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Income and Traffic Report: March 2016

Welcome to another IncomeBully Income Report. I can’t believe March is already over with, it seems like I had so much work I wanted to complete this month but time keeps on ticking faster and faster.

Some may wonder why I publish income reports.

Well, income reports aren’t a new thing for bloggers to do. The reason I do it though is because it provides a transparent way to track my progress, having accountability for the work I do or don’t do, and actually be real when it comes to evaluating what needs to happen. It’s easy to think positive and look at the good things, but it’s much more beneficial when you look at everything, good and bad.

A lot of income reports have inflated numbers to boost the ego or because the creator of the blog feels they have to meet expectations. It does a disservice to them, and their readers. I promise, that no matter how good or how bad this blog does on a monthly basis, you get real numbers, no excuses, just numbers. Numbers are hard to argue with.

The income reported here is made 100% from the blog and “internet marketing”. It does not include business consulting income, offline income or traditional investment income.

What Happened In March

March, was supposed to be a very productive month, and I feel that it was but not as productive as I wanted. That’s the pesky thing about actual numbers and statistics, you can feel a certain way about the work you do but if it doesn’t reflect in any meaningful way then what good was it?

Anyway, this is what happened in March

Hosting Affiliate Site

This damn site, I’ve had in the pipeline for a couple months. I was close to launching it in the beginning of the month before I decided to scrap the entire idea.

Maybe not the ENTIRE idea, but I quickly identified that it was only going to eat up time without having a real chance at generating income.

Instead of making a broad approach to the very competitive, hosting affiliate niche, I decided to carve out a niche within the niche.

You guys will see what I mean in future updates.

What this essentially means, is I failed in my goal to launch early March. I went back to the drawing board, and I’m near completion on the new, more refined version now. That will certainly be a priority in the month of April, and I’m hoping to launch it in the next 10 days.

Considered Promoting 1 on 1 Coaching

I mentioned last month that I started exploring the possibility of coaching. I’ve had 2 people take me up on it, kind of as a trial run, no advertising or marketing the offer, they just came to me.

I like the idea, because it’s fun, but most importantly, very rewarding when seeing the growth of the 2 that did a coaching session with me.

Both of them have contributed to the blog this month via guest posts.

Andrea shared his method of using video and cold emailing for a big boost in conversion. MJ also shared one of the strategies he’s been using to close a lot of sales, high value sales through good old fashioned networking with a creative twist.

It’s great seeing people succeed, so I’ve been looking into offering this to readers and subscribers, just haven’t figured out the best way to do it yet.

Took Part in Another Expert Round-Up

I was asked earlier this month to take part in an expert round-up for a pretty well known SEO blog. It hasn’t been published yet so I’m not going to spoil it.

I’m very interested in how it turns out, because last month I also was included in another expert round up but it didn’t bring me even an inkling of traffic.

I hope this one ends up performing better, though it wouldn’t take much for that to happen!

Experimenting With New Traffic Sources

I’ve heard from people that they generate a lot of traffic with Quora. I’ve never been a big fan, but figured I would experiment and see what it can do.

I also took a friend’s advice on utilizing instagram, and trying to bring traffic from the platform.

Right now, I haven’t received much traffic from either, but I just recently started and I’m more focused on building up the properties before really trying to generate traffic.

Maybe it will be a bust, but maybe not. If anyone has any suggestions on which traffic sources to utilize, I’m all ears, leave me a comment below.

Posts I published in March

Haven’t been here in a while? Here are some of the posts I’ve published in March.

February 2016 Income Report

Can NoFollow Backlinks Impact Rankings in Google

Jared’s Story, Homeless, Living in His Car, and Building a Business

Google + Home Advisor + Home Service Ads = Death of SEO?

How Andrea Used Video to Skyrocket Email Conversions

Long Tail Pro vs. Market Samurai: Keyword Research Faceoff

How To Network Locally and Close 5K+ Every Month

Top 5 Most Popular Posts in March

In the top 5, I include all posts from the start of the blog, not just posts published in January.

1.) How a Vape Store Doubled Their Sales With 3 Simple Things

2.) Jared’s Story, Homeless, Living in His Car and Building a Business

3.) How I Ranked a Site in 20+ Cities for 60+ Keywords

4.) Google, HomeAdvisor, Home Service Ads = DEATH of SEO?

5.) Can Nofollow Backlinks Impact Rankings in Google?

Alright… Lets get into the juicy stuff

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March 2016 Income and Traffic

In my income reports, I don’t display offline income or client income. There’s a couple different areas I am displaying in these reports. Course income like my Agency Blueprint, or Ice Cold Email Gold, my coaching income which may or may not be a thing in the future, and affiliate income.

Here’s the breakdown.

Self Created Income / Courses

My Ultimate Blueprint To Start a Web Agency
Ice Cold Email Gold – The Key to Cold Email Marketing Mastery

Courses : $1,820

At the end of the year, I will break down product by product, but for convenience, the total will reflect combined income from my two courses.

Coaching Income

Something new, not sure how long I will do this, after all it is just a trial run to see how it goes.

No sessions this month – $0

Affiliate Income

TOTAL Affiliate Income – $419.77

Total Overall Income – $2,239.77

March Income Reflection

About $1,000 decrease this month, so I definitely can’t be happy about that. $550 or so was related to the difference in last month’s coaching income vs. $0 this month. That caused a small dip in income, paired with $100 less in course sales, and a dip in affiliate sales.

My blog post on Long Tail Pro vs. Market Samurai didn’t do much to help, maybe it will in the future but I guess time will tell.

At least it’s another affiliate product I can promote.

I studied a few other blogs doing very well with affiliate income… They’re bringing in 10X the revenue, but they also are generating revenue from 10X the products. Interesting correlation there.

OTHER METRICS FOR THE BLOG

Alexa Rank – 344,099

Twitter Followers – 1,798

Youtube Channel Subscribers – 52

Google+ Followers – 27

Aweber Email Subscribers – 1,675

More Metrics:

Unique Visitors – 4,505

Bounce Rate – 72.12%

Pages Per Session – 1.66

Average Time On Site – 2:16

Thoughts on the Metrics

It wasn’t only revenue that decreased, it was traffic too, but not by much.

My traffic was about the same as February, but you can count it as a net loss since I had 2 extra days in March than I did in February.

I have a plan going forward though… I’ll explain in a few.

Here’s some data so you guys can see my progress month over month.

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
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
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

Plans and Goals For March

Looking back at the goals I had for February, I see that I really didn’t accomplish any of them. However, I did end up making progress with the blog, which is the most important thing.

I need to be more careful about accomplishing goals each month forward though, since the goals I set are going to help the development and growth of Income Bully.

Here are some plans and goals for March

Launching My (New)Hosting Affiliate Site

As mentioned earlier, I had a change in plans for the affiliate site. I wish I had it up already and it was on its’ way of generating income, but I realized I needed to be a bit more targeted for the audience. That probably reduces the broad appeal or income potential but it should increase the waiting time of it generating income.

We’ll find out soon if my assessment was correct.

A New Case Study for Traffic

I’m not happy with the growth of this blog and the traffic.

So to make the best out of the situation, I’m going to do a case study on increasing the traffic. Most bloggers ask themselves, how many posts per month is enough? When does the law of diminishing returns kick in? Well, we’re going to find out.

In March, I published 6 posts + an income report. In the month of April I’m going to see if doubling the output of content can lead to a doubling of traffic.

Basically, if March’s 6 posts generated 4,500 visitors, will 12 posts in April generate 9,000 visitors? I would say, probably not, but it will be interesting to find out.

I also have to account for any other testing I’ll be doing, traffic sources, content promotion, etc. so this won’t exactly be the most scientific study in a controlled environment, but we will be able to see levels of correlation.

Hit 2,000 Followers on Twitter

Twitter has been growing nicely, and I should be able to hit 2,000 followers in the month of April as long as I stay on top of my buffer queue and can force myself to be semi-active there.

Complete 1st Draft of My New Local SEO Product

It’s been about a year since I released my Ice Cold Email Gold product and it’s still doing well. I think it’s time to get started and be serious about a new product, related to local SEO.

I want this product to be as detailed as possible, walking through the steps and covering a wide range of topics so that beginners, and advanced people in Local SEO can benefit from this guide.

Stay tuned for more info!

Get My Email List and Autoresponders Under Control

I’ve been bad at managing my list. I haven’t done anything new to the autoresponders in about a year or so. When I first started this blog, I hardly had any content. Now I have quite a bit and I need to leverage that content.

Another thing is, my actualy subscriber count is not truly as it is displayed in these reports. It’s likely to be half the amount due to different lists. For example, Ice Cold Email Gold, and my Agency Blueprint have separate lists from the blog. There are people subscribed to 3 different lists, all counting as a unique subscriber.

It’s inaccurate, and giving me a false representation of growth.

So two things here…

  1. I need to revamp my autoresponders to maximize traffic, and increase value for the subscribers
  2. I need to revamp how I manage my subscribers in multiple lists.

Final Thoughts

I view March as a month of struggle. Not the outcome I wanted and it shows me the many flaws I have in the approach I’ve taken for many things.

I keep looking back at the 2nd half of 2015 where the blog was inactive, and keep wondering how would progress be if I didn’t let things slide back then.

Both traffic and income need to increase in the future. When traffic increases, I think Income will as well.

April is going to be a better month. Wish me luck!

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