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This is the 49th 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 October
Last month I invested a lot of time in speeding up the site to improve the overall user experience.
With a few minor tweaks I have continued to improve on site speeds cutting them by 80% on average.
I have had a few hiccups along the way and taken the site down by accident a couple of times, but all in all – it should make for a much better experience for you all.
On top of that I completed my first 10km trail run up a very muddy rock filled wet Volcano in preparation for Ironman but ended up injuring myself so had to take 2 weeks off training.
Turns out running up a muddy rocky trail up a volcano is much harder than doing it barefoot on the tranquil beaches of Costa Rica.
But putting the fact I couldn’t walk anymore aside, lets look at what I did on the blog this month.
How I Made $134,171 In 6 Days
That is not a typo.
Over the past few days I have bee preparing a post that takes you behind the scenes of one of my recent campaigns that made $134,171 in just 6 days.
In fact, in one day alone the campaign made $45,025!
I am going to be publishing that post tomorrow so make sure you keep an eye out for it – you definitely don’t want to miss it!
80% Increase In Site Speed
Last month I shared all of the things that I had done to increase loading times across the blog.
This month I have continued to build on that which has had some amazing results.
Before I did any optimization my Long Tail Pro review took 8.09 seconds to load-
That is a pretty long time for anyone to wait in this day and age!
After last months tweaks that was reduced to just 2.72 seconds-
That was a great improvement but I felt like I could do better.
So this month I added KeyCDN into the mix and replaced the FV Gravatar Cahce plugin with the much more efficient Nix Gravatar Cache.
That means that all the gravatars now get loaded from a content delivery network rather than making a bunch of extra HTTP requests which is a serious problem when some posts have over 1,000 comments.
That helped trim load time by another 35% all the way down to just 1.75 seconds-
At this point I don’t think I can improve on those load times, so it’s officially case closed on my site speed optimisation project.
Are you guys feeling the difference at all?
You can learn how to increase your websites speed in this post.
Disney Ahoy!
I also had time to fly out to Orlando to catch up with my mum & sister.
We did the usual Disney trail including Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom & Universal Studios.
It was nice to take a few days off, but I was more than happy to leave the United States to dial back the volume of life again!
New Marketing Books
While I was in the states I picked up a couple of new marketing books.
Well actually they are not new to me, they were introduced to me in my coprorate career but I’ve missed theme ver since.
- Words That Sell (amazon link)
- More Words That Sell (amazon link)
These are great books to have lying around on your desk for quick reference when writing any type of copy.
They are structured by descriptors and benefits – for example if you wanted to create the feeling of Romance, you could instantly find all the right words to do that-
There are also a bunch of extra copy writing tips, structures and more for quick reference and perfect for anyone that wants to improve their copywriting skills.
Content Creation
I only published 4 new blog posts this month which is on par with the 4 I published last month.
However last month I had an excuse because I launched the huge 15,000 words marketing tools section on the blog.
This month I was just plain lazy, no excuses :)
We kicked off the month with my video tutorial to find powerful expired domains easily.
That was shortly followed by my ultimate list of tutorials to increase website traffic which is broken down by difficulty.
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 62,587 (2,086/day) which has remained steady at 62,481 (2,015/day) this month.
At the moment I’m trying to maintain at least 60,000 visitors per months after breaking through the barrier last month, so far – so good!
Most Popular Content
My expired domains tutorial stole the show this month but only by a slight margin.
The how to create a profitable membership site tutorial was close behind with my website traffic tutorials bringing up the rear.
Top Traffic Sources
The top traffic sources have remained pretty much the same as last month.
However there is one key difference, and that is that Bing is starting to send more and more traffic which I suspect is because of my recent SEO optimisations across the blog.
Search Engine Traffic
Search traffic has grown steadily the past few months and that has continued this month!
Last month saw 51,122 (1,704/day) from Google which has jumped to 54,204 (1,749/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 jumped from 17,954 to 20,279 this month because I published a new video which I haven’t done for a while..
That also had an impact on total minutes watched which increased from 80,283 to 92,759 respectively.
That means at least 2 people are watching one of my videos every single minute of every single day!
Social Shares
This month the total social shares across Facebook and Google+ increased from 63,528 to 67,809.
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 1,915 new subscribers which is a welcomed increase from last months 1,755 new subscribers.
There are now a total of 150,761 subscribers across all of the various channels!
