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What a month May was.

By far my highest earning revenue (and profit) month on the books…ever. 

A lot of things contributed to that, which we’ll talk about in the report, but it was really a great month to experience.

Aside from that, I also had my first hacked website!  (Joy…)  Unfortunately, this vulnerability lead to FOUR of my websites being hacked. 

So, I guess it was a way for me to get knocked off my pedestal of feeling good, lol.

As I write this, we’re still dealing with the issues that this hack caused and though things are getting fixed, it’s a pretty bad attack and it’s still hurting some of my websites. 

I’ll get into further detail within the report, but just hope that you never get hacked.

I’ve also decided I’m absorbing my wife’s website into my business to help her grow something of her own.

It’s in the whole beauty/fashion/makeup niche which is something I have NO interest in, but I just enjoy the process of growing websites, so it’s pretty easy to plug her into my process as we already found a good writer.

Lastly, I had a TON of sign-ups for my flagship course on the OneHourProfessor website this month.

THANK YOU to all of you that got the course.  I really appreciate you trusting me to teach you how to create an online business. 

It’s helped me realize that maybe it’s time I consider getting back into teaching people about creating websites.

More on that within the report…(Look in the OHP Project Update if you want to skip right to it)

Oh, and I also made a house/office tour for you guys to compliment this income report.  Enjoy!

This month my total income after expenses was $19,327.22 which comes out to $623.46 per day.

Personal Life Update

Things continue to progress with our new house renovations (we’re 6 months in!) and I’m happy to say that we finally have a couch and were able to mount our huge new TV.

We had to wait on this because we completely redid all of the flooring within the house with new hardwood floors and it didn’t make sense to buy any furniture until that was done.

I haven’t actually owned a couch in over four years and it’s nice to finally have a piece of a quality piece of furniture that I didn’t buy from Craigslist.

If you’ve been following me for some time, you’ll recall that I lived in Brazil for about a year and even after that, I moved to an apartment that barely had any furniture because I knew we’d eventually be buying a house and I didn’t want to deal with moving it in.

Now that we have a house, we’re trying to actually decorate with adult stuff…so far, so good.

As a special treat for this income report, I have done a vlog just for you guys!

It’s a house/office tour.  Enjoy!

Aside from the house, my wife is back in Brazil and she’s going through her interview to finally get her green card.

This is essentially the last step that she’ll have to take prior to being able to come to the US full-time and travel in and out of the country freely.

It’s been over a year and a half since we started the process and though it’s been a complete nightmare, it’s finally coming to an end thankfully.

Oh, and remember how last month I mentioned that my wife and I would be rebooting our vlog channel on YouTube?

Well, I accidentally lied to you guys.

Instead of doing that, my wife is just going to incorporate me more into her YouTube channel and we’re going to do some videos together.

Her channel is mostly focused on beauty/makeup and such, but once in awhile we do a thing together that you all might enjoy.  Like….this video…which we recently did where I put on her makeup.

Spoiler….my makeup was terrible and it was actually not on purpose.  Turns out I just suck at putting on makeup.  Ahem.

That’s all for the personal update.

Before I begin the actual report, If you’d like to begin a similar journey as myself and try to create a passive income online business, I recommend you read this write-up I did.

It explains the truth about online business and should help educate you before you move forward with anything.

If this is your first time on my website let me explain a few things about my detailed income reports each month that outlines the money I made (or lost) each month.

I’m doing this for a number of reasons:

1) I strive to be transparent about what it takes to make money online.

2) These reports help me keep track of my own progress.

3) These reports hold me accountable.

Keep in mind, I don’t create these to gloat about my earnings. I create them to help you understand the true “earning curve” of online business.

On a side note, I don’t disclose my actual website URL’s on my reports because I’ve had bad experiences with copycats in the past.  So, in my income reports, you’ll see website generalizations like Website 1, Website 3, Website 5 Website 4, etc.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s dive into the report.

If this is your first time on my website let me explain a few things about my detailed income reports each month that outlines the money I made (or lost) each month.

I’m doing this for a number of reasons:

1) I strive to be transparent about what it takes to make money online.

2) These reports help me keep track of my own progress.

3) These reports hold me accountable.

Keep in mind, I don’t create these to gloat about my earnings. I create them to help you understand the true “earning curve” of online business.

On a side note, I don’t disclose my actual website URL’s on my reports because I’ve had bad experiences with copycats in the past. 

So, in my income reports, you’ll see website generalizations like Website 1, Website 3, Website 5 Website 4, etc.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s dive into the report.

How did the Income Report Turn Out This Month?

