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June 2015 Income Report

Welcome to another Income Report here at Niche Site Azon. The purpose of publishing these reports is to document my successes and failures with my niche sites, and to hold myself accountable. 

In June, I had one of my best months ever. In fact, outside of December 2014 (i.e. Christmas season), it was my best month ever as an Amazon associate with $4,005.07 in income.

On top of that, my PBN Service has started to take off a bit, and combined with a few affiliate sales plus building a custom niche site for one of my readers (read more on this below), Niche Site Azon itself was able to generate an additional $1,960.52 in revenue for the month.

So, combining the Amazon affiliate income with the revenue generated by the blog, and my total income for the month comes in at $5,965.59.​

More...

First, a screenshot from my Amazon account showing the combined income from my four niche sites for June.

So $4,005.07 in Amazon affiliate income for the month! This is the only time I've been able to crack the $4,000 barrier besides last December, so it's a pretty big milestone for me personally.

What certainly helped was that for June, I was back at my 8% commission tier with Amazon, after falling to 7.5% last month. This alone accounted for about $200+ in extra commissions. 

June vs May

Here's a top-level overview of a couple of basic metrics that I like to track with each one of my sites.

Click on each of the tabs to jump from one metric to the next.​

  • rEVENUE
  • ORDERS
  • AMZ visitors
  • $ / AMZ VISITOR

Site

June 2015

May 2015

Difference

Niche Site 1

$2,383.62

$2,456.27

-$72.65

Niche Site 2

$1,344.21

$741.69

$602.52

Niche Site 3

$221.38

$109.81

$111.57

Niche Site 4

$37.86

$56.78

-$18.92

Total

$3,987.07*

$3,364.55

$622.52

*I earned $18 in various one-off commissions that Amazon doesn't credit to any specific tracking-ID, just your overall account; see screenshot above.

So obviously, the first thing that jumps out is a huge gain for Niche Site 2. This was the direct result in a jump in the SERPs and a small tweak I made to the pricing tables.

Let's dig a bit deeper into Niche Site 1 (NS1) and (NS2), and we'll also take a look at the increased revenue this blog was able to generate.

Niche Site 1

Niche Site 1 just keeps cruising along. For the bulk of this month, it actually looked as though NS1 would only be earning around $2,000 or so, but over the final week of June it picked up a bit, and then hitting the 8% commission tier brought it back near its typical ~$2,400 per month figure that it's been earning for a while now.

Income​

June 2015

May 2015

Difference

$2,383.62

$2,456.27

-$72.65

Another $2,400 month, like clockwork. 

I still haven't added any new content or links to this site in several months. From the sounds of it, Google may be updating it's Panda (and then Penguin) algorithms sometime in the near future, so I may just wait until after that and see if this site is still left standing.

Yes, on some level I do feel that this site could get hit with a penalty, because it has been before. The reality is, if any of my sites were hit with a penalty, I would obviously be disappointed, but not totally unexpected.

As a niche site builder who uses gray-hat link building methods​, that's just part of the reality that you have to accept.

Google Rankings

A little jumping around in the SERPs but nothing major from last month. My ranks held steady, one month after seeing a few keywords drop.

Traffic

I finally got my Clicky account up and running for a full month for each one of my sites, so no more Google Analytics.

NS1 had 13,339 visitors for June, which is pretty much on par with how it's been performing over the past several months.

That averages out to around 445 visitors per day for June.​

Amazon Traffic and Revenue Per Visitor

In addition to traffic coming to your site, it's always a good idea to track the number of people that are actually clicking on over to Amazon.

Of the 13,339 people that visited NS1 in June, I was able to get 5,389 of them to click on over to Amazon from one of my affiliate links.

This gives us a click-through-rate of 40%, which is exactly the same CTR as it was for May.

As for revenue per Amazon visitor: NS1 did $2,383.62 total revenue in June, with 5,389 visitors to Amazon. That gives us an average revenue per visitor of ​about $0.44 each

Niche Site 2

So the biggest news for me this month is the gains I saw with Niche Site 2.

Over the past five months, NS2 has been a solid earner, averaging around $600 per month or so. But this month, it took a big jump.​​

Income

May 2015

April 2015

Difference

$1,344.21

$741.69

$602.52

An 80% jump in revenue over just one month!

