1st of September. While most children in Belgium are having their first day of school again, I’m celebrating the small gains both Project Alpha and Beta have gained in the last month.
Both projects are growing nice and getting their first sales dripping in. Especially Project Beta had a good month in terms of revenue. Project Alpha is way less but is getting some decent traffic and Google love with keywords getting top 3 positions.
So let’s dive in!
Project Alpha
Content
Last month I said I wanted to get a lot of content published. Goals were: 8 money pages, 10 informational/supporting articles & optimize 4 older articles.
I didn’t manage to achieve this goal (at all). Instead I published 3 money pages with one in the work. While these are 3 high quality money pages, I’m definitely losing momentum here.
Links
As you can see in the graph above, I secured a few links. About 15 directory links, of which some of them still have to be indexed as I decided to get them drip fed. 2 guest posts have been secured as well.
I also created some forum profiles and started commenting on threads. However, to get some trust first, I haven’t linked out to my website yet.
Rankings
Oh I love this graph above with the organic keywords. I’m getting some nice rankings and even some top 3 spots on fairly competitive terms.
Since some money pages are only just indexed and getting first page rankings right away as well, I’m hoping the amount of organic keywords to keep rising like this.
According to Ahrefs, I have about 13 keywords in top 3 positions and 67 keywords on page 1.
Traffic
In August we hit over 1.000 users through organic traffic. Given the fact that August is low-season for this niche, that’s not too bad at all. Only one year ago I had virtually 0 users through organic traffic.
Revenue
The most important of all to me is not the amount of ranking keywords, rankings or organic traffic but the revenue. And finally, this site made some sales.
Again, even though some sales might still get rejected, August brought in about €26,16 in commissions.
With this amount of traffic, I defintely expected this to be more. Especially since one affiliate program seems to be converting really really bad, that’s something I’m going to keep an eye on.
Nonetheless, I’m glad I’m able to report some earnings. Just a shame it took so long 😉
Goals for next month
Even though I don’t seem to manage to achieve my goals for this project, I’m not going to set the bar any lower. With traffic going up like this, I can’t be slacking down now. So here are my ambitious goals for this project for September:
- 8 new money pages
- 8 new informational/supporting articles
- Update/optimize 2 older articles
- Get 6 guest posts
- Get 15 directory links
- Some more blog commenting, social profiles & forum commenting
Project Beta
Content
Unlike Project Alpha, I did reach my goals in terms of content for Project Beta. I wanted to get 2 informational/supporting articles, 2 product reviews and 1 money page published.
And I got the 2 informational/supporting articles, 2 product reviews and 1 money page. 1 product review is already written but just has to be published so that should give me a little bit of head start for September.
Links
I got 10 directory links and 1 guest post in August. I feel like I could’ve gone a little more agressive on the guest post part but I’ll take it.
Rankings
Just like Project Alpha, the amount of ranking keywords is going up. I’m even starting to see top 3 rankings for some longtail keywords. These longtail keywords is also where I’m getting my traffic from right now.
Traffic
The organic traffic is going up and just like with Project Alpha, August is one of the worst months for this niche. So I’m happy to still see the traffic picking up.
There’s still very little traffic, I know, but I like the way it’s going right now.
Revenue
Of this whole report, this is the most exciting thing for me to share. Because I got some decent sales with Project Beta despite the low amount of traffic.
In August I got
*Drumrolls*
€145,32 in commissions.
And man, that feels good. For a month like August, for a site that’s live for only 6 months, that’s not bad at all!
This is the reason why I’m a little bit disturbed by the earnings of Project Alpha as well. I’m getting almost 10 times as much traffic with Project Alpha than Project Beta but earnings for Project Beta are so much better.
I could blame this on the search intent of some of the keywords but even with that in mind, Project Alpha should be earning way more. I definitely have some work to do to monetize the traffic for Project Alpha better.
Next to the revenue, rankings etc for Project Beta I thought it might be a good time to report on the email list as well.
As I mentioned before, I have a lead magnet for Project Beta and I’m building a nice email list. Right now, I have a total of 37 contacts in the list. 20 of them signed up in August.
I don’t have an email strategy in place and don’t really know how I can leverage these contacts but I’ll take some time to think about this. In the meantime, it’s a nice thought that these contacts will have some value in the future as well.
Goals for next month
- 2 money pages
- 2 informational/supporting articles
- 3 guest posts
- 7 directory links
- Optimize homepage (again!)
While both projects have their challenges, I feel good about both of them. I certainly see potential in both of them and hope to be able to give them enough attention so they can grow further like this.