Seasonal websites are a tricky thing. They can be lucrative niches if executed well, e.g. Halloween sites, Mothers Day sites, Christmas sites, etc. Seasonal websites usually correlate to what I call “Episodic purchases” –usually made by first-time customers who are looking for a quick solution to their issue. E-File.com is one example of a seasonal Minsite that we operate.
The History of e-File.com
Ed Stolarz brought us the domain e-File.com. We originally thought it should be auctioned or sold to someone in the tax preparation business. We still think that. We made a focused effort to sell the site to some of the logical end-buyers but could not get the 6 figure price tag that we thought was entirely warranted. So, in February we quickly set up a Minisite with which to monetize the site for 2010 while also laying groundwork for building a more significant site.
The site went live right around February 1. It was authored in DevHub.com — a company with which Epik has close ties. The DevHub solution offers integrated directory services which was helpful for quickly incorporating a directory of local tax advisors. Chathura, who leads our Sri Lanka based production center produced the site. Sri Lanka is where we produce 10-30 Minisites per week, mostly for our own portfolio but increasingly for clients like Ed.
How did it do?
As expected, the traffic spiked around April 14 — the day before the tax day deadline. Here is the report from Google Analytics.
The full Google Analytics file is available here for anyone who wants to study it: Analytics-EFILE
The revenue sources skewed towards LinkShare which was added shortly after the initial launch. You can see the relative split here for February-April period:
- Revenue from linkshare = $2,347.04
- Revenue from Adsense = $1,442.10
Ed was pleased with the 2 month result as this was far better than what he was doing prior to the Minisite development. It also provided real data with which to justify the 6-figure price tag that we think this site warrants to a strategic buyer.
What’s next for e-File.com?
A formal auction for the e-File.com domain is probably the right next step. If there is a specialist for selling finance/tax sites, we are interested in having this name shopped to the right buyers. OilPrices.com is another Epik-powered site that is a good candidate for a similar process.
If we don’t sell the domain by summer time, e-File.com will be ready to go to the next level in time for the October 2010 filing deadline for extension filers. This will be a warmup for the 2011 tax reporting season.
The two main improvements areas are:
- Improved ranking in search engines: The e-file.com site is competitively ranked in Bing and Yahoo but not Google. The reason seems pretty clear, and that is the relatively lack of original and fresh content. For starters, that can be fixed with editorial work, article sourcing/syndication, and a relevant news feed.
- Integrated Directory Services: The directory feed we are using here is one from SuperPages. It does not monetize all that well, and there is no way for a service provider to pay to get listed. Our forthcoming directory platform — TelephoneBook.com — will remedy this situation. And that is a subject of a future post!
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