How Matt Giovanisci Made $1,000,000 оn a website about pools and hot tub maintenance.
Hello everyone! Paul here, and today we have a new deep dive. We'll figure out how to earn over $1,000,000 on just one website in a very specific and narrow niche, all while working on the site as a small family business. Sounds like a dream for many, doesn't it?
Meet today's hero, Matt Giovanisci, the founder of Swim University, which is a website about pool and hot tub maintenance. I want to say upfront that Matt, in my opinion, is not a business genius. He's just an ordinary guy like you and me who takes action, tries things out, always puts the customer first, and enjoys the process. I think that's why he manages to achieve such impressive results! But how exactly? Let's find out.
Matt and Swim University's Story The story began almost 20 years ago when Matt started working as a salesperson in pool-related stores. By the age of 25, he managed to secure the position of corporate marketing director at a local company. As Matt himself says, this happened thanks to his skills in creating websites.
It was this same skill of creating great websites that led Matt's former boss to rehire him half a year after he left.
During those six months, Matt worked at a website design firm. And when his former boss from the pool industry saw the websites Matt was creating, he hired him back and gave him the position of marketing director. This is where websites and pools came together.
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It was during my time at the pool company that I had this idea to start a website teaching pool and spa maintenance. It took me two years to finally build.
Matt came up with the idea to create Swim University while still working as a consultant in the store. He noticed that different people were asking the same questions about pools and asked himself, "How can I scale help for pool and hot tub owners?" And that's how Swim University came to be.
What is Swim University Now and How Does it Make Money? Currently, the Swim University website has just under 5,000,000 visits per year. The site still covers topics related to pool and hot tub maintenance, offering its visitors various ways to solve their queries, just as it did when it started.
The project's mailing list has over 125,000 people, and the YouTube channel has around 225,000 subscribers. For such a narrow niche, this is a pretty impressive result.
In total, Matt earns about $1,000,000 a year from his audience.
Here is the pie chart illustrating the revenue breakdown for Swim University:
- 60% ($600,000) from Pool Maintenance Courses
- 30% ($300,000) from Affiliate Sales (Amazon)
- 10% ($100,000) from Advertising & Physical Products
Matt Giovanisci
Here's the graphic showing the revenue breakdown of Swim University. The chart illustrates that 60% of the revenue comes from pool maintenance courses, 30% from affiliate sales of pool maintenance products on Amazon, and 10% from advertising revenue and sales of physical pool maintenance products.
Despite this, Matt consciously chooses not to place ads on the site. As he says, many visitors find ads annoying. Moreover, Matt loves fast-loading websites and dedicates a lot of time to this on Swim University, and AdSense blocks can slow down the site's loading speed.
Of course, Matt didn't reach the $1,000,000 result right away.
Here's an approximate timeline of Swim University's revenue over the past 10 years, based on the open data I was able to find:
As I mentioned earlier, Swim University didn't do anything outstanding. Matt was simply good at doing what he was supposed to do. He doesn't always hit the mark, but he always continues to experiment. However, the main driving factor of the project remains content.
Every time Matt publishes a new article or video, traffic grows, and sales increase. Matt keeps his focus on content and product. He probably spends a little less time on marketing and promotion than he should.
It's time to find out exactly how Swim University attracts traffic and grows profits.
Here are the main success factors, in my opinion:
- Focus on content and product
- SEO and content formatting
- YouTube
- Automated email newsletter
- Unique lead magnet
- One-time offer
1. Focus on Content and Product We already touched on this topic a couple of paragraphs above. But let's break it down in more detail.
According to Matt, he was very bad at English when he started. But as soon as he realized that content was the main driver of Swim University's growth, Matt diligently began to improve his language skills.
He practiced a lot, read, observed other authors, and improved his copywriting skills step by step.
Every sentence is thought out and is in its place. There is practically no fluff or unnecessary words in the texts. Matt is not afraid to use humor in his materials on the seemingly very boring topic of pool maintenance. This makes Swim University's content lively and sets it apart from competitors.
You may think that these are fairly obvious things that are on the surface. But how many people in your niche follow at least the basic recommendations 100% when creating content? I'm sure it's only a handful.
Similarly, on YouTube, Matt doesn't do anything supernatural. At the same time, he maintains the consistency of high quality content and the regularity of its release. Once a week, he releases a long video, from which he gets several Shorts. Matt posts these every couple of days.
No magic. Just work that needs to be done well.
2. SEO and Content Formatting Search traffic has become the key growth driver for Swim University. And since SEO is all about content, our second point will be an excellent continuation of the previous one. Let's explore Matt's approach to content from an SEO perspective.
Here's what sets Swim University's content apart:
- Clear headline based on the reader's benefit
- Concise wording broken into small, informative paragraphs
- Pleasant article formatting, from font and color to numbered lists and appropriate interlinking with other articles, which increases reader engagement
- Bright, attention-grabbing featured images
- Content variety within the article: tables, videos, product links, and, most importantly, appropriately inserted calls to action (download a cheat sheet)
I probably won't waste your time on theory. After you finish reading, just go to Swim University and see for yourself that Matt has outstanding content for the boring pool niche.
It's this concise and extremely well-formatted content that allows Swim University to collect its 5,000,000 traffic per year.
Really like the SEO strategy, design, etc of https://t.co/45s7kH5A1h by @MattGiovanisci
— Hidden Small Caps (Mike) (@hiddensmallcaps) January 26, 2024
Excellent simple layout. Nice use of "cheat sheets" to draw in email subs, integrates Youtube videos in his posts that are actually enjoyable.
