Well it’s been about 5 months since the last website update. There have been some pretty good updates on the website front lately. Had a decent March at $396, a solid April at $669, and a surprisingly strong May at $581.
I always like comparing this year to last year – mainly because I was making so little last year so everything pretty much looks great this year. Here are some comparisons and why I am “cautiously optimistic” about where everything is headed: May came in about 7x what last year’s May came in at. $581 compared to $78. Now I don’t know if last May was just a total dud but the best comparison I have year over year is always the same month since some of my sites are so seasonal. So I think it’s something to hang my hat on for sure! Year to date is NOT quite as stellar as May’s x7 multiple but my goal was to double this year’s revenue compared to last year and currently through May I am sitting about 2.7x what I was making last year.
Scaling My Affiliate Website Success
So the reason that I chose a dragster peeling out in this month’s update is because I feel like that is exactly where I am at right now. I made a change recently that I feel is going to step up the company’s capacity to grow. I feel like the systems are now in place to really succeed, and I can feel the momentum building, but I haven’t quite gotten off the starting line yet. We just recently brought a project manager on board to assist in uploading articles to the website and I feel like that has really enhanced my ability to focus on the direction of the business. I was definitely the pinch point in producing content lately and I feel like delegating the uploading and editing of articles is definitely a step in the direction. At the same time, though, it’s definitely stepping up the pressure. The extra $200-$400 going out the door per month is definitely going to be felt and may actually send my cashflow and income/expense negative but I am just trying to remember the end game: It’s great that I am seeing some gains in what I am making every month but an extra $500/month is not what I am looking for. I want to continue in the journey to making it to $10,000/month and being satisfied with $500 is not going to allow me to reach my goal. I just have to stay confident (but not too confident) that I know what I am doing and then everything we are going through today is going to pay off in the future. I am hoping that “the future” will mean this year and not “next year” or “many years down the road”. I feel like with my sudden available “free time” (ha!) I am no longer limping along like last year but I am definitely feeling the pressure to stay focused and to not lose sight of my goal to reach a revenue of $10,000/month. So to remind myself more than anyone (again, no one really actually reads this blog) on how the hell I am going to get there here is my plan.
My Plan on Making $10,000 Per Month Using Passive Affiliate Income
Continue Producing Content for All of My Currently Owned Sites – I know that this may be hurting me in the long run but I am working on a number (10) of sites at once. This first step is easy(ish) because I have taken myself out of the “daily grind”. Contractors are writing content for me and a PM is uploading for me. So the ground work for a good plan is to always produce content. I have always told people that 100 articles per website is an absolute minimum if you want a fighting chance, and so I should have no problem finding enough content for my writers to write for my 10+ sites that are going. Probably not a great term to use but I kind of feel like this is my “throwing shit against the wall” stage. I use longtailpro to find keywords and I do decent research but at the end of the day the best way to find out if an article will rank on Google is to put the article up on Google and see what happens! I think that we have a good system in place for this step #1 and but really a little more nervous about what happens with the next few steps.
80/20 Rule – Focus on the Good Articles – I feel like this next step is where I just started to experience some great gains lately,a good run so far, and where I am excited to continue pursuing. For the longest time I was building a site up and then letting die down slowly over time. Now I like to re-focus the articles and try to improve on the ones that “have a chance” to really try and juice them and get them over the hump. I have a lot of similes/metaphors today but I like to think of it as having bobbers in the water. If only 10% of my articles get a “nibble” then why not really hone in on that article and try and capitalize on the attention it’s getting? What I need to figure out at this point is do I continue to let my writers “bump up” the articles or is that something that I take on personally? I think for right now I am going to stay focused on bumping on my industry specific articles but I can probably continue allowing my writers to bump up the other existing articles on my other websites. I suppose the question comes up whether I can give the “update” articles to my PM to upload or do I just continue hitting them myself? My first reaction is to continue hitting them myself until I feel like I am getting too slammed to keep up.
Easywins.io – The last piece of this is ramping up all of my websites to meet the standards of what I know works for SEO. Easywins.io has been a great tool as a hope to ramp up my game and I like the theory and momentum behind it and I feel like this piece of my websites is going to help me propel to the next level. This is pretty similar to what I am doing by focusing in on the articles getting attention but it’s a little more than just writing additional content. At the end of the day my websites are going to achieve great success if people find them as a great resource and I feel like I have the ability to make them helpful websites because I enjoy writing about the topics that we are targeting and I know how to research and produce great content if I put my mind to it.
Not a complicated plan but hopefully one that can help me keep growing. Long story short is if I have 10 sites going and I can somehow get them to average $1,000/month each then I will be GOLDEN and achieve my goal of $10,000 per month. If something changes along the way and one of the sites takes off then I can and should “pivot” but I think that doing this will certainly give me a fighting chance and is the direction that I am pointing toward for the time being. Onward and upward!