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.
November ushers in all the Black Friday conversations and looks at how to maximize your traffic potential when visiting your website for most owners. For me, I focused on just continuing to build content instead to build traffic numbers as I had family around for the entire last week and a half cutting my access to perform solid website work.
November also had the normal yearly Google algorithm update that bounce websites around after they start making the month a variable again during the highest sales timeframe which also proved that it was better spent building as much content as I could and waiting until traffic levels increase instead.
My focus is still on getting websites to 100 posts and the electronics is now clear and now garden 2 is moving up and is now over 70 before December starts. Google recently said that with low content totals, like 30 posts, they still can’t tell what your site is about which means the lower side I may need to adjust to 50 posts instead of 30 before resting.
The rest of my time was spent getting posts onto the P24 case study website and working hard to maintain their timeline and not fall too far behind which is a busy addition to my monthly work.
December, like November, is a busy month for most people. With a family and Christmas coming there will be minimum time available to write content and keep the volume up. I just eclipsed 500 total posts for the year as this was a primary goal I am very happy to have reached this number and the benefits it will yield over the next year.
With that being said, Welcome to my November 2021 Income Report!
November 2021 At a Glance
November is a hard month to focus on as you have too many things in too many directions with holidays, visitors, huge sales, Google updates, so I don’t try to overly waste effort with it as I am not fond of just writing gift guides or best X for Y guides with a focus on just profit.
I am just going to keep pushing to see my traffic grow month over month, I have moved to nearly 40k in pageviews this month, and moving from the fitness and outdoor site to my other projects has provided much more value for the time put in.
The outdoor site is still a passion site and I will continue to build it out and grow it to be my 10-year project overall, the others are very good passive income delivery vehicles as most are in evergreen topics where the information won’t change much over time.
The longer I do this the more I realize I don’t want to be a sheer number only content generator, I want to be able to upkeep and update my content, and seeing people with 1000+ posts on a site shows the issues coming with managing upkeep in general without it becoming a chore.
My goal now has been to focus on reaching 200-250 posts on any single website, then spend the time, work, and effort to continue to dial them into the best content on the web on the subject matter as this is manageable by a single-person business targeting shorter and shorter tailed keywords for maximum value per post.
I’ve always been into this for the freedom aspect, the choice to do what I want without a 9-5 along with the opportunities it can provide but I also want to be the best resource out there and not just another Jon Dykstra winning by the sheer volume and hope of a home run.
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 – 10 posts
- Outdoor 1 – 0 post
- Outdoor 3 – 9 posts (New P24 Method Case Study and YouTube Series)
- Electronics 1 – 1 posts
- Backyard – 0 posts
- White Hat Blogging (This Site) – 2 post
- Hobby – 0 posts (On Ice as just a 30 post incubator)
- Travel – 0 posts
- Business – 0 posts
- Popcorn Site – 0 posts
- Elite Content Publishers – 1 posts
- WHB YouTube – 2 Videos
Total Posts for the month: 32
Monthly Income Breakdown
| Income Source | Income Amount |
|---|---|
| Ads (Ezoic) | 683 |
| Amazon Affiliate | 132 |
| Avantlink | 133 |
| ButcherBox | 0 |
| Other Niche Affiliate Programs | 289 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - BigScoots | 65 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Jasper.ai | 131 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Cloudways | 55 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Project 24 | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - SurferSEO | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Ezoic | 114 |
| 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 |
My Niche Site Updates
Let’s dig into each site and see progress, or lack thereof happens when you are working to manage a wide array of sites. Overall this does lead to a slower growth curve than a focus on a single site, but with this diversification comes a much better chance of safety from a Core Algo Update.
Site – Fitness
I continue to just let this one idle and gain some age, I have sent off some posts to see if there was a way to push outward into some nutrition side discussions but haven’t seen much budge on them so for now, this site will just continue to sit.
The site is continuing to make around $30-40 per month in ad revenue so it may slowly over time begin to pay itself off even if I never post again, I just need to find the right angle, whether on YouTube or how to win from the content approach.
Monthly Traffic
Normally, based on last year, the traffic begins to dip starting in October through December. I guess when everyone wants to glutton themselves with food, drink, and enjoy the life they don’t care as much to read about health, fitness, or nutrition!
SERP Rankings
Rankings didn’t move up much and the posts I updated using Frase haven’t started to move so the jury is out on the “optimization” it helped to perform and I will do a few more just to be safe as there is many miss posts that just aren’t ranking in the top 100, let alone the useful top 10 spots.
