niche pursuits, a Facebook group, and I think it was a previous podcast episode, actually I posted, and it was somebody that had been, that had bought a site and grew a site.

And then sort of in the comments you had made mention that you had a site that you had bought and had done pretty well and you shared some of the numbers. I was like, Whoa. Okay. It sounds like another interesting success story here. So why don't we have you on the podcast and you can share your story as well.

So that's, that's kinda how we connected to get here, to be on the podcast, but to. Introduce yourself to listeners that don't know who you are. Why don't you just give us a little bit of your background, maybe your professional background, what you've been on? 

YoYao: Yeah. So my background has been mostly in the software industry and then in entertainment as well.

So in college I was studying CS, computer science, right. And then. I fell into acting and moved to LA after graduation. You know, so if you Google me or search for me on MDB, you'll find what I've been in and then stuff like that. And then I've also been in a budget in these smaller stuff. And then it was, you know, I moved to LA to pursue acting and then got behind the scenes, started doing more production work as well, and eventually moved to China about.

11 years ago. And prior to pursue entertainment industry, there was doing a little acting, got more behind the scenes, got more into the production side of things and started producing stuff. And up until. The the mid to 2020, um, when I, when I stopped working at a company in China and the whole pandemic and everything, and it was, you know, it came back to Taiwan.

So they'll go to Taiwan now. He came back to Taiwan, beginning of 2020 for Chinese juniors and with the pandemic and everything, we just didn't want to go back to China. Right. Because it was the epicenter of it all back in January, 2020. Right. So we, uh, we just stayed out here, but luckily, you know, the, the job I was doing and the project, uh, the film project that was on, um, a lot of the, the director and.

Um, some of the artists, a lot of all daughters at the time and, um, we're in Los Angeles. You know, so I was able to work remotely, um, cause it was remote work anyways from China. So, so 

Spencer Haws: how many years were you involved in acting and production work? Sort of the, the film industry since 

YoYao: 99. Wow. Yeah, so it was a long time, 20, 20 years.

Spencer Haws: Okay. So you've had quite a few little acting gigs and now it's mostly, you're doing more production behind the scenes stuff. Right? 

YoYao: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so throughout, throughout all that, you know, when I was in LA, I was still, you know, still very technically minded. Right. So I still, you know, in high school I was making websites.

HTML is I did a lot of that. That's why I went to school for it and, and CS. And then why I was in LA instead of. Well, I did that too. I waited tables, I bartended, but then I also fell into a gig with a startup where I was, I started out doing some quality assurance, QA work on their software, and then eventually just moved up the chain and, you know, it was, it was great because it was flexible.

They were, they were really cool with my act, my whole acting thing and auditions and everything. So I stayed, I stuck around, you know, there was always the tech side of things as well. I was always, um, you know, building websites here and there, whether it was for myself or, or just for friends or just a mess around that.

And, you know, finally, I guess in the last couple of years I started thinking, okay, You know, I want to jump on the, um, the whole passive income train, you know, and see what, what there is online, what kind of online businesses I can get into, you know, so that's how I came into the whole online business world.

Spencer Haws: So. Let's sort of dig into that a little bit. Um, so you dabbled in high school building websites, you've done a few things on the technical side, through your, your work. What was the first dollar and how did you make the first dollar online? Uh, for yourself? 

YoYao: It must've been a couple of years ago or no, a year ago.

So 2019 around fall, winter 2019. That's when I started getting into really getting into it and trying to figure something out, um, in terms of an online business. And so I got into drop shipping, right. I was like, all right, this is, you know, I can make some easy money and quick money and throw out some Facebook ads and then people click and then people go to the.

My Shopify store. And then, um, because they were really easy to set up and, you know, and then I started making money, um, ship somebody else's product or somebody else ships the product. Right. Someone else ships it for me, you know, straight from China. And where were 

Spencer Haws: you finding the products? Was it like Ali express or Alibaba, or did you like have official distributors or something like, no.

YoYao: No. I never got to down to that route. I was testing it out with AliExpress first. And so there were. There were a couple of plugins you could do where you could connect it straight from your store to an alley express store. And so that's what I did. And then I figured, okay, if these products really sell really well, then I'm already in China.

I could just fly South to, to like Guanzhou or someone sends in where most of the products are manufactured and find a, you know, find a manufacturer and find a supplier and everything. And then. And get, uh, get things cheaper, right. Get product cheaper. And it wasn't as easy. Obviously it's never that easy.

