Niche Product Site Case Study #2 – Shifting Focus to Meet Goals
Last Updated on July 22, 2020 by Jeremy
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Last Updated on September 14, 2021 by Jeremy
Disclaimer: This Week in Blogging uses demographic data, email opt-ins, and affiliate links to operate this site. Please review our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.
At the start of COVID quarantine, I decided to start new niche sites that were focused on products with the goal of making money via affiliate sales and, if possible down the line, ads with networks like Mediavine.
Six months back, we shared an update on what we were doing with each niche product site and gave some goals for the future. As it has been a while since that update, I thought it was time to share more information on how things are going and share some changes that we are considering making to improve our sites outright.
As a quick recap, we have two product sites with a bare minimum number of articles, Doctor of Coffee and What is Sous Vide, as well as a more robust wine blog called The Grape Pursuit. The former two were designed to be low page count sites to push products, with the sous vide site trying to tap into the exact match keyword as well. The wine blog is run more like a traditional blog with posts every week or so on general wine topics as well as focused wine reviews.
With that recap out of the way, let's talk about the status.
Mailerlite Review – A Powerful Newsletter Service at a Budget Price
Last Updated on August 30, 2021 by Jeremy
Disclaimer: This Week in Blogging uses demographic data, email opt-ins, and affiliate links to operate this site. Please review our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.
For bloggers, email newsletters are one of those things you either love or hate- there is often little room in between.
If you are on the love it side, odds are good it is because you have a huge list as well as products or services for sale such that you are able to make a profit with each and every email. If you hate it (a category that I fell into for the longest time), we'd guess it is because you think newsletters are expensive to operate, are hard to generate direct ROI relative to their cost, and you are only doing it because you've been told it is one of the only marketing avenues you can truly “own” on your site (no battling crazy social media algorithms here!).
I had originally stumbled upon Mailerlite when I was firmly in that latter category and made the switch because it was a cheaper alternative to Mailchimp (and a virtual carbon copy) that I could use to send out my latest and greatest articles with ease.
Purely from a cost-savings standpoint, I was happy with Mailerlite on its own for quite some time. I was only just starting breakeven from my list (sometimes even netting a small profit), but I was simply happy to no longer be hemorrhaging money outright. It wasn't until I really started to dive into the powerful program that it became worth its price even more and it truly made me a fan of email marketing outright.
So in this Mailerlite review, I thought I'd break down the functionality as well as the financial elements as to why this newsletter should be on your radar.
3 Ways to Increase Pages Per Visit on Your Blog
Last Updated on August 16, 2021 by Jeremy
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In an earlier article on This Week in Blogging, we had a discussion about the differences between CPM and RPM when it comes to advertising revenue on our sites.
The main takeaway from that was CPM is the cost to advertisers for one single ad on your site (per 1,000 impressions) whereas RPM is the total revenue a site earns across all ads (per 1,000 sessions- typically). RPM takes in a number of factors including article length (number of ads displayed), audience demographics (for cookie-based advertising), pages-per-visit, and more when it comes to determining what you actually earn on your site.
We concluded that article with ways to increase your RPM, and one was to work on optimizing your site to increase your pages-per-visit. As that is easier said than done, we thought it'd be timely to put together an article all about the topic!
CPM vs RPM – What They Mean & Why They're Hard to Compare
Last Updated on August 15, 2021 by Jeremy
Disclaimer: This Week in Blogging uses demographic data, email opt-ins, and affiliate links to operate this site. Please review our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.
One of the most common questions we see in many blogging groups is simply the following:Â What is your blog's RPM?
Many bloggers are happy to jump in and say that they earn $10 RPM, $50 RPM, or even $100+ RPM in some extreme cases and let that be that. But while $100+ RPM sure does sound exciting (okay, fine, it is exciting considering just a few years ago most blogs barely broke $10 RPM), simply sharing this number without any additional context is a bit meaningless.
The reason for that is that there are far too many factors that go into your blog's earnings such that even if two bloggers were discussing ad prices, even on the same ad network, they're really not able to be compared apples-to-apples in any respect.
So in this one, we wanted to break down a bit of the terminology you see (beyond our blogging acronym guide) and discuss all of the things that go into what makes up your blog's RPM.
Have a Growing Email List? You Need an Auto Responder Series
Last Updated on July 26, 2021 by Jeremy
Disclaimer: This Week in Blogging uses demographic data, email opt-ins, and affiliate links to operate this site. Please review our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.
If I said the phrase email auto responder and let you imagine what I meant by it, odds are good you'll be pretty close- we all receive these regularly.
For brands that sell products, email auto responders can be a valuable tool to put new mailing list subscribers into a sales funnel in order to promote their products. First, you may get a welcome email. Then you may get a list of new products. Finally (especially if you still haven't made a purchase), they may even send you a discount code to help convert a sale. This may put you in another funnel based on what product you bought and could even start the entire process all over again with new content!
I've personally known about how these work for years, but it wasn't until I really started expanding my mailing list that I thought an auto responder could be valuable as a blogger that doesn't offer a single product.
In this one, we thought it'd be interesting to discuss a few cases when bloggers may want to look into email autoresponders and also share my settings for how I set up my emails in Mailerlite!
