In 2006 I came up with the idea of an online treadmill website. It was right around the time that I needed to take my online skills to the next level and right after the refinance boom and bust. This was especially important because I went from a well off real estate appraiser to a struggling one in a heartbeat.
I start learning search engine skills in 2003 but I just wasn’t quite an expert yet. So during this time in 2006, there was a internet company that was about to do a product launch. They showed all of their testimonials prior to the launch about people just like you and me creating an online ecommerce store and making a living online.
So when this company finally decided to launch their product, I felt like it was exactly what I needed to take my search engine skills to the next level.
Right before the launch, I remember waking up in the middle of the night with “treadmills” in my head. As I always do with my new ideas, I wrote down the word “treadmills” on a sticky note on my nightstand. In order to do the research later. But knowing myself, I couldn’t fall back asleep so I ventured down the hallway to locate my laptop and began the research.
Once I started to do the research and typed the keyword treadmills in the Google search box, I realize all the websites that were on page 1 were mom and pop shops. You see back then in 2006, page one of Google wasn’t stacked with top companies that we see today like Walmart, Amazon, Dick’s Sporting Goods, etc.
I knew that all I really need to do was to beat the number 10 position on page 1 and bump them to page 2 in order to get my treadmill site on page 1. I learned how to reverse engineer the competitors and do what they were doing but try to do it even better. That was the ultimate plan!
And after checking the Google keyword tool there was significant search volume. It was in the hundreds of thousands per month. So I knew this was a worthwhile endeavor.
- #1 there was the opportunity to get on page 1 of Google due to the competition
- #2 there was significant search volume for treadmill keywords and an opportunity to make money from a business
I ended up joining the internet company that launch the product, they were called StomperNet. I learned a lot from them and it was good timing because it was just right around the time I needed to get to the next level.
I bought Treadmill-World.com. The next thing I need was to find companies that I can be a dropshipper for. It took a lot of work. The biggest company in the world for fitness equipment is ICON Health & Fitness and that’s where I wanted to get a deal from. They have all the top brands under their umbrella like Pro-Form, Reebok, Weslo, NordicTrack, FreeMotion, Weider, Golds Gym and at the time they also had Epic Fitness.
ICON was the big company that felt that I needed to take this big time. I contacted them several times via email and phone calls and never got a response back. But I kept at it and I was persistent. Eventually, I got my big break when Mark Thatcher, the director of online marketing contacted me back and I am gave me a super affiliate deal with them. I was able to make 15% on all the products sold and I was considered a drop shipper. All of the sales went directly in my checking account and I had to pay them back the difference of 85%.
At first it was slow going. I had to write a lot of content and eventually even got some help for writing content because the big key with product descriptions is that you do not want to use them directly from the manufacturer and copy and paste them on your site. That is a big Gotcha in the eyes of Google. I needed to rewrite all of the content to be completely unique. I couldn’t just copy and paste those descriptions and put them on my website and risk my website getting banned.
So that’s what I did. I ended up rewriting all of the content for the treadmill product pages one by one on my little laptop using a Yahoo site builder store. That was one of the difficult things I ever did. By month two and three I started to get traffic and a few sales trickled in. I also started saw a page 1 ranking on Google for the keyword “treadmillls”.
Sales started getting steady and eventually by the seventh or eighth month, the sales hit $50,000. By by the 11th month, the site exceeded over $100,000! I had three consecutive $100,000+ months and landed the #1 position on Google for the main keyword.
That got the attention of the company StomperNet and also the manufacturer ICON. ICON called me and had me on a conference call with their team. They wanted to pick me brain about my successful #1 Treadmills ranking. I was on cloud nine! StomperNet called me to let me know they were making me a contest winner and I received 10 one hour calls with their trained experts.
By the way, back to StomperNet… When they launched their product they were charging almost eight hundred per month. They were teaching people just like you and me how to have a successful online website. I only paid them for three months and after the third month I pretty much got everything for free. Lucky me!
Anyway, the company StomperNet that I originally learned from the most and made me a contest winner and I got to hang out with them and even partnered with them in the future. I started speaking at events for their SEO Pro conferences and created a few product.
Mainly because I started to get the attention from them and they allowed me to come to their events at no cost. I even partnered with the co-founder Brad Fallon at the time. Being number one for a top keyword like Treadmill’s was really a big deal.
I eventually starting to see the big brands like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart bubble up in the search engines and they were on my coattails. Back then, these companies were just starting to understand the importance of being online. This was now in 2007. And I knew eventually they would be writing enough unique original treadmill content and with the available resources at their disposal, they we going to be able to beat me online.
So once I had the consecutive $100,000+ months in a row, I decided to sell the website. I pretty much the treadmill rankings weren’t going to get much better than that. The treadmill space is just super competitive with a lot of different companies and they were catching on quick.
So when I sold the site, I was able to get three times earnings. That was pretty typical of what I knew to be true so whatever the site did annually with net profit, you should typically be able to get that much. I was able to sell it for three times earnings plus a little piece of the business for a year. Plus, I ended up helping the new owner out for Treadmill-World to even double the business. But that didn’t last forever. Flash forward to 2020, he sold the site for a fraction of what I sold it to him for. The landscape has really changed since then. But that was an incredible time in Internet History for me.
If my site had a keyword similar to “wedding favors”, I probably would’ve considered keeping the site. Because I know that there are not a lot of big box brands out there selling those items. So that really makes a difference.
The ways I was able to get most of the traffic was doing all of the Google research for the keywords. I would look at the main keyword. For example, “treadmills” or “proform treadmills” but then I would look at the keyword depth, meaning what other keywords were underneath those keywords — proform cross trainer treadmill and proform home treadmill and all of those other keywords. These different keywords are the long tail or the depth of the main broad keyword treadmills. In order to get those rankings, I added some of those in the title tags.
If you plan on creating a website like treadmill-world in the future, pay close attention to some of the details I outlined above. Remember, the landscape has changed since then so you really want to check the competition and determine if you are able to beat them. If you can find a niche that isn’t available in big box stores like wedding favors or dirt bikes, you might just have a million dollar idea!