Month 8 Income Report – 1000 Dollar Per Month Website
April was a great month for website income case studies(Spencer Haws ranks #1 and Tung ranks #1 in Google) and mine had record traffic and record income! This month now brings my monthly income average for the last 3 months to over $1,000!
Key Successes:
Finding Time To Work – As I mentioned a few times my Son was born March 5th and I have been enjoying every minute with him but on top of my busy day job it has been a challenge to find time to work.
However, within the last few weeks I have settled into a routine of putting in a few hrs late each night.
Defining My Business Strategy Moving Forward – As I talked about in my recent post here I felt it was time to re-asses my strategy to get me to my goal…
Make $15k/month online by the age of 35
I have decided after some help from a lot of smart people in the comments section and some input from some people further along this journey than me in my mastermind group what my strategy should be.
Thanks to everyone that provided some valuable input!
HedgeHog Concept from the book Good to Great:
My Hedgehog Concept:
What Do I Enjoy – Strategy – any kind of computer strategy game gets me addicted – I have had to go cold turkey with these games because I can play them for hours and hours. Any kind of strategy game board game etc keeps me fully engaged and entertained. My online efforts are similar! Working on a marketing strategy or new business model strategy is extremely fun and rewarding.
What Can I Be The Best At? With my analytical approach, niche website experience, large dollar project management background, experience with outsourcing, small business size and my passion for all things SEO I believe I can work to be the best at setting up and managing processes for creating and marketing websites in competitive niches at very low cost.
What is My Profit Engine? The metric I am going to focus on to drive my strategy and business in the right direction is Profit/Website. I chose this over profit/visitor or profit/capital employed since it will drive me to create valuable more authoritative sites that will be more resistant to fluctuations in Google’s algorithms.
So what’s my strategy going to be?
Replicate the success of (My Case Study Website URL is Now Hidden) by focusing on my strengths (strategy and systematizing the process) while monitoring the key metric of profit/website until I reach $15k/month profit.
Key Failures:
Promotion of CTR Widget
My plugin CTR Widget which has resulted in increasing my click through rate by over 50% has not been promoted at all even though I know it will help out a lot of people!
Based on my decision this month to focus on replicating authority sites I do not plan to pursue this project but in another month the expense of creating the plugin will have paid for itself.
Diversifying My Affiliate Offers
I guess this is a good problem but my audience is so focused on student loan consolidations that any of my affiliate offers talking about other products don’t seem to do very well at all.
Authority Website Stats for April
Income = $1127.12
- CPA #1 (loan consolidation) – $513.00
- CPA #2 (load consolidation) – $545.12
- CPA #3 (credit check) = $69.00
CPA Offer #1 = $513
Although this affiliate is not main focus the conversions are great and I really like the ability to quickly judge the quality of traffic through the daily conversion reports here.
CPA Offer #2 = $545.12
The number of leads continues to grow due in part to my CTR Widget plugin which got a lot of clicks in April!
- February = 54 Leads
- March = 98 Leads
- April = 151 Leads
CPA Offer #3 = $69
Of the several other products I have tried offering this is the only one that generated any revenue and it’s a credit check and recovery service.
Costs = $237.16
Having been taking so much time off for my day job and the birth of my son the article inventory for my website was starting to run dry. So because I am looking to expand into a new niche I wanted to build up a large inventory of quality articles to be scheduled out over the next 3-4 months.
In April I followed the process I outlined to get “cheap” articles created and in the end I have almost 60 articles created of which 40 were good enough to go on my website or after a little editing a guest post.
I was able to re-hire a great VA who had taken a year off for school, he is back and working out very well as I knew he would! The VA’s do a lot of things for me such as research post material, identify potential guest posting opportunities, publish content, modify graphics, upload and syndicate videos I make and other assignments as they come up.
All my team members are hired through ODesk
- VA #1 – Content Publisher = $15 @ (posting/scheduling of created articles per my content calendar)
- VA # 2 – Backlink/General = $25 (web 2.0 creation, Link Authority, blog carnival submission, Friday post creation)
- VA #3 – Website Manager = $10 (he takes care of security/speed on all my sites – no work this month)
- VA #4 – Social Media Manager = $0 (I need to get her working again!)
- VA #5 – Outreach – $22 (blog commenting and guest post outreach)
- Content Creation (60 articles this month!) = $158.00
- Hosting = $7.16 @ HostGator
Running Net Income/Loss
Its playoff time and so here is a little hockey stick graph for you…
Traffic = 9,022 Unique Visitors
A very good month that almost doubled my traffic from last month!
Traffic From Day 1 to Now (8 months later)
Email Opt Ins – Still a failure!
Total sign up = 17! (5 in the month of April with 9k+ visitors!)
Even though I no longer focus on sign up I will keep reporting this to show full transparency of both my successes and failures.
Content, Promotion and Backlinks
In this section I will show exactly what I have done over the last month to get to 300 visitors a day.
