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Income Report – April 2015

Welcome everyone to my income report for April 2015. April was the best month I have ever had in my online career for a bunch of reasons but the main reason was because I sold my first website!

I wrote a post about the whole journey from start to finish that documents how an Amazon niche site made me close to $17k in one year and if you are interested in niche sites I would suggest you check it out!

Another reason why April was my best month ever was because I wrote the longest and most in depth article I have ever done. I put in countless hours and made multiple videos to complement the article. I am really proud of my work and I got some awesome feedback on it which is awesome. The post I am talking about is a how-to guide that I wrote on how to find profitable products to sell on Amazon

Only two new posts this month(excluding March’s income report) but both posts were very detailed and had a ton of information packed into them. 

A Few New Changes Coming to the Income Reports

As most of you are aware of, my income reports in the past have been about my main two niche sites and documenting their progress each month.

That way worked for a while but now that I sold one of them and only one is remaining there is no point only talking about one niche site in my income reports. 

So from now on, I am still going to be documenting the progress of niche WP but I also will be talking about my other niche sites as well as the earnings/costs of selling on Amazon.

I won’t be talking about my Amazon business in this income report because I do not have any costs or earnings as of yet but that is going to change real soon. By next months income report there will be some stuff worth writing about. 

I want to do this so that you as the reader can get a better idea of all of my business assets and how they are doing each month.

One thing that I have been thinking about is my niche site that I have been updating you all on in my Niche Site Journey, where I have built a niche site from start to finish and let you follow along the whole time.

I have found some decent success with this site but the reason why I am not going to talk about that site in these income reports because the journey is not over for that site. I am planning on trying some different techniques out on that site and I will be writing about that in future updates.

There hasn’t been a new Niche Site Journey update in a while but I am hoping to change that soon!

Those are the changes that I am going to be making to the income reports and I wanted to let you all know my reasoning behind the changes.

Now for the fun part, let’s see how my income looked this month!

Niche Site TZC

This is the last time that Niche Site TZC will ever be mentioned in my income reports since I was able to sell the site on April 2nd for $13,911.00!

After Empire Flipper’s took their 15% cut for helping me sell my site the total amount made was $11,824.35, which was wired into my bank account. Cha ching 🙂 My first big earnings online and I couldn’t be happier about it. 

I am not really going to talk anymore about this site since I have already talked about it extensively in this post

Just wanted to say farewell to niche site TZC in my income reports and that it’s sad to see the site go but I am excited to start new opportunities with the free cash I have now.

I think of selling the site in this way: I think that selling the site was the best way to finance my new journey trying to sell private label products on Amazon.

I love the business model of selling on Amazon and it has a way higher earning potential than niche sites. I see selling the site as a tradeoff with starting my Amazon business and I am happy with that decision.

Niche Site WP

This site is still struggling to regain its glory that it had a couple months back but I have a plan in place that will hopefully kickstart it.

This niche site, along with my other niche sites, have been lower on my to-do list now that I am starting to sell on Amazon.

For this reason the earnings have not increased month after month and instead have stayed pretty consistent. I am not mad about that because my niche sites are just passive income for me at this point.

Let’s see how the site did this month despite being neglected for most of April.

Traffic

Traffic has decreased this month but not too bad. My rankings for the site that used to be in the 2-5 range in Google a couple of months ago are now in the 8-25 range in Google.

Why?

There hasn’t been any new PBN links added to the site and some of my old PBN sites are not as strong anymore. Also, I have had about 3-5 sites in the past couple of months get deindexed in Google. Not because of a penalty but because my hosting for the PBN sites run out and I forget to renew the hosting.

I have been working on trying to get all of the PBN sites back up on new hosts and that should help give the rankings at least a small boost.

This Month’s Traffic(April): 2,213

Last Month’s Traffic(March): 2,852

Growth: -22.41%

Earnings

The site was able to pull in $217.17 this month, which is the lowest it has been in a long time. Not too long ago this site was making $700 each month and was looking really good. The traffic has decreased a lot since then and the earnings have followed.

I am not giving up on this site and I think I can regain the glory that it had at one point in time. It is going to take at least a couple months of work but it will be worth it, especially if I can sell it down the road.

I am still firm a believer that this site has the potential to earn $2k a month just like I have been saying in the past income reports. The niche is definitely big enough I just need to regain my rankings and take a slightly different approach to the content.

This Month’s Earnings: $217.17

Last Month’s Earnings: $331.40

Growth: -34.5%

Future Plans

I mentioned in last month’s income report that I would be fine with earning $300 a month from this site, I have changed my thoughts on that. 

