Online Success Story:
Christian Fager BestMilitarySurplus.com
Hi, my name is Christian Fager. I started Best Military Surplus to give people a site that can talk in-depth about products that normally only have brief descriptions.
1. When did you set up your website?
Spent about 3 weeks getting the site and initial content ready, officially went live with it on January 1st of 2010.
2. What gave you the idea for this particular niche & website?
Being in the military actually had no weight in this decision. I wanted something with good keywords and products I could talk about. Out of the 10 ideas I wrote down, military surplus had the best keywords at the time.
3. Did you have any experience with online business prior to creating this website?
My first real site was KlingonWeapons.com. I set that site up and followed Lynns strategies to see if SEO and affiliate marketing would actually work. A couple months in I was surprised by the fact that if you do it the right way, it actually does. The niche for that site was very small, so I wanted something with more potential (which led to Best Military Surplus).
4. What did you do for work prior to setting up an online business?
Have been in the military since 2007. Which meant to continue my love of business, I had to do something that could be partially outsourced, and somewhat passive when I am gone (my brother Kerry now helps run the site when I am gone or busy).
5. How did you initially promote your website, and if different - how do you promote it now?
Initially I ran facebook ads to get 'fans', which provided good starting traffic and some sales. After a couple months the clicks from those fans tailed off to very small numbers. Thankfully the SEO was finally kicking in at that point. We have done SEO as the main source of traffic ever since.
6. Is your website profitable? Can you share some basic traffic & profit stats with us?
Yes, not a full-time income yet, but it is consistent.
Traffic avg over the last year has been:
11k visits per month
42k page views per month
Profit avg for the last year:
Adsense - $161/month
Amazon - $100/month
Other - $35/month (CJ, Chitika, Kindle, etc)
7. What are your plans for the site going forward?
- Getting key pages into the top 3 of oogle through high-quality link building.
- Making more use of a newsletter (giving people something they want to open and read).
- Creating some higher-converting pages and SEO'ing them like crazy.
8. What ONE piece of advice would you give someone interested in starting their own niche site or blog?
Start with something small, jump in, and make plenty of mistakes to learn.
Hope this helps you with your business.
P.S. - Lynn's pretty good at this stuff, listen to her.
Christian Fager
http://bestmilitarysurplus.com
-Thank you, Christian and congratulations on your success!
About Lynn Terry
Christian,
You hit the nail on the head!
'Start with something small, jump in, and make plenty of mistakes to learn.'
Regards,
Ivan
Wonderful site. Keep it up and you'll do well. I also like ‘Start with something small, jump in, and make plenty of mistakes to learn.’ As someone who wants to create niche sites eventually, this is great advice Christian!
Be Your Best YOU!
- Seleema
Very inspiring story. I love learning how people are making money online.
I think this income is intermediate start.With some good keywords if we bring our site to first page we get smart income from Affiliate as well as from adsense.
I'm really glad that your website is starting to take off. I think i ran across it once but i can't remember when (it seems very professional and well designed though). Good luck with growing the site.
Great website you've got. Impressive traffic and profit as well.
Great stuff. I love these success stories and yours is a good. Great niche/market selection. I like how you have a huge variety of products to write about. That certainly offers massive traffic and affiliate promotion opportunies. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Christian,
Congratulations, It is so good to hear success stories like yours. Well done and keep at it!
Regards
Catherine
Interesting to see how you integrated amazon.
did you also try to send prospects to the reviews on amazon for 'more information'? Would be interesting to hear your results (if).
Yeah, I've tried many different ways for bringing people to Amazon 'more information', 'check prices', 'see reviews', 'buy now'. There doesn't seem to be a large difference in results. Most likely it's the reasons your giving them to go there that determine it more than the button itself.
Yeah I certainly have all the mistakes down pat! It made building my second website that much easier!
Great interview! Even though it's not a full time income just yet, at least you're progressing! I'll bet it'll get there eventually. And even if it doesn't, you should still be proud of your efforts, because they've paid off nicely. 🙂
Great to see another web business making money. The traffic numbers are really good - just need to find better ways to monetize it.
I like this article, I think it shows very realistic outcomes of what this business is all about. You can't have the mentality that you can just build a website and quit your job the next day, but it takes time and work. Good job!
I'd love to hear more details on your high quality link building 🙂
Even with such high numbers he isn't getting rich on adsense. Better have a product to sell to make a real business.
Great stuff. I love these success stories and yours is a good. Great niche/market selection. I like how you have a huge variety of products to write about. That certainly offers massive traffic and affiliate promotion opportunies. Thanks for sharing.
Great story, gives me hope that I can succeed online.
Nice recap. It seems as though you've built yourself quite a nice site. Anyways, I'm off to see KlingonWeapons.com now. 🙂