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August 2016 Blog Income & Traffic Report

It’s September 1st, which brings us towards the end of summer and a new income report, despite a bit of inactivity here on the Income Bully blog.

For those of you that are new here, I share my income that gets generated from this blog and other projects related to the blog. I don’t share offline income, investment income or anything like that, only directly related to this blog.

I share this to help other people see what is making money, also to be transparent, but to tell you the truth, the biggest reason is because I like the accountability, sharing successes, and even publicly shaming myself in a bad month.

What Happened in August?

If you visit the home page, you would think absolutely nothing happened in August.

Now is the time when I’m supposed to tell you all the behind the scenes stuff I’m working on.

That would be a lie. August has been absolutely unproductive for me when it comes to this blog. I did spend a bit of time working on my local SEO course, but even that has hit a few snags and I’m struggling with providing perfection instead of just cranking it out.

Content creation was definitely lacking. Understatement of the year.

I didn’t do any outreach, passed on an opportunity to join an expert round up that could have provided excellent traffic. I also could have taken part in a guest posting opportunity but put that off for now.

Why Did August Suck?

To give myself a bit of credit, just because the blog hasn’t been active in August, I definitely have been.

I’ve been working on an SEO project that has taken a lot more time than I’d like. A lot of issues that happened due to previous SEO work from people that were out of their league and making bad decisions overall.

Also spent time trying to win a municipal project. Nothing better than government work providing you with 20-50X the income a regular business would pay for a website. Perhaps I should write a blog post on how to land government website projects?

Even though I have legitimate excuses for why the blog has been inactive in August, it is still unacceptable. I need to do a better job preparing and creating content, seeking guest bloggers, and budgeting my time better.

It isn’t just about time management though. One of the biggest struggles is just focus and motivation.

August was a success for me overall, just not so much with the blog, which will be obvious when sharing the income and traffic stats.

One Good Thing Though…

Even though I STILL haven’t created a “coaching” page to sell hourly coaching services, a reader of this blog contacted me and wanted to buy multiple 1 hour blocks to help setup an SEO strategy for his business that has 40 different locations.

Very cool guy. It was great connecting, and helping implement a strategy and seeing the work pay off for him in such a short period of time.

Even though he paid me, I felt like the roles should have been reversed. I think I learned a lot more from him than what he learned from me. This has kind of been the pattern with my coaching calls, I often feel that I’m learning just as much from the people on the call with me. I haven’t had any complaints yet, and so far everyone has returned for multiple calls.

August 2016 Income and Traffic Stats

Self Created Income/Courses

Income: $1,571

Coaching Income

  • 6 Sessions

Income: $1,650

Note: Page coming soon for coaching.

 

Affiliate Income

Affiliate Income – $236.23

TOTAL Income Bully Blog Income – $3,457.23

Thoughts On August Income

Overall the numbers look fine, but in reality, the coaching income really puts a mask on where the income probably should have been. If it weren’t for the coaching, this would have been one of the worst months I’ve had with the blog.

Affiliate income took a hit, which is no surprise since the lack of activity on the blog. The big surprise is the increase in ebook sales. That number I keep expecting to decline. It’s only a matter of time until it gets under $1,000/mo unless I do something about it.

I need to get back on track or else income will continue to slip.

OTHER METRICS FOR THE BLOG

Alexa Rank – 314,510

Twitter Followers – 3,310 ( 100 decline since last month, been inactive on Twitter)

Youtube Channel Subscribers – 68

Google+ Followers – 40

Aweber Email Subscribers – 2,499

More Metrics:

Unique Visitors – 3,660

Bounce Rate – 72.40%

Pages Per Session – 1.67

Average Time On Site – 1:57

Thoughts On Traffic and Blog Metrics

Earlier in this post, I was going on about the lack of activity on the blog. I just realized when looking at followers and other metrics, that I also was totally inactive on Twitter. Twitter doesn’t provide the highest quality traffic, but when I schedule mass tweets, and automate the process it does provide decent traffic and a few subscribers each month.

Visits are down. Other metrics are about the same, slight decline in pages per session and time on site but that’s expected since regular readers are coming to the blog and leaving once they see there is no new content. Honestly, I expected those to be worse than what they are.

I should have set some time aside even an hour here and there to keep twitter going, g+ communities and other activities to bring in traffic. I know content creation needs to be on track, but there’s no excuse for not promoting some existing content.

