Case Study & Income Report #17 [April 2021 edition]

Looks like overall April was a decent, though slightly disappointing month for some of these sites.

All things consider though, things are going well with these sites (and the rest of my portfolio).

So, let’s jump in and see where the disappointment lies and what I’m excited about.

Remember, the sites in this report are only a portion of my portfolio and not the only sites that bring in revenue.

**And as always, I’m an affiliate marketer and this post contains affiliate links, meaning I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links

Contents show

What Happened In April

In a lot of ways, April was even busier for me than March.

I was super focused on content production for most of the sites in my portfolio. And I’m really pleased with how that’s been going, except for some problems with the content agency I’ve been using.

I released the aged domains course.

Work for my agency really exploded, which resulted in needing more staff (and having to fire those that didn’t work out).

Unfortunately, I feel like the agency work has taken away some of my time from my portfolio of sites, which isn’t really how I want things to be.

I’m hoping with a few more hires that I’ll be able to get back to my normal schedule. But hey, if you need a job then let me know!

The Sites – April Update

In case you missed it in the announcement post, or just can’t remember, I’ll be recapping the basics of each site before I give you the details on what the month looked like for each site.

Site #1

Remember, I got a surprising offer on this site in February and I sold that shit.

So, no more updates on this one.

Site #2

Here’s what you should know about this site:

Niche: Transportation
Monetization: affiliate (Amazon + others) + display ads
Income Goal: I’ll be happy with $1000/mo but I think it has the potential for mid four figures monthly based on a conversation I had with someone in this niche.
History: Site has been earning steadily and is profitable. It was sitting, neglected, when I decided to pick it back up this year.
Growth Plan: hit it with lots of informational articles to optimize content for ad money (first goal = Ezoic and eventually Mediavine). I also need to update old content & utilize more non-Amazon affiliates with longer cookies. I may end up testing Pinterest on this site to see how it performs.
The case study angle: ~~prioritizing links over content~~ prioritizing content over links + expanding beyond Amazon + beyond Google traffic

Ah man, so much content has been going up on this site. And I’m stoked with how that’s working out.

Though I ordered a total of 50 articles in April, all of that wasn’t actually ready until May, but still. Good stuff.

But I’m not stoked about this fucking referral spam that keeps hitting my sites.

When you account for the 329 referral spam visits, this site saw an increase of around 2500 sessions compared to the previous month.

So, that’s actually an improvement on the increase that I reported in last month’s report.

Overall that has me sitting right around 10,000 sessions for the month.

Not too shabby for a neglected site.

Of course, it should be fuckloads better, but hey, I’m working on it.

New posts for this site: 18 (outsourced at Word Agents)

New links for this site: zero

Total income for this site last month: $188.17

Last month’s income is a mix of AdSense, Ezoic, Amazon affiliate, and other affiliates. I use the AAWP plugin on this site.

Summary for site #2: A nice boost in income with a decent rise in traffic + lots of content to marinate in the SERPs.

Site #3

Here’s what you should know about this site:

Niche: Health/Fitness
Monetization: affiliate (Amazon + others) + display ads (and maybe products?)
Income Goal: Looking to sell once I’m stable at somewhere around $7500-$8000/monthly
History: Site has been earning steadily and is profitable. It is somewhat seasonal, though the niche is evergreen.
Growth Plan: Hit it with lots of informational articles to optimize content for ad money. This site has enough traffic for Ezoic, but I’m holding out to qualify for Mediavine and then AdThrive. I also need to update old content & utilize more non-Amazon affiliates with longer cookies/higher paying offers. HARO is the only link building that I currently have planned for this site.
The case study angle: prioritizing content over links + building a mailing list + monetization diversification + alternative traffic growth

Last year, this site saw a crazy month with all the COVID shit hitting the fan and people wanting to get fit at home.

So, I knew that this year it wouldn’t be as big. I was mentally prepared for that.

But here’s the thing – my traffic is BETTER this year, but most of the shit I promote is still having supply chain issues.

So while I was mentally prepared for it, the income still feels like a punch in the gut compared to last year.

Traffic numbers were slightly up compared to the previous month, at around 1,000 more sessions.

I did manage to get up a fuckload of content though. I mean, 30 is a lot when you have as many sites as I do.

This content is for a whole new silo that I’m building where I’m testing target a luxury product to see if I can skew the overall RPM to something higher.

I don’t know if it will work, but it will be an interesting experiment and the silo is going to be around 100 posts.

You’ll notice below that the income for this site actually dropped. That was a bit of a shock.

If you recall from my reports starting last summer, the main affiliate program that I use for this site started reporting a lot of high dollar returns.

Like a suspicious amount of them. And that has continued.

To give you an idea, on May 1st when I checked my affiliate account several returns were booked for hundreds of dollars of lost commission.

I’ve also been suspecting that they’re not actually reporting all of my orders. So, I finally tested that by having someone place an order from my site.

Yeah, it never showed up.

So, that confirms that. I now need to look for an alternative, but I’m not sure what to do since this brand is a major player in the industry.

New posts for this site: 30 (outsourced at Word Agents)

The articles were all informational.

New links for this site: none

Total income for this site last month: $2,162.42

Last month’s income is a mix of AdSense, Amazon affiliate, and other affiliates. I use the AAWP plugin on this site as well.

Summary for site #3: Traffic increased a little, but income dropped quite a bit. Overall an okay month for this site – if only the income hadn’t dropped!

Site #4

Here’s what you should know about this site:

Niche: Lifestyle
Monetization: display ads + affiliates + products + info products (+ possibility for real world business offshoot)
Income Goal: I think I’ll be happy with $2500/mo but I know of a few people in this niche making $20K+/month.
Growth Plan: Right now I’m all about content creation. Next up is traffic diversification and this niche does well on Pinterest. For link building, I haven’t decided yet. There are a lot of guest posting opportunities in this niche though.
The case study angle: mega authority site from day one to mega status –> building a brand from the beginning with long term growth focus on diversifying traffic + monetization

You know the trend … I only managed to get three new posts up on this site since I was so busy with the other sites and such.

Traffic was pretty stagnant for the month, so no real movement there.

I did put display ads up on the site late in the month, so at least there’s a teensy bit of income flowing in now!

New posts for this site: three

New links for this site: zero

Total income for this site last month: $3.59

Only has one post live with an affiliate link, and AdSense was added late in the month.

Summary for site #4: Added some new posts, traffic stagnant, first income on the board for this site.

New Expenses for April 2021

If you want to know about any recurring expenses or previous expenses, then refer to February 2020’s report in this section.

Here’s new expenses for the sites for April 2021:

Site #2

$6.50 Vultr server at Cloudways (two sites on this server, so I split out the cost for just this site)
$935 in content from Word Agents

Site #3

$22.45 hosting with BigScoots (this account is split with another site)
$2563 for articles via Word Agents

Site #4

$6.50 Vultr server at Cloudways (two sites on this server, so I split out the cost for just this site)

Final Thoughts & Summary

I won’t lie, I was disappointed with site #3’s income for this month. But, that’s just the way it goes sometimes.

But, I am happy with how site #2 is growing.

Anyways, here’s a quick glance at revenue and expenses for these sites.

Month summary:

And remember, these four sites are only a portion of my portfolio 🙂 I also want to remind you that sites #2 and #3 were existing sites that have been earning and ranking before starting this whole thing.

Got any questions? Requests for other data in future updates? Let me know.

Shawna Newman

Hey, I’m Shawna. I make a living working from my laptop in places like London, Sydney, Dubai, Rome, Oslo, Bangkok, Las Vegas, Barcelona, and Amsterdam. I share how I do some of that on this website.