Right. Um, but I eventually started breaking even. And then I started making a little bit of money profit every day. Um, from, you know, the sales versus the Facebook ad costs, right? The Shopify cost and everything. And then my Facebook account got shut down, uh, with all those ad accounts and everything. And I think part of it was because I was in China, so I was on VPN all the time.

And with the VPN I was on, it would, what it would do is it would just shut off and then reconnect to another location somewhere else. So I was constantly jumping from the U S to Singapore, to Japan, to Taiwan, to whatever country. So it looked a 

Spencer Haws: little bit suspicious from Facebook's end. Yeah. Yeah. 

YoYao: So that's rough activity, you know, notice.

And the first time I was able to get it back, And then a couple of weeks later, they did it to me again. And I was never able to get it back. And so that was, well, that was the end of shipping for me. Um, because you need a Facebook ad account. Right. You know, I tried creating, I tried getting new phone numbers, uh, to try and email addresses to try to do all that, but they could, they just kept shutting it down.

And then finally I figured, okay. It must be some Facebook. Facial recognition, AI or something. Right. Because I'm putting photos of myself, but then I'm also adding people that like my wife and my family and friends. And so they must have seen a certain pattern. Right. And I don't know if they're that they're they have to be some.

I dunno, I don't know what they were doing unless they were cutting through the, the VP analogies. And so I just couldn't get one that, that, that stuck. I was finally able to get one, a really old one, an old account. I actually had, uh, for one of my startup businesses, um, way back when, but I was able to use that.

And so that's what I'm using now. 

Spencer Haws: Yeah, so that's tough. I mean, you, you figure out how to make a little bit of money from drop shipping, even though it's not a lot, you're starting to get ads that are profitable and then Facebook comes in with the hammer and just completely shuts you down. I mean, that's, that's rough.

Right. And so where do you go from there? I mean, even though, I mean, it sounds like you tried, but. The reality is, is that Facebook is always going to be there lurking in the background. If you create a new account that might be able to shut you down. And so it sounds like you've shifted into a little bit different direction and, you know, you're, you're building some niche sites.

So let's maybe talk about kind of, you know, All of that, that happened dropshipping, Facebook account. And why you decided to eventually sort of land on what you're doing now? 

YoYao: Well, so the whole blogging thing then came, you know, I, I seen it when I was looking into things I could do online. Right. And it was just a longer process and I didn't want to get into that.

And I was like, all right, drop shipping was seem quicker. It's more immediate. The feedback loop on it. And, and then, then, you know, with Facebook shutting me down, I figured, okay, well, let's, let's go, let's try to blogging thing and affiliate marketing. And so that's when I got into that. And you know, so that was January.

Um, let's just beginning of 20, 20 the rungs. Yeah, it was, it was more December, January timeframe. And then just got into that started, you know, Building websites on knowledge I had and stuff I wanted to talk about. And it was like, all right, well, I can build a personal site, you know, personal brand. And then it was January.

And then month after month, I just kept public publishing. You know, every few days I would publish something. So. Oh, while working at the same time. And it was, I guess, April, may. I was like, all right, this is going to take forever because I wasn't getting much traction with, you know, search console, the search impressions or anything like that.

And, and then I, as I started learning more and watching videos, you know, like watching your past videos, right. And Y watching other guys, and then I was like, okay, The niche I'm in is really, really competitive. And I was like, all right, well, I can, I'm going to put that aside for now and try to figure another niche out, right.

Something that's less competitive as I learned more and more. And then. I think it was about the same time you guys had put up motion and best. What, when did you guys put that up news? Like may April may type or maybe he 

Spencer Haws: put it up earlier. It was towards the end of, um, I was like, I want to say September, October is really when we first 2019, but you know, sometimes the word, you know, maybe we did a big, um, relaunch or something in may.

It's very possible that we did something like that. 

YoYao: Okay. Um, and so I, it might've been because I think that was when you, cause you guys had a different business model back then it was like a member of the business model. Right. And it was when, um, the membership, um, model change to your current model and it was around that time.

So that's when I started, I started, you know, Learning about, you know, Oh, you can buy websites. All right. Cool. You know, and so I started looking into it. I, I joined Facebook, a couple of Facebook groups, um, that you know, where people are always buying and selling and trading, not trading, but buying and selling.