Search Console
I was moving up at the end of October but then the November update comes and I start all over again, I just need to rework missed content to see if I can get them higher in the SERP as the increase in CTR from that change is more powerful than just tossing more content at it.
Plan For Next Month
The plan is the same as last month, the focus will be on auditing the content of the failures and then begin to check and rebuild, using Frase. No more new content to try and recoup overall costs and try to get even on the site in general and allow the aging process to possibly help build it greater.
Site – Garden 1
This continues to show hints of viability, I just need more time as the posts I outsourced were junk posts from iWriter long ago and are honestly crap posts of super low quality. This is a site that could use a YouTube channel to help push people to the site, it is more finding the time and building something when short on time, must feel nice when you can become a full-time affiliate marketer… goals.
Monthly Traffic
Overall traffic may look down but the organic is actually up, this site was part of the crash of WPX and then migrations took time and it hasn’t gotten back to where it was back then even with crappy content. Some time and TLC will hopefully turn the traffic back around again.
SERP Rankings
I m very happy that the newer content I wrote recently and published started this moving in the SERPs again where it had been basically stagnant forever and a day. Now is the hard work to correct my mistakes from 2 years ago where I targetted keywords I wouldn’t be able to win, you learn a lot over 2 years.
Search Console
Overall my impressions are improved and now it’s just working on building more winnable top 10 content to gain clicks and to build some user impressions to feed Google that my site is awesome. I am very happy with only 1 day with 0 Google clicks, now it’s to move onto bigger and better things on this site for the new year.
Plan For Next Month
This will be 1-2 posts to continue to rebuild this site and target winnable topics where the top 10 is easily in reach, this site is far more oriented to info products to make money but you need traffic for those to become viable for good levels of income.
Site – Garden 2
I love this site and I am happy to move it towards 100 posts, I do think that this site will get to 200 posts and be a stable income source for a couple years without issue before looking to sell it off. I think most could use more time looking and learning to dive into niche evaluation as you may find some amazing nuggets!
Monthly Traffic
Traffic increased but it has been a long time since fresh content in bulk has been added to this site so until it begins to rank that newer content I expect growth to be at a similar 5-10% level and hope for a huge burst at 50-100% eventually once all this new content begins to rank in the SERPs.
SERP Rankings
I am choosing winning topics as you can tell with a newer non-aged domain I am ranking 41 of 66 keywords in the top 10, I hope to continue this trend and move more into the top 3 to maximize traffic into the site.
Search Console
Google is pretty flat, I ended where I began. CTR is 2% but I would hope to move towards 3-5% which means putting some time in with Ezoic and Tag Tester to see if I can make better and more clickable titles for the posts.
Plan For Next Month
December is going to be a difficult time for building content on my sites due to a general lack of time to create content. I am hoping to make 3-5 posts and just keep the growth potential growing.
Site – Outdoor 1
Building up outdoor sites can be a total pain, they are incredibly competitive, even with information content I find much of the top 10 in the SERPs being slammed with content where they all skyscraper one another so now the entirety of page one is 3500+ words on very basic topics because any item sale can be very lucrative.
Monthly Traffic
I am very happy to see a 35% growth on this site as I have put nearly 200 posts on it. Maybe it is time to finally bust out of this sandbox or artificial ceiling and begin gaining some momentum!
SERP Rankings
Growth across all levels is nice to see, now to push more into the top 10 to really gain traction on pageviews and begin the real site growth explosion curve!
Search Console
I love graphs that actually grow within 30 days, they show the true meaning of you getting rankings that matter in the top 10 as that’s where meaningful clicks and impressions come from, pretty sure this is why my earnings were boosted through Avanatlink sales this month.
Plan For Next Month
I am spending December working on post topics for the new year, I will be letting this site rest through the end of 2021 and hopefully be primed for an amazing 2022!
Site – Outdoor 3 (P24 Case Study Site)
Never start your summer niche in the summer if you don’t want some real sad performance through a longer timeframe, point taken. I built this cause it sounded like fun to make and I have limited knowledge on the entire niche which makes for a much better case study on a program like P24.
I am writing a lot as a newbie on a couple specific categories of posts but if it takes 8-12 months for the site to hit its stride then that should pair closely with the beginning of spring so these months of no results and overall depression could yield amazing results and income next year when the season hits hard on more aged content.
The side issue is that with a small window you won’t know if you have totally missed the boat and gone the wrong direction for the next 4 months still which is why I have covered a couple of cracks with 30-50 posts each hoping to score a win in at least one to start building up from.
