Here is the 3rd update for my Niche Site Project, Keep It Simple, Steven.
The update includes my income report for May 2023, along with traffic stats and other things that happened in May.
Here’s a quick look at last month’s stats:
Quick Stats
Pageviews
1,256
Income
$89.28
Articles
30
Overall, I’m really pleased with the income the site made in May.
However, I didn’t update or publish the amount of content I was hoping for.
But, any progress is good enough for me.
If you want to read previous updates about this project, you can find them here.
Let’s dive into this update and income report.
Table of Contents
What Happened in May?
Last month, I wanted to update 10 articles and publish 5 new articles.
Unfortunately, I only managed to publish 1 new article and update 5.
Still, I am noticing how important it is to update old content.
Mainly because I made double the income in May than I did in April, but with the same amount of traffic.
Sure, there was a commission increase in May, which could have contributed a little, but the Amazon associate tracking explains a lot.
Just look at this graph:
The conversion rate was 23.75% in the first half of the month when commission was still at 3%.
This is a super high sales conversion. Getting 10% to 15% with Amazon is about average and an excellent conversion, but over 20% is 😍
Compare that to the second half of the month:
There was a commission increase from May 15th (ends June 18th), but the sales conversion is still over 20%. This confirms the extra revenue without the extra traffic isn’t down to the commission increase alone.
Maybe May is a busy month in my niche? Who knows, but it won’t hurt to keep optimizing the copy of my articles to see if conversions stay high.
What else happened in May?
I added Ezoic ads back to the site. If you don’t know what Ezoic is, they’re an ad network that provide tools to place ads on your site.
I was going to wait until I had more traffic, but I wanted to test a few things.
To keep the site as user friendly as possible, I’ve limited the number of ad placements on the site and kept the settings to a minimum.
I can monitor how much different types of content earns and focus my attention on producing content with higher income rates, also known as EPMV (Earnings Per Thousand Visitors).
Lastly, I tested out more AI tools to refine my process for creating high-quality content.
Here’s what my current workflow looks like:
- Harpa.ai to summarize the first page of Google results
- MarketMuse to find related keywords for the article
- KoalaWriter for creating the article outline
- ZimmWriter for creating the first draft
- And ChatGPT to expand on topics and fill in missing details
Detailed Traffic Reports
Search Console
Search Console shows the site received 735 clicks from Google and 43,919 impressions.
I find it so interesting that I only received 735 visitors (73 less than April) from Google, yet I more than doubled the income.
There were more impressions, but less clicks, so CTR is lower, yet way more money!? Can’t complain with that.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing impressions are still on the rise with 2,100 and 65 clicks for May.
Google Analytics
May’s total traffic was 980 visitors, which is 20 less than April.
Pageviews in May were slightly higher at 1,256. This tells me that more people who land on the site are clicking through to other pages to read more content.
I’m aware how low these numbers are in the grand scheme of things, but I’m hoping these update motivate smaller niche site builders with little traffic.
Other Stats
Rank tracking
I added more keywords to SerpRobot and saw an improvement in Google rankings.
The average position in April was 43, so 33 is a decent improvement.
Income Report
Amazon earnings
I made $86.93 in Amazon commissions in May. That’s $45.16 more than April. A 108% increase.
This is exciting, because it’s only $20.92 away from my best month, which was back in April 2022.
You can see on the graph that my best day in commissions was May 27th at $18.23 ✊
Ezoic earnings
I added Ezoic ads back to the site on May 18th. I wanted to get a baseline of how much the site can make at the bare minimum.
As I mentioned, there are very few placements on the site as I don’t want to bombard the little amount of traffic there is with an overwhelming number of ads.
When the site is getting double or tripple the traffic, I’ll make some adjustements.
All in all, the site made $2.35 from Ezoic in 2 weeks. Almost half the cost of web hosting.
The best day was May 29th at $0.27. The ePMV is very low, probably due to the low number of ad placements.
Excited to see how the progresses in the next few months.
Total income for May 2023
The site made a grand total of $89.28. So, I almost doubled the income from March to April, then I more than doubled the income from April to May.
Can I double the income for June? If it’s meant to be, it’s up to me.
Expenses
Expenses for May were $12.47, which was for NameCheap hosting and SerpRobot.
That is a net income of $76.81 in May 2023 and a net loss of $-485.27 for the entire project so far.
You can read the total income for the site in my project announcement.
Plans for June
Plans for June will pretty much be the same as last month.
Update articles and add new ones. I’m confident that I can do better and keep improving my workflow.
Something else I might start in June is create Pinterest pins and add them to my Pinterest board.
I think Pinterest could be a good source of traffic for this niche, so I will give it a try to see how well it goes.
Conclusion
That is it for this update.
I’m feeling pretty positive with the income, even though content production has been pretty slow.
See you in July for June’s niche site update.