Buying An Online Business From Empire Flippers (PART FOUR - Taking Over Operation and Why Google WHY)

It's been 12 months since I closed on my 2019 purchase from Empire Flippers. Here's what happened when the dust settled after migration.

This is part FOUR of this multi-part series about my 2019 Empire Flippers experience. When the other parts are available, I will come back and link them.

Part One: Backstory/WHY

Part Two: Negotiations and Closing

Part Three: Migrations Challenges

Part Four: Running the Business for 12 Months

Part Five: Takeaways/Hindsight is 20/20

Was my decision to invest in a package of websites through Empire Flippers a good idea? 

Ultimately, that’s the question. 

To arrive at that conclusion, people will judge the data (earnings, traffic, trouble) differently. 

They might say that a site where the traffic held stable or even increased over the past 12 months was a good purchase. 

Or, if the sites earned the amount of money that the site was listed at earning consistently.

Or, maybe if I earned all of my money back in the first year. 

I was prepared to accept any one of these options as a sign of my competence and intelligence, so that I could report my success back to my friends and family (and the world at large). 

JUST LOOK AT MY BRILLIANCE!!!! (imagine me saying that with a very cultured British accent)

But as I said before, Google (and the world) had some other ideas.

Oh, the Project Sites.

As I noted previously in this series, I purchased four earning sites, and two project sites were thrown in as a bonus. These project sites were throw-away items for me, I didn’t want them and they contributed no additional value for me to the deal.

I think it was a relief for the seller to unload them because they were costing him money each month in hosting and domain fees and he wasn’t doing anything with them either.

The sites weren’t going anywhere without a ton of investment in time or money. The niches were poorly chosen in my opinion (requiring constant updating due to changes in trends, nothing evergreen, and a very small niche audience). All of the content needed revising and was pretty thin, in my opinion.

I did list the better of the two sites out on Flippa for a few hundred bucks to see if I could unload it quickly, and didn’t get any serious offers that it would make it worthwhile.

Consequently, I let both of these project sites go without doing anything with them. It would have cost me more in time to even try to do the work to see if someone wanted to take them over than I would have made with them. Maybe I could have sold the domains to someone for PBNs or something, but I just really wanted to be done with them.

Purchasing a Portfolio Again?

In hindsight, I don’t think I would consider at all purchasing anything that was more than one, or at most, two sites, at a time. Unless you have a lot of experience (or a team), what that means is that you’ll end up neglecting some of the sites while you focus on others.

If I had a team in place, ready to work on the site, to create content (or to outsource and edit it) and to just do all the THINGS I do every day, then I’d consider a portfolio.

But otherwise, no way, no how. Not for a beginner.

So that leaves me with four sites. 

If you are new to the world of building/buying/selling content websites where the traffic is primary organic Google search, you might not realize that the past 12 months have been a bit…...turbulent. 

It might be painful for some of us to recall the bumps and bruises of the past 12 months. But for those of you who don’t know, Google did THIS to us:

• May the 4th broad core algorithm update

• January 2020 featured snippet deduplication

• January 2020 broad core algorithm update

• December 2019 BERT update (worldwide)

• October 2019 BERT update (called the biggest change to Google search in 5 years)

• September 2019 broad core update

• June 2019 broad core update

Not to mention all the tweaks and adjustments that were made quietly without going to Twitter to make an official announcement (I saw changes in February and March of this year.

Oh yes, did I also mention this little thing that happened in the beginning of 2020….ehem….this GLOBAL PANDEMIC?!?!?!?

Where ad rates around the world crashed through the floor, followed swiftly by Amazon slashing their affiliate earnings percentages?

Leaving content publishers investing their money into ramen noodles and whiskey?

It’s been straight up carnage out there in the past 12 months.

If little ‘ol me could go back in a time machine, I’d tell myself to hold onto that money I wired to the Philippines and wait to invest it instead this spring to take advantage of the volatile stock market recovery.

But I don’t have a time machine. All I have are some glasses that give me 20/20 vision so I can see clearly what happened.

First, were the four sites impacted by any of the Google Updates?

Yep. Sure were.

But what is funny about it is that it felt like a see-saw. I’d see one of the sites roll through an update just fine, while another got slaughtered. Then in the next round, I’d see one recover, maybe even improve past it’s previous performance, while another one got slaughtered. Then in the next round, it would all happen again. 

