This is the 42nd income report as part of the zero backlink experiment.
Every month I will publish a post like this one that shows you how this blog is progressing and everything I have done across the month to get it there.
These reports will help me track my own progress while teaching you what to do and more importantly what not to do.
What I Have Done In March
Lots of things were catching up with me in February, so I was happy to move past all of the problems of life this month.
I’ve been focused on making lots of improvements to the blog, some you may have already noticed and others are behind the scenes.
That trend is going to continue through April as I have a list of things to attack that will improve the user experience end to end for everyone although some of these tasks are real grinders that take the wind out of my sails.
So with that said, let’s take a closer look at what I have done in March.
Improved Main Navigation
In my annual reader survey, one of the most common complaints that came up is that my blogs navigation was terrible which made it hard to find previous posts.
This is largely because when I started the blog, I did a terrible job at planning my categories – and when I say terrible, I mean really really really terrible.
The only categories I have setup are Income Report, Experiments, Interview, Reviews, Talks, Tips & Tutorials.
That in no way, shape or form aligns to any of the topics that I cover on the blog and is so far from user intent it’s unreal.
So to fix that, I went through nearly 300 posts and came up with a series of tags that I could then use to improve the navigation-
Let me tell you, that was a very painful process to go through but it was a necessary one.
Now it’s possible for me to link directly to just SEO case studies or blogging tutorials or just everything to do with email marketing by combining tags.
So with those new abilities in hand, I updated the menu structure in the header-
I only deployed this a couple of days ago so I am yet to see if it it’s a major impact on key engagement metrics.
Either way, it definitely helps to make content more accessible for you all!
Published Lots Of New Testimonials
One of the things that I love the most as a blogger is all of the wonderful feedback & testimonials I receive.
It’s truly amazing to see that what I am teaching people is having a real world impact and helping people to improve their position in life.
Take a look at just a few of them-
I reach 50k uniques a month following your advice, Matt !!
There have been very few people in the SEO industry whose influence on me did so much to change my approach to SEO, affiliate marketing and creating great content. One of those special people is Matthew Woodward. His tutorials are easy to follow and replicate. I was able to get workouttrends.com from zero to 50,000 uniques per month within 7 months of launching after following his advice. Thank you for the blog. I learned a lot from him over the years.
Anant Mendiratta - Workout Trends
More traffic & more money
I had a little niche with no more than 100 visits per day and after follow your tutorials the traffic has grown to more than 1,200 visits per day and that means more money for me. Thanks so much!!
Johnny Galo - DKSignMT
From not knowing anything to becoming a major influencer
I honestly did not know much about SEO. I thought guys in fiverr can rank you number 1 but I soon learned through experience not to do so. My wife and I started a waist training company and I was in charge of the business side of things. I spent multiple days reading articles, most of which being Matt's articles and putting the knowledge to work. In about 4 months the company started making thousands per month. January being the sixth month was the most successful and we are now getting closer and closer to making 5 figures a month. Thanks Matt.
Brian Nguah - Royal Lioness
I was able to double organic traffic
Hi Matt, Your online tutorials are quite easy to follow and replicate. I was able to double the organic traffic in many of my clients’ websites relatively easy in very short time. Keep up the good work.
George Papatheodorou - Digital Bang
Matthew helped us make hundreds of thousands of dollars
Matthew Woodward's advice and insight is always spot on. My business has literally made hundreds of thousands of dollars (and our clients have as well!) thanks to his advice. Our company has greatly benefited from his blog and we look forward to each post. Keep up the great work!
Andrew Stickel - Social Firestarter
Honestly, I just have no words.
And those are just the one’s that I’m allowed to display publicly!
I had a huge backlog of testimonial submissions so this month, I went through everything and published a bunch of them.
If by any chance my blog has helped you, then I would love to hear about it.
You can read all of the published testimonials here.
Giving Away Free Copies Of My 6 Figure Blogging Theme
Way back when I was just starting out in the blogging world, I used a really badly coded theme and hacked it to death.