And then I went to yours to your site to motion the bass. I went to empire flippers, flip, uh, you know, Effie international. I checked all those sites out and everything. And I was like, all right, well maybe I could just buy a simple site. You know, uh, um, and ha be out of the sandbox and, you know, you could, you know, accelerate things a little bit.

Right. So that's what I went to most of the mess and, you know, 

Spencer Haws: yeah. And so what, what ended up being the, a site that you eventually bought in terms of, why were you attracted to that deal that was listed on motion? Invest. What did you, what did you like about the listing and the site that you ended up buying?

YoYao: The primary thing was the price. Um, so it was a couple thousand and you know, I had tried to. Purchased once before. And I tried to do, you know, due diligence and everything. Um, put a lot of time into that and trying to see is the niche, was the niche good or not? Um, and I lost opportunities because the price, the prices were lower.

And so there were a couple of thousand, 3000 and then I would lose out on those because they sell really quick. So when this site came up, that effort just on motion and best. I was like, all right, 2000, the niche kind of makes sense. And I just purchased it, you know, pulled the trigger. I just went for it.

Spencer Haws: Um, how much money was it? Uh, the monthly income, do you recall? I think it was, 

YoYao: I think it was making, um, It was in the teens after. Cause it was, it was after the, um, affiliate, Amazon affiliate cut their commission. Oh yeah. It was in the teens, um, w with a max of like 20 or something, 20, 20 

Spencer Haws: bucks a month.

Something like that. Yeah. 

YoYao: Like 20 bucks a month. So 

Spencer Haws: not a lot, but it's gets your foot in the door. Right? You've got a site. That's already got traffic. It's making a little bit of money. 

YoYao: Yeah. Yeah. Your, your, your guy was great. The guy who, um, the support staff who switched things over and handed things off to me was great.

Um, we had a lot of back and forth and, you know, it's funny because when I got, when I finally got control of everything and I was like, all right, cool. Um, I'm going to get a lot of hits, clicks. Um, I'm going to be able to get the Amazon API on. Um, and this is all great. And then it was like crickets for three weeks.

There was like, no, they were like very limited Amazon clicks. Um, there would be days without Amazon clicks. Um, it was very strange. I was like, Oh crap. Did I get swindled? I get screwed. But then it finally started, you know, people started finally clicking and everything. And so I think that first, that first month it was like $8 commissions and it was like the last that lasts a week.

June, I think it was, um, when finally made something, 

Spencer Haws: at least you were on the board a little bit. Um, do you remember what the traffic was like, you know, in may and June, roughly? Like how many visitors a month, um, was the site getting when you bought it? 

YoYao: Yeah, I could tell you, uh, so that June. It had 900 visitors.

Okay. 904 in July was 900 was just under 900. Okay. 

Spencer Haws: So yeah, I want to just kind of what's the baseline, right? You've got a site that's getting around 900 visitors a month. It's making maybe $20 a month. You know, made eight bucks the first sort of month that you had it. So it it's pretty minimal. Um, but it, I mean, it's there, it's got traction.

Yeah. 

YoYao: Something that was out of the sandbox. That was a big 

Spencer Haws: thing for me sandbox. And so what I want to do is actually skip ahead to how much is it making now? And then we're going to come back and we're going to fill in all the gaps of how you got it there. So give us the big picture of like, okay, this is how much it made last month and how much traffic it's getting.

Currently. So last 

YoYao: month it made 6,800. 

Spencer Haws: That's insane. In November, 

YoYao: it made 8,600. Wow. Yeah, that's a combination of, of, of Amazon and Zoellick, um, that's 

Spencer Haws: phenomenal 

YoYao: and it's also, you know, Product base too. So obviously that's why it sells well on Amazon products are usually in the, it could go up from 500 to.

1300, um, like 300 and 1300 around that, 

Spencer Haws: a little bit 

YoYao: higher price point higher price points. That 3%, you know, too 

Spencer Haws: bad. Yeah. Not bad at all. I mean, congrats. I mean, that's huge to take his site from June. To you know, what is that? Six months roughly, um, six, seven months maybe of owning a site to making almost $7,000 a month.

6,800. Did you say the last month? That's that's huge. I want to know. I want to know like how in the world did you do that? I would love to be, yeah, well the bias site making $20 a month and it making almost seven grand after six months. So. Let's jump into, uh, your exact steps. Like what's the first couple of things that you did initially after buying the site.

YoYao: So right after I bought it, I noticed there were I internal linking. That was the big one, um, link whisper. I purchased link whisper after I purchased the site. Um, because I noticed there was no interlinking, you know, between the pages 

Spencer Haws: and how many articles were on the site when you bought it? There 

YoYao: were 30, 32.

