Hello!
Happy 2022.
It has a been a minute, but here I am with another newsletter.
Where have I been?
Oh, you know…
Things fell apart in December, LIKE THEY DO. I was gonna just take a week or two off to try and find my way back from the metaphorical edge of literal existential crisis. It took some sorting out, I’ll spare you all of the blah blah but things are finally a little more stable, mental health is a little healthier, and I found myself with the bandwidth to write these email (and ENJOY writing these emails) again, so here we are.
Speaking of mental health and productivity, I have another podcast episode FINALLY coming out this week with Nick Eubanks, who is amazing, and we speak fairly candidly about mental health, productivity, ADHD, and MORE. Subscribe to the podcast or just follow me on twitter @seanmarkey because I’ll definitely talk about it there!
Here’s what you can expect in today’s newsletter:
What I’ve been up to for the last few months, and what I’ll be up to in the future months
I bought an ecommerce store because I hate myself and want to be unhappy
JuiceMarket news, if you actually remember wtf that is (if not, scroll down for a surprise)
How I would build a website for sale on JuiceMarket (that I will hide the URL of once it sells)
The expired domain SEO course update
Hiring an SEO assistant person, are you in?
This is what I’ve been up to for the past several months
I tried a lot of things last year to make a living. The move to Vermont from Utah really depleted a lot of it, and I showed up in The Green Mountain State with no momentum and no steady gig to generate cash. I tried to do several different things, from starting an agency (Fail) to working with a friend of mine on his portfolio of sweet affiliate sites (also Fail).
I’m beginning to sense a theme here…
Everyone is the worst and lets me down constantly and that’s why I’m failing.
…wait a second, it might be the opposite of that. Further research clearly needed.
I took a full-time job for the first time since I worked at Smash Digital.
This is similarly a good job that works well with how I work, working for a super smart friend of mine. I’m working as the Director of SEO for a development shop ahead of him selling the business later this year. Among other things, I will be helping him build an in-house SEO team. I’m sure that’ll lead to something interesting things to write about on here throughout the year…
I am now a community advocate at Traffic Think Tank.
What does that mean?
Each week I write an AMAZING thread on some super tactical piece of SEO, or some very thought-provoking theory.
I’ve mentioned before that I love Traffic Think Tank. I’ve been a member since it opened in October 2017 (I remember this date because I signed up in the hotel room while I was in Bangkok Thailand at a Dynamite Circle conference).
If you want to see what I’m up to there, you have to be a member.
Not a member yet?
Join with my affiliate link and help support my domain name addiction.
Like clicking buttons instead of links?
Even if you don’t use that link, you should still join, I’ve gotten so much value from that community it’s bonkers.
Other than those two things:
Just trying to rebuild a foundation of good work habits, good financial health, and good literal health. That, and just trying to figure out like, what my whole deal is.
I bought an e-commerce store because I hate myself and never want know happiness again
One things I’m famous for among everyone that knows me is making good decisions that always work out in the long term.
Just kidding. The opposite of that!
In November a site that I have been watching for a while because I REALLY LIKED THE BUSINESS showed up on Flippa for sale, at a price vastly reduced price. I had already been in touch with the owner earlier in the year (July) because I was really interested in being an affiliate.
I rang him up and was like, “yo, I want to buy this business, let’s make something happen.”
Will I tell you the niche? Absolutely I will not. It sells a physical product DTC—I’m not fucking around with Amazon.
Will I tell you the purchase price? It’s mid-five-figures: one big payment in November and then three small-but-equal payments across December, January, and February. I got a loan from the bank for the big down payment.
Even with seller support, it has been a huge task to get a handle on the business, understand the dynamics of the supply chain, and step into an already-running business like stepping straight into a fucking metal pole while I’m walking because I’m not watching where I’m going.
I’ve hired two PT people to help run this biz: someone to help with shipping/fulfillment, and someone to help round-up the orders, send them out for manufacturing, as well as customer support.
I love the business, think it can be WILDLY success when I get my feet under me and can grow it. It’s the first actual e-com biz I’ve owned, and my first time working on Shopify. Probably this won’t be the last time you hear about it…
Juice Market is slightly less abandoned these days…
Phew, I’m just bringing all of my failure out into the sunlight. Why am I like this?
