This was the fourth update in my Niche Site Duel series from 2010, where I was building a small niche site about learning guitar alongside Pat Flynn's parallel project. At this point, the site had been live for a few weeks and I had done very little promotion. My virtual assistant was still rewriting articles for the site a few at a time, and I had not even set up the affiliate tracking IDs correctly.
In other words, it was a typical part-time entrepreneur situation: moving slowly because life kept getting in the way.
The Traffic Reality of a Brand New Niche Site
The traffic numbers were essentially nothing. Most of the visits were coming from people reading about the Niche Site Duel on my main blog and typing in the URL directly. That is not real traffic — that is curiosity traffic from an existing audience.
But there were a few interesting signals. I was starting to see a tiny trickle of organic search traffic. Someone had found the site searching for “Silverhill guitar knobs” — a keyword I had never targeted. That is one of the beautiful things about having content indexed in search engines: you always end up ranking for terms you never anticipated.
I was also seeing one or two clicks on affiliate links, though I had no idea if these were from real potential buyers or just people exploring the site. And since I had not set up the affiliate IDs properly, those clicks would not have generated commissions anyway.
What This Teaches About Early-Stage Sites
Looking back at this update from a 2026 perspective, the core lesson still holds: new sites take time to gain traction. Whether it is 2010 or 2026, Google needs time to discover your content, assess its quality, and decide where to rank it. The timeline has changed — modern sites with good content and proper technical SEO can sometimes see results faster than in 2010 — but the principle of patience remains.
The other lesson is about expectations. If you launch a niche site and check your analytics after two weeks expecting meaningful traffic, you will be disappointed. Early-stage sites are about building a foundation: getting content indexed, establishing your site structure, and creating the content that will eventually attract search traffic.
The most important thing you can do with a new site is keep publishing quality content consistently. Do not obsess over analytics in the first few months. Focus on building a content library that serves your target audience, and the traffic will follow.
Hi Mark , hadn’t been on your blog in a while and just came across this challenge. Very neat idea. I love reading about your approach to this, building the site w/ minimal time investment and outsourcing most of it. This model would make it very easy to scale this and turn it into a pretty profitable little business.
If you can, it may be interesting to see you document how much time you personally have invested in this.
Susanne
P.S. Hope to see you again in Jan. at NAMS.
Great idea — time and money need to be documented. So far, I have spent far more time messing around with documenting the process and writing blog posts than I have spent on the site. I spent about an hour on keyword research and about another hour checking out the affiliate offers in the space. I spent half an hour buying PLR and about another hour giving instructions to the VAs. I need to spend another hour or two looking at the site and writing instructions to the VAs today. So, let’s say 5 hours of time so far.
As for the cost — less than $100 total so far I think. I will have to document that in more detail.
Thanks,
Mark
Awesome. I’m looking forward to seeing how this pans out and how quickly you recoop your investment. $100 really isn’t all that much for a new little stream of income.
Me too! I agree that $100 is a pretty small investment in the grand scheme of things.
And yes — I do have a NAMS ticket for January. Now all I need is permission from my wife to attend! 🙂
Wonderful. Looking forward to seeing you again.
If you’re already getting traffic for Silverhill Guitar Knobs maybe they have a affilate program that you can tap into.
Are your VA’s using an article spinning software?
Thanks for the update!
Definitely – I use TBS http://www.masonworld.com/recommends/bestspinner
Mark,
You always talk about your VA… i was wondering…. do you only have one VA working for you ?
I always have at least one full-time VA offshore (I have 3 right now but am shrinking that later this year). For content, I have a part time writer and a part time transcriptionist. I also have a part time web designer and a part time perl programmer “on staff”. For part time VAs, “on staff” means hourly rates are agreed ahead of time and they just bill me as work is completed.
So, if I want to do something, I just enter the task in my project management software and assign it to a VA.
What project Management system do you use ?
Interesting following the progress as it happens, shame we can’t filter out visitors from this blog to get a sense of the ‘real’ effect your work is having but it’s going to be fascinating to watch anyway.
Well, we will get some idea by splitting out organic search traffic versus direct traffic. I need to add the blog to my Google Analytics account so we can get some good data.
Hey Mark,
I’m a new reader here (originally heard of your site from the podcast with Pat), and I’m a fellow niche site duel participant. Glad to see you are getting some traffic, but like you, I’m also seeing most of my traffic from people just curious about the niche site duel.
Oh, and here’s a kick in the pants you need – Set up your affiliate link!! It takes 2 seconds, and who knows, you may be missing out on sales right now. 🙂
Best of luck,
Eric