This is the 62nd income report as part of the zero backlink experiment.
This will also be the final income report I ever publish on the blog
What I Have Done In December
Last month I started planning and preparing for 2018 and December marked the start of executing that.
That includes making changes to the look and feel of the blog and experimenting with some new content formats.
But I’ll also be killing income reports moving forward…
Why I Am Terminating Income Reports
When I first started the blog, it was nothing but an SEO experiment which got out of control.
The income reports were there to help track the progress of that experiment and to help other people see behind the scenes of what is actually going on.
Over the years I have recieved thousands of emails thanking me for sharing my knowledge in these reports.
I have chronicled the entire journey of the blog from zero to well over a million dollars and I have thoroughly enjoyed doing it.
But at this point, the income reports no longer serve their purpose.
On top of that they take a huge amount of resources to put together every month and have a very short life span when I look at the performance of all income reports historically.
All of that time and resource could be invested in producing a much higher level of content across the board and that is the direction I have decided to go.
So while this will be the last income report I publish on the blog, it opens the doors for some incredible things in 2018.
Thank you to every body that has joined me on the journey and offered support over the past years, it’s been wild to say the last.
But now – it’s time to take it to the next level. I owe it to you all.
Key Focuses For 2018
So what is the “next level” you ask?
Well that is going to come in a variety of different flavors-
Easier To Digest Content
One of the biggest problems with the blog is content is very fractioned and theres no easy way to go from SEO beginner to SEO pro in any logical order.
I want to consolidate and organise that experience so you can get the answers you need no matter what stage of the SEO journey your at.
To do that I need to create a structure set of pages that help connect the dots in a way that makes sense.
That is going to take around 140,000 words of new content along with all of the other content enhancers like videos, graphics and downloads.
Lights, Camera, Action!
Last month I told you that I upgrade my computer to an Intel Core i9 7920x, with 128GB RAM and a Nvidia GTX 1080Ti.
I also bought a new camera body, lenses, tripod, teleprompter, bags, cases and all the accessories you can think of.
All of that is to help produce high quality video throughout 2018.
Right now I am still waiting for some essential parts of kit to arrive – but I had a quick play with my how to start a blog video last month.
Develop The Team
Better quality content is going to demand more resources. So I am going to start developing the team as a primary focus.
I have already started doing that by handing graphic design over to Kapa99 which you may have seen with the new featured images across the blog.
That is also going to grow to include more key people so I can accelerate the rate that I deliver high end content to you.
I’m will also invest in a community manager that is dedicated to answering all of your SEO questions and nothing else – this person is proving hard to find.
Blow Your Mind
And most importantly, my mission is to blow your mind with the user experience here end to end which is very fractioned at the moment.
By bringing it all together that will help to accelerate your success.
Because who knows?
Maybe you’ll become one of the many readers that have seen incredible results from the tutorials here.
From not knowing anything to becoming a major influencer
I honestly did not know much about SEO. I thought guys in fiverr can rank you number 1 but I soon learned through experience not to do so. My wife and I started a waist training company and I was in charge of the business side of things. I spent multiple days reading articles, most of which being Matt's articles and putting the knowledge to work. In about 4 months the company started making thousands per month. January being the sixth month was the most successful and we are now getting closer and closer to making 5 figures a month. Thanks Matt.
Royal Lioness
I was able to double organic traffic
Hi Matt, Your online tutorials are quite easy to follow and replicate. I was able to double the organic traffic in many of my clients’ websites relatively easy in very short time. Keep up the good work.
Digital Bang
Matthew helped us make hundreds of thousands of dollars
Matthew Woodward's advice and insight is always spot on. My business has literally made hundreds of thousands of dollars (and our clients have as well!) thanks to his advice. Our company has greatly benefited from his blog and we look forward to each post. Keep up the great work!
Social Firestarter
Your tutorials helped me to rank a number of sites
Matt, I love your down to earth approach, your actionable content and your enthusiasm. Your tutorials have helped me to rank a number of niche based sites... Great job!
Snoop Marketing
I reach 50k uniques a month following your advice, Matt !!
