Fridays with Vicky 87
August has come to an end and it’s time to summarize what turned out to be the best month yet for this site. Not too bad since most products recommended are winter month related.
When I started this case study site, I had a few things in mind.
I wanted a site that was pretty hands off. A helpful site that would grow and gain organic listings over time. A site with outsourced content that would be submitted on a weekly basis. I also wanted to recommend physical products and monetize it with Amazon products.
All this is accomplished. The site is very much work in progress. It is slowly growing and gaining traction but like my 7-year-old daughter says slow and steady wins.
Exciting times ahead for this site, but let’s take a look at the numbers for the month of August.
Traffic Progress
How do I get traffic to the site?
This is a site that gets 87.7% visitors from organic searches. The site is built on mostly outsourced content that is slightly keyword optimized. I submit content on a regular basis, around 3 posts weekly.
Over time more and more content is ranking within Google and other search engines. Organic listings is a great way to get free traffic. It’s not the fastest way, but that was never the goal for this site.
The numbers are improving…
July 2016 (Month 17)
- Sessions 5.614
- Users 5.107
- Pageviews 7.670
- Session duration 1.15
August 2016 (Month 18)
- Sessions 7.400
- Users 6.748
- Pageviews 10.080
- Session duration 1.13
We’ve been talking about top 10/ top 5 pages and reviews in previous case studies. I was kind of curious how many page-views these pages get.
Under your overview tab in Google Analytics, you can access all this information. What I find very interesting is that directing traffic to these main pages has really paid off. Looking at the 4 top pages of my site, 3 of them are top 10 or top 5 pages. These get a total of 47% of all my page views.
Maybe even more interesting is that these pages are truly helpful to people How do I know that?
The average time on these pages is 3 minutes and 22 seconds.
That’s exciting, people read the content and they find it interesting, otherwise, they would have left long before the 3-minute mark.
With Google Analytics you can find all kinds of good information about your audience. Here are some fun facts about the people visiting my case study site:
- 3.61% are movie lovers
- 82% of the visitors are from either the US, UK or Canada.
- 40% that visit the site from a mobile device use an iPhone.
Ranking Result
Since the majority of my visitors come from organic listings, I keep an eye on improved and lost keywords. The best tool I have found to do that is SemRush.
New and lost keywords
July 2016 (Month 17)
- Improved 617
- Lost 227
August 2016 (Month 18)
- Improved 908
- Decline 336
We gained some we lost some. I do see some good keywords climbing up though and that’s a good sign.
Sales Result August 2016 (Month 18)
- Sales: 323
- Commission: $942.22
Expenses August
Outsourcing: $104
- 9 Outsourced articles $54
- 4 Outsourced reviews, (these are longer in-depth articles 1000 words at least) $50
Hosting: $2
This site is on shared hosting, therefore the low cost of hosting. Read about my recommended hosting here.
List building: $5
Aweber list building shared cost with other sites $5
Total Expenses: $111
Total Result August: $831.22
This is very exciting numbers for August. We are still in the warm months and the site improved greatly from July and became the best month this far. I can’t wait for this site to reach 1K +, hopefully, September can bring us that!
Total Result for the Site
- Result Month 1 – 6: $–265.36
- Result Month 6 – 12: $817.13
- Result Month 13-18: $3146
Total result after 12 months: $551.77
Total result after 18 months: $3697.77
Result 2016
Going Forward…
As I summarize the numbers from August, I’m pretty pleased. I took July and August off to be with my family and friends and still had a good upswing, in fact, the best month this far.
It shows me that we’re on the right track with this site. That the content submission and organic rankings are starting to pay off. Since the site is focused more on winter month products, I can’t wait to see what the site will do in October, November, and December.
I have decided to add another post weekly, that will give us a total of 4 posts submitted each and every week.
I will also add a couple of new Top 10 posts. One of them will be recommending higher ticket items. I’m hoping to have this up and running in good time for Christmas shopping.
Another area where I need to improve is social media, hoping to get more traction here as well.
Exciting stuff to come, don’t miss it! If you want to join the case study journey, sign up for the “Fridays with Vicky” newsletter.
These are some of the tools I depend on:
- Wealthy Affiliate for training and updates (Free and Premium membership)
- BlueHost (starting from $3.95 monthly)
- Jaxxy for keyword research (Free trial)
- WpZoom Theme I use for the site (Premium theme)
- EasyAzon to fast and easy include amazon links on the site (Premium plugin)
- Aweber to collect emails (Premium tool)
- SumoMe (Free and premium for social share)
- Crowdfire for Twitter growth (Free and premium)
- Google Analytics (Free)
- SemRush (Free and Premium)
Did you miss the related posts in this case study series?
It’s good to be back in the office,
Have a productive day,
Vicky
This is great information! I was looking for something that would show a realistic view on money made from websites. I look forward to seeing more progress, and I will certainly be checking back for tips on my own site traffic!
Thank you Brooke, glad you enjoyed the post.
Yes feel free to read up on the other post in this same study, there are some helpful tips along the way,
Vicky
Hi, Vicky
It’s interesting to read about your website and google analytics.
I have a website and wondered how long it took before you gained trust with google regarding your content. When did you start ranking as number one on google? That’s interesting. I had been live with my website for about 2 months and had 20 % site trust and decided to change my domain name. That was in the middle of July and I still have just 10 %. I feel impatient and thought I would have achieved 20 % now.
Tove
Hi Tove,
Thank you glad you enjoyed the post.
Ranking in Google is a ongoing process. It probably took a few weeks for my first rankings and as you can see in the post there’re gained and lost keywords on a regular basis.
I wouldn’t focus so much on the %, focus on delivering great content that is slightly keyword optimized on a regular basis and the rankings will come.
Vicky
I’ve been browsing around your site and have enjoyed reading about your journey and successes, Vicky! I’m where you were about 8 years and getting serious about launching a successful online business. I joined WA recently and I love seeing posts like this one that show the smart and creative ways people are using WA to produce income. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Josh,
Glad you enjoy my site! Joining WA has truly been a game changer for me. It gave me the training and support that I needed to make things happen.
Stick with it and it can do the same for you Josh!
Vicky
Congratulations it is so wonderful to here of your success! I have gotten users to my websites but no sales yet. I believe it shouldn’t be much longer. Keep up the amazing work and the great smile!
Thank you Joshua!
I wish you the best of luck, if you need any help just let me know.
I can take a peek at your site and possibly make some suggestions…
Vicky
It’s great that your site is growing steadily each month! Also I love that fact that you’re sharing all these numbers each month. Anyway, best of luck in your journey.
Thank you John, glad you are enjoying the amazon case study. Can’t wait to see what it will do during the holidays.
Vicky
Vicky, I have like 15k UV/month and doing like 1200 , so you are at half #of visitors and doing the same. Maybe I’m not in the right niche Thanks
Hi Traiana,
How long have you been working with the site? What kind of content do you offer? Do you have in depth reviews and how to articles? Do you monetize with Amazon or another company?
Every site is different. You are making money, that’s great! Maybe there are ways that you can improve conversion though.
Here’s a post that might help…
7 Ways to Improve Conversion on Existing Content
If you want to feel free to send me your site and I will be happy to take a peek and give you a few suggestions,
Vicky