On Page Content = 17 Posts
A lot more great posts were published following my editorial calendar.
Outreach – Blog Commenting & Social Media (2hrs only)
Blog commenting via a VA started back up again but my social media profiles have been inactive for the last month since a VA left that was doing a great job but we just weren’t seeing any results from it.
Guest Posts = 0 Posts on Quality Sites
There were no guest posts published in the month of April! This is not good since its one of my main methods of building authority in my niche. However, I have attacked guest posting with some serious effort at the very end of the month and 3 days into May have 5 posts published!
All of these guest posts were achieved using the method I talk about here.
Backlink Stats
I use majestic SEO (free) to track my link profile and help estimate how my link building efforts are being viewed by Google.
- Referring Domains = 143 (-2)
- Backlinks = 7,034 (+831)
- Citation Flow 36 (no change)
- Trust Flow 20 (+1)
I got help confirming that my site was not attacked by a negative SEO campaign but was just getting widget links from a relevant site indexed at a rapid rate.
Image From – MajesticSEO.com
Last Month’s Goals
- Restart Guest Posting – (guest post on 5 high quality sites) – Partial Fail (restarted well but did so late)
- Outreach Effort – 1 Epic Post That Generates High Quality Backlinks and a Traffic Spike – Success
- Continue Content Creation at 16 posts/month – Success
- Monetize –Earn over $1,000 per month – Success
Next Month’s Goals
- Pursue Guest Posting – (guest post on 10 high quality sites)
- Blog Commenting – Restart blog commenting via VA
- Continue Content Creation at 16 posts/month
- Monetize –Earn over $1,000 per month
2013 Website Goal Progress:
My website case study (My Case Study Website URL is Now Hidden) will earn more per month than Pat Flynn’s case study site SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com for at least 3 months of the year
- So far in 2013 I am 0 for 3
- January (-$2,796.18)
- $452.13 for (My Case Study Website URL is Now Hidden)
- $3248.31 for SecurityGuardHQ.com – Report
- February (-$1,675.35)
- $1126.55 for (My Case Study Website URL is Now Hidden)
- $2,801.90 for SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com – Report
- March (-$2,076.94)
- 759.63 for (My Case Study Website URL is Now Hidden)
- $2,836.57 for SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com – Report
- April (?)
- $1,127.1 for (My Case Study Website URL is Now Hidden)
- $? for SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com – Report
Great month! I really like all the details you share in your graphs
Thanks James, I like the graphs as well! I have to down down the number of graphs to make it more user friendly…what do you think…do we need more
cow bellgraphs?Wow ! That’s really impressive Jon! You are the man ! I never thought CPA can be this much profitable. I have consumed all your past blog posts 🙂 btw, Do you write guest articles yourself or you outsource it as well? I would really love to see an in depth post regarding your content calendar and content generation techniques !
Hi Anisul, I think that post idea is a good one…my system isn’t too complicated but a video showing exactly how I hire, the email I send, etc etc could be useful. I will add it to my list.
Amazing report Jon! You are making lots of money in a competitive niche. I’m sure your niche will keep growing in the future.
You’re doing great at building your own team. I’m inspired and I will start building my team soon. Right now I only have 2 writers 😀
I’m looking at the homepage of your niche site right now, but I dont see any strong call to action above the fold. I’m wondering if adding one call to action in the homepage would increase your revenue or not :D..
The small widget “COMPARE CONSOLIDATION RATES” has a link to your CPA but it’s under the fold. So if you could replace the text with an orange button and put it above the fold. I think there will be an improment in clicks :D.
Have you thought of replacing the slider with something else that can improve your earning or get more email subscribers ( a featured box)
Tung
Hi Tung, that is intentional…my site needs to look respectable, look like a blog and be monetized like a business. If I had a strong call to action on the homepage I believe I would lose some credibility…however the question I need to find the answer to is what is worth more – the increased credibility or the increased conversions.
Also, because of the amount of content I have on the site my homepage accounts for 7.58% of pageviews. I have other smaller sites that the homepage accounts for over 70% so increasing my homepage CTR wont has as big an impact on my site.
You brought up a good question and one I need to look at – improving the conversion rate on my most popular pages. Right now I have the same call to action on each page but the audience on each page isn’t the exact same. If I targeted the call to action to the audience on each page I bet I would see an increase in conversions. – Thanks for the suggestion.
Best of luck building out your team!
Have u considered the feature box to get email? Like this blogmarketingacademy.com
I have considered it, when I had a call to action for opt-ins above the fold I did not get very much traction. I am considering a slight change in my sales funnel to collect emails before I send the reader off my page.
Again! Great stuff! keep pushing you are in the right track.
Thank Miki!
+$1000/month with only one site it’s really amazing !
I have a question to ask you. I also want to build my team (at this time I only have one writer), but I want to find someone who will publish articles on my websites. How much do you pay your VA for this task? ($$ per published article).
Thanks.
