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| Kezz Bracey War Room Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Australia
Posts: 1,291
Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 323
Thanked 599 Times in 291 Posts
| ![]() At a glance: Site Name: Two Talking Monkeys Website URL: www.twotalkingmonkeys.com Monthly Revenue: $147 Monthly Average Visitors: Awstats: 32,532 Analytics: 18,910 Wordpress.com Stats: 23,985 Unique Monthly Visitors: Awstats: 23,431 Analytics: 16,956 Monthly Pageviews: Awstats: 153,911 Analytics: 25,683 Site Start Date: 10th October, 2009 Traffic Origin: US 62%, UK 6%, Canada 8%, Australia 4%, Europe 5% Site Design: Unique, custom theme unavailable elsewhere Site Content: Unique, 342 articles About Two Talking Monkeys. My partner and I started this site one month ago with a simple plan - to write about the TV shows, movies and video games we like, and plug relevant products at the same time in our posts and advertising slots. The name "Two Talking Monkeys" was chosen to be a little tongue in cheek, but primarily to allow the site to be wide open to any kind of subject matter we chose. Revenue We launched on the 10th of October and the site started making affiliate sales via Amazon from that very first day. Day one saw three orders, the next saw two orders, the next also two orders, the next another two and so on. In total we have shipped 63 items from Amazon for a commission of $90.34. There are also another four items that have been ordered, that should add to the commission once they are shipped. ![]() We have also generated $35.25 in commission from Sideshow Collectibles (http://www.sideshowtoy.com/), who create limited high end entertainment collectibles. A $15 lead payment was generated from Commission Junction, by writing a review of a game I enjoyed and referring readers to a game membership trial where they could play the game. Additionally, $6.44 has been generated from clicks through to Ebay, via writing about interesting items up for auction there. ![]() ![]() ![]() Overall the site is very easy to run, as you need only write about the TV shows, movies and video games you enjoy, and refer people to products relevant to what you write about. You don't need to write about the same topics we have written about. You can write about anything you like, as long as you choose topics popular enough that other people share your interest. Traffic Traffic got off to a great start right away thanks to the way we setup & promoted the site, and has been steadily increasing across the month. We use three stats tracking applications, and each reports a little differently, so I will give you info from each. According to Awstats (reports from the hosting server), our first four days traffic showed 29 visits, 335 visits, 268 visits and 457 visits. It now reports the site as getting between 1700 - 2400 visits per day, and says we have had 32,532 visits for the month. ![]() Click here for Awstats Traffic November Click here for Awstats Traffic October Wordpress.com stats (plugin, reports from within Wordpress) had yesterday as our record traffic day with 1,656 visits, and says we have had 23,985 visits for the month. ![]() Google Analytics (reports if the analytics javascript fires successfully) has Nov 6 as our record traffic day with 1,276 visits, and reports 23,985 visits for the month. ![]() There are different schools of thought on traffic stats tracking, but I tend to think that Awstats reports a smidge too many, Analytics javascript doesn't always work so it reports too few, and that the Wordpress.com stats plugin falls in the middle and is probably about right. NOTE: The dip on the end of those graphs is just the start of a day that hasn't finished counting visits yet. The site is already doing very well in the SERPS with a number of page one Google rankings that have bought quite a bit of traffic. Here are some examples: the fourth kind movie, Number 10 (sometimes number 4), bought 1,498 visits - "the fourth kind movie" - Google Search fourth kind movie, Number 6 (also sometimes number 4), bought visits - "fourth kind movie" - Google Search There are more, but rather than making the keyphrases public, let me know if you are seriously interested in the site and I can arrange analytics access for you to take a peek. Additionally, the site has 3,620 pages indexed by Google: site:http://www.twotalkingmonkeys.com - Google Search Site promotion Our site promotion strategy is very simple, and started to yield great results for us straight away. The site is setup with a comprehensive ping list that works automatically in the background for each post we make. We have accounts with a number of social bookmarking and networking services, most of which are configured in our OnlyWire account, as well as a Twitter account each. For each new post, we simply Tweet, Digg, Reddit and OnlyWire (and sometimes share to Facebook). We are also listed in a few blog & rss directories, which send us some traffic as well. Posts & Comments At present, the site already has 342 original posts, on a variety of different entertainment topics. Even if you could find an writer who could create articles for you at $1 each, that would still be a minimum of $342 in value in the site's content alone. Each article is tagged and SEO'd in such a way that every article acts to capitalize on longtail keyphrases. The example keyphrases above demonstrate what I'm describing. Site readers are also very responsive and interactive, and we already have 75 published comments. Some of those are from us of course, as we like to be responsive to our readers, but we are very happy with the level of interaction we have had from readers in this first month. It has been our experience so far that the more people comment, the more traffic we tend to get and the more affiliate sales. Site infrastructure A great deal of time, effort and expertise has gone into the setup of this site, both with the front end and back