It’s a smaller site, and one that I run SEO experiments on to test different theories before trying them on my bigger sites.
This article will specifically let you in on why I picked the baby niche, how I’m building the site, and what I plan on doing to grow it.
Why I Started BabySchooling.com (And Then Restarted it)
I started BabySchooling.com in June of 2017.
At the time, I had just started to see a tiny bit of earnings come in from my pest blog, which motivated me to start a 2nd site and grow it simultaneously.
That was the plan at least…
I ended up side lining the baby blog to focus 100% of my effort on growing 1 site instead of dividing my attention and focus between 2.
Then after 2.5 years, I picked it back up in November of 2019 to run SEO experiments on it, and really I still genuinely like baby as a niche because:
- There are a TON of products to promote
- There are established affiliate programs outside of Amazon Associates
- There is a lead generation component (baby sitters)
- There are big sites, small sites, and medium sites having success in the niche
- There are lots of informational content topics to create content around to generate revenue from display advertisements
- Getting niche specific links would be very easy, so cost of links should be a bit lower
- Finding writers who are experts in baby care will be extremely easy, which means my cost of content will be really low
At the same there are some drawbacks to the niche such as:
- There is A LOT of competition in this niche, with seemingly everyone having an opinion on proper baby care
- Baby is dangerously close to the health niche, which has me worried that I’d need to build a crap ton of strong links to compete for profitable keywords
Overall, the pros outweighed the cons with this site, and I see enough opportunity that I feel comfortable to re-launch it, so here I am working on it again as we speak!
How I Built BabySchooling.com
As you know from the previous section, I started BabySchooling.com in 2017 alongside my pest site.
I published about 20 articles on it initially but quickly came to the realization there’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to work on this AND my pest site AND have a full-time job as an accountant because I was still working don’t forget!
So, instead of dividing my attention between two projects, I decided to put the baby site to the side and focus 100% of my effort on the pest site. I knew that letting the baby site age until I’d be ready to pick it back up would probably benefit me later on anyway.
Fast forward to November of 2019, after the sale of the pest site and with the new experience and wisdom gained, I definitely feel much more confident and ready to enter a saturated niche like baby and find success.
And again, I like the Baby niche for the same reason I hate it. Every single mom and dad with a child is essentially a niche expert. This means theres a ton of competition, but there is also a ton of supply for decent writers, which brings the cost of content way down and leaves more budget to build stronger backlinks.
So to compete, I deployed my trusty “hub and spoke” model of site architecture and I built out the blog creating hubs of content around the most popular baby products like “baby monitors” and “baby carriers”.
My spokes would target the longer tail phrases of those products like “best baby carriers for breastfeeding” and “best baby walkers for tall babies”.
Below is my mind map of BabySchooling.com, which I use to help outline and visualize how the site is going to look as content is published.
As with my other sites, you can see it follows a relatively flat structure organized by baby product. In the baby walker hub, you can see how I go a level deeper and split that hub into types of baby walkers.
The reason for this “hub and spoke” model is to create topical relevance around baby walkers such that Google sees my site as an authority on the subject.
As a result… this strategy allows me to compete and make money on a very competitive niche term like “baby walker”. For example, below you can see I am ranking #1 for “best baby walker for tall babies”.
Which generates me daily traffic that looks like this…
That’s between 40 and 60 daily sessions on a keyword that’s only supposed to have 30 MONTHLY searches per popular SEO tools like AHREFs or SEMrush.
This right here is EXACTLY how I am going to compete in a saturated niche like baby and how I am building the site.
And it’s working…
As I write this post on May 2nd, 2020, here’s what the analytics look like for the entire site over the last 12 months.
That’s about 67,000 sessions over the last 12 months, and to-date, I’ve generated about $1,900 in revenue from this blog.
About 90% of that traffic/revenue was generated in the last 4 months, which is a result of the recent content push and linkbuilding effort I’ve been rolling out.
If you’re a frequent viewer of my public income reports, you’ll know that I bought LoveLiveGrow.com (screenshot below), a different parenting site with a strong backlink profile for $6,000 and merged it with BabySchooling.com to re-launch the site.
I had it in my mind that I wanted to re-launch the site soon, but I just didn’t know when. While browsing a private blogger Facebook group, the previous owner posted she was looking to part ways with it. After looking it over, I noticed it had high-quality backlinks pointing to it, so I knew it could be a good opportunity to merge it with BabySchooling.com and super charge the content I’m trying to rank.
Remember when I mentioned I’d be using BabySchooling.com as a place to run SEO experiments? Well this is one of them. I’ve never actually bought a site and merged it with another site until this moment, so I was nervous I’d mess something up or throw $6,000 of my own money out the window.
Well, it turned out to be an amazing decision.
In the below analytics screenshot, you can actually see the exact moment I merged the two sites together and its effect on traffic growth.
As a result of increased traffic, earnings from the site is going up month after month .
And because LoveLoveGrow.com was already enrolled in Mediavine, a premium display ad network, my site BabySchooling was able to auto-enroll in Mediavine as well even though I was under the required 25,000 sessions per month threshold to get in, further increasing my earnings.
To give you a sense of earnings growth, below is a screenshot from the last 90 days of earnings from my Amazon Associates dashboard, and you can see a gradual increase in clicks and orders month after month.
So the SEO test was a success and the merge was a success and the re-launch was a success. Now it’s time to grow it!
How I Plan On Growing BabySchooling.com
As you can see, baby is 100% a niche you can make money in as an affiliate even though it appears to be hyper competitive in the surface.
So how do I plan on growing it from here?
Well because my time is limited I’ve actually decided to partner with someone to help with day-to-day execution publishing content and building links.
Initially I was skeptical to partner with anyone on a site, but these guys were professionals. It also made it easier when they explained to me how they were expert linkbuilders, but they didn’t know much about keyword research or building affiliate sites. This made it a win-win and perfect team effort to grow the site.
And this way I can focus more of my time on LearningJewelry.com and my other projects I have brewing but still have BabySchooling growing in the background.
I’ll still be involved in high-level SEO strategy deciding which keywords we target and how to continue growing revenue, but I’m not actually working with writers or building links for this site anymore.
That said, here’s how I plan to go BabySchooling:
- Look for additional affiliate partners
- Leverage the experience of my new partners to build strong backlinks and outrank my competitors
- Publish more content
- And build more backlinks
Thanks to the partnership we’ve already got some early wins under our belt with a brand new link from Parents.com (DR 86). Check it out!
This is just one link we’ve secured with many more like it coming down the pipe. With links like these, I have no doubt we’ll be able to compete with some of the bigger players in the baby niche in due time.
What This All Means For You
Like I mentioned at the beginning of the article, my intention with sharing this site publicly is to teach aspiring bloggers how a site is built and all the little things I do to grow it.
On top of that, I’m also using BabySchooling.com as marketing for my personal brand and this site “ShaneDutka.com”.
The great thing about SEO and teaching people to blog, is that it’s really easy to prove you know what you’re talking about when you can prove it with a real site.
And truthfully, I can think of no better way to help the most people build their own blogging businesses but also help build my consulting business at the same time then by sharing BabySchooling.com with the world.
That said, I’m not giving you a pass to copy my site and its content (please don’t do that), but look at it, learn from my strategy, watch my videos, and hopefully it inspires you to build something of your own and eventually hire me to help you build it 🙂
Questions, thoughts, ideas you’d like me to test on BabySchooling.com, drop a comment down below and let me know!