Here we go again with another income and traffic report for the Income Bully blog.
You guys know the spiel now, but for those of you that are new around here, I share the income and traffic of this blog, along with future plans, and analyze how I do each month. It’s good accountability, no matter how good or how bad I do.
I don’t include offline income, traditional investment income, or other projects I have, only income through this blog and projects I announce through this blog.
I do this, because it’s helpful to me, holds me accountable, and it’s also helpful for some of you.
While I don’t have the humongous numbers that some others have, everything I list is 100% real, no fluff, no sketchy accounting.
My expertise is not in running a blog… I’m not a blogging guru, just someone that likes to share things along the way.
So lets see how I did.
What Happened In June?
The story of the summer slump.
In last month’s income report, you saw how I failed to meet most of my goals, especially the one about investing more time into the blog.
The struggle continues.
In May, I actually did better than June, which is not what was supposed to happen. Only 12 hours invested in the blog in the month of June. Tsk Tsk.
Struggled with Focus, Productivity, and Perfection
Content production was low. Only 3 blog posts and an income report. The quality of the content was good, no complaints there, but the problem I had with content production is perfection. Nothing seemed good enough.
I’m not referring to the 3 blog posts that were published… I’m referring to the other 8 blog posts I had scheduled but ended up canning because I didn’t think they were that good.
I think that these issues, are all related to focus, or lack of. If I get my focus back on track with this blog, productivity will follow, and content production would be up.
It seemed like no matter what I would try to work on with content, it just didn’t turn out right.
This has brought me to the point where I’ve been questioning everything, like should I publish posts anyway even if I don’t think it has the level of awesome sauce it should? After all, the value is still good, but maybe it’s just not an interesting topic or something people care about.
I feel like it’s some sort of writer’s block. I don’t know, but obviously I need to get this figured out to continue the growth of the blog!
Benefited From Some Mentions on Other Blogs
The good thing, and something that has really picked up the slack for my lack of focus in June, was some mentions I received on other websites and blogs.
Picked up a nice link and shout out from NicheDesire, along with some pretty decent traffic. That was pretty cool!
WebCrazies which I never heard of before, put out a post on bloggers sharing income reports and included me in it. Charles Floate linked to a post from his “What I’ve Been Reading” page.
And of course, I can’t forget to mention the Monthly Income Report Round Up on Matthew Woodward’s blog.
All these helped a lot. Normally I get a decent chunk of traffic from the Warrior Forum with signature links, but that took a big hit this month. I guess that happens when a moderator asks you to change your signature from 3 lines, to 2 lines and you tell them to go EFF themselves. So a ban was in my future, which knocked off about a week worth of visitors.
What can ya do? Gotta stick it to the man sometimes.
Working On a Local SEO Course
I’ve been working on this for a while, and starting to see it pay off. I scrapped half of it and decided to rewrite and give better examples.
One problem I have that is going to stall completion is waiting for Google to implement the pack ads. We don’t know if it’s going to take a spot in the 3 pack, reducing organic local results to 2, or if it will be placed above the packs in place of regular ads.
If the ads are above the pack, I anticipate reviews playing a heavy role in increasing your click through rate on your GMB listing. Unless those that have ads, are also using snippets and harvesting reviews. In my opinion, this just increases the need for a business to have someone competent handling their local SEO.
New Blog Posts in June
Despite a lack of focus, content production, and overall productivity, the quality of content that was published is pretty darn good and resulted in a new record traffic day this month.
Here is what was posted in June:
May 2016 Blog Income and Traffic Report
It Takes Over 6 Months for 81% of SEO Companies to Build 100 Links
Transitioning From Client SEO to Affiliate SEO [Guest Post by Matt Diggity]
5 Things You’re Doing Wrong When Selling Local SEO
Each post was pretty popular, especially the awesome post by Matt Diggity.
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June 2016 Income and Traffic
Self Created Income/Courses
Income: $1,450
Coaching Income
- 1 Sessions
Income: $275
Note: Page coming soon for coaching.
Miscellaneous Income – $3,000
Out of the ordinary, a little bit of consulting I picked up that wouldn’t have happened without this blog.
Affiliate Income
- Long Tail Pro – $1.. $1 free trial (see my review here)
- NameHero Hosting – $200 (review)
- Clicks Magazine – $17
- Mobile Renegade – $45.06 (See it in action here)
- Mobile Renegade Mega Deal with Facebook Plugin – $465.60 (Blog post + Video)
- TeamWork Project Management – $6
- Social Pilot – $13
Affiliate Income – $747.66
TOTAL Income Bully Blog Income – $5,472.66
Thoughts on June Income
Pretty good.. though $3,000 of it was out of the ordinary and would have kept the blog at it’s average amount of 2,500.
I saw a dip in ebook sales, which is kind of concerning, but at the same time, it’s surprising they’ve lasted this long. I anticipate a larger drop. I projected last year that both books combined would pull in $300/mo in a year. While I hope I stay ahead of that projection, it’s bound to happen eventually, unless I take steps to build a funnel for them.
