Monthly Income, Growth & Traffic Report

This is the 17th 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 December

I really tried my hardest to wind down in December and take as much time away from the computer as possible. Which didn’t really go to plan.

Either way it has being an interesting month to end the year on and after breaking my personal goal last month I’m excited to see what has happened this month!

You have no idea how hung over I am right now.

Content Creation

I published 6 posts throughout December including my first live talk at Boston SEO.

At long last I was able to launch my free SEO software (more details below) which seems to have gone down pretty well!

As 2014 drew closer I published the first part of my monster will change in 2014.

I also published the December best of internet marketing & income report roundup posts.

Blog Features

The blog had a number of features this past month.

I shared some tips on monetisation and was thanked by Eric.

I also gave an interview with BloggingCage.

I was also listed in the LWB Top 100 & Charles Floates best of 2013 content round up.

UK Blog Awards Nominee

I was kindly nominated for the UK Blog Awards which is one of the biggest awards of its type in the UK.

Looking through the other nominees the competition is pretty fierce to say the least!

Spoke At Boston SEO

The Boston SEO meet up has being running for 7 years and they invited me to speak at their December event.

Everything went without a hitch but behind the scenes it was a very different story. I was due to talk at 00:15am local time, but by that point I had already being working for 18 hours that day.

Combine that with the small problem that I hadn’t actually prepared anything & only had a few hours to put it all together in my brain dead state of mind.

As we pushed into my 19th hour of work for the day I took live fire questions from the audience – that was rough. Mostly answered with my head on the desk ^^

No one noticed though so it was all good! Check out the recording right here!

Launched Free Software

I launched my free SEO software at long last!

This was originally created as a private tool for me to save huge amounts of time when replicating competitor backlink profiles.

It takes advantage of one of the oldest tricks in the book and is so simple in nature many people overlook its value.

It took nearly a year to get it to a standard good enough for public release.

When a tool is private you don’t have to worry about installers, system compatibility, ease of use, customisable options, license checks or any of that! It just has to work most of the time!

Oh and then there’s setting up the backend, the website, the graphics, the launch, the videos and everything else.

All in all there was a lot more to it than I first thought. It is great to see people using it creatively though!

Launch Stats

The launch went pretty well although there were a couple of technical hiccups needing an emergency update to the software.

In total there were-

Over 10,000 unique visitors
4,943 downloads/email opt ins

You’ll have to wait for the end of the report to see how sales of the upsell went ;)

Thank you to everyone that helped with the launch and if you would like to give away the software to your audience, sign up here.

I’ll be using all of this experience/data to produce a highly detailed product creation & launch case study for you all. I have some interesting stuff behind the scenes to share!

Going To Affiliate Summit

Affiliate Summit is the biggest conference of its type in the world and I recently won their best affiliate blog award.

Brian Littleton is the CEO of ShareASale.com who is one of the main sponsors of the conference.

He very kindly reached out to me and offered to pay for my flights & tickets to attend! I certainly wasn’t expecting generosity like that so extra thanks go out to Brian for making it happen.

So because of Brian’s kindness I will be attending Affiliate Summit in Vegas next month.

If you are attending and want to hook up please let me know!

I’ll be making an appearance at the ShareASale super heroes vs super villains party, the Affiliate Ball with Cyprus Hill & Affiliate Nation with Warren G.

This is without doubt, the biggest internet marketing party in the world!

Crunching The Numbers

So let’s get our hands dirty and take a look at what my hard work has done for me this month.

Visitor Statistics

Traffic has grown from 31,509 (1,050/day) up to 34,036 (1,097/day) – not a huge increase but I’ll take it!

Most Popular Content

My how to start a blog and make money & SEO in 2014 posts dominate this month.

And the Ecommerce SEO post is still going strong.

Great to see the launch of my SEO tool and YouTube marketing series sneak in as well!

Top Traffic Sources

Google remains the dominant traffic driver again with some nice bursts from a range of social media sources.

Even Charles managed to claw into the top 10 this month! Thanks man!

Search Engine Traffic

Search traffic sat at 26,874 (895 per day) last month with a steady increase to 29,573 (953 per day) this month.

