August 2021 – Monthly Income Report

By Josh Koop •  Updated: 09/01/21 •  24 min read

Welcome to August 2021! I knew I was going to make a little less this month than previous months since I sold off my outdoor site which was pulling in a decent amount monthly.

But with everything configured I have recovered quite well with the other sites growth helping me to cross very close to the same traffic and nearly same income as last month.

This is why I am such a fan of having a wide array of sites and not just going hard on one site, there will be misses and there should be hits but going all in on one thats a miss could lead to exhaustion and quitting.

Overall this has been a pretty smooth month, with some life and the pandemic starting in again with Delta I was still able to focus and get out over 50 posts across the sites with my focus on driving all my sites to a minimum of 100 posts.

That all being said, Welcome to my August Income Report!

August 2021 At a Glance

I have continued to focus on building out my solid P24 Case Study for the YouTube channel, spending the time to choose the right posts and to keep myself aligned to the Project24 timeline but not pushing past it.

As you may recall if you have been keeping up with these income reports, I decided to stop focusing on the 2 sites which are reaching nearly 200 posts but showing mixed results in growth to focus on building up the sites which show results but hadn’t had proper attention applied.

The growth in the Electronics niche site as an example is up a GIGANTIC amount in traffic versus last month after pumping out solid content for 2 months straight, I still have about 25 to go to reach 100 posts but if this growth keeps up it will quickly have the chance to become the most solid year-round site.

Menwhile YouTube is moving and I’m closing in on 2500 watch hours, this means in 1500 more watch hours I will move into the possibility to monetize the channel and add a new revenue source to my income reports which is quite exciting!

Why Create Income Reports?

I can say that I don’t necessarily “enjoy” making these as they take a solid chunk of the day to gather and align but they are very nice when I go look back historically and can see where I was along with my thoughts back at that point.

I started doing these income reports to show month on month growth and to provide some motivation to show that websites can be a solid income over time but that it isn’t a get rich quick scheme by any means.

Should you choose that you want to make websites for a living to earn income you need to be realistic that the work you do now will have a CHANCE to pay off in a year or more.

That being said there is not another way to build an income that allows you the freedom with time that a blogger can achieve, this is my why and it is the reason I work continually to improve my skills and my niche sites.

If you are an absolute beginner I would suggest joining the Income School Project 24, it can help you when you have no clue to get solid footing for a really good cost.

If you aren’t sold on them then you can look at good detailed affiliate marketing class and many others which are available from MoneyLab.co.

Overall Content Generation Breakdown

Building content against a vast array of sites can be intimidating, I write what I can, I work with Jasper when it makes sense, and then I outsource whatever I can afford to help keep the gas pedal pressed down hard.

Total Posts for the month: 55

Monthly Income Breakdown

Income SourceIncome Amount
Ads (Ezoic)500.64
Amazon Affiliate115.49
Avantlink77.70
ButcherBox35
Other Niche Affiliate Programs46
Blogging Affiliate Programs - BigScoots0
Blogging Affiliate Programs - Jasper.ai189.72
Blogging Affiliate Programs - Cloudways5.02
Blogging Affiliate Programs - Project 240
Blogging Affiliate Programs - SurferSEO0
Blogging Affiliate Programs - Ezoic58.97
Blogging Affiliate Programs - Fiverr0
Blogging Affiliate Programs - Passion Posts184.50
Blogging Affiliate Programs - Amalinks Pro0

Monthly Expense Breakdown

Expense SourceMonthly Cost
Hosting - Bluehost1.33
Hosting - Cloudways26
Hosting - WPX25
Amalinks Pro14
Link Whisper10
Outsourced Content - Fiverr250
Ezoic Premium110
WP Rocket7.50
Canva - Images9.99
Dreamstime Images25
Project 24 Subscription10
Frase.io114.99
Jasper.ai (Formerly Conversion.ai)99.99
LSI Graph19.00

My Niche Site Updates

Recently I realized I was approaching sites with the wrong focus, I was putting in massive effort into the sites a “wanted” to be successful and neglecting sites that already were showing signs of success.

