[00:01] and was built by one guy with zero marketing experience. And he's even outranking Reddit and Amazon on Google. And when the world looks like it's falling apart, traffic to his site doesn't just rise, it explodes. In this
[00:14] video, I'm breaking down how he's using SEO to beat billiondoll companies, how much money he's really making, and how you can steal his playbook even if you're starting from scratch. But first, let's see what the site actually looks
[00:26] like. So yeah, site looks like a typical blog So yeah, site looks like a typical blog kind of like from the mid 2000s, like 2015, 2016. The theme looks like a free one. So here is our founder and lead
[00:42] writer, Sean Gold. Let's check him out on LinkedIn. Yeah. And here's his US Air Force Reserve experience. He was an emergency manager there, a hazmat technician, a degree in emergency management. So, emergencies, disasters,
[00:57] and survival situations. Yeah, if the world was ending tomorrow, this is the guy that I want to call. Hello. The threat list. What's this? Hello. The threat list. What's this? Holy crap. Look how long this thing is,
[01:10] Holy crap. Look how long this thing is, man. Wa. This is a massive guide. Yeah, I'm really impressed. Like, look, this is him. This is a great site. While most affiliate sites recycle product blurbs, Shawn's in the field testing, reviewing,
[01:23] and actually using this gear. Even with content like a threat list, which barely has any search volume, he goes all out because every piece he publishes gets the same 100% effort. From the homepage, it looks like a hobby blog, but it ranks
[01:37] like a publishing empire. So, I popped it into HFS to see what was really going on. Wow, he's getting like 37,000 monthly organics. That's pretty impressive. has like a traffic value of $11,000 per month. Based on these
[01:52] numbers alone, we would take $11,200, multiply it by 12, and we end up with like $130,000. From the very short time that I've actually looked at his site, I don't think he's making that much. I
[02:05] guess he's making between like $50,000 to $70,000 per year. This traffic trend is really interesting here cuz like he said it started in 2016. Yeah. And we start seeing some traffic build up here. Oh, and then check this out. Boom. March
[02:20] 2020. Remember what happened then? We see a big spike in traffic there. Interesting. Another spike there. It's very spiky this traffic. And it doesn't seem like he's like an SEO pro or anything like that or even doing SEO
[02:33] actively. All right. So, let's see what kind of keywords he's ranking for. Uh, I right now. I just want to see what he's ranking for right now today. Right here. Best gas can. Wow. Oh, he's outranking Reddit and Amazon. Yeah. So, he's
[02:48] basically like ranking for a lot of these like best type products for like super super like niche stuff. Ranking number three for that, number one for this. Like this is super niche. Like, is he actually buying all this stuff and
[03:01] testing it? Looks like it. Man, this guy's opening it up and like there it is of him holding it. This is like affiliate site done right. I I hope he's affiliate site done right. I I hope he's killing it. Best powdered eggs. Look,
[03:16] best powdered milk. So, he's just going after all these like best of terms. And then it's got affiliate links to Amazon. Amazon. Another affiliate link to Amazon. Yeah. Okay. So, that's basically his strategy. Sean's targeting best of
[03:31] affiliate links to Amazon because the searcher wants product recommendations and he's not chasing big search volume keywords. He's targeting low competition ones that his audience wants and that he can actually rank for and the results
[03:45] are compounding. That's exactly how small site should start. Compete in your find out what was happening here with all these spikes. So, this was the co
[03:57] something happened here in March 2020. Go away green. What is this thing? He got a huge spike in traffic from this. Is this when he did it? Oh, no. He's had it forever. Yeah, the post came out in 2017, but it never really gained
[04:12] traction. So, if we go and just put that one in here. Let's look at Yeah, he didn't really get traffic until much later. This might have just been like a trendy keyword, was it? Let's look it up in Keywords Explorer. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
[04:27] Check this out. April 2021. It had 91,000 searches. That's crazy. Whether he's doing it on purpose or not, Shawn is ranking for keywords that get massive
[04:40] search volume when certain events happen and and when they do, tens of thousands of people end up on a site. Now, depending on your niche, this can potentially be a huge opportunity because people don't put that much
[04:54] effort into optimizing for non evergreen topics. It's the same idea with seasonal topics like a blog post on gardening tips. there's going to be a huge spike probably in like April and May and then it's going to completely die down. And
[05:07] this is going to happen every single year. So, a key to ranking for these queries is going to be to prepare well before the wave actually hits with 10x much harder for your competitors to actually catch you. And a cool way that
[05:22] you can actually spot these seasonal or eventdriven type trends is to use HF's keywords explorer. Just enter a seed keyword, go to the matching terms report, and then scan the spark line charts to look for recurring spikes in
[05:35] searches or just oneoff big spikes, which you can then investigate further. often lower competition, too, which is a bonus. As I kept digging through his site, I started to notice a pattern with these traffic spikes. And then it
[05:49] occurred to me that they might not be so random. Maybe they were tied to something bigger. Okay, so call me crazy, but I think some of these spikes actually line up with major world events, stuff like natural
[06:04] disasters or wars, that kind of stuff. All right, so this spike right here, that was during the violence in Myanmar. And here there was tons of unrest like And here there was tons of unrest like bombings, suicide attacks. Then here
[06:18] you've got extreme weather, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires around. And now 2025. M yeah, we're not in a good place. But ranking is only half the equation. Shawn figured out how to monetize that
[06:33] traffic, and I'd say he did a pretty solid job because according to LinkedIn, he left his 10-year job and went full-time self-employed in 2024, which just so happens to be right around the time True Prepper went parabolic. So,
[06:49] yeah, I guess you could say Shawn struck gold. Okay, so how exactly is this site making money? Let's dig in. Okay, the most obvious thing is affiliate links. So, this one here goes to an affiliate
[07:05] this one here goes to an affiliate network. Let's open them. Let's see. 511tactical.com, right? Uh affiliate commission. How much did they pay? How much do they pay? Oh, here it is. 6% per sale. Amazon would give you 3% on the on
[07:20] the outdoor category. 6%. That's actually decent. All right. So, that's a an affiliate link to Amazon. Link ID tag. Yep. So, that's definitely an
[07:32] affiliate link. Clothing. Amazon. Amazon. Amazon. I don't know why, but the feeling that I get is that this isn't just like a list of random stuff that's added here, but it's actually a lot of thought and care.