end. Here are some of the most notable inclusions: Unique, custom made theme I am a professional Wordpress Theme developer, and created this theme exclusively for this site. I would typically charge around $200 to create a theme like this for a client ($150 standard price plus $50 for the additional special features). Let me describe some of its features: Easily updatable "branding" area. You will see that the background of the site features a billboard advertising area. The entire background can be set to link to any affiliate offer you choose. We have found this to be very effective so far, and 38 of our 63 amazon sales have been of items directly related to promos we have run with this background. This advertising method is usually accessible only to sites with a big budget media company behind them that supplies them with advertisers and the necessary code. We decided that if the big boys do it, it probably works, and found a way to build it into the theme. So far, it has proven to be as effective as we suspected. Automatically updating category menu block. We have found on previous sites that having an easy access category menu at the top of the site promotes browsing, as people can easily identify their areas of interest and meander through. Auto updating page menu. We kept the page menu low key, so as to draw attention more to the site areas that contain advertising. At present just "Home" and "Contact" are displayed, and any new pages you add will appear here. Widgetized social network icon bar. We wanted to be able to add new social networking icons as we needed to, so the area where you see the rss, twitter and youtube icons can be updated easily by adding new widgets. Color scheme & layout based on years of testing experience. After much trial and error, we have learned some key points about how to get people's attention where we want it, through use of color & layout. You will see that the only white area on the site is the content area, with everything else appearing as background. This ensures that visitors always know exactly where to look, and that you don't have anyone wondering where to start. You will also notice that above the fold, the four key areas that catch the eye are the branding background, the logo (to impress the name on the visitor's memory), the slideshow of banners for sideshow collectibles banners, and the first article. This is all very much according to plan. Lightweight, clean coding & design. To ensure our branding background and content loads as quickly as possible, and that our site is very easily indexed by crawlers, the code has been created from scratch to be very light and clean. The entire theme is only 314kb in size. Plugins We have 35 plugins installed that we have found over time to be very helpful with the overall functioning of Wordpress, the encouragement of traffic to visit, browse and interact, and the means of generating revenue. I won't list them all for fear of boring you, but some of the key plugins and their purposes are: For security: 'AskApache Password Protect' - blocks spam, hackers and password protects your site (several folders). 'Login Lockdown' - adds extra security to the admin login page. 'Secure Wordpress' - takes care of a series of tweaks that remove some Wordpress vulnerabilities. For post & page management: 'jQuery Lightbox' and 'Add LightBox & Title' - in tandem these two automatically add a really swish lightbox to your images. 'Advanced Excerpt' - gives control over what goes out on your RSS feed. 'Exclude Pages' - allows you to add pages but hide them from your page menu, which we use with the site privacy policy. 'Mombly Review Rating' - makes it easy to add our ratings of shows to articles, which we give as a number of 'monkeys' out of '12 monkeys'. 'TinyMCE Advanced' - makes the post editor more like working with a wordprocessor and adds extra handy tools. 'Vipers Video Quicktags' - makes it easy to add just about any kind of video. For revenue generation: 'Advertising Manager' - easily create banners and then add them as widgets or with shortcodes. 'Amazon Product In a Post Plugin' - add a formatted Amazon product to a post just with the ASIN (amazon product number), which has worked well for us. 'Sponsors Slideshow Widget' - creates a slideshow of banner ads, pulled from your site links categories, which we use to advertise Sideshow Collectibles at the top of the sidebar. For promotion: 'Digg Digg' - adds post sharing icons to the bottom of each post, which we use to promote each article. 'Post to Facebook' - adds a button next to the publish button to easily share on Facebook. For browsing & returning encouragement: 'Get Recent Comments' - adds a display of recent comments to the sidebar, drawing people into conversation. 'Subscribe To Comments' - updates people when a topic they are commenting on gets updated so they can come back and chat more. 'Recently Popular' - displays the most active posts and encourages browsing. For SEO: 'Google XML Sitemaps' - generates a Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com compatible sitemap. 'LinkWithin' - automatically grabs thumbnails and creates links to other posts at the bottom of each article. 