Quick back-story: I started Juice with Travis Jamison and An Ly in late 2020. It was an amazing idea, but there were a few flaws that persisted and we never solved for. It kind of faded away slowly—especially when I moved last June. The biggest problem was:
We wanted to build an open marketplace where people could list their shit for whatever price and let the market decide what would sell.
The problem with that: people had to wade through pages of absolute garbage and overpriced names to find something worth buying.
There was also a lack of information about how to build and grow a site on an expired domain that people were interested in learning about, but I was just too busy with everything to really do anything here.
But now, things are changing!
First, Travis is no longer with Juice, as he has a full million things going on.
Second, I’ll be paying more attention to the site going forward, working to make it better, curating the names, engaging the email list, etc. You know, like a proper marketer (sometimes).
Finally, the biggest update: I’m going to be changing the focus of what Juice Market has in its marketplace slightly: from just a place to pick up expired domains (which there are tens of thousands of and most of them are bad and worthless), to selling domains with a site attached, a site with some age and some content and some rankings—it won’t sell on Empire Flippers or even Motion Invest, but it still has a lot of value to smart SEOs as an aged site. This kind of sale represents about 90% of the inventory we’ve sold, and it’s what I personally like to buy, so it makes sense to lean into this.
It’ll take a while. I’ve got A LOT going on, but eventually Juice will be the place you go to find a site for sale that’s not making any money, but COULD be if someone owned it and didn’t absolutely abandon it. :)
So stay tuned! Very exciting.
***SPONSORSHIP MESSAGE***
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How I would build out MikesGym.org, for sale on Juice Market
(I will remove the domain from the public post once it sells, if it does, to protect privacy).
This is how I would set the site up for a quick flip inside of 6 months. I also speak a little bit to how I’d play the long game with this one, but mostly we’re talking about a quick flip here.
PLEASE NOTE: this is not investment advice. This is not a guaranteed win. Google is a bitch and everything might go to shit. Do your own due diligence and stuff, you can’t come to me in two months if you buy this and Google slaps it back to the icy purgatory of page 11. That’s SEO for you…
This is an expired name, in Oct 2020 it went for just under $5k at auction. It’s an incredibly old site, with steady archive.org saves dating back to 2002, and looks to have been fairly steadily updated throughout. Here’s a riveting post from 2006:
It has a ton of great links, like:
Crossfit.com - DR 87
MensJournal.com - DR 85
BodyBuilding.com - DR 82
BostonMagazine.com - DR 81
RogueFitness.com - DR 75
And ranking for a ton of new keywords, like:
best crossfit grips (450 s/m) - 5th
how to protect knees on elliptical (150 s/m) - 4th
how to get rid of hip dips fast (500 s/m) 13th
how much do ellipticals weigh (50s/m) - 7th
(and a BUNCH of keywords about how to get a smaller rib cage, which is wild).
All the keywords rankings are new in Ahrefs, so this site is picking up some steam:
So, two things are very clear to me:
This site has some serious momentum
Google loves this site for info keywords
It is not ranking for a lot of review terms (because there’s only one review post and a couple of buying guides—which are both more competitive keyword categories). In my opinion, even though the price to acquire this is on the high-but-not-unreasonable side ($7k at the time of writing), I think there is so much low hanging fruit. Here’s what I’d do.
First:
I would write a bunch of new content targeting lower competition keywords, stuff like “how to get rid of hip dips” that no one is heavily competing for. In the gym/health space (be careful of YMYL topics), there are a TON of these. Just find a big gym/exercise site and do a content gap analysis on Ahrefs, sort by keyword competition lowest to highest, and start assigning topics.
Then I’d interlink the shit out of everything. Easy wins.
Second:
I wouldn’t focus on reviews/buying guides for a while, as it’ll take a bunch of work and money to start getting some rankings. I’d focus on getting ads on the site, as there don’t appear to be any (I tried checking on a browser where I don’t have ad blocking stuff installed, so pretty sure this is true, but maybe not?).
If you already have access to some of the big ad networks based on other sites in your portfolio, this is an even bigger no-brainer acquisition.
