Hosting Case Study (Tastemaker Conference)
Attending a conference with sponsors lined up around the block, each paying thousands of dollars to attend, it’s no surprise their marketing efforts are maxed out, competing for every attendee’s attention with eye-catching displays, immersive experiences, and nonstop promotional pitches.
This is a case study of a business owner who made an innocent business decision that resulted in thousands of dollars in lost revenue and stuck in a negative ranking state.
Tastemaker, “We would absolutely love to work with you and offer affordable and unique experiential influencer marketing opportunities. Please reach out to receive our current sponsorship deck.”
Within a week of the conference ending, a long-term client reached out to cancel their hosting service with no notice.
Expert Tips
When things are going well and traffic is growing, focus on business, operations, and growth. This is not the time to change themes, migrate to a new hosting company, or rebrand your business.
Whenever making changes, always ensure whatever you’re upgrading is of higher quality than what you had previously. (Good to Great)
Often, a single business decision is enough to change course long-term. As business owners, we’ve all experienced this at one point in our journey.
Timeshare
This was nothing more than perfectly executed marketing. It’s like going on vacation and coming home with a timeshare that seemed like a good idea at the time but ended up costing a small fortune long-term.
It’s unfortunate that businesses once known as owner-first transition to investor-first and focus on selling owners’ products or services, regardless of whether they will genuinely help. Currently, hosting companies like this are no different from Siteground or Bluehost.
Case Study
After subsequent traffic declines, this owner sought an Audit in February and invested six months of hard work. Finally, this site recovered in August and maintained a positive ranking state for months.
- Aug – increased from 36k to 160k
- Nov – increased from 145k to 185k
- Dec – increased from 185k to 220k
On Jan. 20th, this site randomly lost its positive ranking state.
Update on March 17th, 2025 – 98k
Update on March 30th, 2025 – 63.6k
There were no Google updates or announcements. The only date that stands out is the Tastemaker Conference on January 19, 2025, when this customer moved to BigScoots.
Their negative ranking state started on Jan. 20th (251,473) and is still declining on Feb. 19th (186,214), with a net decline of 65,259 organic traffic.
Updated March 17th, 2025, again starting on Jan. 20th (251,473) and is still declining on March 17th (98,730), with a net decline of 152,743
Updated on March 30th, 2025, and still declining with 63,649, and net decline of 187,834.
This is a food blog; on average, we can estimate pageviews using 2-3x organic traffic in Ahrefs. Using conservative numbers:
- rpm: $25.76 – $48.10, avg $36.93
- pageviews: down 130k Feb 19th
- pageviews: down 305k Mar 17th
- revenue loss: $4,800/month Feb 19th
- revenue loss: $11,200/month Mar 17th
- revenue loss: $13,872/month Mar 30th
- status: negative ranking state
Note: When things are going well, please avoid significant changes. It’s one thing to attend a conference, network, and scale. It’s another entirely to attend a conference and buy everything they’re selling when you’re already doing great.
This is why the timeshare element resonates. You head out on your vacation intending to relax, have fun, and then you return home, trying to figure out, why and how you bought a timeshare.
Measureable Data
Here is the migration from Crave (35ms avg. worldwide) to BigScoots (850ms avg. worldwide). This immediately impacted crawling, core web vitals, and user experience, all of which contributed to their current state of ranking.
Before moving to Crave, they had below-average performance and failing core web vitals, they’re decision to improve quality is justified.
After moving to Crave and resolving many unaddressed and underlying technical issues, this blog naturally passed core web vitals and was finally alive again.
Crave’s 35ms average worldwide TTFB, for the first two weeks of Jan.
After migrating to BigScoots.
This 850ms avg. worldwide TTFB is a real killer.
This is a case study of a business owner who made an innocent business decision that resulted in thousands of dollars in lost revenue and stuck in a negative ranking state.
Meanwhile, BigScoots has one more monthly active user (MAU) to impress Stone-Goff Partners and their Fortune 5,000 drive.
As someone who helped this business recover, I feel personally invested in its long-term success, and cases like this are heartbreaking.
