- Date Range: June 2022
In the equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean, there are large stagnant swatches of the ocean called “the doldrums.” It’s a band where the trade winds collide and cancel each other out. In ye olden times, sailing vessels could get stuck for weeks, even months, in the doldrums, praying for a breeze to startle the placid waters.
June is the doldrums of the blogging world. There just … isn’t much going on. It’s a good time to take a vacation. Or better yet, start writing content that will peak around the upcoming holiday season!
I hate to say it, but June may have been my most boring month yet. None of my sites jumped or dived. They flatlined. The money trickled in. A lot of money trickled out (mostly paying for content). I feel like a farmer stuck between planting and harvest season.
YOU NEW TO THESE PARTS, STRANGER?
New to My Income Reports?
If this is your first time visiting one of my Income Reports, welcome! (Here’s a strong, firm handshake). Let me explain how they work.
I report how much income I made or lost every month. These reports help me analyze and track my progress, and they (hopefully) help you benchmark your own performance. I don’t have to worry about boasting about my income because as of now, my income is non-boastable!
I don’t disclose actual URLs. Like a good journalist, I keep my sources safe.
New to FLUB?
If you’re visiting FLUB for the first time, sit down and stay a while! This is my blog about blogging, or more specifically, about my journey to create a six-figure income stream through info blogging. I’ve been doing this since April 2021, so I’m still a greenhorn!
With the exception of FLUB, none of my websites are in the how-to-make-money-online niche. I’m reporting straight from the front lines.
Income Report Table for June 2022
| INCOME | |||||||
| Niche | Size (Posts) | Type | Ads | Affiliate | Digital Products | Physical Products | |
| Website 1 | Transportation | 100-200 posts | Info blog | $488 | $156 (?) | – | N/A |
| Website 2 | Transportation | 200-300 posts | Info blog | $194 | (?) | $95 | N/A |
| Website 3 | Travel | 30-100 posts | Info blog | $1 | – | – | N/A |
| Website 4 | Outdoor Recreation | 30-100 | Info blog/online magazine | – | – | – | – |
| FLUB | Online Business | 0-30 posts | Info blog | – | – | – | N/A |
| TOTAL | $683 | $156 | 95 | N/A | |||
| EXPENSES | |||||||
| Hosting | Content | Labor (Other) | Software Subscriptions | Advertising | Other | ||
| TOTAL | $32 | $1059 | $0 | $111 | $0 | $110 | |
| REVENUE | EXPENSES | PROFIT | |||||
| GRAND TOTAL | $934 | $1155 | ($-221) |
LEGEND
- N/A = Non-Applicable, Not Offering
- ( – ) = Not Monetized (Yet)
- $0 = Attempted Monetized, Haven’t Make a Dime
- ? = Bad reporting, not sure of exact numbers.
REFLECTIONS ON THIS MONTH
Where I Came From
Fun fact: June is typically an AWFUL month for advertising revenue.
- It’s the start of a quarter, and brands tend to spend the least of their advertising budget at the start of a quarter.
- It’s a month without a big consumer holiday or federal holiday weekend, which means there’s less reason to buy stuff and services.
- And lots of advertising agencies consider June the end of their fiscal year. CPM drops like a rock.
And as you can tell, June wasn’t a great month for advertising revenue. My pageviews stayed consistent, but my EPMV dropped. Ah well!
I told you last month that I was trying out Jasper AI. Well, I canceled my subscription after one month and I wrote a full review of Jasper AI here.
Jasper AI wasn’t what I expected. It has a certain … oilness to it. It reads like a sleep-deprived highschooler who wrote his essay in the last 12 hours and is hoping you won’t realize it’s a casual rephrase of Wikipedia (with added commentary).
Where I’m Going
I spent over $1,000 this month on content, exclusively on Upwork contractors.
I have such a love-hate relationship with content contractors. I feel like a ‘49er California gold miner panning for gold flakes in a mountain stream. Most of what I scrounge up is dirt – but hopefully, there’s enough gold to make the sluicing worthwhile. It’s part of why I wrote the article, “No sh*t Sherlock – the curse of bad blog writing.”
The trick is to always have people write from experience! Even a bad writer can craft an interesting story about their own life. And if you’re lucky enough to find a good writer with an interesting life – well, there’s your gold.
Despite all the headaches, I’d rather pay real humans for their stories than regurgitate the internet with an AI writer or content scraper. Yuck.
Summer will be a slow season for me. I’m an outdoor-a-holic, and with summer in full swing, I’ll be spending a lot of time climbing, kayaking, or cycling.
How I Make Money Online
My Content Strategy
- I specialize in info blogging. I build authority niche websites with a focus on evergreen content written by people with hands-on experience.
- At present, I don’t drive traffic to my websites other than organic SEO and a very, very limited presence on social media platforms, namely Pinterest. I’ve done virtually no active backlink building or guest posting. Therefore, I don’t expect significant traffic to a website for 6-18 months after launch.
- I’m working on too many websites. I drip content (1x post per week) onto every website, but I’ll publish at least 2 posts per week on sites I’m actively growing.
My Monetization Strategy
In general, I aim to average 500 views per post per month with an average EPMV of $40 from all revenue sources. This month, EPMV dropped because of advertising revenue.
Affiliate Marketing
I earn a few hundred dollars a month from Amazon (which I also have a love-hate relationship with), and spare change here and there from other affiliate partners. But I feel like I’ve barely tapped the potential of affiliate marketing.
I am becoming firmly convinced that it’s only worth hawking products that sell for at least $100. Commission rates on a $20 pillow or $30 headphones just aren’t worth the hassle of maintaining affiliate relationships (not to mention tracking all the links!)
If you can market a product that sells for over $500, even better! That’s where I’ve had the best luck. I prefer selling quasi-necessity goods rather than purely uxury goods.
Advertising
I use Ezoic for all my sites monetized with Ads. I’m a Premium Publisher. Currently, advertising makes up the lion’s share of my income. Because my content is usually long-form response posts to search queries, there’s ample inventory, and Readers are open to buying products or services to fix their headaches. I love that advertising is so easy, but I dislike that it’s purely a scale-numbers game.
Digital products
I’ve just dipped my toe into this field. I sell a few digital downloads via Etsy, and while each one may only make $10-$30 a month, if I can build up a portfolio of at least 50 digital products, that’s not a bad income! And it’s wholly passive.
I did release two new digital products this month, but I’m only expecting $10 a month or so from each. I honestly released them to round out a portfolio, not so much to gain income.
Strategies I Haven’t Used (Yet)
- Email marketing. I have a confession to make. While I’ve been passively growing my email list through newsletter subscribers … I don’t even have a newsletter :/ I just stockpile email addresses in subscriber lists.
- Social media marketing. I’m not on Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, Whushmygush, or whatever other social media platform is currently blowing up. I’m a member of several blogging/content creator groups, and everything I see about becoming a social media pop star makes it look exhausting.
- Pay-per-click. I’m a firm believer that paid traffic should never be sent to your general site or blog post, but to a targeted landing page with a high-value call-to-action. I don’t have a high-value CTA right now, so no need for paid traffic.
