January 2021 – Monthly Income Report

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.

Well here we come to the end of another month and I am working hard to make sure I continue to publish how things are going for my business.

My plan is still to just continue to publish content and build my sites, I have begun to look into hiring writers to continue content creation through utilizing more resources.

Many people will build and focus on only one site, but given the pandemic and Algorithm changes the safest way to build for me in a long term manner is to distribute between multiple sites.

I just built a complete seed site that I am letting grow, it isn’t running ads and is built for full pagespeed insights pegging a 99/99 rating. This is a test to see if pagespeed and the upcoming may update will launch this site into overdrive.

January 2021 At a Glance

As expected Ezoic ad rates dropped about 50% for the new quarter and new month, this isn’t a large surprise as it was anticipated. Beneficially pageviews continue to grow which offset some of the losses in EPMV.

The diet site that I thought had been impacted by the update was more than likely somewhat impacted but more and more appears that people just hate dieting and reading about diets leading from November through January 1st.

The fitness site is growing and looks to get some love every once in a while where it gets a huge spike in impressions and clicks but then drops, looks like testing from Google and could be getting close to moving up soon.

As to outdoor the growth has been good as it should reach a 7 month high at just around 7k pageviews, I feel like the motion up has begun to grow so I am hoping this is the beginning of the push to 10k and beyond.

Why Do I Do Income Reports?

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.

Content Generation Breakdown

January was a month to get back on track as the Christmas holidays all came to an end. The content generation was focused on building my new gardening related site out and fleshing out other sites.

• Site 1 – Fitness – 4 posts
• Site 2 – Diet – 1 posts
• Site 3 – Gardening 1 – 0 posts [ DOA? ]
• Site 4 – Gardening 2 – 9 posts
• Site 5 – Outdoor 1 – 4 posts
• Site 6 – Outdoor 2 – 0 posts
• Site 7 – Electronics 1 – 0 posts [ Fail ]
• Site 8 – Electronics 2 – 0 posts [ Super limited niche but found 6-8 more post ideas ]
• Site 9 – Public Niche Site – Footbagger.com – 0 posts [ Fail ]
• Site 10 – Backyard – 7 posts
• Site 11 – White Hat Blogging (This Site) – 9 posts
• Site 12 – Online Business – 5 posts [ New ]

TOTAL POSTS FOR JANUARY: 39

Building upon the successes so far from an excellent 2020 as a blogger, though hoping this pandemic blows past and we can get back to normal life once again.

I would prefer my posts to be better balanced in future months but I push hard where I have content ideas lined up and sometimes this is pushed on some more than others.

As I expected from December I am focusing on bringing fitness to 200 posts and this is being done at the rate of at least one post per week, I may try to accelerate this and balance out some of the other sites.

Monthly Income Breakdown

Monthly Expense Breakdown

Many of these are purchased for yearly licenses but I tried my best to break the costs down into monthly chunks to help make more sense of a overall monthly expenditure.

As you can see the overall monthly costs are more than I am actively making but thats the cost of building a business, investing time and money to build something that will pay off in the end.

My Project Updates

Now that we are almost 2 solid months from the last algo update I figured we can have a good chance to see how sites responded and where I feel they are moving.

As to the feeling of having a large singular authority site versus many smaller but strong websites I still believe that you are strongest by having more diverse income.

The benefit that a single authority site would provide will be diluted when spread out over more sites but the overall impact from any one update is greatly minimized.

Site 1 – Fitness

I was able to hit the 4 posts I set as my minimum required to add to this site per month to push it towards that 200+ posts total.

My goal is to have this still be the anchor for my overall sites as this can easily grow to near any size as fitness and nutrition is nearly limitless.

This site is still making an amazing amount based on the age and if that trend could continue while content gets more views and grows this could be incredibly lucrative.

Site 2 – Diet

I love the idea of this site but find it to be very difficult to have someone else write for it. I am trying to actively figure out if I can get writers by adding a banner to the top to get visitors attention.

It has begun picking up in traffic again though and is moving closer to the pre-Thanksgiving numbers around 6k pageviews so the motion is back in the right direction of growth again.

The Facebook group continues to grow and pull in people who visit the website, this will hopefully continue through the new year helping to pick up steam and gain more people to share my content.

Site 3 – Gardening 1

I spent this month using LinkWhisper to thoroughly build an internal link structure between all the posts I have built on this website. It has had some random hits and some Amazon and Etsy sales but is still massively underproducing.

This is really my final hurrah for this site for now and I will just let this site sit and age to see if it will somehow find a spark, maybe later I will decide to put some money in on additional content but for now this is full backburner and watch mode.

This site is monetized through Etsy primarily but does have some links to Amazon products also. It has made a few sales that technically pay for the hosting and domain for the year but nothing fabulous and really to this point a total letdown.

