Marketing & Business Case Studies

Below are the different marketing projects and business ventures I’ve worked on as an employee or as a founder.

You can also see my UpWork profile for a few of the freelance clients I have worked with on that platform.

CPA Exam & Other Test Prep Websites

Crushthecpaexam.com was one of the main websites in a portfolio of test prep websites that I worked on as a digital marketing employee.

I was hired in 2016 when the business was just starting to grow and between 2016 to 2019 the web properties in the business that I worked on doing keyword research, outlining content, implementing conversion rate optimization test results, and optimizing web pages for SEO grew dramatically.

The business doubled in revenue and profitability from the time I was hired and I ended up hiring about 6 new employees to aid in the business growth.

Here is the traffic graph from Crush The CPA Exam:

This was a successful business project that I worked on as an employee and I learned a ton about SEO and online marketing.

Gut Health Niche Website

The next online business I worked on was a website that I started in the gut health niche called sibosurvivor.com.

I started this website because I had experience with gut health issues and saw an opportunity in the online SEO market to make money and provide good information to other people trying to learn about healing their digestion.

On this project I was a jack of all trades. I wrote all the SEO content including the site landing pages, blog articles, emails, and other resources.

The main tasks included:

• SEO content writing
• Email marketing and copy
• Landing page creation and optimization
• SEO strategy, keyword research, and planning
• Virtual freelancer management
• Digital Product creation (created numerous digital products)
• Affiliate marketing & relationship management
• Video creation
• WordPress website development

The site grew rapidly after around 6-8 months and I was on top of the search results for all the keywords associated with the issues I was targeting. The business grew rapidly as well and I was making enough money to focus mainly on just this project.

Here is a screenshot of the traffic graph in Ahrefs:

The business took off from 2017 to 2018 and then the Google medic update created a strong decrease in traffic and business revenue.

When this happened I had a pretty substantial email list and following so I was still able to maintain the business and keep it running for a while after until I ultimately decided to sell it and move on to another idea.

It was a successful website and venture overall.

Home Improvement & Water Filtration Niche Website

The next online business I worked on and started was a content website in the water filtration and home improvement industry called watertechadvice.com.

I decided to start this website and business because I spotted an opportunity in the SEO landscape for a good website in this niche where there were a few others but the competition wasn’t too fierce.

So I hired a small team of writers and invested a small amount of money into getting the website and content up and running.

The main tasks I worked on for this business included:

• SEO Strategy, keyword research, planning
• Link building and outreach
• Content brief creation
• Hiring writers and getting SEO content created
• Building affiliate marketing relationships in the niche
• Optimizing and ranking key web pages
• Conversion rate optimization on the main money pages
• Email marketing
• WordPress website development

The website and business took off at around 1 year after getting it going and it was at the top of Google for most of the key terms in the market.

The benefit of this business was that the affiliate products and commissions were high ticket value items so I didn’t need a ton of traffic or to make a ton of sales to have a sustainable business.

There were a few simple pages on the website that would generate substantial amounts of revenue each month. This ability to spot revenue generating keywords and money page targets enables me to be a good marketer because I know where to invest time and money to get a return on investment without wasting resources on tons of useless content.

Here is a traffic graph image from Ahrefs:

You can see that the SEO traffic shot up in 2020 when Google picked up the site and decided it liked it. This large amount of traffic lasted for a while and then at the end of 2020 and 2021 it decreased and stabilized for the rest of the business venture.

I eventually ended up selling this website on Empireflippers.com for a nice little exit amount and I learned a lot through this business process of starting and selling.

Dental Practice Website & Local Marketing

Another business website that I created and worked on was a website for a dental practice in San Diego called drsabourin.com.

I planned the website development, outlined the website content and SEO, got the content and website development done with other contractors, optimized the Google Business Profile, and produced a monthly email newsletter with audio recordings from the dentist.

Overall, the San Diego and La Jolla dental SEO market is quite competitive with other practices spending a good amount of money so it was a challenge to get the website ranking well in the local searches and for the GBP with a small budget.

That being said, I was able to improve the GBP positions and get the website showing up for a small handful of longtail keywords in the local market. This enabled the office to get a few new patient leads each month and get a small amount of new patients over time.

See the traffic graph below to see the increase since I redid the website:

This was one of the harder projects I worked on because a lot of the local SEO depends on Google reviews and other content creation that only the office can do where I wasn’t able to control that variable.

On another note I created a monthly email newsletter for this practice for the retention stage of the marketing funnel that has helped with current patient interaction and for generating repeat appointments and business from existing patients as this business gets most of its business from referrals.

See an example of the newsletter below:

Mobile Car Detail Business in San Diego

I worked on a mobile car detailing business website in San Diego to help them show up higher in the local search results and the Google maps pack called lajolladetail.com.

I mainly acted as a strategic SEO and marketing consultant on this project and didn’t implement as much of the work.

I focused on doing local SEO keyword research and determining which pages and content needed to be created for the website to start showing up higher in searches that could bring in new customers.

I also did research on the GBP competition and determined how the GBP needed to be optimized and how many more reviews they needed to increase their positions in the maps pack.

After I completed the strategy research and audit for this business they implemented the suggestions and saw a substantial increase in positions on their GBP. Then over time as they updated the website content and created new resources targeting specific keywords, the organic pages increased in rankings for mobile detail and detail keywords in San Diego.

See the local GBP rankings graph below:

Content Brief Creation and Planning for Pet Website

I have worked as a content marketer and content brief creator for the pet website Kinship.com.

I report to the SEO Manager on this project (and it is still ongoing) where he assigns me keywords and then I use various AI and SEO tools to do research on the keywords to come up with content briefs that the writing team can use to complete the website content.

This has been a monthly work project and Kinship has seen a dramatic increase in their SEO traffic since I’ve been working with the SEO manager to outline the content being created.

Here is the traffic graph from Ahrefs:

I started working with the SEO manager in the middle of 2024 when they were re-doing a lot of their content and starting to ramp up their SEO content production after seeing a decline in traffic before. They now receive over 100,000 monthly organic searches consistently.

San Diego Bombers Baseball Club Website Creation

I worked with a client to help them create a new website for their college summer baseball team at sdbombers.org.

We used a standard WordPress setup and I worked with a developer to implement the design and website structure that was needed for the baseball club.

This included a roster page, coaches pages, statistics page, and schedule page where custom code was needed to make these pages have the necessary functionality.

This project required a tight deadline and project management with a developer to get the website and custom pages done for the summer baseball season.

After this organization had a proper website and put time into posting pictures and updates on their social media profiles they were able to recruit top talent for their program and grow it over the next 2 seasons to where they are a prime club to play for.

The Daily Light Newsletter

I created a daily newsletter for Christian spiritual growth that uses passages from the bible and other spiritual content on the web to offer a daily devotional email and other website content at thedailylight.co.

When I started this I had the vision of growing it to a large audience with paid ads and social sharing but have decided for now not to get into growth and monetization yet as I’m not sure if I want to make this a business.

It has a small following and receives really solid email open rates at around 85% including around a 7% click rate to the website content.

I used Kit for this email newsletter and designed a few different template layouts for different types of emails that I send the audience.

I have pretty good systems in place for this newsletter to where I just have to do a little bit of research and come up with unique content ideas and creation in order to get it done.

Here is a sample email: