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July 2016 Blog Income & Traffic Report

Welcome to another edition of the Income Bully income reports, something I do each month to track progress or lack of.

All income reported is through this blog, a project announced on this blog, or wouldn’t have happened without this blog.

I don’t include offline businesses, investment income or any other income away from this blog. 

The reason I do this, is for accountability purposes, and perhaps someone else can learn a thing or two along the way. It’s been beneficial to me just to be able to see monthly progress or decline, and identify why certain things are happening.

I’ve also received a lot of great suggestions from the awesome readers here, so keep that up!

Let’s get started.

What Happened In July?

Well, it’s been hot as hell. I have a problem with productivity when it’s super hot out like a week of 100 degree days and the air conditioner not keeping up.

Pair that with a lot of barbecues, the 4th of july and cops getting called because we like to light off illegal fireworks, and then my birthday “celebration”, it wasn’t a good month for creative thinking and content creation.

I turned 30 this month, and have been a little depressed about it. I know the older people I talk to think it’s silly, and that the best years of my life are in the future. Honestly, I think they’re just in denial.

Really, I do believe I’ve accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. I guess I’m just more upset about the fact that I really didn’t have the opportunity to enjoy my 20’s. The initial struggle I had when getting started, then the non stop hustle and grind to grow a business. I didn’t have time for friends, traveling, and enjoying life.

Now that I’ve had a little bit of time to grieve, I’m ready to make my 30’s the new 20’s.

Moving Away From AWeber

One of the things I wanted to work on in July, was to revamp my autoresponder. Well, I ended up making this a much bigger project than expected.

Not only am I revamping my autoresponder sequences, I’m also changing to another service. I’ll do a more in depth post on why, and what the impact was and how I’ve (hopefully) benefited from the change.

To keep it short, I have no problem with AWeber. I believe the deliverability is good enough, and they seem to be making some decent changes with the introduction of “campaigns” for automation. However, I really like control and decided I’d like better automation.

Preparing To Launch a Facebook Ad Campaign

This is really kind of a transition from the last point, moving away from aweber. I wanted to set up a new funnel so I can increase sales for my Ultimate Blueprint on How to Start a Web Agency. I’m not sure how effective it will be, but since I’ve noticed sales drying up a bit, I want to bring in a new audience.

It also helps with reaching a wider audience for this blog. As long as I break even on the ads, I’m happy. After all, breaking even on the front end of a funnel allows for massive profit on the backend.

Will it work the way I want? I really don’t know… but at the very least, it will make for an interesting case study!

You may be wondering what I mean by “preparing” to launch the ad campaign.

One of the reasons content has been thin this month is because I’ve been focusing on a mini course as a lead magnet for the FB ads. It’s a 7 day boot camp style course delivered through email. A lot of time has been dedicated towards setting up my new email platform, along with creating content for the emails.

I’m STILL not finished with it!

Working On My Local SEO Course

Some of my other content creation efforts have been going towards a local SEO course I’m working on.

My hope was to have everything ready by August 1st, so I can work on some edits and other things to prepare for a September 1st launch date. I’d still like to be at that launch date, but I’m not sure that will happen.

There’s a LOT left that I need to put in there. If you’re one of the people that has already purchased my agency blueprint or Ice Cold Email Gold, then you know I like to be very detailed. This guide, is no different. In fact, I know there are a lot of courses/guides out there, and I want this to be far above the rest as far as quality of information and depth.

Content Created in July

Despite what you see on the blog, it has been a big month for content creation.

Working on the SEO course, also making edits to my agency blueprint, and then preparing content for the boot camp lead magnet I will use with FB ads, along with general autoresponder content, it’s been pretty busy!

On the blog, I published just a few posts:

The Follow-Up: How You Can Instantly Double Your Sales

Your Website Sucks and It Has Nothing To Do With Design

And of course..

The June 2016 Income and Traffic Report

Not much for blog posts in July, but the “Your Website Sucks” post seemed to get the most traffic, even out performing some of the other popular posts that continue to get a lot of traffic, like Matt Diggity’s guest post on transitioning from client SEO to affiliate SEO as well as the Ultimate Guide on Using Parasites for SEO.