The thing I’m happier about, is the affiliate income. Seeing that in the $700’s is a big deal for me. Luckily, this month I was able to work out a deal with Rick from Mobile Renegade giving readers here an exclusive offer to scrape business leads. If you haven’t already, check it out: Mobile Renegade Mega Deal.
That gave a big boost to affiliate income. However, something I’m seeing is that as I start to promote more products, the income goes up. Shocker, right? I looked at Matthew Woodward’s blog and saw all the different products he’s promoted in the past, and many still generate income for him. I guess the key is diversity and options, but it’s always been difficult to find affiliate offers I have confidence in promoting.
Going forward, I need to find a way to stop the decline or at least reduce the decline of ebook sales. When I launch my local SEO course, that will help but it doesn’t address the problem.
I will also be looking for new products I can promote with a good conscience. If you guys have any recommendation, I’m all ears!
OTHER METRICS FOR THE BLOG
Alexa Rank – 306,944
Twitter Followers – 3,273 (600+ increase!)
Youtube Channel Subscribers – 63
Google+ Followers – 37
Aweber Email Subscribers – 2,312
More Metrics:
Unique Visitors – 7,132
Bounce Rate – 71.75%
Pages Per Session – 1.75
Average Time On Site – 2:25
Thoughts on Metrics in June
Considering the amount of time spent on the blog this month, I have to be happy about the metrics.
Visits went up by about 11% or so, on page metrics are pretty much the same with slight increases in time on site. My Twitter account has been growing strong each month, and I had over 10% increases in my subscriber list with AWeber.
I started tracking blog broadcast emails when there’s a new blog post. I added UTM codes to see the break down of traffic with Emails, and I’m glad I did that. Before, it was reporting as “direct” traffic, which wouldn’t give me a full idea of what’s going on.
Now that I’ve started tracking that, I believe I’ve identified areas for improvement. I’ve also been playing around with Google’s new Data Studio, you guys should check it out, especially for easy analytic reports for clients.
Anyway, here’s a table of historical data so you can check out the progress.. I need to shorten it up to include the last 12 months, maybe I’ll do that next 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 |
April 2016 | 7393 | $525.57 | $2821.57 |
May 2016 | 6469 | $457.29 | $2585.29 |
June 2016 | 7132 | $747.66 | $5472.66 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
Plans and Goals For July
My lack of focus has been a problem the last couple months and I need to turn that around.
I’ll also be celebrating the dirty thirty birthday. Okay, maybe not celebrating, I actually hate the thought of turning 30. It’s a bit depressing to me.. I feel like my entire 20s I’ve just been busy with work and never had a chance to enjoy it. Maybe 30 is the new 20? Sounds good.
Other than that, here are some plans and goals:
Get Content Production Back on Track
I need to get refocused and get things back together. I need to replan my content schedule and idea list. If I would have had just 5 additional posts this month, there would have been a good chance of breaking the 10,000 visitor milestone in one month.
Launch Another Affiliate Site
My last affiliate site hasn’t worked out well, but that’s also due to a lack of content. I need to finish that, so hopefully it brings in a bit of income but there’s also another affiliate site I’d like to launch.
It’s going to be an amazon affiliate site and I’ve used Long Tail Pro for some of the keyword research, and I think it has a lot of potential. Of course, amazon commissions are pretty low, but I believe the income will be very passive and not require too much work either.
Redo My Autoresponder
Fair warning to you guys that are subscribed, I’m going to invest some time in making my autoresponder better. I want to be able to guide people through all the different content I have available here. I also want to be able to better promote offers associated with content, which will help long term.
When I started, I set things up kind of stupid for a blog, I have 6 different lists, actually maybe 7 lists and I don’t need that many lists. The purpose was to separate subscribers, but what it leads to is multiple subscribers across a variety of lists and that can cause problems with too many automated emails.
I need to consolidate, and better plan the emails to you guys.
Final Thoughts
It was a tough month overall, which is weird because all the other signs were positive. Aside from the mental block, the reality is this is the best month in a while, strong traffic, record breaking traffic day, best income from the blog in a while and signs of a promising future.
I want to implement a few other traffic sources and test a few things out. My hope is to hit 10k/mo in visitors in the next few months. We’ll see how it goes!
looking for a epic post where you talk about how to get more clients selling the idea of a machine. Do you remeber wich one was?
Hey Alan, thanks for the comment. Is it this one : 7 KILLER Tips to Make Your Business a Machine!
Hi Nathan,
A few thoughts to share. First, I can totally relate with your struggles. The need to strive for “perfection” is a killer though, and you have to get rid of that right away. You’ll never be perfect and neither will your content. Most of what I’ve read has been from “very good” to “excellent”. So what if you whiff on a few posts here and there? It’s still bringing in search engine traffic, right? Also, just because one person may not see it as being great, it may be exactly what another person was looking for.
