Our new Website: An thorough progress report After 2 Months

It has been quite a while considering that I’ve written a post on Goats On The Road. It’s not because I stopped loving this site. This fantastic blog and the community that comes with it will always be my pride and joy.

But I’ve started another web site and today, I thought I’d share a bit about it. 

It’s pretty much brand new, at just two months old, but it’s already seeing some extraordinary successes.

In this post, I’m going to share with you why I made a decision to start another website, how I’ve managed to grow the site so quickly, how much it’s earning, and what my goals are with the site in the future.

Why Did I start another Website?

When we started this Goats On The road travel blog, we had no idea what we were doing. It was way back in March (March 10th to be exact) of 2012.

Dariece and I were travelling around the Philippines and trying to work on the blog in between beach beers and long bus rides.

One of the first photos taken of me “blogging” in El Nido, Philipines 2012
We never could’ve thought of that this blog would have done so well.

It’s afforded us business-class travel around the world, extraordinary all-expenses-paid trips in some luxurious destinations, and a lot more extraordinary experiences than I can remember.

All of this was without knowing anything about blogging when we started.

This blog did so well in fact, that we didn’t bother starting another web site or working on other projects.

Why would we?

We hardly ever worked a lot more than 10 hours per week, the site was earning a lot more than we ever would’ve made at our full-time jobs in Canada, we were getting complimentary travel, living a crazy exciting lifestyle, and we saw no way that any of this could stop.

But then the world changed.

Suddenly a pandemic swept the globe and people’s idea of travel changed overnight. nobody was searching “where to stay in Rome”, instead they were searching “how to cancel my trip to Rome”.

How swiftly things can change…
This had a direct impact on this blog, its incomes and its ability to continue functioning as it was.

Luckily for Goats, we have an fantastic community with this blog.

The people who follow this blog aren’t just travellers. They’re also digital nomads seeking to work remotely, find side hustles, research cool travel jobs, and earn money online by doing things like teaching English online and starting blogs.

As a result of our varied audience, while our travel traffic plummeted, our remote work traffic began to grow.

When people are at home, one of the first things they think of is new projects they can take on.

This indicates that Goats On The Road, while absolutely affected by the pandemic, is doing just fine. 

But still, the sudden shift in the global travel landscape was a wakeup call for us.

Yes, we’re very delighted to say that we’ve diversified our blog income streams and we don’t just earn money from ads, or solely from travel referrals, press campaigns, or hotel stays. but having just one web site isn’t diversified enough. We needed to do more.

So out of the chaos that was COVID in early 2020, I made a decision to start another web site and on March 20th, my new site was born. exactly 8 years and 10 days after we started Goats On The Road.

Working in our living room office in Grenada with a random cat who showed up. We named him Marvin.
In just 2 months I’ve been able to grow it to a DA 21 (more on that later), it already gets Google traffic, it is starting to rank for some of my targeted keywords, I’ve had clicks on my affiliate links, I was used my first press campaign, and it’s growing very quickly.

We have a lot of bloggers who read this blog and a lot of people who have always wanted to start their own web sites but have never got around to it.

So I figured this was a good opportunity to share with you the struggles and successes that come with building a new web site and online service from scratch.

Read More: Why We started a new web site during Lockdown

Why is it my Website?

Well, because Dariece and I share everything, nothing is just mine of course ?

But this site is my new side project.

Dariece has been so fantastic (and successful) in keeping Goats On The road and our other travel site running so that I can work on this new passion project.

Because I’ve taken sole responsibility for its growth, and it’s something that I’m interested in, I’ve got into the routine of calling it mine.

I love building web sites and I’ve built a lot of sites for other people over the years, but it was time that I started a new site from scratch.

What is The new Website?

It’s a secret. I know, that’s annoying, but hear me out.

I’m using this new web site as a case study so that I can show the students in my Beginner blogger course and my advanced SEO course just how effective the tools and methods in those courses are.

I’m using the exact steps I show in those two courses to grow this site. nothing more, nothing less.

I do want it to be authentic though so that if other people follow the exact steps, they’d have the exact same results.

Most people don’t have a blog like Goats On The road with 400,000+ readers a month (pre-COVID), so if I was to share the web site on this blog, it would immediately get a ton of traffic, ultimately skewing the stats on the new site.

So… I’m keeping it a secret.

But I will be revealing the web site after 6 months of working on it, so if you want to be informed when the big reveal happens, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.

What I can tell you is that the web site is not in the travel space.

Some big early Wins

I’ve only had the web site for 2 months at the time of writing this post, and already it’s doing quite well. When starting any new project, it’s the wins (big or small) that help to keep you motivated.

Here are some of the wins I’ve had considering that starting this new site.

It’s reached DA 21

DA (Domain Authority) is a ranking from 1 to 100 and it ranks web sites based on how good their SEO potential is.

For non-geeky, non-blogger types, this generally indicates that the higher the number, the a lot more chance the site has of getting traffic from Google.

Working on my new web site from lockdown in Lisbon
DA21 might not sound a lot on a scale of 1 to 100, but for a site that’s only 2 months old, this is incredible. In fact, the site reached that level on March 16th, just 7 weeks after I started it.

To give you a bit of comparison, it took us a lot more than 2 years to get that far with Goats On The Road, and today, GOTR has a very solid DA54.

Large DAs like 90-100 are mostly reserved for huge global web sites like Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

Domain Authority is by no indicates the be-all and end-all of a website’s success.

In fact, it has little bearing on how good a web site is overall. but what this number tells me personally is that the site has a solid enough foundation to start getting traffic and to start ranking in Google.