I've written a few times before about how I think this site has at least $1,500 per month potential, and truly has the possibility of my top-overall grossing site.​

How was I able to nearly double the revenue in just one month? Well, let's have a look at the SERPs.​

Google Rankings

Yes, if you check the "week" and "month" columns for that first keyword, you can see that I did hit #1 for that keyword in June! 

So that keyword has been bouncing around between #1 and #2 for the past month or so. This has contributed to the majority of the traffic (and consequently, revenue) increase for NS2.

Traffic

Here's what the traffic looks like via Clicky.

Just over 3,000 visitors for June, which comes out to about 100 per day.

Only two months ago, my traffic for NS2 was just over 50 visitors per day. So the increase in the SERPs over two months has lead to nearly double the amount of traffic.​

Amazon Traffic and Revenue Per Visitor

Last month, I expressed a little concern over the CTR for NS2, which was only 20%. There were a couple of caveats that led to this, which you can read about in May's income report.

How did we fare in June? Well, this month, I sent 1,238 unique visitors over to Amazon, out of the 3,006 visitors.

This makes for a click-through-rate of about 41%! More than double improvement from May.

What led to such a big jump in CTR? The primary reason has to do with the positioning of my pricing tables.

For previous months, I had placed my pricing tables a little further down the pages. A visitor would have to read several paragraphs of text before even seeing the pricing table. 

For June, I switched things up. Basically, I followed my own advice, and placed the pricing tables ​above the fold, after only a short bit of text, like I have in my sample shower head site.

This makes a significant difference in click-through rate.

The idea behind it is this: when a reader hops on your page, if you are targeting the right "buyer's" keywords, then they should already be in buying mode.

They know generally that they are looking to make a purchase; they just want to see some validation of their purchase decision by looking at some reviews.​

So when they see a couple of items on your pricing table right when they land on your page, it makes it extremely easy for them to simply click ​on over to Amazon.

Anyway ... with an increase in CTR, it's only natural to see a bit of a drop in revenue per Amazon visitor, as you're going to have people clicking over to Amazon who aren't quite ready to buy yet.

For June, the revenue per Amazon visitor figure for NS2 was $1.09, which is still excellent.

Niche Site Azon

For only having the blog up and running for just over two months, I'm pretty happy with the income it's been able to generate for me in such a short period of time.

Income

May 2015

April 2015

Difference

$1,960.52

$418.77

$1,541.75

I had a couple of affiliate sales, but most of the income was from offering products and services to my e-mail list subscribers.

Thrive Themes ($160.50)

Regular readers of the blog know that I'm a huge fan of Thrive, both with their Thrive Themes and their amazing Thrive Content Builder.

A few of of my readers were nice enough to use my affiliate link when they made their Thrive purchases, netting me $160.50 in affiliate sales. Thanks, guys!

AmaSuite 4 ($148.50)

AmaSuite 4 is the software I use to identify best-selling and highly-profitable product categories on Amazon.

You can read my full review of the software here.

Elf Links ($50.25)

Elf Links is a plugin I use with all my affiliate sites, as it truly and fully hides your affiliate links from Google. Yes, it actually hides the links, it doesn't just "cloak" them like most other plugins.

I wrote about Elf Links as part of this post here.​

Both of these affiliates are managed through my JVZoo account, pictured above.

PBN Service ($1,204.27)

June was the first month that I opened up my PBN Service to my readers, and I'm happy with how things have been working out so far.

The way I've set up the network is so that it is "semi-exclusive". In order to keep outbound link footprints low, I'm limiting the number of people that I allow on each site to just six people per site.

This means that for every 10 domains I set up in my network, there are only 12 spots available for purchase. This also inherently limits the amount of income that I'm able to generate per domain.​ Each site I build effectively has a cap on how much it can earn.

Right now, I'm not having any trouble selling out the 12 spots per month. I just send one e-mail per month to my list when I've added new domains, and I also keep a link to the sales page in my navigation bar. This has been more than enough to sell out the spots.

I do wish that I could offer more than 12 spots per month. I may try adding 15 new domains (instead of just 10) next go around, which would mean 18 orders up for sale. 

The main obstacle for me is time. As I've said a few times on the site, I do have a full-time day job, and so my niche sites, this blog, and any services related to the blog are really just side ventures. 

And the truth is, it takes a lot of time to run a PBN with even just 10 new domains per month. I have to find all of the domains, set them up on hosting and with WordPress, and then add an initial set of articles to each site.​

Then, I have all the work involved with completing each order with a customer.

