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As many know this was the month that the great and powerful Google was planning to demolish us with slow loading pages, but fortunately they realized that they hadn’t provided very good measuring tools nor were anyone (including big businesses) ready for this shift.
Thankfully this means they moved this to June and then a slow rollout to all sites in the month(s) that follow which means we can all breathe a sigh of relief, but not much as thats still next moth.
I took this month to really look at my sites and re-evaluate what needed to be done on them to be closer to a green rating and for many I have moved into the green of good experience and hope that once the next 28 days of information loads the rest will reach there too.
I also finally completed the sale of the Diet site through Motion Invest which was amazingly painless and will be an avenue I continue to follow now as I grow and age sites.
May 2021 At a Glance
This month I saw people ask in my videos why I didn’t do income reports, I guess this are is somewhat hidden but I think these videos are fairly boring and don’t really explain much to the watchers.
I want you to be an active participant in growing income and not just a passive watcher all excited and geeked out for my progress, so to that note this month I did start a site following the new P24 process outlined in there most recent blog update.
You can watch this progress report series over here on my channel if you are finding this late, if you find this now I exceedingly push you to quit lollygagging around and to start your site today, if worried on how to start jump in below to P24.
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
This month was messy compared to my normal months as there was a lot of family commitments and bad weather paired with work on transitioning my sold site to the new owner and getting all that work completed.
Due to this publishing slowed a little more than I would prefer but anytime I can manage to move the bar forward is a good month, forget about short term goals, this is about 24 months plus boys and girls.
- Fitness – 4 posts
- Gardening 2 – 0 post (On Ice as just a 30 post incubator)
- Outdoor 1 – 3 posts
- Outdoor 2 – 1 post
- Outdoor 3 – 8 posts (New P24 Method Case Study and YouTube Series)
- Electronics 1 – 0 posts (Waiting on new post performance to find direction)
- Backyard – 4 posts
- White Hat Blogging (This Site) – 2 posts
- Hobby – 1 post (On Ice as just a 30 post incubator)
- Travel – 5 posts
- Business – 5 posts (No blogs in area, lots of forums and businesses – big value or waste of time to be determined)
- YouTube – 2 Videos
Total Posts for the month: 33
Monthly Income Breakdown
| Income Source | Income Amount |
|---|---|
| Ads (Ezoic) | Income - $497.61 EPMV - $18.57 Adjusted Income (After Premium) - 387.61 Adjusted EPMV (After Premium) - $14.47 |
| Amazon Affiliate | $143.63 |
| Other Niche Affiliate Programs | ButcherBox - $105.00 Avantlink - $47.26 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs | Conversion.AI - $178.20 Income School - $79.76 Amalinks Pro - $126.97 Frase - $26.39 Cloudways - $4.18 Ezoic - $44.36 Fiverr - $10.00 |
| Total Income | $1,263.39 |
Monthly Expense Breakdown
| Expense Source | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Hosting | Cloudways - $26 / Month WPX - $25 Month Bluehost - $1.33 Month |
| Amalinks Pro | $14 - Month |
| LinkWhisper | $10 - Month |
| Outsource Writing - Fiverr | $220 - Month |
| Ezoic Premium | $110 - Month |
| WP Rocket (Non Ezoic Sites) | $7.50 - Month |
| Carbonate Theme | $3 - Month |
| Canva - Pinterest and Better Imaging | $9.99 - Month |
| Dreamstime Images | $25 - Month |
| Project 24 Subscription | $10 - Month |
| Piotnet Forms | $6.50 - Month |
| Frase.io | $114.99 - Month (Unlimited Docs) |
| Conversion.ai | $99.99 - Month (Unlimited Words) |
My Niche Site Updates
Building out these reports is meant to help out if there is more detail that would be helpful please let me know as I will always be apt to add more content in this area when it makes sense and supports more knowledge.
I may look to begin adding in Ezoic or other ad based income if it is interesting or helpful, the issue there is that it isn’t really “niche” related as many seem hooked on, more you want to write what advertisers want to have their ads shown on.
Fitness Niche Site
This site is moving along, it isn’t moving at the speed I had initially intended but I do think much of this is due to fitness just having a lot of competition and that I haven’t acquired much links which would boost me.
This site was always my attempt at a home run swing going against hard competition without the kind of money that others may use, my goal is really to re-evaluate search and look into covering some more diet and recipe related content that can be bolstered by Pinterest traffic.
Monthly Traffic
As you may notice the traffic is “down” but this is due to me being a moron and adding GTM but with an additional duplicate tracking code which I fixed where you see the blue line dip down, all you can do is move forward!