Since this realization occurred I have fully shifted my focus onto the sites that are showing high promise and less time on the sites that are just fighting to move upstream, this has given me some strong growth numbers for the month!

My overall hope is that my change in focus will cause a rebound of growth in the sites which were showing promise and has already started to shape out that way! Keep on reading to see the growth in the sites.

Fitness Niche Site

I continue to work on this fitness and health site because I am getting older and learning to adapt and get my body to last as long as possible is a smart approach to longevity for my family and myself.

I have begun writing content again on this site after going through some serious evaluation on what I have wrote and where I have faltered, fitness and health in general are definitely not simple but cracks exist if you look hard.

Monthly Traffic

It appears at the start of this month there was something that was doing well in ranking that may have dropped back off before the end of the month as the blue line was clearly above the orange line through the middle of the month.

Whatever happened there has brought traffic to lower levels which I am hoping is transitory, I am going to continue to produce content and see if by 200 posts if this can get some more signs of growth and life.

SERP Rankings

All things considered I don’t like losing one of the top 3 results, but the other content appears to finally be jumping in Google with gains on 12 posts in the top 100.

I am planning a full on evaluation of missed posts to see where I lack versus the competition though this may not happen until October since the push for 100 posts in 30 days starts for me on September 1st.

Search Console

GSC shows some good overall growth in clicks within Google for this month over last month. Impressions are up 46k which is exciting as I move content up into the top 10 this can easily translate into a large growth in click chances!

Plan For Next Month

I have been using KeywordChef to dig into more longer longer tailed content options to see if I can find and write on better topics where I can build some strong relevancy.

I wrote the first 5 posts this month on this site around topics I found in those searches wher I should be able to win, I also paired this with Frase.io (similar to SurferSEO) to help find what other in the top 20 have for keywords and content to make sure I hit all the marks.

These posts are more informational and not buyer targeting, I really want to ramp up the traffic volume to the site and am much less worried about affiliate as you can always fix monetization faster than gaining overall traffic volume.

Garden 1 Niche Site

I have spent months digging through this trying to figure out why it is so badly performing, whats funny is it is one of my first sites and I think I failed badly at keyword research, I have since gone back through with KeywordChef to see if I can find some lower competition to reboot against.

Monthly Traffic

As expected the traffic is messy here as I had the site crash due to the WPX downtime, this is why many I know switched to BigScoots or Cloudways as WPX appears to be overloading servers and didnt accept blame for the issue and passed the buck.

Due to this and the migration processes my stats are all over the place because traffic was just dead in that start of the month and the turn just made this month a total loss for real data.

SERP Rankings

This is expected, I have posts that are targeting posts that they may not be able to rank for. Unfortunately the first posts I had ever outsourced belong on this site and looking at them with a eye now I can see how trash they are and when paired with targeting too difficult a keyword you see the results.

Search Console

Just staying the same basically isn’t much to write home about, now that this domain is aged at nearly 2 years old I plan to rework and rebuild and this should help spike GSC results.

Plan For Next Month

Still building out a list of low competition keywords in a particular part of this niche to try and renew the foundation of the site to start building it, the focus will be to turn this around and then probably sell it off.

Garden 2 Niche Site

This is one of my sites on the push to 100 that can turn into a lucrative income creator, there are a couple sites online running on AdThrive which means I know there is traffic and income available as this site grows.

My focus is really to take it to that 100 post realm and then start to work on posting against shorter tailed keywords to really grow the traffic volumes, this is a very nice evergreen niche so it should need constant post updates.

Monthly Traffic

Growth was nearly 50% moer pageviews which is awesome growth but as with many gardening sites this will be my first year and I do not know whether this will dip in the winter as some of it could be done inside in theory.

I am hoping it stays highly searched all winter as this would be a solid year long niche with evergreen content making it a sweet passive income niche with ads as the focus.

