$12K/Month 1-Woman San Francisco Tourist Website

The website is SFTourismTips by Jill Loeffler 😎

Jill started the site way back in 2009. I added it to my list of affiliate marketing website examples back in 2019, when the site was earning $5000/month.

A few days ago Jill told me via email…

It’s now at around $12k a month with about 60% Mediavine and 40% affiliates.

Jill went through a rough time with the site a few years back 🤕

She shared in a recent interview…

I escaped being hit by any [Google Search] algorithm changes until the November 2019 update. My site was hit, and I lost about 30% of my traffic. Two months later, my biggest affiliate decided to change their program in a way that cut our income by another 30%.

And then…the pandemic hit, and overnight San Francisco closed its doors to all visitors on March 15, 2020. We lost all but about 10% of our traffic and all of our affiliate income. This was devastating, and I had no idea what we would do to make it through this tough time.

A few things she did to get back on track…

• Completely revised and updated all pages that didn’t rank well
• Created (and regularly updated) content about things to do in SF during the pandemic
• Started a Facebook page to complement the website
• Added display ads (Mediavine)

Then…

the June 2021 update hit, and two days later, California opened back up. Our traffic soared, and we were back in business. Not only that, we were in better shape than before the pandemic hit.

We doubled traffic and revenue even though things were not 100% open.

Love that resilience 🥰

Jill’s income from the site dropped from $78K in 2019 to only $10K in 2020. I think a lot of people in that situation would have been tempted to give up on the site. 

But Jill faced the adversity head on and emerged from it as a much stronger entrepreneur with a much better business 💪

Lots more good stuff in the interview with Jill, including…

• Her top marketing strategies
• How she creates content
• How she does keyword research

Also worth noting: SFTourismTips is NOT a WordPress website. Jill created and still runs the site using a platform called Solo Build It (SBI).