PRODUCT OR SERVICEREVENUEEXPENSESNET INCOME
Aweber Email Platform$20.70$20.70
ShutterstoWebsite 5 Images$51.00$51.00
Thrive Themes$70.50$70.50
OHP Course Sales$916.00$916.00
Partners and Affiliates Revenue
Website 2 Partners and Affiliates$13.48$13.48
Website 5 Partners and Affiliates$50.48$50.48
Website 6 Partners and Affiliates$69.38$69.38
Website 4 Partners and Affiliates$525.44$525.44
Website 3 Partners and Affiliates$1,303.40$1,303.40
Website 1 Partners and Affiliates$9,270.03$9,270.03
YouTube Revenue
Personal VLOG Channel$11.75$11.75
Website 6 YouTube Channel$33.58$33.58
OHP YouTube Channel$70.69$70.69
Media.net Revenue
Website 3 Media.net Ad Revenue$30.48$30.48
Website 4 Media.net Ad Revenue$53.35$53.35
Website 1 Media.net Ad Revenue$158.55$158.55
Google Adsense Revenue
Website 6 Adsense Revenue$2.13$2.13
OHP Adsense Revenue$4.14$4.14
Website 2 Adsense Revenue$8.77$8.77
Website 5 Adsense Revenue$10.69$10.69
Website 4 Adsense Revenue$170.35$170.35
Website 3 Adsense Revenue$3,566.19$3,566.19
Website 1 Adsense Revenue$8,150.39$8,150.39
Software Expenses
Adobe Photoshop Account$10.61-$10.61
Manage WP$14.00-$14.00
Mailshake Email Software$19.00-$19.00
Deadline Funnel$37.00-$37.00
Namecheap$38.88-$38.88
Intuit Quick Books$40.00-$40.00
Google Business Drive Storage and Apps$40.16-$40.16
Fiverr.com - Logo Creation$48.00-$48.00
Ahrefs$99.00-$99.00
Hunter.io - Email Address Finder$99.00-$99.00
Active Campaign$135.00-$135.00
Thrive Themes$147.00-$147.00
Siteground Hosting$256.33-$256.33
Freelance Labor Expenses
Freelance Research, Editing, and Misc. Labor$1,746.26-$1,746.26
Freelance Writing$2,504.01-$2,504.01
TOTALS$24,561.47$5,234.25$19,327.22
Revenue By ChannelWebsite 1Website 3OHP WebsiteWebsite 4Website 2Website 5ConsultingUdemyYouTube
May 2019$17,578.97 $4,900.70 $1,062.34 $749.14 $22.25 $61.17 $0.00
$0.00 $116.02
April 2019$16,273.68$4,078.83$239.73$700.42$9.53$46.05$0$0$76.86
March 2019$17,006.79$3,620.30 $439.88$931.22 $19.98$152.99 $0$20.24$76.24
February 2019$15,656.00$2,799.98$551.53$647.94$15.68$291.72$0$28.75$65.63
January 2019$16,483.03 $3,280.64 $469.30$1,009.83$10.41$401.91$600.00$45.75$76.52
December 2018$11,776.03$2,488.53$483.96$2,078.19$20.16$487.37$0$98.43$73.60
November 2018$12,886.78$2,324.75$657.86$789.26$10.67$386.31$0$205.87$79.91
October 2018$13,246.69$3,135.04
$369.22$747.29$15.46$306.89$150$93.27$83.86
September 2018$11,784.71$3,853.20$321.67$628.97$0.00$210.72$175$14.94$82.99
August 2018$11,556.29$3,266.47$512.72$980.89$5.31$39.81$0$97.18$93.63
July 2018$12,864.08$4,991.15$722.76$707.66$8.05$26.84$0$91.48$84.33
June 2018$11138.00$6,858.01$432.01$797.02$11.06$52.42$0$50.92$95.96
May 2018$9152.94$4,288.26$391.63$699.19$6.96$40.23$0$44.40$100.82
April 2018$9637.30$2,028.65$545.01$804.71$11.74$236.23$0$24.90$85.48
March 2018$14236.64$778.01$380.29$1362.83$13.78$224.68$0$80.61$94.79
February 2018$10918.94$382.03 $644.36 $838.51 $22.27 $454.08 $0$23.90$86.86
January 2018$7993.31
$467.71
$757.59
$718.04
$14.26
$486.99
$0$113.95
$67.06
December 2017$6707.43$432.22$785.74$555.72$28.50$114.05$0$59.21$96.12
November 2017$7545.13$574.91$480.41$479.34$17.70$4.31$0$187.01$90.40
October 2017$6859.17$617.67$265.38$319.02$13.06$0$135.59$66.71
September 2017$6781.51$348.16$673.87$223.95$11.31$0$81.39$58.13
August 2017$7429.92$391.68$945.04$181.93$16.36$0$133.91$63.57
July 2017$5658.64$344.91$1055.57$85.84$58.55$1,496.38$41.80$94.84
June 2017$5924.41$423.04$403.84$31.71$11.87$600.00$148.88$79.81
May 2017$6805.18$214.18$79.00$9.67$8.71$51.50$76.08$82.58
April 2017$8175.11$116.65$106.71$3.57$0$80.25$57.76
March 2017$9527.42$224.16$355.12$6.43$0$137.29$59.11
February 2017$3726.98$160.48$438.54$32.99$125$165.43$52.40
January 2017$4005.52$104.19$267.33$0$222.20$41.60
December 2016$3553.43$52.63$384.57$125.00$138.07$41.32
November 2016$3778.45$22.10$357.77$125.00$259.26$48.13
October 2016$3841.36$1.37$213.88$126.00$238.90$48.92
September 2016$3102.56$402.32$112.01$271.02$57.14
August 2016$3318.70$44.72$731.05$423.49$55.08
July 2016$3353.06$347.47$135.19$186.34$52.12
June 2016$3219.41$132.77$330.00$397.55$72.22
May 2016$4677.02$253.67$206.25$135.25$75.89
April 2016$5008.23$286.38$497.50$353.02$62.52
March 2016$2311.67$265.29$556.75$301.06$60.14
February 2016$2760.21$250.70$431.25$324.58$62.00
January 2016$233.00$117.58$1140.00$400.97$46.19
December 2015$121.30$76.00$1163.75$17.15$38.83
November 2015$138.11$39.00$1150.25$245.68$36.78
October 2015$107.72$89.54$760.50$49.50$40.65
September 2015$102.95$113.10$1112.32$17.49$27.46
August 2015$39.68$51.75$1463.75$12.05$25.09

