This is the monthly post where I provide a recap of the last month and display the income this blog has made and other things I’m pursuing online. This blog allows you guys to see first hand what works and what doesn’t.
There are a couple reason I’m doing this:
- I want a more passive income than agency work, so I can live life the way I feel I should live it!
- I want to help others out in their agency, business, or online and offline endeavors.
- I enjoy sharing knowledge and have started to enjoy blogging!
There are many other reasons as well, but these are the main things. The income reports displayed on the blog only reflect this blog’s income, and in the future will reflect income from niche sites, affiliate sites, etc. This of course doesn’t reflect offline income from clients or any other business offline.
After starting this blog in January, I can’t believe we’re already in June. Time has been flying it seems. 5 complete months down and the blog has grown at a very rapid pace.
So let’s see what happened, shall we?
What Happened In May?
May was pretty intense with this blog, I didn’t have time to do a few things I wanted and later on in this post you’ll see I didn’t accomplish a few of my goals but I’m pretty happy with the results.
I’ve made quite a few new connections, I’ve learned a bit about running a blog, and I’ve been in contact with many new readers here!
31 Days of Blogging Challenge
Last month, I guess it was technically later April, I announced the 31 days of blogging challenge. I did this to force myself to keep up with content creation and keep a focused schedule when it comes to posting.
You can see all the content created here: 31 days of blog posts
This was a pain in the ass at times. Some days I wasn’t motivated, I didn’t know what topics to consider writing about, I didn’t have time, and some days I just didn’t want to do it. However, I made it through the 31 days with success.
It really opened my eyes to what regular content can do for your traffic. Before this month, I was pretty active with posting new content but didn’t stick to a daily schedule.
I’m going to be publishing an analysis of the 31 days of blogging tomorrow, so make sure to come back and see it.
Featured In AuthorityHacker’s Top 23 Bloggers
This was an awesome roundup, well, I guess not really a roundup but a very interesting breakdown of who they considered to be top bloggers. You can read it here.
It was very cool to be a part of the list with some of the well known names out there. Maybe if they make a similar post again next year I’ll finish higher on the list, since this is the youngest blog to be included 🙂
I had no idea I was being included in this breakdown until one day I looked at my analytics and saw some traffic from authority hacker, so I went and checked it out. Kind of surprising but definitely great to be on there!
One of my goals that I didn’t list on the goals in last months income report was to be included in a round up of some sort. I was supposed to be in a round up on another blog but was excluded for some reason and after seeing the published version, it wasn’t due to content quality at all. I can only assume I wasn’t because maybe I’m seen as a competitor now. Either way, that’s the way I’m going to look at it, haha… and the inclusion in the top 23 blogger list made it all better.
My Amazon Niche Affiliate Site
A few months back with a depressing income report, I decided to do something about it and launch an Amazon Affiliate site. I haven’t shared the site with you guys yet because I’m hardly getting anywhere with it yet and don’t want to sabotage myself.
I intended to spend a lot more time on promoting this site during the month of May but I’ve barely done anything with it.
I need to create additional content and allocate some time to promoting the website, especially on pinterest since the niche is very visual.
I honestly don’t really care much about the niche, which is probably my first mistake. I’d like to put some stuff together, have it bring in a modest income so I can sell the thing.
Announced the Launch of My New Email Marketing Course
Just a few days ago I announced the launch of a new product. I actually planned on launching it during the money of May but there was no way I would be able to.
It’s called: Ice Cold Email Gold… it’s about email marketing to generate leads and sales. There are so many problems people have with email marketing and no course or guide out there really helps you with avoiding blacklists, IP bans, and other issues.
While there is no fool proof method to ensure 100% rate of success, this will help you get as close as can be.
You can see the pre-order details here: Ice Cold Email Gold – Cold Email Marketing Mastery
Content This Month
Usually I will list all the posts I published during the month, but I can’t do that this month, or else I’ll have 31 straight links.
So what I’m going to do is list the top 5 overall pages in popularity this month, then I’m going to share the top 7 pieces of content that was created in the month of May.
Top 5 Overall Pages
Just a Little Thank You To ALL Of You!
How I Ranked a Client’s Site in 20+ Cities for 60+ Keywords with Duplicate Content
The BlueHost & HostGator Alternative: Arvixe Web Hosting Review
SEO in 2015 and Beyond: Backlinks A Thing Of The Past?