Monthly Traffic
Well, it’s basically wintertime in a new niche with no age and no authority so a lose-lose, just never lose hope as these are sometimes what is needed to see an amazing explosion on the other side!
SERP Rankings
I do like seeing some movement climbing month over month, just keep the posting coming and never give up, especially in year one as year two is when you will see and experience all the benefits!
Search Console
This update in November looks to have sparked some love for my site and the impressions and clicks raised as it occurred so now maybe the growth may start to continue and move the site’s needle, I would love to explode into summer as it would make this all worth it!
Plan For Next Month
I was short this month with 9 out of 10 posts complete, I need to get 11 out this next month to keep up with the timeline but like any normal person building sometimes there is an ebb and flow to creation, sometimes you can’t be perfect but good is better than none.
Site – Electronics 1
This site was super tightly niched down, one of the first sites I had ever built but it had few keywords left and was too tight to gain traction. So I bit the bullet and found an awesome domain name and did the cutover to a more expansive domain that gives me near-unlimited topics.
What did it net me? Well, it has grown from a little 1000pv micro-niche into a 15000 pageview and growing rapidly authority site in the making. It has taken a good 8 months to build and write new content that is finally expanding and taking shape and the results show a nearly 50% growth monthly for 3+ months in a row.
This just shows you sometimes you need to take the plunge and move your domain to a more open and expansive domain and you may be able to just explode content and viewership!
Monthly Traffic
I am cruising in at around 50% growth month over month for nearly 3 months now, I am excited to see where this goes with the new year and to see it mature into a 50k session plus website. At that point maybe I will switch this site over to Mediavine to see what performance and income they can generate for me, who knows as I am never locked in.
SERP Rankings
I love all green, I am now hoping to take over more and more of the top 10 and top 3 to boost the pageviews in fast order and get this site ready for the new year.
Search Console
As you can see the bars are fully independent of each other, this is why I build sites, for this moment where all the pain of hoping is dissolved and you know you can make an income and successfully build sites!
Plan For Next Month
This site is currently without a sidebar and this has cost me some income I don’t doubt, I have been considering a theme change in January but with the growth working for it at this point I don’t want to rock the boat.
I will be planning out more content and focus on adding 2-4 posts to maintain through the holiday if possible but the focus is on preparing for the new year and what this set can bring to bear in 2022.
Site – Backyard
This site is another of the very seasonal sites I have, it can bring amazing benefits in spring to later fall but it drops off like a rock after that timeframe in income and pageviews.
This site will not ever be a non-seasonal site but I am working to build it up and look to sell once it can reach that 4 figure a month mark. Last year it maxed out at about $300 a month but much more content has been added and I am continuing to work on content to push this income out.
Monthly Traffic
As the previous year’s data along with Google Trends shows, I keep losing traffic while not losing massive ranking in the SERPs, just no one is looking for my content in the winter which means finding some topics to post on in January for winter and fall next year.
SERP Rankings
I lost a top 10, but it is moving back up already so it must have been tied to the algo update by Google in November. I went through this last year but since no rankings lost and spots are gained it’s more patience through a slow winter on the site.
Search Console
Same as above, the off-season is not gonna set any records.
Plan For Next Month
Research topics for new posts to start in January with at least 25% being topics that are winter-friendly possibly targeting heating or other useful topics to off-season searchers.
Site – White Hat Blogging
My journey documented. I find and post on items I think can be helpful to people but the internet marketing zone is a hard nut to crack if you aren’t focused on building links and so I use this to journal my progress for others and myself to look back on.
Monthly Traffic
Traffic is flat, I’m quite ok with that, ranking is just painful and internal linking hasn’t benefitted moving the needle much.
SERP Rankings
Slowly moving up, allowing myself to age and focus on the value I can bring documenting the entire process from start to finish for people to read if they need inspiration.
Search Console
No zero days, all I can ask for at this point!
Plan For Next Month
Continue the income report monthly, write content as I find unique content that could possibly rank and help people, if not rankable convert to YouTube videos.
Site – Hobby
Just an idea incubated, not very passionate about it may give it away in the future, I you read this and want a starter site email me.
Monthly Traffic
Near 100% growth, haven’t looked at it at all this month.
SERP Rankings
Near 100% growth, haven’t looked at it at all this month.
Search Console
Near 100% growth, haven’t looked at it at all this month.
Plan For Next Month
Who knows, this one is not something that pulls me to it to post as much as it needs or requires.