Okay. And 

Spencer Haws: then we're all just essentially published no internal linking between any of the articles. I think there were like, there were, there were, you 

YoYao: know, a handful here or there, but there's no real thought put into it. Um, it didn't seem like there was thought put into it. And when I did it, I actually, you know, I, before I purchased Lincoln whisper, I tried to do it myself actually.

Um, and then I just put it, you know, I would just throw it here. You know, I, there was no thought process organization into it and it wasn't, uh, it wasn't until I purchased Linquist for that, I got, you know, it became much easier and it was easier to organize and 

Spencer Haws: everything. Right. You can see the reporting, you can see how many articles, how many links they have and how they connect and everything like that.

YoYao: Yeah. I, I made sure there were, you know, no orphans or anything. That was the big thing. The content, you know, the English was good and it was all native English. Um, it was well-written um, I didn't do too much there. So the big things were, you know, the interlinking and then just continue. And then I just poured myself into the content.

Just I wrote as much as I could in the same, in the same, um, You know, I, I guess, format as the previous articles, right? So I could stay consistent there. And you know, 32, I has like 120 or so now I put up about 90, over the course of, you know, the seven months 

Spencer Haws: I've had it. Which of those articles did you write yourself versus outsourcing?

YoYao: I've written about. Initially it was all me. Um, and then I started outsourcing to Fiverr. Um, cause I, I looked at Upwork and then it was just like, I don't feel like doing a gig. I don't feel like, you know, you know, creating a gig and then. You know, interviewing people and not just on, or I can just look at, you know, people who have written stuff.

Right, right. And 

Spencer Haws: just hire 

YoYao: him, give him the job, just trying to do it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, but I made sure that the outlines and the briefs were, were all by me. So it was very, it was very structured right there. They couldn't, it was difficult to go wrong. Um, and it was just, you know, basically just, you know, like Madlibs, just fill in the blanks.

Um, you just have to look up the information and then fill in the blanks. And so I think I put up maybe 20 or 30 that first month, and it just continued, you know, getting more and more hits, um, impressions. Um, and I think, and then it was now I was like, all right, so I'm stuck in this one niche and. But it could do so much more, you know?

And so that's when I did a, I re I got in new domain and, uh, it was an exact match domain. Right. Okay. Okay. 

Spencer Haws: So like a specific product, very specific niche. Yeah. Originally. Okay. 

YoYao: Yeah. So I, then I got a granite domain and then I switched everything over, um, the beginning of August. So less than two months in, I was like, I'm sick of writing about this one, you know, this one niche, you know, so I wanted to expand and I did a three Oh one redirect and everything, and I got all that traffic back by, um, within like two or three weeks.

Wow. Okay. So it was pretty well, I guess I got lucky. Yeah. Um, cause I know that three Oh one redirects and everything could take could sometimes, you know, really hurt 

Spencer Haws: just more opportunity to make mistakes. Right. You know, Google, maybe isn't crawling it as quickly as. You would like, are there anytime there's a big change, there's just a lot of opportunities for sort of mistakes to be made.

And so it sounds like you did it all properly, that you got your traffic back. Um, so that's, that's huge. So, uh, you're able to expand the niche if you will expand what the site is covering itself. And then it sounds like you just kept cranking out a bunch of content. Yeah. 

YoYao: Yeah. And by that time, I, I. I wrote very little, I still edited everything.

Um, cause the writers I was, I was getting, you know, they weren't, they weren't the best of best starting thing. So I still made sure that, um, I just put a lot of time into, into editing content, making sure you know, the spelling, grammar, um, and then just optimize the content. Do you remember, 

Spencer Haws: do you remember how much you paid for those fiber gigs for that content?

YoYao: It was between one and a half and three and a half cents. Um, inexpensive. Yeah, there were, there were, there were very cheap. Um, and they, I think they started out around two and a half, three and a half percent. Um, and then as I, you know, as I said, Oh, Hey, Hey, what if I give you 10, you know, 10,000 words? And then they would lower like a penny.

Wow. So, yeah, so I did, I just got to, you know, as much content as I could and kept doing it that way. 

Spencer Haws: So, uh, what else did you do to the site? SEO wise? Um, I mean, we already covered quite a bit. You did a lot of internal linking you added a bunch of new content. Uh, you move to a new domain, so it's more brandable.

