This is the 47th 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 August
After a crazy month moving house last month, I was happy to settle back into a normal pattern of life this month.
One of the biggest struggles at the moment is training for Ironman, not only does it take up a huge amount of time but it leaves me drained and uninspired.
I’m sure as training continues that effect will lessen and I will have more available energy, but for the here and now – the training & eating is taking its toll.
Plus I am up to 4 poo’s per day now.
Cleaning Up The Blog
I’ve spent most of this month on blog maintenance fixing things like broken links, missing alt tags, duplicate meta data and all that fun stuff.
The last time I did a complete audit like this was around 14 months ago and it’s amazing just how messy things can get without you noticing.
I used DeepCrawl for this which is without doubt the most comprehensive crawler on the market.
Honestly it was amazing what kind of things it dug up – everything from missing titles to duplicate H1 tags but it also revealed a huge amount of duplicate content coming from the forums.
This led me down the path of adding noindex tags to 6,508 pages on the blog & submitting them all to the URL removes tool in Google Search Console.
As you can see above, there is some huge movement in the number of pages Google are now indexing on the blog and I’m expecting that to drop even further.
This should also have an impact on organic search traffic, whether that will be positive or negative remains to be seen but early signs are looking good-
Of course this is only a top level view of things and the dust needs to settle for another few weeks yet.
Naturally I will follow up with a dedicated post that drills down into more detail but basically I just ran an audit with DeepCrawl and fixed everything it told me to fix.
You could also do the same with Screaming Frog BUT that doesn’t cover all of your bases, for example it won’t flag up duplicate content like DeepCrawl does. So if you are going to do it, do it right.
New Featured Images
If you have spent any time on this blog you have probably noticed that I am a really sucky graphics designers.
So in an effort to improve the visual appeal of the blog I had a few different featured image templates mocked up for you guys to vote on.
Thank you to all 862 people that took the time to vote. Your opinion is critical to my decision making!
From all of your votes there is one image in particular that seems to have caught your attention the most-
The problem is that you guys are so awesome, that you all started sending me other concepts & ideas to choose from.
And if you know anything about marketing, then you’ll know that the paradox of choice makes you anxious and less likely to take action.
Right now I am slap bang in the middle of that feeling, I mean look at some of these other awesome concepts I have received since sending out the survey-
So now I really don’t know what to and I’m wondering if I actually need to go a step further with a full branding design review.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place – any ideas?
Content Creation
I published a total of 6 posts this month which is 1 more than last month.
First we looked at 7 ways to get traffic to your blog today – if you just implement 1 of those strategies you will see an increase in traffic.
Then we look at my simple 2 step SEO process that delivers crazy results – in fact I was re-applying step 1 to this blog this month with my DeepCrawl fixes earlier in the post.
Next we looked at how to sell your Amazon affiliate website for $190,000. The post tells the story of the site and how it was eventually sold for a huge lump sum.
Other than those we just had the regular income report roundup feature and this months edition of the very best of internet marketing.
Crunching The Numbers
So let’s get our hands dirty and take a look at what my lack of attention to the blog has done to the important metrics.
Visitor Statistics
Last month traffic increased to 54,642 (1,762/day) which has increased further this month to 58,775 (1,896/day)
Most Popular Content
The most popular post on the blog this month was the classic post that’s shows you how to make money on Fiverr.
That was very closely followed by the simple 2 step SEO process & how to create a profitable membership site guides.
Top Traffic Sources
Not much has changed in the top traffic sources this month other than how much traffic they sent. There was a drop off from Facebook as I heavily reduced ad costs this month.
Search Engine Traffic
Search engine traffic increased nicely this month growing from 39,615 (1,278/day) to 47,541 (1,533/day).
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 showed a small drop this month from 17,969 views to 16,799 views this month.
However the total minutes watched metric increase from 77,266 to 78,154!
Social Shares
My social analytics plugin seems to have broken at some point in the past month so I am seeking an alternative right now
Subscribers
The most important metric on the entire blog – earning a subscription from someone is the ultimate form of commitment and conversion.
This month brought 1,755 new subscribers which is huge drop from last months 3,498. This is because of the giveaway I ran last month which inflated the numbers.
There are now a total of 145,125 subscribers across all of the various channels!
