Case Study Archives - This Week in Blogging

Niche Product Sites Case Study #8 – A Big Jump

March 4, 2026August 19, 2025

Welcome to the eighth 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, sharing 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).

This update will cover everything that happened between January 2025 and August 2025. As mentioned in our last update, our wine blog saw a nice uptick with the homestead blog remaining flat. This trend held, and we have seen a solid increase on the wine side!

Niche Product Sites Case Study #7 – Algorithm Chaos

January 21, 2025January 21, 2025

Welcome to the seventh entry into our niche product site case study series.

Before jumping into this, I should note that my original intent for this series was to provide an update every six months. But with all that happened in 2024, I forgot to publish updates. So this one will cover everything that happened between September 2023 and January 2025. For those who know all that has gone on in blogging over this time, you'll understand when I say the theme is simply this- chaos.

Niche Product Sites Case Study #6 – Getting in a Groove

September 18, 2023

Welcome to the sixth entry into our niche product site case study series.

In the last six months, the wine blog has started to find its footing and is gaining momentum with new ideas we are replicating at scale. The homestead site's growth in traffic has been slow, but an uptick in affiliate sales shows that we're on the right path all the same.

Niche Product Sites Case Study #5 – Finding Momentum

March 6, 2023

Welcome to the fifth 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.

Niche Product Site Case Study #4 – Changing Targets

September 26, 2022

Welcome to the fourth entry into our niche product site case study series.

While we are seeing some growth in the sites in a few categories, some stagnant areas have us changing our targets ever-so-slightly.

Niche Product Site Case Study #3 – Finally Seeing Growth

April 16, 2022April 11, 2022

Welcome to the third entry into our niche product site case study series.

In this case study, we are tracking the performance of niche product sites that 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 a sous vide blog, into a broader umbrella branding to allow for more content to be produced with other topics).

So, how are they performing? Let's check it out!

Niche Product Site Case Study #2 – Shifting Focus to Meet Goals

September 14, 2021

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.

Niche Product Site Case Study #1 – Introducing the Sites

September 14, 2021March 24, 2021

During quarantine, we saw a severe drop in traffic on our travel blog and local blog. As we knew that these sites were not going to rebound for quite some time, rather than doubling down in new topics on these established domains, we decided to start new blogs outright.

This was done for two reasons. First, the topics we wanted to write about didn't fit all too well with the established branding. Second, we know that new sites take a long time to establish themselves such that, while they weren't going to make much money during quarantine, we would be diversifying our portfolio for the long-haul across many unique domains.

At first, we had every intention of making these sites personality-driven blogs much like our travel sites (think full social media, multiple posts per week, a story involving us somehow, etc.), but we quickly realized that would be too time consuming. In fact, when we stopped to assess how things were going, we realized that we had started three sites all were niche products focused. Our ideal monetization model was not display advertising (although we'd certainly take it), but rather affiliate sales for a few core items.

As we are approaching each of these sites just a bit differently, we thought it'd be fun to share a periodic case study here talking about the sites, how we plan to monetize, and update their progress over time. So today, let's do a quick introduction to the sites and our monetization goals!