This includes the initial e-mail communication back and forth, ordering the articles with my writers, reading the articles, scheduling the articles on WordPress with all the formatting, ​links, and images, keeping track of all of this information in a spreadsheet, and then communicating the posting schedule with each customer, and then answering any questions afterwards.

I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining, but just to explain why I'm hesitant on trying to expand the network much further. The truth is, I probably priced the service too low ($127 for 5 posts) considering the value provided and the time and work involved on my end, and I will probably be tweaking the price point soon.

Anyway, that's a bit of a peek behind the curtain of operating my PBN Service. If you're interested in ordering a package, be sure to check out the Sales Page for a lot more information.​

Custom Niche Sites ($397)

A few weeks ago, one of my e-mail subscribers reached out and asked if I would build him a niche site from scratch.

We agreed on a price point (you'll see that $397 transaction in my PayPal screenshot above), and then I got to work with my writer on the content.

I did some research on a good niche and some nice keywords, and then built out all of the content, pages, and reviews. And within a week, the site was complete and I transferred over the domain to my reader.

I know there is a market for building custom niche sites, and so this is a space that I'm considering getting into. 

I haven't figured out all the details, but it would involve me doing all the niche and keyword research, building out the site with 6,000-7,000 words of highly-targeted content/reviews, structuring the site to maximize click-through rate and conversions, and even throwing in some goodies such as a Thrive Theme and the Thrive Content Builder, and a few free links from my PBN.​

As for price point, since this reader of mine was my very first customer, I cut him a bit of a deal, but going forward I think I will be pricing at $497.

Again, I haven't quite ironed out all of the details. ​I plan on sending a note to my e-mail list once I've got everything figured out. If you're not already on my list and want to find out more info when I've got it, you can sign up on this page.

And since time is of course a consideration for me, I think I'll be limiting these to just 4 new sites per month.​

To give you an idea of what a typical site would look like, have a look at my shower head site (which, by the way, is still not completed; keep that in mind).​

Traffic

Here are the traffic numbers for the blog in June.

So 5,219 visitors in June, which averages out to 174 visitors per day. This is an increase in nearly 50 visitors per day compared to May.

Once again, the average time per visit and bounce rate are pretty good. I'm glad to be writing content that people are interested in and engaged with.

Expenses

Content

Hosting & Domains

Niche Site Azon

Total

$93.00

$321.27

$506.04

$920.31

With my PBN Service taking off a bit, I incurred a lot of expenses in June.

Content

I added some longer-form articles for NS2, to keep the site looking fresh in Google's eyes.

Hosting & Domains

This expense column is for my own personal PBN. I had some yearly hosting accounts re-up last month, plus on-going fees for maintaining the network.

Niche Site Azon

Expenses related to the blog and services come mostly from my PBN Service, from registering and hosting the domains, and paying for the content.

Other expenses include the content for the custom niche site for one of my reader's, and I also upgraded to an "agency" license for my Thrive Membership, so that I can include the Content Builder as an add-on with my custom niche site offerings. 

Net Income

Month

Total Income

Total Expenses

Net Income

June 2015

$5,965.59

$920.31

$5,045.28

To hit over $5,000 in profit from a single month is something I'm really excited about.

A couple of things came together at the right time to make this happen: the huge jump in revenue for NS2, and my PBN Service selling out during its first month being open.

I doubt that I'll be able to consistently hit $5,000 month after month, but it's a goal I'm going to set for myself going forward.​

Any questions, let me know in the comments below.​

Mike Bradford
 

Hi there, I'm Mike, the guy behind Niche Site Azon. I made $32,000 in 12 months with Amazon niche sites. This blog is where I share my tips, tricks, and tactics to building and profiting from Amazon affiliate sites.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 40 comments
EL - July 6, 2015

Awesome Work !!
any stuff to rank an non-english websites ?
can i use PBN with english content for a french website ?
Thanks you !!

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 6, 2015

    I don’t see any reason why a PBN wouldn’t be able to rank a French site, EL, thought I haven’t personally tried it.

    Reply
    Paul Gray - July 13, 2015

    El – not sure if you’ve tried this but aim to get backlinks from .fr domains along with .com websites.