- E-mail – 1,255 (1,227 last month) / Total: 79,380
- Twitter – 322 (748 last month) / Total: 13,597
- YouTube – 164 (726 last month) / Total: 12,323
- Facebook – 169 (716 last month) / Total: 21,508
- Google+ – -5 (9 last month) / Total: 17,877
- RSS – -150 (72 last month) / Total: 440
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Income Report
Here are the numbers you really want to see-
Affiliate Earnings
- 48HoursLogo – $10.00 (case study)
- 99CentArticles – $37.31
- ActiveCampaign – $1.80
- Ahrefs – $357.34 (my Ahrefs review)
- Aweber – $150.60 (my Aweber review)
- Blog Advertising – $907.36 (Advertise)
- Blue Chip Backlinks – $100.00
- Bluehost – $840.00 (discount coupon)
- BuyProxies – $22.50
- BuzzBundle – $65.67 (review)
- CheapWindowsVPS – $0.85 (discount coupon)
- CMS Commander – $9.61
- Drip Revolution – $156.47 (discount coupon)
- FCS Networker – $203.63 (discount coupon)
- FreshDrop – $18.08
- GetResponse – $157.10 (review)
- Gleam – $25.00
- GSA Captcha Breaker – $544.96 (review / discount coupon)
- GSA Search Engine Ranker – $284.38 (review / discount coupon)
- GSA SEO Indexer – $70.80 (case study)
- Hostgator – $200.00
- HQ Biz In A Box – $21.60
- JustHost – $240.00 (start a blog / discount coupon)
- Kontent Machine – $394.10 (review)
- LeadPages – $62.40
- LinkEmperor – $263.69 (review)
- LongTailPro – $1,228.30 (my Long Tail Pro review / discount coupon)
- MyThemeShop – $144.90 (review)
- MTTB – $44.10
- OneHourIndexing – $424.12 (case study)
- OptinMonster – $3.42 (my Optinmonster review)
- PandaBot – $101.40 (case study)
- PowerupHosting – $27.74 (discount coupon)
- PrivateInternetAccess – $90.00
- ProxyHub – $4.73 (discount coupon)
- Rank Tracker – $00.04
- RankWYZ – $6.60
- Raven Tools – $0.27 (best backlink checker case study)
- SEMRush – $765.90 (my SEMRush review)
- SENuke – $44.10 (tutorial)
- SEO Content Machine – $51.38 (discount coupon)
- SEO Dominators Club – $14.99 (discount coupon)
- SEO Powersuite – $191.74 (see my SEO Powersuite review)
- SERocket – $363.60 (tutorial / discount coupon)
- SERP Book – $18.72
- SERPed – $1,352.90 (review)
- Social Locker Pro – $13.18
- SociSynd – $18.04
- StableHost – $25.00
- TheBestSpinner – $341.50 (The Best Spinner review / discount coupon)
- ThirstyAffiliates – $25.05 (discount coupon)
- Traffic Planet Hosting (now called WPX Hosting) – $420.00 (Case Study / WPX Hosting review)
- TweetAttacksPro – $50.80 (discount coupon)
- Ultimate Demon – $123.58 (review / discount coupon)
- URLProfiler – $157.94 (my URL Profiler review)
- VideoMakerFX – $67.20 (how to make money on Fiverr case study)
- WordAI – $59.95
Expenses
- Traffic Planet Hosting (now called WPX Hosting) – $49.99 (Case Study / WPX Hosting review)
- DeepCrawl – $49.00
- Survey Monkey – $34.55
- Facebook Advertising – $774.82 (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.
I didn’t take on any consultation work this month which resulted in a juicy zero dollars!
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 showed a huge drop off during the summer season but that has recovered from $6,417.57 last month to a comfortable $11,267.91 this month around as predicted!
Earnings Total
- Affiliate Income – $11,326.54
- Consultation Income – $00.00
- Other Income – $11,267.91
- Expenses – $908.36
Grand Total: $21,686.09 / £16,336.65 ($13,551.28 / £10,267.29 last month)
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Signing Off
The blog was showing huge signs of decay for a range of metrics last month so it’s nice to see things swing back the other direction.
Now that Summer is officially over I am expecting to see an upward swing in all metrics over the coming couples of months before we hit December.
I planted a lot of seeds this month, not just from the site audit perspective but I’ve also got some killer content prepared and ready to launch on Monday or Tuesday next week.
However, I do have a friend arriving here in a couple of weeks for a vacation which is guaranteed to keep me distracted so I may not achieve everything I want to.
Either way last month the blog felt like a sinking ship in terms of performance and just how much work I had to catch up on and now we are sailing on smooth seas again.
So with that said, I am going to hit publish on this post then plan all of my goals and work for the month ahead!
Thank you to everyone that has helped me reach my goals – I couldn’t do it without you, the reader!
