Well, we're off to a good start in Q1 2017. The website is earning nicely for two major reasons:
- All of the work I have put into the site in the past 5-6 months is starting to pay off.
- We are entering the peak season for the niche.
In my 2016 year end report, I said the focus for 2017 would be:
- Hit a Natural Cap on Affiliate Earnings
- Escape the Fragility Trap of Affiliate Earnings
- 10x YouTube Channel Growth
- Scale Content Creation 2-3x
Let's see how I've done so far!
Major Work Done in Q1
Purchased a Website
While doing research for a piece of content, I stumbled across a site that looked perfect: out of date design wise, but solid rankings on "OK" content, all related to my niche.
I looked up the WhoIs info and tweeted the owner, who said he forgot he even owned the site.
We negotiated a rate of $10 per existing article on the site, of which there were 96 total. So I got this site for $960 + escrow fees.
Did I mention that the site had ~800 quality backlinks and roughly 20,000 uniques a month? Total jackpot find!
In essence, what I did was buy a category of my site all at once. My plan for the site is the following:
- Map out all of the articles to my existing site
- Migrate them over to my site
- Improve, reformat, and optimize them
- 301 redirect the old URLs to the updated and improved new ones on my site
- Sit back and enjoy the increased traffic and earnings
I'm about 50% done, prioritizing the articles that will move the needle the most and then figuring out the best way to migrate or improve the remaining lower-priority ones.
Started a Podcast
I know, I know. I have a goal of "10xing YouTube Channel Growth", but started a podcast? Well, the fact remains that YouTube is still not a good revenue generator for the site until I have a product or service of my own to offer.
I decided to start the podcast for two reasons:
- Expand my presence into another media type that will retroactively boost existing content (more on this later)
- Reach a new audience and increase likelihood I can land a book deal or bigger brand work.
The podcast is a daily tips show with episodes no longer than 5-6 minutes. This makes it stand out in a category where most of the podcasts are rambling and 40+ minutes long. I want my audience to get quick and informative answers in a fun way...every day.
It's been a week and I'm averaging 100 downloads a day...not bad for a new podcast.
More on how I promoted it in a future article.
Systemizing Content Promotion + Hiring
There is no way around it: the biggest ROI on my personal time right now is spent not on creation of content, but on promotion.
I have much of my content creation systemized already and only need to solve one more piece: the formatting and uploading. Once I record a few training videos and hire some help there, that should be completely off my plate.
That leaves content promotion, a task I usually hate doing. Luckily, I know it moves the needle and have started to put time into systemizing it so I can eventually hand off the lower-level tasks in content promotion as well.
I do almost exclusively guest posting, collaborations, and "skyscraper" style link building. I prefer to keep my promotion efforts 100% above board, unlike many competitors and other people in this industry. I find that I feel better about myself and often get better results anyways, so it's a win-win.
Quarter two will see the content creation on my site almost 100% outsourced, and the promotion elements 100% outsourced as well.
Quarter One 2017 Revenue Report
As always, Amazon makes up the bulk of the revenue for the site. This quarter saw a few larger purchases in January, which boosted income nicely.
Here are the other sources of revenue this quarter:
- AdSense - $579.42
- Clickbank - $34.36
- YouTube - $377.80
- Amazon - $9,602.04
- Ezoic - $693.00
- Content Writing - $1,000.00
- Other Ads: $97.38
Total Revenue: $12,384.00
If revenue remains stable for the rest of 2017, I'm looking at making $49,536 from my site in 2017. That would be around 2.9x what I made from the site in 2016, roughly fulfilling my 3-5x growth goal for the site. Not bad!
But I can't assume that revenue will remain stable — and on top of that, I should be actively looking to grow it!
As a result, I'm revising my 2017 revenue goal to be 5x of 2016, putting the new target at $86,310.
How have the first three months of 2017 gone for you? What are you going to do more / less of?