Niche Product Site Case Study #4 – Changing Targets
Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on September 26, 2022.
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Welcome to the fourth entry into our niche product site case study series.
In this case study, we are tracking the performance of niche product sites I created between 2020 and 2022, what is working, what is not, income and traffic changes, and lessons learned along the way.
The first site we will look at is The Grape Pursuit, a wine blog I started in early 2020. The second site is Hipster Homesteaders, a home & garden plus food & beverage blog we started in late 2021 (where we merged two lagging product sites, a coffee blog and sous vide blog, into a broader umbrella branding to allow for more content to be produced with other topics).
While we are seeing some growth in the sites in a few categories, some stagnant areas have us changing our targets ever-so-slightly.
3 Ways to Find a New Affiliate Program to Join
Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on October 3, 2022.
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.
We've talked a fair bit about affiliate marketing here at This Week in Blogging, ranging from how to improve your affiliate marketing to product reviews (like the Pretty Links Pro link cloaking plugin), and so much more.
But for this one, we wanted to take a step back and answer a rather pressing question- “how do I find affiliate partners to begin with?”
Thankfully, there are numerous ways to do this that we can discuss today including direct programs, 3rd party affiliate networks, and via customized partnerships!
How to Define Your Blogging Strategy – Keeping Your Goals in Mind
Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on August 6, 2023.
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 the last few months, I felt like I've been spinning my wheels on growing my blogs. My sites are doing well, but I'm not seeing as much growth as I would like (especially for my new niche sites).
It wasn't until I saw a comment in our Facebook group from our friend Mariellen (of the amazing travel blog Breathedreamgo) about the differences between strategy and tactic that it made me really stop to think about what I was doing with my brands. In fact, I thought of this one so much that it helped inspire me to change how I approach producing content moving forward.
So in this one, I thought I'd share a bit more about defining a blogging strategy and how my new angle helps keep me in line with my site goals.
100+ Topic Ideas for a Local Blog with Traffic Potential
Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on January 6, 2025.
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Since founding my Pittsburgh blog in 2015, my overall strategy was a very broad “do everything and write about it“.
For the first seven years, we put in a pretty solid effort and visited over 1,100 unique attractions/events/restaurants/etc. in the region. But after a while, it felt like our strategy was having less and less of a return for annual growth.
Part of this was simply because we had visited most of the big ticket attractions in the city, such that most of the places we were visiting were small and obscure spots with limited traffic potential. The other part was that I simply stopped putting effort into writing cornerstone pieces that are much bigger hitters with regards to keyword volumes and/or viral potential on social media.
So I took a break for a little bit and brainstormed all the ideas I could think of where we could repurpose existing content and create killer, themed articles with higher traffic potential. These, coupled with existing cornerstone/skyscraper articles on our site that we've published in the past, ended up totaling well over 100 ideas, and many were new for us to publish moving forward.
So in this one, I thought I'd share some of the best ones to help inspire some ideas for your own local blog!
Note: For purposes of this discussion, “[destination]” will be used as a generic placeholder for you to replace with your city, region, state, country, or other geographical areas. These are not intended to be exact keyword matches (research the best ones on Keysearch!), but more to inspire ideas outright. Other uses of brackets imply flexibility on specific items and examples will be provided for clairty.
AdSense vs Monumetric – Which is Better For Your Blog?
Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on June 19, 2024.
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When my wine blog, The Grape Pursuit, started to grow, I was hesitant to monetize it too soon. Partly because I didn't have to (my other sites earn enough revenue for me daily), but also because I was holding out for when I qualified for a premium ad network, like Monumetric or Mediavine, in order to make any user experience hit worthwhile.
But for the sake of understanding the state of the advertising market, we decided to put together a little test and turned on AdSense just a little bit before we qualified for Monumetric to see how the two networks compared.
So, what were the results of our AdSense vs Monumetric study? Read on.
Note: RPMs as discussed in this article are based on a page view basis to be in line with AdSense's reporting structure. Some networks report session and page view RPMs, which may be confusing if not clarified upfront.