It’s been a month since I got a manual penalty from Google…
And a couple of weeks since I held my hands up to everything I could have possibly done wrong.
I haven’t heard back from them yet,
And you may be wondering how this is affecting my income.
I love to share the ups and the downs with you guys, so here goes…
Travel blog
Here are the stats for Feb (vs Jan):
- Age: 4 years
- Posts: 983 (up 50)
- Pageviews: 1,219,823 (down 37%)
- RPM: $59 (up 17%)
- Revenue: $71,577 (down 4%)
As there were two extra days in Feb than Jan, the site actually earned more per day this month.
So despite the penalty, it’s overall performance is still improving.
Now, let’s break that down by channel…
Sessions By Channel:
- Organic Search: 638k (down 28%)
- Organic Social: 172k (down 15%)
- Direct: 67k (down 16%)
- Email: 63k (up 35%)
The penalty appears to have affected the organic traffic a bit.
The red line is when it happened and you can see that the traffic is now flat against the previous year, rather than being ~20% up.
I’m fine with that.
If it comes back, it comes back.
If it doesn’t, whatever, it could be worse.
The way the Google dumpster fire is going right now I’ll take a 20% drop.
Hooray for email traffic, though!
If you’ve been reading this newsletter over the past week or so, you’ll know that I have some big plans for email and I’m just getting started with those.
(If you’re new here, hello! You can access my email archive here)
Now, let’s look at where the $71k came from…
Revenue streams:
- Display ads (84%)
- Sponsorships (9%)
- Affiliate (7%)
- YouTube (<1%)
- Products (<1%)
As well as not wanting most of my traffic to come from Google, I also don’t want most of my traffic to come from display ads.
Luckily, my email newsletter works great for brand sponsorships and affiliates so we’re doing more of that.
Other projects
My 10-month-old AI test site, is still doing pretty good.
It made $548 with 26,000 pageviews.
I abandoned it after the first 60 articles back in October,
But a new series of Married At First Sight Australia has just started so I think it’s time for me to start working on it while I watch TV again – it’s a fun hobby.
My newest site is also growing nicely.
Feb was month 3 and it had 1,783 pageviews, which is pretty good for such a new site.
I’ve never had a brand-new site grow so quickly and I’m so excited for this one to get out of the sandbox.
I had Web Asset Builders do the keyword research, site build and content production so that was completely hands-off for me.
They did a great job and the site looks so much prettier than the usual basic designs when I build them myself.
I’m also working with Linkifi who are building me some fantastic PR links, like these…
Digital PR is the ONLY kind of link-building I’m happy to do, especially with the penalty hanging over me!
It’s not cheap, but it’s perfectly possible to do it yourself (or train a VA to do it) if you have the time.
I recommend this course which tells you everything you need to know to build digital PR links.
My Plans for March
My focus this month is email, email, email.
The migration to ConvertKit is almost done,
Then I’ll be ramping up the sends from 3X per week to 7X.
And I’ll be applying everything I’ve learned to my newest site too.
Does anyone know of a content service that specialises in the kinds of articles that do well on email and Facebook?
The ones like these…
- 7 {X} You Won’t Believe Exist
- 9 Things You Should Never Do in {X}
- 11 Unwritten Rules of {X}
- The Worst {X} According To Online Reviews
- If you do, let me know, I’d love to try it out!
In other news, I’m also trying to buy my dream home for cash.
I’ve been negotiating on the price for the past 3 weeks so maybe this week we’ll be able to sign on the line. 🤞
Having owned a travel blog in a pandemic, I’m very aware that everything could come crashing down at any moment.
Being debt-free and for my family to be able to live on $1,000 per month if it ever comes to that will be an incredibly fortunate position to be in and I’m super grateful for that.
See you next week!
– NSL
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