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July 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. 

July was a crazy month.

First, I had another record-breaking month with my niche sites, totaling $4,414.07 in Amazon income.

Second, the revenue I was able to generate from this site has been increasing as well. In July, the blog was responsible for an additional $3,805.21 of income. This was attributable mostly to my PBN Service and Custom Niche Sites, plug some nice affiliate sales.

So, combining the Amazon affiliate income with the revenue generated by the blog, and my total income for the month of July comes in at $8,219.28.​

It's not all good news, however. Google rolled out its much-anticipated Panda update in the middle of the month, and it appears that my sites may have taken a bit of a hit.​

More...

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

So $4,414.07 in Amazon affiliate income for July!

This is my best non-Christmas month ever, and beats last month's previous high of $4,005.07 by more than $400.

July vs June: NS1 & NS2

Here's a top-level overview of a couple of basic metrics that I like to track with Niche Site 1 and Niche Site 2. (Since my other two sites do not earn nearly as much, I decided not to track their numbers here in these reports).

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

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

Site

July 2015

June 2015

Difference

Niche Site 1

$0.41

$0.44

-$0.03

Niche Site 2

$1.08

$1.09

-$0.01

Niche Site 2 continues to grow, hitting nearly $1,700 in July. I've said a few times on this blog that I think NS2 could ultimately be my highest-earning site in my portfolio. 

Niche Site 1

Another month, another ~$2,400 in revenue for Niche Site 1. This now marks five consecutive months of NS1 hitting this income level, with zero new backlinks being added on my end.

Income​

June 2015

May 2015

Difference

$2,382.42

$2,383.62

-$1.20

In fact, looking at this site historically, over the past 15 months, NS1 has hit $1,300 or more 14 times, which is pretty remarkable. 

Google Rankings

As you can see, one of the main keywords that I track for this site dropped two spots over the past month. Since I'm not building any fresh links to this site, and haven't done so in more than 8 months, this is to be expected.

My plan for links with NS1 is to wait out the next Penguin penalty refreshes. If this site (somehow) survives unscathed, then I will think about building new links. But for now, I'm more than happy to collect the $2,400 per month while putting zero time or effort into the site.​

Traffic

We'll talk about the Panda update in a minute, but traffic for NS1 was pretty much on par with June, when it had 13,339 visitors.

So for July, you can see a slight increase to 13,652 visitors, which averages out to around 440 visitors per day.

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 13,652 people that visited NS1 in June, I was able to get 5,825 of them to click on over to Amazon from one of my affiliate links.

This gives us a click-through-rate of 43%, which is decent increase from the 40% CTR from June.

As for revenue per Amazon visitor: NS1 did $2,382.42 total revenue in July, with 5,825 visitors to Amazon. That gives us an average revenue per visitor of ​about $0.41 each

Niche Site 2

Niche Site 2 continued its impressive growth in July, nearly hitting the $1,700 mark.

Income

May 2015

April 2015

Difference

$1,691.19

$1,344.21

$346.98

The growth projection for NS2 has been impressive, going from ~$600 in April, $750 in May, $1,350 in June, to now almost $1,700 in July.

Google Rankings

You may remember from last month's income report that I had (briefly) hit the #1 spot for one of my main keywords. Well, as you can see above, that milestone was short-lived, as I'm now hovering around the #3 spot.

Traffic

Here's what the traffic looks like via Clicky.

Nearly 3,400 visitors for July, which comes out to about 109 visitors per day, which is a decent improvement from the 100 per day average from last month.

Amazon Traffic and Revenue Per Visitor

Of the 3,387 people who visited NS2 in July, 1,566 of them clicked on over to Amazon, which amounts to a very impressive CTR of 46%.

In terms of revenue per Amazon visitor, of those ​1,566 people who clicked one of my affiliate links, I was able to generate a revenue of $1,691.19, which gives us an average revenue per visitor of $1.08.

Panda Update?

For those of you who follow the Google algorithm news cycle, you may have read that Google finally unleashed its updated Panda algorithm on July 18, which is designed to detect "quality content" issues. 

While it's not exactly easy to determine if your site has been hit by the penalty, what you can do is have a look at your traffic, and compare days of the week over time to see if your traffic has been significantly affected. 

And when I do that with NS1 and NS2, it looks like both sites have indeed been affected.​

Let me show you what I mean.

Here's a screen shot of NS1's traffic over the past 28 days. (Note: I grabbed this screen shot on Sunday morning, which is the last data point on the graph, showing traffic from Sunday in real-time; so ignore the last day​ on the graph, because it doesn't represent the entire day's traffic).

So you can see four data points that I've highlighted on the graph above. These are the traffic numbers to NS1 for each of the four past Saturdays. (It's important to compare specific days of the week against each other, e.g. Saturday vs Saturday, as opposed to Saturday vs Friday, as it will give you a more accurate snapshot).