Mobile Renegade: The Ultimate B2B Sales Lead Generator
It’s great to see two recent posts make the top 5 overall. The thank you post, a lot of you liked but it also got a lot of traffic from search engines, apparently it was ranking for “thank you” for a few days after I posted. The SEO in 2015 and beyond post is probably one of the best posts this month but it doesn’t come without controversy.
My local SEO tutorial with ranking in multiple cities is still pretty popular, one of the most popular posts on the blog month in and month out.
My Arvixe hosting review is still getting good traffic, mostly through search, and my mobile renegade demonstration page is still getting good traffic, mostly through search as well.
Top 7 Posts in May
1.) Just a Little Thank You To ALL Of You!
2.) SEO in 2015 and Beyond: Backlinks A Thing Of The Past?
3.) Why Web Designers SUCK… Don’t Be a Web Designer
4.) 69 Of The HOTTEST Marketing Statistics to Grow Your Business
5.) So You Want To Start a Web Agency? Read This First.
6.) Pre-Order: Ice Cold Email Gold! The Guide For Cold Email Marketing Mastery
7.) Lead Generation Tip of The Week: Google+ Communities
Honorable Mention: The Quadruple Marketing Threat: Get Clients FAST and CHEAP
Lets Get on to the income section.
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May 2015 Income Analysis
Here’s the breakdown:
My Ultimate Blueprint To Start a Web Agency – $2,134 (+$143)
Ice Cold Email Gold Pre-Order – $221
Affiliate Income – $400.90 (+nochange from last month)
– Mobile Renegade
– Clicks Magazine
– Arvixe Web Hosting
Amazon Affiliate Niche Site – $74
Total Income – $2,829.90 (+$438)
I had a nice little increase in income this month, which wasn’t exactly expected. I tried introducing a new affiliate product to the subscribers here, called WP Rebrandr but I guess it wasn’t well received. It had a lot of clicks but didn’t convert at all, nobody bought it.
My Ultimate Blueprint has seen an increase in sales but nothing truly significant, although, an increase is an increase and sure is a hell of a lot better than seeing a decrease, right!?
Affiliate sales remained exactly the same as last month. I would like to see an increase next month but due to my picky selection of affiliate products, I’ve been finding affiliate marketing to be quite difficult.
Other Blog Metrics
Alexa Rank – 537,433Â (Last Month was – 786,089)
Twitter Followers – 573 (This time last month was at 399! 43.6% increase.)
Youtube Channel Subscribers – 26 (Last month was 19…36.8% increase)
Google+ Followers – It’s kind of embarrassing really, at 11 followers. I actually LOST a follower LOL. This is okay though since Google+ isn’t a part of my strategy aside from using the Communities feature. However, I do intend to increase that number significantly.
Aweber Email Subscribers – 611 (506 last month, close to a 21% increase, which seems to be about average)
More Metrics:
Unique Visitors – 6,422Â (That’s an increase of 154%)
Bounce Rate – 58.11%
Pages Per Session – 1.89
Average Time On Site – 1:56
I’m really happy overall with this month. I increased my twitter followers, email list, youtube subscribers and had a big surge of traffic.
The 31 days of blogging really allowed me to have this traffic growth and it’s pretty awesome to see the huge growth just one month of a daily blogging schedule.
The only thing I’m not really happy about is the bounce rate, pages per session and average time on site. If I didn’t run a filter to exclude referral spam it would have been even worse. I think the problem is related more to traffic quality than it is related to the blog design, but I’m going to be testing some stuff out and see if I can improve those numbers. I also want to implement a related post feature, that will hopefully improve some metrics as well as get older content some additional visibility now that the blog is getting pretty full of content!
Another thing I need to work on next month is to try and get more social traffic. Social traffic contributed only a tad more than 3% of my total traffic. This may go up if I ever decide to make a facebook page for the blog, but right now I really don’t know if I want to do that. As my organic traffic increases, the more I need to focus on other traffic to manage and maintain proper allocation to handle risk.
Here are some tables to show the data in previous months and currently.
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 |
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 |
Month & Year | Alexa Rank | Email Subs | 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 |
How Did I Do On My Goals?
31 Days of Blogging – This was a goal I set out to do in the month of May and it proved to be quite challenging. Many others were going to be joining me but pretty much everyone that had set out to join me, gave up within the first week! I was determined to accomplish this one, but it was difficult. Definitely worth it though.
