Authority Site: Quarter One 2017 Report

Well, we're off to a good start in Q1 2017. The website is earning nicely for two major reasons:

  1. All of the work I have put into the site in the past 5-6 months is starting to pay off.
  2. We are entering the peak season for the niche.​

In my 2016 year end report, I said the focus for 2017 would be:

  1. Hit a Natural Cap on Affiliate Earnings
  2. Escape the Fragility Trap of Affiliate Earnings
  3. 10x YouTube Channel Growth
  4. Scale Content Creation 2-3x

Let's see how I've done so far!

Quick Navigation
Major Work Done in Q1
​Purchased a Website
Started a Podcast
Systemizing Content Promotion + Hiring
Quarter One 2017 Revenue Report

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While doing research for a piece of content, I stumbled across a site that looked perfect: out of date design wise, but solid rankings on "OK" content, all related to my niche.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:

  1. Map out all of the articles to my existing site
  2. Migrate them over to my site
  3. Improve, reformat, and optimize them
  4. 301 redirect the old URLs to the updated and improved new ones on my site
  5. 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:

  1. Expand my presence into another media type that will retroactively boost existing content (more on this later)
  2. 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?