#80 | NOVEMBER INCOME REPORT ($74,618)

Hi!

Honestly, I did NOT expect to make $74k in November. 🤯

Yes, November RPMs are 🔥…

But my traffic had been on a decline since the summer.

Somehow though, things turned around! 📈

So read on, and I’ll share what’s working for me right now…

Let’s take a look at how my websites did in November (with comparison to October in brackets)…

1. Travel

Revenue – $68,5997 (up 27%)
Page views – 1,004,097 (up 9%)
Site age – 4.5 years
Articles – 851 (+44)
Page views per article – 1,180
Revenue per article – $81
RPM – $69
Monetisation – 87% ads, 7% affiliate, 5% sponsors
Traffic sources – 67% organic search, 24% organic social, 6% direct, 4% email

This site has been on a decline since July, which I expected due to the seasonality in travel, but the Google Updates hadn’t helped either.

However, this month, it turned around!

Organic search actually increased month on month, which I didn’t expect.

It was up 6% compared to October.

Why?

Well, it could be a co-incidence, but I started building links to the site…

Or rather, an agency did. I didn’t actually do any work at all aside from paying the invoice.

I hired Search Intelligence to do digital PR.

I heard their ad about 100 times in the Niche Pursuits podcast, and it obviously worked on me, haha.

They put out a press release that resulted in links to my site.

They’re currently working on a second campaign so I’m hoping to see even more results soon.

I won’t lie – digital PR is very expensive.

It’s not for everyone.

But, if you have the money to invest and want to get the same service for less than I paid,

Then you might like that I’ve negotiated a discount for you…

Use code ‘Lady1000’ for £1,000 off your first campaign with Search Intelligence.

The rest of the extra traffic came from Facebook, which was up 25% month on month.

All we do is post links to blog posts on my Facebook page which currently has 14,000 fans.

My VA posts about 5 per day.

Just a few words, an emoji and a link. That’s it.

Not all of the posts do well, but some have results like this…

If a post does particularly well on Facebook, I look at my Raptive dashboard to see what the RPM is from the ads on that page.

If it’s high, then I sometimes run paid ads to drive even more Facebook traffic.

Facebook traffic costs about 5 cents per click for me, so if the RPM is about $70 or more, then it can be worth doing.

I just have to keep an eye on it and nudge up the spend each day, then bring it back down when it stops working so well.

It’s a fun game!

(I’ll list my expenses for this and everything else at the end of the report)

In December, I’m trying a variety of methods to speed up the page growth.

What will happen if I have twice as many Facebook fans?

I want to know.

In two weeks’ time, I’ll be able to give you more details about what worked and didn’t work for me.

Look out for an email if that interests you.

Now, on to the next site…

I’ve not done much on this site, but it’s ticking along nicely.
The graph is spiky, but it’s generally going in the right direction so I don’t check it too often.

The niche is very small and I think that once I get to 100 articles it will be complete.

Maybe that’s why it’s doing so well?

The tighter the niche, the faster it grows?

There’s a theory that may hold true.

I’ve seen others have problems with a very large niche like ‘food’ or ‘sports’.

With those, you could create 10,000 posts and not cover the niche fully.

Thankfully, the domain name is broad enough that I can add on a few other similar categories later.

3. Other sites

I also have websites in the gaming, environment and leisure niches.

I’m not currently working on these at all, but together, they made $5,536 of passive income in November.

Not too shabby.

4. My new site

My next site has been built by Web Asset Builders which means it’s almost completely hands-off.

I’m excited to see how this performs.

I don’t want to rely on Google search traffic though, so we’ve also started posting to the Facebook page to see how that grows organically.

Of course, I’ll share the results when I get some.

Expenses

Overall, my sites made $74,618 in November.

$66,321 of that was profit.

My expenses were $8,451.

Here’s how that’s broken down…

Writers/editors – $4,950
VAs – $450
Facebook ads – $2,532
Email software – $263
Hosting – $99
Misc. – $157

Of course, expenses don’t always match to the same month the work is done.

I paid Search Intelligence in September, and my VAs were paid for November’s work in December.

You can see a full list of everything I pay for (as well as all the free tools I use) here: nichesitelady.com/resources

I’m managing to save $100 every month by switching from ahrefs to KeySearch too.

Have a look at that if you haven’t already.

Until next time,

– NSL

P.S. Want to sponsor this newsletter? YOu can see available dates here.

1. Travel

2. AI Test Site

3. Other sites

4. My new site

Expenses