I make it a duty to report my income and traffic on this blog every month, as well as some very important lessons I learn during the month.
There are several reasons why I publish my income and traffic on this blog every month. Below are some of the top reasons why I publish my income and traffic report on this blog regularly.
- I love doing it
- It motivates people
- It inspires people
- It keeps me accountable
- It encourages more people to join me on this journey
- My income reports are one of my most popular posts – in other words, people enjoy them!
While there are a lot more reasons, I think those are the most important reasons.
It is time to publish my report for October, while at the same time giving you insights into what happened.
October is All About “Passive Marketing”
I know this will sound funny, especially if you’re familiar with the concept of passive income (you should start reading Pat Flynn’s blog if you’re not!).
I’ve always been an advocate of guest blogging, and I even have a comprehensive guide on it. One thing about me is that I’m used to a fixed approach of guest blogging, and my approach lately has been focused on targeting big blogs. The reason for this is that if I publish a guest post on a big blog I can get anything from a few hundred visitors to a thousand, whereas publishing a guest post on a small blog might not even send me up to 10 visitors. I changed my approach in October, and I started to focus more of my guest blogging efforts on targeting small blogs. Why? I’m starting to think about the future of my blog, and I noticed it would be dangerous to be too reliant on the big spikes of traffic from the big blogs.
I thought to myself, why not focus on a guest blogging approach that will be sending me traffic for years to come, even if I stop guest blogging. I know some of you might not be aware of any such approach yet, but it exists, and that was my focus in October. Search engines are very good for sending passive traffic to a blog on a consistent basis, and since links influence search rankings, and since guest blogging is one of the best ways to build quality backlinks, I decided to use guest blogging to build backlinks to my blog early October, and in less than one month of doing this, I already have days with an increase of over 200 visitors from the search engines.
Before I started the “passive marketing” thing, I was at around 300 visitors a day from the search engines. I’m now getting over 550 visitors on my best days. I plan to continue with this approach, and I might even dedicate a whole month to it sometimes soon where I won’t take a single client job and only work on guest blogging for my blog.
To learn more about my approach, you can read about it here.
To also prove the effectiveness of my passive marketing approach, I decided to go offline for over 2 weeks, in which I didn’t update my blog with any article. The result was that in the process, I was getting an average of 700 visitors a day to my blog, and I even have days with over 1,000 visitors – I think that’s pretty impressive for not updating my blog, and a sign that I’m doing the right thing to generate traffic.
I know my main aim here is to teach you how to write for traffic and money, but I haven’t really written any article on the subject of traffic for writers, and I will work on creating something great in that respect soon.
The “Secret Project” I’m Working On
If you read my two most recent income reports, you will notice I talked about working on a project that will be one of my most expensive investments.
The project is still yet to be complete, and work is going on fast on it. In fact, it should be completed soon.
The project is my Home Office and it is designed in such a way that will help me avoid distractions while at the same time helping me stay focused and have a schedule. My work schedule is so erratic nowadays, and some people still believe I’m “really productive”. I can only imagine what my schedule will be like, and how much more I will earn once this home office is ready.
The home office is currently estimated to be over $10,000, and I’m working alongside with my brother to make it a success. I believe I will be able to make a lot more than I invested once it is ready, so I don’t believe the money I’m “investing” in it is in any way a waste.
I’ll let you know as soon as it is ready!
October 2011 Traffic Report
It’s now time to go straight into October’s traffic report.
October is obviously my best month of traffic ever, with one of my articles being viewed over 17,000 times, and other articles being read by thousands of people. While I’m not sure November will be like that, I have some plans in place to make all months better in the nearest future.
Clicky Traffic Screenshot
Here’s what Clicky Analytics has to say about traffic to my blog in October.
I know that 39,000+ visitors in one month is awesome, but I wouldn’t get too excited considering the fact that Google Analytics has something different to say.
