The 'pets' site that only made money once I shrank it

The 'pets' site that only made money once I shrank it

Month 1: I started a broad pet site — dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, fish. Figured a bigger niche meant more keywords. By Month 6: 19k sessions spread thin across everything, $390/month. Mediocre.

The diagnosis in Month 7: my reptile content — specifically bearded dragons — was 11% of articles but 60% of revenue. The dog and cat stuff competed with billion-dollar sites and ranked for nothing.

The turn: I made a hard call and effectively split the site. Spun the bearded-dragon content onto its own focused domain, redirected, and went all-in on reptile keepers.

The setback: the redirect cost me ~20% of traffic for six weeks while Google reprocessed everything. Nerve-wracking when you're voluntarily torching traffic.

Month 13: the focused reptile site hit 26k sessions and $1,250/month — more than triple the old whole site, in a fraction of the topics.

The takeaway: 'big niche, more keywords' is a trap when every keyword is a war you can't win. The narrow site Google can categorize beats the broad one it can't. Topical focus was worth more than topical breadth.