Put up ads, start generating revenue.
Third:
You’re going to be getting some solid traffic from the content you’ll start ranking for in the next few months. I’d find a compelling affiliate offer or two (NOT AMAZON) to put in the side bar or at the bottom of posts and rotate through several until you find some that resonate with the audience and get some action.
Fourth:
Build some fresh links. Keep the site looking good to Google, looking sexy. No shitty links, spend some dough or some time to get some decent links. Spread them around to your posts targeting some juicy keywords.
Fifth:
Build an email list with some optin-bait and send a weekly routine or weekly exercise tip or whatever to those that sign up. Include a link to an affiliate offer that you found resonates from earlier in each email. Don’t need to overthink this…
All of that will keep you busy, but it’s not impossibly hard or expensive—the biggest cost will be the content.
After several months of this the site should be making some money—I’d be shocked if it didn’t AT LEAST make a few hundred a month off ads and some affiliate offers. You can either flip it for a nice multiple (the longer you hold, the higher you can sell it for) or decide to keep it, at which point you can start searching for a much better domain name to 301 this to (because MikesGym.org isn’t great).
I’d invest in an amazing brand if I was planning to keep this site for a few years to try and build a monster fitness site, and then 301 it to the new brand and keep executing on content, staying as far away from real health topics as possible (unless you wanna invest in some expert medical doctors to write some content for you or something, but that is a different journey. Worth it, if you’re playing the long game, but a very different journey). In this long game scenario I’d also start going heavy on “best X” or “X review” type of keywords and all the link building campaigns that’ll go with targeting those KWs.
That’s it. That’s how I’d build on MikesGym.org if I was acquiring it. Maybe if no one picks it up, I will. It seems like a pretty straightforward win.
My expired domain SEO course update
Woof. Speaking of failures… I definitely lost the momentum I had on this thing as everything else sort of… fell apart.
But I seem to have gotten my MOJO back
and am making vids again. Three are going up today, and I’m recording more this week.
It’s not a pretty course. Production value is 0/10. But it gives you all the info I have on how to find, buy, build, and grow with expired domain SEO.
As soon as the course is done it’ll be for sale again. Thanks to everyone that pre-ordered it, and stay tuned if you’re interested in taking it, I’ll let my newsletter know the soonest when it’s ready to take new students, so stay subscribed.
Do you want to do some SEO bullshit with me and also get paid for it?
Finally! Last thing for this super long newsletter: I’m looking to hire a part-time person to help me with some SEO things, like throwing a site up on a newly acquired domain (not writing content, just Wordpress stuff), doing a little bit of research, helping organize previously done research, doing other SEO shit that I can’t think of, but you’ll probably find it valuable to know how to do?
Basically, the pay is not great but it exists, and you’ll learn a lot and get to see what I’m working on right up close.
If you’re thinking of applying, here’s the basics of what you need:
basic understanding of Wordpress (install a theme, make and format a post, etc)
basic understanding of SEO (why links are important, what I mean when I say “internal linking”), etc. Just the basics!
solid command of the English language. Gotta be able to communicate…
at least SOME overlap with US business day (either morning or evening eastern time)
willingness to do some stupid-ass SEO experiments to learn from, even if they’re probably doomed
That’s it!
Looking for maybe… 40-60 hours per month? Pay will start $1000. You’ll also be paid, intangibly, with an increased knowledge of and experience with SEO, and we’ll chat in my private Slack.
Great opportunity for someone with some availability, some familiarity with Wordpress and SEO, and who wants to learn some advanced SEO.
To save my poor inbox, please click this link to fill out some brief info.
I will only be able to reply to those that may be a good fit, sorry! I’ll remove this sign-up link when I’ve found someone to work with, so if there’s no link, I’m good!
~
Well that’s it!
Be on the lookout for the release of the podcast with Nick Eubanks hopefully on Wednesday. Subscribe to the Rank Theory podcast in iTunes or whatever app you use, or follow me on Twitter to get an update.
Otherwise, LMK: what did you think of this email. Highlights, lowlights, inbetweenlights—definitely love hearing from people.
Thanks!
Sean | RankTheory