The first two data points are traffic numbers before the Panda update. As you can see, on July 11 NS1 had 522 visitors, and on July 18 it had 504 visitors.

The last two data points are post-Panda update. For July 25, NS1 had 460 visitors, and for August 1, 432 visitors.​

So obviously, there is a serious downward trend in traffic. Comparing July 11 vs August 1, this represents a ​17% reduction in traffic!

Let's perform the same exercise with Niche Site 2.

The data is not as conclusive with NS2, at least not yet. The general trend line is definitely sloping downward, however. Some of this could simply be related to the main keyword bouncing around from #1 to #3, and some of it could be Panda; it's tough to tell.

Google did announce that this Panda update would be a "slow roll-out", so chances are I haven't experienced the full impact yet.

Bottom line at this point, however, is that I definitely expect my Amazon earnings to decrease in August, maybe upwards of 20%-25%​. We will see.

Niche Site Azon

Income generated from the blog is really starting to pick up. What I'm most excited about is that the revenue streams are well-diversified, both between products and services I offer to my readers (PBN Service and Custom Sites) and affiliate sales to products that I personally use and recommend.

Income

July 2015

June 2015

Difference

$3,805.21

$1,960.52

$1,844.69

Thrive Themes ($463.50)

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. If you're going to invest a little money making sure your niche site looks well-designed, then Thrive is a great choice.

Several of of my readers were nice enough to use my affiliate link when they made their Thrive purchases, netting me $463.50 in affiliate sales. Thanks, guys!

The Hoth ($279.38)

The Hoth is my go-to link building service for when I'm just launching a new niche site. I use it to build tiered Web 2.0 properties that gives you a nice set of initial links that get my sites started out in the right direction.

 I highly recommend ​the service for use on all kinds of niche sites.

You can read my full review of the The Hoth here.​

AmaSuite 4 ($33.50)

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 ($150.75)

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.​

PBN Lab ($35.40)

PBN Lab is the service I use to find all of my expired domains, which I use personally for my own PBN, and also for the PBN Service I offer to my readers.

PBN Service ($1,919.76)

July was the second month that I opened up my PBN Service to my readers, and I'm easily selling out the 12 spots per month that I made available for purchase.

I'll repeat this again here this month: the way I've set up the PBN Service is so that it's "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. 

Again, I'm selling out the 12 spots per month pretty quickly. I just send one or two e-mails to my list per month, and that's more than enough to sell out the spots. So if you are interested in learning when new domains are added, I encourage you to sign up to the mailing list here. They sell out pretty quickly, so if you're thinking of buying links for one particular month, it's a good idea to act quickly to secure your spot.

And to read more details about the service, just check out the sales page.

One other change I made recently with the PBN Service is with the price. After a two-month "introductory offer" of $127 for 5 posts, I went ahead and increased the price to $167. With the semi-exclusivity of the network, and the fact that it's only a one-time payment (as opposed to a recurring fee), the honest truth is that $127 for 5 posts was just way too low of a price.​

Custom Niche Sites ($922.92)

Last month I started experimenting with building out custom niche sites for my readers. In July, I built two. But I also had to turn three people down, due to lack of time on my end.

The truth is, offering a custom niche site service is extremely time-consuming. The amount of e-mails back and forth between me and my customers was a LOT more than expected. To be honest, it felt too much like work. So for now, I've decided to put the service on hold.

I'm looking into ways to streamline and standardize the service, to make things operate more smoothly. I'm also looking into partnering with a reader of mine who will build the sites for me, and we'll split the profits. ​So stay tuned for more updates on this.

Traffic

Here are the traffic numbers for the blog in June.

So 6,430 visitors in July, which averages out to 207 visitors per day, a nice increase from the 174 visitors per day from June.

Expenses

Content

Hosting & Domains

Niche Site Azon

Total

$22.25

$107.88

$679.44

$809.57

Here is my expenses breakdown, both for my own niche sites, and for the services offered from the blog.

Content

I added a handful of articles to NS2 in July, to keep the site looking fresh in Google's eyes.

Hosting & Domains

This expense column is for my own personal PBN. My Go Daddy account re-upped in July for another year.

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. I also had to pay for content to be written for the three custom niche sites I sold.

Net Income

Month

Total Income

Total Expenses

Net Income

July 2015

$8,219.28

$809.57

$7,409.71

So a total profit for the month of over $7,400, which I'm super excited about. Last month was just over $5,000 total profit, so this represents a sizable increase.

I'm obviously excited with the growth, but in the back of my mind I know this likely won't be sustainable for next month. For one, I have the Panda update(s) to deal with, which will significantly impact my Amazon earnings in August. Also, I'm not sure I'll be able to continue building custom niche sites the same way, so that revenue will be impacted as well.​

So, August will definitely be an interesting month to follow, and I'm curious to see how much my revenue will drop.