SERP Rankings

You cant help but love green across the board, I gained in all sections and all but 2 posts are now in the top 100! This is just excellent feeling and I hope that once at 100 posts I maintain and grow even more into the top 10 to help ramp traffic.

Search Console

Continuing to nearly double clicks within GSC is an outstanding sign, the fact that the previous month is fully under the August side shows that overall there was no weak day but that overall the site is growing in Google’s eyes!

Plan For Next Month

My goal is to produce 10 posts this next month which would help move this site closer to nearly 55-60 posts and really start the final push to 100.

I feel this site will be amazing for longevity and being able to provide a solid income basically in a passive manner once this hard work is complete it will really be just writing better longer, and more helpful content than all my competition and gain that high volume short-tail keyword traffic.

Outdoor 1 Niche Site

This is a passion niche and I will continue to grow it for life as it is something I do all the time regardless of it being a website for me. It is just difficult to rank when faced with stiff competition from the likes of REI, and it just can’t be a pure focus.

I do hope that within the next year this continues to grow and can become that full passion site that takes my time like many other big bloggers who make a real income from a passion of theirs.

Monthly Traffic

Growth of 11% isn’t poor and is nice as this is a pace that is continually achievable, don’t get me wrong I would love to get a 50% or higher growth like some of my other sites but as long as it is going up we all know thats the best news!

SERP Rankings

I appear to have lost a good chunk (4) of my top 10 keywords, I am researching which these are so I can figure out how to take them back. As a good sign the top100 and higher are growing and staying green but the losses in the top 10 and above are what keep the bigger traffic numbers away.

Search Console

Search console is favorable for the month for this site as it grew by nearly 500 clicks, all growth I can get in this tough niche is worth it to me. I looko forward to the day when the mythical “hockey stick” happens…

Plan For Next Month

Maybe 1 or 2 posts but the focus will be more on evaluating the miss posts and figure out how to turn them around into winners (if viable for traffic) otherwise find related content and merge together and redirect and delete the dead post.

Outdoor 3 Niche Site

This is a brand new site built with only the P24 new course that was launched this month over on Income School’s Project 24. This uses their new search methodology and puts it to the test, the hope for me is that it helps find lower competition, yet higher search volume content.

We concluded month 4 in August and all signs look very good as to continued growth and that we should be moving towards the point where there is a chance to get that elusive first $5 month.

Monthly Traffic

The growth in organic traffic at 350% shows how well this may go as the months move on and I am far ahead of the timeline as the expected pageviews for month 4 is 100pvs. I am currently nearly 4x ahead of the P24 timeline.

SERP Rankings

As expected on a super new and fresh niche site, my keywords are lagging behind my posts, this is where I lean heavily into internal links and hope to pull up the other content as quick as possible to help get that hockey stick prepped for action.

Search Console

Growing as expected, following P24 you do have to have a little bit of patience as you aren’t out there buying artificial links to baloon your site as an authority it actually inst.

This means patience and a continual push to keep building content volume to help snowball your site.

Plan For Next Month

I have another 10 posts to reach the timeline goal of 70 posts total for month 5, this has been an easy goal when it is the primary focus.

This month I am aiming for 2-3 buyers guide and best x for y to begin building some income from affiliate sources.

Electronics Niche Site

This site got some HUGE love this month which was amazing and its the one I knew had potential and was the one I had decided would be the first to push to 100 posts, after adding nearly 28 posts over 2 months the payoff looks like it was worth it!

Monthly Traffic

Any site that can grow at 130% month over month would be explosionary! If I got close to this next month this site would have moved to over 10k pageviews a month with ease, now thats what we all are looking for!

I hope that this can continue with the high ramping introduction of fresh content on winnable keywords is causing a rocket of visitors to the site, I am excited to see if this trend can continue!

SERP Rankings

Look at the green, gaining 3 in the top 3 and 6 in the top 10 shows in the vault of traffic that I was able to receive this month. This further proves to me that the race to 100 was far more important than I even understood before!

