🐶 $9M Reviewing Dog Food

Today’s niche business is DogFoodAdvisor.com, a site that has made a fortune reviewing dog food (Sold for $9M)—but also serves as a lesson in how internet businesses can and need to evolve in 2025.

🔎 What We’ll Cover in This Article:

✅ How Dog Food Advisor started
✅ How they used SEO and affiliate marketing to generate millions
✅ Other examples of niche affiliate sites
✅ Why Google updates have crushed many smaller affiliate sites
✅ What’s working for affiliate marketing in 2025

Let’s jump in!

🚀 The Business Model

Dog Food Advisor started as a simple review site focused exclusively on dog food ratings and recommendations.

Their core strategy? Ultra-specific SEO content:
✅ Deep-dive ingredient breakdowns
✅ Independent product ratings
✅ Coverage of dog food recalls

By focusing on one product category, they positioned themselves as an authority and dominated Google search results.

Unlike broader pet blogs, they niched down hard, ranking for specific search terms like:

✅ Best dry dog food
✅ Grain-free dog food
✅ Dog food recalls

💰 How They Make Money:
1️⃣ Affiliate Commissions – They earn commissions every time someone clicks their links and buys dog food on Amazon, Chewy, or other retailers.
2️⃣ Display Ads – They monetize their high traffic with ads.

Dog Food Advisor sold for $9M in 2023 to Wag. At their peak, Dog Food Advisor pulled in over 10M+ visits per month and was likely generating millions in revenue through affiliate sales and ads.

🔍 Other Niche Affiliate Sites That Have Made Millions

This model isn’t unique to Dog Food Advisor—there are plenty of other niche affiliate success stories:

🔹 The Wirecutter – Started as a simple tech review blog and was acquired by The New York Times for $30M+.
🔹 Sleep Foundation – A site reviewing mattresses and sleep products that sold for millions.
🔹 Runner’s Lab – Focuses entirely on running shoes and gear, making money through affiliate commissions.
🔹 Outdoor Gear Lab – A niche site dedicated to hiking and camping equipment.

While Google has made it tougher for new affiliate sites to rank, these businesses still prove that the right niche + smart SEO + affiliate commissions = big money.

📉 Why This Model Is Struggling in 2025

Affiliate websites like this thrived for years, and many still make some great money (dog food advisor sill gets close to a million visits per month) but Google has recently changed the game:

⚠️ Google is now favoring brands like Reddit and Quora over niche review websites.
⚠️ Low quality AI-generated content is flooding search results.

🚨 Dog Food Advisor’s traffic has dropped nearly 50% from its peak. This isn’t unique to them—tons of niche review sites have been struggling to stay afloat.

🎥 What’s Working NOW for Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing isn’t dead—but it’s shifting. Here’s what’s working today to drive traffic to affiliate products:

📌 Short-Form Video (TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels)
– Reviewing products and linking to affiliate programs.
– Showing side-by-side comparisons of different brands.
– Unboxing and demonstrating products in real time.

📌 YouTube Long-Form Content
– Many niche channels still rank well on YouTube for searches like Best dog food for puppies.
– Videos can drive traffic to affiliate links.

📌 Building an Audience
– Communities keep people engaged and returning.

Its important to note-SEO still works for people who go ultra-niche and dominate a specific keyword.

But only if you provide quality helpful content.

If we look at the dog food space there are still plenty of low competition keywords available to rank for…

All the green boxes below show the KD or keyword difficulty to rank for. This number goes from 1-100. As you can see there are plenty of 0 difficulty keywords still out there.

🛠 How You Could Do This Today

The exact same strategy Dog Food Advisor used still works in other areas. Instead of starting a review blog, consider:

🔥 Short-Form Video Reviews – Start a TikTok/Instagram/YT channel reviewing niche products.
🔥 Niche Authority Site – Focus on one hyper-specific industry (e.g., camping gear for ultralight backpacking).
🔥 Affiliate Newsletters – Collect emails and monetize through recommendations.

The internet always changes, but one thing stays the same—people will always search for product reviews. How they consume that content is what shifts.

Hope you found this one interesting. Would love to hear your thoughts on affiliate marketing in 2025.

Enjoy the day!

— Tim

📖 Resources & Further Reading

📌 Dog Food Advisor Website – dogfoodadvisor.com – Explore their review methodology and how they rank different dog foods.

📌 The $9M Sale of Dog Food Advisor – Sale of Dog Food Advisor

📌 Examples of Other Affiliate Sites – 13 Affiliate Site Examples