Not only did this make it really slow which affected my traffic from Google, but it also had lots of different problems depending on which browser you used. Never mind the fact it wasn’t mobile responsive and there was zero support from the developer.
All of that was really holding back my progress as a blogger, so I decided to do something about it.
So I hired a team to rebuild from scratch and add a bunch of my most wanted features at the same time.
This is the theme you currently see live on the blog.
That was over a year ago and since then we have been testing, tweaking and changing things to not only improve the user experience, but also to increase conversion, social sharing and search engine rankings.
So this month I decided to share the love and package my theme up to giveaway to 3 lucky people.
The giveaway closes for entries today, so if you would like to win a copy of my 6 figure blogging theme – enter now!
I will draw the winners tomorrow so keep your eyes on your inbox if you have entered, it’s amazing how many times I have had to re-draw prizes in the past because people didn’t respond.
Bought A New Car
Last month I was complaining about my car breaking down constantly, mainly because it is a 1989 Suzuki Sidekick with over 300,000km’s on the clock that is constantly abused off road-
Other than it’s constant break downs and despite it’s age the car runs beautifully and it’s approach/departure angles means it can handle any terrain you throw at it.
Not only that but it has been in 2 crashes since I owned it which destroyed the front ends of 2 new cars and barely left a scratch on mine.
But despite all of that, the one thing we cannot buy more of in life is time. The car was costing me huge amounts of time so I decided to take the plunge and buy a new car so I didn’t have to worry about anything for years to come.
So I picked up a shiney new Suzuki Grand Vitara which arrived yesterday-
You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to buy a new 4×4 that can actually handle seriously off road rocky terrain.
At some point in the last 30 years car’s seem to have lost their balls. Solo quiero un carro con huevos!
Honk honk!
Content Creation
I published a total of 6 posts this month which exactly the same amount as last month.
We started the month by looking at how to choose the right email marketing software for your business.
That was shortly followed by the longest post I have ever published which showed you 465 different ways to make money online weighing in at 13,176 words.
I also published a post to announce the launch of my theme giveaway.
Other than those we just had the regular income report roundup post and the very best of internet marketing post.
Crunching The Numbers
So let’s get our hands dirty and take a look at what my lack of attention to the blog has done to the important metrics.
Visitor Statistics
Traffic showed a steady improvement this month from 48,316 (1,666/day) to a comfortable 52,439 (1,691/day) this month around.
I would still like to see this float around the 60,000 mark each month and I have a number of improvements to make to the blog this month that will help support that.
Most Popular Content
The 465 ways to make money online post stole the show this month with 8,354 pageviews in total.
That was followed by this tutorial that shows you how to build private blog networks with expired web 2.0 sites.
It’s always great to see some of the older posts performing well, such as this guide to make money with Fiverr & how to create a 6 figure membership site.
Top Traffic Sources
Not much has changed in the top traffic sources this month which are still dominated by organic search and social.
Although it was nice to see Bing jump into the top 10 for the first time in a long time!
Search Engine Traffic
Traffic from Google showed a slight drop this month from 37,193 (1,282/day) to 39,382 (1,270/day) but I am working on a master plan to increase that over the next month, so watch this space! Mwahaha!
YouTube Views
I lost all of my historical YouTube views because of changes I made to the branding – so I keep track of them separately.
YouTube views showed a small increase this month from 22,456 to 23,847 this month but that is probably just because there are more days in March than Februray.
This also meant that total minutes watched increased from 105,486 to 113,433!
Social Shares
This month the total social shares across Facebook and Google+ increased from 49,161 to 49,767.
Subscribers
The most important metric on the entire blog – earning a subscription from someone is the ultimate form of commitment and conversion.
This month brought 2,338 new subscribers which is nice increase on last months 2,118 new subscribers.
There are now a total of 133,757 subscribers across all of the various channels!
