Case Study & Income Report #11 [November 2020 edition] | Skipblast

Case Study & Income Report #11 [November 2020 edition]

Guess what? It’s time for another installment of ‘did I underwhelm you with my progress?’

But seriously – managing multiple sites is a lot of work.

And sometimes (often) one site gets most of the attention, which means that others get neglected.

So, let’s dig in and see which of these sites got neglected in November!

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

What Happened In November

Fuck if I know!

Seriously, I have been working more hours than usual in recent weeks, but I can’t give you a concrete answer on what I’ve done on sites.

Though I did spend a lot of time working on a new course that will be available soon. If you want in on the pre-order pricing, then act now. (you can sign up here)

The official release date is January 4th, 2021…but I might end up releasing it early (and ending the early bird price) if I get those finishing touches done sooner than expected.

That’s the first of two new courses that will be available in January.

There are new additions to the image copyright backlink scammers drama, and I’ll have a post on the latest for that soon.

Now let’s look at these sites!

The Sites – November 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

Here’s what you should know about this site:
  • Niche: Professional services
  • Monetization: display ads + info products + sponsorships/direct ads
  • Income Goal: I’ll be happy with $2,000/mo but I think it has the potential for low to mid to high four figures monthly (if not more).
  • Growth Plan: HARO, joining niche relevant groups/forums for traffic leaking, ebooks/books, social media marketing. This will be a large site/brand.
  • The case study angle: building a successful non-affiliate site

It’s hard to work on sites that are doing nothing, huh? I feel like people don’t readily admit this, but the struggle is real.

You think, why put in time on something that’s not bringing any rewards to the table? Sometimes finding that motivation is a challenge.

That is 100% what my problem is with this site.

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So, how do you overcome something like this? For me, it’s spending money as a commitment – money on content.

On Cyber Monday, I bought five of the platinum packages at Word Agents (100,000 words total). Not all of them are going to be used on this site, but now I’ve got no excuse to not get content up since it’s already paid for.

That being said, I did manage to add one new post to the site during the month.

The curious thing is that traffic dropped by almost 60% compared to the previous month. Not sure why as I haven’t really dug into it yet.

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New posts for this site: 1

I wrote that one simply because I happened upon a great keyword while researching something else. I’m not interested in this niche and don’t really enjoy writing content on this topic.

New links for this site: zero

I responded to two HARO requests in this niche, but so far no new links have shown up.

Summary for site #1: Another month of fucking around on other sites and neglecting 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 + expanding beyond Amazon + beyond Google traffic

So, this was an interesting month for this site. I managed to get the site into Ezoic early, which I’m excited about cause Q4 ad rates are always the highest of the year.

However, the traffic for the site dropped pretty much the entire month and I’m not sure why. Overall, I’m looking at around a 16% drop in traffic compared to the previous month.

site 2 analytics drop

I haven’t investigated why this happened, or which posts dropped, simply because it’s a low earning site and my other sites that earn more take priority.

But, if you’re in this situation, then you should use Google Analytics to see which posts saw the biggest traffic loss. And you’ll also want to see if you experienced a drop in a traffic source (i.e. maybe you used to get a lot of traffic from Facebook, but that dried up).

Since I’ve been buying guest posts from NO-BS, my guess without even looking into things is that some of those links got devalued.

My plan of attack here is to prepare to switch gears from link-focused to content-focused (as I mentioned last month). Eventually I’ll dig into the data behind the drop, but I’m not really worried about it right now.

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New posts for this site: zero

New links for this site: one

Despite no attention from me at all, this site managed to earn one natural link – and from a decent DR site, too!

Total income for this site last month: $106.74

Honestly, I’m a little surprised that this site had a slight fall in income.

With all the fixed product tables from the previous month, plus the addition of Ezoic, I really expected to see a small income increase. But, it’s looking like I need to get some fresh content up to bring in more traffic and income.

The income for this site is a mixture of AdSense, Ezoic, and Amazon affiliate. I use AAWP for the Amazon links on this site.

Summary for site #2: Income is slightly down and traffic is slightly down. One new link pointed at site.

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. 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

Though traffic was down just a teensy bit for this site, it was still a good month for it. And hopefully a glimpse into what I have to look forward to in January.

This was the best November that this site has EVER had, which is really exciting. But at the same time it makes me really anxious about getting the income up to my goal.

It’s like it’s so close that I can taste it. And I just wanna be there now.

I know this feeling. And I know that it’s dangerous because it can result in shortcuts that harm a site in the long run.

So, while I want to put things on turbo speed here, I know that I still need to focus on doing things the right way and not the fast way.

I’ll be really focused on adding massive amounts of content to this site for the next few months. That’s what I’ll do with one of those platinum packages at Word Agents that I bought on Cyber Monday.

In fact, I’ve already ordered up 14 articles from them just yesterday.

site 3 analytics drop

New posts for this site: 15 (9 outsourced at $0.06/word at Writer Access, I wrote the rest)

The articles were a pretty even split between informational and affiliate.

New links for this site: two

I didn’t build any links for this site, but I did manage to score natural links – including one over DR50!

Total income for this site last month: $1,856.66

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: Slight drop in traffic but an increase in income. Highest November earnings ever for this site.

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

Man, this site is one of my favorite projects that I’ve started this year. I’ve mentioned before that I have another older site in this niche.

But what I didn’t tell you was how this site is different and why I didn’t just continue growing the older site. I actually am still growing the older site.

That site is 99% affiliate focused. This site is 100% informational content.

You see, I knew this niche is profitable from an affiliate standpoint, but it’s also pretty competitive. I didn’t even consider going the informational route until a little over a year ago when I was doing niche research for another site.

If you recall last update, this site saw a nice growth in traffic. Well, that traffic growth is continuing.

site 4 analytics up

I’m really happy to see that, since I spent more time working on the new course than I did creating content for this site. That increase is around 60% compared to the previous month.

And it’s all organic traffic too!

Though I have to say that I’m kinda bummed that all those Facebook posts that I setup to auto post throughout the month didn’t really result in much of anything.

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New posts for this site: three

All written by me cause I’m loving this niche.

New links for this site: zero

Not really focused on this right now.

Total income for this site last month: $0.00

Still not monetized.

Summary for site #4: Nice traffic increase, rankings on the rise, fresh content added. Boom!

New Expenses for November 2020

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

Here’s new expenses for the sites for November:

Site #1

  • $7.00 Digital Ocean droplet at Cloudways (two sites on this server, so I split out the cost for just this site)

site 1 nov exp

Site #2

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

site 2 nov exp

Site #3

  • $22.45 hosting with BigScoots (this account is split with another site)
  • $533.29 for articles via Writer Access

site 3 nov expenses

Site #4

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

site 4 nov expense

Final Thoughts & Summary

Income trending up is always a good thing, and it would be especially troubling if it didn’t in November with all the holiday shopping starting to rev up.

If these were my only sites, then it be around $1400 profit which is decent enough. Of course, if these were my only sites then a hell of a lot more work would be done to them each month and it would show in the revenue.

It would be great to see a big December from these sites, but honestly I’m not sure how it will go with the current state of things due to COVID-19. What I can tell you is that my overall expenses for these sites will increase in December because I’m doing a big content push for at least one of the sites.

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

Month’s summary:

all sites nov expenses

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.

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