Sebastian
Hi Sebastian, I pay my VA from $1-$2/hr and they do many things, including posting articles.
I dont pay on a per article posted since the quality of the job they do posting is far more important than their efficiency posting it.
There are many providers at ODesk that have WordPress experience and if you say follow ____ instructions (find a wordpress seo post checklist) then they should be able to do a really good job for you.
Awesome Stuff Jon, Got no doubt you can achieve your goal and I love the clarity you have been able to achieve for your strategy going forward! Great Stuff, Quinn
Thanks Quinn and thanks for the help!
This is really incredible Jon:)
I’m so happy for your success on this project and here is a thumb up for you man. I’m sure that if you continue like this then, the $15k goal will soon be a reality:).
And I’m not surprised with your results at all because you deserves it i mean, its something you’ve worked tirelessly for so, why won’t you succeed on it?
Just keep on replicating what you’ve been doing man and i tell you, the sky will only be your starting point. Thanks a lot for sharing and more strength to your elbows:).
BTW: How is Jon junior and his mother:)? I hope he will be as strong and dedicated as you are:). Please, extend my warm regards to them.
Thanks Theodore! The hard work is paying off which is always a great feeling. My son and wife are both doing great…have him in a snuggly sleeping as I write this. Thanks for asking.
Hi Jon,
Its really amazing, your tireless efforts are now paying off and I’m so happy for you too:). It shows that hard work really pays after all.
I’m also happy the way you always takes your time to share with us your honest and transparent experience, we have really learnt a lot from you and man, if you keep on doing what you’re doing, the sky will only be your starting point.
Thanks for sharing man and good luck.
Hi Valentine – thanks for commenting. I am glad that the message people are getting from this isn’t that its easy but that with hard work it is possible. Too much information online making people think this process is easy! I plan on continuing to share.
You know I like this report. So detailed. I’d advice you to try and get a good article writer so you need not spend more time editing those articles.
Since Pat announced that he will be having another NSD, I’ve been thinking in the side of student loan or dog niche. Just thinking which of the niche to pursue big time and know how to go about it.
Here, you have good earnings, but I will like to have ebook, cpa (not compulsory though), kindle book, and maybe some 6-month course – that is the way i wish to monetize my own website.
What you think about it?
Sheyi
Hi Sheyi, I personally prefer the student loan niche – the dog niche has a lot of searches but also a lot of direct competitors(hobbyists that have blogs and can rank well in google for their sites). For monetization I would say don’t be married to one idea – start with one and then based on its success try others.
Great update! I find it interesting so many people are following in Pat’s footsteps and you are comparing your website earnings to his security niche site. That is a ton of generated traffic for such a small amount of leads generated! You should checkout Derek Halpern’s site http://www.socialtriggers.com/list-building for some good info on optimizing your blog for lead generation, he shares a lot of great value on his blog.
Hi John – Any kind of competition gets me fired up so whenever I can compare to something, someone I know I perform better so that’s the reason for the comparison. Derek Halpern’s stuff is great – on the list front I am going to try some different techniques but all the incentives I have tried have not moved the needle so I don’t want to waste valuable real estate on an opt in sign up.
Its great to know a 8 months old site earning >$1000. The best part is the sharing of everything you did or whatever you are doing right now with the site. A great help Jon.
I am glad you found it useful. Thanks
Hi, I just know you from nichepursuits.com, I saw that your cpa earning is not bad.
I want to ask about yg traffic strategy, its organic traffic with seo and keyword research or paid traffic and media buying? Thx
Hi Jon. Great earnings as per usual, congratulations!
Your plan for moving forward look good too. I don’t suppose you could recommend any of the low cost article writers you use on Odesk? I’ve tried to find them, using your approach but not had much luck.
If not, don’t worry and good luck for next month!
Thanks,
Joe
Also, I just installed your plugin but a lot of the links are broken such as:
https://websiteincome.com/ctrwidget/email
Any idea if those pages are still up?
Thanks.
Hey Jon,
This is indeed motivational and I like the insight you shared.
Never heard of the hedgehog concept before….as the guy points out, not many people do this, mainly because they probably don’t know any better. I’ve read quite a few personal development books and even for me it’s hard to put something like that in place and stick with it…so well done for doing the thinking. I guess you have to see this goal/purpose setting as ever shifting. I have no doubt if you make some breakthroughs in your endeavors, you will have to re-evaluate your 3 circles.
Great to read your progress, that’s great! I would love to be where you are in a couple of months. We are the same age, and I love your goal of $15k/mnth. I have been thinking that $16k is about my ideal number. Right now I’m making about $0, but hopefully that will change. 🙂
Can’t wait to read more about your may progress!
This is a good detailed posts John. Great to read some personal experience and how you have done it in niches websites.
Will be reading more to see what else you have for niche websites. Just started a new niche website this weekend for “www.homeworkoutequipment.org” so researching all the best information out there.
Thanks for the share.