SERP Rankings
This site is slowly moving up and its just definitely hurt by being in a health/fitness with large competition. As long as it keeps inching up I am happy, I just don’t want to see losses in placement in a month.
Search Console
I have a low CTR rate but many of these posts are not currently in the top 100, the first thing I will revisit in year two will be to content audit and understand where I have gone wrong and if it is fixable or just dead weight.
Plan For Next Month
I am reworking my search focus to try and find some more diamonds in the rough and looking into HARO also. I have also failed to work at getting Pinterest really moving on this but the goal is to make, at a minimum, 1 pin per post so this next month may be low on post creation but it is to reinforce the groundwork to build out stronger.
Garden 1 Niche Site
This site is still on cruise control but it appears that performing heavy internal linking may be getting it some sort of life within Google. I may look to write 3-4 posts this month using Coversion.AI to see if I can double down in any aspect of this site as I feel it should be performing better than it did.
Monthly Traffic
As you can see I didn’t even have Google Analytics installed on this site as I had really decided it wasn’t worth the time I had put into it, but I wanted a good record if it did jump back to life so now we can watch it maybe blossom into something intereting!
SERP Rankings
This month there has been some actual growth in ranking with many things starting to move upwards that I had long since relegated into the garbage heap, fingers crossed it keeps moving and maybe we move this forward?! Who knows!
Search Console
The impressions appear to be slowly growing and the clicks have at least finally moved into the 100 in the month realm, though still not amazing it is maybe a step in the right direction and I am hoping we see the spark of life come now after being heavily in a sleep phase?
Plan For Next Month
I will be publishing a few new posts, now there is some life I don’t feel like I will be totally wasting my time and efforts. I will keep it moving and hoping that it grabs more and more keywords and can begin to grow into a strong site for me as I feel there is plenty of room in the niche.
Garden 2 Niche Site
This site just keeps moving and moving, when I did my TES I checked to see if other sites ran ads and noticed this niche had a couple of players in AdThrive and Mediavine which proved to me there was interest and search intent.
This site has continued to grow and grow without much additional content being poured into it, the next step is to move this to 50 posts and add some more solid footing around the niche to see if we can move this towards Mediavine.
Monthly Traffic
This month was 100% growth in users but only a 77% growth in pageviews, I don’t mind this but it does mean the average pageviews per user dipped from the last month. If this speed of growth continues to occur this site would be a big money maker sooner than many other experiments I have made.
SERP Rankings
For 37 posts to have 34 ranking in the top 100 already is quite exciting, I have chosen good posts that will get moving and help me build traffic levels up showing Google good signals as to user experience and my information is solid.
Search Console
As you can see the steady incline over the week is an excellent graph for any new site builder to see as we have moved from 10 clicks per day at the start of the month to around 20 by the end of the month!
Plan For Next Month
The push to 50 posts is the next focus so that means jumping back into the search content to find myself about 13 posts to begin writing or outsource, if life allows maybe this can be reached within the next 2 months which I think will be an awesome springboard to the next level of traffic.
These next posts will be on shorter keywords, focusing on linking from currently ranking content to these high search keywords should start to help ramp up the traffic by capturing shorter, higher volume search traffic.
Outdoor 1 Niche Site
This is and will always be my passion site, I have a YouTube channel I have assembled and next will be to start creating content to it in addition to the website. This site is in pretty heavy competition but I have no issues with writing 500-1000 or 10000 posts to grow this as it is what I enjoy away from this keyboard.
Monthly Traffic
I will take a steady 7% growth on the month, knowing that in the beginning stages I wrote too many review posts and less informational than I should has helped me learn to not make that mistake on newer sites. =
The benefit is most the new content ranking is all informational and should add to my traffic increasing dramatically through this and into next year!
SERP Rankings
I am very happy to gain 10 spots in the top 10 this month as this is starting to show that the work I put into the site and informational content is starting to pick up steam and the growth in the top 30 gaining 19 posts backs this up.
Search Console
I have just been slowly moving up the SERP which has helped the CTR values to begin growing towards the 4% I would prefer it to be at a minimum, clicks are up and next month looks to be a winner if the graphs upward trajectory is maintained!
Plan For Next Month
I am continuing to produce content for this site and will always want to get 2-4 posts minimum per month but I am working hard on the ideas to start the YouTube channel and begin building a secondary form of interaction with the community at large.
Outdoor 2 Niche Site
This site is a interesting one, it can grow bigger but I just need the time to give it the TLC it deserves to become the site it should be. This domain is open to easily reaching 500-1000 posts and bringing in those 100k-200k pageviews if I could just focus.
