Master Plan For My New Content Website

I'm spending my long MLK Jr. weekend building a content website that I believe will eventually make me millions - here's the plan I created & am following to do so. Apologies in advance - I had to censor more of it than I'd like to protect the niche.

REDACTED is a content website (and perhaps also an app?) that provides advice on how to do REDACTED & find REDACTED.

We'll offer advice on a wide range of REDACTED issues - primarily related to REDACTED at first but eventually expanding into other issues that REDACTED experience.

We'll also offer an SEO-friendly "REDACTED guide", so people who want to purchase, i.e., a replacement REDACTED for a REDACTED will have an easy time finding exactly the REDACTED they need, as well as a way to buy it via Amazon.

This document outlines my plans for Traffic, Monetization, Content, & Technology.

Traffic

The initial SEO focus is on going "wide" - meaning that I want to rank for a lot of long-tail keywords like "REDACTED" instead of focusing on trying to rank for "REDACTED" right away.

Avoid sketchy backlinks where possible. If opportunities come around to buy or earn high-quality ones, consider doing so, but stay primarily focused on content.

Initial Target Keywords include

  • REDACTED
  • REDACTED

Traffic Targets (educated guesses)

  • 50k visitors / month (Mediavine Threshold) in 12 months
  • 250k visitors / month in 18 months
  • 1M visitors / month in 36 months.
  • Site as planned will probably top out around ~3MM visits a month.

Monetization

Targeting revenue of 5-7¢/session for this site (assuming MediaVine / AdThrive). If I can hit 5¢ * 1,000,000 sessions a month, that's $600,000/year, almost all of which would flow through to profit.

Revenue Breakdown

  • Use Ezoic Ads To Start.
  • Expect to make 1-2¢/session in revenue from Ezoic.
  • Once you can upgrade to MediaVine (50k sessions/month) or AdThrive(100k pageviews/month), expect more like 3-5¢/session in revenue.
  • Amazon Associates is also a lucrative opportunity.
  • 10% of sessions will click an amazon affiliate link.
  • Plan on a 10% conversion rate once they click an aff link.
  • Average purchase value of maybe $70? (remember - we'll move a decent # of REDACTED, which are big $)
  • Amazon offers a X% commission on REDACTED products.
  • All totals up to ~2-3¢/session in additional revenue.

Content

This is the area that still needs the most thought.

The three competing factors here:

  • Content Pricing
  • Content Volume
  • Content Quality

Getting two of three of these is usually not that hard. Three of three is very tough. Building a stable of reliable writers who know the drill is going to be key.

Probably need to look overseas - we've have had some luck with Pakistanis on Upwork in the past?

Technology

  • No WordPress. I'd have to fight the platform the whole way to get the site structure etc that I want.
  • Build it in Remix /w no client-side react.
  • Keep site design simple, especially to start.
  • Update site via PostgreSQL client in a separate app.
  • Use Upload.io for image resizing & as a CDN.
  • Use Prisma & Postgres. Data models will include: REDACTED
  • REDACTED Articles are mostly the same across each REDACTED, but are stored individually so I can add links to REDACTED, REDACTED, etc. into each article as appropriate.