- E-mail – 1,198 (2,853 last month) / Total: 83,431
- Twitter – 257 (312 last month) / Total: 14,166
- YouTube – 230 (182 last month) / Total: 12,735
- Facebook – 179 (170 last month) / Total: 21,857
- Google+ – 9 (7 last month) / Total: 17,8934
- RSS – 42 (197 last month) / Total: 679
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Income Report
Here are the numbers you really want to see-
Affiliate Earnings
- 99CentArticles – $21.87
- ActiveCampaign – $1.80
- Ahrefs – $413.69 (my Ahrefs review)
- Aweber – $164.00 (tutorial)
- Blog Advertising – $857.74 (Advertise)
- Blue Chip Backlinks – $100.00
- Bluehost – $325.00 (discount coupon)
- BuyProxies – $34.00
- CheapWindowsVPS – $2.55 (discount coupon)
- CMS Commander – $9.60
- Drip Revolution – $231.74 (discount coupon)
- Domain Hunter Gatherer – $445.40 (expired domains tutorial & Domain Hunter Gatherer review)
- FCS Networker – $179.44 (discount coupon)
- FreshDrop – $17.92
- GetResponse – $31.17 (review)
- GSA Captcha Breaker – $116.97 (review / discount coupon)
- GSA Search Engine Ranker – $252.00 (review / discount coupon)
- HQ Biz In A Box – $13.80
- Indexification – $3.70 (case study)
- IPVanish – $50.70
- JustHost – $160.00 (start a blog / discount coupon)
- Kontent Machine – $341.15 (review)
- LeadPages – $257.70
- LinkEmperor – $112.55 (review)
- LongTailPro – $1,517.56 (my Long Tail Pro review / discount coupon)
- Magic Submitter – $30.49
- ManageWP – $6.00
- MTTB – $88.20
- OneHourIndexing – $382.66 (case study)
- OptinLinks – $17.73
- PandaBot – $150.00 (case study)
- PowerupHosting – $40.20 (discount coupon)
- PrivateInternetAccess – $28.00
- ProxyHub – $10.80 (discount coupon)
- Rank Tracker – $127.29
- Raven Tools – $49.86 (best backlink checker case study)
- SEMRush – $754.28 (my SEMRush review)
- SENuke – $44.10 (tutorial)
- SEO Content Machine – $33.75 (discount coupon)
- SEO Dominators Club – $44.97 (discount coupon)
- SEO Monitor – $12.09
- SEO Powersuite – $213.85 (see my SEO Powersuite review)
- SERocket – $297.00 (tutorial / discount coupon)
- SERP Book – $21.21
- SERPed – $1,321.66 (review)
- SESlingShot – $50.00 (review)
- Social Locker Pro – $4.80
- TheBestSpinner – $304.00 (The Best Spinner review / discount coupon)
- ThirstyAffiliates – $50.75 (discount coupon)
- ThriveThemes – $204.00
- Traffic Planet Hosting (now called WPX Hosting) – $430.00 (Case Study / WPX Hosting review)
- TubeAssist – $14.50 (tutorial)
- TweetAttacksPro – $141.54 (discount coupon)
- Ultimate Demon – $319.91 (review / discount coupon)
- URLProfiler – $98.30 (discount coupon)
- VideoMakerFX – $67.20 (how to make money on Fiverr case study)
- View2Be – $1.00
- WordAI – $79.94
- WP Robot – $64.75 (discount coupon)
Expenses
- Kinsta Hosting – $00.00 (currently free)
- Aweber – $119.45 (tutorial)
- Pixel Your Site Pro – $55.00
- Facebook Advertising – $456.78 (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 came in at $8,511.57 however after a few funnel tweaks this month it increased to $10,391.53.
Earnings Total
- Affiliate Income – $11,166.88
- Consultation Income – $00.00
- Other Income – $10,391.53
- Expenses – $631.23
Grand Total: $20,927.18 / £17,104.36 ($20,388.83 / £15,860.44 last month)
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Signing Off
Although in a lot of respects the blog made some good progress this month, I don’t feel like I did enough to push things forward.
I mean income is up, traffic is up and the site loads quicker than ever but I just don’t feel it in my veins!
November is going to be the first month I have had for a while where I haven’t got something major planned so I expect to establish razor sharp focus over the next few weeks.
And let’s not forget, Black Friday is on the horizon which usually makes November a very profitable month.
So while I batten down the hatches, you should get ready for tomorrows post where I share how I made $134,171 in just 6 days.
Thank you to everyone that has helped me reach my goals – I couldn’t do it without you, the reader!
41 Responses
Matthew why are you not trying to make money off of youtube?
I am?
Thanks again that i have learned by many things from you, i hope one day becomingly my first income made.
No problem Bilguun :)
Great to see you dial in that page load speed, it is bound to increase organic traffic and earnings. Had a plugin that was running on one of my niche sites a month ago and finally realized it was slowing my site down so much. Once I dropped it a saw a great increase in traffic and earnings!
You should make a post about that!
Wow that’s a lot of $$ in six days! I’ve seen reports like that from others who have launched products. My main website right now is my recipe website and my main income comes from ad revenue. I’d eventually love to release a product, but for this type of blog, it’s more or less going to be a recipe book. I do have another blog I have yet to actually work on that would be ideal for releasing products.