600 Email Subscribers – This goal was accomplished, just barely though. If it weren’t for the traffic increase this month, I definitely wouldn’t have met that goal. I’ve been averaging around 20% increases for my email list, and would like to continue that rate of growth. Of course there are some duplicates in there due to segmentation, but this rate of growth is definitely a good pace.
600 Twitter Followers – Goal almost accomplished. I’m at 573 right now, but it still made for a good increase over last month’s 399. My social traffic converted the best this month but it’s also the traffic I have the least of. Twitter is by far my best performing social property with Google+ (communities) in 2nd. Definitely an area I should dedicate a little more time to, especially since it can provide quick wins and long term gains.
Break 3,000 Unique Visitors – It’s funny, last month I thought 3,000 would be nearly impossible especially since from March to April I only saw an 8% increase in traffic. Needless to say, if you saw the metrics for this month, I absolutely crushed this goal. Now can I keep up the pace if I’m not blogging each day? I’m not sure.
Have a Record Month in Income – I didn’t meet this goal, but I’m not disappointed. I had a slight increase in income this month but the metrics I care about more right this second is traffic related. The income will increase. I want to gain a larger following before really focusing on the revenue the blog generates, since the user base is more valuable long term than what revenue I show this second. Doesn’t mean I ignore income, but I’m not terribly disappointed in the performance of income this month. As long as I continue to slowly increase that number, that’s fine with me 🙂
Setup Conversion Tracking in Analytics – This was really important for me to do, and this goal has been accomplished. However, I noticed my in-content opt-ins are not being tracked, so I have to fix that. This allows me to break down which traffic performs better in terms of opt ins, I can see where the quick wins are and where my time is better spent.
Top 600k in Alexa Rank – Goal met. However, moving forward I think it’s going to prove to be more difficult moving up the Alexa ranks as I have plateaued recently. I’m not sure what level of traffic I’m going to need to be in the top 500K and so on. I know, I wrote a blog post on why Alexa Rank doesn’t matter, but it’s still fun for me to check.
Plans For June 2015
June should be a nice month. I’m launching my Ice Cold Email Gold product in the middle of June, and hopefully that performs pretty well.
Other than that, I intend to add a couple features and implement some additional testing for the blog.
I also want to work harder on increasing my social traffic since it has been converting pretty well.
I think it may be time for me to get some affiliates for my Ultimate Guide To Start Your Own Web Agency. Perhaps get it on JVzoo and bring in some additional income. I haven’t decided whether I should put it on a landing page on the Incomebully.com domain or if I should just have it as a separate site. I’ll be figuring that out this month.
Almost forgot… one more thing I need to do in June is to delete my LinkedIn account, or keep it and just setup an additional LinkedIn Account since someone reported me as spam in a group I contributed to. Now every time I share something on LinkedIn groups, it gets sent for moderation, so I have to change that.
What Are My Goals For June?
I’m pretty happy with the goals I had for May, but since I met many of those goals, it’s time to keep going and increasing my goals.
- Increase to 700 Subscriber list in Aweber
- Get up to 800 Twitter Followers
- Double My Social Traffic
- Increase Alexa Rank to Top 450K
- Get My Ultimate Blueprint listed on JvZOO
- Have Record Month in Traffic, 7K+ Uniques
- Create a new lead magnet
- Improve my Autoresponder sequence for affiliate sales as well as overall helpfulness
- Promote my amazon affiliate site more
These seem to be relatively easy goals that should help with the blog gaining traction. I know the subscriber goal along with alexa rank will be tough, and who knows what can happen with traffic.
Will I meet the goals? Guess we will see this time next month!
Looking forward to your comments!
Good month!
would you consider a profit/loss breakdown in your income report. I think it would be cool to see what your income verses costs breaks out to. Valuable information for someone wanting to create their own blog I think.
Hey Jason, my expenses are super low, just hosting + aweber. I will start doing that once my expenses go up to something worth reporting.
Great work done by an author. This is very useful information, Thanks for sharing this information.
Congratulations on the feature in authority hacker. Your growth is outstanding, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if people start viewing you as a competitor
Thanks Skye 🙂
Nice income reports.
Been collecting income data from many blogs over the last few days as I’m doing a roundup report on my blog.
I would love to feature your numbers if I may?
Thanks
Raj
Go ahead Raj! Would love to see what you come up with!