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.
Google continued to rock the world online for affiliates with continued updates which made for seriously unsettled times in blogging overall, many thinking they should just move on.
In effect, Google is helping remove competition who isn’t willing to be in it for the long haul which is interesting and intriguing.
This month I was able to attend an invite-only get-together thrown by Ezoic called Ezoic Club22 which was a place for many from the YouTube side along with bloggers, many of which with millions of monthly pageviews to get together and see where Ezoic is heading.
This showed me that focusing on the short term, as many bloggers do is not the way to a long-standing and well-producing site.
Instead, you should be focused on your passion for carrying you through the ups and downs that online businesses will have.
So my plans are to grow what I have, but my core focus is on my Outdoor 4 site, NicheU, and 2 Travel sites which can be full-on passions and less about “keyword grinding.”
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 more significant ad revenue.
With that being said, Welcome to my October 2022 Income Report!
October 2022 At a Glance
October for income sucked, as updates kept rolling out, much of the rankings shifted non-stop, leading to less traffic than I have had in previous months.
But coming out of the last updates has seen a spark again in the Electronics site, so I am hoping to regrow it back to where it was previously to think about selling out of it.
With less traffic came less income and just a painful month, but compared to last month, I have still grown, and I need to remember that it shouldn’t be a month-to-month process but a year-on-year growth game.
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 look back historically and can see where I was along with my thoughts 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 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 suggest joining the course from Income School called 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, you can look at another well-detailed affiliate marketing class from Affiliate Lab and Matt Diggity. If those don’t fit, then there is an awesome option 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, work with Jasper when it makes sense, and then 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 – 1 post
- Outdoor 3 – 5 posts (P24 Method Case Study and YouTube Series)
- Outdoor 4 – 11 posts (Part of Emilia’s Project Icarus)
- Electronics 1 – xx posts
- Backyard – xx posts
- White Hat Blogging (This Site) – 1 posts
- Travel – 0 posts
- Business – 50 posts
- Backyard 2 – 5 posts
- Travel 2 – 0 posts
- Course – 1 post
- WHB YouTube – 1 Video
Total Posts for the month: 79
Monthly Income Breakdown
| Income Source | Income Amount |
|---|---|
| Ads (Ezoic) | 512 |
| Ads (Ezoic Basic) | 153 |
| Amazon Affiliate | 148 |
| Avantlink | 1 |
| ButcherBox | 0 |
| Other Niche Affiliate Programs | 106 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - BigScoots | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Jasper.ai | 119 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Cloudways | 5 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Project 24 | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - SurferSEO | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Ezoic | 145 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Fiverr | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Passion Posts | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Amalinks Pro | 0 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - Frase | 7 |
| Blogging Affiliate Programs - The Affiliate Lab | 0 |
Monthly Expense Breakdown
| Expense Source | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Hosting - Cloudways | 52 |
| Amalinks Pro | 14 |
| Link Whisper | 10 |
| Outsourced Content | 376 |
| Ezoic Premium | 0 |
| Canva - Images | 10 |
| Project 24 Subscription | 10 |
| Frase.io | 115 |
| Jasper.ai | 100 |
| Trellis | 15 |
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
Still idle, probably something to sell or outsource content on but just not been all that interested to fight this and instead just letting it age and exist.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
N/A
Site – Garden 1
This site just doesn’t get me revved up, I think you could make something of this if you were a huge devotee, but I have personally killed the last two I bought.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
N/A
Site – Garden 2
I have realized recently that some of these posts are now over two years old without ever being updated and cleaned up, which may be why some of the rankings has dipped, though there is more people making sites on this topic now too.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
Continue to edit and revise all the content I can to see if I can spur on some new growth to gain back the ground I lost and hopefully move the dial forwards enough to decide to sell.
Site – Outdoor 1
Just needs a full revamp, theme update, and content revision but has been hard to find those topics because maybe I am too used to the topic, so thinking more outside the box and adapting approach.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
Look into time to rebuild the site theme and clean it up then revise content and get it updated and fresh for next year.
