Tackling the cost of starting up and running an affiliate website are typically hidden. You can do things a million ways with every combination of in-sourcing and outsourcing going.
Ok so this is an investors budget, not a bootstrappers budget, just to be clear.
There are typically a few categories of costs:
- Content
- Links
- Social signals
Content says “this is a website”
Links say “this is a website that’s worth ranking”
Social signals say “this website is alive”
The Foundation Investment
Social Profile Setup (300 sites for $250)
Typical websites from around the web have backlinks pointing towards them from social profiles. So setting these up sounds sensible.
The HOTH – Lock My Brand Package
$250 to secure your profiles on a shed-load of websites across the web.
Contextual links from Web 2.0 properties (48 links $250)
Typical sites also get links from bloggers on powerful high authority Web 2.0 properties. So getting some Web 2.0 properties setup with content and links back to your site makes complete sense.
$250 for the Web 2.0 property setup, content creation and they hand over the login details to the sites.
50 Posts of Info and Money content ($1.5k-3.25k)
50 posts, making up about 50,000 words should provide enough of a carpet-bombing of keywords. This volume of content also helps Google establish the website topic with relative certainty.
Service providers will give you prices anywhere between $30-$65 per 1000 word post
So someone like The HOTH or Human Proof Designs can provide you with this.
Alternatively, you can hire your own writer for as low as $15 from UpWork. This reduces the total cost to $750
The Maintenance Cost
Employees
So employees are an alternative to paying service providers.
Say a delivery level employee costs $9,000 what does that equate to when working with service providers.
That’s 300,000 – 138,000 words of content
That’s 100-200 DA 40+ backlinks
Content Provider Comparison
Human Proof Designs – Standard Level
Features:
- English Second Language Writers
- Native English Editor Provided
- Delivered as Word Doc
- Writers Follow HPD content templates
- SEO Focused writing
Notes:
- Content is targeted at affiliate websites
Cost:
$32-37 per 1000 words
Human Proof Designs – Premium Level
Features:
- Native English Writers
- Native English Editor Provided
- XML download available – direct upload with formatting included possible
- SEO Focused writing
- Content is targeted at affiliate websites
Cost:
$65-75 per 1000 words
The Hoth – Blogger
Features:
- U.S. Writers
- Native English Writers
- Will Post Directly to Website for you
- SEO Focused writing
- Content offering not just targeted at affiliate sites
- Would probably need to provide a content template
Cost:
$60-70 per 1000 words
Textbroker
Features:
- Managed Service
Example Affiliate site inputs and results (Case Studies)
Case Study from From Facebook posts
Outputs
This doesn’t include about $1,000 from Ebay affiliates one one of the sites, and around $3600 from advertising revenue from a 3rd site.
Inputs
Vimal Parkash 22 articles target keywords greater than 1000 per month. The rest under 250 on average.
Site one had 71 articles until this month when I added 50 more and have 110 ordered. Site 2 has 546 articles. Articles targeting kw volume over 1000 have around 3,000 words average. Articles targeting KW under 250 have around 1,0000 words each.
Site one has 1/3 info to 2/3 commercial ratio. Site 2 has an 20/80 split. 20% info.
I now outsource all my articles. The first 60 articles on site 1 I wrote, along with over 500 articles on my older site that is a pure info site. I pay $20.00 per 1000 words with Textun.
I am not sure what I would pay for other than what I just shared about outsourcing. I paid for premium theme, use good hosting with Cloudways, and have a premium Content Egg subscription. I did pay for 2 months of Ahrefs at 99 per months. I also have a premium version of Social Warfare plugin for use with Pinterest marketing.
Case Study from HPD blog (Gary 4 month ROI)
https://www.humanproofdesigns.com/gary/
Recommends not just focusing on “best xyz” keywords – think of alternatives with the same intent
This could be a differentiator – as most will follow the basic formula.
Could find alternatives by:
- Scraping competitor sites who rank for “best xyz”
- Reviewing successful affiliate sites people have revealed in any niche
How many articles are required for 1,000,000 visitors?
If a long tail keyword can generate 300 searches a month and you can capture 30% of that traffic that’s 100 visitors per month per long tail keyword. Or 1,200 visitors per year.
Assuming:
- There’s 1 long tail keyword being targeted per article.
- The average article length is 1,000 words
To get 1,000,000 visitors per year you therefore need 1,000,000 / 1,200 = 833 articles
Therefore:
833 x $65 = $54,145
What does 1,000,000 visitors equate to in affiliate income?
Assuming 40% of visitors visit an affiliate link, and 10% of those buy something…
That’s 4% of visitors providing you with an affiliate commission (or 40,000 visitors)
Average Amazon purchase $50 (total value of sold product = $2,000,000)
Amazon commission rate 5.5%
Total income per year = $110,000
Or $9,166 per month
(The above assumptions including; number of visitors clicking an affiliate link, number who buy something, average purchase level and Amazon commission rate are all standard assumptions corroborated by several niche affiliate marketers)
This number doesn’t include potential other forms of income such as Adsense or other Ads platforms that can generate revenue through your site. This is exclusively Amazon affiliate income that’s been calculated.
Summary and ROI
Costs:
employees =$20,000
Content = $27,000 – 54,000
Hosting & Admin = $2,000
Total = $75,000 investment
$110,000 return
100% ROI within 2 years…
These numbers are just numbers. They are however eye-catching numbers.
The real difficulties in generating 1,000,000 visitors and turning them into 40,000 purchasers of $2,000,000 worth of products aren’t explored here – but you can be assured, it’s not just a case of generating volumes of content and doing what everyone else is doing.
I’m sure getting off the ground with this sort of site is relatively simple – once traction kicks in. Pushing on to almost 100,000 visitors a month means you’re most definitely going to compete with some BIG online publications who are established in the market.
Some food for thought…
Update – Ad Revenue Potential
So CPM is the measure that’s typically used here – earning per 1,000 impressions.
With an Ad Network such as Ezoic you can get around $5 CPM (referred to as EPMV)
There’s a low minimum traffic threshold (10,000 visitors per month) which makes this extremely accessible
With an Ad Network such as Mediavine you can earn whopping numbers, with figures in excess of $30 reported.
So let’s do some numbers…
100,000 visitors per month, with each visitor equating to approx 1.5 page views on average is 150,000 impressions.
With an EPMV or CPM of $5 that would be $750 a month
At $30 CPM, that would be $4,500 per month
Total income for the year = $9,000 – $54,000
Somewhere between 10-50% of what you can earn from Amazon Affiliate commissions