This Month’s Income Outliers

Every month I have income that streams in from multiple sources and quite frankly, a lot of that is pretty regular. However, each month I tend to see a few line items that are drastically different from the prior month. In this section, I only discuss the items that have increased or decreased significantly.

There were three items that jumped out to me this month:

  • Website 1ub Income: This website has really been doing well lately and the only thing I can think of is that I’ve had my team revising a lot of content on the website and because of that, a lot of my rankings that I lost previously are coming back. This has increased the traffic and because we have the monetization strategy so dialed in, more traffic just equates to more money to the tune of about $60 per 1000 visitors.
  • OHP Website: The website you’re on right now generated over 1000 bucks in the month of May and it’s almost exclusively because of the podcast that I was featured on (Episode Here). Thanks again to Doug Cunnington at Niche Site Project.  This is the best month I’ve ever had for the website and it’s got me pretty pumped up.
  • Website 3: This website has a very strange seasonality aspect to it that I never thought of when I created it. Basically, this time of the year the earnings increase because the visitors increase.  If you look at my graphs from last year, June was actually the best month of the year, so I’m hoping that the same thing happens this year. That said, May wasn’t a bad month at all and is definitely something that I’d like to replicate consistently.

This Month’s Expense Outliers

Similar to the income I make every month, there are certain expenses that I consider “fixed”.  As I did in the income area, I’m only going to discuss the outliers or new items added as expenses.

There was one item that jumped out to me this month:

  • Freelance Writing: My writing costs are getting pretty significant and it’s a little bit tough because most of that is on the new Website 7 that I’m developing which hasn’t made any money yet. This was by far my biggest expense for the month but I don’t think that it’s all in vain. Odds are that I won’t decrease this expense as I want to keep in investing in my content as I know that this is what will eventually generate much more revenue.

Project Updates

Website 1 Update:  It was an amazing month for this website and I’m thrilled to say that traffic increased by 9.5% MoM.

The only thing that we’ve been doing here is revising content and this has to be the cause of the traffic increase.

Truth be told, I still need to revise a good amount of content and I have one writer going through 10 pages a week, but I should dive into more pages to make sure that I gain back all of the traffic that I lost from the past.

Last month I talked about how I was able to find an affiliate program that paid me somewhere between $400-$600 for a three-minute phone call…. But this actually had nothing to do with my earnings.

While that all sounded well and good, I didn’t generate a single lead for this affiliate like I was hoping.

But it’s okay, I’m still making good money in other ways and I’m definitely not going to complain about that.

Aside from revising some content, I just completed a pretty large database of information that nobody else on the Internet has.

This project put me further ahead of my competition and gives me just a little bit more authority.

I was able to basically make my own search engine within the website to give them a resource specifically to the state that they live in.

I can’t go into too much for the detail because If I do, I’ll give away what the website is, but generally speaking, there is a lot of generic information that goes around in this particular niche.

I was able to find a way to create specific information for every single state which is immensely helpful for what people need to accomplish.

This is a huge competitive advantage and I’m proud to say that I have no doubt my website is the best resource on the Internet for this particular niche.

