Hey peeps, welcome to month 6 of my content site case study.
If you want to check out how I grew the site to where it’s at now, you can find my previous posts here:
If you’re new here, I started a brand new site on the 1st of this year with some very simple goals:
- Publish as much SEO-focused content around low-comp keywords as possible
- Invest no time or money in link building or outreach
- Monetize preliminary with ads and some affiliate stuff where possible
- Create a nice passive income stream
So far it’s going pretty well, I can’t complain. It’s been far from what I expected due to a little thing called the global pandemic, but I’ve done my best to roll with the punches.
Anyway, here’s what happened in June:
Contents
Traffic and Earnings Stats for Jan-June 2020
| Month | # of articles | Pageviews | Ezoic earnings ($) | AdSense earning ($) | Affiliate earning ($) | Total ($) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 31 | 109 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb | 70 | 677 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar | 86 | 6,533 | 0 | 0 | 11.49 | 11.49 |
| Apr | 33 | 30,001 | 190.84 | 18.89 | 64.84 | 274.55 |
| May | 35 | 48,275 | 474.67 | 46.83 | 94.60 | 616.10 |
| June | 22 | 42,748 | 454.75 | 60.41 | 62.52 | 577.68 |
| Totals | 277 | 128,343 | 1,120.26 | 126.14 | 233.43 | 1,479.83 |
Ad Revenue for June
I had a very similar EPMV as May and similar traffic numbers, so it’s no surprise that the ad earnings are similar.
The numbers are actually down a little. This is mostly due to traffic being slightly less and because there’s one day less in June than May, just little things like that.
Here’s a screenshot of the Ezoic earnings:
I was listening to the Publisher Lab podcast – a weekly podcast from the folks at Ezoic – and they said the ad revenue index is starting to go back up now.
So here’s hoping that I see an improvement in EMPV next month. Even a $1 dollar improvement would bring in an extra $45 or so, I’d take that.
I’ve been really happy with Ezoic so far though, I can’t think of a better way to earn from ads at this point.
If you’re not yet using Ezoic you should sign up and at least give them a try. I’d appreciate it if you used my affiliate link here – let me know if you do and I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.
Amazon Earnings for June
Clicks and earnings were down pretty hard over last month. I’m still only using very few affiliate links on the site, and most of this traffic is coming from just one post.
I started adding more links last month, I’d like to drive more clicks and make more sales from Amazon (obviously).
I still only feel comfortable recommending products that I have either used or know 100% is exactly what the person wants though.
I can’t bring myself to just list out a load of high priced products, recycle reviews from Amazon, and call it a “best of” post.
I did finally get around to adding the Canadian store to my OneLink and made a few sales there too. I didn’t set up any tracking codes though, so I have no idea which of my sites are responsible.
Traffic Stats for June
It’s obvious from that Search Console graph that I’ve hit a bit of a traffic wall.
The May update did some weird stuff with how my new posts were indexing, and that peak at the end of the month was another small algorithm change.
To be honest, I don’t expect traffic to keep going up unless I put in more work. I hardly touched the site this month, so it’s on me to dig in and publish a load more content to boost the traffic.
I published 22 articles in June. All of which were around 700-900 words, pretty much the same as what I’ve been doing all along.
Maybe I need to mix it up and go for some long-form content and see how that indexes. I did add a new category and posted a few posts around zero monthly searches and some other experimental stuff last month, so I am thinking outside the box a little.
NB – I have several posts that have passed 100k impressions already. Not bad organic exposure considering I was targeting single keywords with 0-200 monthly searches.
Time Spent on the Site in June and Rough 6-Month ROI
I spent about 25 hours working on the site throughout June. Let’s be honest, that’s not a lot of time.
“Passive income” is a subjective term, but it’s fair to say I’m riding some of that passive income wave right now – which is what niche sites are all about, right?
Seeing as I’m at the 6-month mark, I thought I’d check what kind of ROI I’m running on the time spent and expenses to-date.
