This is the 55th income report as part of the zero backlink experiment.
Every month I will publish a post like this one that shows you how this blog is progressing and everything I have done across the month to get it there.
These reports will help me track my own progress while teaching you what to do and more importantly what not to do.
What I Have Done In April
With 2 months until my first ever Ironman triathlon (and first ever anything like that) I have really stepped up training 2 discipline per day.
That is having a huge impact on my overall energy so I’m spending more time refining everything from nutrition to technique.
At the moment the data says I am going to die but with 2 more months of hard training anything is possible!
Content Creation
With my Ironman prepeartion taking my energies, content was limited to 4 posts this month including last months income report.
We started out with an update to my Wikipedia link building tutorial that adds a great twist.
Then we looked at how to use Google Alerts to generate traffic, build links and spy on your competitors.
And let’s not forget these 10 Google Analyitcs SEO hacks that you cannot afford to miss.
Crunching The Numbers
So let’s get our hands dirty and see how the blog has actually performed this month.
Visitor Statistics
Last month traffic increased to 60,453 (1,950/day) but this has dropped to 56,603 (1,886/day).
Unfortunately that means I dropped below my comfort level of 60,000 visitors per month so it’s time to up my game next month to recover that.
Most Popular Content
The Wikipedia link building guide stole that show this month.
That was closely followed by the ever popular how to make money on Fiverr guide.
We also saw the Web 2.0 PBN tutorial & expired domains tutorial hold positions.
Top Traffic Sources
Not much has changed in traffic sources with a good mix of traffic coming from Google organic and social sources.
Search Engine Traffic
Last month search traffic dropped to 45,175 (1,457/day) which has dropped off slightly more to 40,399 (1,346/day) this month.
YouTube Views
I lost all of my historical YouTube views because of changes I made to the branding – so I keep track of them separately.
YouTube views decreased from 19,146 to 16,466 this month.
That also had an impact on total minutes watched which decrease from 93,165 to 79,899 respectively.
Social Shares
This month the total social shares across Facebook and Google+ increased from 77,484 to 78,229.
Subscribers
The most important metric on the entire blog – earning a subscription from someone is the ultimate form of commitment and conversion.
There are now a total of 117,187 subscribers across all of the various channels compared to last months 116,158!
- E-mail – 517 (-42,918 last month) / Total: 45,588
- Twitter – 195 (418 last month) / Total: 15,681
- YouTube – 221 (439 last month) / Total: 14,063
- Facebook – 230 (299 last month) / Total: 23,402
- Google+ – -1 (-20 last month) / Total: 17,882
- RSS – -133 (62 last month) / Total: 571
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Income Report
Here are the numbers you really want to see-
Affiliate Earnings
- ActiveCampaign – $2.60
- Ahrefs – $298.68 (my Ahrefs review)
- Aweber – $152.60 (my Aweber review)
- Blog Advertising – $540.78 (Advertise)
- Blue Chip Backlinks – $100.00
- Bluehost – $65.00 (discount coupon)
- BrightSpark – $15.60
- BuyProxies – $17.00
- CashCrate – $14.32
- CheapWindowsVPS – $7.50
- CMS Commander – $9.60
- ConvertKit – $34.80
- Domain Hunter Gatherer – $442.37 (expired domains tutorial & Domain Hunter Gatherer review)
- Drip – $3.00
- Drip Revolution – $274.88 (discount coupon)
- FCS Networker – $269.99 (discount coupon)
- FreshDrop – $8.98
- GetResponse – $16.17 (review)
- GSA Captcha Breaker – $336.44 (review / discount coupon)
- GSA Search Engine Ranker – $379.48 (review / discount coupon)
- IPVanish – $239.64 (my IPVanish review)
- JustHost – $240.00 (start a blog / discount coupon)
- Kontent Machine – $296.00 (review)
- LeadPages – $40.20
- LinkEmperor – $190.65
- LongTailPro – $907.16 (my Long Tail Pro review / discount coupon)
- MintVine – $6.13
- MyThemeShop – $77.70
- OneHourIndexing – $324.20 (case study)
- PandaBot – $150.90 (case study)
- PowerupHosting – $20.57 (discount coupon)
- PrivateInternetAccess – $28.00
- PrizeRebel – $3.26
- Product Launch Formula – $158.80
- ProxyHub – $1.70 (discount coupon)
- Raven Tools – $49.94 (best backlink checker case study)
- S2Member – $35.60
- SEMRush – $752.20 (my SEMRush review)
- SENuke – $44.10 (tutorial)
- SEO Clerks – $6.50
- SEO Content Machine – $44.63 (discount coupon)
- SEO Powersuite – $49.66 (see my SEO Powersuite review)
- SEO Monitor – $81.50
- SERocket – $183.30 (tutorial / discount coupon)
- SERP Book – $7.01
- SERPed – $2,644.32 (review)
- SiteGround – $50.00
- SwagBucks – $0.33
- TheBestSpinner – $126.00 (The Best Spinner review / discount coupon)
- Themify – $16.59
- ThirstyAffiliates – $12.55 (discount coupon)
- Thrive Themes – $57.00
- TrafficPlanetHosting – $430.00
- TweetAttacksPro – $61.64 (discount coupon)
- Ultimate Demon – $23.50 (review / discount coupon)
- URLProfiler – $82.77 (my URL Profiler review)
- VideoMakerFX – $60.50 (how to make money on Fiverr case study)
- WordAI – $59.94
Expenses
- Kinsta Hosting – $100.00 (See my Kinsta review)
- Drip – $295.50
- Facebook Advertising – $1,939.63 (Case Study)
Consultation Earnings
I separate out my SEO consultant earnings from the affiliate earnings. The blog drives affiliate sales directly and whilst it does generate SEO consultation leads these are separate projects in their own right.
This month I didn’t taken on any consultation work so made a grand total of nothing!
Other Income
I’m working on another project right now that is part of the blog but not something I’m ready to talk about publicly yet or maybe ever.
I will declare the income here though as it wouldn’t be possible without the blog and ‘technically’ it is affiliate income.
Last month this was $11,507.85 which increased to $19,135.45 this month.
Earnings Total
- Affiliate Income – $10,571.36
- Consultation Income – $00.00
- Other Income – $19,135.45
- Expenses – $2,335.13
Grand Total: $27,371.68 / £21,207.58 ($21,992.83 / £17,629.45 last month)
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Signing Off
Overall a lot of the statistics have been down, from traffic to new subscribers and more.
Over the next month I am purely going to focus on building that traffic back up to the 60,000 mark.
Juggling Ironman training and work is a huge challenge at the moment but I think things will get easier once a rhythm is established.
Until then, I’ve got to grind it out!
Thank you to everyone that has helped me reach my goals – I couldn’t do it without you, the reader!
