Monthly Income, Growth & Traffic Report – November 2016

This is the 50th 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 November

November was a crazy month for a lot of reasons.

Most importantly of which was Hurricane Otto which caused complete destruction across the country.

Entire roads were swept away, houses completely disappeared and mass flooding.

Luckily we were not affected too much and only lost power/water for 24 hours, but it was an eye opening experience that gives a lot of perspective.

Secondly it was Black Friday and I’m sure some of you got sick of my promotions, but it was the best Black Friday ever as I rounded up over 100 deals in total.

Speaking At Affiliate World Bangkok

Tomorrow I am jumping on 3 flights for a total of 28 hours to speak at the Affiliate World conference in Bangkok.

I have put together an all new presentation and will be revealing my secrets to over 3,000 people!

There are lots of great speakers in attendance including Neil Patel, Charles Ngo & many more.

While I hate the traveling bit of traveling, it will be a blast!

After the conference is done I am going to have a few days to myself to explore so if you are in Bangkok, let me know in the comments!

Bounce Rate Experiment

I launched a new experiment on a handful of pages to try and reduce bounce rates or improve time on site.

All I have done is optimise ‘above the fold’ content, either by re-writings intros or improving text formatting.

So far I have mixed results but some pages are showing great improvements improving average time on page from 07:55 to 11:31.

However some of the pages have seen pretty big drops, so the jury is still out!

Featured Snippet Experiments

I’m sure you’ve all seen the new featured snippets in some Google search results-

Essentially if you rank in the top 10 results for a keyword (better if your top 5), you stand a chance of being selected for the featured snippet.

That means you can leap frog your competition to position zero and enjoy a high CTR from the SERPS and a ton of traffic.

So I found a list of 26 keywords that I currently rank in the top 10 for that have a featured snippet box that I do not control.

Then I looked at how the current website in the featured snippet box is formatted and applied it to my own page(s) in an attempt to steal the featured snippet.

I only deployed the experiment a few days ago so I will keep you updated.

Million Dollar Blogger

I didn’t realise it at the time, but the total income for the blog passed the million dollar mark last month.

In total the blog has made $1,007,235 profit between August 2012 and October 2016!

Now I know you might be wondering why that isn’t reflected on the income reports summary page and there are 2 reasons for that-

1. I have never included my income from the product launch and although in my product launch formula case study I reported it made $134,171 in 6 days – I didn’t include how much it has made since those initial 6 days
2. When I compare my raw data with the income report summary page there are some typos that I need to correct

I am going to fix all of those typos when I get back from Affiliate World which accounts for about $1,500.

But rest assured, the blog has now crossed the million dollar mark when you take the sales of my product launch into account.

But It’s Not About The Money!

Let me be clear, the success of this blog has nothing to do with money.

It is purely down to the success of you, the reader.

Because without your success, I cannot achieve success!

So I would like to thank each and every one of you for your continued hard work.

It really is something special to see new testimonials like the below come in every single day of the week without fail-

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.

Brian Nguah
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.

George Papatheodorou
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!

Andrew Stickel
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!

John Taylor
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.

Anant Mendiratta
Workout Trends

People all over the world are changing their lives for the better!

I’m not actually capable of putting the feels that creates into words.

But what ever super mega wow wow incredible times a million is, it feels something like that.

Focus On Helping People

I can’t stress enough how important it is to just forget about the money and focus on helping people.

I get emails everyday from people asking for help that are purely focused on making money like this one-

Honestly it’s crazy, most people are just interested in getting as rich as possible as quick as possible and these are the people that never ‘make it‘.

Very rarely does someone email me and say “I want to build the best site on the internet to help people with ______”

So please please please listen when I tell you this:

If you want to succeed online, you MUST do everything in your power to help people solve their problems.

It is often grueling hard work with little reward for a long time to do that, but so is getting up every day to go to that job you hate that helps no one.

Just focus on building something that helps people.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Hates Gonna Hate

Now despite all of that I know that the 7 figure announcement is going to bring out the haters.

