White Hat Blogging is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, in addition, I am an independent Jasper Affiliate, not an employee. I receive referral payments from Jasper and possibly other affiliates.
February, February, February… what a weird month as it has fewer days and is still in Quarter one of the new year means odd results at times. Add into this Google Algo updates for desktop pagespeed and then pandemic and now Russia-Ukraine and you just end up with oddball results.
I was hoping to stay close to my $1700 figure from January but between the Algo and motions in the SERPs, I had a little less traffic and due to this less income overall, this does showcase to me my lack of focus on building money pages which will be a new focus even though I find writing them boring.
I am hoping to balance out the income from the sites as it is still way too skewed in favor of ads which means when you lose even minor traffic volume you see a definite drop in your ad revenue whereas if I had more affiliate offers or built an info product I could push people who visit towards those for a boost in the bottom line.
Goals For Income Breakdown By 2023:
- Ads: 50%
- Affiliate: 40%
- Info Product: 10%
I have been pushing to move all my sites to a minimum of 100 posts as I feel this is the best level to see what Google feels about your sites and gives them the best chance to grow towards the 50k sessions and to my bigger 100k pageviews mark and a push into event larger ad revenue.
With that being said, Welcome to my February 2022 Income Report!
February 2022 At a Glance
I enjoyed February but. it blew by super fast, I focused on outsourcing content to build my sites up to 100 posts and crossed the threshold with the backyard site this month which is perfect timing leading into the main season for backyard activities so hopefully, they will pay dividends soon!
I am working to find more content options to have these writers build out these sites to get that main basic content out and then I can work to clean them up and work on linked pillar posts that will help me rank for those much larger volume keywords.
As to my personal site, Outdoor 4, I am continuing to produce 12 or more posts of over 2500 words on average as my goal for the entire year as part of Project Icarus, this is a plan to push your web business by being part of an accountability group sharing in successes and failures to help each other.
I continue to minimize YouTube work for the foreseeable future minus live streams or something without editing as I don’t get paid but YouTube is showing ads and generating income for themselves, so taking time and losing money is a double deal-breaker.
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 the 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 no other way to build an income that allows you the freedom with the 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 another well-detailed affiliate marketing class and many others which are available from MoneyLab.co which I am a member of as there is high value in the users within.
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.
- Fitness – 0 posts
- Garden 1 – 0 posts
- Garden 2 – 0 posts
- Outdoor 1 – 0 post
- Outdoor 3 – 0 posts (P24 Method Case Study and YouTube Series)
- Outdoor 4 – 13 posts (Part of Emilia’s Project Icarus)
- Electronics 1 – 3 posts
- Backyard – 25 posts
- White Hat Blogging (This Site) – 2 posts
- Hobby – 0 posts (On Ice as just a 30 post incubator)
- Travel – 0 posts
- Business – 7 posts
- Popcorn Site – 0 posts
- Finance – 0 posts
- WHB YouTube – 1 Video
Total Posts for the month: 65
Monthly Income Breakdown
| Income Source | Income Amount |
|---|---|
| Ads (Ezoic) | 723 |
| Amazon Affiliate | 134 |
| Avantlink | 106 |
| ButcherBox | 35 |
| Other Niche Affiliate Programs | 46 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - BigScoots | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Jasper.ai | 65 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Cloudways | 5 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Project 24 | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - SurferSEO | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Ezoic | 281 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Fiverr | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Passion Posts | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Amalinks Pro | 0 |
Monthly Expense Breakdown
| Expense Source | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Hosting - Cloudways | 52 |
| Amalinks Pro | 14 |
| Link Whisper | 10 |
| Outsourced Content - Fiverr | 250 |
| Ezoic Premium | 110 |
| Canva - Images | 10 |
| Dreamstime Images | 25 |
| Project 24 Subscription | 10 |
| Frase.io | 115 |
| Jasper.ai (Formerly Conversion.ai) | 100 |
| Trellis | 30 |
| Ahrefs | 99 |
My Niche Site Updates
Let’s dive into the site stats and details to help lend so usefulness to an income report. I am always interested in adding more details should anyone be interested but this helps keep me motivated and growing.
The benefit to this is people get to see where I feel like I have gone right or totally wrong and hopefully help some people skip these from occurring to themselves.