Here’s a graph of the last 12 months of progress:

Month

Pageviews

Referring Domains

Total Earnings

May-19

296,686

594

$17,578.97

Apr-19

270,983

638

$16,273.68

Mar-19

257,616

639

$17,006.79

Feb-19

254,351

604

$15,656.00

Jan-19

333,317

597

$16,483.03

Dec-18

279,239

606

$11,776.03

Nov-18

319,096

600

$12,886.78

Oct-18

340,903

600

$13,246.69

Sep-18

301,207

596

$11,784.71

Aug-18

319,731

547

$11,556.29

Jul-18

330,002

561

$12,864.08

Jun-18

312,903

517

$11,138.00

May-18

356,722

553

$9,152.94

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Pageviews continue to climb and my hope is that I can get back to where the old numbers were last year.
  • I have no idea why referring domains fell as much as they did. I actually use the service to monitor all of my back links for link reclamation and I have my VA go through reports to make sure that we don’t lose back links without me contacting the people behind them. Maybe these were spam links? I’m really not sure, but you’ll see this one all websites this month for some reason.
  • You can’t see it in the graph above, but one of the best things about this month is that my “partner and affiliate earnings” for this website actually surpassed my Google Adsense earnings for the first time ever. This is a good feeling because now my website is very well diversified and if Adsense somehow goes away, I should still be okay.

Udemy Update: I no longer focus on Udemy and any income I receive is completely passive.

OHP Website Update: I was able to get 10 course sales for the month and this has me seriously thinking about doing something with this website.

I know I can grow a pretty big following and finally get to teach online business the way that I wanted to when I started years ago, but I’m just not sure if I should do it yet. I don’t want to commit to anything unless I’m going to go 100%, but I’m definitely kicking it around. 

This was a great month for the website and I sincerely enjoy talking to the new students that signed up for my course, but I’m just not sure if I should jump into this arena or continue doing what seems to work really well for me.

Here’s a questions for all of you readers….

Should I Start a Podcast?

I have to say that May was an eye-opening month for me. It all started when I was featured on The Doug Show podcast.

To be honest, over the last 5 years I’ve been heads down working on my portfolio of websites and have rarely gone on podcasts.

The reason was because I didn’t want anybody to try to steal my ideas and I’d much rather just spend my time focusing on creating successful businesses.

Then…this month happened…

Long story short, I was able to sell 10 copies of my flagship course and I realized something…

I’m pretty successful at this online business stuff.

It’s not like I’m trying to gloat or say that I have it all figured out, but I think I’m currently in the top 5% of earners in the online business niche and maybe I should capitalize on that.

I don’t necessarily have all the numbers in front of me, but I know there’s a heck of a lot of people who never really make it big in this industry and I’m realizing that I’m becoming one of those people that is in the process of doing so.

There is one thing though that sets me apart from all of the other people in this industry.

These income reports.

Yea I know, Pat Flynn did it and he was actually my inspiration, but he no longer does them and most people stop them after a certain amount of time. 

But not me, I love these.  It helps me keep a pulse on my business.

I’m starting to realize that I am an expert in this field and there are probably a lot of people out there that would like me to teach them how I’m able to do what it is that I do.

And even better, my income reports show them that I wasn’t an overnight success.

It took me years to get to the point that I’m at and I’ve made a ton of mistakes along the way and I think people understand and respect that.

So, I’m contemplating the idea of starting a podcast.

It’s actually always been something that’s been in the back of my mind but I haven’t acted on it because I look at it as a pretty big distraction and it is a GRIND to do.

At this point, I’ve been able to get to where I am by simply creating a portfolio of websites that very passively generates revenue every single day.

But a podcast isn’t passive.

I’ll have to find guests, I’ll have to be consistent, and I’ll have to build a team to help me produce it.

That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen, it just means that I’m not 100% sure if I want to commit to it yet.

I have the utmost confidence that I would drop some pretty big knowledge bombs on you guys if I went through with this, but I’m not sure if I want to do it.

The positives to this are:

  • Help people change their lives and create their own online business
  • Get to teach people (which I enjoy, I’m actually still an adjunct professor on the side)
  • Generate more income for business
  • Diversify business portfolio further
  • Meet a ton of cool guests once I’m established
  • Learn a lot of good info and tips from those in the trenches
  • Create a show in a format I want that I know I would listen to

The negatives are:

  • Opportunity cost of working on this vs. other websites
  • Email overwhelm will eventually become a problem
  • Not passive
  • Costs money to produce
  • Might not do well…no idea how people would react
  • I’ll have to create a lot more content to get potential students in the door

So, my question to you is, do you think I should start a podcast?