July 2016 Income and Traffic Stats

Self Created Income/Courses

Income: $1,443

Coaching Income

  • 1 Sessions

Income: $275

Note: Page coming soon for coaching.

Miscellaneous Income – $6,000

Out of the ordinary, a little bit of consulting I picked up that wouldn’t have happened without this blog.

Affiliate Income

Affiliate Income – $508.24

TOTAL Income Bully Blog Income – $8,226.24

Thoughts on July Income

Considering the lack of posts on the blog this month, and a dip in traffic, the income is pretty good. Granted, 6K is from a not so typical source for this blog. Without that $6,000, I would have remained about average with $2,200.

The affiliate income has been pretty steady lately, and I’d like to boost that. I believe eventually it will be something that increases as I promote or try out different products, but that’s always been a struggle for me.

One of the most alarming things about the blog income is the downward trend of course sales.

That’s the reason I want to reach out to new audiences with FB ads, hoping to get those numbers back up.

Overall, good month considering the lack of new content.

OTHER METRICS FOR THE BLOG

Alexa Rank – 293,400

Twitter Followers – 3,416

Youtube Channel Subscribers – 66

Google+ Followers – 40

Aweber Email Subscribers – 2,414

More Metrics:

Unique Visitors – 4,745

Bounce Rate – 72.18%

Pages Per Session – 1.71

Average Time On Site – 2:00

Thoughts on Metrics in July

Very low growth in July, maybe we could chalk that up to everything I mentioned in the beginning of the post, but also because of a lack of content. Maybe everyone is out playing Pokemon Go, I know I’ve had my fair share of time playing the game (level 21 right now).

There’s actually quite a few reasons for lower traffic this month.

  1. I had less content
  2. Less content means less shares / promotion on social media
  3. Less content means not as many emails sent out to my subscribers
  4. I also slacked on Twitter, I could have easily matched my Twitter traffic from last month

In June, social traffic was 400% higher. In July, there wasn’t enough content to regularly promote.

My email traffic was also cut in half. Obviously when there’s a new post, I send it out, and I get traffic.

A lot of traffic concerns seem to stem from not having new content. I need to get on track with new content otherwise I will see these same results in August.

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
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
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

Plans and Goals for August

Now that July is over with, no birthdays, probably less BBQs, no major events, I should be able to get content on the blog going a bit better. Especially since I’ve made a lot of progress on the FB ads and the lead magnet course.

Here are my plans this month:

Complete “7 Day Agency Boot Camp”

I’m almost there as it is. I need to finish a few things and add another 5 emails to the sequence and I should be good to go. For those of you that have already received my Agency Blueprint, this will be available to download as an update to the product, among other updates. You’ll get an email from me soon!

Launch My 7 Day Agency Boot Camp Ad Campaign

I still have a lot of work to do that isn’t related to the funnel I’m creating.

I still have to create a Facebook for this. I have one already but hate logging in, and will never do it if that’s the one I use. So that means, I need to create a page for the blog, a bunch of ads and copy for the ads, and I need to update the agency blueprint since that’s the product I’ll be pushing. I want to make sure it’s all good for 2016 and beyond.

Publish 8 New Blog Posts

Since I’ve been slacking on creating new blog posts, and as mentioned in last month’s income report, being too picky on what I put out, I figure that giving myself a goal on here will help me complete it.

I want 2 out of the 8 posts to be product review / analysis type posts that will add value to the readers as well as boost my potential for adding new affiliate income.

Add Sales Pages for My Courses

My Ultimate Blueprint is a WSO on Warrior Forum. That’s where the sales page is, and while I really like the fact that all those reviews are right there below the post, and you can go through 5+ pages of reviews, I can’t help but feel that conversions are lacking because readers from this blog are going to a forum.

I think having a dedicated sales page would help conversions, and make me less dependent on Warrior Forum for course sales. I don’t need anything fancy, just functional!

Final Thoughts

While content production on the blog itself was low this month, I’ve been setting a foundation to move forward and grow the blog to new heights. Hopefully it all works out the way I have planned.

I have a lot of things I’ve been wanting to do with this blog, and it’s time to get on track and get it done!

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