Monthly Traffic
Without much being consistently added the site has grown by nearly 50% in users over the previous months, since the content is all about outdoors though its expected with the restrictions lifting and summer hitting!
SERP Rankings
Lots of movement in the Top 10 is super exciting!
Search Console
Some cool spikes where one post was hammered with nearly 400 views has hopefully been a chance to see where we could go with a teensy bit more loving from Google, the post had a nearly 5 minute read time even with all those viewers.
Plan For Next Month
I am thinking about just posting a bar to ask readers if they are interested in writing for the site, not sure where to go with this one as it was built with me and a partner but he has pretty much left the game altogether so this site sits in limbo as it is hard to write for “shared” credit when the other party has abandoned it.
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.
Monthly Traffic
This is me in this first month, when I changed to organic the number was 0. April data was prepping the site in preparation for the P24 release and not writing any content nor search analysis just getting the bones squared away.
SERP Rankings
Getting some ranking content in month one is pretty cool I feel!
Search Console
Little heartbeats, start of life for a baby site!
Plan For Next Month
Keep on cranking out content and building out based on what Income Schools course shows as the best possible keywords to focus on, building out another 10 posts would be my minimum hope given that we are moving into summer.
Electronics Niche Site
This site was the one I merged a month or so back due to being in too tight a niche and domain name, I lost a bit of the love with the domain name change as it was more product focused but this new name will allow for a load of more content and a chance to really become something big.
Monthly Traffic
We began the month in a lull that hurt after moving but we appear to be coming on strong with some of the newer content and grabbing views leading to that 14% increase in users and 18% increase in page views.
SERP Rankings
This ranking could only come by giving the site more open areas to be written in, I worried at first as the old domain and content brought in around $50 a month reliably but I now feel that this number will be dwarfed by the end of this year as it continues to move outwards and not being cnstrained.
Search Console
I am very happy with this jump from 20 clicks a day to around 40 as that is a doubling in clicks within a month, if that happened next month again I would be ecstatic.
Plan For Next Month
Continue writing into the newer content areas to locate reader interest and then begin building new content in that same direction, currently using a shotgun style approach in many directions to find what searchers are truly looking for.
Backyard Niche Site
I knew going into May that the start of the real outdoor season was about to pop, definitely also adding in how many have felt cooped up for the last year is adding to the momentum!
I was able to get into a specialty info product affiliate which I have slowly added to my posts that provides a high income possibility outside ads only which was the plan up until now.
Monthly Traffic
184% growth over last month is even more than I was expecting as I though it could grow by nearly 100% but to almost double that expectation is pretty exciting! I hope this growth continues through the summer and into fall before the season ends and traffic numbers dip heavily.
SERP Rankings
As with most sites where you are adding content slowly the addition of ranking will be a slower process than someone who can drop 50 posts in a month will achieve but I am happy with a steadily increasing number of ranking posts as some in Ezoic have EPMV’s of over $100.
Search Console
This kind of graph everyone loves to see with a consistent steady growth from start to month end, if this continues then next month could be yet another one with 100% growth levels!!!
Plan For Next Month
Any content I write now is basically going to rank in time for winter, so I am working on finding some content that can be posted that would draw clicks and interest in the down months to hopefully add some stability to some wonky year long graphs this will produce. (Can you say bell curve!)
White Hat Blogging Site
Blogging in general is a super hard nut to crack, especially if you aren’t selling fake futures and that you are saying it is hard work and determination, but that’s the honest truth so I will continue to add content to help people out and hope one day to get at least one person started to freedom.
Monthly Traffic
Outside of what appears to be a weird bot impact on one day the traffic is basically stagnant, I don’t expect this to change dramatically any time soon but there has been a large pick up in these income reports so that’s always a cool thing to see.
SERP Rankings
Honestly, since I don’t add these income reports to the tracking I think this is just fine for blogging content without paying for links to boost the signal, white hat all the way baby!
Search Console
I’m pretty happy about 50 clicks in a month, no kidding, now onto the next goal of 100!
Plan For Next Month
Continuing to write content that helps people move the needle, have about 25 ideas for posts but just need to find the time. Now that summer is here I may get more chances to write on here but my focus is on the niche sites themselves with this a place for my odd thoughts.
Hobby Niche Site
Unlike the gardening site the hobby site looks to be plodding along like the old gardening site, never really getting anywhere so it is going to be sitting here at about 30 posts until I start to see a heartbeat out of it.