If I start this, it also means that I’ll be posting these interviews on my YouTube as well and I’ll eventually create more hour-long courses to help all of you be successful.

What do you think?

Website 3 Update:  Traffic increased by 32% for this website in the month of May and I’m hoping that the seasonality brings a spike in June like it did last year.

To be completely honest with you, I haven’t done a whole lot on this website lately because I’ve been focusing on other projects and I am only publishing one blog post per week.

But, the traffic continues to increase for this website and I’ve noticed that my rankings are typically hovering on page 1 somewhere.

Not always in position one, but still on page 1.

One of the frustrating things about this website is that there are a few different pages that I’ve been really focusing on getting back links to in an effort to get them ranked higher than my competitors.

These pages have many more page level links pointing directly to them than any of my competitors.

Now, most people tell you that page level links will push you above your competitors and while I do have some decent ranking with these pages, I can’t seem to push past competition.

Because I didn’t want to continue to create links to the specific pages, I decided to dive deeper into what the Google search results were showing.

Long story short, I suspect that the reason why I’m not beating my competitors is that my page isn’t similar to my competitors.

As dumb as that sounds, and as ridiculous as I think it is, sometimes Google just has specific types of pages that they want to show to website visitors and if you go against the grain with your formatting and goal of the page, it can actually hurt you in the search results.

I’ve absolutely gone against the grain and though I do get some traffic, I think that if I make my page more similar to my competitors I’ll be able to rank higher on the SERPs. 

That said, I currently have my developer adjusting some things on the website to make it so that my page is much more similar to my competitors.

Then, below all of that content I’m going to have all the stuff that I already have on the page so that I have significantly more information than my competitors do which will hopefully help Google realize that I have a better search result.

I really have no idea, but this is just an assumption I’m making because nothing else seems to work.

Hopefully next month I’ll report back that I’m on position one or two for these particular terms and if that’s the case, this website is going to really increase my earnings.

We’ll see what this will yield.  Consider it an experiment of sorts.

Here’s a graph of the last 12 months of progress.

Month

Pageviews

Referring Domains

Total Earnings

May-19

257171

421

$4,900.70

Apr-19

194433

482

$4,078.83

Mar-19

174087

473

$3,620.30

Feb-19

141825

405

$2,799.98

Jan-19

161334

441

$3,280.64

Dec-18

97508

450

$2,488.53

Nov-18

100689

462

$2,324.75

Oct-18

118331

460

$3,135.04

Sep-18

137652

471

$3,853.20

Aug-18

145395

408

$3,266.47

Jul-18

186643

383

$4,991.15

Jun-18

247176

339

$6,858.01

May-18

237151

349

$4,288.26

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • There has been some slow but steady growth YoY and this website seems to have really hit its stride. I still think we can improve it and I’m working on that, but I’m happy to see how consistent this website is becoming with its earnings.
  • Page level links don’t always push you above competitors. I tried and I tried to make this happen, but for whatever reason, it doesn’t seem like it worked for this particular website.

Website 4 Update: Another solid month for Website 4.

Nothing crazy, but I definitely have some pretty good earnings and I’m happy with the results.

This is one of those websites that I’ve neglected pretty strongly over the years but it just keeps delivering money every month.

Not only that, but we have an accompanying Facebook group with 21,000 members which is growing organically at this point.

I probably should just sell this website as I’m confident that I’d be able to get somewhere between $25,000-$30,000 for it, but the thing that always kills me about this is that I’ll have to pay taxes and a broker fee.

Assuming that a broker fee is 15% and taxes are 15% (long term asset), you’re looking at losing 30% of your total gain from selling the website right off the top.

Considering the website made me about $12,000 last year, I just don’t know that it’s worth it.

We’ll see what happens, but for right now I’m going to hold onto it.

Here are my statistics for this website in the last 12 months:

Month

Pageviews

Referring Domains

Total Earnings

May-19

51419

260

$749.14

Apr-19

51688

286

$700.42

Mar-19

56758

283

$931.22

Feb-19

55893

250

$647.94

Jan-19

62079

241

$1,009.83

Dec-18

58605

218

$2,078.19

Nov-18

56881

233

$789.26

Oct-18

56121

201

$747.29

Sep-18

57141

184

$628.97

Aug-18

57128

176

$980.89

Jul-18

54010

162

$707.66

Jun-18

49443

157

$797.02

May-18

47806

147

$699.19

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • This website is still as steady as it’s ever been. I rank very highly for most terms I want to and though I could do website revisions, I’m pretty lazy about it. 

Website 5 Update:  I’ve been ignoring this website the entire month because I’m still mad that Google doesn’t love it.

I said that I’d be doing this a few months ago to see how Google reacted to my changes and interestingly, it seems like what I’m trying to do is slowly working.