I’ll have to try some of the suggestions for improving my speed. I just switched hosting not too long ago, and that helped. I was on Max CDN but it was clear I was going to be spending a pretty penny. Does your CDN service have a limit?
You could learn a lot from the PinchOfYum.com income reports :)
No CDN service has a limit that I’m aware of as long as you have money. MaxCDN is super cheap though.
Oh I do love her site! And I read a lot of what they have to offer from Food Blogger Pro since they also have podcasts. Very informative!
I did try Max CDN but I’m going to wait. I was going to surpass the $9.99/mo. My ad service pays me net 75 days so right now I’m waiting to get my bigger checks, lol.
First of all a big congratulations to you for keeping your earning stable. And secondly, I can experience your site speed. It is way faster than before.
I just wanted to ask how do you keep track of all your affiliate earning? Did you just visit every affiliate network and note down your earnings or is there any special tool you’re using.
Thanks Shafi that is good to know!
Unfortunately I do it all manually with a spreadsheet!
Whoa, truly inspiring round-up this month.Thanks for introducing new marketing books and good job! I remember following your blog back when you started – you’ve come a long way!
Thanks Walter, glad to have taken you on the journey with me :)
Hello Matthew,
I am impressed with your results, hope you are going to double your income in next few month. I read you article and found that you spent most of your money on Facebook ads and Aweber. So i am interested if i can achieve same results without building web 2.0 or PBN links. I know that your site (matthewwoodward.co.uk) has a quite good authority, but what about my affiliate site which is not as good as yours. Is it possible to increase traffic and sales following zero backlink experiment?
Thanks Jack!
Yes you can do that, but the biggest part of the equation is putting out the highest quality content which takes an awful lot of hard work.
Hi Matthew,
Congratulation for your great income achievement. You income report always inspire me to do blogging.
Thanks Palashtd!
Hey Matthew,
I have realized that increasing site speed can make one a lot of profits in big time as you highlighted here. Have been working to increase my site speed to under one second and saw a slight increase in traffic almost overnight.
Yeah it makes a huge difference to a number of key metrics across the board
congrats for increase in Income . Every month your income motivated me a LOT to earn onlinbe. But things are difficult to achieve in real life. But I never give up , one day I definitely get success like you would be more thank yours . :).
It’s only as difficult as you make it, there is no substitute for sheer determination and hard work. Make every minute count towards your goal.
Hey Matt,
What’s the expenses spent on?
You have one of the lowest expense of so many gurus in the field.
Thanks in advance.
You can see them in all of the income reports
Wow! It’s relay great post. I got some info here. thanks for share it…..
No problem :)
After reading this I can clearly see how newbie I am, so many sources of income, I need to work real hard to reach you but I have confidence that I will.
This kind of post is very helpful because people like me can understand much better how everything works, sharing all your numbers and stats is very cool since I can learn a lot just from that!
Also, I love the way you show us how you were improving your site speed and all the small results.
By the way, why are you not making money from YouTube? Maybe you don’t have the numbers to make good money but something is better than nothing :)
Glad it is helping you out Nicolas, just stay consistent and you’ll make it.
I choose not to monetize the YouTube videos because I prefer to keep peoples attention on the content.
Nice one on the page speed increase Matt.
Have you found the increase in speed has positively effected the ranking of that particular page?
Traffic across the blog is up
Running a successful campaign that brings in $134,171 in a week is inevitably going to dampen your enthusiasm for a blog bringing in 20k/month… ;)
Hahaha I just need to combine the two :)
Congrats… what else ?!
Nothing more to report
Hi Matt,
these income reports and whole your site is inspiring me. Forces me to stop crying and stand up from the floor, and start my authority website at end of 2016. Even with handicaps like English is a foreign language for me; 20 years in corporate IT dev; and I had only started learning this thing months ago, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I am ready to taste the pudding.
Thank you for your work and sharing it free.
No problem Csaba, I know many people in a similar position to you that have ‘made it’ so to speak.
Don’t forget-
Words are what you want to be.
Actions are what you will be.
Thanks for sharing Matt. Sounds like you haven’t been that lazy considering you’re training for Ironman!
I’d love to do an Ironman triathlon, but I think i’ll warm up to a marathon first…
Good luck!
P.s. looking forward to reading how you made $$$ in 6 days :)
Cheers,
Jamie
Haha well I never did a Marathon either, that trail run was my first actual run of any kind.
When I signed up for Ironman, all I had was flip flops :)
Amazing.
Glad to see that your still rocking the profit.Proud of you!
Thanks Rizvan!
Thanks for sharing your detailed stats. Gave a good insight
No problem I hope they help you out!