Monthly Traffic
As you can see traffic says “down” but this is probably due to me avoiding visiting the site and the clicks for me going away as direct when I log in, we shall see over the next few months if this one decides to pop.
SERP Rankings
The fact that nothing is in the top 10 is pretty irritating as I see what’s there and I know the content I wrote is better and fulfils readers more but without getting users to click and read your data ain’t no one gonna find you down on page 3 of Google…
Search Console
Consistent impressions, a few clicks, welcome to the life of a newer website in the online world, now we can wait and see should it choose to become anointed by Googles as the next best thing to sliced bread…
Plan For Next Month
Hold the ground and wait to see signs of growth before jumping in harder, the cool thing is the site has a lot of directions it can grow but I will wait for the aging in to occur first to see if it is long term viable.
Travel Niche Site
I love this site and much like the outdoor site it is here for the long run as my wife loves the topic too and hopefully once she see’s the awesomeness she will decide to start writing on that site to help grow it out, she just cant see why people online would care.
Monthly Traffic
The growth on a new site of 50% is super cool given that in todays Covid world the search traffic for travel is near all time lows I can hope that once the world has moved on this site could come roaring to an explosion of life!
SERP Rankings
Movement in the SERP is a wonderful thing, I have found so many topics that are super short 200 words and aged that I should be able to continue writing for ages on this site.
Search Console
I am happy with moving to less and less 0 click days, hopefully next month I can have no days with 0 clicks and then it will be onto the next goal of 500 clicks per month, just remember keep writing and don’t get sidetracked!
Plan For Next Month
I want the new outdoor site to reach around 30 posts total so the work will be in just writing, I am not outsourcing anything in this new site until I get to around 100 posts which I hope I can do within the next 12 months with hard work and dedicated effort.
The other sites will have to be outsourced more though to maintain any organization to publishing and growing so I will be planning to build out 4 solid post ideas to submit to writers and begin the process of asking for subject matter experts to write on the blog.
I feel this will help add credibility to what is added along with be at about the cost I pay for outsourced writers anyway which require editing and cleanup regardless, may as well hire people because its their passion!
Business Niche Site
This is more a flyer on a super open niche, now whether that is due to no traffic or not finding viable ways to monetize traffic I won’t know until I take the shot. The site is really going to be written as I find time and the first goal will be that 30ish posts mark.
Monthly Traffic
Nothing to see in the first 8 days of existence.
SERP Rankings
For 8 days old and to get something onto the top 10 shows me that there is a lack of real niche blogs in this area, my current goal is to get content started and then add on ads as this will allow the site to monetize itself while I try to find any decent opportunities for affiliate income.
Search Console
Nothing to see in the first 8 days of existence.
Plan For Next Month
Shooting to get about 8 posts written seeing how these first 5 appear to already be getting hits and moving up the SERP there is a huge gap possibly and a chance to fill that gap could be a perfect opportunity to get some side income.
Overall Lessons from May
Just adding content isn’t going to always lead you to results, the fitness site has been something that continues to vex me and prove that no matter how much I know it still isn’t enough in all aspects depending on the competition.
I have loved the addition of Conversion.AI to my toolset because I don’t rely on it to write my content for me but to help partner with me to stop my own head from hitting roadblocks that stop my creative juices.
The new sites are like a ray of fresh sunshine and are allowing me a chance to continue to learn and adjust the process to see what works and what doesn’t when you are not buying links from others, if you aren’t going to purchase links you need to rank in the top three for a chance to get natural backlinks so you have to win those posts first.
Did I Meet my May Goals?
For myself I feel that is a yes, I spread out the content over most the sites that I am actively attempting to grow and I was able to output 2 videos in a month which for me has always been an issue.
I do wish sometimes I could focus better on a single site but this would honestly lend me more to burnout that I have avoided largely by allowing my brain to learn new things and dive into other areas when it just isn’t interested.
I do think my approach will lead to the same as other people in the long run, but unlike many who write their first 30 posts and then quit to never write again I am outputting nearly 30-40 posts per month and the sites are all growing!
In the end you only aren’t making goals when you choose to stop, this isn’t a business where you get rich quick and it is far more a longevity approach which can lead you to success, if you aren’t where you want to be then stop and re-evaluate and keep moving!
What Are my Goals for June?
I have simple goals this month with it being summer, to keep building content on all my sites but with a focus on the new P24 case study site and the new YouTube site along with the push to 1000 on my White Hat Blogging YouTube channel (993 currently).
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.
- Conversion.AI – This is your personal writing assistant, offerring you more information and helping prompt you in writing make magical and informative content.
- 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.