Site – Fitness
The fitness site continues to bring in decent enough income without any work, I do think this needs aging and then links to get any huge growth explosions to compete with others in fitness. I think what I will be considering is finding around 20-30 more lowest competition possible concepts to see if over a month I can cause a spark.
If not for now I am more than happy to let this just age and move as it is paying for itself and recouping funds but a sale wouldn’t blank the slate so no outsourcing here will occur and any content will have to be written by me to keep costs down overall.
This site could really use a huge revamp to content to build out highly focused buyer intent pages and internally link to them as the current layout isn’t getting the purchases and clicks I would expect, even Amazon links.
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
I think I will work to plan out a page and tree layout to make some huge content moves on buyer intent to start growing the buying power of this site, while doing this layout I can start to research those “spark” keywords to hopefully get the site growing again but this is a long term project.
Site – Garden 1
I finally resolved the GA mess I caused when I was purging plugins to make the site lean, so the numbers really aren’t a good comparison though pretty close to even from appearances in the graph below.
With the site I am unsure where to go, there looks to be traffic but sites with ancient updates, un-secure, and similar content continue to win ranking against me. Maybe this is why Google said it doesn’t know you until you are over 30 posts and more towards that 100 posts mark may fix issues I am experiencing currently.
The problem for me currently is time as I have other sites that are growing and making far more money-making this a back burner for me until I can maybe find the right writer to outsource this content to as most outsourcing has resulted in getting garbage content back due to not researching well and making it mostly fluff every time.
I can say the one post I wrote in January seems to spark the site to move around a bit with more posts all of a sudden moving up for the first time in 6+ months, I like this site and this concept but for me, this will just have to wait and maybe once more income is available I can find a good writer from a service or visitor.
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
Just watch and see how it goes, no current plans to push content until I can find the personal time or I can find a good writer on the site topic. May look at adding a “become a writer” page to see if anyone who visits would want to write for the site as they may be the perfect match to get higher quality work.
Site – Garden 2
This site is growing well, I have 10 posts to add this month that I just received back from my writers so I am hoping for another boost in a few months with a little more ranking time.
I am continuing to push this site to 100 posts with about 15 more to go I am happy with continual growth each month as things continue to grow and rank organically without hours and hours spent trying to get backlinks.
The only issue for me currently is that I need to build out some strong affiliate and monetization pages though I have introduced a new call to action before the first H2 that leads to a good-paying offer so now it will be to see if it converts or if I need to adapt it more.
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
Post the 10 posts I received and then work on a page structure to build out some high-performing best XX for YY content and increase the affiliate income side of the site to align with my goals up above of closer to 50/50 with ad revenue.
Site – Outdoor 1
This site I haven’t posted to in over 2 months as there is no growth and no additional keywords in older content so this site needs more of a content audit and tweak to re-classify and build content that aligns more with the visitors I am getting.
This site has homerun posts but basically, those are the main ones bringing any traffic in which makes the site close to failure with any ranking loss in those few keywords.
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
Start a content audit on the existing content to find what works, what failed, what is just needing of an update to gain spots and more traffic.
Site – Outdoor 3
My P24 case study which has its own video series over on YouTube, I am continuing to build this site and maintain it to the public timeline without deviation on adding more or falling way behind to see results.
I started with no knowledge on the subject on purpose as I find it interesting but not in my wheelhouse to make this even more aligned to a new blogger and not someone with massive subject knowledge as I think it will align better with someone watching them.
This has led me to a few realizations on choosing a very seasonal niche is probably not good for your first site unless you can weather the slower growth than on a more evergreen and non-seasonal niche site.
This site just completed month 10 and while still having issues with the content being indexed it is beginning to have solid growth as you can see below, the site gained 50% more organic traffic this month and if we can get more and more of these heading into the season this could be a good peak season for some income to offset expenditures.
I do think that it will be a tough sell to hit $1000 during this peak season and this number may not be hit until the next peak season leading into the end of the 24 months but we will see as we have plenty of time to go!
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
I have 10 posts again to maintain the timeline along with this I will be focusing on building buyers based content to help increase my opportunities to get some affiliate sales but with the current low traffic this won’t yield large results but I hope with the peak season coming I can get ahead of the visits and maximize the potential visits.
