Simultaneously, I've been hammered by a recent Google algorithm update<\/a> and am seeing some pretty significant dips in organic traffic. I've also had a myriad of website usability issues to tackle over the past few weeks.<\/p>\n Revenue is at an all-time high, traffic is on the decline, and some big changes are coming soon to WebMonkey. Will this project be able to recover and continue to grow, or are we headed to 0?<\/p>\n No idea, but let's enjoy the ride!<\/p>\n I think one of the main reasons to remain consistent with blogging and to approach this side hustle with a long-term plan in mind is because\u00a0it takes time to figure everything out.<\/strong><\/p>\n When it comes to actually monetizing your website, this is even more apparent.<\/p>\n Balancing affiliate sales, advertising platforms, sponsored content, or other revenue streams is a tough job. There's no cookie cutter solution, and optimization is an ongoing and critical process.<\/p>\n After about 1.5 years of blogging, I finally feel like I'm seeing some revenue diversification on WebMonkey which really gets me excited.<\/p>\n Anyways, here are the revenue results from Q2:<\/p>\n April was a pretty standard month and saw just under $400 in revenue.<\/p>\n May and June are where things really took off. After I made the switch to from Adsense to Monumetric<\/a>, my advertising income increased by roughly\u00a0400%<\/strong>, and this was just the start.<\/p>\n I also published 2 sponsored posts.\u00a0Adding in sponsored content isn't something I plan on over-doing.<\/p>\n However, I think these sorts of posts can be very valuable for increasing income and providing additional content, provided the content is actually worth reading\/matches the theme of your website.<\/p>\n Note: I have a third sponsored post scheduled for this month, but I have included the income from the deal for the month of June since that is when the deal was worked out and when I actually wrote the article.<\/p>\n Finally, affiliate sales also saw a pretty significant increase in performance. Regular channels like Shopify and FlexOffers<\/a> continued to perform steadily, and I ended up referring an absolutely killer Etsy shop owner through my article on starting an Etsy POD shop<\/a> (more on these results in a bit).<\/p>\n Amazon Associates and some other random affiliate programs\/referral links also trickled in some income, but this was probably under $30 and I'm too reluctant to track down all those numbers (plus I redeem all that stuff for Amazon gift cards anyway).<\/p>\n Medium payments have also continued, although the platform has been fairly bipolar. Some months I can make $50+ through content syndication, but most months range between $10-$20.<\/p>\n You can checkout my post on how to make money on Medium<\/a> if you want to see how I syndicate my blog content and make free money by doing so!<\/p>\n Here is how all the channels broke down:<\/p>\n I'm still blown away that I've been able to scale from a blog that was making a few hundred bucks a month to a blog that topped $1,000 in such a short amount of time.<\/p>\n If you want to checkout the major milestones so far and how I've worked on scaling WebMonkey I suggest reading my ‘Road To' series:<\/p>\n It has honestly been a very rewarding grind that has taught me incredibly valuable lessons and helped supplement my income. The combination of skills and money you can learn through blogging is why I suggest people (especially young adults or students) start a blog<\/a> in the first place.<\/p>\n Now, I'm expecting Q3 to be much, much lower in terms of revenue for a few reasons I'll get into later in this post, but I wanted to highlight some of the main lessons I've learned about blog moneitization in the last 3 months.<\/p>\n This sounds like a very simple concept, but it's easier said than done.<\/p>\n I've spent so much time promoting posts like my list of gig economy jobs<\/a>, or various blogging guides in an effort to generate affiliate sales, when in reality, these posts rarely generate any leads (a massive overhaul is coming soon to the gig economy post so stay tuned).<\/p>\n After a new Etsy shop I referred generated almost $300USD in just a few weeks, I realized I may have been barking up the wrong tree.<\/p>\n Once I realized how lucrative Printify referrals could be (they give 5% of any purchase for 12 months for referrals), I started promoting my Etsy POD article on Reddit.<\/p>\n With some relatively light promotion, I've managed to refer another 6 people to Printify, and someone has even made their first sale!<\/p>\n Long story short is\u00a0listen to the data.<\/strong><\/p>\n You don't have to promote Bluehost or Personal Capital just because other bloggers do. See what speaks to your audience, and follow the money\/conversion data, not what's trendy.<\/p>\n I was hesitant to switch to Monumetric because I was scared to slow down my website.<\/p>\n I was also petrified of accepting my first sponsored post as it was something I had never done before.<\/p>\n But here's the thing:\u00a0accepting opportunities opens up new ones.