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July was a pretty difficult month to be inspired for my niche progress. Despite earnings still being fairly poor, traffic was growing in a steady way.
In August, the traffic growth took a much bigger jump than usual as the “Helpful Content Update” rolled in by Google.
Let’s get into the details with my blog income report for August.
Watch the income report
What happened in August
Here are some of the things I’ve been doing in August:
- I struggled to find a writer or editor to add to my team, but eventually onboarded an additional writer into my team (now 3) from OnlineJobs.
- Published 23 posts onto the main site (2 less than last month). Over 30,000 more words added and mostly in a much lower word count as I’ve been focusing my team on topical relevance, filling out subcategories on the site.
- Checking on HARO requests and actually landed a Tier 1 link!
- Site 2’s DMCA issue finally resolved and the site has began growing again.
- I still didn’t accomplish much with my PR campaign, as training a new writer, freelance work, and life stuff took up most of my time.
Site #1 Google Search Console
Site 1 reached 31,800 organic clicks and 1,230,000 impressions.
Pushing on from July’s success in reaching over a million impressions, it continues to rise up!
You can see on this graph, a significant spike around 20th of August and a higher maintenance towards the end of the month, too.
CTR and positions stayed about the same, so we were literally just seeing way more traffic potentially for August.
So GSC shows that my main site reached over a million impressions, which is dope!
The Helpful Content Update began rolling out around 25th August, which doesn’t quite coincide with GSC.
But the week prior to the spike, I received a Tier 1 backlink from a HARO response I made which doubled my DR for this site (it was really low).
I definitely felt the positive effects of that link!
Site #1 Analytics
One thing to note immediately is that I’ve moved from using Ezoic’s Big Data Analytics for graphs and data this month. That’s because my Google Analytics data isn’t broken for once, and I need to start relying on it for Mediavine’s requirements of 50,000 sessions visible on Google Universal Analytics.
July represented 37,172 visits (sessions) on Ezoic, but 32,957 in Universal Analytics.
So transitioning to UA analytics data, there were 37,010 sessions for August compared with 32,957 in July.
(And just to book-end the difference, Ezoic shows 41,926 visits (sessions) for August. You always have to take these numbers with a pinch of salt, they all show something different.)
What I need is to get my last 30 days sessions to be 50,000 or higher in Universal Analytics.
Based on the recent growth spurt in latter August, I’m feeling far more confident about reaching this goal in the coming months. Hopefully before Q4!
Overall the stats are as follows for August:
- 37,010 visits/sessions in August (12.30% increase)
- 42,220 page views in August (11.76% increase)
- 1.14 pages per session in August (0.48% decrease)
So I’m still 13K visits/sessions away from Mediavine.
Towards the end of August, my daily average has been much higher. I know that I need a 1.7K daily sessions (average) to hit the 50K requirement.
Site #1 EPMV (Ezoic)
My EPMV graph shows me that while my traffic has grown, the EPMV hasn’t changed a whole lot. A few dips here and there.
This graph is showing July and August to have an easy comparison. As you can see, nothing much to shout about here.
Site 1’s EPMV for August was $6.30.
Pretty shocking ad rates for my site, isn’t it? This is also down from July, which had a $6.41 EPMV.
Site #1 Earnings (Ezoic)
This daily earnings graph shows what this site is making in cash between July and August 2022.
You can see some slight growth towards the end of August, where Ezoic’s ad partners have stepped up to improve the earnings.
All the while, in recent months, meditation (AdSense) has been generating a bulk of the earnings.
It took a long time for this to happen, it just seems to translate for me that Ezoic as an ad network and the type of niche I have is not a happy handshake.
In researching other sites, I feel that I’ve seen sites more similar to mine do much better when transitioning to Mediavine. That’s why I’m so eager to reach that goal.
It’s coming, I can feel it!
Site #1 Amazon Earnings
Before I get to the overall earnings, I wanted to make note of my Amazon earnings for August. Which hit $106.62 total from Amazon Associates.
In the past, I had purposefully steered clear of Amazon mostly. If I was ever recommending products (which was rare), I would utilise Skimlinks (which connects with many other affiliate networks in one tool) and go for the higher commissions.
But after seeing many peoples success with Amazon over early-mid summer, I changed my tune and knew there was some work I could do.