All Time Stats For The Blog

Month & Year Unique Visitors Affiliate Income Total Revenue
December 2014 N/A $18.10 $3528.10
January 2015 921 $46.48 $4062.48
February 2015 1361 $223.65 $3239.65
March 2015 2324 $70.58 $2697.58
April 2015 2528 $400.90 $2391.90
May 2015 6422 $400.90 $2829.90
June 2015 9830 $449.96 $3378.27
July 2015 8015 $586 $3621.86
August 2015 6209 $777.93 $8386.24
September 2015 2372 $132.06 $1912.06
October 2015 2249 $267.59 $1277.59
November 2015 2331 $331.68 $1757.68
December 2015 2191 $306.56 $1981.56
January 2016 4126 $463.09 $2411.09
February 2016 4850 $754.95 $3219.95
March 2016 4505 $419.77 $2239.77
April 2016 7393 $525.57 $2821.57
May 2016 6469 $457.29 $2585.29
June 2016 7132 $747.66 $5472.66
July 2016 4745 $508.24 $8226.24
August 2016 3660 $236.26 $3457.23
Month & Year Unique Visitors Bounce Rate Pages Per Session Time on Site
December 2014 N/A N/A N/A
January 2015 921 51.07% 2.93 4:04
February 2015 1361 49.74% 2.63 3:22
March 2015 2324 54.65% 2.65 3:24
April 2015 2528 54.36% 2.09 2:06
May 2015 6422 58.11% 1.89 1:56
June 2015 9830 61.4% 1.82 1:58
July 2015 8015 67.91% 1.68 1:30
August 2015 6209 65.03% 1.72 1:57
September 2015 2372 74.96% 1.63 1:27
October 2015 2249 75.94% 1.62 1:30
November 2015 2331 73.23% 1.75 2:01
December 2015 2191 72.71% 1.64 1:53
January 2016 4126 69.56% 1.75 2:18
February 2016 4850 69.96% 1.71 2:29
March 2016 4505 72.12% 1.66 2:16
April 2016 7393 72.14% 1.69 2:27
May 2016 6469 72.27% 1.74 2:16
June 2016 7132 71.75% 1.75 2:25
July 2016 4745 72.18% 1.71 2:00
August 2016 3660 72.40 1.67 1:57
Month & Year Alexa Rank Email Subs Twitter Youtube Google+
December 2014 N/A 69 N/A N/A
January 2015 2918591 212 72 0 N/A
February 2015 1492063 336 95 7 N/A
March 2015 997051 419 125 13 N/A
April 2015 786089 506 399 19 12
May 2015 537433 611 573 26 11
June 2015 377461 755 970 31 18
July 2015 290185 896 1063 38 17
August 2015 242955 1054 1339 40 19
September 2015 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
October 2015 369324 1162 1261 42 20
November 2015 372286 1190 1258 45 20
December 2015 349370 1236 1238 45 22
January 2016 350881 1374 1533 50 22
February 2016 320070 1577 1674 51 26
March 2016 344099 1675 1798 52 27
April 2016 319884 1920 2210 53 35
May 2016 338710 2074 2763 56 35
June 2016 306944 2312 3273 63 37
July 2016 293400 2414 3416 66 40
August 2016 314510 2499 3310 68 40

*If you guys have a better idea on displaying historical data please let me know. It’s getting to be too much to list everything here.

What I NEED To Do In September

Some of you have been coming to this blog since the beginning. For those of you that have been here for a while, you probably remember a period of time last year, from September until December where I pretty much abandoned the blog while working on a big consulting gig.

It’s always this time of year, the 2nd half of the year where I seem to slack with personal projects.

I need to take steps forward to make sure that doesn’t happen again this year. I want to finish off 2016 with a stronger 2nd half than the first half.

Planning Content

I spent a bit of time a few days ago creating a list of content ideas. One of the problems that prevent content creation is that when an idea pops in my head, I lose it by the time I can sit down and type up a blog post.

Having a list of content ideas should help with content creation. At least that’s the theory right now and we’ll be able to prove it wrong or right by October 1st when the next income report will be posted.

Finish My New Lead Magnet Series

One of my goals last month was to start with some Facebook Ads, driving traffic to a lead magnet / free course.

It’s a 7 day course by email, but I’m no closer to finishing than I was at this time last month. That needs to be finished, so I can drive new traffic, subscribers and hopefully conversions to my Agency Blueprint.

Stop Procrastinating With Blog Stuff

It really comes down to this. I need to stop procrastinating with content creation and improving this blog.

I need to really kick into gear, and get things moving, and growing.

With focus, and dedication, I believe this blog could have already been 2x better with traffic and income at the low end. Time to stop making excuses and get stuff done.

Final Thoughts

It was a bad month. Could have been worse though but I’m tired of having bad months and knowing I’m in a rut. Hopefully I’m able to get things back on track and make up for it with a strong 2nd half of 2016.

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