Ch. 7: What Year One Actually Cost Me — Every Line

Ch. 7: What Year One Actually Cost Me — Every Line

People ask if niche sites are "passive." Here's my first year on a gardening-tools site, full ledger:

— Domain + hosting (Cloudways): $312
— Content (147 posts, freelance writers): $8,820
— Editing/photos (me, unpaid, ~210 hours)
— Links (4 guest posts, paid): $900
— Tools (Ahrefs lite + Surfer 6 months): $1,074

Total cash out: $11,106. The site earned $2,380 that year. So I was down ~$8,700 on paper at month 12.

Month 18 it crossed $1,900/mo and recouped everything by month 21. I sold at month 26 for $61,000.

The brutal part: months 1-9 felt like setting cash on fire. Most people quit in that window. The site wasn't failing — it was loading.

Lesson banked: budget to be negative for at least 12 months, or you'll sell a winner during its loading screen.