The page views are significantly down on this website, but the earnings are up and I’ve noticed that my affiliate income has been increasing.

I’m still going to give this website another month before I even look at it again, but for right now I’m happy with the trends that it’s showing.

It would be really cool to get back to this bad boy.  I had REALLY high aspirations for it when I created it, but it just hasn’t delivered yet.

Here are my statistics for this website so far:

Month

Pageviews

Referring Domains

Total Earnings

May-19

6847

318

$61.17

Apr-19

14922

346

$46.05

Mar-19

41295

372

$152.99

Feb-19

72698

379

$291.72

Jan-19

80255

359

$401.91

Dec-18

76156

339

$487.37

Nov-18

66606

323

$386.31

Oct-18

52613

293

$306.89

Sep-18

39651

286

$210.72

Aug-18

40756

259

$39.81

Jul-18

34117

240

$26.84

Jun-18

35544

226

$52.42

May-18

31276

216

$40.23

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Pageviews dropped again and I’m totally fine with that. Now I’m getting to the point where Google understands the important pages that I want indexed and I’ve seen my affiliate income increase because of this. I’m hoping that Google will continue to move these pages up the SERP and eventually I’ll be able to rank my Best X for Y posts on the first page. I have plenty of back links to do it for the domain, but it just hasn’t happened yet.
  • My earnings per 1000 visits (across all monetization channels on the website) is the highest it’s ever been at $8.93/1000. The highest it was previously was $6.40, so that’s a really big positive for the future. Now, we just have to figure out how to get the website back up there with traffic but it’s kind of on Google to figure this out.

Website 7 Update *NEW* 

This website is still a baby hanging out in the Google Sandbox.  We’re just focused on creating good content for now and I’m beginning to build a few back links to the website itself.

That still hasn’t stopped me from investing a significant amount of money into the website content.

I’ll tell you, it’s really nerve-racking because I have no idea if this website is going to succeed, but I have a good feeling that it will, and it compliments one of my other websites well, so I’m not going to stop.

How Much Have I Invested in This Website:

$4750

How Much Content is on the Website:

Keep in mind that this is an informational type of website, not affiliate related at all.  My plan is to monetize with AdSense and info products I create

236 Informational pages on the website

9 Informational Blog Posts 

As of now the total number of referring domains linking to the website are:

7, and of those, I feel 1 is legitimate

When did the website officially launch?

My first article was published on 3/26 and the website was first submitted to the Google index on 4/8/2019.

What Do I Plan on Doing in the Next Month With This Website?

Because this website is so new and I (suspect) that I got burned by building too many back links to quickly with Website 5, I intend on slowly growing this thing.

It actually sucks because I created a really good guide that I think a lot of people would link to, but instead of going crazy, I’m just going to reach out to a couple hundred link targets and try to get somewhere between 3-5 links in the month of June.

I’d love to do more than that, it I really don’t want Google to see things as suspicious and penalize me like I think they did with Website 5.

So, I’m just going to continue to create a heck of a lot of content and build a few back links so that this website has slow and steady growth over the coming months.

Below is a summary of the website so far:

Month

Pageviews

Referring Domains

Total Earnings

May-19

2393

7

$0.00

Apr-19

2045

2

$0.00

Website 6 Update *NEW* 

This website was a pretty interesting circumstance.

Many of you may know from reading my past reports that my wife is a social media influencer.

This is actually her full-time job and though it’s a very unconventional way of making a living, it’s pretty cool to watch.

For the longest time, she focused all of her audience in Brazil (that’s where she’s originally from), but in the last few months she’s decided that she’s going to try to create a following in America.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but the main one is that English speaking audiences bring in the most money.

So, my wife has put a lot of effort into Instagram and YouTube and took a few of my recommendations for her website and implemented them.

She’s definitely more of a creative and because of this, she’s spent so much time focusing on social media and her YouTube while effectively neglecting her website.

I wouldn’t care about this, but I started to see her ranking for some product reviews that she did related to beauty and I began to see how much money could be made in this niche.

Because of this, and because it’s really where my interest lies, I told her that I would take over her website portion of her business and she needed to continue to focus on the social media.

We’ve got a good writer in place along with an editor and my VA has been trained fully on how to structure and post all of the content on to the website. As of right now we’re only publishing two articles a week, but we will increase it in the future if she starts making some cash.

I’m working with her to do a pretty unique link building campaign where we are using her Instagram account to entice other people to link to the website.

So far, we’ve been able to get three confirmed links out of a couple hundred targets, so we have a conversion of around 5%.  Which, if you do link building, you know that isn’t too shabby.

A good sign is that the content that is created on the website is almost immediately ranking on page 1 and though it’s not in the top spot, this website is completely out of the sandbox and it’s something that I enjoy seeing those instant results for.