The site has major potential and there is no reason to give up on my initial goal of getting it to $2k a month.

The first step in getting the site back in regular form is to add a bunch of new links, and that is exactly what I have done.

I went out and bought 10 PBN links from a trusted PBN link seller who has a very strong network of sites. I paid a $350 one time fee for these links and I am still waiting for them to be placed in his network. 

They should be live within a week or two and I am very interested in seeing how my rankings change from these links. I am pointing these 10 links at two pages, the home page and a page that makes most of my money but recently lost its high ranking in Google.

If I can increase my rankings from these 10 links then I am going to ramp up my PBN efforts for the site and build out 10-15 new PBN sites to help it rank.

I will keep you all updated on the progress of the rankings and the site.

Niche Site SH(New Site)

This is the first time that I have ever talked about this site publically on my site but I started this site way back in the middle of September.

I have taken a much more passive approach to this site in terms of PBN links and trying to rank it. Instead, I found an expert within this niche to write content for the site and I threw it up on the site and let it sit for about 3-4 months.

Didn’t hardly touch the site and maybe added a new PBN link once every 1-2 months. The site has 8 main articles on the site that are all about 2000 words long.

There aren’t any huge or major keywords that I am trying to rank for with this site. Instead I am trying to rank for 10+ longtail keywords on each page of the site. These keywords have anywhere from 20-1000 monthly searches but all of the keywords are buyer keywords. 

The types of products that I am trying to sell on the site are very high ticket items($1,000+) which is a little bit different than the normal types of products that I try to sell on my niche sites. 

Also, its worth mentioning that I am not using Amazon’s Affiliate Program to monetize the site. I am using another affiliate program instead.

That is some basic info about the site and I am sure I will go more in depth about the site at a later time(maybe a separate post) but for now that is enough info. 

Now I want to show you the all time traffic that the site has received.

Traffic

The site has seen consistent growth month after month which is awesome!

Now that the site has had time to age in Google it is about time for me to start ramping up the PBN links to the site.

To give you an idea of how many PBN links I have added to the site and when, you can view the screenshot below straight from my excel doc that keeps track of my PBN links to this site. 

In around 7 months I have added 10 total PBN links to this site. I have also spread the love in terms of what pages I point the PBN links at on this site. I did not focus on one page over another and instead tried to evenly distribute the links to each page of the site.

I also threw a lot of the links at the homepage of the site so that the link juice would flow evenly to all of the pages.

I feel like this is most natural and safest.

Overall, not a ton of traffic each month but there is improvement which is the most important metric. Like I said, now that the site has aged in Google I will be starting to add more links which should increase the traffic pretty rapidly.

Earnings

There are no earnings for the site yet because there are no affiliate links anywhere on the site. The reason for this is because I wanted to make the site look as clean and natural as possible in Google’s eyes while the site was still young.

Also there is no real point, in my opinion, to have affiliate links if there is not very much traffic.

I am planning on adding affiliate links here very soon!

Future Plans

I have already mentioned my plans for the site, which are to add more PBN links and add affiliate links. 

This should increase the traffic and hopefully start to earn some money from this site each month. I am excited about this site and think it has some awesome potential.

Niche Site GM(New Site)

This is another one of my niche sites that I have kept private up to this point. I started this site not too long ago, around mid March, which is less than two months ago.

Since the site is so new I have no traffic nor earnings so far but I have added a couple of PBN links to the site. You can see how and when I have added those below.

Only 4 PBN links so far and they have been pretty well spread out. At this moment, the site only has three main pieces of content but I am going to add at least 3 more articles here very soon.

The articles are all at least 1000 words and well written by a niche expert. 

Despite starting the site only two months ago, only having 4 PBN links and 3 pieces of content the site is starting to rank decently for high monthly searched for keywords.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see it start to rank on the first page within a 2-3 months and start beginning in good money not too long after that.

The niche itself is not very competitive at all and due to my good keyword research found a pretty good niche.

I think that this site can easily earn $500+ a month and I will probably be looking to sell the site once it reaches that point for a nice payday.

There is not much to report on this site right now since there is no traffic or earnings.

Future Plans

I am going to get three other articles written and posted onto the site within the next month. Aside from that, I am going to keep adding PBN links and slowly start to rank in Google.

I will probably speed up the rate at which I add PBN links to about 3-4 a month. That should be enough to get me ranking competitively within 2 months. 

I will have more info and data for this site in the next income reports, so stay tuned for those!

Month by Month Earnings

I earned just over $12,000 in April…wow

Just look at how skewed the chart is, I love it!

I probably won’t be earning that much in one month for a while but it sure is nice to look at. The previous months of over $1,000 look so small compared to this huge month.