Seriously, my traffic graphs for the last 12 months look like something I would have created at six years old with an etch-a-sketch. 

What about the pandemic?

You know, the pandemic had an interesting impact on these sites. While people around the world bemoaned traffic losses as countries closed and people could no longer travel or work, two of the sites that I bought in this deal actually got a pretty significant boost right from the get-go of the pandemic drama.

Things have definitely smoothed out traffic-wise, but I didn’t see massive losses in traffic on any of these sites that I can attribute to the pandemic.

Next, even with turbulence, have the sites returned to their original traffic levels?

One of the sites is down, I would say about 25-30% today, from where it was last year. This was originally the top earner of all the sites (for ad revenue), and it was pretty disappointing to see this one fall even a little bit. 

Another of the sites got hammer-slammed, and is down almost 90% or more, Just total annihilation. I wasn’t as sorry about this one, as the RPM for this niche was really, really low. So the loss in traffic makes the hurt seem more than it really is. 

The third of the sites got a pretty major boost, and is up close to 5x the number of visitors in a given day. When I bought this site, it earned very little. Now with its current traffic and the RPM, some days it earns the most ad revenue of any of the sites I have monetized with ads.

The traffic on the last site has just about doubled from where it was last year at this time. This is a fairly little site, so the traffic upswing is cool but not worth throwing a party about.

Why do you think the sites have lost traffic in the updates?

I think the content needs some pretty dramatic improvements. The seller of these sites had a formula that worked for him for years. But I think that it isn’t just enough anymore to punch out as many posts as possible, without considering whether you’ve even helped answer the question, or given the user what it is that they are looking for.

And I can’t say that I didn’t know this would or could be a problem…it was definitely one of the reasons why I wasn’t willing to pay the full listed price for the sites.

Would I be happier if the traffic were stable, without the bumps and bruises?

Sure, I definitely would be. But as these updates continue to roll out, it isn’t just the black hat spammers that are getting sucked down. A lot of folks that I know and respect in the business who are doing everything possible to avoid any chance of impact by Google updates are still getting hit. 

I was concerned about algorithm updates when I made the decision to pursue this deal, and those concerns were sadly realized.

Yay? I was right?!?

I’d rather be wrong in this instance.

What did I do to the sites in the past 12 months?

Well, I’m sad to say that I did exactly what I would now advise people not to do. I was super excited when I took over the sites, that I immediately went to work on them.

And I changed all kinds of stuff. I started working on improving old posts. I started experimenting with different ad unit placements and types. I started creating and posting new content. I added some plugins and removed some others. 

I felt like everything that I was doing was helping. I focused primarily on the main earning site. I figured, if something is working, why not just do more of that.

So I stuck very closely to the SOPs and script and templates provided by the seller and created content that was very similar to what the site already exhibited (though I probably wouldn’t have used that template on any of my other sites). 

I was seeing more traffic, and seeing all of my metrics in Google Analytics improving (number of page views, session duration, number of pages per session, bounce rate). 

But then Google strolled in with all it’s drama. 

And honestly, to this date I don’t know if there was something that I did to “improve” the sites had any impact one way or another as to how well the sites weathered (or didn’t) the subsequent updates.

I just changed so much. 

If I was going to buy an existing site again, here’s what I would do:

• After migration, I would explore the site, and come up with a plan

• But before making any changes, I would sit and watch the site for 30-60 days. Watch the traffic patterns, make sure that everything post-migration has settled down.

• Then, I would make one change at a time. And wait and see what happens. Before doing something else. So I could tell if what I did was working (or not).

I wouldn’t hesitate to order or create new content for the site, especially if the site depends upon a constant flow of new posts. But again, I wouldn’t roll in on the first day and change the theme, start disavowing links, making massive structural changes, none of that. I’d do it much more methodically. 

Alright, so does that mean you regret buying the sites from Empire Flippers?

I’m not saying that, oh no, not at all. We haven’t talked at all just yet about the revenue and how that worked out in the past 12 months.

Look for how well everything performed (even through a global crisis) in the last installment of the series, coming out as soon as I can find the time.

Wrap Up

This is part FOUR of this multi-part series about my 2019 Empire Flippers experience. When the other parts are available, I will come back and link them.

Part One: Backstory/WHY

Part Two: Negotiations and Closing

Part Three: Migrations Challenges

Part Four: Running the Business for 12 Months

Part Five: Takeaways/Hindsight is 20/20