Hello!
I really ramped up the content production this month and now I have over 1,000 articles across all my sites.
Together, those brought in $70,237, which is a new record for me.
I’m aware that is an absolutely ridiculous amount of money, especially for a business that runs at 95% profit.
This still doesn’t feel real to me, so I like to match the figure to actual things to try to make sense of it all.
$70k was roughly the sale price of my last house, which was this one…
If someone told me I could have bought the house outright with just one month’s income, would I have believed them?
Absolutely not.
I couldn’t think of a single job or business that would pay that much.
And so, when I was living in that blue house, and I started a blog about personal finance,
I gave up after just 6 weeks.
Because I didn’t know how long these things take to see results.
And I didn’t know how much it could bring in if I only kept going.
And that, my friends, is the sole reason WHY I share these income reports.
Because if it stops one person from quitting too soon, it’s worth it.
Now, let’s break down that $70k…
Now then, here at the stats for each site…
Site 1 – Travel
- Revenue – $66,611 (up 10%)
- Page views – 1,288,076 (up 11%)
- Site age – 4 years
- Articles – 635 (up 52)
- Page views per article – 2,028
- Revenue per article – $105
- RPM – $52
- Monetisation – 85% ads, 15% affiliate
Here’s where the traffic came from…
As you can see, it’s mostly organic search.
So I’m also working hard to grow organic social (Facebook) and email.
These will be backups in case organic search traffic declines,
But they also provide good signals to Google, which should also help with organic search.
Win-win.
(This chart comes from GA4. If you still haven’t got your head around it, there are courses you can take to learn. I took this one and I highly recommend it.)
I’m also working on YouTube…
I have 20 videos now and they get about 3,000 views each on average, so I’m happy with that.
(To learn how to make YouTube videos I took this course. It currently has 75% OFF, so if you want to up your YouTube game FAST, now’s the time.)
On Saturday I just launched my first digital product – a travel planning spreadsheet and printable.
I’ll let you know how much that made in next month’s report.
Since this site brings in 95% of the income, it’s where I put 95% of my effort.
The other sites are just:
- Backups in case of lockdown / global disaster
- Passive income
- A testing place for AI (the newest one)
They have just content. No social, email, YouTube or digital products.
And the content is going on pretty slowly at the moment.
But here’s what they look like…
Site 2 – Gaming
- Revenue – $1,656 (up 6%)
- Page views – 125,958 (up 3%)
- Site age – 2.5 years
- Articles – 168 (up 0)
- Page views per article – 750
- Revenue per article – $10
- RPM – $13
- Monetisation – 97% ads, 3% affiliate
No work done on this site last month.
Site 3 – Environment
- Revenue – $864 (up 29%)
- Page views – 35,531 (up 15%)
- Site age – 17 months
- Articles – 101 (up 1)
- Page views per article – 352
- Revenue per article – $9
- RPM – $24
- Monetisation – 83% ads, 17% affiliate
I have an expert writer working on this site, but she’s a busy person so the content is going on very slowly, which I’m fine with.
Site 4 – Leisure
- Revenue – $1,106 (up 4%)
- Page views – 33,307 (up 15%)
- Site age – 2 years (purchased 1 year ago)
- Articles – 85 (up 2)
- Page views per article – 392
- Revenue per article – $13
- RPM – $33
- Monetisation – 65% ads, 35% affiliate
I’m currently testing a hands-off service on this site where an agency does everything from KW research to publishing. If that has a positive ROI, I’ll let you know!
Site 5 – New Site!
- Revenue – $0
- Page views – 452
- Site age – 2 months
- Articles – 50 (up 23)
This site is human-edited AI.
I have been using two methods to write the content.
1. For informational content, I use Koala Writer
I like how new features keep being added, like FAQ sections and how it uses real-time search results.
2. For best X for Y, I use ChatGPT Plus
I copy text from manufacturers’ and retailers’ websites and paste it into ChatGPT. So all it’s doing is augmenting the information to present it in a way that’s easy to read. It’s not researching anything itself (because it can’t be trusted).
AI content always requires thorough fact-checking, but I find that if you give it all of the facts, and tell it not to add any more, it’s great at rearranging these facts into compelling articles.
Let me know if you’d like to know more about how I do that.
Expenses
My expenses in June were about $4,200. The majority of that went on team members. There are ten of us now, all part-time freelancers who choose how many hours they’d like to work.
All the tools I use regularly are listed here.
I hope you found that interesting.
If you’d like to share your numbers to inspire others, please consider joining The Race to $100K/Month.
61 people took part last month – you can see their stats here.
I’ll be publishing the June leaderboard next Tuesday so please sign up here if you want to be a part of it.
Until next time!
– NSL