[07:46] Like, jeez, look how massive this bugout bag checklist is. Yeah, this guy's cool. like he's really committed to his work. Wow. Win a get home bag kit. He had
[07:58] 29,000 entries. He's actually giving stuff away. He's probably doing that to build his email list. I think he could be making six figures like easily based on what I'm seeing here. But yeah, in terms of monetization, all I see are
[08:13] affiliate links. I think there needs to be more. True Prepper's monetization strategy is simple. He ranks for high intense survival keywords like best freeze dryer. And when thousands of people Google that each month, they land
[08:26] on his site, read his guides, click on the gear he recommends, and when they buy, he earns a commission. It's stupid simple, and it works way better than you'd expect. True Prepper is clearly doing a lot right, but after an hour
[08:40] inside the site, I couldn't help but map out exactly how I'd grow it if I took over today. Okay, so gears are turning and I'm starting to see a few things that could easily double the site's traffic and revenue. Right now, the only
[08:52] monetization I see are affiliate links and those only pay when someone clicks and those only pay when someone clicks and buys. So, the first thing that I do is to add display ads, ideally through Mediavine since it typically pays better
[09:05] than AdSense. All you got to do is just sign up for an account, install their ready to roll. That way, you're getting paid for every page view, not just ones that convert. And it doesn't have to look like a spammy recipe blog. Display
[09:20] ads can actually be clean, classy, and unobtrusive. So, if I had to guess, True Prepper is probably getting around 75,000 page views a month. And if we 75,000 page views a month. And if we assume a 20 to $25 RPM, that's $1,500 to
[09:33] $2,000 a month in extra revenue for like 10 minutes of work. That's not bad. Now, since we be getting paid for every page view, the goal becomes simple. We just got to get more page views. And the best way to do that consistently is by
[09:48] site, which is SEO. And I'd start with this. I would ask Chad GPT to give me 20 prepping niche. Then drop those into HF's keywords explorer. Filter for
[10:01] affiliate style terms like versus, review, and best. and bang bang, thousands of high intent keywords, many of which are low competition ready to go. But I wouldn't stop at just affiliate terms because if we're running
[10:15] display ads, informational content is going to print money, too. All while attracting our target audience. I'd run true prepper through site explorer, hit the organic competitors report, pick two or three relevant prepper sites like
[10:28] this one and this one, and then drop them into content gap tool. And in seconds, we have tons of keywords that our competitors are ranking for where our blog isn't. And here's the coolest thing about doing these things in this
[10:42] order. Once your traffic goes up, so does your negotiation power with affiliate merchants. Most affiliate programs, they publish like a base commission, but almost all of them are negotiable. And I'm not talking about
[10:54] pocket change. I've seen some affiliate offers go from $50 to $200 per sale just by asking. So, let's say that True Prepper is responsible for around a,000 sales at an average order value of $50 per month. Through Amazon, he'd make
[11:10] roughly 3% for the outdoor category products for a total of around $1,500. But if he were able to find another reputable e-commerce store that offered 6%, if the clicks and conversions were equal, he double his
[11:24] income. Which is why the next thing I do is diversify affiliate partners away from just Amazon and look at negotiating affiliate merchants through a network like Commission Junction. A key takeaway
[11:38] here is that traffic isn't just money, it's leverage. Obviously, there are affiliate merchant converts because you're paid for sales, not clicks. But because it's all covered in our free affiliate marketing course, which I'll
[11:53] link up in the description. So, True Prepper, this site isn't just about prepping. It's about serving an audience that's interested in a specific niche. keywords through keyword research,
[12:06] creating actually helpful content for that audience, and optimizing it to turn it into a cash flowing machine. And if you want to learn how to grow your site like True Prepper did, watch our free SEO course for beginners right here on