Site 4 – Gardening 2

This site was built with the new Google PageSpeed update coming in May, the thought being to have a site that is built focusing solely on a few links to Amazon and no ads or any delays, speed is consistently 99/99.

This site is very much in the ghost town and I don’t expect the traffic levels to increase dramatically until around the May update timeframe as that would be right around the six month mark.

My goal for this site is to skip running any ads and focus on growing this to 50 posts and a goal of maintaining peak pagespeeds so the site will be running lean and mean non-stop.

Site 5 – Outdoor 1

This site seems to have hit its six month mark along with being loved by the update as it has continued to grow. This month will be almost double last month in total traffic which has helped with the loss of EPMV from ads.

I absolutely love this niche and continue to write about 95% of the content myself, this is something I enjoy doing non-stop myself and know that it can get large by viewing others in the niche on Mediavine (multiple sites).

This lets me know that as long as I don’t give up it can easily become a solid performer with ads along with having a vast trove of affiliate choices which means it can be incredibly diverse.

Site 6 – Outdoor 2

This site is one that could easily be 1000+ posts it is a long term project to grow out within multiple sub niches and the end goal being a site that pulls in 100-500k visits per month.

Unfortunately there is always a loser when trying to crank out content and this site was the unlucky one, this site needs to get moving and I am working on building out a large list of posts to begin outsourcing.

I will be focusing on building this with more force this year as it is definitely able to be as strong a performer as the Fitness site, growing this site out would easily give a large income per month once aged.

Site 7 – Electronics 1

This was actually my second site I ever created but I wasn’t aware of what a “micro” niche was at the time, now I know what I built was a micro niche site and the growth is fairly limited by the subject matter.

The reason I keep it is that it is reliable for around $60-$100 each month and is incredibly reliable, I do updates to any new products as reviews and cover topics as they become viable.

I have found some more review posts I can write and some tertiary keywords that I can target to write posts on that will give me a little more traffic and hopefully increased income.

I actually like sites that are micro sized as they are easy to canvas but they are limited in what they can ever provide and I would rather have one $3k website than 3 $1k websites to manage long term.

Site 8 – Electronics 2

I am so lazy with this one that I still haven’t gotten to installing GA4 onto it, this one can get some good value but it is product oriented and in a tough place when competition is high and effort on my side is low.

This may be a site that is sold to someone who will give it ti TLC is deserves and start to build out the information it needs to become a strong powerful site, not the lame duck I allow it to be.

Site 9 – Public Niche Site – Footbagger.com

This site is just for helping show people what can be accomplished online on my YouTube site: Pro Blogger Income. The goal is that I write everything and the delays of real life may slow down progress but it continues to move.

I absolutely failed at this site this month, showing people that a site can be built is being derailed by being too distributed.

I am hoping to continue to grow this by at least 2-3 posts per month through the next year and end the year around 50 posts. After this I may try to find a Facebook group where I could find someone in the niche to actively write.

Site 10 – Backyard

This site was more because of my new house and learning about the backyard and how to properly take care of it. This is more a labor of need than specifically one of a niche to make money, in fact this has not made a single sale on Amazon.

I have broached a few other niche topics to start preparing for next winter and am on course to reach 100 posts on the site this year, I have high hopes for this one as the ad EPMV continues to be high.

I am hoping to have this vault into the higher traffic volumes this year as it already has nearly double the content as last year through the season.

Site 11 – White Hat Blogging

This site itself, it is aimed at people looking to begin blogging but with a focus of not needing to get grey or black hat through building links and similar processes.

I will also be listing sites from my collection to sell on the front page once I know they are viable and if I won’t have the time to manage them myself.

I am also working on services to provide to help people build successful niche sites and these services will include parts people traditionally find difficult.

Lessons Learned

I am continuing to push out content and the goal is still to get all my sites between 50 to 100 posts at a minimum, from there choose what to keep and what to list for sale and move on.

Definitely building a single authority site, while allowing for better overall core authority, impacts you in the case of an algo hit as you could go from 100k to 5k overnight and drastically lose your income.

Did I Meet my Goals for January?

As I hoped I focused hard on building out content and getting site content built up, I also was very close to the $500 range again even with a bigger drop in ad revenue overall.

The sites are moving up and gaining on the 10k pageviews goal I had but there is definitely some time to go but if this current trend was to continue I may hit this within a month or two.

I started the three channels but have failed to get any movement on posting videos, I will need to focus on this goal for next month to not fall behind.

What Are my Goals for January?

Currently my goals are to balance out the content being added to my sites to help move them all forward instead of big hits on specific sites, so the goal this month is to find 4 posts per site to get done by month end.

If I finish those 4 per site, then I can begin to look at adding more content onto the sites to ensure I am moving them all forward. The only place this will not happen is on Garden 1 as it just has never caught on.

If I can get this squared away then the next goal would be to start figuring out YouTube on a few of these niches to help build another way to get people to the content and to build up additional ad revenue streams.

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.

• 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.

Josh Koop