There’s a bit of bro-science here and I’ve rounded figures for simplicity, but the rough figures shake out like this:
Earnings to date – $1,480
Site value* – $18,000
Expenses to date – ($100)
Net value – $19,380
Time invested (hours) 350 (Probably less if anything)
Estimated $ value per hour $55.40 (ish)
*Based on last two month average earnings and a 30x multiple.
I’m happy with how this is working out so far. I’m not banking on anything though, in the world of SEO and niche sites, there are no guarantees.
I’ve lost bigger sites to an algorithm update before. So trust me, I know this all hangs in the balance.
Anyway, that’s about all that happened in June. How’s your projects going? If you have any comments or questions, feel free to drop me a note below.
Awesome work. Happy to finally see your update. I was checking all day yesterday but then I realized that there’s a huge time difference between our countries which means it’ll
most probably be posted on the second of June here lol.
Anyways, I have noticed that you mentioned in a prev post in a comment that you’re going to post about how you write your content (on page SEO I guess). I really can’t wait for that, I need it more than anything else. would you please let me know when are you planning to post that? Just so that I know when to expect it.
One last question, it would be great if you let us know what plugins are you using on your site. Are you using Rank Math? Many people on Reddit are complaining about it, what’s your recommendation?
Thanks, Ahmad. I have your email, I will email you when I publish that post if you want?
Yes, I use RankMath. It seems fine, I don’t always have to make my posts “green” though, you know. I do my own thing for the SEO for the most part, In fact a lot of my posts had a “red” score out of 100. I like some of the other features, like quick drop downs for nofollowing links, I used the FAQ schema, and it reminds me to do meta desc and stuff.
The plugins I use are;
Contact form 7
Easy table of contents
Monsterinsights analytics
Imagify
Insert headers and footers
Rank Math
Tablepress
W3 Total Cache
Cheers!
Sure, please feel free to add me to whatever mailing list you have.
Thank you for the info, can’t wait for your on page SEO strategy.
Best of Luck !!
Hey, Phil.
Thanks for the quick update, I have been waiting for it like anything. Overall, this site seems on a good track. All the best, can’t wait for the July update.
Thanks srihari, appreciate it. Got a task on my hand now to push the traffic up, will see what I can do!
Hey Phil! Great Results!
Just a small request. Can you also add the number of words published per month on that table? It would be really helpful.
Best wishes for the future.
Seems like a lot of people like knowing the word count. I will run the plugin and grab up to date stats for next month then, no problem.
I just watching this one video on keyword research whereby I’ve stumble one of your comment recommending case study. I am really glad that i did . Thank you very much. Your honesty and transparency is really appreciated thanks again
Thanks, Dem – hope it helps!
Hey Phil,
Your post on keywords with free tools was recommended (and the comment was upvoted) on reddit and I found it so helpful! Thank you so much for sharing this.
And I hopped on over to your blog, and found this post (if my site ever qualifies for ezoic, i for sure will be hopping on your affiliate link). Thank you for sharing this update, and I, too, would be interested in the word count per month! Also interested in the word count per article, but I assume that’s about 800-1000 or could also vary on the competition.
Thanks, Sil, and I’d appreciate that of course.
Here is a screenshot showing the latest word count and average per article for my site.
https://gyazo.com/5403c25876a07b759e43c3c99c241f87
Thank you SO much for sharing this!!
Where in the world did you get a 30x multiple on the last two months of earnings? I want to do that too!
Hi Dave
Even in the short time since I wrote that post valuations for sites have gone up a lot. Browse some of the large brokers, marketplaces, and website flipping communities to get an idea for site multiples. I’m seeing sites going for much higher than x30 with very short earning histories.
Hi Phil, do you add images and do interlinking on your posts?
Hey, Lisbeth – I only add a header image for most posts, sometimes another image if it’s really needed. I always interlink a lot yes, usually 5-10 links per post.