Was there anything else that you feel like worked well on page wise? Well on page or just on-site in general, just anything that you did on your own site that you feel like improved anything. 

YoYao: Um, I think. I made a lot of little things here and there. Um, you know, but the interlinking and the content optimization were the big ones, um, you know, optimizing with, with, um, surfer at the time I use phrase now, Um, and so just optimizing the content and making sure that, you know, looking at the SERPs and seeing who the top, the first page of results your competitors are and making sure that whatever you're putting out is better than what they're putting out, but in the same, in the same thing, right?

If in the same similar formats, um, similar. Better information. And so I, that's why I would spend, that's why I kind of stopped writing is because I spent, I realized I was spending so much time editing and optimizing that, you know, the first drafts of these things I just wasn't getting to. And so that's why part of the, also part of the reason why I was like, all right, well, I'm not going to need to find expensive writers because.

I know in the end, I'm going to be doing everything. I'm going to be editing it and optimizing it as well. So these writers were more of a first draft writers, if you, if you will. Um, and they would just get too, they would get me to that first draft and now, and then I'll put it into surfer at the time and just optimize it.

So I spent a lot of time doing that. Yeah. Yeah. 

Spencer Haws: So, um, I know a lot of, uh, listeners are usually curious about like the types of content that you're producing. Is it, was it a lot of, you know, product review type content, you know, or the best, you know, products, whatever, um, or. Informational, you know, what's kind of the breakdown of product versus information.

YoYao: The first, the first 30 to 

Spencer Haws: 40 

YoYao: articles, I would say we're, we're all buyer and tank articles. Um, whether it was best X for Y or, or experts, Y um, Uh, it was all those. And so there were absolutely no informational articles on it for the first, you know, the first 60, 70 articles total. And, and then I was like, huh, well, maybe I should throw up some informational articles.

And so I threw up about, um, original articles and, um, And then I threw up and then that's it. They, in terms of informational. So I would say so about 20 of them out of the 121 six, or then, or informational the rest are all buyer and 

Spencer Haws: tab. Okay. And that seems to be working fine. I mean, Google appears to be, um, you know, ranking the site, you're making money.

So, um, I just, I know people are always kind of curious of that, uh, approach. So what about link-building off-page stuff? Um, were you doing a ton of link building at the time? Is that, you know, 

YoYao: it really helped, um, That's where it, it grew a lot faster is when I started link building. Um, and you know, with guest posts and everything.

So I was, you know, I was very cautious in the beginning and they wanted it. I didn't do any link building, um, and it was growing. So, um, but then I was like, all right, well, I I'm seeing what a lot of other guys are talking about. Um, You know, especially Mac dignity. And when he was, you know, his, he's got this whole back like blueprint, right.

Where when you start a site. And so I was looking at that and I was like, all right, um, well, I Oh, the other thing I did was the, I built, you know, a lot of the social media accounts. So I did a I lab on page actually. Now I'm going there, social persona, um, a persona. I put, I put a persona on law on there, so that may be helped with eat and stuff.

And then I made, you know, Facebook count. Um, Well, no, I didn't. I made a Facebook page, um, that I, for, for the site I made, uh, you know, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram counts. Um, I even made a LinkedIn account for, for the persona. So I did all that for authority. Right.

Yeah. I think all that, you know, helps as well, even as a little bit. And what we building definitely helped, you know, started out. I was like, all right, well, leaks are expensive. So purchase a scalpel. And I was like, all right, well, it seems like it's going up a little bit. Um, and then I just started, you know, doing my own outreach with HARO and seeing, um, looking for certain.

Articles that would tie into the niche that I'm in and tried to contact them for. You know, it's like, Hey, I wrote this year, like into this and I wrote this great other great article, you know, um, let's even better and it's more updated. It's more current, you know, um, And I think the, the, the ratio was really bad on those, but, um, and then now I'm using a niche website builders shop.

Um, shotgun, scratch, skyscraper. Um, you know, so they they've been great, you know, building lots of lanes. Yeah. Um, to, to the article that they created. So that, but that's really where things started to take off, um, is when I started getting a lot more links pointing to the site. And so people started seeing it.

Yeah. So 

Spencer Haws: if somebody were in your position, they've got a site, they've got a bunch of content that they've added recently, but they haven't really done any link building. Now that it sounds like you've tried several things. Where would you recommend that they start link building? I'd say, start 

YoYao: with HARO.