Site – Outdoor 3
The P24 case study is going well, unlike the graph. The problem is just hardcore seasonality. I am keeping to the timeline and publishing the 5 posts per month to get it to the finish line of the P24 public timeline.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
Continuing to publish the 5 posts per month the timeline sets. Start revising the first content and clean up for a last hard run at reaching the 4k goal within 2023.
Site – Outdoor 4
I continue to grow this site out, I am working on my way towards 200 posts and this site can produce very good returns from both ads and affiliate, and if I choose to delve into products and memberships there are some examples out there paying well.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
I am continuing my pace of 8-12 posts per month as I continue to grow this passion website, the next goalpost is at 200 posts, and I can’t wait to see the results. As you can see, it is moving forward in SERProbot well.
Site – Electronics 1
This has seen a resurgence as the hit from May and then each update after beat it little by little down until it hit capitulation. Now with the month being mostly sad if was still up a whopping 67% which makes me breath a little easier.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
Continue to add a few posts, continue revising posts and see if I can get it back to the 1k+ users a day mark where it was basically at before the Google hate hit and get the income growing again.
Site – Backyard
This was my first shot at a backyard site, little did I know it was up a load due to the pandemic and since the traffic has lowered overall even for other sites in the niche.
The domain is too locked in so I have instead left it to revise and continue income generation but start clean with a much more broad yard website.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
Revising posts and keeping costs to a minimum to put money into the bank for the rainy day fund.
Site – WHB
This is where I continue to journal my progress in building a side hustle and replacing my income as well as paying off all my bills to leap into a life online and free from “the man”.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
I long ago stopped focusing on standard blogging here and have changed to focus on just the journey itself and the pains and pitfalls as well as the glory.
Site – Travel
This site is one I want to grow, I just have come to realize i don’t have enough time nor enough money to “just power through it” so this is on a chill out while I get the money sites growing to sell off and once that happens this is going to get loads of TLC.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
On ice
Site – Business
Just to really push and see whats viable I pushed out 50 posts to get this on the precipice of 100 posts, now I will let these age and see just what this can make overall as it has no direct products and is only ad income.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
On one and let the newest 50 posts age in.
Site – Backyard 2
This site will be a solid power if I continue to get posts out, a focus of my outsourcing attempts this site will help hopefully anchor my content sites for years to come.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
I am working to get this to 100 posts as soon as possible and push as I have a list of 300 solid starting posts to begin the growth of this site, now is the push to grow as yard sites always seem to be solid in Spring to late Fall.
Site – Travel 2
This is a site that I have seen others do based on a locale, my hope is to turn this into a simple to build local site that’s easy for custom images and to write non-stop about to build a powerhouse.
Monthly Traffic
Plan For Next Month
Building content ideas, the initial posts don’t get much traffic but they were tests to see if I could rank without tremendous work as I haven’t done a local site ever, looks good so far now I just need to identify and post.
Overall Lessons from October
From Club22 I really got more focused and regrounded and instead of working to make a full on diverse set of sites I want to focus on my core strengths and use my own vast knowledge and cut away research just focused on “profitability”.
This change will allow me to produce better content while spending less overall money on content that I can’t tell if it is good or not, which is always a problem when you don’t know the niche deeply.
Did I Meet my September Goals?
Personally yes, I spent a good chunk of the month revising and cleaning up content while focused on pushing content hard on the business site to let it grow and age in while I focus now on my real passion sites.
I failed on best xx for yy in general as I just don’t find them interesting to focus on, this doesn’t mean I won’t create them but they are more for when I am out of creative juice and just want to make the more bland product content.
What Are my Goals for November?
Continue the bulk revision and work towards building video content using Flickify and Humix in general to get additional chances to rank in the SERP for my keywords.
My Recommended Tools For Results
Here’s a quick recap of 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.
