Hey hey!
I know this is kinda late in the month for an income report,
But, well, travel bloggers gotta travel.
Some people may say otherwise, I don’t believe them. 😆
Anyway, here goes…
✨ (New Level Unlocked!) ✨
In March, my sites brought in a whopping $55,297.
It’s getting to the stage where these don’t even feel like real numbers anymore.
I mean, that amount could buy a HOUSE not too far from where I live.
It could buy THIS house, which is the standard type of house that most people I know live in.
My expenses were $4,569 – leaving me with a profit of $50,823.
Or 94%.
Here’s how that’s broken down…
Site 1 – Travel
- Revenue – $52,578 (up 17%)
- Page views – 1,060,499 (up 20%)
- Articles – 526 (up 35)
- Page views per article – 2,016
- Revenue per article – $83
- RPM – $41
- Monetisation – 83% ads, 17% affiliate
This site saw a nice boost from the March core update which began on March 15th.
Google organic traffic increased by 21% in the second half of the month compared to the first.
This meant that it reached a million page views in a month for the first time. Yay!
Focus for this month
I’ll be handing over the news production to one of my writers to work on for an hour per day.
I also plan to ramp up my emails for this site by sending twice per week.
I’m launching my first digital product – a travel planning spreadsheet.
And I’m determined to devote Tuesdays to YouTube.
I’ve been naughty and skipped a few weeks, but I’m mid-way through an AMAZING YouTube course that’s helping me massively.
Site 2 – Gaming
- Revenue – $1,355 (down 17%)
- Page views – 108,987 (down 1%)
- Articles – 166 (up 5)
- Page views per article – 657
- Revenue per article – $7
- RPM – $10
- Monetisation – 96% ads, 4% affiliate
This site was hit hard by an update about six months ago and has been tracking flat ever since.
But, over the last few weeks, it’s started to make a recovery and is getting better every day…
My writer has been going through and improving all of the articles one by one.
It’s a long process and they’ve worked on about a quarter of them so far.
This is their checklist:
- Add a Key Points summary at the top
- Mention personal experiences
- Use Query Hunter to optimise for more keywords
- Add more FAQs
- Check and update affiliate links
- Add internal links
- Replace stock photos with original
Focus for this month
Continue with the updates – it appears to be working!
Site 3 – Environment
- Revenue – $698 (up 6%)
- Page views – 32,979 (down 5%)
- Articles – 96 (up 1)
- Page views per article – 344
- Revenue per article – $6
- RPM – $18
- Monetisation – 84% ads, 16% affiliate
Confession – this site is getting neglected at the moment.
I don’t have time to work on it, don’t have time to sell it.
So I’m letting it sit for the moment, dripping in a couple of articles per month and collecting the passive income.
I’ve heard of people seeding sites with 100 articles to come back to later – so I’ll call it that. 😂
Site 4 – Leisure
- Revenue – $665 (up 6%)
- Page views – 21,999 (down 15%)
- Articles – 80 (up 1)
- Page views per article – 275
- Revenue per article – $7
- RPM – $25
- Monetisation – 60% ads, 40% affiliate
Eek, another neglected site.
Same story.
Future plans
The problem I have is that articles cost me at least $100 each.
So I’m inclined to add them to site one where each one makes $83 per month, rather than these sites where they make $6-7.
The ‘only the best will do’ model isn’t a good fit for the lower RPM sites.
This is why we should never copy anyone else’s strategy – each site needs its own unique plan.
To reduce the cost of content for the smaller sites, I have three options:
- Cheaper writers
- Heavily edited AI
- One click AI
Cheaper writers have been pretty much replaced by AI (or they use it and don’t tell you) so I’ll rule that one out.
One-click AI isn’t a good match for my personality. I like to feel that I’m making the internet (and the world) better, not worse.
So, we have heavily edited AI as the best option.
Now, I’m not keen to add this to existing sites at the risk of feeling the wrath of Google.
Yes, I know they said they don’t care, but they say a lot of things they don’t mean.
And I’m a chicken.
So I’m testing out the edited AI route on…
Site 5.
Eek!
Is this a shiny object to distract me?
Yes.
Would I be crazy to ignore new tech and evolution?
Also yes.
It would be mean of me to present my strategy I’m using on my travel blog as a one-size-fits all blueprint.
So I’ll continue to test new strategies and share my results with you.
Here we go…
I’ve just upgraded my Koala subscription from $9 to $25 per month.
That gives me about 30 articles per month, which is plenty for now.
I’m giving it 30 mins each evening for 3 months.
Then, with about 100 articles and I’ll sit back and see what happens.
And of course, I’ll let you know!
If it works, I’ll roll out the strategy on the two other sites.
If it doesn’t, I’ve learned something.
Of course, with this being a new site on a fresh domain I’m not expecting much, but I’ll hope to see some initial signs of life after 3 months.
Until next time,
– NSL.
P.S.
It’s been a few months since I did any HARO link building.
But I’m STILL getting links coming in randomly.
These things are slow burners sometimes.
I only paid for 5 links per site, but I’ve actually ended up with way more as they just keep coming – woohoo!
I’m not suggesting everyone should pay a professional to do HARO as I’ll admit it’s pricey.
If you’re just starting out, you’d be better off learning how to do HARO yourself.
You could also get your VA to do it once you know how to do it with a high success rate.