<\/strong><\/p>\n My increase in blogging revenue from Monumetric is going to enable me to reinvest more into growing WebMonkey, and I was able to land my 2nd sponsored post simply because I accepted the first one and established a new connection.<\/p>\n Don't shut down new chances to increase revenue as long as you are taking sensible, calculated risks.<\/p>\n I've managed to run a pretty lean operation on WebMonkey for quite some time, but this is the first quarter I invested heavily back into growth.<\/p>\n My Q2 costs included:<\/p>\n Total costs: roughly\u00a0$1420.<\/strong><\/p>\n Okay, so a few things.<\/p>\n The website redesign is currently in progress, and while I could have gone for a cheaper option, I elected to hire the designer I did because:<\/p>\n Hiring the VA at this point in time was a mistake, but it was also a solid learning experience.<\/p>\n As for marketing\/hosting related software, I plan to continue to pay for these quality services as I believe they help spur growth. Once the redesign is done and traffic is back on track I will probably invest in more (I want to use a CDN for this blog and I'll probably get some sort of marketing software, like SEMRush<\/a>).<\/p>\n As I mentioned, a recent Google algorithm update was rolled out, and in it, there were some major winners and losers.<\/p>\n I wasn't one of the sites that was absolutely massacred, like The Daily Mail or CCN<\/a>, but I'm definitely bleeding quite badly:<\/p>\n While previously Google algorithm updates have largely been focused around the topic of improving EAT factors (Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness), it's clear there's more to this recent update than just EAT…I mean, The Daily Mail is certainly high in authority if you consider traditional metrics like backlinks, and they got hammered.<\/p>\n The consensus in the SEO community seems to be that it once again comes back to quality content and meeting user intent, but there's also a fairly strong and pessimistic vibe going around that argues ‘there's nothing to fix,' and that we're all at the mercy of these sporadic updates anyway.<\/p>\n Regardless of the camp you're in, if you're a small blogger like me, we must recognize these key points:<\/p>\n I was tempted to go along with the line of thinking that says to ‘not overreact after an update,' and that I would give things a few weeks to see how the dust settles.<\/p>\n But, if I'm honest with myself,\u00a0my website has severe problems and this update was a long time coming.<\/strong><\/p>\n Here are the greatest challenges I'm facing in regards to recovering:<\/p>\n I'm going to fix the website speed and usability issues through the redesign, so this should hopefully be taken care of.<\/p>\n Additionally, I'm going to be editing and optimizing many of my older posts over the next 2 months. I wrote many of my existing posts before I knew proper on-page SEO techniques<\/a>, so this will ideally assist in recovering some rankings.<\/p>\n Thirdly, I've actually deleted 3 posts from my archives and redirected the URLs back to my homepage. These were random, poorly written posts on social media marketing, and one was a post about college side hustles that was frankly too similar to one of my other articles.<\/p>\nWhat's New With The Blog –\u00a0Massive Revenue Gains!<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"blogging-revenue-growth\"](\"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/blogging-revenue-growth.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"total-monumetric-payments\"](\"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/total-monumetric-payments.png\")
![\"shopify-referrals\"](\"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/shopify-referrals.png\")
![\"flexoffers-affiliate-income\"](\"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/flexoffers-affiliate-income.png\")
![\"medium-syndication\"](\"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/medium-syndication.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"blogging-revenue-channels\"](\"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/blogging-revenue-channels.png\")
<\/p>\nKey Takeaways:<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Identify & Promote Your Money-Makers<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"printify-payments\"](\"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/printify-payments.png\")
![\"printify-referrals\"](\"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/printify-referrals.png\")
<\/p>\nDon't Shy Away From Opportunity<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Costs<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Google Updates, Traffic & Recovery Plans<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"impression-after-google-update\"](\"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/impression-after-google-update.png\")
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![\"sitemap-issues\"](\"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Screenshot_20190704-141202_Samsung-Internet.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"yoast-taxonomies\"](\"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/yoast-taxonomies.png\")
<\/p>\n