- E-mail – 1,352 (1,257 last month) / Total: 73,011
- Twitter – 358 (286 last month) / Total: 11,586
- YouTube – 244 (242 last month) / Total: 10,726
- Facebook – 365 (167 last month) / Total: 20,068
- Google+ – 1 (11 last month) / Total: 17,866
- RSS – 18 (177 last month) / Total: 500
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Income Report
Here are the numbers you really want to see-
Affiliate Earnings
- 48HoursLogo – $30.00
- 99CentArticles – $162.71
- Active Campaign – $1.80
- Ahrefs – $448.18 (my case study)
- Aweber – $176.70
- Blog Advertising – $1,018.94
- Blue Chip Backlinks – $350.00
- BuyProxies – $148.00
- BuzzBundle – $61.63 (my tutorial)
- BuzzStream – $1.90
- CheapWindowsVPS – $1.70
- CMS Commander – $12.00
- Drip Revolution – $74.92
- FCS Networker – $248.28
- FreshDrop – $53.86
- GetResponse – $4.69
- GSA Captcha Breaker – $714.97
- GSA Search Engine Ranker – $598.23 (my tutorial)
- GSA SEO Indexer – $141.60
- HQ Biz In A Box – $13.80
- Indexification – $3.99
- JustHost – $480.00 (start a blog tutorial)
- Kontent Machine – $550.20 (my tutorial)
- LeadPages – $282.60
- LinkEmperor – $273.67 (my tutorial)
- LongTailPro – $381.39
- Magic Submitter – $30.34
- Manage WP – $6.00
- OneHourIndexing – $447.08 (my tutorial)
- OptinLinks – $27.34
- PandaBot – $120.00
- PowerupHosting – $99.00
- PrivateInternetAccess – $40.00
- ProxyHub – $2.49
- Raven Tools – $0.13
- SEMRush – $655.76
- SENuke – $88.20
- SEO Content Machine – $52.13
- SEO Dominators Club – $142.43 (this post)
- SEO Pressor – $21.24
- SEO Powersuite – $240.09 (my tutorial)
- SERocket – $361.20
- SERP Book – $7.48
- SERPed – $2,108.27
- SociSynd – $18.02
- SpinRewriter – $18.50
- TheBestSpinner – $597.50 (my tutorial)
- ThirstyAffiliates – $12.70
- Traffic Planet Hosting – $560.00
- Ultimate Demon – $150.41 (my tutorial series)
- URLProfiler – $243.90
- VideoMakerFX – $53.70
- WordAI – $77.92
- WP Robot – $24.19
Expenses
- Traffic Planet Hosting – $49.99
- Facebook Advertising – $301.53
- Twitter Advertising – $205.06
Consultation Earnings
I separate out the consultation earnings from the affiliate earnings. The blog drives affiliate sales directly and whilst it does generate consultation leads these are separate projects in their own right.
I didn’t take on any consultation work this month which resulted in a juicy zero dollars!
Other Income
I’m working on another project right now that is part of the blog but not something I’m ready to talk about publicly yet or maybe ever.
I will declare the income here though as it wouldn’t be possible without the blog and ‘technically’ it is affiliate income.
This month that income has dropped slightly from $11,286.49 last month to $10,413.07 this month.
Earnings Total
- Affiliate Income – $12,351.77
- Consultation Income – $00.00
- Other Income – $10,413.07
- Expenses – $556.58
Grand Total: $22,208.26 / £15,616.53 ($23,548.35 / £16,876.30 last month)
Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap
Signing Off
After solving a lot of my problems last month, I was able to get my focus back on my work and start making progress towards my current goals.
There is still a long way to go as I work to improve the blog on all fronts to improve the overall user experience.
For example, I am going to have all of the featured images/graphics redesigned by an actual designer and I am going to spend time setting up systems to automate some areas of my work flow further.
That will set everything up nicely for the future, but for the here and now – I’ve got an awful lot of work to do!
So with that said, it’s time to get my hustle on =D
Thank you to everyone that has helped me reach my goals – I couldn’t do it without you, the reader!
from Matthew Woodward http://ift.tt/1TozM7h
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