Good to see the site doing well throughout the flurry of Google updates recently! Google is playing nicely.

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.

Last month save 20,015 views which has increased to 29,125 this month!

The main YouTube metric I like to track though is minutes watched which increased to 118,755 from last month’s 107,060.

That means 2.5 people are watching 1 of my videos every second of every day!

Social Shares

The blog has seen a total of 30,667 shares across Facebook, Twitter and Google+ this month compared to 26,847 last month.

Google+ – 6,460 (5,178 last month)
Twitter – 14,227 (12,875 last month)
Facebook – 9,980 (8,794 last month)

My Forum Statistics

There were 745 new users, 63 new topics and 146 new replies on the forum this month.

If you haven’t joined the forum yet, get involved!

I’ll personally answer any internet marketing questions you have!

Users: 4,347 (3,602 last month)
Topics: 904 (841 last month)
Posts: 3,135 (2,989 last month)

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 3,330 new subscribers across various channels which is up from last month’s 1,506.

There are now a total of 19,090 subscribers across all of the different channels.

E-mail – 2,263 (313 last month) / Total: 9,256
Twitter – 196 (210 last month) / Total: 2,413
YouTube – 388 (315 last month) / Total: 2,920
Facebook – 203 (144 last month) / Total: 1,267
Google+ – 464 (300 last month) / Total: 2,705
RSS – -184 (224 last month) / Total: 529

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Forum Promotion Posts

With everything going on this month I haven’t had much time to kick back on forums for some promotion work.

TrafficPlanet – 1 posts (252 visits)
WarriorForum – 0 posts (168 visits)
BlackHatWorld – 0 posts (799 visits)

Income Report

Here are the numbers you really want to see-

Affiliate Earnings

48HoursLogo – $60.00 (case study)
99CentArticles – $21.31
Ahrefs – $194.57 (my Ahrefs review)
AuthorHreview – $91.74 (review)
Aweber – $11.40 (my Aweber review)
Blog Advertising – $634.00 (Advertise)
BlueHost – $130.00 (discount coupon)
BuyProxies – $83.00
BuzzBundle – $1,222.30 (review)
CodeCanyon – $33.60
Gravity Forms – $50.55
GSA Search Engine Ranker – $293.86 (review / discount coupon)
GSA SEO Indexer – $7.00 (case study)
Inspyder Backlink Monitor – $257.79 (best backlink checker case study)
JustHost – $120.00 (start a blog)
Kontent Machine – $1,843.84 (review)
LeadPlayer – $138.10
Licorne AIO – $340.00 (my tutorial)
LinkEmperor – $501.45 (review)
Market Samurai – $82.56 (tutorial)
PrettyLink Pro – $14.80 (discount coupon)
Proxy Hub – $3.10
RankCracker – $6,811.64
Rank WYZ – $6.00
ScrapeBrokers – $244.92
SENuke – $126.30 (tutorial)
SEO Powersuite – $725.42 (see my SEO Powersuite review)
SESlingShot – $50.00 (review)
TheBestSpinner – $246.00 (The Best Spinner review)
Thirsty Affiliates – $32.18 (discount coupon)
Ultimate Demon – $1,683.16 (review / discount coupon)
WordAI – $57.13
WP-Answers – $32.70
WP Engine – $349.50 (review)

Expenses

WPEngine (hosting) – $99.00 (Case Study / WPX Hosting review)

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 take on any consultation work.

Earnings Total

Affiliate Income – $16,499.92
Consultation Income – $00.00
Expenses – $99.00

Grand Total: $16,400.92 / £9,920.70 ($11,407.36 / £6,960.37 last month)

After struggling to break the $10,000 barrier for so long this month has posted a huge 43% increase on last month!

Signing Off

Although I was trying to wind down for the festive period December has certainly being an interesting month.

I have seen nice growth in all areas and even managed to shatter my $15,000 target after taking me over a year to break a $10,000 month.

I have some interesting case studies coming up in the new year along with the rest of my YouTube marketing series.

Thanks for spending 2013 with me!

I would like to personally thank each and every one of you for joining me on this journey.

Monthly Income, Growth & Traffic Report – December 2013