Didn’t Feel Like Coming Up With A Sub-Header
Not much happened on any of the sites since the last report. In June, I took a step back to think about what I wanted to do with this project at a higher level.
Despite not doing much, we did see some good growth and hit some new earnings records, though!
For a while, I was thinking this project would be summed up with “Look at how I grow these websites via SEO without doing any SEO”. Which, for the most part, it has kinda been that.
But, overall, I want the affiliate sites to be a larger percentage of my overall revenue, and to do that, I’m going to have to actually work on the sites.
Go figure!
Okay, great. What do I want to do? Solved.
Now, I just had to figure out how I could work on the sites without having to overextend myself, which was one of my early challenges when balancing running the agency, affiliate sites, and various other things I’m involved in.
PLUG: Such as our podcast the “Value Added Podcast”. Check that out here.
I decided that the best way to do this is by creating “task tiers” based on how much a site is earning. For example, anything under $500/m and I won’t worry about building links, at $1000/m I’ll set up more sophisticated tracking and look into private affiliate networks, etc.
Of course, I’d benefit from doing a lot of this stuff as early as possible, but it’s not worth my time, and while I will eventually need a site manager if I continue to grow this project, I want to put that off for as long as possible.
In July, I’m going to ease into things and get the sites “up to par” with my “new website” checklist. The biggest things here is a basic CRO audit & improvement as well as onsite for all of the existing pages on the site.
This may take me into August to complete, so in either August or September the tiered strategy will go into effect.
Lastly, I now own 100% of all of my affiliate sites. I ended up buying my business partner out for the 2 sites we owned together.
The deal was more complicated than just “here’s some cash” and I won’t be going into the details of the deal or why it happened. I will, however, be updating the P&Ls for both of those sites to represent the total profit factoring in that I now own 100% of the site.
Sports Site
Like most months, nothing happened with this site since the last report. This is also one of the sites that used to be in a partnership.
P&L (May – June 2020)
| EXPENSES | REVENUE |
|---|---|
| $0 | Amazon Earnings (May) $96.04 |
| Amazon Earnings (June) $145.11 |
This puts the site at a $2,432.61 loss so far.
Outdoors Site
Nothing has happened on this site either since the last report.
Earnings are looking OK, but I’m holding out hope that we can be profitable on this site pre-sale, however, if the site doesn’t end up gaining traction after I start working on it – then it may end up being for sale early next year.
P&L (May – June 2020)
| EXPENSES | REVENUE |
|---|---|
| $0 | Amazon Earnings (May) $195.58 |
| Amazon Earnings (June) $138.96 |
This puts the site at a $3,598.65 loss so far.
Tech Site
This is the second site that used to be in the partnership. The only thing done on this site is that 2 new articles were published in May.
Interestingly, the site lost over 50% of its traffic in May but the earnings pretty much doubled. I was concerned when I saw the traffic drop, but since earnings are doing well, I haven’t looked too much into it.
P&L (May – June 2020)
| EXPENSES | REVENUE |
|---|---|
| Content $-375.00 | Amazon Earnings (May) $420.66 |
| Amazon Earnings (June) $656.71 |
This puts the site at a $2,338.71 loss so far.
Automotive Site
Another winner in this report, is the earnings pretty much doubled again. Granted, this could be just 2 good months, but – it could also be some nice gains related to some of the links that were built.
Speaking of links, I acquired 3 links. 2 went live in May and 1 in June.
Finally, 1 article was published in May.
P&L (May – June 2020)
| EXPENSES | REVENUE |
|---|---|
| Content $-260 | Amazon Earnings (May) $1,269.48 |
| Links $-540 | Amazon Earnings (June) $1,399.74 |
This puts the site at a $2,215.91 profit so far.
Outdoors Site #2
I purchased another site in May, this site is also in the outdoors niche, but it has no overlap with the other outdoors site that I have.
This site was a bit of a riskier play, but I thought it looked interesting.
The site has only had 1 real month of earnings and the site has only been around for about 6 months. Prior to buying, the site had a couple months of low earnings and then shot up.
With the site being so young and with very little earning history, I was able to acquire it at a price that I felt was fair, given the extra risks.
Since buying the site, the only changes have been swapping the affiliate links, reducing the number of plugins installed, and editing the content to remove any mentions of product prices as that’s against Amazon TOS.
P&L (May – June 2020)
| EXPENSES | REVENUE |
|---|---|
| Site purchase $-1,999 | Amazon Earnings (May) $55.90 |
| AAWP license $-42.79 | Amazon Earnings (June) $311.78 |
This puts the site at a $1,674.11 loss so far.
Wrapping Up
Let’s see how things get on with the new tiered system. If the sites and portfolio continue to grow, I’ll likely need to hire a site manager – otherwise I’ll either drop the ball here or on the agency side of things.
The next report should have a lot more details and, some really interesting things have happened so far in July that’ll be in the next report.
That’s it for this report! Have a question? Post it below
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