March 2018 Blog / Traffic / Income Report

So it’s time for another blog report.

For those of you that are new here, I went back and forth with myself in the past about whether I should publish these or not. I quit for a while, and decided to get back into it because of the accountability, and it helps to set mini goals each month to help me stay focused.

Some like to publish these for a bit of bragging, or to show how great they are. That’s not really the point here.

The reasons I’m sharing this is because:

• It helps me be accountable, having to share how the blog is doing, setting goals for myself and sharing plans for what I want to accomplish.
• Having a historical timeline for me to come back to in the future and see what has been done, what it takes to get to a certain spot, etc. is beneficial.
• It allows me to keep subscribers and followers informed on what comes next
• It helps those that are starting blogs for themselves, to learn from my mistakes and successes
• and other reasons

It’s not just for the reader, but also for me. When I say I want to have something done in X amount of time… if I don’t tell anybody, then it’s easy for me to delay or come up with excuses to myself. If I share it with everyone, then that accountability helps.

What I Did In March

Looking back, March seems like it was fairly uneventful but there’s a lot that was done in March, related to the blog. Some big, some small, but none that are noticeable on the blog itself.

Fixed My Email Automations

I’ve had a few issues with email automation and wasn’t getting the right conversions in my funnel. This is something I talked about last month, and I did make improvements last month with the new lead magnet, and email sequences but I didn’t like the results.

I decided to test things out.

What I ended up doing, was removing the “7 day Agency Bootcamp” email course, and converting it into a PDF. I did this because I figured it would be better converting if someone signed up for that and received an instant download. THEN, I would be able to pitch the Agency Blueprint much earlier, instead of the soft mentions throughout the 7 days.

Next, I added an additional sequence for when people complete the course. A mix of information / value and of course a sales pitch for the Ultimate Agency Blueprint. I also have certain conditions that will lead subscribers through a separate sequence based on what they do.

Overall, I have been able to get the conversion rate of my boot camp funnel, to 19%. This number is slightly skewed because of those that have purchased the blueprint, prior to subscribing to the boot camp. Overall, I estimate the conversion rate to be around 15-16%.

That’s a much better performance than the 5% conversions I was getting prior to the test.

There’s still a few things I can implement to improve the flow of the funnel but overall, pretty encouraging results.

Getting Active on Twitter Again

One thing I’ve been wanting to do, is get active on Twitter like I used to. Looking at historical metrics, even though conversions weren’t the best, the traffic and on page metrics were always pretty good.

I’m converting roughly 2% of traffic with Twitter, and visitors usually stay on site longer than other social mediums. Facebook is the easiest to scale and provides much more volume, but conversions have been lower.

Anyway, I’ve been using Social Pilot to bulk schedule tweets and that alone seems to be helping. I’ve also been using appunfollowers to copy audiences of other bloggers and influencers.

Overall, the results have been alright. Nothing spectacular, but good enough to continue using Twitter.

Just being “active” by bulk scheduling tweets, has gained me 300+ new followers in a month.

If I were more dedicated or cared a bit more, I could probably see gains of 500-1000 new followers a month. Maybe I’ll try harder in April.

Starting an Organic Traffic Case Study

This didn’t really begin until the last part of March. Kind of towards the end of March.

The goal: Triple my traffic in 3 months. 

For this case study, ahrefs was kind enough to give me a free account to use for this, and hopefully be able to post the results of the case study on their blog as well as here.

There’s a lot of quick wins out there for every blogger, every site. I believe I can triple my traffic, simply by doing great keyword research and on page optimization.

I’m looking for keywords that have relatively low keyword difficulty, decent volume, and competitors that have links I can copy or use for myself as well.

I’ve also been using ahrefs to study competing blogs, their keywords and backlinks.

Tripling my traffic seems reasonable, but it may be more difficult than I expect. Guess we’ll see how it turns out.

Tested Medium for Content Syndication

One thing I’ve been reading up on lately is how other bloggers and content marketers are using Medium for content syndication.

They like it because of the audience on the platform, they get traffic from it and a lot of engagement both on their own sites and on medium.

So, I decided, hey.. why not give it a try to see if I can get any new subscribers.

Let me tell you…

The results were….

Amazingly awful.

I’ve tried 5 posts. A mixture of publishing the entire post, and just a portion of it with a link back to the original post.

