Reverse-engineering is an underrated skill.

The ability to trace the steps that led to someone’s success helps you learn the “real-world” steps necessary to succeed.

For example, my first successful site grew to $12,000/month in 18 months. I wrote all the content. Traffic was all organic.

If you were to ask me what led to my success, I might say “consistent publishing”.

If I had a lot more time, I might tell you about my determination not to fail, my strong “why” that kept me going, my foray into learning SEO from Brian Dean’s Backlinko blog and Neil Patel’s blog, and so on.

Those are all important factors in my blog’s success, but they may or may not be applicable to you.

Which is why reverse-engineering is important.

Reverse-engineering is looking at the actual tangible steps someone took.

If I shared the URL of my site with you, you could reverse-engineer exactly what I did.

You could plug the domain into Whois to see the exact date I registered it.

You could find the first article I published. And the second. And third. And so on. You’d look at the date they were published. You’d look at the topic they’re about; the keyword I was targeting.

You could plug my site into the Wayback Machine to see what changes I made to the design and layout over time.

You could trace every tangible step I took.

And then, you could apply the same tactics to your own site, in your own niche.

If you weren’t sure how to do something, you could research it and learn. There are enough free resources out there. With serious reverse-enginnering and research chops under your belt, you can succeed in almost anything.

A few weeks ago, I launched a tool that makes it ridiculously easy to find sites to reverse-engineer.

The tool is Site Stats Database. You’ve probably heard about it already.

If you haven’t, go check it out.

Like I said, it helps you find tons of sites to reverse-engineer. It has 217,430 sites that get at least 100 visitors/mo, to be exact. It even includes my blog I mentioned earlier. 😊 

Let’s say you want to reverse-engineer the strategies young sites are using to succeed. After all, SEO has changed a ton in the last few years.

You can simply filter the database by sites that were started in the last year. Then, sort it by the highest organic traffic.

And voila!

You now have a massive list of very young sites that are succeeding in Google search right now.

Another thing you can do is sort by niche.

If you want to see recipe sites that are succeeding, simply filter by the “recipe” niche. You can stack multiple filters too, so you can see all the recipe sites that are ALSO less than a year old.

Just a few days ago, I added the ability to filter by language. Wanna see just Spanish sites? Filter by the “es” language code.

I also added over 60,000 ecommerce sites recently. It already has sites monetized by a couple dozen ad networks and affiliate programs, such as Mediavine, Raptive, and Amazon Associates. So if you want to see a list of only Amazon Associates affiliate sites to reverse-engineer, you can do so.

You might be wondering what all the metrics you can filter and sort by are. Here ya go:

And if you want to export or copy the results, you can! (This is another new feature I just recently added).

Yesterday, I added over 59,000 new sites to the database.

Because it took so long (it’s a semi-automated, semi-manual process), I fell behind on writing a “last reminder” email about the 50% off Black Friday promotion. So, I decided to extend the deal until Monday, December 4th.

You can get lifetime access to Site Stats Database at a 50% discount ($200 off!), and the yearly and monthly plans are also discounted.

After Monday, the price will increase.

Don’t miss the deal. I won’t be extending it again.

Get Site Stats Database for 50% off today

That’s all for this email. Hope it gave you some new ideas about my favorite skill, reverse-engineering. 🙂 

As always, feel free to reply with any comments or questions!

Ian