Search Console

Growth in both total impressions along with clicks is a welcome sign, the CTR is moving towards 3% and this means I am being shown higher in the SERP and that my titles in the SERP are interesting enough to yield a pretty decent click through.

If this keeps up I may work through Ezoic to do some H1 Title Tag Optimizations to see if I can improve my CTR to even higher rates.

Plan For Next Month

Adding on 10 to 15 more posts will bring me very close to 85 to 90 total posts, I have really pushed hard on this site instead of blending across all in the race to 100 as the focus is shown here to help push the gas pedal faster than a distributed drip style approach.

Backyard Niche Site

This is a powerful niche which averages nearly $40 EPMV on Ezoic but the issue with it is that it is time limited, it is a spring to early fall niche for most and this means the traffic will drain off and later ramp up next year.

This was initially why I was so slow to post on this site, I was not interested in a site that could only provide a solid income for a few months a year.

As time has gone on though I have realized that this can be an excellent niche to run though as it will be mainly passive and is a good “vacation” funder for the summer months.

Monthly Traffic

The good news is that after the 2 months of Google updates (and hammered hard on July in particular) I am close to back to the previous levels of traffic I was at before the update.

I am working to find unique posting options within this niche that have easy to rank for informational posts but also feature a much higher than expected EPMV for advertisers making it an excellent 100 post site.

SERP Rankings

I am regaining what was hit in the updates from Google, the top 100 keeps growing which means that I may be in for an amazing year next year when the traffic launches again for the season.

Search Console

I have broached the 100k impressions again which is a nice number given it is in drawdown for the seasonality. I gained minor raise within CTR from 3 to 3.1 but this means with 100k impressions to a 100 click increase so each of these increases is fine with me!

Plan For Next Month

I have a list of posts that can be wrote, this may need to be outsourced next month to try and get 10 more posts out while I work on the Case study and headphone site.

I don’t want to lose eyeballs on this site as it is a supreme ads generator when in season and having to wait a year for results is already ainful enough.

White Hat Blogging Site

This blog gets content when I find the time to write, I thin kof it more as a way to help other newbie bloggers and show income history for those looking at realistic approaches without the fluff.

Monthly Traffic

Pageviews are down, honestly traffic is always weird to this site as getting any content into the top 10 is like crafting a masterpiece painting. Most the visitors I feel come from a couple specific posts that have migrated their way into the top 10.

SERP Rankings

Growing traffic in the SERP for “blogging” and “affiliate marketing” is just plain tough, this site is a longevity play though and not ranking immediately doesn’t bother me as long as it helps out people.

Search Console

Growth in clicks, impressions, and CTR is welcome to the performance, again, fighting against big powerful players is not a fast win game and is more a long game for years.

Plan For Next Month

Write content as I find time, the ability for high returns is amazing in a blogging or affiliate website itself, but the never ending fight to keep rankings and to keep up to date with the trends and changes makes it a hard grind.

Hobby Niche Site

This site is more of a test as the space is full of blogs but none of them are necessarily outstanding in my opinion, I have some aging to to before I write more this is just going to stew.

Monthly Traffic

Nothing being added but numbers are up is a good sign on a site thats pretty fresh. I’ll take the 70+% growth in pageviews but it is slower than other sites I have had at this age.

SERP Rankings

This niche seems like it should be a winner but ranking is slow, though there are a fair amount of other blogs in the space many appear to be more or less dead and haven’t posted in a long time.

If this continues and gets closer to 20 in the top 100 then I may decide to push up to 50 posts and write more in another sub-niche to see if there is a space with more traffic than what I currently tested on.

Search Console

Lots of zero days, hoping to see those shrink over time.

Plan For Next Month

Sit on it and just watch it age over time.

Travel Niche Site

I wrote the first 26 posts to kind of start this little site moving to age and grow over time, its been hard to find enough time to get content moving here but it is on my shrot list for the push to 100 posts.

I love this area and I know my wife is wanting to travel again and I hope this can be the push she needs to start blogging also and bringing in content she is interested in writing herself.