For the sake of the income report, I’ve decided that I’m going to include her YouTube, Affiliate, and Adsense revenue in my own income reports because this is just going to be another part of my business portfolio.

While she’s completely running it and enjoys the day-to-day stuff, I’ve basically been able to inherit the project and help with the strategic direction while she implements a lot of the strategy.

It’s really tough for her right now because she’s not seeing a lot of growth and things are moving slow, but that’s always how this starts and over time with the accumulation of all of her efforts, I have no doubt we will yield some very good results.

By the way, THIS was the website that got hacked.

This is the website that was hit really hard with someone who hacked into our server this month.

Long story short, the were able to sneak in through one of my plugins (Contact Form 7) somehow and edit some of the main theme files and inject Malware. 

This basically created over 100,000 fake URL’s for the website that are indexed in Google and every time somebody clicks on one of those URLs, it redirects them to a third-party website which injects Malware into the computer they are using.

To make this hack even more insidious, this website was ranking in Google for things like “Child Pornhub”. 

Which, obviously, is very disturbing.

That said, I kind of like that people who is searching for something like that gets Malware on their computer if they click the link.  That is the type of thing that just shouldn’t exist and shame on anyone looking for it.

I digress…

I’m working with my developer and we’ve already been able to get rid of a lot of the fake URLs and redoing a lot of different things to fix the problems. We’ve been able to revoke the access to the hacker in multiple different ways and now we’re just working on cleaning a few things up.

I’m really hoping and long-term that we can tackle this quickly so that Google doesn’t fully understand what’s going on and it doesn’t get her website penalized.

The worst part about all this is that because this one website got hacked they were able to do the same thing to multiple other websites that I own.  They didn’t get my big money makers with Website 1 or Website 3, but they did get a hold of Website 4 and CK so we’ll see if we can stop the attack from really hurting anything there.

How did it get hacked?

We’re not 100% sure how this website got hacked yet. But, I didn’t have my standard security plug-in installed (Webarx) and I’m willing to bet that if I did it have it on the website, it would’ve stopped the attack before it even happened.

I don’t want to say too much right now about this because I’m not really sure what’s going on, but I may write a separate blog post about this or maybe even make a YouTube video once it’s done.

How Much Have I Invested in This Website:

It’s hard to say how much was put into this website prior to my involvement.  But I think a good estimate is $1000 for the design and the content/video editing up until this point.

Using that figure as a baseline, and the current investment of about $450 per month, we’re about $1450 into this project so far.

How Much Content is on the Website/YouTube:

This website is mostly focused on affiliate content with some informational.

92 Blog Posts

16 YouTube Videos

As of now the total number of referring domains linking to the website are:

73 and I’d say of these, only about 15 are legitimate.  The rest is probably spam and junk.

When did the website officially launch?

The first article was published on 6/26/2018 so it’s been about a year.  However, I’m just now getting involved heavily with it and my wife never worked on it fully in the past.

What Do I Plan on Doing in the Next Month With This Website?

I’m still learning a lot in this market and not 100% sure exactly what we’re going to do yet, so right now I’m just having my writer create two pieces of content a week and we’re doing some back linking.

Obviously, this month I want to completely rid the files of any malware hacking issues that we have and see how the website does after that’s completed.

For right now, I think that will just be creating content and building links using Instagram while removing the Malware is the focus.

If this website starts to rank a little bit better and makes a little bit more money, I’ll happily have the writer create another piece of content each week…or 5 additional pieces and I’ll reinvest every dollar that we make to make it bigger than it currently is.

Here are my statistics for this website so far:

Month

Pageviews

Referring Domains

Total Earnings

May-19

5989

73

$35.71

Lessons Learned

Every month, I’m going to reflect back and tell you a few different lessons that I’ve learned. My hope is that the lessons each month will be a cautionary tale for you that makes it so that you don’t make the dumb mistakes that I do along the way.

  • Use Security Plugins – even on small websites: Malware sucks, don’t be dumb like me… Take time to install a security plugin to make sure your website (or portfolio of websites) don’t get infected.  I use Webarx personally, but you can also use Wordfence. 
  • People actually want to buy my course: I get 1-2 sales a month from my course usually, but this last month helped me realize that people WANT to hear what I have to say.  It’s funny because I’ve just not even tried for so long, but this month was a wake up call.
  • Link Building requires creative thinking: Instagram to link build?  Yes please!  I’m realizing that link building is a creative endeavor and though many people hate it, it can be pretty fun if you think of creative ways to do it.

Did I Meet my Goals for May?

Revise 40 Pieces of Content on Website 1 (SUCCESS)

Done and done.  My writer is focused exclusively on revising content and it seems to be helping.  Now I just need to figure out how to make him revise the better content I usually do myself.

