Niche Site Project 4 Monthly Report for December 2019…Record Earnings!

The time has finally come for another update on Niche Site Project 4.

In my last monthly report, I made it clear that I was going to no longer provide regular updates.  However, I also made it clear that I would be providing updates whenever I felt like a milestone was achieved.

In December, I cracked the $2k per month revenue benchmark and overall had a stellar holiday season for the site!

So, I wanted to provide an in-depth update of what I’ve been up to for the past few months and explain where I’m going with the site in the future.

No, I won’t be doing monthly updates going forward.  But I do still reserve the right to provide an update when I feel like I’ve hit some other significant benchmark.  I expect in 3 to 6 months, I’ll provide another major update.

And remember, my project site is publicly known now – so you can always check out OwnTheYard.com if you are interested in seeing what I’m up to.

Earnings

As you can see from the chart above, the earnings of Own The Yard jumped significantly in December!

In total, the site earned $2,360.98 in December 2019.  This is the highest month by far.

The primary reason for the big jump in earnings was due to Christmas season – more people were definitely buying products on Amazon.  However, my keywords also continue to climb the ranks in Google and so more SEO traffic also is leading to higher earnings.

Amazon Earnings

In total, Amazon US brought in a whopping $1,991.96!

I also earned a few bucks from Amazon UK and Amazon Germany (less than $10).

As you can see from the Amazon chart, I was referring lots of buyers for the few weeks leading up to Christmas.  Even though my site is about “yards”, which is not really in season during the winter, I do also talk alot about yard games, tools, and other gear that happen to make great Christmas gifts.

As a result, I saw a significant bump in earnings in a normally low traffic time of year (due to seasonality of my niche).

Ezoic Earnings

Ezoic was actually down by almost $100 in December, when compared to November.  In addition, the EPMV (earnings per 1000 views) was also down from $21.21 to $17.54.  

Usually, December is the highest earnings per visitor month of the year for display ads, so I’m not sure why the Ezoic earnings dropped.  One possibility is the season for my niche as I mentioned before.  Advertisers related to “yards” perhaps just aren’t paying as much during December.

Overall, the earnings from all sources was up significantly, and I’m very happy about that!

Traffic

When you look at the total traffic over the past year, it’s not exactly what you would hope to see.  However, you have to remember that Spring and Summer really are the peak months for this niche, and so the fact that traffic has basically held steady from Oct. to Dec. is not all bad.

And so yes, Own The Yard made significantly more in December than ever before, despite the lower traffic (compared to July for example).

However, let’s break down the traffic into it’s 2 main sources – Pinterest and Google organic.

Pinterest Traffic

This screenshot does include all social traffic sources, but you can see that Pinterest is nearly 97% of the social traffic.

Pinterest has not been working that great over the past few months. Again, I believe that this is mostly due to seasonality.  People are not searching for and sharing “pins” in Fall and Winter as much as they would in Spring and Summer.

In fact, my Pinterest VA has reduced the number of pins that he’s adding each week because they simply are not getting shared right now.  We will ramp up the Pinterest effort more as Spring approaches.

However, I do have to acknowledge the downward trend, which is definitely the main reason why the overall traffic has been down a bit.

Google Organic Traffic

The chart for Google organic traffic is a bit better looking!  It’s hard to tell, but organic traffic has actually been trending up for October, November, and December.  Again, this is pretty good considering it’s now the middle of winter.

Here’s a look at Google trends for the term “backyards”, which is a core topic of my website.  This gives you an idea of the seasonality that I’m talking about.

So, the fact that my Google Analytics isn’t tanking in lock step with the seasonal dip like Google Trends does, is a great sign.

In other words, I expect traffic to increase significantly in just a couple of short months (maybe sooner?).

So, how is traffic increasing even though less people are searching for my particular keywords this time of year?  Well, I’ve been adding lots of new content.

So, even though the search volume of any individual keyword might be lower this time of year, my organic traffic is trending up because I have more keywords that I’m targeting with new content.

Keyword Rankings

As you can see from the keyword rank tracker from Long Tail Pro, my top keywords are generally improving in rank or holding steady.  I’ve kept the individual keywords private, but since you know my site, I’m sure you could figure out most of them if you really tried.

The good news is that my keywords are ranking higher and higher, so when the search volume of these keywords picks up during Spring and Summer, my traffic should increase in lock step with the higher seasonality.

From my discussions with other bloggers in a similar space, this should definitely be the case.

You may have noticed the one keyword that jumped from ranking #66 to #1 in the last month.  This is actually an older article and nothing was updated on the article itself.  