Monthly Traffic

There were no new posts on this site this month yet the traffic still grew by 50%! This is much like the electronics site and that it could readily explode once the posts can be poured onto the site.

SERP Rankings

Continuing the all green streak, super happy with the growth of 2 in the top 3 and 3 more in the top 10! This shows that the content in this niche is sub par and there is a good opportunity to push i and take a solid hold of traffic.

Search Console

Nearly 50% more clicks, 9k impressions, and a slight drop in CTR which may be due to additional keywords that I assume caused the large rocket in impressions for the site.

Plan For Next Month

Try to write 10 more posts on the site to move closer to the 50 post mark while building towards a shot to 100 posts and to see a hopeful explosion in traffic!

Business Niche Site

This was more of a rainbow shot, there is no affiliate programs that I have been able to locate but the ad possibility and evergreen idea behind it could yield strong results for a site with a strong chance to look to info products or maybe even lead generation for RPM explosion.

Monthly Traffic

This traffic number is helping prove my thoughts right, I am going to push out another 5-10 posts and see if this continues to grow well, if so this will be my next to 50 posts and then consider ramping to 100.

SERP Rankings

I lost a keyword from the top 3, but the site is super young so Google dance with results is definitely still occurring frequently.

The fact that a large chunk are in the top 100 already though shows me that there is a lack in resources and I can quickly take control if I push content to eat it up.

Search Console

Like you would expect with a large showing in the top 10 the growth has been solid within Google even for a newer site, when there is no competition you get to rank for most terms faster than expected normally.

Plan For Next Month

Continue to write on topics where there is a glut of forums only and ramp content creation to get to the 50 post mark as soon as possible.

Popcorn Theme Niche Site – AKA Hobby 2

Since I was selling off a site I was happy to fill in the spot with another niche site that I can focus in on and get some more fun testing the Popcorn Theme out, I put in a bit of time helping clean up issues prior to their launch and have been happy with functionality and speeds out of the box, check it out!

Monthly Traffic

This site is a fun build for Popcorn as a theme while I wait on my own personal theme to be complete, the site is also growing pretty well and is more focused on topical relevancy and covering every section in hyper detail before moving on.

SERP Rankings

There is more blog competition in the niche but the section I decided to start building was in a smaller part that is covered less in depth by others, we will wait to see the results.

Search Console

As expected with a super fresh site, there is a nice peak in impressions but there is nearly nothing for clicks because nothing has made it to the top 10, without being in the top 10 you may as well not exist at all!

Plan For Next Month

I am writing these posts on Jasper with Frase for content scoring, this is an intresting take on ranking a site with content from AI that scores above the other top 20 results along with a super fast theme and topical relevancy all rolled into one package.

Overall Lessons from August

The one big thing to note from August is that sometimes you really want to hit the gas on a site and that post velocity can change the math on any website, as long as you choose the topics well and they are something you can actually rank for.

Outside of this, Jasper and tools have a place but they can’t be relied upon to write the entire post for you. Jasper is a writing assistant who is there to hel pyou create but isn’t a research assistant so all “facts” are just placeholders that you should replace with real facts.

Did I Meet my August Goals?

Personally I feel this is a yes, I am working to push all my sites to that almighty 100 post mark to find what is a solid play for longevity and what is a falter.

I am not attached to my niche sites and I have sold off sites when I don’t feel I can do them the justice the deserve which opens me up for more niche sites.

Unlike others who will work on one site only, I don’t want to be one Google update to complete collapse and I see diversification as the only way to build this level of defense to ensure no one update will take me down.

What Are my Goals for September?

I have a lot of life happening in August, school started again, my daughter is in sports, the pandemic doesn’t appear to want to end. My goals are quite simple, to continue to push to 100 posts for all sites and to see green across the board in the SERProbot scores for the month.

From there, here’s a quick recap on some of the most valuable resources and things I recommend you check out. They’ve helped me in my journey and I think they’ll be valuable in yours.

Josh Koop