Think of all the great artists, musicians, actors, athletes, etc in history. Was everything they did a Picasso? Was it a Top-40 hit? Did it win an Oscar? Was every at-bat a home run or every catch a touchdown?
This isn’t the best example, but I recall Marie Osmond consoling brother Donnie after a solo performance years ago. He didn’t feel like he’d really “brought his best” that night. Marie reminded him that he got a couple standing ovations and encores, so it couldn’t have sucked that bad, right? I don’t recall anyone asking for a refund.
In other words, just get it all out there and let your readers decide what they like best. You may be surprised.
Also, just because a topic may seem old, rehashed or boring to you doesn’t mean that it’s not solid gold to others.
Next, regarding ideas for content, have you made a list of other blogs in your niche to see what they’ve promoted recently? If so, have you checked their social shares? If it’s being liked on Facebook, Tweeted, etc more than a few times you should take the idea(s), put your own spin on them and create a similar post, or maybe use some of their ideas as part of your post and link back to them.
Another thought. Have you set up Google alerts so anytime something in your niche is trending it’ll come to your email inbox?
Note: I need to do some of these things, too. I’ve just been slammed recently by some real “pain in the neck” stuff, but I’ve already started doing a few things.
Anyhow, I know that I have a tendency to be my own worst critic sometimes and it’s seriously stunted my growth. Fear is a part of it, as well. Dumb, but very common.
Just start posting, keep track of what’s working well and learn from the stuff that didn’t do as well.
Oh, regarding your product updates. Dude, if you just skimmed through everything and made sure that all of the information is still relevant, add anything new you’ve learned, maybe package it in video and/or audio format, as well as PDF, and add to the title “Updated For 2016 & Beyond!” – you’re freaking done! I’d almost bet that the reason your sales have been dropping is because it’s been awhile since they’ve been released and buyers need to know how much of them is still relevant.
Also, the different formats could easily justify a price increase – except for me, of course. 🙂
Anyway, I’ll shut up now. Hope this made sense.
Best,
Joe
Joe, thank you so much for your comments. You always make some pretty good points and I agree with pretty much everything you said. Good idea on the product updates, something I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time.
You’re welcome, Nathan. As I mentioned, I need to follow some of my own advice. Recently I’ve been hung up on what template I’m going to use on my site, as well as what the first 3-5 posts should be. Crazy stuff!
Regarding your product update, I really do look at it as being that simple. I’d seriously consider including both videos and audio formats, as well. It will increase perceived value.
Also, many people prefer other formats besides reading. An audio can be downloaded and listened to while driving, walking, cleaning house, etc. Videos are excellent because you can include visual case studies, images, graphs, etc that will break up the content and make things easier on the eyes.
In addition, most people need to go through a product from start to finish in order to become familiar with the material before fully implementing it. That’s much easier to do with short videos. It’s super important to keep them short. There’s nothing worse that trying to find a specific bit of information somewhere within a one hour video. Sucks!
By the way, the Warrior Mods made me change my signature, too. That place has become very disappointing.
Anyhow, just keep posting, keep interviewing experts, do more product reviews, etc.
I look forward to your next post!
Best,
Joe
Video is tough, takes up a bunch of space and time. It’s pretty time consuming to put that together, but I have been thinking about getting into video a bit more. I’d like to do some khan academy style blackboard videos. Thanks for all your input Joe!
Nice work, Nate.
Your hard work online really inspires me. I hope to get to your level one of these days.. And I can’t wait for your local SEO course! I know I always tell you that, lol. I may have to check out your coaching in the future, too when you finally open it more public!
But I can really appreciate the fact that you are holding the course back a little longet to wait to see if Google does a big an update to the local 3 pack and adds paid Ads to the 3 pack or snack pack. I do have some concerns about that, but what can you do? It’s Google’s and they are going to make a profit and can do whatever they want. I just hope this new update for services Ads doesn’t hurt local organic SEO… But if it does we just have to adapt I guess…
Marc
Hey Marc, thanks for the comment. I’m hoping the ads they implement are above the pack, where people are already used to there being ads. If we really have only 2 listings in the pack that are organic and not paid, that sure does stiffen the competition doesn’t it!? You’re right about adapting, that’s the name of the game it seems. If you can’t adapt in SEO, you die. It’s always something with the big G. lol.
~ 2500 for 12 hours work is very impressive from where I’m sat.
I’m totally with you on striving for perfection but sometimes I think you just have to hit publish. How about publishing something and if it starts getting really popular come back with a fresh pair of eyes to see if it can be tweaked?
Either way, congrats on another good month.
Thanks Matt, and good tip. One of my problems I think, is that I haven’t gotten ahead with content. I’d like to have posts pre-planned and scheduled, so that way if I become extra picky about new content, it’s not as much of a hassle.
very good earning report. I also have a blog from which the entire earning will be donated for charity works.
That’s awesome! I’ll come by and check it out.