May was another record month for my sites.
It’s a great feeling when almost every month is a record month!
The best thing about this business type, is that record months are a regular occurrence for most of us, no matter the scale.
Record days, well they’re much rarer.
So I don’t try to spot them.
I think monthly is the ideal interval to check on progress and celebrate wins.
If you’d like to join in with sharing your progress, please consider joining The Race to $100K/Month.
There are no requirements to join in, and it can be a fun way to see your spot on the leaderboard.
Now, on to the stats for May compared to the previous month…
Site 1 – Travel
- Revenue – $59,539 (up 15%)
- Page views – 1,155,680 (up 4%)
- Site age – 4 years
- Articles – 583 (up 40)
- Page views per article – 1,982
- Revenue per article – $102
- RPM – $52
- Monetisation – 79% ads, 21% affiliate
I’m thrilled with how this site is going.
In the last few days, it’s seen a further traffic increase and is now tracking a whopping 20% up compared to 4 weeks ago.
The more this site soars, the more it pushes me to lean in to this one and ignore the others, which is what I’m doing.
I haven’t included it here, but I have also started to make money from YouTube in this niche.
If you’re interested to know how much I made in the first month,
And what it took to get monetised,
Look out for next week’s email and I’ll share all the details there for you.
Site 2 – Gaming
- Revenue – $1,555 (up 5%)
- Page views – 121,946 (down 12%)
- Site age – 2 years
- Articles – 168 (up 1)
- Page views per article – 726
- Revenue per article – $9
- RPM – $13
- Monetisation – 95% ads, 5% affiliate
This site’s up and down like a yoyo.
It seems Google can’t decide what to do with it.
I’m just letting it sit and counting it as passive income.
It’s my safety net, because we may not always be able to travel, but we should always be able to play games!
Site 3 – Environment
Revenue – $627 (up 6%)
Page views – 30,967 (down 2%)
Site age – 16 months
Articles – 100 (up 2)
Page views per article – 310
Revenue per article – $7
RPM – $22
Monetisation – 84% ads, 16% affiliate
This site’s tracking pretty flat, which I’m happy with seeing as I’m not working on it besides adding the occasional new post and replacing a few stock images with my own.
Site 4 – Leisure
Revenue – $1,060 (up 44%)
Page views – 28,980 (up 21%)
Site age – 2 years (purchased 11 months ago)
Articles – 83 (up 3)
Page views per article – 349
Revenue per article – $13
RPM – $37
Monetisation – 58% ads, 42% affiliate
This site is up massively this month. It’s a seasonal niche though so that’s just because the sun in shining and people are outdoors.
I can’t take any credit for the increase as I haven’t done much to it.
Site 5 – New Site!
Revenue – $0
Page views – 330
Site age – 1 month
Articles – 27
This is my new AI site. I’ve only been working on it while watching TV in the evening as a way to practice my AI prompting skills.
It’s not doing too badly though considering it’s brand new and the content isn’t the best.
Expenses
My expenses in May were about $4,800.
I say ‘about’ because, well, somehow I track income much better than I track expenses – it’s more fun isn’t it!
This was about double what I spend in April.
Did twice as much get done?
Not really, it’s just variation due to the date that invoices come in, although I have hired a few more people recently so expenses should continue to rise when they get paid in June.
Here’s where I spent the money…
Writers – $4,283
A lot of new posts got written and I now have a huge backlog to get through, especially as I’ve been away.
Time to knuckle down and get these published!
VAs – $106
This is very low this month because most of my VAs are students so they have taken some time off for exams. It will be much more next month.
Email software – $240
I have about 50k subs and I use Mailerlite.
Hosting – $99
I use BigScoots and I’m very happy with it.
Theme – $0
I bought the lifetime deal for GeneratePress a while ago.
Product links – $43
I use Genius Link to send people to the right country to make purchases.
It’s like Amazon’s One Link (which is free), but it also works outside of Amazon and it does more things, like A/B tests.
AI – $30
I’m using a mix of Koala Writer and Chat GPT Plus.
Which one I use depends on the type of article that I’m writing.
For example, if it’s a listicle, I find that Chat GPT does a better job.
I downgraded my Koala to $10 per month as I don’t need so many credits right now.
Speed – $12
I use WP Rocket to make all my sites nice and fast without me needing to learn the tech behind it.
Images – $13
Canva is where I get any stock photos I need and I use to edit images and make YouTube Thumbnails.
Those are all of the tools I pay for.
There are a few others that I use regularly that I get for free – usually because I’m an affiliate, a friend lets me use theirs or I just use the free version.
All of the tools I use on the regular are listed here.
I hope you found that interesting.
If you’d like to share your numbers to inspire others, don’t forget to join The Race to $100K/Month.
I’ll be publishing the leaderboard towards the end of this week.
Until next time!
– NSL