Get 5 Links to Website 7 (FAIL)

I did nothing with this and I’ll blame it on the Malware distraction.

Figure Out How to Fix Website 3 (SUCCESS)

After analysis, I have a plan and strategy we are implementing to try to fix this.  I am not sure if it actually WILL fix the page so that we get ranked higher in the SERPS, but we’ll see.

What Are my Goals for June?

Get 5 Links to Website 7

Repeating this one because I didn’t finish it last month.  I have two link building campaigns all set up right now, so I should be able to make something happen.

Implement solution on Website 3 to try to get better rankings

My developer is already on this trying to fix it.  We are still working on it, but I want to have it finished by the end of this month.

Review Flagship OHP course

First off, thank you guys who signed up for the course.  I made this quite some time ago and though I designed it to be evergreen, I think it makes sense to review some of the content to see if some things have changed.  All of you who signed up, don’t worry, you’ll get full access to the revised course.

What are your goals for the month?  What questions do you have?  Let me know in the comments below!

  • I like the reports and it really gives me some great insight and ideas on things I should work on as well 🙂

    Random question – About your hosting setup (I am also with Siteground – I simply love them)

    What plan are you on? Do you host all your sites on the same server or spread them apart?
    Over the years I have tried both, just wanted to hear your thoughts on the matter 🙂

    • Thanks Dave, glad you enjoy them. For my hosting, I have them separated.

      JFFH – Has it’s own server because it gets too much traffic.
      This website is on a shared server because it doesn’t get a ton of traffic and I don’t want people to find my other websites.
      All of my other websites are on a dedicated server. Basically, when they get too big for that server, I just move them off of it on to a dedicated one. Also, this was the server that got hit with Malware this month 🙁

      • Cool – I feel like in a few months I might need to upgrade my server as well 🙂 Starting to outgrow the SG shared server limits LOL

        Did you go for a Managed Cloud Hosting or an actual dedicated server?

        I had a similar malware story a few years back. in my case, it was due to a plug-in not being updated. No matter the reason it sucks to need to deal with that type of stuff and divert your time and effort

        • I stuck with Managed Cloud hosting, a dedicated server still isn’t worth it for me because I don’t have enough traffic.

          And yea, Malware sucks. The people behind it are miserable.

  • Really inspiring stuff, Ron! You must be stoked to see the growth that you did in only a month! Also, your house is beautiful. It’s just the bones right now, but boy does it have a nice layout and structure. It’s really neat to see your progression in the last few months with the new things you’re sharing. Just think… pretty soon your yearly income could surpass a quarter of a million dollars. How damn.

    • As always, thanks Kyle. The house is a money pit but it’s really coming together quickly. Actually going to pick up the cabinets today for an install tomorrow. Trying to share more/do more as I’m starting to realize a lot of people are actually watching me. And yea, the income thing. Honestly, still can’t believe it. I remember when I was hoping to make $500 in a month…and now I make more than that each day. Insanity.

  • Really excellent results again, Ron. Congratullations. 20K is just around the corner 🙂
    I wonder how you manage all this while fixing the house (thanks for the great video – gives a completly different touch to the site now).
    Hope that the hacks to your sites don’t cause longterm harm – I had it some years ago and am only recovering now (3 yrs later). Since then, focus on security (WF) and always installing the latest updates to WP, plugins and themes (and keeping the plugins to a minimum to reduce possibilites for introders).
    Lots of success
    Tom

    • Thanks Tom, appreciate the kind words! I can honestly say it’s all possible only because I’ve spent a lot of time hiring good people and putting them in place. We actually think we may have buttoned up those issues. This is the first time I’ve ever had this happen and it was absolutely my fault, but there are just two more files to tinker with and we’ll be good. I hired a good guy for it, he knows his stuff!

  • Congrats Ron! And you house/office looks amazing

    Curious, why do you use adsense and not a higher paying network like mediavine or adthrive

    • Thanks Dami, appreciate it!

      I actually applied and was reviewed for Adthrive and they told me they didn’t think they could increase my earnings enough to justify the change. I was shocked to hear it, but I guess that means I’m pretty decent at the optimization so I took it as a compliment. Haven’t looked into Mediavine, but I may…

  • Hi Ron, impressive results. I should have come across your website earlier.

    How do you get $60 per 1000 visitors? Most keywords should be only $1-2 in CPC.

    And considering your Adsense earning $8,150.39, and your pageview 296,686, isn’t it $20 RPM?

    Thanks

    • Hey Sky,

      The RPM is calculated across all revenue channels, not just a single one. I’ve spent a SIGNIFICANT amount of time monetizing my websites and over time, collectively, these are the numbers that they equate to.

      I am not able to confirm/deny the RPM for Adsense as discussing this is against TOS.

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