February 2022 Niche Site Portfolio Income Report…😰📉 (What Happened!?)

So this is the infamous Q1 effect I have been warned about? Despite traffic and everything else being up, ad earnings are down! I had such a smashing month last month, it isn’t even right to be disappointed.

And, in fact, I am far from disappointed.

Everything else is up, which means when we get over this Q1 hurdle, things will be well, I’m sure. Not only that, but with February being a shorter month, it isn’t all that surprising.

All across the board, I’ve been hearing about how earnings are down so we will just have to charge it to the game! (See what I did there?)

Let’s get into the highlights for this month and what I have done on my sites!

Highlights:

• Site 7 has crossed $150 this month!
• The low EPMV of Site 7 continues to bring my overall portfolio EPMV down; $20.35 in February (Down from around $22 in January)
• From Ezoic I earned $557.41 (only $33.89 more than last month) from 27,386 unique visits (3,428 more than last month).
• From Amazon I earned a combined total of $171.52
• From digital products I earned $25.42
• From other affiliate programs (combination of ShareASale, Awin, etc. as well as niche specific programs) I earned $194.74

Total earnings: $949.09

Total spend: -$636.57

What Has Happened This Month…

Nothing new to report here. Not actively adding articles on it at the moment. Nice to see it growing, albeit very slowly. I have a better idea of what works and what to go after when I pick it back up in the future.

This is definitely not an abandoned project!

This site is just costing me hosting at the moment (and I guess a share of Ezoic Premium, which would mean it is still in the red technically)

I haven’t done the best job in tracking my spend on each individual site in the past, and I realize I am probably the only person who hasn’t. These days I am doing a better job; using a free spreadsheet I got from Tortoise Cashflow.

---

Nothing has changed on this site as of February 2022 in terms of content. However, watch this space, March we have picked it back up!

I have been doing a lot of keyword research and although the niche is competitive, there are some easy wins all over the place. There is also a lot of room to improve existing articles and try to rank for more keywords within those.

I will have two writers working on new content while I go back and improve existing content and find more affiliate opportunities.

---

No new content added.

---

I have no plans to do anything additional to this site for now. It has an active Pinterest page where all the articles have 5-10 pins that had been published using an automated service over the past year so it continues to get both organic and Pinterest traffic.

Everything seems to be in the red on this one, however, and the EPMV is pretty low at just under $8. You can see that if February had that extra day or two the statistics would have been quite consistent with January’s.

---

---

Nothing to report as far as content or plans for now.

---

My Thoughts

I will now be shifting my energy back over to Site 2 to make the most of those high EPMVs the site is getting.

Site 7 is still a success to me, despite my plans for it to be primarily monetized by ad revenue falling through. The site’s Amazon revenue continues to grow month-on-month, and as Doug has mentioned, there is still more opportunity to further monetize it by going directly to the brands and product manufacturers in the niche.

For now, I will sit on it and watch what it does!

My plan is still to build Site 7 to sell, so I probably won’t leave it too long before going back in with more content.

I want all of my sites to be earning the bulk of their income from display ads because although Amazon is great, they are known to switch things up on us affiliates often! I am using the premium display ad network, Ezoic. If you have a blog and want to improve your earnings, I definitely recommend giving them a go!

What I Am Doing At The Moment

Hiring More Writers

I have hired another three writers and they’ve begun cracking on with content. My templates have made hiring super easy. It is a breeze and something I actually enjoy doing! This week I have made even more templates that I plan on adding to the zip file!

Hiring a Virtual Assistant

I have hired an amazing virtual assistant on Online Jobs who is in the onboarding phase. This is going to help me scale up tremendously, as she is well-versed in many aspects of my day-to-day.

Onboarding Documents & Training

Scaling up any business by expanding your team is a huge upfront workload. I have been creating training videos and accompanying documents to help both future VAs and writers.

These have been pretty straightforward to do, but they are time-consuming as I am still doing these day-to-day tasks.

I go about my day, and then start writing a script and bullet points of what I am doing on a specific task and use QuickTime Player to screen record. I then record the audio of the notes separately, sync them up with the video, and, voila!

Again, huge upfront workload, but man, does it feel good being organized and having a whole folder full of documents and videos of exactly how I do things.

For ages, I have said that I need to replicate myself and now I am. It is a scary thought at first and one that holds many people back from expanding their business. If this is you; two life-changing books come to mind:

1. Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris
2. Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki

Tim talks about outsourcing pretty much everything that can be outsourced – this book helped me scale up by hiring more writers.

Robert talks about the different ways in which we make money; as an employee, self-employed, business owner, and finally, an investor. If you really want to go from being self-employed to a business owner, you are going to need to make that shift!

The following three things are my new go-to tools, I have put them on my Resources list, if you want to check that out and see what other tools and things I use for different aspects of blogging.

Keyword Research & SEO

These are a few new things I have done/used this month.

Rank Math + Content AI Credits

Rank Math has a new feature; Content AI. Which gives your article a score in realtime and shows you what you can improve on based on what your competitors are doing to get into the top ranking positions.

The free Rank Math is good enough but Content AI is a credit system and it is not part of the free nor the premium plugin. However, you can use them with either. I really like how Rank Math is developing overall; it is definitely a bit of a swiss army knife.

Keywordtool.io

I LOVE this keyword tool. I can’t remember how I came across it but it is my go to tool. I will do a review on it in the near future.