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 (tutorial)
- 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
- 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.
61 Responses
Nice goals Matthew, love the tutorials and everything you share man. Hope the best for you!
Thanks very much Pankaj!
your regular reports is very motivational
yes to me too
Hi Matt, I love how you present your income reports. I have followed them since 2012! One thing just took my attention. You have never talked about what the “Other Income” is about. Is a big part of your earnings. Are you ever going to talk and write how you make that, or is something hidden that you prefer keep in the quiet zone.
Best wishes,
Carlos
Hi,
Thanks for the long time following :)
That is going to stay in the quiet zone, as soon as I lift the lid on that it puts it at risk, and you can see why I wouldn’t take that risk right now. But maybe in the future I will reveal it.
Well that makes sense. If you are making lots of money with a technique maybe it’s the best not to share it if it’s going to put it at risk of losing that income.
Anyway looking forward to see the next income report!
I’ll perhaps use it as a case study in the future :)
Dude when are you planning to launch your zero to here course? its been a long time man
I’m working on it still :) Don’t want it to be sub par!
Hi Nepo,
Sure drop me an email https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/contact-me/
Looking good, Matt. Constantly growing. I wanted to ask if you’v ever considered starting a podcast? I would think it would be pretty successful, given the following you have.
It’s crossed my mind but I don’t know what I would talk about!
Great report! I’m curious, do you earn any affiliate income from sites outside of this (using some of the black hat/grey hat topics you cover) or is this blog your mains source of income now?
Yes I have a fleet of websites
Ok, does this report just cover this site or all your sites? How much money does the blog earn vs your other sites?
Just this site. They make enough :)
Hi Matt,
I am a boy passionate about internet marketing, seo, blogging and all these things.
I first found you on buysellads.com few months ago (unique approach, right?) and I am still attached to your blog because its wicked awesome.
I have some queries. Please make me clear:
Can I go through rankcracker.co.uk/affiliate to be a rankcracker affiliate and earn commission just by giving away the software for free?
And are you doing the same so you earned $705.78 this month just from rankcracker affiliate program?
If so, it would be the easiest way, man.
I’m waiting on you.
Hahah weird :)
Yes you can go through that to make money no problem :)
reading your regular reports is motivational
Thanks Lev!
Hi Matt
Recently read and put into practise the info you provided in your wikipedia tutorial. Great write up and i’ve been following your blog ever since.
In your income report you mention a service called “scrapebrokers” looks interesting, have you used it personally? If so how do you find it?
Cheers
Shane
Hi Shane,
Thanks for your kind words.
I haven’t used them no, that’s residual income from their black friday sale last year
Great job as always! Are you tracking all social shares of your site across the web, or just the ones shared from the site itself? Also I’d be interested to see your cumulative or month to month affiliate earnings, just to see the jumps and changes for programs over time (if any), if you feel like making next month’s report longer :P
Hey – from all over the web :)
Will the info here do the trick – https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/blogging/income-reports/ ?
Great work with the bump in income Matt!
I had a request. Maybe you have written about it already. You have multiple projects that you work on. Could you share some of your productivity tips for getting the most out of your day. For instance setting short term goals vs long term goals as well as planning out your days. That would be cool.
Interesting suggestions I will think about that but I like to use TheSecretWeapon.org to help manage things through
Hey Matthew,
Another great article… I have a ? for you…
What is the best way to post affiliate links: cloaked, redirects or…
I got some aff links yesterday that are pretty lame… delete after the forward slash and I lose my commission.
How can I protect my affiliate links to be certain I get paid… what strategy or technique and product do you highly recommend.
What process and product do you use? I see you makes tons of affiliate commission…
Thanks in advance and looking forward to hearing from you.
Steven
Hi,
Personally I just use ThirstyAffiliates
Amazing Affiliate Income Math :)
haha thanks
Some really great info – Thanks!
Here’s a suggestion/request for a tutorial. Pretty Link Pro has some useful ” how to set it up” tuts but not a lot on how to use it best strategically. Seems like that would be ideally suited to your style – and also a good affiliate earnings opportunity.
Hope you agree because I’d find your input very helpful.
Thanks
Hi,
What do you mean strategically? If its an affiliate link, cloak it/no follow it. If its not don’t.
I was referring to the pro version – see features list link – prettylinkpro dot com/features
It seems to have a lot of built in functionality- but where to start deploying them?
Ahh I don’t know, I just use ThirstyAffiliates
Great stuff.
Glad to see it’s still going well.
Tom
Thanks Tom!
That is great Matthew, I hope I will earn a half your income :)
No such thing as hope, you either do or you don’t!
Yes, Matthew. I will mirror you :)
Hi Matt,
Great job! All the best in breaking your next milestones for organic and overall traffic.
Most people are hush hush about their income and you published it every month! I have to give you a thumbs up for that.
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Hahaha than you very much :)
Thanks for the mention Matt. I might just start publishing my income reports as well. About time.
Let me know when you do!
Wow Matthew,
killing it!
Bookmarked the twitter experiment post to execute some time soon. From the traffic chart ( as #5 ) it looks like it’s bringing in some really decent traffic.
Keep on hustling!
Thanks Lee – let me know if you have any questions!
Truly inspirational man!
Just got Buzzbundle, watching your review —ready to rock!
Enjoy it =D
Hey Matt,
Awesome Stats over here.
I appreciate the mention. I feel honoured.
Thanks
No worrys :)
Nice goals Matthew, love the tutorials and everything you share man. Hope the best for you!
Thank you kindly!
Congrats Brotha – Pictures look amazing
Thanks Will!
Hey Matt,
Nice income stats over here.
This is a very huge income. If i’m able to make $16,804.29 / £10,379.55 from my home country, that would a few millions.
Thanks for mentioning one of the articles on my blog in this report. I feel honoured.
I just published my own income report as well, its all over here:
http://letescape.com/september2014-income-growth-report
Thanks Matt.
No worrys :) Let me know when you have published 3!
Thank you Matt…
Damn! This its awesome man..
Hope to achieve this with my blog soon!
Thanks =D
Amazing progress again my friend!
Keep up the good work!
Thanks you Rizvan!