There have been very few people in the SEO industry whose influence on me did so much to change my approach to SEO, affiliate marketing and creating great content. One of those special people is Matthew Woodward. His tutorials are easy to follow and replicate. I was able to get workouttrends.com from zero to 50,000 uniques per month within 7 months of launching after following his advice. Thank you for the blog. I learned a lot from him over the years.
Workout Trends
Those stories are the only success metric that matters in the end because your success, is my success.
Took A Break
I also spent the last couple of weeks taking a break in Nicaragua visiting just about every place you can think of border to border.
It was great to get lost in a totally different world and fully rely on Spanish for the duration.
It’s taking a while to “change my chip” back to the real world as I am putting the final plan of attack together – but there’s no rush.
Content Creation
Like last month I only published 2 posts this month, including the income report.
But one of those posts was me getting my feet wet with 4k video while I wait for the rest of the equipment to arrive.
So far the all new how to start a blog tutorial has done pretty well with traffic and I am using this as a test base to decide on future change to the blog.
Crunching The Numbers
So let’s get our hands dirty and see how the blog has actually performed this month.
Visitor Statistics
Traffic increased from 55,657 (1,855/day) to 60558 (1,953) per day which is pretty good for the Christmas period in this niche.
That also brings traffic above my desired 60k per month marker.
Most Popular Content
The all new start a blog tutorial stole the show this month by a significant margin.
As usual the how to make money on Fiverr tutorial stayed strong and the Successful vs Unsuccessful people post saw a big jump.
Top Traffic Sources
One of the biggest changes in traffic this month comes from Pinterest.
This is because I had the Kapa99 team design some custom images for this tutorial that are doing really well on Pinterest.
Other than that not much has changed in terms of the top traffic sources which are made up from organic search and social.
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 increased to 45,662 (1,522/day). which has slumped a little this month to 41,414 (1,336/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 jumped from 12,344 to 29,524 this month which is largerly down to the release of my new video.
Total minutes watched jumped from 52,900 to 110,272 respectively.
Social Shares
At this time I can only track social shares for Facebook. It seems the plugin I am using isn’t working properly at the moment.
- Facebook – 69,675 (66,141 last month)
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 149,631 subscribers across all of the various channels compared to last months 131,550!
- E-mail – 1,122 (1,965 last month) / Total: 66,675
- Twitter – 128 (120 last month) / Total: 17,261
- YouTube – 125 (115 last month) / Total: 15,380
- Facebook – 308 (482 last month) / Total: 32,021
- Google+ – 5 (41 last month) / Total: 17,823
- RSS – -52 (-24 last month) / Total: 471
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Income Report
Here are the numbers you really want to see-
Affiliate Earnings
- A2Hosting – $85.00 (my A2 Hosting review)
- ActiveCampaign – $9.20
- Ahrefs – $273.29 (my Ahrefs review / Ahrefs vs Semrush)
- Aweber – $133.70 (my Aweber review)
- Blog Advertising – $461.84 (Advertise)
- Blue Chip Backlinks – $200.00
- Bluehost – $65.00 (free domain / Siteground vs Bluehost)
- Brightspark – $8.40
- BuyProxies – $22.50
- BuzzBundle – $269.10
- CMS Commander – $38.70
- ConvertKit – $8.70
- Domain Hunter Gatherer – $979.00 (expired domains tutorial & Domain Hunter Gatherer review)
- Drip – $59.10
- Drip Revolution – $191.22 (discount coupon)
- EasyBlogNetworks – $145.57
- EasyExpiredDomains – $15.12
- FCS Networker – $102.64
- FreshDrop – $17.70
- GetResponse – $21.12 (review)
- GSA Captcha Breaker – $245.05 (review / discount coupon)
- GSA Search Engine Ranker – $378.04 (review / discount coupon)
- Hostgator – $100.00
- HPBacklinks – $7.20
- iPage – $1,920.00
- IPVanish – $128.52 (my IPVanish review)
- JustHost – $160.00
- KDPRocket – $140.50
- Kinsta – $80.00
- Kontent Machine – $290.05 (review)
- LinkEmperor – $90.82
- Loganix – $0.70 (my link building services post)
- LongTailPro – $471.50 (my Long Tail Pro review / discount coupon)
- MintVine – $19.27