However, I did add just 5 internal links to that article using Link Whisper, and a few days later that article jumped to number 1 in Google!  As a result, the traffic has tripled to that one article from November to December.  And based on what I’m seeing in January, that article should get quite a bit more traffic in January than December.

So, I’ve now added more internal linking using Link Whisper to my to-do list.  Fortunately, Link Whisper makes it MUCH faster and easier to build internal links, so it’s not as overwhelming of a task as it would be if I had to do it all manually.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out Link Whisper yet, go ahead and check it out here.

Content

One of the first questions that people ask when I tell them how much my site is making is, “Well, how many articles does the site have?”

Well, I’m willing to share!  I’ve really ramped up content in the last few months, with 50 to 60 articles per months being published.  Take a look at the history of articles published:

Overall, the site now has 377 articles live!  I really feel like this site just has so much more potential, so I see no reason to stop the growth.  I’m betting big that traffic is going to start ramping up very soon.

The additional articles and the bigger traffic in the next couple of months (hopefully) should really increase earnings.

Most of the new articles added in the last couple of months have been shorter information articles (1000 to 1500 words long).  Many of them have been question type keywords related to backyards. 

For example, if you do a Google search for “Can you eat squirrel from your backyard?”, you just might find a certain someone ranking #1 for that keyword!

If you try eating squirrel, let me know.

Over the next couple of months, I’ll be adding more buying guides targeting more product related keywords.

After that, I’ll reassess how often I want to be adding new content.  How the site performs in Spring will be a big determining factor for how much new content I’ll be adding after that.

I outsource all the content, so yes, more content does equate to higher costs.  These were mostly shorter articles, so the cost was not as high as my previous longer articles, but there is definitely a cost.

I no longer am doing a detailed P&L breakdown, but you can see my last report to get an idea of the expenses involved.

Link Building

Another common question I get is always related to Link Building.  People always want to know the exact strategy and how they can replicate it.

Unfortunately, I have not done any link building in the last few months.  I simply included this section because I know people will ask about it.

I’m not saying that the site wouldn’t be better if I had done some link building, it probably would be.  I just haven’t made it a focus or a priority.

So, I have no link building efforts to report on. 

If you are interested in a link building strategy that you can follow, Mark and Gael over at Authority Hacker have put together a complete course on how they build authority sites, and this does include their link building strategies.  You can check out their Authority Site System right here.

TOOLS I’M USING FOR MY SITE

In case you are wondering what I’ve used to build my site, what plugins I have, or other tools or services I’ve been using to grow, I’ve created this list for you below.

• Generate Press Premium (WordPress Theme). Super easy to use and fast loading.
• Long Tail Pro – for all my keyword research and rank tracking.
• Big Scoots Hosting – I moved to Big Scoots for all my sites and love it.  Managed WP hosting at a fraction of the cost of competitors (and my sites got faster when I moved from the more expensive options).
• Table Labs – To create beautiful product comparison tables for Amazon Associates products.
• AAWP – To create product boxes for Amazon Associates products.
• AmaLinks Pro – To create great looking buttons for Amazon Associates.
• Link Whisper – To significantly speed up the process of building internal links. (This is my product I created).
• Short Pixel Image Optimizer – Reduces file size for images and increases site speed.
• Optin Monster – To capture leads with opt in forms.
• Convert Kit – For email automation and email list management.
• Tailwind App – For Pinterest scheduling and image management.
• Content Pit – Content writers that know how to do product reviews and more.
• Ezoic Ads – Display ad management platform that uses artificial intelligence.

What’s Next?

Overall, I’m happy with the earnings for the month of December!  Cracking the $2k mark for the month is great, but I hope for much more in the future.

As far as the plan, here’s what I expect to do over the next few months:

• Add another 100 articles or so in the next 2-3 months.
• Re-asses how many new articles I want to add after that.
• Do a full internal link audit.  I’ll be using Link Whisper to make sure that all of my content has at least 1 internal link pointing to it (if possible).  Some articles will get significantly more internal links and I expect this will improve the rankings across the site.
• Monitor and improve both Ezoic and Amazon Associates.  I know there are tweaks that I can make to improve the earnings per visitor, so I’ll plan to dive into that over the next few months.

That’s the plan for now!  Overall, I’ve got a great system in place with an editor and all my authors where I really don’t do any work on the site at all.  Everything is written and published without my involvement.  The team just follows the SOPs that I created for them and it appears to be working well.

The only work that I do is find new keywords…and check my stats. 🙂

I don’t know when the next update will be, but give me at least a few months.  Thanks again for following along!

Feel free to comment with any thoughts or questions.  How has your niche site gone over the past few months?