In this lab, we examine a site that has been sold and see how we can replicate the results (without all the guesswork.)

This Month's Site – weldingstars.com

Flippa Listing - https://flippa.com/8227163-weldingstars-com

Date Sold - 14^th April 2017

Price Sold For - $15,000

Age of Site When Sold – 14 months

Details – This is another example of just how well Amazon sites are selling in 2017. With an average monthly profit of less than $600 it sold for $15,000. It also proves that niches aren't too important either as this one is certainly not sexy in any way shape or form! It sells all types of welding and cutting accessories and makes all it's profit from the Amazon affiliate program.

Keywords Targeted – It targeted all types of welding related terms such as welding tips, welding kits and others about welding.

Backlinks – The site has 67 backlinks from 38 referring domains according to MajesticSEO. These were high DA guest posts, a press release and an EDU scholarship.

What My Plan Would Be To Clone The Results – I would set up a brand new site using a domain name that has 'welding' within it. I would then create 1,000 word content posts that target relevant keywords and place Amazon native ads on each page. I would most likely need to have 75+ posts on the site to become more of an authority in the niche but these can be added on an ongoing basis.

Potential keywords I would target:

airgas welding supply

6g welding

ace welding

welding kits

welding tips

3m welding helmets

3m welding helmet

acetylene welding

air gas welding supply

035 welding wire

4/0 welding cable

advanced welding

6g welding test

and other related welding keywords found during research.

I would use social, Web 2.0 and PBN links to rank the site over the course of 12+ months. I would heavily focus on getting topically related and thematically related backlinks, as discussed in the Fred update last month.

The aim would be to get to $1,000+ per month in profit and then sell for $30,000+

The Sniper Lab is all about creating small 3-5 page websites that target buyer keywords with an Exact Match Domain (EMD).

You simply browse the Amazon marketplace to find products, then put those into the Google keyword planner and see what searches come up. Find one that gets 250+ searches a month that has a .com available domain and you're good to go!

You can use a free keyword tool like this one to get more accurate search volumes than the Google keyword planner now gives you.

These are really simple sites to make and each can make you 4 figures in profit when you sell them. They make great additions to add to your Amazon empire.

This video has more information:

(Click the fullscreen icon to enlarge the video)

Here are some domains you can use right now (each one is available as I'm typing this and has a clean history):

110vwelder.com - 880 searches/month
besttigwelder.com - 590 searches/month
aluminumtigwelder.com - 590 searches/month
rigidtilesaw.com - 390 searches/month
airhammerchisel.com - 320 searches/month
airjackhammer.com - 210 searches/month
smallcementmixer.com - 390 searches/month
8inchbenchgrinder.com - 320 searches/month
toolchestcombo.com - 1,600 searches/month
toolchestonwheels.com - 390 searches/month

These will obviously be snapped up fast by members but give you an idea of what to look for. A new list will be added every month.

This month I'm sharing the results of a 12 month test.

Expired Domain Case Study

Whilst I generally like to start with domains that have never been used before, I do like to test whether expired ones do actually work for money sites.

So I picked up this domain 12 months ago. It is basically a “word + niche” short .com domain. It had existing links pointing to it from sites related to the niche. It also had a Google+ page and Facebook pages too.

I registered it, put a small post on it and waited for it to pass the Google manual spam penalty (detailed in the training) and it passed within a few days.

So I figured, OK I'll get some content on it and see what happens. So I've put about 25 posts on it to date and have done no backlinking at all. I just wanted to see what would happen.

These are the current rankings:

It has even made a few sales too.

One thing I noticed is that when adding new posts, they seem to rank on page 2-3 almost right away. I've added just a few posts each month.

I'm confident that by adding a few PBN links to the individual posts that they will jump up quite a lot without any other links needed.

The Take Away – If you use a tool like RegisterCompass.com to find domains that already have backlinks, register them and see if they pass the penalty check, add content on a regular basis, then you can get a good head start in the months that follow. By leaving the domain, you'll see where the posts rank in several months and have a better idea of how many PBN links you'll need.

Questions that have been sent in this month:

Q – Do you just do Amazon sites these days or do you create others?

A – I've always loved creating Amazon sites and will always continue to do so. I have been dabbling in some eCommerce recently with Shopify. I'll update results on this when I have some solid data. Most screenshots you'll see of Shopify stores making $10,000+ per month are using Facebook ads but I want to build my store using SEO as the primary long term strategy.

Q – Do you use press releases?

A – I've never used them and don't feel they provide much value. Most links are 'no-follow' so you don't get much power from them and the links drop off the sites and don't remain long term. They possibly do have uses for local business and ranking temporarily but that's never my goal.

Q – Are guest posts worth getting?

A – Guest posts can be useful but only if you can get your main keyword(s) in the URL or title of the page that is linking to your money site. If not, then I wouldn't bother with them at all. The FRED Google update means you really must get keywords in the URL or title of sites linking to you. Links that don't do that and aren't relevant can actually harm your site if you have too many of them.

Q – When analysing competitors I'm not seeing many backlinks, can they be hiding them?

A – That's certainly a possibility. Plugins like Bot Nemesis or Spyder Spanker can be used to stop sites like majesticSEO and AHREFS picking links up. But sometimes those sites just don't pick links up anyway. AHREFS is the best tool out of all of them for showing the most links but it's a monthly fee.

If they genuinely don't have many links then check the relevance of the links they have. Do those sites have their main keywords in the URL or title? It could just be that they have a really high relevance and that's why they are ranking.

Have a question? Send it in - tony@zonbootcamp.com