Google Analytics Screenshots
Below are my traffic numbers in October according to Google Analytics.
Main Traffic Screenshot
Top Traffic Sources
Top 10 Content
Obviously, traffic is doing great, and based on a few changes I made to this blog I’m getting a lot more subscribers (which is my main aim for now). You will notice that most of the traffic is coming from Stumbleupon, but I’m working on making other sources send even more traffic.
If you also take a look at the screenshot above you will notice that Google traffic is growing strong. That is what I was referring to above when I was talking about passive marketing – and, mind you, I’m not just getting the traffic from generic keywords. I’m getting them from quality keywords to key articles, and I will work on maximizing their impact as time goes on.
October 2011 Income Report
My income for October isn’t that impressive, but I was really very busy with offline activities (such as my home office), watching some cool movies and other things. To be sincere, I initially planned to make October my best month in terms of income, but it became clear I can’t do that towards the end of the month. Here’s my income report for October.
INCOME
Writing Services: $4615
Total number of articles written in October: 57
Average amount per article: $80.96
EXPENSES
Crazy Egg: $19
Aweber: $29
WP Clicks: $97
Server Monitoring: $4.95
Total Expense: $149.95
Amount after expense is deducted: $4465.05
Lessons Learned in October
1. Stop thinking and working hard, start thinking and working smart: This is shown in how I decided to approach marketing this blog. I now focus on writing guest posts that will serve me for years and decades to come, and even if I stop writing today, traffic will continue to grow.
2. Do what you love: I took 2 weeks off in October, and for these two weeks I hardly used the internet at all. What I did was watch movies, ride my bicycle and have some fun. Within that period I didn’t update my blog. Not because I don’t have ideas to write on – in fact, I can write over 20 articles in any given day so getting ideas will never be a problem. My reason for not updating the blog was because I didn’t want to. I wanted to go offline and come back online with a new perspective, so as to help me focus on my business in a new light. I believe I achieved that!
Doing what I love also affected my income, but believe me, it didn’t have an impact on me.
Conclusion
After being offline for 2 weeks now, I’m now back online, and I have a lot of great stuffs planned for you.
If you’re yet to subscribe to this blog, make sure you do that so you don’t miss updates!
|
How to Write for Traffic and Money
Enter your name and email address to download a copy of my free ebook now!
|
|
|
We hate spam just as much as you
|
PDF 
1 Ping on "My Income and Traffic Report – October 2011"
35 Comments on "My Income and Traffic Report – October 2011"
I am glad that you are back and that your blog is doing great.
Your guest posting strategy for link building really inspired me to do the same thing, so far this month I have written 17 guest post, all of which have been published.
17 guest posts? Nice!
While I don’t think I’ll ever catch up to Oni (especially that one recent week, what was it 30+ posts? Sheesh!) guest posting has been the best way to market my content thus far.
I’ve found the only comparable option to be interviews and collaborations with people, especially influencers, because they will usually share the post on your site (or at least tweet it) which brings in some great traffic.
Oni
That’s a really cool summary on a number of points. It must have been tough deciding to take 2 weeks off. We should all do that every so often. You continue to prove to me that i need to guest post more often
Thanks
Mark
Congrats on another great month – nice to see that you were able to take a few weeks off and still see so much success with your businesses!
That’s an interesting approach to guest posting – I’ll admit, I’ve always thought that posting to big blogs was the key to getting noticed, but I see your point about posting on smaller sites. I might have to try that as soon as I start getting serious about guest posting!
Best of luck with the office renovations – I’m putting some work into mine as well, and I know it can be a big project!
That’s huge amount and you deserve it, congrats. Stumbleupon works great for you.
really awesome… but i am also getting 35000 visiting in a month but i am unable to earn money… can you tell me any right way and tips in simple wording that i can follow easily.
