This is the 61st 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 has been all about planning and preparing for the future.
While it may have looked quiet on the blog in terms of new content, things have been hectic behind the scenes.
Not only that but it was Black Friday which always absorbs a huge amount of my time.
Built A New Computer
I decided it was time to upgrade to my trusty old desktop computer that hadn’t seen an upgrade for about 7 years.
It was still a pretty rocking i5, 16GB RAM with basic video card but it was time to go all in.
So now I am packing an Intel Core i9 7920x, 128GB RAM and a Nvidia GTX 1080Ti for kicks-
The only problem when I got it all back to Costa Rica it didnt fit in the case I had.
Now you might be wondering why the crazy hardware specs and I’ve only got one thing to say-
4k Video.
Yesterday I exported my first 4k tutorial quicker than I could have previously exported the same tutorial in 1080P.
Ps. I’ll be publishing that on Monday…
New Video Studio Setup
With the new computer hardware in place to process video I also went about building out a complete video studio.
Well, it’s nearly complete – there are still some key parts I need to get but it will do for now.
I bought the camera body, lenses, tripod, teleprompter, bags, cases and all the accessories you can think of-
It’s been about 10 years since I owned a DSLR so it’s been good fun playing with it all again!
Deployed New Blog Styling & Featured Images
If you click around the blog you might notice that I have made some significant changes to the overall styling.
I have been split testing different post layouts for a while now-
Well I finally settled on a winner that offered lower bounce rates, higher time on page and higher pages per visit.
That has now been deployed across every post on the blog and although there are a few posts that need some cosmetic touch ups, it went pretty smoothly.
All I did was remove the sidebar and change the font. Nothing more, nothing less.
New Featured Images
I have also started deploying the first batch of new featured images across the blog which when finished, will have a huge impact on the overall look and feel on the blog.
Here is a before/after example from just one post-
As you can see the difference is worlds apart!
All of these graphics are been done by Kapa99 who provide an unlimited monthly graphics service which I am taking full advantage of.
Take a look at our project board in Trello-
This makes it really easy to request new graphics and send feedback for revisions.
About half of the new featured images have been deployed so far and I will be deploying the rest of them this month.
Black Friday Madness
November also delivered the annual crazyness that is Black Friday.
This always takes a lot of my time as I build out a completely dedicated site with it’s own email campaigns, ad campaigns and much more.
Not only that but actually collating and managing all of the deals is a huge time sink in itself.
But in the end, the Black Friday weekend is always the most profitable weekend of the year.
Content Creation
This month I only published 2 months, including the income report.
That is probably the weakest month of content the blog has ever had, but as you can see above – I’ve been preparing for the future.
In fact there are around 30,000 words of some of the highest caliber content you have ever seen written right now going through production.
But all of that has come at the cost of taking my foot off the content publishing pedal temporarily.
So this month I shared my experience at the Affiliate World conference and how I helped one blog reader triple his income.
Crunching The Numbers
So let’s get our hands dirty and see how the blog has actually performed this month.
Visitor Statistics
Last month traffic dropped to 55657 (1,855/day) from 65,852 (2,124/day) which is a big drop.
This was down to the lack of new content and the fact that all of promotional attention was directed towards my Black Friday site which had nearly 11,000 visitors.
Most Popular Content
The making money on Fiverr tutorial has always been a strong performer but this month stole the top spot.
That was closely followed by my internal linking guide which is already producing great results for people.
Top Traffic Sources
Not much has changed in traffic sources with a good mix of traffic coming from Google organic and social sources.
YouTube traffic also remained steady after its jump last month. If you use YouTube cards on nay of your videos – delete them for immediate traffic increases!
Search Engine Traffic
Last month search increased to 46,972 (1,515/day) which has continued to increase this month to 45,662 (1,522/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 remained steady at 12,344 this month
Although total minutes watched decreased from 55,944 to 52,900!
Social Shares
At this time I can only track social shares for Facebook. It seems the plugin I am using isn’t working properly at the moment.
Subscribers
The most important metric on the entire blog – earning a subscription from someone is the ultimate form of commitment and conversion.
There are now a total of 131,550 subscribers across all of the various channels compared to last months 130,333!
- E-mail – 1,965 (633 last month) / Total: 65,553
- Twitter – 120 (129 last month) / Total: 17,133
- YouTube – 115 (89 last month) / Total: 15,255
- Facebook – 482 (3,684 last month) / Total: 31,713
- Google+ – 41(-46 last month) / Total: 17,818
- RSS – -24 (7 last month) / Total: 523
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Income Report
Here are the numbers you really want to see-
Affiliate Earnings
Expenses
Consultation Earnings
I separate out the consultation earnings from the affiliate earnings. The blog drives affiliate sales directly and whilst it does generate 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 increased to $13,386.53 but has dropped off to $12,212.79 this month.
Earnings Total
- Affiliate Income – $21,737.79
- Consultation Income – $00.00
- Other Income – $12,212.79
- Expenses – $5,610.27
Grand Total: $28,340.31 / £21,038.71 ($21,278.58 / £16,254.71 last month)
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Signing Off
November allowed me to plant a lot of seeds for the future.
From new computer hardware to new video equipment and a new look and feel on the blog all of the building blocks are coming together.
On Monday I am going to launch a new piece of experimental content to measure the impact it makes.
If it’s successful I will be applying a similar approach to every new post on the blog – so stay tuned!
This is also the first test run of all my new toys so who knows how it’s going to work out.
Other than that as we move into December you might not hear much from me, time to relax!
Thank you again to everyone that has supported the blog over the years – you guys are amazing!