Inheriting a Profitable Bastard Child Website, WWYD?

[ew3]

My girlfriend made a website in the adult e-commerce niche (think toys, etc.) and it's performed really well - mostly by accident. She's basically handed it off to me because she doesn't know what she is doing and doesn't want to accidentally ruin a good thing.

So, now it's mine.

The good?

- It makes great revenue, ~5 figure range.
- It is 95% organic traffic driven.

The bad?

- It is losing backlinks and rankings for keywords each month, gradually ever since last summer for some reason.
- Building quality backlinks to a large e-commerce store is difficult to perform/scale it seems, at least in an outsourced way.
- Building quality adult backlinks to a pseudo adult website like this is extremely difficult.

I have been outsourcing links to reputable backlink providers and paying on average $200-$300/link, but I need to add a lot of backlinks to make this viable (75-200+) and keep the site from gradually dying.

So, what would you do?

I'm in a bind because the site makes great money but it's ton of headaches trying to keep it afloat as traffic dips continually every month. Getting backlinks is incredibly time consuming and finding backlink providers who can help works until they seem to hit their own bottle neck in terms of additional links they're able to acquire. I can't sell the site because no site flipping platform will accept it due to adult nature and business model. I'd love to sell it, but I can't.

Do I let the site just die?
Do I just buy any links I can find and hope for the best?

I've exhausted all ideas I can come up with and this property has been a golden goose that is also a constant thorn in my side as I've tried everything I can think of. Would love some outsiders ideas or fresh perspective on this.

Extra info:

• Shopify website.
• I've done a ton of technical SEO and on page is pretty tight, so am not sure it's causing any problems.
• Traffic decline mirrors backlink referring domains decline over last 6-12 months; so am pretty confident this is the case and site doesn't have a ton of good quality backlinks to begin with.

 

[CCarter]

How did she get the initial traffic in the first place?

 

[ew3]

How did she get the initial traffic in the first place?

Social media, it gradually gained affiliates who linked back to the site. I tried getting more affiliates but it's difficult and there don't seem to be a ton of good opportunities to source from.

 

[mikey3times]

Have you tried HARO? I’m working from memory and it has been about a year, but I think they were always looking for adult toy input. I could be way off. I deleted all their emails so I can’t go back, but someone here will chime in.

 

[harrytwatter]

Congrats on the site and congrats to your GF, 5 figures just kind of winging it is amazing!

In terms of links, niche edits/inserts might be a more cost effective way of growing your RD pool, mix in some pedestrian foundational type links and you might get closer to a healthy trend for the new/lost RD ratio you seek.

I'd would make sure not to over-react though. I've had sites (albeit 3 figure range vs 5) that shed backlinks, seemed to dip in traffic, but eventually grew back on their own via resolute and consistent publishing alone.

Sometimes I think these little alarms are designed by Google to expose SEOs... like a shakedown.. and if you flinch and start getting aggressive with nefarious links at scale, it's an easy "gotcha" for them.

@mikey3times has a good suggestion with HARO too.. I have a friend who builds links that way, providing PG-13 yet informative responses to relationship/dating advice queries.

I think for HARO as long as the homepage isn't flashing giant genitals in your face you could probably create a journalist-friendly resource section, or even blog, where you dig into link-worthy non-explicit content.. if the site is toys, you could do something like the health benefits of masturbation, or the importance of safe manufacturing practices and organic silicon, cleaning best practice, anything that you could see Buzzfeed getting away with (in fact many of those millennial clickbait shit rags rank for all kinds of grey-niche keywords, Ahrefs might yield some great low comp targets).

OR just enjoy the last few years of a burning star that's *potentially run its course, take all the earnings and put it into a new project you feel more confident growing?

 

[Boy]

I can't sell the site because no site flipping platform will accept it due to adult nature and business model. I'd love to sell it, but I can't.

I fart around a bit in the adult space. That's entirely false. People are buying & selling straight dick-em-down hardcore adult sites on the regular.

If you're looking for advice from people in the industry, sign up on xbiz.net. Avoid gfy.com, just a bunch of bums and industry cynics.

 

[bernard]

Sell it! and yes, there are many people who buy adult.

I wouldn't even consider sex toys adult, it's practically boomer at this point.

 

[GNews]

What I'd do?

I'd THINK OUT OF THE BOX

Make viral content that's branded.

Push it heavily in Facebook groups, reddit, ig, etc

See what back-links you reel in from the buzz / hype .

Maybe start a entertaining Podcast where hosts and/or guests talk about the toys and add that to your site; multiple benefits. If you can do it on YouTube, even better.....

If you're banking 5 figures, I'd just re-invest if i had the time.

Other options:
1 - Do a deal with someone to run it and you keep a % of revenue for X time
2 - Sell it to a group in the same niche

 

[ew3]

Have you tried HARO? I’m working from memory and it has been about a year, but I think they were always looking for adult toy input. I could be way off. I deleted all their emails so I can’t go back, but someone here will chime in.

I use HARO for other niches and have good results, but I rarely see any adult related requests.

Congrats on the site and congrats to your GF, 5 figures just kind of winging it is amazing!

In terms of links, niche edits/inserts might be a more cost effective way of growing your RD pool, mix in some pedestrian foundational type links and you might get closer to a healthy trend for the new/lost RD ratio you seek.

I'd would make sure not to over-react though. I've had sites (albeit 3 figure range vs 5) that shed backlinks, seemed to dip in traffic, but eventually grew back on their own via resolute and consistent publishing alone.

Sometimes I think these little alarms are designed by Google to expose SEOs... like a shakedown.. and if you flinch and start getting aggressive with nefarious links at scale, it's an easy "gotcha" for them.

@mikey3times has a good suggestion with HARO too.. I have a friend who builds links that way, providing PG-13 yet informative responses to relationship/dating advice queries.

I think for HARO as long as the homepage isn't flashing giant genitals in your face you could probably create a journalist-friendly resource section, or even blog, where you dig into link-worthy non-explicit content.. if the site is toys, you could do something like the health benefits of masturbation, or the importance of safe manufacturing practices and organic silicon, cleaning best practice, anything that you could see Buzzfeed getting away with (in fact many of those millennial clickbait shit rags rank for all kinds of grey-niche keywords, Ahrefs might yield some great low comp targets).

OR just enjoy the last few years of a burning star that's *potentially run its course, take all the earnings and put it into a new project you feel more confident growing?

Great ideas, thanks. Any idea where to get good niche edits for something like this?

I've had similar thoughts regarding the shakedown theory as well, really feels like that what is happening sometimes. Great content idea suggestions too, this might be possible.

In any event I am still reinvesting profits into new properties, but I'd hate to let this site fizzle out.

I fart around a bit in the adult space. That's entirely false. People are buying & selling straight dick-em-down hardcore adult sites on the regular.

If you're looking for advice from people in the industry, sign up on xbiz.net. Avoid gfy.com, just a bunch of bums and industry cynics.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll sign up here. Had little to no success on Gfy, so that makes sense.