What I can just say concerning this new technique you are using is that, it is good to invent an idea. It now shows that you have a great way of driving more traffic to your blog even at the very time when you are not doing any other thing. I really love your achievement for this month, though, your income is low due to some of the expenses but you have traffic increase better than last month in replacement for that one.
wonderful report. once again you have proved you are writing maestro.
keep up the good work
About being offline yeah man i was worried for you even i had sent message on your facebook inquiring your status and yeah writing 57 articles in a month is tough, you really did a hard work!
woow am happy that you are doing great Mr Oni
go on try going offline a little more, don’t you think?
Nice month! Every time I come by here, I am still stunned at the design of your site – one of the best I have ever seen! Keep up the good work.
It’s a great idea to take some time off the blog. Everyone needs time off, that’s what holidays are for.
I can’t wait to see what you have planned with your new perspective.
The per post cost you manage for ‘writing services’ is pretty impressive. Keep it up! Did you notice the 1.10 pages per visit of the stumble upon traffic?
I didn’t even think of that Raj. That’s a very good point. Stumbleupon users are the most unreliable traffic and the bounce rate is usually like 100%. That’s pretty darn good Oni!
Congrats Oni for this months income. You are going Good.
write more and earn more.nice share
thats great way to earn. I think writers can earn more than SEOs.
Nice numbers … Curious to know about the new stuffs that you’ve planned offline
I love these numbers Oni.
Keep inspiring younger Nigerians man!!!
Hi Oni, you are an inspiration for all newbie freelance writers.
Keep up the good work.
Its good that you are getting so much traffic from Google.
Excellent figures and thanks for motivating us.
im motivated to guest post because of you and so far its decent done on 10-20 blogs but plan on doing more soon
Its great that you took 2 weeks off work and had fun. I am really inspired of you my friend.
You mentioned that you can write 20 articles a day. I suppose in such a case you’re not spending more than 20-30 minutes on a single article. So my question is: how can you produce anything of good quality at this rate? Are you writing straight from your mind with no prior research or anything?
You’re right about that.
I try to research the field I’m writing for every once in a while, and I guess the key to writing that much article is being knowledgeable about a field.
I can write 30 articles about blogging right now without research, and that is because I’m already familiar with the field. If you make yourself familiar with a field writing a lot of articles won’t be a problem.
Simply INSPIRED to revamp my blog and implement some of the amazing key points you speak of, so happy I discovered you today. Great time to find you and get my blog back moving and making money. I thank you Oni for being you and not being afraid to build your brand and take a stand as a Writer and admit that you aren’t the best but you do indeed know how to make money. Thank you so very much. Daphne
You’re welcome Daphne! Keep on rocking
Aha, that is really kind of you Daphne and I really appreciate it! Every single visitors add and I’m sure your spreading the word about my blog will contribute a lot to its success
Also, feel free to get in touch if there is any question that bother you, and I’ll be most happy to provide an answer.
BTW If you have a spare minute, I’ll also appreciate if you can help nominate my blog as the best blog for writers here http://writetodone.com/2011/11/22/nominate-your-favorite-writing-blog-6th-annual-top-10-blogs-for-writers-contest/
Your post on your income report is most inspiring,your office project is a welcome idea,but you may need to relook into your cost of $10,000 perhaps you may save some reasonable dollars because business is all about minimising cost as much as possible and maximising your net earnings.
hi Oni, it’s been a long time, huh? Good luck with the new office of yours. You and Ayodezi will go even higher with that investment in your house. We anticipate to see photos, all right?
I was wondering how come and you don’t have Adsense in your website.
Aha, thanks Steven!
Sure thing about the photos, I’ll try to upload them once the office is ready
Concerning not having adsense, I don’t think it will be a perfect fit for my blog – I’m looking for a way to make it more of a business.
Thanks oni, its always good to see your report…
Oh another things you are getting lots of visitors but there is no affiliate sales…. quite surprising. Isn’t it?
Dude, you seriously inspired me. I will work harder on my blog and also start guest blogging now
-Subodh