Cause you know, the, the success with Horrow initially was, it was, it took a while to get going. Um, but then as I did more, um, Then I was starting. Wow, Dr. , you know, w w they were coming in and they were linking to me. And then all I had to do was go through the horrible emails every day, or, you know, three, four times a day, and then look for whatever, you know, fit.

And it's not every day I would, I would find something at all. It would be like maybe two a week. I would find something, but then the other part was 

Spencer Haws: just outreach. And, and before you go onto that w with HARO, um, I'm just kinda curious what your success rate was there, you know, if you were doing submitting, like to, um, You know, pieces of content, you're responding to two requests a week.

How many of those actually ended up into links to you? Actually, I haven't gotten them. I've 

YoYao: gotten to that site. I've gotten three, three in the last, like three months. Okay. So it's one, not a lot. So it's not a lot if I want. Yeah. Because one out of eight then, you know, um, so it's not a high ratio at all, but it's, they're usually good deal.

Right. Um, I usually avoid them. Like if you go on, if you look on the horrible emails, there's a lot where they're just affiliated sites, you know? Um, so I just avoid those they'll cause what they're asking for are, Hey, what are your, you know, tell me a. And best, you know what, what's the best X for Y. Tell me your product, you know, tell me what you think the best X is.

And they're easy to see, right? They're just affiliate sites and they want, what they want is to they'll they'll link out to you still, but then they also are hoping that you're going to link back to them. Right? Right. So it makes sense. You know, I haven't tried it yet. I haven't tried it yet, but I liked that.

And I, I don't know if I have time maybe down the road, I'll try that.

I usually go for the bigger, um, You can usually tell, you can look at, you can look up the, you know, the, the media that is asking for the things right 

Spencer Haws: now. Okay. So that's a good place to start is maybe HARO. And then, um, maybe doing some of your own outreach, it sounds like, um, to either get guest posts or, or, 

YoYao: yeah.

Um, but I, it wasn't until I, I really, um, I was like, I I spent, I spent, so I started realizing that I spent so much time trying to link, build that to build links, that it was just, it wasn't as fruitful as just, I was like, all right, well, I'm making some money now, but it still wasn't enough to cover like a niche website builder.

So I was like that first month, I was just like, all right, well, I'm just going to bite the bullet and, you know, um, paperwork and see what happens. Um, And then, you know, it just worked out well, you know? Yeah. 

Spencer Haws: And so how many months have you been with niche website builders? Now 

YoYao: this is the third month of outreach.

So the first month is always the content. Right. And then three months is the typical campaign of outreach. So I'm in the third month right now. I'm trying to decide right now, if I continue with. This site or continue with another site, you know, go to another site, um, with, with it or just stop and try something else.

Yeah. That's another thing I'm I'm thinking about doing is, um, is just pouring all that money into content. And getting more content. Right. 

Spencer Haws: So, um, for listeners that maybe don't know is that this isn't the only site that you now own and operate, you actually went out and bought a second site and you've known that really well.

Uh, also, why don't you just give us the really highlight details, you know, maybe how much you bought it for how much it's making now and how long it's been. 

YoYao: So it was, it was, uh, it was at the same time actually. Um, and so I purchased it on, on flipping websites. I think it was the Facebook group. Um, and it was a five month old, six month old site.

Um, the posts that were put up there were nine posts on it. It was, they were put up in January, February. Um, I purchased it for 50. Um, but that was like two sites. So they had, they were like, all right, well, here's the throwing. So 

Spencer Haws: a little bonus for you if you buy now. 

YoYao: So I was like, all right, fine. Um, so I purchased two sites for one 50.

The other site I just had not touched because of what I had to go through for this site, you know? Um, so. The this site after I was, I was still, you know, I still didn't know what, I didn't know. Um, I was like, all right, cool. It's a, it's a micro niche. And, um, I figured, all right, well, let's give it a shot.

Let's see what, what happens. Um, I purchase it and then I was like, all right, so many issues with it. It was on, you know, it was using thrive architect. Um, but then I was like, all right, well, I don't want to pay for thrive. And Danny give me thrive at the side with it. So I do, that was one thing. Um, I had to change the theme and redo a lot of that.

And then as, as I started getting into the, the, um, content, I was like, wow, this is really poorly written. You know, it actually got hit by the may, the fourth update. Right. So it was, it was getting like, Between two to 300 impressions on, on search console. So just impressions on search console. And then it went down to like 50 impressions.

