Hi!
It’s been another busy month of travel for me.
In last month’s income report, I said I’d worked for only 10 days in September.
Well, October was similar with just 10 days at my desk.
November is on track to be the same.
Yikes!
I think it’s time to finally admit to myself that I only work 60 hours per month.
(Yes, I’m taking photos, videos and notes while I’m travelling, but it’s not really ‘work’, or at least it doesn’t feel like it)
I’m putting in half the hours I was this time last year, and my income is around half of what it was.
Are these two things related? Let’s dive into the numbers to see…
In October, my travel blog made $35,309.
That’s 27% less than in September.
Seasonality is huge in the travel niche, so I expected that.
I also paused most of my Facebook ads.
When I’m doing ad arbitrage I like to check on performance daily so I avoid doing it when I know I won’t be at my computer for long periods.
It’s easy to burn money with FB ads if you don’t watch them!
Expenses
Because I turned off most of my ads, my expenses were lower at $12,530 in October. (Versus $19,224 the previous month.)
Aside from ads, my expenses cover my team’s wages (this is what they do for me) and also any tools I use (these are listed here).
After taking out the expenses, my profit in October was $23,103 from my travel blog plus about $600 from my other sites.
I’m running at about 70% profit, which suits me nicely.
Income Streams
Now, let’s take a look at where the income came from for the travel blog…
Here are my income streams:
- Display ads (with Raptive) – $19,655
- Sponsored campaigns – $9,415
- Affiliates – $4,828
- Facebook bonus – $601
- YouTube Ads – $550
- Misc – $260
The website had 581,349 page views.
This isn’t so important as a decent chunk of my income comes from the email newsletter, social media and YouTube.
If my website disappeared permanently, my business wouldn’t die. And that’s key.
I’m always ready to pivot to the next opportunity.
Around half of my website traffic came from Google.
Google Discover has been popping off a bit lately. Have you seen the same?
I spotted a pattern in the articles that are appearing here. They’re all news articles written with GhostCraft.
So I asked my writer to write more of these and also make them longer (because more length = more ads = more cash)
Most of the new articles that we publish are news now. These mostly attract clicks from email and Facebook, but if they start working on Google Discover consistently, that will be fantastic.
Facebook traffic has been declining for me lately.
Over the past few months, it’s dropped from around 200,000 visits per month to around 60,000.
To be fair though, I did hand it over to a VA and largely ignore it, so I probably deserve that.
My plan is to be more hands-on for the next couple of weeks to figure out what works.
I’ll be sharing any findings on X for you. So you might want to tap that bell icon to turn on notifications so you don’t miss my tweets.
I’ll also be investing in Facebook ads to grow my page, my email list and send traffic to the site (ad arbitrage).
A new project
Aside from my niche sites, I’ve also been working away on a secret project that will make my life SO MUCH EASIER!
It’s almost ready and I’m excited to show you in the next few weeks.
Speak soon!
– NSL
P.S. THANK YOU to everyone who shared your nuggets of wisdom in reply to last week’s email. You’re amazing.
I’ll collate those and share the ones that stuck out the most.