Today we are sharing with you a case study from Michael Xavier, a webmaster, and blogger who decided to build a content site after being inspired by a Youtube channel called Income School 2 years ago. That website currently generates him over $10 000 per month in revenue and it receives over 390 000 sessions per month.
In this case study, we are going through how Michael built this site from scratch to the point that it's making him 5 figures per month in less than 2 years, and also his tips on how to fast track your content site to 6 figures.
Getting Started
Michael started this blog in 2020 as a side project after he had come across the Income School YouTube channel and really got the inspiration to earn money online. He picked up a broad niche and decided to go all-in by providing mainly very detailed informational content that most of the competitors were not delivering.
Content
99% of Michael’s content is informational and very specific. Most people visiting his site are there for one specific piece of information and they have no reason or interest to read other articles. He aims to create about 20 articles per month each with an average of 1 400 words.
In the beginning, Michael was writing the articles all by himself but he recently started to outsource some of the writing work to freelance writers to free up time and treat this as a business. Michael has bitter-sweet stories with freelancers that’s why he hasn't completely outsourced 100% of the writing as yet.
“I had some good writers who I was even paying upwards of 9 cents a word. One guy wrote 20+ articles for me making 100+ bucks a post and then just vanished. Stopped answering emails, just nothing. I am a very reasonable and fair person and would have even paid him more. It’s just hard finding talent and even harder retaining it.”, Michael says.
The part that puts Michael ahead is that he is writing a lot of unique content while most other people in his niche are just regurgitating and summarizing the top three posts ranking for a particular keyword they’re after. Their result is that they end up with mediocre content on page one.
Michael goes way deeper to find real solutions to problems and summarize them clearly. He does a lot of research through Youtube and in turn, his articles receive an average time of 7 minutes and 20 seconds per session.
Keyword Selection
Michael chose a broad niche at the beginning and this in turn gives him the advantage of having absolutely tons of low competition keywords with high traffic. He admits that he spends 20% of his time doing keyword research.
Michael says, “I often spend 3 days straight building a list, grooming it, and prioritizing it. Searching the keyword and picking apart page one to see if I can really do better/rank. Completely guessing but I would bet a lot of people do keyword research but they don’t go really deep. If you’re going to spend 4 hours writing, make sure you’re giving yourself the best odds at a high return on time investment.”
Traffic
Michael's traffic is mainly from organic searches. In January 2022 alone, his website received 397 000 sessions and 435 000 page views. His site has experienced fast exponential growth as just in mid-2020, it was having only 2 500 sessions per month and about 82 000 sessions in mid-2021 on average.
He admits that he has never built or paid for a single backlink or even done guest posting even though Ahrefs indicates that his site has 6 000 backlinks.
Revenue
Michael's website is currently making steady 5 figures a month. It made him $17 000 in December 2021, and $13 000 in January 2022. His revenue comes mainly from ads as the website contains mostly informational content rather than promotional content. Affiliate marketing accounts for only 5% of his monthly revenue.
He uses Adthrive for monetization with ads and Amazon Associates for affiliate marketing.
“I dreamt about making a few hundred bucks online just 365 days ago. Exponential growth is really hard for any of us to appreciate, when it happens it's shocking. But having experienced it, and having seen others experience it, it's clear that if your content is solid, you will enter an exponential growth period with Google. For me, it took nearly 2 years and over 200 posts to hit that growth.”, Michael says.
Plans for 2022
Michael’s plan for the site in 2022 is to do more of the same. He aims to publish 20 posts a month which he will still write the majority by himself. He tried scaling with writers, from Fivver, Upwork, and P and Pro blogger but that didn't go so well. So instead of trying to dump a ton of shit content on the site, he is planning to keep on writing for himself to maintain sustainable quality content.
Advice from Michael
Michael emphasizes that blogging still works. People just need to be consistent, stick to a schedule, and pump out content month after month. Don't worry about the money, it will come. You can't control when or how much it will be. All you can control is creating quality content.
Also when it comes to ad platforms, he advises people to try other alternatives apart from Adsense as it pays peanuts compared to other platforms. He suggests Ezoic for people without much traffic, Mediavine for those receiving 50 000 monthly sessions, and AdThrive for those with 100 000 sessions and above.
Conclusion
Through consistency in output, Michael has been able to grow his content site from 0 to over $10 000 per month in revenue in just 2 years. His site is on a steady exponential growth as he is continuously adding more content to serve more people in his niche. And his aim now is to reach up to millions of sessions per month.
This kind of success can easily be replicated by anyone. All that it requires is the effort to produce more content every month.