And at the time he actually shared with me the Google search console on screenshots. And I was like, and Agni, think about it. You know, at the time I actually didn't know there was a, there was a global update and that's where, that's what, I didn't know what I didn't know. And so. When I purchased it, I was like, all right, well, what I'm going to do first is I took a couple, a couple posts.

Um, one was a polo post, and one was just more of a, another product post, a product review posts. I agreed that those, and it took me three to four days to do those because they were that poorly written and I optimize them and everything with surfer. Um, and. Then they immediately, within the, within like two days, um, started getting more impressions, you know, and then that's when I went through the other articles and then made sure that the same thing, the interlinking and everything, um, And then I just let those nines sit there for, for a few months, for a couple months, a couple of more months, it just kept growing and growing and it was actually getting sales.

Um, you know, it was actually doing better. Um, then, then the emotion invests, like, just because it was, it was a micro niche, I guess. Um, and, and people, or it was a growing trend. And that was one thing is I saw I put it into Google trends and I saw that it was great. Right. It's a growing micro niche. And so I was like, all right, cool.

Um, and that was, I think that was the main thing that I had that it had going forward. Um, cause it had like no traffic. Um, the first month I had it, let me see. I had 167 visitors, July was 239, you know? Um, now it's December was just under 15,000. Wow. 

Spencer Haws: That's uh, so yeah, essentially went from making almost nothing.

It sounds like, um, very little to now what's the most recent month that this site has made. 

YoYao: Um, this month in December, it was a 4,200. Wow. From zero to 4,200. Not too shabby, too shabby at all. Like I say, I, 

Spencer Haws: you built a portfolio now that's over $10,000 a month. 

YoYao: Really? First, 10,000 in profit. 

Spencer Haws: Congratulations for doing that, doing that in a matter of about six months is both incredibly unusual and very impressive.

So congrats on doing that. You know, kind of, lot of work. It's a lot of work. No doubt. Yeah. So I know. Yeah. It's easy for us to talk about all the things you did. You know, you built all the internal links and you added content, but it is, I mean, at the end of the day, it's just kind of a slog, isn't it? I mean, you can put in the time you have to put in the work and, um, sometimes you get better results than others, but you clearly have done very well on these two sites.

YoYao: Yeah, this, this site I'm really, you know, I'm, I'm really thinking about the reason I haven't done much in terms of like adding posts or anything I've added, you know, there there's. I did 20 very short form, informational articles, um, the beginning of the month or the end of last month. And, and, and previous to that, I mean, I, I did five or six articles, um, and they're all product articles, well, best, best X for wise.

Uh, and then, but those, because they were within the niche day. You know, within like a week, they were already in top, on the first page. Um, so my little Dr. Site, you know, of like five or six, um, it was like beating out the big boys in the, in the game. And it's funny cause I, I didn't build any links to that, um, until, until last month.

And it was, it was doing all that. No. So I credit it to content and, and interlinking. Cause I didn't do any other external linking to it. Right. 

Spencer Haws: So what are your plans for these couple of sites? Do you just plan on kind of holding onto them, building out a bigger portfolio? Do you want to flip, do you want to do something else?

YoYao: I've been thinking about that actually I've been, I think I want to. Eventually I'll flip them. Um, but it's, it's like it's had two months of success in term and obviously because of the holidays, partly too, as well, November, November, and December. And I do, you know, be nice to flip one of them, um, to get, uh, you know, a good chunk of cash and then, um, take some money off the table and, and, um, Um, I'm gonna, I do want to build a portfolio of sites, so I'm starting to, I'm going to start another one.

Um, and I guess I'm starting it from scratch because I couldn't find a small site that I, I wanted to, you know, I wanted to repeat the magic, you know, the second site and buy something and buy like a little starter site. And, um, if that was out of the sandbox and use that, but I just haven't found the one guy in the niche that I wanted to pursue.

So, you know, um, there's pursuits. Um, and so, um, I have my, you know, started to outsource that content. You know right now as well, and for that new site. So we'll see how that goes. But I do want to, you know, we'll see how it goes. Um, Do you actually, do you think, cause it's only had two months, so you know of good revenue, right.

Do you think I would come? I'm thinking that I need a little, like maybe six more months, six months of consistent, right. And consistent returns and everything before I can actually really get into the idea of, you know, selling it. Do you think that I should just wait. 

Spencer Haws: Uh, that would be ideal. I mean, the longer track record that you have at a higher earning level, you can expect to get a higher sales price.

