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June 2016 Blog Income and Traffic Report

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

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 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

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!

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