The web site Is getting Traffic

I’ve been working really hard on building up the site (more on how I’m doing that later in this post), and I’m delighted to see that my hard work is paying off.

Slowly, but surely, I’ve started to see traffic coming in from Google, from Pinterest and from some of the other referrals I’ve been building up.

It’s not a lot of traffic, but it tells me that the site is on a good trajectory to grow swiftly over time.

At the time of writing, the site has 1,880 page views and 358 users over the past 30 days, which is very good for a site that’s only 2 months old.

The web site Is starting To Rank

The word “rank” generally indicates that my web site shows up in Google Results.

When I started the site, I choose some queries that I figured I wanted to write articles for, so that when people search those queries in Google, my site might show up.

If I show up in Google search Results, then I have a better chance of getting traffic to the site.

Google accounts for around 90% of web traffic these days, so without Google, sadly, a lot of web owners don’t have a business.

I was targeting around 100 potentially lucrative keywords and I’m delighted to see that my site is starting to show up in search results for those terms and I’m starting to see traffic from Google. 

I’ve published 45 Posts!

The site is only 65 days old and yet it has 45 posts, all of which are in-depth, useful, and around 1,500 – 3,500 words. This is not an easy task to do, but luckily, I’ve had help.

Blog posting schedule On The new Website
I’m going to talk a bit a lot more about how I managed to get 45 epic articles published in 65 days later on in this article.

I’ve Been featured On Some big web sites In My Industry

One of the best things you can do to help a new site grow is to leverage the traffic and audience of a lot more well established websites.

I have spent hours reaching out to different companies in my niche and asking them if I can write for them, if they can interview me, if they can feature me and generally just doing everything I can to get my name out.

I’m delighted to say that after just 2 months, I’ve been able to have some really useful features, which has helped the overall authority of the website.

I’m A Social Influencer

I have a total of 90 followers on all of my social media accounts. just imagine all of that influence! ?

These numbers are very small, but considering I’ve hardly posted on any of my social networks and I’m not focusing in any way on social, this is a good sign. 

What I’m a lot of delighted about is the YouTube subscribers.

I have 21!

This is very few subscribers for sure, but YouTube subs are notoriously hard to gain and I already have a video on the channel with over 500 views. 

This is very tough to do with a brand new channel, so I’m delighted about the potential there. YouTube could be a good earning platform for this particular niche.

People have Clicked On My affiliate Links

Affiliate links are links that trackback to my website. If a reader clicks on one of those links and ends up purchasing on web sites like Amazon or Expedia etc., then as the blogger who referred them, I would get a commission.

I’ve been tracking my affiliate links for this site and while I haven’t had any sales yet, in the past week or so I can see that people have started clicking my links.

This tells me that I’m getting traffic to my potentially lucrative posts, people are clicking the purchase links and I have a good chance of earning some money, once those articles get a lot more traffic.

I’ve received My first press Campaign

When you have a web site in a certain industry, whether it’s a sports website, a tech site or a travel site, there are always companies that are ready to partner with you in hopes that you share their product or service with your audience.

Dariece keeping our other web sites going as I pursue my new passion project
Even though the site is brand new, I was able to work out a press partnership with a company in my industry worth €400.

I’m not getting paid anything for it, but I’m getting the use of those services for free, in exchange for sharing it on my blog and YouTube channel for that site.

It’s something I was already going to spend money on out of my own pocket, so now I can take that €400 and invest it back in the service instead.

The web site has Value

When you build a site with a user-friendly design, build it to a DA21 and start getting some traffic coming in from Google and Pinterest, it has value.

Like when you get land and then build a house on it, the overall value of that property goes up.

In this case, the land is the domain name (www.____.com), and the house is the web site that I’ve built on top of it.

Some examples Of recent web sites available for sale On Flippa
As an example, we purchased the land for Goats On The road in 2012, built the house on it over an 8 year period, and at its height this property was likely worth around $1 million.

You can see that by investing very little in a web site (it costs about $60 to get started), you can build something very valuable.

I had a look at Flippa, a web site where people get and sell blogs, and I checked what other DA21 web sites with very little traffic are selling for in my certain industry. 

I saw that a lot of sites that are not even built up as much as mine have been selling for $2,000 – $5,000. 

I’m not planning on selling the website, but knowing that all my hard work and investments have already added value to my property is a great feeling.

What Are The goals For This Website?

My goal with this site is to start earning an income from it, then scaling it and growing it to a full-on business.

I’m intending to start earning around $500 / month after 6 months.

Will I make it there? At this point the site is earning $0 / month, so I can’t really say, but I hope so.

Once the site is earning $500 / month, it’s proof that the concept is working.

Blogging from a remote island in North Sulawesi, Indonesia
At that point, I would have enough monthly income to invest back into the service to scale its growth. I would hire a lot more writers and an editor to take care of the site’s day-to-day operations.

Then all I would have to do is manage the marketing side of things and the site would generally be on autopilot, growing consistently month on month. 

Once Goats On The road reached $500 / month, it a lot more than tripled annually until it reached a lot more than 60 times that.

I’m not saying that this new site has as much potential as Goats, but I would love to one day see it earning $5,000 or even $10,000 per month, at which point we would also have the option for a $120,000 – $360,000 exit.

How exactly Am I growing This Website?

The cool thing about what I’ve been doing with this new web site is that I’m following exactly what I’ve been teaching people in the Goats On The road WordPress beginners blogger course and complete SEO course for years.

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