I got 1 visitor.

And even on Medium itself, only 4 people even read the posts. I’m pretty sure 1 or 2 of those people were me.

I literally have only 2 followers on Medium.

I’ve followed the guides, instructions, and recommendations of influencers, but nothing.

Where do I go from here? 

Look, I know there’s a lot of bullshit out there. I see it all the time with SEO stuff, business and lead generation… so I shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a lot of bullshit in the blogging world either.

The thing is, usually in every pile of bullshit, there’s a tiny sliver of truth. I know there’s a lot of people that are getting good results with medium, but I’m not one of those people.

Either I just haven’t given it enough time, or maybe I’m doing things wrong, or maybe I’m just too late to the party. I’m note sure.

I feel stupid for wanting to keep at it and see, but at the same time I’m not ready to call it quits just yet. Any of you use Medium for traffic generation? What has your experience been? Any tips?

Content Published in March

5 new posts in March, 6 if you count February’s blog update / report.

Dentist Grows His Business by 458%..This is How He Did It!

SEO in the Boonies: Marketing Your Client’s Business in a Small City

Why I Deleted Half of My Email List… and Maybe You Should Too

15 Ways to Make an Extra $1,000/mo

Freelance Digital Marketing: A 6 Figure Business Potential

Blog Traffic and Income Update

Ah here’s the fun part. Maybe. I haven’t been keeping track this month so now is the first time I’m logging in to everything to see how I did.

Metrics / Subscriber info

Unique visitors were 2,513 this month, a 10% increase over February. On page metrics have also seen a slight improvement with a 77% bounce rate, 1.5 pages per session and 1:36 time on site.

I definitely need to get my uniques up a lot.

Twitter followers went up to 3,259, which is a 324 follower increase. Youtube at 97, which, I don’t even know why I’m tracking since I haven’t done a new video or webinar in like 2 years… but I’ll keep tracking it anyway. Maybe I should do mini presentations or something to grow it. g+ was at 47, and somehow got a new follower despite my last update on there being in 2016.

Alexa rank doesn’t mean anything but it does tend to show a long term trend that sometimes I don’t realize when looking at short term analytics. Rank improved to 1,118,082 which is around a 350k difference compared to last month.

Convertkit subscribers is sitting at 776, because I deleted more than half of my list.

BLOG INCOME

This blog makes money with a few different ways:

• Products / Courses
• Affiliate products
• Coaching Services

I got a question from someone that started a blog somewhat recently, and they asked “Why don’t you use an ad network to supplement your blog income?”.

I believe that visitors and subscribers are worth more to me ON my site than off of it. I do have an ad to namehero in the side bar which brings affiliate commissions but ad networks favor those with higher traffic and even then, usually isn’t worth the “real estate”.

My earnings per visitor is insanely high, and would like to focus on that instead of making an extra $50-$100 by taking people off site.

Anyway, let’s break this down.

PRODUCTS / COURSE INCOME

For products, I have:

1. The Ultimate Agency Blueprint
2. Ice Cold Email Gold

The Agency Blueprint brought in $158

Ice Cold Email Gold also brought in $158

I had to double check this because I copy and pasted some heading tags and thought maybe I copy and pasted more than I needed. These are the exact same numbers that I did in February. I expected a bit of a drop off but sales held. I do have plans to increase this soon.

Product income – $316

AFFILIATE PRODUCT INCOME

• Mobile Renegade – $45.06
• Clicks Magazine – $8.50
• ConvertKit – $17 (Why I switched from aWeber to Convertkit)
• Long Tail Pro – $18.50 (Review)
• Thrive Leads – $33.50 (How I increased conversions by 309%)
• NameHero – $50 (shared and reseller hosting) (NameHero Hosting Review)
• Teamwork Project Management – $12 (3 Project Management Hacks to Skyrocket Productivity)
• Social Pilot – $3

Total Affiliate Income – $187.56

I really struggle with growing affiliate income. Part of it is a lack of affiliate products that I actually like or believe in. I’ve been working on improving this but that seems to be a bigger struggle than anything else.

I expected around $100 in affiliate commissions this month, so all in all, I guess it was better than I thought it would be.

COACHING INCOME

I offer two types of coaching.

