Ep 37: Stacy Caprio. Buying & Optimizing Websites - 400% ROI

In this episode, Avi talks to Stacy Caprio, owner of Her.CEO. They discuss Stacy's previous website purchases, and her case study on acquiring an expired website listing on Flippa. Stacy grew this site’s ad revenue 4 times in 2 years, despite not creating any content and being fairly hands-off in its operation.EPISODE SPONSOR🔥 Smash Digital - an SEO growth agency with actual skin in the game, ranking their own portfolio of profitable businesses, and offering the exact same services to clients. Check. Them. Out.📝 Show Summary & InsightsBuying Expired Listings* Stacy’s 3rd website purchase was a pair of sister sites. These became the first sites that made a profit for her. She purchased them on Flippa, after searching for expired listings that no one had bought. * Stacy searched for expired listings because she doesn’t believe in artificial increases in listing prices. You can definitely find a diamond in the rough by looking for distressed sites.* Stacy was confident in her purchase, thanks to her previous experience with online marketing and SEO. A big motivator to search for expired listings is that she likes finding sites in which not everyone sees potential, and which are undervalued.  Growing A Niche Site* Stacy bought a site for $6,400. At the time, it was making around $240 a month in profit. * Over two years, Stacy increased the ad revenue by 4 or 5 times. She added another ad network, as well as placing a static ad on the site. * Stacy did not add any content or links. She was very much hands-off on the site, since it was a forum dedicated to a particular niche. Here, users were the ones generating the content.* The downside to owning a forum is that you can’t control what people post, and this may lead to various copyright issues where you could face liability.* Prior to the above purchase, her first 2 sites were making little profit, and weren’t breaking even. * Stacy eventually dropped these sites because she became discouraged by how little they made.Purchase Criteria * Stacy’s criteria when purchasing a site is the purchase price. The price must be good,  relative to your plans for the site. Another thing she considers is the plan for the site. This includes an SEO plan with keyword research, and how to restructure it to get the most traffic to the site. * She also likes to buy smaller sites with little traction and with good RPM. Once purchased, she does the SEO work to improve the site and generate more traffic and profit. * Stacy prefers buying sites that are in the same niche, or are relevant or connected to one another, thereby creating verticals. This allows her to easily support them, and give the sites a quick link or a boost in keywords. * However, Stacy admits that this could be considered borderline gray hat SEO. * She also warns against creating double content for your sites in the same vertical, or linking to your other site because Google could recognize these moves.* Stacy places prime importance on RPM, because this means more meaningful interactions and engagement with site users. * When it comes to e-commerce, Stacy recommends optimizing your site for sales first, including getting a good conversion rate.Guest Info* Her.CEO: https://www.her.ceo/* Stacy’s email: [email protected] did you think?Did you enjoy this episode or do you have a question?Please leave a comment to let us know.Cheers,Juliet This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit investing.substack.com