Uh, typically, you know, people are gonna want to see about six months, um, of, you know, sort of a track record. Um, obviously longer is better. Uh, but, but some of these, you know, smaller sites, people can clearly see that they're growing quickly. And so even if you have three or four months, um, Depending on the buyer, you know, they may be super excited.

They see the growth and, you know, they may be willing to pick it up, but, um, usually a site will be valued on sort of average revenue of the past six months or 12 months even. But in your case, I'm sure they would still probably want to say, eh, I want to look at the last six months and average that out.

So yeah. So if you could sustain yeah. At least a couple more months, that would, the average would go up significantly 

YoYao: for sure. Exactly. That's what I figured. So I'm just going to keep working on them, you know? Um, That second one. I'm trying, I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it. Cause it's a, it's a micro niche and I've covered a good, you know, 80% of that niche already.

So I'm just trying to figure out what to do with it, you know? Um, cause I'm looking at some of the other sites on it, the big competitors are, you know, Or the big boys, like the, like the wire cutter was in that, that type of where they just cut palms God, where they just, her everything. Um, and then the ones who are niche specific.

Or they have like 30 posts, 40 posts. So it's the same thing as me. I think that's what helped as well. The 

Spencer Haws: niche. Yep. Yeah. It very well could be that all your content is very laser focused on this one specific niche. And I do think Google kind of values that a little bit, right. That you're kind of the authority on this.

You know, very specific niche. And so, uh, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what you do. I mean, maybe a, the right decision is to just, you know, build it a little bit and then, you know, sell it later in the year. I don't know. Um, there's nothing wrong with doing that, right. It's it's uh, hopefully good to have options.

Um, so, uh, maybe final question here is just. Are there any other tips that you might have for somebody interested in buying and growing websites, or just anything else that you feel like you did on these sites that we didn't cover yet? 

YoYao: Um, I I'd say focus on content, um, focus on, on interlinking. Um, those are.

Those can be free, right. In the sense that they're just your time that you put into it. Um, I feel that the content optimization is what really drove things along with the interlinking. Um, because that second site, I didn't build anything. So it, and it was, you know, that, that group quickly, um, As well as the first site, um, the portion of that site, it was same thing.

Um, that's a more competitive niche, so it needed the Link-Belt thing to really give it a big boost. Um, but with the second site, um, it, I just put everything in content. Um, and then I focused on that. Spend the time there. 

Spencer Haws: That's awesome. Yeah. Great advice. I agree. Um, that, uh, that's, I mean, that's a lot, what I focus on my sites right.

Is, is trying to optimize on page getting sort of the, the most out of the money that I've already invested in content, right. Is optimizing the article itself, optimizing the links, internal links, that sort of thing. And so I just want to say, thanks again for coming on the niche pursuits podcast, sharing your story.

Yeah, it's great to hear. Not, not just because, you know, you bought a site on motion and best which that's awesome, but you also bought a site somewhere else. Right. And found a great deal and have grown that side as well. So sort of a, I feel like you had lightning strike twice, uh, for you day here in, in 2020.

So, uh, best of luck in 2021, hopefully growing those sites and maybe some new ones. 

YoYao: Ellen, one last thing for everyone out there. Um, I just want to say Spencer's got some great YouTube videos from three to four years ago. All those coaching calls that you did, those are great. Um, because when I, when I first started out, I would actually listen to those right.

Where you took, you took your, your students right. Beginning to end, you know, and they're, even though they're three, four years old, they're still relevant. You know, it's like finding a niche, finding low, you know, low competition keywords and everything, you know, all the way to creating a brand. You know, for the site.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely go, go, go watch those and listen to those. Yeah, 

Spencer Haws: no, thanks. Glad you found those helpful. Um, that, that was for niche site, project three. Um, I was co coaching Somara and so I did coaching calls with her, uh, every little detail we pretty much covered. Uh, and so yeah, you can head over to the YouTube channel.

You can do a search for niche site, project three, or coaching calls. Uh, and those will definitely pull up or you can go over to niche, pursuits.com and, uh, up in my menu, I have case studies and projects and it's it's project through. You can get a list of the entire project there as well. So cool. Glad to hear that those were helpful as well.

So, um, but yeah, once again, uh, y'all y'all thanks for coming on the niche pursuits podcast and sharing your story. 

YoYao: Yeah, thank you, Spencer. Loved it. 

Spencer Haws: All right. Thanks again, everybody.

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