I’ve been covering a lot of material about buying and selling websites on my blog because one of my only business goals this year was to buy $100,000 worth of websites. I also think there are a lot of opportunities to make money in this space because regardless of Google algorithm changes as long as there is an internet there will be websites making money. One of the main things I look for when I buy a website is how much work it will take for me to run it. Ideally I want to find websites that require minimal upkeep or that can be outsourced to run with minimal involvement from myself. If I have to be writing daily blog posts for a cooking blog I purchased two weeks ago, while I’m negotiating price with an owner of a vintage mustangs website I’ll never be able to fully scale this business model and neither will you.

Why CopyCatCrafts.com Was A Great Purchase

(See past blog posts on this case study: Start Here, Then Part 1 and Part 2)
I’ve already discussed how important it is to buy websites that are easy to manage and CopyCatCrafts.com was the perfect example that fit my criteria. When I bought the website there was already a terrific editor involved that I could pay to help run this website. I pay her a very nice hourly rate to help run this website and she does a great job. Some websites can be managed for a lower price than what I’m paying but with CopyCatCrafts the quality of what is shared on the website is most of what makes it so successful and helps to drive the traffic so I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that. Plus I like working with this editor too which is always nice to bounce ideas off her.

Future Plans For CopyCatCrafts.com

I had a list of things I planned to do to increase the income on the website that I’ve mentioned in past blog posts and even though I haven’t spent much time implementing all of the ideas the website still continues to generate a nice income. The biggest things I want to focus on in the future are better monetizing the highest traffic pages on the website with additional affiliate links, split testing more CPC advertising solutions and to start offering high quality products for sale to the email list members. After I’ve done these things I’ll write another follow up blog post to share my results, but listed below I’ve put together more details on the income split and history since I first purchased this website.

Total 4 Month Income Graph For CopyCatCrafts.com

Rivit Media Total Income: $881.79

You’ll notice that Rivit Media has dropped a bit from the July and August highs. I’ve been told by my account manager that late Q4 is their best quarter, so I’m expecting November and December to be much higher income. Rivit uses my Adsense code as back fill when they don’t have more premium deals with advertisers so in October they just must not have had many deals with advertisers.

Google Adsense Total Income: $332.39

I didn’t put Adsense onto the website until late July, but in August I put in an additional Adsense unit that was a 468 x 60 unit just beneath the headline of all of the blog posts, this one new unit has contributed to about half of the income. I could be more aggressive and put in a 336 x 280 adsense unit in that location, but there is a fine line between making money and too much advertising hurting the user experience especially when this website is less focused on Google organic search traffic and more reliant on users sharing the website. I will do more testing with Adsense sometime soon.

Vibrant Media In Text Advertising Total Income: $806.53

The in text advertising income from Vibrant Media was more than double what Google Adsense provided! (Are you seeing this Pat, Spencer, Jeremy and Justin / Joe? Time for you guys to try riding more than one pony on your niche sites. Just mention my name when you sign up ;)). Now I should mention that you need to have much higher page view counts to run Vibrant Media and I know that some smaller Adsense earners wouldn’t qualify, but I just wanted to toss a friendly jab out at a few of my friends and fellow bloggers. Now would also be a good time to mention that most of them make a lot more money on Adsense than I do though lol like Spencer for example.

Vibrant Media Display Advertising Total Income: $169.64


This is a new advertising option I just recently added. Basically I noticed a second column for earnings data that appeared one time inside my Vibrant Media dashboard. So I contacted my Vibrant Media rep to find out what it was about and if I could try using it on my website and I was able to test it out on a trial period. I can’t remember how long my trial is supposed to go on for, but in any case this is the little bar you see at the bottom of the page when you go to CopyCatCrafts.com. Again, this is additional income that I was able to generate without doing anything extra except send an email a few months ago to see if I could test it out.

Overall Income Impressions:

Rivit Media was the only income source on the website when I bought CopyCatCrafts.com and as you can see it doesn’t even contribute to half of the overall total income since I took it over. If you see a website is only making money from one income source you can see by this example that it’s entirely possible to buy that website, add in some other income sources and make more money without having to increase traffic. Boo yah!

New Copy Cat Crafts Case Study Updates:

Update: Since I wrote this blog post in October 2011 I’ve done several case study updates that I urge you to read if you want to do well with this internet business model:

Introduction – How To Buy A Website
Part 1 – Two strategies to employ after you acquire a website
Part 2 – How I drastically increased the income
Part 3 – Long term income case study results (You are reading this now)
Part 4 – $4,000 Investment Paid Off
Part 5 – How To Buy Websites And Profit In Less Than 12 Months