Conclusion

Wow what an amazing month for my online business. I earned over $12k in one month, I never would have thought I would be typing those words out. 

The sale of my site is really important to me for a couple reasons. The first I have already talked about, it created some capital that I have to work with and use to start my Amazon business. 

Another reason why it was important was because now I have some extra money to pour back into my other niche sites and help the grow at a faster rate. 

The most important reason out of them all was that I now don’t have to worry about trying to come up with a way for me to pay for my college next year. I was able to get by this year with my online income but I am already set for next year. It is such a good feeling knowing that and I am extremely proud. 

Thank you all for reading my income report and I hope that you like the new changes to the income reports. I am excited to start sharing my new niche sites with you all and hopefully the will start to earn money soon!

I have a question for all of you that I would love for you to answer in the comments below, my question is should I write a separate post that will get into more detail about the two new niche sites or are you fine with getting updated on their progress in next month’s income report? 

Please let me know below, thank you and have a wonderful day!

Comments

13 Comments

Quinton Hamp

I love these inspiring stories from other people in the industry.

I think you are making a good call by trying to grow the $300/month site to $2k/month. I think a lot of people cash out way too soon.

The traffic graphs are really fun to see. So many people get impatient with SEO. I think seeing these numbers help people get a much better idea of what to expect.

Can’t wait to see more reports!!!
Q

Josh
Josh

Hey Quinton,

Huge fan of your work and site. I have been wondering why you weren’t updating your blog over at the lost cyclist but I guess you moved to another site! I will be following you over there now 🙂

Glad you liked the report and I agree with you, people think that once they put up a new site that traffic should be booming in a month. It is rarely like that and you have to work at it everyday to grow the traffic. It is a hard but rewarding process. Thanks for commenting and Ill see ya around Quinton

-Josh

Mike Bradford

Hey Josh,

I found your site when Empire Flippers tweeted out a link. Awesome job with the blog.

I also found your Amazon FBA post to be the most in-depth out of all the ones out there, which is saying a lot. I will be following along closely with that for sure, as I’m also looking to expand into that space.

Are you on Twitter by chance? That’s usually where/when I find out when bloggers post new stuff to their sites.

Keep up the great work.

Cheers.

Josh
Josh

Hi Mike,

Appreciate your comment and that means a lot that you think that my Amazon post was the most in-depth out there, that is what I was aiming for! Glad you like the site and I will have to check out your site. I don’t have a twitter for this site yet and I don’t tweet my posts on my personal twitter. Sorry

Anyways, thanks for the comment and talk to you later

-Josh

john

Josh, is this the entire earnings for April $217.17 ?

Josh
Josh

From niche site WP yes, the niche site that I have been documenting in the niche site journey made me close to $300(not shown here) as well along with the $11,800 from selling niche site TZC.

-Josh

Nabeel

Hey josh, I really admire your work, effort and patience. Glad to hear that you could make your next year’s college fees quite in advance. I am also beginning with my main website and your report has taught me one thing, that is PATIENCE!

Lack of it causes most of IM failures.

Josh
Josh

Hi Nabeel,

Yes it is very nice knowing that I don’t have to stress over paying for my college next year 🙂 Thank you for commenting and I am glad you like my site.

-Josh

Daniel Daines-Hutt

Hey Josh

Nice work-its always great to have a good month like that!
I found you from Matts link roundup post, so you should get a bit of new traffic i’m sure!

As this is my first read I haven’t gone through all the content, but perhaps look at mobile optimised on your niche sites if their not already? We saw a nice jump in rankings when that kicked in so i’m sure a number of non optimised sites had a big drop!

Dan

Josh
Josh

Hi Daniel,

Yes, being included in Matt’s roundup gave me a lot of new traffic and I am glad you found my site 🙂

My niche sites are already mobile optimized but thank you for the suggestion, hope to see you around the site more

-Josh

Tony Hardwire

Hi Josh , came here from matthewwoodward.co.uk awesome Job you doing Man. Just a question …when you sold you site via empireflipper , was it 20x monthly revenue or …?

Josh
Josh

Hi Tony,

Welcome to the site and thank you!

Yes, when I sold the site the sale price was based off of 20x monthly profit. In my case, I didn’t have any monthly expenses so it was based off of my revenue since my revenue = my profit.

Hope this cleared it up

-Josh

Skytech

Hi,

Amazing and really impressed with your online income report and it has inspired me to work harder.

I’m a blogger from Malaysia and currently generating online revenue about $200 per month through Google Adsense and only joined the affiliate marketing recently. I really admire to be as successful as you.

Cheers,
Skytech


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