Content is excellent, not mindless AI drivel… pic.twitter.com/UH5RqUP6xk
By the way, here's an interesting fact: 20% (versus 10% on average) of Swim University's search traffic is branded traffic. These are people who are already searching for the project by its name, which means they've heard about it from other sources. Such traffic is the cream of the crop for a business in terms of profit.
3. YouTube Here, Swim University's main strengths are thumbnails. They are always designed in bright colors, the font on the image is always large, and the text is short but concise. All thumbnails feature Matt's face as an expert. And not just a face, but always with a different emotional reaction, which greatly increases the CTR of the videos.
Well, there's no rocket science here either. The basic principles of running a channel, combined with the regularity of video releases, yield an impressive result. YouTube generates about half a million visits per year for the site and works great to grow branded search traffic (which I mentioned a bit earlier).
Such visits from YouTube are not just visits; they are precisely those people who have already watched the video and are familiar with Matt. In other words, it's a warm audience that is much easier to sell to.
4. Automated Email Newsletter Here, Matt has a real ace up his sleeve. In their email campaigns, Swim University uses the ActiveCampaign service, primarily because of its automated email sequences and flexible related capabilities.
Let's break down how Swim University's funnel is set up in emails.
Since Swim University's business is seasonal, the newsletter automation is built around the months of the year. This means that those who subscribed in May enter the email sequence starting from the May emails, and those who left their email in January start with the January series. The sequence for all 12 months of the year is prepared in advance.
The question arises: if the email sequence is looped for 12 months, what to do with those who have been subscribed for more than a year? Well, Matt himself claims that no one remembers pool maintenance emails from a year ago.
But then why send emails in a loop and annually at all? Elementary! Because in each email, Matt pitches his product or course, which contributes to revenue growth.
During the season, Matt sends more emails; in the off-season, he sends fewer. Most emails are sent on Thursdays, which forms a specific content consumption pattern for subscribers and helps build relationships.
However, if Swim University has received a significant update or they have a fresh offer for their audience, Matt doesn't hesitate to send additional emails at any time.
5. Unique Lead Magnet Before arriving at the current lead magnet format, Matt tried a bunch of things:
- Free videos. This worked poorly because YouTube is already full of free videos that don't require leaving an email to watch.
- Checklist. This worked poorly because it didn't provide enough information for subscribed pool owners.
- And finally, a cheat sheet. And this worked great! Even in such a boring niche as pool maintenance, people are interested in shortening the path to results and learning lifehacks to save time and money.
But Matt didn't stop his experiments with just the lead magnet format. He tested very different cheat sheets, depending on where the user subscribes to the newsletter and requests the lead magnet.
Moreover, Matt prints out the cheat sheets and clearly demonstrates them in all his YouTube videos. And it really works!
Also, pay attention to the quality of the lead magnet itself. How it's designed and laid out. It's not some mediocre PDF with a shoddy design. It's real infographics. And this again scores points for Swim University and sets it apart from competitors.
6. One-time Offer Great lead magnets are not the end of the story. Immediately after subscribing, the user will see a one-time offer that Matt actively works on and experiments with.
In 2021, Matt raised the price of the main product - the course - from $49 to $97. He made an OTO for 24 hours with a 50% discount. And to this day, it works great. Although, there are a few nuances.
As Matt himself admits, his OTO funnel has a 3% conversion rate on warm organic traffic. But as soon as he launches Facebook ads, he sees a conversion of only 0.2%, which is negligible. It is this low conversion rate on cold traffic that currently prevents Swim University from scaling.
But let's get back to the OTO. Here's one amusing story that perfectly reveals Matt's approach to the product.
After implementing the OTO, Matt started receiving negative comments on YouTube complaining that users had to go through too many steps (including the OTO) to get the cheat sheet that was promised for signing up.
So Matt decided to remove the OTO and focus all course sales in the email sequence following the lead magnet acquisition. Matt was surprised when he calculated that out of 15,000 people who went through such a funnel, he received only 5 sales. Just 5, which is negligible compared to the 450 he could have received in a funnel with an OTO before delivering the lead magnet.
Afterward, Matt brought back the OTO and continues to work in this format: first the one-time offer, and then the lead magnet delivery.
Do you have an OTO in your business? If not, what are you waiting for?
Conclusion It's time to draw conclusions. Here's why, in my opinion, Matt achieved seven-figure annual revenue on a very niche project:
- A diversified approach to monetization.
Often, affiliate sites are created for only one type of monetization: Amazon, AdSense, or referral links. Here, there's a course, an email funnel with upsells, those same Amazon links, and AdSense (though only on YouTube, not on the site). Moreover, Matt created an entire store with pool maintenance chemicals.
Be as diverse as Swim University in your revenue sources, and your business will reach impressive numbers faster.
- Diligence and time.
I repeat, Matt's story may not reveal innovative ways to promote a business, but it perfectly shows how you can make impressive money by simply following basic marketing and traffic advice. While putting in enough effort into each of them and doing it conscientiously, with heart.
A site with a wealth of content for SEO, email collection with a lead magnet, working with a lead database, automated email sequences with upsells - none of this is groundbreaking, but if you just do it, the result will not be long in coming.
- Experiments.
Over the many years of the project's existence, Matt has truly tried a lot of things. And it works!
Try more approaches, test more hypotheses, and don't be afraid to change and measure results. Numbers didn't grow from changes? No problem; the experience is most important. And it will transform into success and profit one way or another.
Write in the comments what especially resonated with you from today's deep dive, and see you in the next ones. Good luck!
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