Yikes!
Google’s March update was brutal, huh?
Here’s what happened to my main site…
Some of my other sites saw 95% drops in Google organic traffic and, thanks to being made a public example with manual penalties, others were deindexed entirely, resulting in 100% losses.
But, I always promise to share the downs as well as the ups, so let’s get cracking with this income report, shall we?
Travel Blog Stats For April (vs March)
- Total pageviews: 816,158 (down 12%)
Pageviews are now at a level that I’ve not seen since 2022.
I could choose to look at this like:
“OMG I’ve lost 18 months of progress, all that hard work is gone”.
But, that would be silly.
18 months ago I was thrilled with the traffic level and excited about the future. And I still am.
100%.
Success is not linear, right?
The ditch of rocks was 2020, the rope bridge was October HCU and the lake is where I am right now.
We got this. 💪
- Organic search: 218,157 (down 41%)
Organic search now makes up 37% of my traffic.
I said last year that I was aiming for a third of all traffic coming from search, so I’ve almost reached my goal, haha!
I still write a few articles with searchers in mind, but that’s a very small part of my strategy now.
I’ve noindexed a chunk of posts that used outdated techniques or weren’t 100% relevant to the niche.
And my team is going through de-optimising posts to make them less KW-focused and more attractive for social media and emails.
- Organic social: 199,653 (up 6%)
Facebook now makes up 34% of my traffic.
Bang on target!
I had been using Social Pilot for my scheduling, but I switched to Strevio and I find it SO much better.
It’s easier to use and has more features. I wouldn’t be without it.
Strevio lets you make status posts on the coloured backgrounds, which are working like a charm right now.
It also lets you link to articles in the first comment.
But the best feature has to be the analytics for both your own site, and also competitor sites, so you can see exactly what to post for maximum results.
- Email: 83,055 (down 13%)
Email makes up 14% of my traffic.
This is the biggest growth opportunity for me at the moment.
However, as I can link to affiliate offers directly from the email, it makes up more than 14% of the revenue.
For the past month, I tested emailing daily.
It didn’t work for me, I pissed people off.
The unsubscribe rate increased, and some of the emails didn’t generate enough clicks to be profitable.
But, I’m glad I ran the test, as it allowed me to identify exactly which emails work best.
My biggest takeaway is that the best emails appeal to everyone.
Each time you send an email that’s relevant to only some people on your list, you turn off everyone else.
So either segment, or make every email have something for everyone.
Out of all my emails, people love news the most.
News gets a ton of clicks from email and Facebook.
Since I started using Ghost Craft, it takes less than 10 minutes to find a breaking news story and write it up, from start to finish.
One news story my team published made me $625 in ad revenue (22,626 pageviews at $28 RPM).
$625 for 10 mins work!
(There’s a flash sale on Ghost Craft right now, the code is at the bottom of this email)
Income
The total income for my travel blog in April was $44,313.
The expenses were $10,777, leaving a profit of $34,177.
Other projects
I still have a handful of other sites that I’m not working on.
Together, they made about $1,000, but I didn’t bother to track the exact amounts as I’m not working on them.
I have, however, started work on a brand-new No-SEO site.
This will be a public case study, I’ll be sharing the URL and every detail to make it really easy for you to understand the techniques I’m using.
Because I’m short on time, I’m outsourcing pretty much everything with this project.
I’ve just hired this agency to build the site and write the first 50 articles for me.
I’ve used them before so I know they’ll do a good job.
Once it’s ready, I’ll show you what they did.
This week
On Thursday and Friday, I’ll be in York for Affiliate Gathering which is always one of the highlights of my year.
I hope to see many of you there, either at the Mastermind I’m hosting, one of the fringe events, or at the main event.
I know that you might not recognise me, so I’ll wear red trousers to make it easier, haha!
See you there?
– NSL
P.S. If you want 30% OFF Ghost Craft use the code NSL30.
(That code is valid until Friday, then it will be back to full price.)
I can’t wait to use it on my new case study site as well…
10-minute NO-SEO articles are a dream to create.
I’m SO excited about this new direction and thrilled that we can now publish quick and fun posts in minutes, rather than spending 8 hours+ on SEO-optimised 3,000-word posts that were torturous to write!
​Click here for your free trial and 30% discount.