This is the 24th 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 September
September has been a very busy month on all fronts. I had a friend visit for nearly 2 weeks and have dug on a couple of my other bigger projects.
That hasn’t left much time or attention for the blog and there are a number of outstanding todo’s from the month that would normally be cleared!
Unfortunately there is only so much time in the day – it’s what you do with it that counts.
Content Creation
I published a total of 7 posts last month which has dropped this month to 6 which isn’t so bad!
The month started with the announcement of my controversial MTTB case study which has thrown some things into doubt.
Then I shared the results of my Twitter experiment and how I was able to double traffic & engagement with just 30 minutes setup time.
Next we moved onto my Prestashop tutorial to sell digital products online using the free platform.
Other than those posts we just had the regular best of internet marketing & income report roundup posts.
Blog Features
The blog had quite a few features this month including how I got started and listed amongst these income reports.
I shared some tips in this niche blogging post and also explained how you can use blogging for business.
Next I shared my favourite email list building tools and shared some straight to the point Twitter advice.
Affiliate Summit Session Confirmed
I will be speaking at the upcoming Affiliate Summit West 2015 conference in Las Vegas January 18th-20th.
The previous Affiliate Summits have been a blast and Las Vegas is built to party! I had originally submitted a solo session but was invited to join a panel with Zac Johnson, John Chow & John Rampton.
The session is an hour long starting at 12:30pm on the 18th. The panel is called Rise of the Six Figure Blogger – Will You Join Us? and with over 35 years combined experience we will be covering a range of topics and taking live questions.
If you are attending the next Affiliate Summit let me know and we can hook up!
UnGagged Conference
If you happen to be in Las Vegas in November however you can catch me at the UnGagged conference at Caesars Palace.
This was originally the BlackHatWorld conference but was recently renamed to UnGagged and takes place November 15th-17th.
There are some awesome speakers confirmed such as-
- Jeremy ‘Shoemoney’ Schoemaker
- Dave Snyder (Copypress)
- Damien Trevatt (BlackHatWorld owner)
- Jacob Hagberg (InitalEffort)
- Joe Sinkwitz (Cygnus/CygnusSEO)
- John Rampton
Those are just a few of the speakers but what is interesting about this speaker line up is it covers the full range of the spectrum.
From people like Jacob Hagberg that provides some of the most popular link building services on blackhat forums all the way through to someone like Shoemoney.
Reader Discount
If you are thinking of attending you can get a 15% discount.
Alternatively you can use coupon code MatthewWoodward when checking out.
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
Last month traffic came in at 44,565 (1,437/day) which has increased a little this month to 45,999 (1,533/day).
I’m still falling short of the 50,000 uniques milestone though but I’m sure that is just a matter of time, patience & consistency.
Most Popular Content
The most popular content this month was my last months income report.
My social media sharing trick also held strong although the Wikipedia backlink tutorial dropped out of the top 10.
Top Traffic Sources
The top traffic sources haven’t changed that much really although it is nice to see Twitter traffic increase as planned.
One new entry was the Follow Weekly email which brought some nice traffic but I don’t know how or who is responsible for that so please make yourself known :)
Search Engine Traffic
Google organic search traffic dropped from 37,746 to 36,636 this month but it did increase from 1,217 per day to 1,221 per day – just.
I still have my targets sat on breaking the 40,000 barrier from Google again but again – time, patience, consistency.
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 YouTube brought in 23,363 views which has seen dropped a little to 21,366 this month.
Alongside a drop in views also saw a drop in minutes watched from 124,008 to 110,109 – perhaps I should publish some more videos soon!
Social Shares
The blog has seen a total of 53,617 shares across Facebook, Twitter and Google+ this month compared to 50,734 last month.
- Google+ – 15,129 (14,178 last month)
- Twitter – 23,231 (22,056 last month)
- Facebook – 15,257 (14,500 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 3,376 new subscribers across various channels which is a drop when compared to last month’s total of 5,848.
There are now a total of 76,018 subscribers across all of the different channels.