1. Hourly coaching / consulting, which is focused on a topic or issue of your choice, sometimes people want to test the waters before getting into my 12 month program, also I get quite a few brick and mortar business owners that do coaching around specific topics, like scale, SEO, etc.
2. Agency Domination Coaching Program, which is a 12 month program focused on those in the marketing / SEO / web design industry. It’s a custom program, so it’s different for everyone, depending on where they are in their business.

Total coaching income this month: $3,169

Not bad, I only expected about half that amount but surprises are nice. I’ve been doing random discounts for the program but I’m thinking about stopping that. I have thought about payment plans though and may test this a bit to see what’s the best option.

TOTAL MARCH BLOG INCOME – $3,672.56

Overall, pretty good month.

There’s a lot to improve, because even though this month was pretty decent, I feel like nothing is predictable. This month could have easily been under $1,000. I need to take some steps to improve traffic, subscribers, and monetization. So far, I’ve been able to make at least $1 per visitor. Not many people can say the same, but I’m still not happy with that.

I had a few goals for march:

• Create product landing pages – FAILED.. this month though.
• Increase Social Traffic – DONE! Twitter traffic improved, FB remained the same.
• Make a Facebook Group – FAILED – Definitely this month
• Get active on Twitter again – DONE!
• Syndicate content on medium – DONE… but failed.
• Improve my funnel automations – DONE

Goals and Plans for April

So far I’ve been doing pretty well in 2018 with keeping the blog going, and doing much better with content production.

There’s a lot left to do in order to hit my goals for the year, so I set mini goals for each month.

Double My Content Production

Yikes, this is going to be tough.

But in order to hit the growth numbers I’m wanting, I definitely need to put out more content. In March, I published 5 new posts, and in April I want that to be 10.

It shouldn’t be as difficult as it seems, since part of the content plan is going to be going back and updating / improving old posts.

Guest Post on 2 Sites / Blogs

I don’t really do guest posts. In fact, I haven’t done a guest post EVER with this blog.

To be honest, I’m probably going to struggle between doubling my content production along with 2 additional guest posts. I guess it’s a good time to test out my content plan to see if my organization and system has improved since making adjustments earlier this year.

And… not only will the content itself be a struggle, but I will have to start reaching out to people to see who will accept guest posts.

Any ideas? Want me to guest post on your site / blog? Hit me up!

Launch Landing Pages for Coaching and Products

Wanted to do this in March, but for some reason didn’t get around to it.

This month, it’s definitely happening. I need pages for the Agency Blueprint, Ice Cold Email Gold, the Agency Domination Coaching program, and for my Local SEO Course.

I should also create a squeeze page for the Agency Boot Camp opt in. I have plenty of opt ins now, but would like to drive some FB ads traffic to the page to boost subscriptions.

Increase Social Presence / Traffic

Last month I experimented with Medium. It didn’t go so well, but I want to continue that and see if I can make some changes to get more out of the platform.

I also want to start an Income Bully Facebook group. I’ve thought about making it available only to those that have bought the agency blueprint or email gold. I’m not sure if I should do that, or just make it available to everyone that’s a subscriber here.

Another thing I want to do, is try out pinterest for traffic. It’s working really well for other bloggers, so maybe I can get a bit of traffic from it too.

Here are the social goals:

• Continue testing content syndication on medium
• Create and promote the IncomeBully Facebook group
• Test out pinterest for traffic generation
• Hit 4,000 followers on Twitter

Should be a busy month but I think I can do it. The only thing I’m really worried about is Twitter. An increase of 700 followers may be a bit too much.

Design Changes

Not anything drastic, but I do want to make some improvements on the blog.

I’d like to change some ads, like the Agency blueprint as in the side bar, along with the Ice Cold Email Gold banner at the top of the page.

Also having some logos designed to see if I like something else better than what I currently have. May also run a few design based split tests on my opt in forms.

Final Thoughts

I’ve had months in the past where I set the bar pretty low for what I want to accomplish, and then at the end of the month, there’s still a lot that isn’t done.

So, I start thinking that maybe I need to set the bar a bit higher. If I miss my targets or goals, at least I’m getting more accomplished… hopefully.

April is definitely going to be a tough month, considering I plan to spend more time on this stuff than I have in recent memory. Curious to see how it turns out!

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!