It’s my smallest public site, and one that my wife actually runs on the side as a hobby where I help her with picking keywords and monetization.
This article will specifically let you in on why we picked the coffee niche, how we’re building the site, and what we plan on doing to grow it.
Why We Started HotMugCoffee.com
My wife started HotMugCoffee.com in August/September of 2019.
At the time, I was just about done selling my pest site and my wife was feeling motivated to build a site of her own, so I figured it to help her get it off the ground.
I helped her brainstorm a couple ideas and eventually she landed on coffee as a niche she wanted to get into. Coffee is a $74 billion dollar industry, which means there is a crap ton of people buying and selling stuff related to coffee, but similar to baby, coffee is a niche most people can claim to have some experience in, which means there is a lot of competition for profitable keywords. Although similar to baby, I was still fine giving her the green light to move forward because:
- There are a TON of products to promote, which means she can target low traffic/low competition keywords and remain profitable
- There are established affiliate programs outside of Amazon Associates
- 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
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 coffee
- Coffee snobs can spot can spot non-experts easily, so cost of content might have to go up to ensure we product high quality articles
- Not a lot of alternative monetization outside of just promoting coffee products, which isn’t a big deal because there are SO many of them, but still worth noting
- There are a bunch of coffee sites, but not THAT many, which means we might hit a wall with getting niche specific links to grow the site
Overall, the pros outweighed the cons and my wife is passionate about coffee, so we launched it!
I generally recommend people who are just starting out in affiliate marketing to find a niche they wouldn’t mind creating content for free for a while. This is because of how long it takes to get initial traffic on a brand new site. Grinding through those early days until you start making money is critical, and it made sense to do that with my wife’s blog by picking the coffee niche.
How We Built HotMugCoffee.com
As you know from the previous section, I helped my wife start HotMugCoffee.com in August/September right as I was selling my pest site.
To help her get things started, I put together a content plan using my trusty hub and spoke model of creating content.
My hubs would be coffee equipment (i.e., coffee grinders, espresso machines, etc) and my spokes would target the longer tail phrases of those products like “best coffee grinders for your home” and “best coffee beans on amazon”.
Normally I’d put a mind map of the site in this section, but since my wife is running the site, I haven’t created one. I only advise on the keywords she’s considering going after (if she asks me).
To her credit, she’s doing a great job, following what I’ve taught her ranking for some profitable keywords such as “best coffee cups for latte art”
And her overall traffic is going up month after month…
And she’s also built some great links through some guest posting tips and tricks I’m giving her. Check these out…
If you’re a frequent viewer of my public income reports, you’ll know that the earnings from this site is also going up month after month as they tend to do with growing affiliate sites. Below is the last 90 days of Amazon Associates to give you an idea of how HotMugcoffee.com is growing.
At the end of the day HotMugCoffee.com is a great little side project my wife works on when she can, which is just a testament to how amazing blogs are as a side hustle.
How We Plan On Growing HotMugCoffee.com
As you can see, coffee is 100% a niche you can make money in even while working on it part time on the side like my wife is doing!
So how do we plan on growing it from here?
Well, again, my wife is working on this site on the side when she can get around to it. I ‘might’ get more involved at some point in the future, but for now it’s all her and it is more just a side hobby for some extra cash than a site we’re going all in on.
For now the plan is to publish 1-3 pieces per month and just keep the lights on with the coffee site. For writing needs, my wife hired her sister who is also a passionate coffee lover, so we’re good there.
If you’re interested in following a site I’m personally working on, definitely following my public jewelry site or my public baby site.
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.
Even though HotMugCoffee.com is not my most active site, it’s still a good model to see how I help my wife, who is not an SEO or affiliate marketer, build an affiliate site to make money.
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.
I can think of no better way to help the people build their own blogging businesses but then also help build my consulting business at the same time then by sharing HotMugCoffee.com with the world.
That said, I’m not giving you a pass to copy my wife’s site and its content (please don’t do that), but look at it, learn from the 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, drop a comment down below and let me know!