- MyThemeShop – $132.30
- NinjaOutreach – $666.68
- OneHourIndexing – $256.38 (case study)
- PandaBot – $143.70 (case study)
- PrivateInternetAccess – $18.00
- PrizeRebel – $116.18
- ProductLaunchFormula – $2,952.80
- ProxyHub – $1.46
- RankTracker – $56.14
- Raven Tools – $10.14 (best backlink checker case study)
- SEMRush – $1,216.84 (my SEMRush review)
- SEO Content Machine – $34.88
- SEO Powersuite – $798.30 (see my SEO Powersuite review)
- SEO Clerks – $14.50
- SEO eStore – $0.30
- SEO Monitor – $303.11
- SERanking – $65.87
- SERP Book – $11.41
- SERPed – $1,436.02 (review)
- SociSynd – $0.32
- SumoMe – $7.92
- SwagBucks – $5.00
- TBSolutions – $5.00
- TheBestSpinner – $119.26 (The Best Spinner review)
- TrafficPlanetHosting – $200.00
- TweetAttacksPro – $76.40 (discount coupon)
- URLProfiler – $39.21 (my URL Profiler review)
- Website Auditor – $134.89
- Whitespark – $281.40
- WordAI – $29.97
- WPMatic – $189.60
- WPProfitBuilder – $13.50
Expenses
- Kinsta Hosting – $100.00 (See my Kinsta review)
- Drip – $400.50
- Kapa99 – $399.00
- Facebook Advertising – $1,812.07 (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 dropped to $12,212.79 but has dropped off further to $12,019.69 this month.
Earnings Total
- Affiliate Income – $16,410.16
- Consultation Income – $00.00
- Other Income – $12,019.69
- Expenses – $2,711.57
Grand Total: $25,718.28 / £19,035.89 ($28,340.31 / £21,038.71 last month)
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Signing Off
Well as they say, all good things must come to an end.
And this officially marks the end of income reports for the blog from $0 to over 7 figures.
But don’t worry:
This is all to set the stage for something much bigger in 2018.
So while I might not be sharing income reports with you, I will continue to show you how to grow your business.
Thank you again to everyone that has supported the blog over the years – you guys are amazing!
84 Responses
Matt I have found so much inspiration here. “From zero to well over a million dollars”, what could be more uplifting? You have obviously put in a lot of thought and work in your blog and it has paid off. I am learning so much here and look forward to your new ventures. Thank you for sharing your journey.
Thank you, Sharon! I’m glad to hear that!
Keep learning, keep the hard work up and you’ll see great results!
You are a great inspiration to bloggers. I loved how open an honest you were with your income reports.
No problem Macky :)
No problem Macky :)
Great post. keep it up.
Thanks
Interesting stats :) May you earn more next year! You are one of the reason that tells me to never give up :)
Thanks very much. Never give up, work hard and work smart.
Amazing Income Figures. Now I’ve to start blogging
It’s your turn now :)
Amazing post…
Cheers Tom
It’s been great going through your reports, Matt. I’m sure every other reader understands your decision to move onto more practical things.
Good luck and keep it up!
Best,
Lidiya
No worries Lidiya, I hope they have helped you out somewhat!
Thanks for this information it’s very helpful for me.
Glad to be of help
No problem Amit
First time on this website – I really like this article as it is hard to come across transparency on the internet, so thank you for that!
Does make me think if it was more useful to go into affiliation (such as reviews) rather than create a content mill, with I have done with a poetry analysis website….
Regardless, great post, really enjoyed reading this! Will definately keep up to date!
Interesting thoughts William, glad you enjoyed the read
This is really inspirational. Thank you for being so transparent with us!
It is the only way to be. Thanks Victor
hey mathew.. congrats again for this amazing income… you are an inspiration for blogger like me..
kind words, thanks a lot
Good luck on your new journey Matthew. Your new blog design and collaboration with Kappa99 looks awesome. Wish you success.
Thanks Shafi
Hey Matt, you really inspired me !! I am starting my own journey in: http://www.allanandres.com another thing, you should come to Costa Rica, next to nicaragua.
Right now I am in spain, hope we can get a coffee one day to learn from you.
Thanks
Whats so good in Costa Rica?
I really like reading your monthly reports. they give me scope and hope not to retire from blogging market. thank you
Thanks very much
A bit bittersweet… It’s good to see what can be done. But I’ve enjoyed your content (best pbn class ever) so I’m interested to see what kind of cool new stuff you’ll be doing.
