$52k Website Case Study Part 1
By: Ben Shaffer
Tags: Case Study, Work From Home, Niche Marketing, Internet Marketing, Make Money Online

$52k Website Case Study Part 1

Photo by Max Letek on Unsplash

In this article, I want to give you a quick overview of what I have done so far, where I am now and where I intend to go.

The main aim of this case study is to show you how you can build a niche business without too much effort. Fortunately for me, although perhaps unfortunately for you, I’m not starting off from nothing, as I will be developing a website/business which I purchased. That means, that I already have many of the assets that I will need.

However, I also believe that just seeing the construction of a business from zero to hero should be of a help to you.

This is NOT the first business that I have built, so I have a pretty good expectation of success. I have been working online full time for nearly 20 years, so do already have many of the marketing skills already developed.

What you should see by the end of this case study, is that much of the success to any product or business is creating systems that in some way automate the marketing and driving of quality traffic. That automation could be due to software but can also involve employees who help you, but also do their job by following a system which you have created.

The great thing about this case study, is that there is no ‘make millions online’ course to buy at the end. Nor is there any risk of competition so I can literally let you in to every part of the business and show you anything that may help you.

So, to finish off this segment, let’s answer the three questions which I asked towards the beginning:

What have I done so far?

In around May 2020, I purchased a site for $52k that was earning around $1500 a month profit. I bought it on Flippa and it is in the ‘posture’ niche. I bought it mainly because of the great course content that had been created and the potential income that it had.

Also, because I thought that I could improve the current marketing and convert it into a 6 or 7 figure business that I could either reap the monthly income on or sell on.

The other massive asset that it had/has was a Youtube channel with over 50k subscribers. There are around 100 high quality videos that are driving around 60k views a month and are able to be used to send traffic to a website that I choose.

Currently the business is selling posture courses on two online learning platforms — Udemy and Teachable.

As I expected, the income has reduced because I am no longer do any email marketing as was done before. Or uploading new videos regularly. Also, I am not active in the community.

Where am I now?

I am currently sitting on a reasonably passive income. However, I am also aware that the longer I leave giving the business some love, the more that it will decay.

I have updated the branding from Posture Doctor to Master Your Posture. One of the reasons is that it makes it less reliant on the ‘personality’ of the previous owner who personally made all of the materials. It also opens the door to promote and sell other practicioners courses in the future.

I have a number of expenses per month which is throwing down the money down the drown. This is one of the reasons I am eager to start improving the site as I feel that I can reduce these expenses and give the business more profit.

The main expenses are:

Udemy/Teachable — there is a monthly charge to use each platform. In addition they take a percentage of each sale.

Clickfunnels — this is probably the first one which I should solve. I am currently using them to collect emails from people that go to a domain name which is marketed on Youtube. This could easily be moved to somewhere like Kartra or another membership system.

The other reason I am still paying for this is that I need to take off any of the sales/marketing materials that are currently being used. This is NOT a big job, but is one that actually has to be done…

Cost: $197

Kartra — this is the membership site system that I intend to use. It was not easy to find something that fits into my needs. In short, they are automation and integration with other systems and the ability to do One Click Upsells. In addition, to allow customers to view the course material in an attractive and effective way.

Cost: $97

Mailchimp — This is where the current mailing list is being hosted. I need to move the contacts off from it as well as download all of the emails that have been sent out to the list. Thus I will have content to use in the future. There is nothing difficult about doing this. I just haven’t done it!

For the purposes of automation and other subtle reasons, Mailchimp won’t server my needs going forward for this particular project.

Cost: $47

Active Campaign — This is the main mailing system which I intent on using going forward. I have already imported existing leads.

In addition to the above, I also have or have set up basic Social Media profiles.

There is also a blog about posture which has been set up. From memory it receives about 50 visitors a day, although I haven’t given it any love at all so far.

Going Forward

The truth is, that I haven’t got off my arse developing this business as I have been busy doing other income generating activities. Now that I have a bit more time, I am hoping that I put the time in.

The great thing about this project is that there is a very large chance of success as it is a huge niche, I already have materials, and people will pay for this kind of information.

What I need to do is organize everything together, so that there is a sales system in place which automatically sells to customers and continues recruiting prospect and marketing to current customers.

Once it is running reasonably smooth, I will then start buying traffic — probably from Google and Facebook — and try and both make that profitable as well as scale up.

If you are interested in following my documentation of me building a successful business, please make sure that you follow my profile.

And wish me luck!