- E-mail – 2,517 (2,446 last month) / Total: 35,213
- Twitter – 448 (446 last month) / Total: 5,541
- YouTube – 266 (301 last month) / Total: 5,923
- Facebook – 307 (575 last month) / Total: 12,113
- Google+ – 203 (2,119 last month) / Total: 16,843
- RSS – -365 (-39 last month) / Total: 385
Income Report
Here are the numbers you really want to see-
Affiliate Earnings
- 48HoursLogo – $30.00 (case study)
- 99CentArticles – $28.41
- AfterOffers – $229.50
- Ahrefs – $257.00 (my Ahrefs review)
- AuthorHreview – $45.87 (review)
- Aweber – $37.20 (my Aweber review)
- Blog Advertising – $2,462.73 (Advertise)
- BuyProxies – $65.00
- ChimpRewriter – $47.60
- Drip Revolution – $67.72 (discount coupon)
- GoDaddy – $0.17
- GSA Captcha Breaker – $227.69 (review / discount coupon)
- GSA Search Engine Ranker – $311.53 (review / discount coupon)
- Indexification – $6.79 (case study)
- Inspyder Backlink Monitor – $25.98
- JustHost – $640.00 (start a blog / discount coupon)
- Kontent Machine – $1,138.79 (review)
- LeadPages – $167.10
- LinkEmperor – $465.08 (review)
- List Builders Academy – $68.00 (case study)
- LongTailPro – $43.56 (my Long Tail Pro review / discount coupon)
- Magic Submitter – $1.79
- Market Samurai – $46.56 (tutorial)
- MTTB – $44.10
- OneHourIndexing – $171.60 (case study)
- OptinMonster – $9.80 (my Optinmonster review)
- PowerupHosting – $38.24 (discount coupon)
- PrettyLinkPro – $3.70 (discount coupon)
- RankCracker – $705.78
- Rank WYZ – $6.16
- Raven Tools – $59.57 (best backlink checker case study)
- s2Member – $34.50 (case study / discount coupon)
- ScrapeBrokers – $69.93
- SEMRush – $49.35 (my SEMRush review)
- SEO Powersuite – $613.62 (see my SEO Powersuite review)
- SEO SpyGlass – $56.14 (best backlink checker case study)
- SERP Book – $4.96
- SESlingShot – $100.00 (review)
- SimpleVideoPro – $76.35 (case study)
- Social Locker Pro – $385.40
- SociSynd – $61.51
- TheBestSpinner – $576.00 (The Best Spinner review / discount coupon)
- Traffic Planet Hosting (now called WPX Hosting) – $493.89 (Case Study / WPX Hosting review)
- TubeAssist – $16.75 (tutorial)
- TweetAdder – $4.75
- Tweet Attacks Pro – $851.05 (discount coupon)
- Ultimate Demon – $444.23 (review / discount coupon)
- Website Auditor – $56.14
- WordAI – $67.93
Expenses
- Traffic Planet Hosting (now called WPX Hosting) – $49.99 (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.
I didn’t take on any consultation work this month which results in zero consultation earnings.
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 earned a total of $5,438.76 which is down a little chunk from last months $6,663.12.
I’m going to be putting some more time into this project in the next 6 weeks to try and break the $10k barrier with it alone.
Earnings Total
- Affiliate Income – $11,415.52
- Consultation Income – $00.00
- Other Income – $5,438.76
- Expenses – $49.99
Grand Total: $16,804.29 / £10,379.55 ($19,236.09 / £11,582.56 last month)
Last month saw the biggest monthly earnings the blog had ever had so it is a shame to see it drop off by $2,431 this month.
I’ll break that $20k target barrier soon though – I struggled for months with the $10k one so I don’t expect this to be any different.
Signing Off
It has been a very busy month for every other site/project I work on except this blog. I really didn’t give it the time or attention I wanted to but we can only work so much!
Over the next month I’m going to be working on my ‘other income’ site above more but will bring the blog into the spotlight to re-establish earnings and break the 50k visitor goal.
If there are any posts/tutorials you would like to see featured on the blog this month please let me know in the comments.
I’m also open to guest posts if you want a few thousands visitors to hit your blog – but I only accept the highest of high quality case study/step by step tutorial based stuff.
I would like to personally thank each and every one of you for joining me on this journey.