    Reply
Jonathan John - July 6, 2015

Hi Mike,

Terrific results! It’s great to hear about the increase in gross revenue and profit. I was just thinking, would you like to consider adding the avg. amount of time you spend per niche site per month? I think it would help to give readers an idea of just how “passive” the income is. Plus I think it could help a lot of those who are trying to balance a day job and online ventures like you. Just a suggestion. 🙂

Overall, great post, and great work on the record month!

Cheers,
Jonathan

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 6, 2015

    Hi Jonathan,

    To be honest, it’s not much time. This month, probably 2 hours total, and that’s because I tried a little experiment with guest posting (which I’ll be writing about later) for NS2. I also didn’t build any new links to any of the sites. Also I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m waiting for the Google Updates to happen before I put any more time into NS1, and for NS3 and NS4 I don’t touch them at all.

    However, when I was first setting these sites up, and trying to get them to rank, I was spending a LOT of time on them. It’s just now that they’re ranking and earning on auto-pilot that I can leave them alone.

    Reply
Tom - July 6, 2015

This is great, a real inspiration to me to actually get started /moving on crating niche sites. I am probably going to be buying thrive themes myself and will purchase through your link when I do. Is thrive the theme you use on your own amazon sites?

Keep up the good work and being an inspiration!

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 6, 2015

    Yes, Tom, I use Thrive on a couple of niche sites as well.

    Thanks for stopping by!

    Reply
Sophy - July 6, 2015

Hey Mike,

Why don’t you use Google Analytics? What problem with Google Analytics? Could explain some reason that you choose use Clicky instead Google Analytics?

Thank you in advance,

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 6, 2015

    No problem at all. I just find it horribly ugly, anti-user friendly, and a pain to use. Personal preference.

    Clicky is MUCH more user-friendly.

    Reply
Mat Jones - July 6, 2015

Hi Mike! A truly fascinating story about your two income reports! I’m not sure how I became a subscriber of your list, but I clicked on your May report (you said it was June) and I read the whole thing anyway… then I spent the past 10 minutes reading your June report and having a look around your site. haha 🙂

A truly fascinating journey you’ve made here, and I am too interested in your PBN service, but one thing that bothers me is are you purely sending just PBN links to the website? What about social signals and shares?

Anyway, great job! You’ve got a lot of success coming your way!

I purchased NicheGenetics through your email link – and so far I think it’s a great tool. Although I’m not sure I received your bonuses? Not sure, you probably have sent them, but either way – you’ve got a fan here 🙂

Keep kickin’ a$$!!!

~ Matt

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 6, 2015

    Hi Matt,

    I don’t pay attention to social shares. I’m not even sure Google uses it as a ranking factor. Imagine them having to completely overhaul their algorithm every time a social network becomes popular, and then tanks? Remember MySpace?

    That said, I do agree that ONLY PBN links is a bit risky. So I build Hoth links which are basically web 2.0 sites. Blog comments are another good idea. And guest posts if you can land them.

    You must have me confused with someone else on this Niche Genetics thing – I’ve never even heard of it!

    Reply
      Matt - July 10, 2015

      LOL!!! Yes! I did confuse you with somebody else lol… Oddly the names were quite similar in my email inbox. I do apologise for that.

      You make a good point about the social shares – only Google know I guess.

      Question about the PBN links: Are they a one off fee or recurring?

      I’m thinking about purchasing some in the near future.

      Thanks mate, I love your work! 🙂

      Reply
        Mike Bradford - July 10, 2015

        Social shares could be a decent strategy to diversify your anchor text. If you have the time to do it, then I think it’s a good idea. I just don’t think it will help with ranking.

        I’ve had several people ask that question about the PBN, which makes me think I priced it far too low 🙂

        It’s just a one-time fee. $127 for now but will be going up for sure soon!

        Reply
Goran - July 6, 2015

Awesome results Mike, keep up.

Indeed it’s a great sum to be proud off, + you work offline too :p

Simply awesome

What do you know about the next google updates, i mean when they will be happening

Share some information about that too.

Cheers

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 6, 2015

    Thanks, Goran!

    Oh I don’t know anything in particular – just what I read on SE Roundtable, a good blog you should check out. Rumor has it, Panda will be updating any day now.

    Reply
Alice - July 6, 2015

What a great month!

I love reading your income reports, really boosts my motivation.

Mike, your blog is quickly becoming my favourite niche site blog! So keep up the amazing work.

