Question…
Do you think niche sites are ‘passive income’?
Or do you need to keep grinding every month forever?
Well,
I took off most of the summer to move house across the country and then go travelling around Europe.
My team also hugely reduced their output for August as they spent time with their families.
So, how much traffic did the sites lose when we stopped working on them?
In this month’s income report, I’ll share all below…
Site 1: Travel
- Revenue – $63,515 (down 10%)
- Page views – 1,218,205 (down 13%)
- Site age – 4 years
- Articles – 718 (up 37)
- Page views per article – 1,697
- Revenue per article – $88
- RPM – $52
- Monetisation – 84% ads, 16% affiliate
You may have spotted that we created 37 new articles on this site. Hardly a pause, right?
What we did publish were almost all news articles.
This part of the process works entirely without my input.
A writer creates news articles based on press releases and topics that he sees people talking about on social media.
They then send these out via email and Facebook.
The articles just about break even to cover the cost of writing them, social scheduling software and email software.
So, they’re not much of a money-maker, but we do it to:
a) Get non-search traffic (a ranking factor)
b) Attract natural links
c) Grow the Facebook page
While news, social media and email all continued as normal, we did pause on uploading new articles and on updating content.
Did that cause the 10% drop in traffic and almost $7k drop in revenue?
Well, it’s hard to say.
But looking at this graph of past years’ performance, August should have been the annual peak…
On the one hand, I’m thrilled that I can bugger off for the best part of a month and still make 2 years of my old SEO manager salary in a single month.
(That’s wild.)
But then I think, did that time off cost me $7k?
As someone who’s spent their whole life working out how many hours they’d have to work to pay for anything they bought, it’s hard not to think like that.
And then I remind myself that it wasn’t ‘time off’,
I was mostly on press trips, doing research for my travel blog, taking photos, filming YouTube videos and posting social media content!
Anyway, here’s my plan to kill it in September…
UPDATE OLD CONTENT.
That’s all.
That’s what will really move the needle.
I have about 10 sponsored posts to write for brands (I can’t outsource this), plus some YouTube videos (these take fecking ages).
So, I’ve handed the updating task over to my best writer.
In this Tweet, I shared the process I set out for him…
I’ll let you know next month how this went.
Site 2: Gaming
- Revenue – $2,087 (down 4%)
- Page views – 160,846 (down 9%)
- Site age – 2.5 years
- Articles – 169 (no change)
- Page views per article – 952
- Revenue per article – $12
- RPM – $13
- Monetisation – 95% ads, 5% affiliate
This site’s been paused for a while with only one new article every couple of months to avoid it looking dead.
The low RPMs in the gaming niche put me off working on it more.
So, I would say that this one is actually passive.
The revenue goes up and down a little each month, but that’s okay.
I’m not working on the site, yet it’s paying the rent on my house, which is pretty cool!
Site 3: Environment
- Revenue – $1,679 (up 61%)
- Page views – 53,491 (down 1%)
- Site age – 1.5 years
- Articles – 102 (no change)
- Page views per article – 524
- Revenue per article – $16
- RPM – $31
- Monetisation – 86% ads, 14% affiliate
This site’s also been paused for the past 6 months, only getting about one new article per month.
It’s continued to grow though, despite me ignoring it, which is fantastic.
In the past 3 months, the monthly income has doubled, and nothing has changed except the age of the site.
This one has the potential to be huge, when it eventually gets some attention.
Site 4: Leisure
- Revenue – $810 (down 24%)
- Page views – 25,915 (down 1%)
- Site age – 2 years
- Articles – 95 (no change)
- Page views per article – 273
- Revenue per article – $9
- RPM – $31
- Monetisation – 79% ads, 21% affiliate
This is a super seasonal niche – basically, people only do this activity in summer.
The traffic has stayed steady, but Amazon sales have stopped as people aren’t buying the equipment right now.
In the previous month, some new articles were added.
This was totally hands-off for me, as Content Pit did everything from keyword research right through to publishing it on the site.
They sent me a report showing that many of the KWs are already ranking in the top 3!
The traffic is decent too and is offsetting the expected seasonal decline.
I’m really impressed and will be using them again.
(If you want to try this service, you can get 10% OFF if you use code NICHESITELADY here.)
Site 5: AI-Generated Test Site
- Revenue – $0
- Page views – 4,102 (+179%)
- Site age – 4 months
- Articles – 54 (no change)
- Page views per article – 76
The site was growing nicely in August, but it went tits up in the latest Google Update.
And you know what… I’m not surprised at all!
In this Tweet, I detailed all the things I did wrong with it.
I’ve decided to throw some ads on the site to get an idea of what the RPM is.
This will help me to decide whether to work on it or not.
I’ll let you know.
I hope August has been a good one for you.
Until next time,
– NSL
P.S. If you’re interested in sponsoring this newsletter, I have just 3 spots remaining in 2023.
I’ll be putting the price up for 2024, so if you’d like to get in while it’s still way too cheap, you can book online here.