Experiments
An Affiliate Site for a Niche Hobby Audience
Built a content site targeting a specific hobbyist community. Took about six months to get any traction, learned a lot about how long this actually takes.
What I Built
A content site targeting a niche hobby. Not going to get more specific than that. The audience is passionate, the keyword competition is low-ish, and there’s an obvious Amazon affiliate angle.
The Approach
Wrote most of the content myself, then started using AI to draft and edit. Published around 40 posts over about eight months. No link building beyond a couple of forum posts that I’m not sure did anything.
What Happened
Still running. Earns coffee money — not enough to matter but enough to not kill it. Traffic is slow and lumpy. Completely Google-dependent, which is a problem I keep creating for myself.
What I Learned
- Niche selection matters more than execution quality at this scale
- Six months before any signal is normal but emotionally difficult
- AI drafting is genuinely useful for the boilerplate sections of review content; it is not useful for the parts that require actual opinions
- Amazon Associates commission rates are a cruel joke in most categories