In recent months, I have:
- Written a handful of product-based “best X for Y” content
- Combed through my top posts to skim read them and look for opportunities to recommend products as solutions where there wasn’t any before
Both these together have seemed to take effect. I slowly noticed the Amazon clicks increasing each day, and eventually more commissions came in.
For context, my highest month for Amazon Associate earnings was back in December 2021 with $60.92.
December is the biggest month for these kinds of commissions, but the site had much less traffic back then (around 11K sessions).
These are the last three months Amazon Associate earnings:
So for the last three months, those earnings have (almost) doubled every month. I’d say that’s pretty great progress, and something to be chuffed about.
Which leads me into the full income report.
Site #1 Total Income
My main site earned a total of $387.07 in August 2022!
This was a new record! After the previous record of $360.90 from May 2022.
Since May, the traffic has been up and down due to Google updates and the revenue sources have changed a fair bit as I’ve had less Ezoic Premium revenue and the Adsense and affiliates growing.
Whatever the source, it’s something to celebrate!
Closing in on $400 earned in a month of passive income (sorta) is awesome. It’s nearly $100 more than July, too.
To sum it up, in August, site 1:
- Made $387.07 in income. An increase of $93.33.
- Had $744.40 in expenses. A lot spent on content with my team, but also some chunkier payments like Grammarly Premium.
- Profit/loss for this month was a loss of $357.33.
- Running profit/loss (entire age of the site) is now a loss of $1,150.71.
Some progress in income, but still spending a pretty penny.
Most of the expenses are paid for by selling two smaller sites back in May 2022. So it’s not exactly coming out of my pocket, but reinvesting profits from niche sites into niche sites.
Site #1 Stats & Value
- Articles published in August: 23
- Total articles: 198
- Total words published: 350,000+
- Average word count: 1,750
- Blended RPM: $10.46
Almost hit 200 articles by the end of August. Plenty of words. Still a high average word count despite lots more shorter content being published.
Now that I’ve corrected the session counts to use Universal Analytics, the blended RPM (which combines ad & affiliate revenue) becomes a bit more healthy than what was previously reported.
The traffic is growing, but the revenue is taking a good jump, and the typical earnings per thousand visits is simply getting better because of it.
Site #2 Google Search Console
Site 2 began to recover again as a super-post’s DMCA was lifted due to a false claim, and the traffic began to restore.
The site still fluctuates plenty, and that’s probably because there is AI used to publish a handful of posts a couple of months back.
I’m not bothered. I don’t do anything to this site, I just let it ride. All my attention is in site 1!
Site #2 Analytics
Back to Universal Analytics for Site 2’s data, you can see the considerable growth of doubling users and sessions. It just needed it’s super-post back.
Here are Site 2’s traffic metrics for August:
- 7,129 visits/sessions in August (106.82% increase)
- 8,068 page views in August (102.82% increase)
- 1.13 pages per session in August (1.94% decrease)
Onto the income.
Site #2 Income
Site 2 is back in profit!
It earned $20.83 in income with a profit of $8.23!
Still no plans to do anything else with this site except leave it sitting on Ezoic for eternity!
Overall Profit & Loss
Overall, my niche site efforts are still net positive with $1,563.65 in profit.
Despite the fairly chunky loss on Site #1, 2-3 good months could change that really easily.
Here’s hoping from hereon out, we grow to 50K sessions. Move to Mediavine. Improve content RPMs. Things can change fast in this game!
What I’ll Work On In September
So looking ahead, what I would like to achieve in August:
I hope to make September a 30-post month finally.
We’ve almost got there the last couple ‘months, but September should easily hit that mark.
I have around 13 pieces of content coming in from sponsorships with Content Pit (you can use code NICHECAMPUS to get 10% off your order) and Hands Off Publishing (use code NICHECAMPUS to get 15% off your order).
More on those reviews to come soon.
September could easily be a 40+ post month, which would be great!
While I would love to have more niche specialist writers for my site, it’s been hard finding any more from OnlineJobs.
I’ve hired one in August, I need to give them more training time to see if it can work, and feel that if I had to write more myself that would be the simpler option than trying to outsource tons – the training is very draining.
I will be continuing to test affiliate optimisations like CTAs, sidebar, popups, etc. To see what other affiliates can work with my site.
I’ll be working on a direct partnership for a product launch that is relevant to my niche, and then be an affiliate partner thereafter.
So it will likely become a large focus of my site to promote it with high commissions.
Not much else to say other than content, content, content!
The big goal remains the same: Get 50K sessions and apply for Mediavine.