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 6, 2015

    Thanks for the kind words, Alice!

    Reply
Dave Ledoux - July 6, 2015

Mike I’m really enjoying your detailed posts. I find it easier to learn from these monthly breakdowns than most ebooks.

Looking forward to hearing about your guest post experiment. I’m at that stage on my site where I need to focus on linkbuilding, so anything you share is valuable wisdom.

Thanks for all you do!

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 6, 2015

    Thanks, Dave – the guest posting technique was the first time I’ve tried it, and think it would only work for certain niches. We’ll see how it goes!

    Reply
Yesh - July 6, 2015

You’re like my shining star right now. I’ve been building sites waaay before you, but I seem to have lost my way and made several mistakes. Thanks for every post, they’re just what I need!

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 6, 2015

    Thanks, Yesh!

    Reply
Raj - July 6, 2015

Thanks a ton for sharing your inspiring story. I have been your active follower since a month now i guess and I like the detailed income report you are giving to all of us.

Keep up the good work.

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 7, 2015

    Thanks for dropping by, Raj!

    Reply
Richard - July 7, 2015

Definitely inspiring stuff Mike. I think one of the beauties of building commission-generating websites is the “residual” aspect of traffic and sales. You barely built a single link yet saw such an impressive jump? Nice… 😉

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 7, 2015

    Thanks for stopping by, Richard — really enjoy your site!

    Yep, no links to NS2 last month, and finally saw that jump I’ve been waiting for 🙂

    Reply
aaron - July 7, 2015

Hi Mike

I am really interested in your niche site building + PBN combo. That almost sounds like a hands off system.

My problem has always been niche selection as I couldn’t get my sites to earn more than a couple of hundreds per month.

I think it is worth the price alone to see how you pick niches that can rank and bank.

Cheers
Aaron

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 7, 2015

    Thanks, Aaron!

    Ahh, it would not be hands off 🙂 I would get you off on the right foot, but it would be up to you to grow the site, try to get some natural links, add more informational content, etc., and just keep the site moving forward 🙂

    Reply
Vusa - July 8, 2015

Great work Mike. I will be ordering some PBN two months down the road.

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 10, 2015

    Thanks, Vusa!

    Reply
Eric - July 9, 2015

Great income report. I am now intrigued by clicky. I have not installed google analytics on my niche sites, I think that I give clicky a try. Thanks for the tip.

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 10, 2015

    Thanks, Eric! Clicky is pretty slick, I’m a big fan.

    Reply
john - July 10, 2015

great report mike…

id like to clarify which of your niche site is purely using expired domains using pbnlabs ? are you building networks using pbnlabs from now on? im planning to buy pbnlabs sure ill use your link..anlso thehoth….

i just learned lately that using your main keyword as anchor text will surely damage the ranking of your page…. though it will still rank on different keywords…. sample … best car as anchor text .. so your bestcar dot com will not rank for it but will still rank for best car 2015 .. are you seeing this too ?

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 10, 2015

    Hi John,

    Glad you enjoyed it.

    PBN Labs is a newer service that I recently discovered. So none of my niche sites are “exclusively” using expired domains found using the service, but it’s what I’m using going forward, both for my own niche sites, and my PBN Service. It’s just an amazing tool if you are trying to find expired domains; it does it incredibly fast and efficient, saving me SO much time.

    Re: anchor text, I just usual natural/brand anchor text to mitigate any risk. I don’t use exact match ever.

    Reply
Jon Haver - July 15, 2015

Congrats on another solid month. I really like how you lay out your income report. It makes it easy to read through!

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 16, 2015

    Thanks, Jon! Appreciate you stopping by!

    Reply
Adrian - July 16, 2015

Nice work.

I have Niche sites, 80 of them, middle size, and I am also close to this earnings.

Amazon is huge moneymaker and I hope you can make 5 figures soon when all of your sites reach some 2-3k/month.

Reply
    Mike Bradford - July 16, 2015

    Thanks, Adrian!

    80 sites? Wow, that must be a lot to manage!

    Reply
      Adrian - July 17, 2015

      Well I spend 8hours per day and I pay my brother and friend full time.

      Reply
Tonmoy - August 12, 2015

Congrats Mike for your these achievement. This is all for your hard works 🙂 I wish you can make 2* of your present income 🙂

Happy a Good Week end !

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 14, 2015

    Thanks!

    Reply

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