Site – Outdoor 4
This site is my favorite and my long term site for myself personally, while it shows down 24% in traffic this is in large part due to the Discover traffic being very inconsistent and it was very high last month and this month near 75% less but my organic has been growing consistently the entire time.
I am working on building this site out to be on Mediavine and it currently is using Google AdSense only for advertising monetization as you should always learn more about the other options that are available and not be beholden to any specific vendor or provider.
Each post on this site has a featured image and a Pinterest image to help promote sharing hopefully and get more social traffic in the long run, I don’t view Pinterest nor social traffic as a long term strategy but the additional traffic gets more eyeballs on the site and hopefully even faster growth!
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
I am personally writing 12-14 2500 word posts each month on this site aiming to target and absolutely own the main term I target and this so far is working very well to continue growing my site even while under a year in age.
I use ahrefs to find low competition keywords and then I niche up the topic finding the branches and the main primary topic keyword and then I build the best content from that base keyword out answering all the many questions the branches expose showing me a path to build content that fulfills all the reader’s needs.
Site – Electronics 1
I published a load of content to push this site over to near 120 posts in the recent months and it grew fast but has hit a plateau again, not sure if this is an artificial Google plateau or that the content has hit its ceiling.
My approach now is to build more in-depth content while still outsourcing smaller 1000 word content to push this site to 200 posts, my hope is that as this continues to grow I will get to the 50k pageviews marker as this is one site I am working to drive to 100k pageviews this year as a major goal.
Traffic was basically flat which is not optimal but I feel many of the newer posts haven’t actually started to rank inside the top 10 which means there just is no one visiting those pieces of content, this aligns with the Serprobot data showing 86 out of 199 in the top 10.
I am hoping to have more of these grow clicks and visits over the summer and that with pushing content that in Q4 we will be able to push that 100k pageviews number, if we can do this then this site may move over to other ad companies to just diversify my income more.
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
Continue to build content up, similar to my other sites I have avoided focusing on buyers guides and similar content that would immediately increase affiliate income from the site. I am aiming to add at least 4-8 posts this month finding more in-depth content to write on that can pull bigger search volumes.
Site – Backyard
I blew the doors off this leading into the season as I added 38 posts to get it over 100 posts, I have moved this from GeneratePress to a Full Site Editor theme to increase the speed and efficiency of the site for the peak season to get ads up as fast as possible.
I am now working on aligning buyers’ content like many of my other sites, as this site is seasonal I have a short window to maximize the potential visits prior to the end of the season and a serious drop in traffic.
Since it is the off-peak time current;y I am going to have to wait a month or two before I will see if what I had written will provide the income level previous content did last year, if so this could be a big earner for the 2022 season.
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
I am continuing to push out content through writers I have found that will help me create the volumes I am looking to hit, I would like to get this site to 200 posts like the Electronics site above so pushing everything is the goal but now I am focusing on finding keywords for off-peak to maybe survive the downtime better than I did last year.
Site – WHB
I started the merge to clean up my web profile with the transition of the old ECP site being folded into WHB, this helps me continue to focus on adding the content here instead of diversifying for diversifying sake which has always plagued me.
This plan will eventually merge in the old PBI website and then I will continue to centralize everything on websites, affiliate marketing, and content generation here in one easy space to help others find it and read it.
The huge spike in the GA traffic was last month but nothing specific stood out from it, it wasn’t direct or social so I assume maybe Google Algo moved me up space in the SERP for a day or something else similar happened.
If you check out the Search Console image though you will see the growth in the search console after I cut over the content which was nice to see, I think it will help me stay organized but also help showcase that content to people who come to my site from YouTube.
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
Finding time to write on blogging and affiliate marketing is hard currently, much like YouTube it is difficult to rank for much in the space and so time spent here doesn’t translate into much income. I write when I find a subject matter that I think more people need to understand to do better in their path to becoming full-time marketers.
Site – Hobby
This site is just a fun hobby-related area with stuff I have liked since childhood, I just don’t have the time and resources to keep pushing it so it is incubating and it continues to grow even without posting for over 4 months now, this is nice and may prove I need to put more time into content generation.
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
This site is still just incubating nothing new will be added for now.
Site – Travel
This site is neglected and I should put more focus on it now as the travel times and restrictions appear to be ending across the globe, now I feel like I should have been growing this site more beforehand but I started it going into a pandemic and it obviously never sparked much due to the lockdowns and shutdowns.
