This is the 46th 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 July
July was a tough month for a number of reasons.
First off I moved house which sapped a full week of time and attention from work – on top of that, the internet connection was so unstable that some days I had less than 25% uptime.
It took a week working with the cable company to resolve that and as of the last couple of days I have finally had stable internet access again.
I also struggled for a working fridge / freezer which doesn’t sound like much of a problem, but it meant every time I wanted food I had to go out which takes even more time!
With that said, I was unable to bury my head in the sand and get things moving in the way I want them to be.
Last month I identified that a lot of the blogs key metrics were showing early signs of decay and I expect that to be accelerated this month given internet problems and the July/August summer slump.
So with a lot of things working against me this month, here goes nothing…
Signed Up For Ironman
I have signed up to take part in Ironman 70.3 Costa Rica for some stupid reason.
A 2km swim, 90km bike ride and 21km run in glorious 35-40 degree celsius heat.
The only problem is I don’t have a bike and the closest thing to running shoes I own is a pair of flip flops.
Training so far has entailed eating lots of burgers backed up with no swimming, cycling or running so its going pretty well.
Now that I have solved my internet crisis and fully moved house, it’s time to get a grip or I am going to seriously regret it half way up a mountain 10 months from now.
Analytics Tracking Problem
Somewhere around the 15th of July, I updated my Google Analytics plugin which broke tracking entirely for a few days-
I didn’t realise at first and I even have Google Analytics intelligence alerts setup to monitor for exactly this situation, so double face palm on my part.
That does mean that any of the Analytics based stats in this income report are missing a couple of days data but such is life!
Content Creation
I published a total of 5 posts this month which is 1 more than last month.
First my SEMRush review took a very close look at the tool in my super detailed 15,000 word post! That might in fact be the longest post on the blog to date!
Then we looked at how to create a snapchat marketing strategy step by step from scratch.
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
Despite my Analytics facepalm, traffic actually increased heavily this month from 45,440 (1,515/day) to 54,642 (1,762/day)!
There are 2 reasons behind that increase. The first is the fact I promoted my SEMRush review so heavily with a $2,721.48 spend in paid traffic.
The second is because I have being making some small tweaks across the blog to improve on page SEO which is starting to show some nice fruits – I will have a full write up for you in due course!
Most Popular Content
The most popular post on the blog this month was the SEMRush review!
Top Traffic Sources
Not much has changed in the top traffic sources this month other than how much traffic they sent which was down to an increase in traffic generation spending.
Search Engine Traffic
Search engine traffic increased nicely this month growing from 36,575 (1,219/day) to 39,615 (1,278/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 drop this month from 20,469 views to just 17,969 views this month.
The total minutes watched also took a hit from 83,915 to 77,266 thus month!
Social Shares
This month the total social shares across Facebook and Google+ increased from 53,164 to 55,979.
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 3,498 new subscribers which is huge leap on last months 1,704 new subscribers.
There are now a total of 143,370 subscribers across all of the various channels!
- E-mail – 1,227 (1,106 last month) / Total: 78,125
- Twitter – 748 (274 last month) / Total: 13,275
- YouTube – 726 (188 last month) / Total: 12,159
- Facebook – 716 (96 last month) / Total: 21,339
- Google+ – 9 (16 last month) / Total: 17,882
- RSS – 72 (24 last month) / Total: 590
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Income Report
Here are the numbers you really want to see-
Affiliate Earnings
- 99CentArticles – $17.19
- ActiveCampaign – $1.80
- Ahrefs – $509.17 (my Ahrefs review)
- Aweber – $133.20 (my Aweber review)
- Blog Advertising – $816.41 (Advertise)
- Blue Chip Backlinks – $50.00
- Bluehost – $65.00 (discount coupon)
- BuyProxies – $42.00
- BuzzBundle – $157.71 (review)
- BuzzStream – $5.70
- CheapWindowsVPS – $1.00 (discount coupon)
- CMS Commander – $9.60
- Drip Revolution – $155.70 (discount coupon)
- FCS Networker – $220.18 (discount coupon)
- FreshDrop – $18.08
- GetResponse – $10.96 (review)
- GSA Captcha Breaker – $261.05 (review / discount coupon)
- GSA Search Engine Ranker – $195.24 (review / discount coupon)
- HQ Biz In A Box – $13.80
- Indexification – $3.59 (case study)
- JustHost – $240.00 (start a blog / discount coupon)
- Kontent Machine – $624.45 (review)
- LeadPages – $62.40
- LinkEmperor – $258.79 (review)
- LongTailPro – $1,209.66 (my Long Tail Pro review / discount coupon)
- Magic Submitter – $1.79
- ManageWP – $18.00
- MyThemeShop – $79.10 (review)
- OneHourIndexing – $401.96 (case study)
- PandaBot – $68.25 (case study)
- PowerupHosting – $23.99 (discount coupon)
- PrivateInternetAccess – $78.00
- ProxyHub – $7.22 (discount coupon)
- Rank Tracker – $56.14
- Raven Tools – $0.17 (best backlink checker case study)
- S2Member – $44.50 (case study / discount coupon)
- SEMRush – $27.98 (my SEMRush review)
- SENuke – $44.10 (tutorial)
- SEO Content Machine – $40.51 (discount coupon)
- SEO Dominators Club – $29.98 (discount coupon)
- SEO Powersuite – $128.02 (see my SEO Powersuite review)
- SERocket – $360.90 (tutorial / discount coupon)
- SERP Book – $18.72
- SERPed – $1,438.06 (review)
- Social Locker Pro – $12.96
- SociSynd – $92.54
- Spin Rewriter – $48.50
- SumoMe – $183.00 (case study)
- TheBestSpinner – $358.00 (The Best Spinner review / discount coupon)
- ThirstyAffiliates – $12.60 (discount coupon)
- ThriveThemes – $203.35
- Traffic Planet Hosting (now called WPX Hosting) – $210.00 (Case Study / WPX Hosting review)
- TweetAttacksPro – $26.80 (discount coupon)
- Ultimate Demon – $270.44 (review / discount coupon)
- URLProfiler – $324.33 (my URL Profiler review)
- VideoMakerFX – $120.90 (how to make money on Fiverr case study)
- View2Be – $1.35
- WordAI – $127.34
Expenses
- Traffic Planet Hosting (now called WPX Hosting) – $49.99 (Case Study / WPX Hosting review)
- Gleam – $37.00
- Facebook Advertising – $2,587.46 (Case Study)
- Twitter Advertising – $134.02
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.
This month that income has shown a huge decrease from $9,305.69 last month to $6,417.57 this month which is highly affected by the summer season and I expect it to swing the other way next month.
Earnings Total
- Affiliate Income – $9,942.18
- Consultation Income – $00.00
- Other Income – $6,417.57
- Expenses – $2,808.47
Grand Total: $13,551.28 / £10,267.29 ($19,357.38 / £14,577.60 last month)
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Signing Off
As expected key metrics for the blog showed further signs of decay this month, combined with lower income and higher expenses it has resulted in a big slump.
However a lot of those expenses will bear fruit in August which will see higher income with lower expenses so you have to learn to take the rough with the smooth, business is a long term play.
Moving house caused a lot of more trouble than I anticipaited and I’m glad to have resolved all of the problems that took my time and attention away from work.
I am going to finish up all of my reporting today and then move onto mapping out some aggressive goals for the month ahead – there is a lot to catch up on to say the least!
Thank you to everyone that has helped me reach my goals – I couldn’t do it without you, the reader!