Site – Travel
I need to put more time into this but it was a proof of concept for my wife who loves the country and topic. I told her to work on building a site and it could pay for vacations to the country and she laughed at me, so now the site is slowly growing as I find time as I would love to prove her wrong and she would appreciate me proving her wrong for once too!
Monthly Traffic
I wasn’t able to focus on this month but as usual, on the internet, the site is still growing as the content is better than the limited information out there which gets views and keeps the cycle moving.
SERP Rankings
Nearly all my posts have made it to the top 100, this is important as it means I have chosen the right competition level or possibly too easy and limited in scope. Just ranking first isn’t good enough if it brings no traffic, always keep this in mind as you can rank for useless searches but ranking doesn’t equal success.
Search Console
Saw a little dip with the algo update, but I expect them to recover after the holidays overall.
Plan For Next Month
I have a lot of topics just really not enough time to get content onto all sites without outsourcing and outsourcing is expensive when you are in the holidays and money is more useful in pursuit of other information.
Currently finding and locating the low competition to build this site large and start to build a moat to keep it mine for the future.
Site – Businesss
This is what I expect to build into a lead generation site in the future, I have not learned enough to do lead generation well so currently my focus is to let this age in a bit and see what happens, there is literally no blogs in the topic which is a gold mine or boondoggle.
Monthly Traffic
Growing is a good sign, I am really trying to take this slow and steady to ensure the niche can make good income before investing heavily as I don’t want another fitness site where I put in money but the site is flatlined.
SERP Rankings
The site is growing and ranking, I am excited for the future this could provide.
Search Console
As with above, showing good numbers and growth while early and limited in posted content.
Plan For Next Month
The topics I chose appear to be solid for getting some traffic so I will continue to publish things that would help align to gain lead quality traffic over the next year.
Site – Popcorn Theme Site
This site is more a side project to test out the Popcorn theme and to build out a site based on a fun and old hobby I used to play frequently.
Monthly Traffic
The traffic is what is expected for a site with very little content on it, unless you pick perfect topics and get yourself to page one a new site is gonna idle around for a long time.
SERP Rankings
Moving content into the top 10 is a nice way to know things are moving and that adding more content would definitely help this accelerate.
Search Console
The first heartbeat from Google, next will be to get more than one click!
Plan For Next Month
I am focused on other sites and getting this baby humming isn’t my focus, for now, it gets to sit and age for when the time comes and I can post more to get it moving.
Site – Elite Content Publishers
This is a site that is more a passion for helping people to learn to write better content, focusing on building epic level s$%# that keeps people coming back over and over again.
I am focused on writing content and not outsourcing content so this is a 2-year project to become a solid resource for those learning to write content or to help them find ways to make more consistent content.
Monthly Traffic
Organic is up, overall is down but a lot of this traffic is or was me visiting the site to write content, I am not worried about the traffic levels though as this will need massive words to rank and become a valuable resource and won’t be built in a short period.
SERP Rankings
Showing the quality of the content and choosing keywords right gives me hope of greater things to come as this site matures.
Search Console
The algo update does appear to have given me some more clicks and got the rankings moving a bit, I’ll take all the help that it can give!
Plan For Next Month
I will continue to find topics that are rankable but align with content generation topics, these are things like content discovery, content creation, content optimization, and much more.
Overall Lessons from November
My focus is on building the sites which are performing, I can circle back around on the others as time allows but my focus needs to be on the moneymakers to help build my business bigger and better.
I was starting sites frequently to find ideas I loved that could keep my interest long term while also being profitable, I have found those sites and now the time to become focused has come and it will be a challenge.
Now is the fun time in the business, you are past year one struggles and now you can push harder and further than you ever believed, time to work on ringing in 2022.
Did I Meet my November Goals?
I hit 100 posts on electronics and moved the garden 2 site closer to the 100 posts mark which was my main goal outside of the continued movement of the P24 case study, I would call this month a win.
I gave up on the monetization posts as they just aren’t interesting to me and they don’t bring you much traffic without working on links and many other things to make them pop, maybe next year, for now, I’ll call it a miss for the goal but it was on purpose.
My other goal was 30 posts total for the month which I hit and that’s perfect to keep the machine moving forward and as I make more I will be outsourcing more on some sites to free up more time.
What Are my Goals for December?
As to content, I think my standard goal will be 30 posts a month between sites and that if possible to create more content but the 30 posts would be one a day for the month and is a good baseline.
Otherwise, I want to start publishing more consistently to YouTube and to get over 2000 subscribers and reach that hard to get the mark of 4000 watch hours to get the income source coming in from YouTube.
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.