'Platinum SEO Pack' - lets you control meta tags and site indexing. To put all the above in perspective for you, I also used to offer Wordpress installation and setup as a service. If I were to install a site and configure all the plugins it has up and running, I would have asked for around $100 to complete the task. So to recap, if I were to create the theme and install & configure this site as a freelancing contract, it would be at least a $300 task for the site creation alone. This is without the articles, traffic and revenue, which brings me to the next part: Asking Price We would like to start the bidding at $300 and accept incremental offers from there. Realistically, it would cost $300 just to have a site like this created for you with no content, traffic or revenue, so this is a very sound opportunity for interested investors. If you would like to acquire this site immediately, we would be willing to entertain 'buy it now' offers in the vicinity of $900, ($300 plus approx four months revenue). Additionally, if we reach a "buy it now" agreement with you, will include a number of bonuses along with the site: Buy It Now Bonuses Take over two Twitter accounts, each with custom backgrounds. Darren (TalkingMonkey1) on Twitter with 290 followers and Kez (TalkingMonkey2) on Twitter with 59 followers. Note, these are highly targeted accounts that have bought 268 visits for the month. Take over three gmail accounts, associated with our social bookmarking and networking accounts. Take over all of our social bookmarking and networking accounts, (including Reddit, Digg and Facebook), rather than creating your own. NOTE: These accounts have been pivotal in generating traffic and revenue. You can set up your own new accounts, but this is time consuming, and it will be much easier and more effective for you to take over the established accounts. What you will need This site requires a host that supports Wordpress. I would recommend Hostgator, as the site is hosted there now and performs very well. Site transfer I will be happy to transfer this site to your Wordpress supporting host at no extra charge. Why we are selling There are three reasons we are selling the site at this point. One, is that we build every site with a view to selling it at some point as part of our business model. Two, is that a couple of our other sites have begun to require more of our attention, so passing this site on will allow us to divert our resources. Three, is my parents are actually visiting shortly from the other side of the country, and as I get to see them only once every few years, selling this site now will help me to take the week off to hang out with them. Payment methods We are willing to accept payment via Paymate, Wire Transfer or Escrow.com. We prefer payment via Paymate or Wire Transfer, as Escrow.com is a slow process and the fees are quite hefty. If you prefer Escrow.com we would request a 50 / 50 split of the fees. Sorry, but we are not willing to accept Paypal as it is far too open to fraud with transactions for digital items. If payment is made via Paymate or Wire Transfer, the domain and site will be transferred to you immediately upon receipt of payment. If payment is made via Escrow.com, the process will be slightly different as their service covers domain sales only. 1) Funds are deposited to Escrow and confirmed 2) The domain is transferred and receipt is confirmed 3) Funds are released and sent to our account 4) Upon receipt of the funds we will transfer the site to your host. Recap on asking price I imagine there is a good chance you might have scrolled to the bottom to take a glance, so here it is again. We would like to start the bidding at $300 and accept incremental offers from there. Realistically, it would cost $300 just to have a site like this created for you with no content, traffic or revenue, so this is a very sound opportunity for interested investors. If you would like to acquire this site immediately, we would be willing to entertain 'buy it now' offers in the vicinity of $900, ($300 plus approx four months revenue). Additionally, if we reach a "buy it now" agreement with you, will include the bonuses described above. Questions? Please PM me with any questions you might have, and I will be happy to help. |
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| | #2 |
| Kezz Bracey War Room Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Australia
Posts: 1,291
Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 323
Thanked 599 Times in 291 Posts
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New bid placed $500 UPDATE: Yesterday was a new traffic record with our stats plugin reporting 1,728 visits. We also received another $6.30 commission for three new amazon sales and $1.37 from ebay. This bodes well as multiplying the day's amazon and ebay commission alone by 30 would bring the site to $230 per month. With traffic increasing steadily, scaling this site up should be very realistic. Additionally, ebay and amazon report a couple of days behind, so this revenue actually falls within the first month's earnings (prior to the tenth). I would like to wrap up this site sale prior to the end of the week when my family arrives, so please contact me before then if you are interested in bidding. The highest bidder in the next couple of days will become the site's new owner. Thanks, - Kezz |
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| | #3 |
| Kezz Bracey War Room Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Australia
Posts: 1,291
Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 323
Thanked 599 Times in 291 Posts
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New bid placed $700 I will be wrapping up this auction tomorrow, so please contact me soon if you are interesting in bidding. UPDATE: Amazon and Ebay earnings stats are in for the first day of the new month, the tenth. Amazon made $7.63 for the day and Ebay made $1.05. Multiplying this day's revenue by 30 would bring the monthly revenue to $260, an increase from the last day's reporting. Please contact me with any expressions of interest, as the winner of this auction will be declared tomorrow. Thanks, - Kezz |
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| | #4 |
| Kezz Bracey War Room Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Australia
Posts: 1,291
Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 323
Thanked 599 Times in 291 Posts
| SOLD!! We have a BIN buyer now. Thanks very much to all those who were interested in the site. Cheers, - Kezz |
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| Tags |
| entertainment, exceptional, growth, opportunity, page, ranked, revenue, site, traffic |
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