How Swedish Twins Doubled Their Finance Site Revenue in a Year

Introduction

When Axel and Svante Hansson began Buffert.se in 2016, they treated it as a passion project. Five years later, the Swedish site serves 150,000 monthly readers with finance guides, loan comparisons and travel tips. Within one calendar year, they grew revenue from $11,385 to $23,771, doubling earnings while keeping ad spend under control. Below we outline how they achieved this, the lessons learned and the tactics you can apply to your own online project.

Early Days and Site Setup

At launch, the twins added cornerstone articles focused on personal loans and insurance. They chose WordPress for ease of use and outsourced writing to specialist freelancers to hit target keywords quickly. By early 2017 they had a few dozen posts, but traffic stayed under 1,000 visits per month. They stayed patient, focusing on quality and relevance in a YMYL niche that demands trust.

Traffic and Content Growth

From January 2020 to January 2021, Buffert.se added about 204,000 words of content and increased monthly visitors from roughly 75,000 to 150,000. The twins hired a full-time editor to manage publishing schedules, ensuring a steady cadence of new finance guides. They used Ahrefs and Semrush to track keyword gaps and refine existing posts.

Monetization Strategies

Buffert.se runs three affiliate programs, personal loans, business loans and insurance, and uses Google AdSense for supplementary revenue. AdSense was selected over other networks due to its stronger Swedish ad inventory. In January 2021, affiliate income was $23,221 and AdSense $550, totaling $23,771. With expenses at $5,750, profit reached $18,021.

Google Ads Experiments

In late 2019 they tested Google Ads to boost pages with affiliate links. The campaigns returned an average of 100% ROI, allowing reinvestment into more content and link-building efforts. They targeted high-intent loan queries and optimized ad copy monthly to maintain performance.

E-A-T Enhancements for YMYL Compliance

Since finance content falls under YMYL rules, the Hanssons focused on Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. They added detailed author bios, published updated timestamps on key articles, created transparent ad and privacy policy pages, and secured brand mentions for credibility.

Refining and Updating Content

Realizing they’d hit a ceiling in new money-article topics, they shifted effort to revising top-performing guides. By adding fresh data, refining CTAs and improving readability, they saw a 15% lift in conversion rates on core affiliate pages.

Key Results

• Monthly visits grew from 75,000 to 150,000.
• Revenue doubled from $11,385 to $23,771.
• Maintained 100% ROI on Google Ads spend.

Moving Forward

With a stable base of traffic and revenue, Axel plans to continue optimizing older posts and diversifying affiliate partnerships. He also intends to explore new finance verticals like retirement planning. The site’s future growth will hinge on regular updates and adherence to Google’s evolving YMYL standards.