Thank you for all of the awesome SEO content for us ‘normies’ lol.
Hi Earl, you’re welcome and thanks :)
Hello Matthew,
As a new subscriber about a month now I can say I’m very glad I found you. Actually found our about you from Stuart at Niche hacks.
You really give a lot of value especially for a newbie like me. I looked forward to learning from you for a long time to come.
Thanks Joe, glad to have you on board
Hey Matt my blog is just new and I will love that one day I will have your results.great work
I hope so too, thanks
This blog has helped me out so much with ranking websites, especially when you talked about Web 2.0s, that was a game changer for me. It’s sad seeing the income reports going away but I’m glad you did them. I can’t wait for your latest blog posts :).
Pleased you got some good tips out of them
Matthew your income report really motivates me, it gives me hope to continue working when I feel leaving it and start something else.
Happy to inspire!
Hi matt, do u have son?
No
Sad to see the income reports go but I’m sure you will produce other great content in the future. I hope you won’t put to much focus on video as I prefer reading… but I guess I’m pretty much the only one nowadays that thinks this way xD
I hate watching video as well don’t worry :)
awww that sucks it’s the last one, thanks for taking the time to share it with us, appreciate it!
No problem Brad!
Great job here man! Income reports take a ton of time, energy and resources and you’re taking a wise decision into using that time to create even better, digest-able content.
Good luck with your new beginning.
Thanks,
Simon.
Thanks Simon much appreciated!
Two things ive learnt from you..
1. Dedication, and
2. Consistency..
Ill make sure i always follow your example and apply it in every aspect of my life…
Thanks boss!
Thats the “secret” to success!
Looking forward to a greater Matthewwoodward.co.uk this year. Tweeted at you, no response :)
Thanks, probably should install Twitter haha
Good luck.
Are you still using aweber or drip now?
Drip!
Thanks Matthew, yes i agree as a one band use your time wisely. But thank you for sharing……Terence Pera
Thanks Terence!
Congratulations on getting the site to where it is today. I’ve loved spending time with you on this fantastic journey.
Onwards and upwards!
Thanks Alexis!
Thanks Matt for sharing your journey these past years. Yes, I’ll miss the income reports but I am looking forward to the new changes and seeing where you take your business/blog next. Best wishes for this new year.
You too Stewart!
:) Thanks for sharing the journey of 0 to 7 figure blog. Wish you all the best for 2018 and keep inspiring us.
Thanks Juned, all the best!
While I really loved reading income reports, I respect your decision of discontinuing them.
Looking forwad to your 2018 content :)
Thanks Vaibhav
I’ve subscribed you for just that.
Income reports? – you might ask.
No, this very thorough kind of content.
Keep crushing it!
(By the way, if you need help finding a guy for the position of community manager, drop me an email – wink, wink – hint, hint)
Thanks I will keep you in mind :)
Your income reports inspire me a lot, Mathew. It’s sad this will be the last but I’m even more excited about the new direction you’re heading. Thanks for giving me something to look up to.
Good luck on the journey ahead.
Thanks for joining me Samuel!
Your reports motivate me more than “Think and grow rich” and other books on achieving success.
Hah, you’re using a teleprompter. I have it as well, but even though English is not my first language, I feel very uncomfortable to read a script, so I decided to make videos without it.
You’re a great man, Matthew!
Well I only just got it so I will probably fuck it up haha
Good luck for your new journey
Thanks Amit!
Thanks for all your guidance and motivation Mr.Matthew Woodward. Best wishes for your future projects and have a great year!
Much appreciated Sasi!
Matt.
I now got the answer to the question I asked in one of your earlier posts where you mentioned about no longer posting income reports.
I’m really excited to see what’s in the store in 2018.
All the best.
No problem, thanks Umair :)
Wow! I am so inspired matt!
Now back that up with hard work!
All good things must come to an end. Thanks for sharing so much over the years. Looking forward to what you write about in 2018
Thanks Tom :)
Owo awsome planing. It’s really great inspiration for us. Thak you so much :-)
No worrys thanks for coming!
Good luck with your new journey :D
Thank you Sue