In this week’s teardown, I analyze a 17-year-old baking site that I am selling. CakeJournal.com receives over 30,000+ pageviews per month and earns $538 revenue per month (last 6-month average). The asking price is $22,000. Fill out the Google Form if interested.
The site was previously one of the largest baking sites on the Internet and received over 7.6 million pageviews in 2011. Traffic has declined as the niche became more competitive but has been stable for the past 2 years.
I bought the site with a partner less than a year ago from a seller on Flippa. The site was previously owned by the infamous Income Store and was sold to a previous buyer at auction.
The original owner did a great job of building one of the top cake sites by focusing on publishing expert-written recipes and tutorials with lots of shareable photos.
I analyze what is working well for the site and how a new owner could take the site to the next level.
This is what I cover in this report:
- Website overview
- Major highlights
- Competitor overview
- Easy wins to increase revenue and/or traffic
- Actionable takeaways you can apply
Let’s get into it!
✅ Website Overview & Highlights
The website has had stable traffic over the past couple of years and has had minimal impact from recent Google updates. Actual search engine traffic is roughly double the Ahrefs estimate.
Over many years of publishing share-worthy content like fun photos of cakes and creative recipes, the site has earned 3,400 referring domains.
The website’s domain has been active since 2007. It has been continuously online for 17 years.
It was originally founded by Louise, a cake-decorating enthusiast who was living in Sweden. She documented the creative cake-decorating projects she was working on.
Over time she recruited some contributors who were also expert cake decorators and bakers and they helped create lots of interesting content and attractive photos.
The main content types on the site are recipe articles or tutorials on how to decorate cakes in creative ways.
The site appears to have changed ownership around 2017 because the brand launched a YouTube channel with different people. Later, it was sold to Income Store and then sold at auction.
In April 2024, about a third of traffic came from organic search and the rest came from social media like Pinterest (Google categorizes some social media traffic as “Direct” such as traffic from the Pinterest Android app).
The website design is well done but is slightly dated and uses a blog format. Using a new premium theme will help make the content look more professional. The homepage could be changed from a blog format to a “featured content” layout to show the most popular content.
Highlights
- Links from high authority sites like BBC, Buzzfeed, PopSugar, and Univision
- Over 800 published articles
- Pinterest account with 78k followers and 1.7 million monthly views
- Twitter account with 26k followers
- Facebook page with 114k followers
Why is this site winning?
- Lots of unique high quality images of cakes
- The content is written by experts in cake-making and cake decorating
- Strong link profile
- Content is focused on the audience and not keywords
Top 3 Competitors
Here are similar competitors targeting many of the same keywords.
- IScreamForButtercream.com – A similar cake site with an extensive library of cake recipes and 32k organic traffic (Ahrefs).
- CakeCentral.com – A community for cake decorating professionals and hobbyists with a forum. The site has declined as people moved to social media platforms like Facebook.
- SallysBakingAddiction.com – One of the largest baking sites with 12.6 million organic traffic (Ahrefs)
Let’s get into the easy wins to grow this specific website.
🔥 5 Easy Wins To Grow This Website
There are opportunities to significantly grow this brand. I break down the following easy wins:
- Offer paid guest posts
- Add relevant affiliate product boxes
- Hire a VA to publish Pinterest pins
- Publish listicles of best cake recipes and share on Pinterest
- Add recipe schema and recipe cards
Let’s get into it!
➡️ Win #1: Offer paid guest posts
Since this site does not rely on traffic from Google but has a high Domain Rating of 60, this site could earn additional income by working with brands or sites looking to build links.
We have not published any guest posts since buying the site but the site receives a lot of inquiries each day for paid guest posts due to its high domain rating/domain authority.
Since about 2/3 of traffic is from social media, you could generate revenue from paid guest posts without risking the main traffic source. Ideally, the guest posts would be relevant to the content to minimize the risk of a Google penalty.
Sponsored posts or guest posts could double monthly revenue in the short term with just a couple of guest posts per month. I recently saw a crafts site for sale that generates about $1,400 per month from sponsored posts with just a DR of 41 and 1,100 referring domains.
➡️ Win #2: Add Relevant Affiliate Product Boxes
A lot of the baking recipes require baking equipment like mixers, baking pans, rolling pins, and measuring tools.
One way to get more affiliate clicks to sites like Amazon would be to add product boxes that recommend a specific product that will help make the recipe.
You could also use product boxes to recommend a product that would be highly relevant to the audience like a cake decorating book or a cake-making course.
Currently, there are some text affiliate links in articles but product boxes would stand out more.
Adding product boxes with a tool like Affilatable or AAWP will lead to more clicks on affiliate links.
Additionally, adding alternative affiliate programs could add additional revenue opportunities. Promoting cake decorating courses like Learn Cake Decorating Online and CakeFlix provide commissions of up to 30%.
➡️ Win #3: Hire a VA to Publish Pinterest Pins
Pinterest sent about 9,000 outbound clicks in the last 30 days. However, the most popular Pinterest Pins were created a few years ago.
The site has several hundred interesting and eye-catching photos of cakes and other baked goods that can be made into Pinterest Pins.
Canva helps design attractive Pinterest Pins with a text overlay but it can be time-consuming.
Hiring a virtual assistant who can publish new pins consistently will help grow traffic from Pinterest.
It is hard to predict which pins will generate a lot of traffic so it is a good idea to publish several pins per day.
➡️ Win #4: Publish Listicles of Best Cake Recipes and Share on Pinterest
One tactic that has worked very well for other food blogs is to publish listicles of the best recipes or ideas for a specific occasion, holiday, or activity. An example is “15 Creative Cake Ideas for Mother’s Day”.
These listicle articles can perform very well on Google and social media sites like Pinterest and Facebook.
Each listicle can feature some recipes on Cake Journal as well as recipes on other baking sites. I would reach out to baking sites to get permission to share their photos on a top list of best recipes. Then I would follow up when the article is live to ask if they can share the article with their followers.
Once a new listicle is created it can be posted on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter where it has the potential to generate a lot of impressions and clicks. It also has the potential to rank in Google for keywords like “Best Cakes for X”.
Creating these listicles can also be outsourced to a VA.
➡️ Win #5: Add Recipe Schema and Recipe Cards
Recipe schema can be added to recipe pages to make recipe articles stand out more in search results. Adding structured data helps Google understand the recipe and it can show rich snippets in search results.
For example, the popular Lemon Chiffon Cake recipe does not have recipe schema added.
One way to add recipe schema is to add the plugin WP Recipe Maker which integrates with Yoast SEO.
WP Recipe Maker can also add a recipe card that presents the recipe in a nice easy-to-read format. Recipe cards are used by many food sites since they improve the user experience.
👉 Actionable Takeaways
Here are actionable takeaways that you can apply to your niche website today:
- Offer paid guest posts to increase revenue quickly.
- Add affiliate product boxes to increase click through rate to affiliate links.
- Hire a VA to publish Pinterest pins consistently to increase reach.
- Add recipe schema to articles to help them stand out more in Google search results.
