It’s time for a quick recap of November!
My 100% white-hat experiment is still going… And it’s been a very encouraging month.
Traffic and revenue grew steadily in November, and Black Friday weekend & Cyber Monday have been the cherry on top of the cake bringing a good amount of affiliate commissions during the last few days of the month.
Based on historical data for my sites, I was expecting numbers to go up, but it didn’t actually go the exact way I was planning.
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First of all, Project 4, while bringing in a good chunk of my revenue, generated about half of what it made a year ago, in November 2019.
It’s due to 2 factors. First is the fact that Amazon slashed its commissions at the end of last April, so you need a lot more traffic to generate as much money. Second is the fact that I haven’t published any new content on that website since last February because I’ve been focusing my investment on Project 5.
Talking about Project 5, the site keep growing at a steady pace and revenue increased by over $300 in a single month. That’s quite encouraging and I can’t wait to see how it will do in December.
All my other projects were quite stable and to be honest, I don’t pay any attention to them (apart from the occasional WordPress update) as they keep generating a bit of change completely passively.
Let’s take a look at the growth of my various projects:
What about the money?
Here is a summary of the money flow for my various projects.
To make this report easier to understand, I’m using a simple color code: green numbers are positive, red numbers are negative.
Please keep in mind that these figures may not be 100% accurate due to various factors such as refund requests and network adjustments. The terms for each payment may also vary. As a result, these numbers may differ from the actual payments issued and received.
| Income | $3,145.85 | ▲ $1,131.67 |
| Affiliate | $1,690.70 | ▲ $794.98 |
| Ads | $1,430.15 | ▲ $386.69 |
| Sponsored Posts | $25.00 | ▼ $50.00 |
| Expenses | -$3,982.02 | ▲ $1,533.48 |
| Content | -$3,541.08 | ▲ $1,255.54 |
| Ezoic | -$421.94 | ▲ $277.94 |
| Aweber | -$19.00 | -/- |
| Earnings | -$836.17 | ▼ $401.81 |
Since this is the first time I hit over $3,000 in monthly revenue in 2020, I’m pretty excited.
It should have been a month in the green if it wasn’t for one of my writers delivering a batch of content weeks before due date, so I had to pay earlier than expected. Overall, it’s not a big deal as it will reduce my expenses in December significantly.
Still, I lost less than $900 in November, so it’s almost a win in my book. And that “loss” isn’t actually a loss since it’s investment in new content that will bring bring in new visitors and revenue for months or even years to come.
What’s happening next?
December is always a tricky month. The first 2-3 weeks of December are always super exciting as everyone is shopping for Christmas, then things fall of a cliff around the 22-23 of December, when it’s too late to receive deliveries before Christmas day.
So far, numbers are encouraging but I don’t expect to hit the same kind of numbers as November. If I’m being honest, I’m not even sure I’ll hit $3,000 in revenue.
No matter what happens, I’ll keep you posted in my next income report.
Stay tuned for the next update!