It always does when you talk about income, especially if you celebrate it (and is why I will stop publishing income reports) but-

So for now, I am just going to enjoy the newly earned title of 7 figure blogger!

FYI – When the blog crosses 1 million dollars without the product launch numbers included, I plan to stop publishing income reports which I anticipate to happen in the next 6 months.

And again please let me say-

Thank you to each and every one of my readers, I wouldn’t be here without you!

Content Creation

I only published 6 new blog posts this month compared to the 4 I published last month.

We kicked off with the product launch formula I used to make $134,17.

That was shortly followed by my personal product launch checklist to compliment the post above.

I rounded up all of the best tutorials to help you become a blogger (or become a better blogger).

I also showed you the easiest way to start making money online with the best survey sites.

I also published my income report along with the regular income report roundup feature.

Crunching The Numbers

So let’s get our hands dirty and see what all of those changes to the blog has done to the important metrics.

Visitor Statistics

Last month traffic increased to 62,481 (2,015/day) which has grown gently to 63,075 (2,102/day) this month.

That keeps me above my goal of 60,000 visitors per month which I’ll look to grow further next year.

Most Popular Content

My 6 figure product launch formula case study stole the show this month by far.

That was followed by my survey sites tutorial which seems to be holding peoples attention.

Top Traffic Sources

The top traffic sources have remained pretty much the same as last month.

However you can see that Reddit and Lifehacker have popped into the top 10 and upon further investigation this is fake referral traffic in disguise!

Search Engine Traffic

Search traffic has grown steadily the past few months but hit a small rut this month.

Last month saw 54,204 (1,749/day) visitors from Google which has dropped to 51,524 (1,717/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 dropped from 20,279 to 18,066 this month as I didn’t publish any new videos.

That also had an impact on total minutes watched which dropped from 92,759 to 83,776 respectively.

Social Shares

This month the total social shares across Facebook and Google+ increased from 67,809 to 69,723.

• Google+ – 25,139 (24,830 last month)
• Facebook – 44,584 (42,979 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 1,756 new subscribers which is steady drop from last months 1,915 new subscribers.

There are now a total of 152,517 subscribers across all of the various channels!

• E-mail – 1,076 (1,198 last month) / Total: 84,507
• Twitter – 215 (257 last month) / Total: 14,381
• YouTube – 188 (230 last month) / Total: 12,923
• Facebook – 331 (179 last month) / Total: 22,188
• Google+ – 25 (9 last month) / Total: 17,918
• RSS – -79 (42 last month) / Total: 600

Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap

Income Report

Here are the numbers you really want to see-

Affiliate Earnings

• 99CentArticles – $14.06
• A2Hosting – $1400.00
• Accuranker – $5.62 (Accuranker review)
• ActiveCampaign – $2.01
• Ahrefs – $264.45 (my Ahrefs review)
• AlienWP – $45.60
• Aweber – $175.40 (tutorial)
• Blog Advertising – $791.75 (Advertise)
• Blue Chip Backlinks – $100.00
• Bluehost – $1,365.00 (discount coupon)
• BrightSpark – $4.00
• BuyProxies – $51.00
• BuzzBundle – $424.78 (review)
• CashCrate – $1.76 (best survey sites)
• CloudPress – $64.27
• CMS Commander – $9.65
• ConvertKit – $8.70
• CSSHero – $105.20
• CyberChimps – $56.28
• Domain Hunter Gatherer – $725.04 (expired domains tutorial)
• Drip Revolution – $316.37 (discount coupon)
• Envira Gallery – $12.87
• FCS Networker – $272.13 (discount coupon)
• FreshDrop – $17.88
• GetResponse – $24.54 (review)
• GSA Captcha Breaker – $681.71 (review / discount coupon)
• GSA Search Engine Ranker – $631.56 (review / discount coupon)
• GSA SEO Indexer – $134.00 (case study)
• HostGator – $1,200.00
• IPVanish – $168.89
• JustHost – $400.00 (start a blog / discount coupon)
• Kontent Machine – $1,315.40 (review)
• LeadPages – $100.80
• LearnDash – $184.64
• Link Assistant – $512.35 (tutorial)
• LinkEmperor – $109.03 (review)
• LinkUltra – $8.55
• LongTailPro – $859.71 (my Long Tail Pro review / discount coupon)
• ManageWP – $6.00
• MyThemeShop – $262.50
• Namecheap – $18.89
• OneHourIndexing – $385.43 (case study)
• OptinMonster – $208.88
• PaidViewPoint – $1.07 (best survey sites)
• PaighamBot – $88.90
• PandaBot – $118.50 (case study)
• PowerupHosting – $89.78 (discount coupon)
• PrettyLinkPro – $7.76
• PrivateInternetAccess – $74.00
• PrizeRebel – $0.87 (best survey sites)
• Product Launch Formula – $158.80 (see my full product launch formula case study)
• ProxyHub – $34.34 (discount coupon)
• Raven Tools – $49.76 (best backlink checker case study)
• RescueTime – $1.35
• S2Member – $109.54 (case study)
• SECockpit – $207.77
• SEMRush – $899.23 (my SEMRush review)
• SENuke – $88.20 (tutorial)
• SEO Content Machine – $149.50 (discount coupon)
• SEO Dominators Club – $29.98 (discount coupon)
• SEO Monitor – $416.71
• SEO Powersuite – $644.08 (see my SEO Powersuite review)
• SEOeStore – $51.40
• SERocket – $290.70 (tutorial / discount coupon)
• SERP Book – $9.57
• SERP Cloud – $3.02
• SERPed – $1,214.78 (review)
• SimplePageTester – $24.78
• SiteGround – $1,200.00
• SociSynd – $17.14
• SwagBucks – $2.15 (best survey sites)
• TBSolutions – $220.00
• TheBestSpinner – $317.00 (The Best Spinner review / discount coupon)
• TheLandingFactory – $94.50
• ThemeJunkie – $24.75
• ThirstyAffiliates – $22.61 (discount coupon)
• Traffic Planet Hosting (now called WPX Hosting) – $1,390.00 (Case Study / WPX Hosting review)
• TrafficTravis – $44.36
• TweetAttacksPro – $54.30 (discount coupon)
• Ultimate Azon – $159.70
• Ultimate Demon – $121.96 (review / discount coupon)
• URLProfiler – $201.01 (discount coupon)
• VideoMakerFX – $50.50 (how to make money on Fiverr case study)
• View2Be – $1.00
• WordAI – $69.93
• WPBeaverBuilder – $242.23
• WPEka – $19.42
• WPRichSnippets – $183.01
• Xrumer – $50.00
• ZeroBounce – $91.68

Expenses

• Kinsta Hosting – $100.00
• Aweber – $119.45 (tutorial)
• Facebook Advertising – $4,466.83 (Case Study)
• Twitter Advertising – $117.19

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 $10,391.53 which increased to $11,110.44 after I tweaked the funnel and should increase even more next month if I did as good of a job as I think I have done.

Earnings Total

• Affiliate Income – $22,788.34
• Consultation Income – $00.00
• Other Income – $11,110.44
• Expenses – $4,703.47

Grand Total: $29,095.31 / £23,140.37 ($20,927.18 / £17,104.36 last month)

Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap

Signing Off

A few months back I felt like the blog had stalled and it wasn’t going in the direction I wanted it to go.

However the past couple of months has shown a lot of positive growth across a number of key metrics and I have a solid plan of attack to keep things moving.

I am still working through a content audit which will see the removal of a lot of content on the blog and a series of updates across the board.

Right now I’m still not happy with the overall user experience that is provided to you guys and I am going to totally revamp the email marketing strategy in January.

But for there here and now I am going to enjoy the newly found 7 figure blogger title!

However I am expecting a big drop in earnings next month now that Black Friday is out of the way and Christmas is on the horizon.

Thank you to everyone that has helped me reach my goals – I couldn’t do it without you, the reader!