Since nearly everything I have posted has reached the top 10 I am now more interested to work in more detail, covering maybe area by area and city by city with things to do and sights to see as I beat out some travel sites with these posts.
My wife wants to travel back again in 2023 so getting this moving again towards the initial 100 posts will be my goal though I have a lot of research to do first to align some topics and get organized to begin any content push, for me I will avoid affiliate for now and focus on just informational content to grow traffic instead.
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
Research plans to get to 100 posts, find the 70 posts that can yield me the best results for the time to write them or outsource.
Site – Business
This site is more a test as I found no blogs in the space which is typically a sign to avoid at all costs, but I feel this was due to the absolute lack of any true affiliate offers or options. So I wrote and invested in some base content to start getting a chance to see what the EPMV would be from ads alone.
Currently, this site is averaging around $30 EPMV from ads alone, with only 36 posts and 6 of those are new this month this means this could be an excellent passive niche site that could become a lead-generating site with little work.
I am going to continue building this site to 100 posts though I may not reach that level this year as this site is a more background focus for now as I need massive research time or higher outsourcing costs to grow with quality content.
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
Outsource 2-4 posts a month continuing to test out cracks in the niche and find where the big money ads reside and then will focus all content generation in this biggest crack then move down as time goes.
Site – Popcorn
This site is fully neglected, I just don’t have the time I wanted to dedicate so this, for now, will continue to just age, and once the free time is available I will look to begin adding content once again.
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
Just incubate
Site – Finance
Everyone talks about the RPMs from finance related sites, so I started this little baby that I am writing when I find time, and its more a slow burn and incubate site to see if this income does hold true and if so this could be a good site to build and sell-off within 24 months.
Monthly Traffic
SERP Rankings
Search Console
Plan For Next Month
Have 3 post ideas I need to write, have a list of 1200 posts I need to really evaluate, and lay out a plan to start generating the content and building out.
Overall Lessons from February
When working hard to push content using less expensive writers you end up increasing personal time to edit and clean them up, I typically will push them through Frase which is similar to SurferSEO to make sure I am on target and matching similar terms from the top 20 posts in the SERP.
After this I run everything through Grammarly to try and clean it up further and to make sure the legibility and readability are at least decent and not using UK English in the middle of a US-focused post, for example, color and colour seem to frequently occur.
Learning to accept something that I don’t think is the pinnacle of writing should help me get content up and instead focus on revisions on a content audit in 2023 after you can see performance instead of hours editing and re-editing messing up the ranking system.
Did I Meet my February Goals?
Overall I feel February was a win for generation numbers and I really hope to see some good returns on the work being done over the next 8 months leading into a hopefully huge Q4 in 2022!
The real work is just continuing to work when there are limited returns on the time investment which is what allows you to have such a large benefit in passivity later in the site’s life.
What Are my Goals for March?
I think the goals from last month are just carrying forward and building myself moving forward, I continue to post the P24 case study online to YouTube which appears to be growing my subscribers but I can’t focus on it until it makes an income it is more of an anchor to results.
As is my story for this entire year, moving towards 100k pageviews on 3 sites and continuing the other main focus is to push sites to 100 posts.
The 2 currently growing are the backyard site, the garden 2 site, and then I am writing Outdoor 4 to 100+ posts this year.
My Recommended Tools For Results
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.
- Jasper.AI – This is your personal writing assistant, offering you more information and helping prompt you in writing make magical and informative content.
- Frase.io – I use this to build out my outlines for posts and then once done writing to check how my content aligns to the Top10 and Top20 SERP results to make sure I cover all the key terms other sites do.
- Project 24 – A welcome change from the competition, focused for all with a purely content first approach, hands-down an awesome course for building a niche site or an online business that focuses on content.
- Ezoic – Once you’ve got your website and some content, think about these guys. They’re doing some amazing things – and have helped me earn several thousand dollars (in ad revenue) that I’d not have earned otherwise.
- LinkWhisper – Honestly without this plugin managing links within my content would be incredibly difficult, honestly one of the easiest things to re-up each year and highly suggest it.
- Cloudways – As hosting goes choosing Cloudways with a VULTR HF server is the fastest you will ever see a backend run, no more waiting for the new post to load it is as close to desktop speeds as you can probably find.