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 32 comments
Ken - August 3, 2015

Hi Mike,

Congrats on another great month. I hope that Panda doesn’t take that big of a nibble from you.

I was thinking lately about Google and affiliate links and how they see affiliate sites as gateway sites, etc. Do you think that it is the affiliate links themselves or the rate at which links on a site send a majority of their traffic to sales pages or ecommerce sites?

I was just thinking that since anchor text and link text distribution is such a big deal is it possible that the pages that people go when they exit your site is a Google indicating hot item as well? If the majority of your exits and clickouts land on an Amazon page I think that would be a bigger indicator than a simple link to a page? I’m just guessing here and looking for your input.

I’m wondering if a perfectly build niche site that sends SO many of its visitors to Amazon or sales pages might be the issue (and its own worst enemy) rather than the links themselves?

Again, congrats and I appreciate the knowledge that you share here.

Ken

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 3, 2015

    Hi Ken,

    That’s an interesting theory and one I hadn’t thought of it. It’s certainly possible. Unfortunately, there’s really no way around that potential issue as I see it 🙂

    Reply
      Ken - August 3, 2015

      Yeah, I agree. My feeling is that any link on my site that doesn’t lead to Amazon or another page on my site is a lost opportunity.

      Reply
john - August 3, 2015

one good thing about this new google update is that my site is now page 2 … hopefully it will climb to page 1 ..

Reply
john - August 3, 2015

wow congrats Mike, $8k in 1 month is a really big leap…

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 3, 2015

    Thanks, John!

    Reply
Mohit - August 3, 2015

Hi Mike

Sad to see panda penalty for your two sites but I thought Elf links plugin by cloaking links safeguarded the affiliate type of sites. Do you think plugin is not working properly?

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 3, 2015

    Hi Mohit,

    Affiliate links on your site is but only ONE factor that Panda looks into, not the only one. You can receive a Panda penalty for 100 different reasons, such as “thin” content, “duplicate” content, ad placement, etc. Impossible to pinpoint just one reason.

    Reply
Tim - August 3, 2015

Hey Mike,
If your panda didn’t affect your rankings,I don’t think you will see any significant difference in your earnings.

As for traffic,don’t forget that the peak of holiday season begins now in August so you can expect lower traffic during these days.

I know this from my own experience as well with my own affiliate websites.

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 3, 2015

    Hi Tim,

    Thanks for the feedback. While the rankings for the main keywords I track didn’t change that much (though they did change a little), it’s possible that my long-tail searches could have been effected.

    All I know is that traffic for NS1 is down ~17% over the course of the past 30 days. Hopefully you are right though 🙂

    Reply
Theodore Nwangene - August 3, 2015

This is excellent Mike,
Your niches sites really performed incredibly well last month and I’m very happy for you. You’re really walking the talk.

I’ve heard a lot about the HOTH package and the truth is that I’ve actually been so skeptical about their service.

However, I’m very much convinced now that they are good and I’m going to check them out.

Thanks for sharing.

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 3, 2015

    Thanks, Theodore — good luck!

    Reply
Hooman - August 4, 2015

Hi Mike, Congratulations to you for the success my friend,
Again, thank you for your excellent PBN service,It is very clean and efficient,
Dear Theodore, I’ve used Hoth mini package twice and it is great so far but I think that to get the highest impact you should use the Hoth Platinum package.

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 4, 2015

    Thanks for stopping by, Hooman! Glad you are enjoying the PBN Service!

    Reply
Dhil - August 4, 2015

hello, congrats on your success on amazon, 8k a month is great income, it is inspiring. Anyway I created and publish my first amazon niche site last week. I am thinking to do HOTH and PBN when the niche site is in two month. Since the niche site is new (1week old), Do you think doing link building to new site is okay, what link building do you recommend for the first month? thanks

Dhil

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 5, 2015

    Hi Dhil,

    I think for a new site The Hoth is okay.

    Also social media links, social bookmarking, blog commenting, etc. These won’t necessarily increase your ranking, but they will diversify your backlink profile, which is important.

    Then around month two I think you can start with some PBN links.

    Reply
Jon Haver - August 4, 2015

Congrats Mike on another great month. It is impressive the number of things you have been able to master in such a short period of time.

Too bad about the drop on a couple sites but all part of the game 🙂

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 5, 2015

    Appreciate that, Jon.

    Yep, I knew it was coming eventually 🙂

    Reply
Imat - August 5, 2015

Congrats @Mike for your success, if you have time please check your email.

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 5, 2015

    Hi lmat,

    Please re-send.

    Reply
Aakash - August 7, 2015

Whoa Mike, now not only are your niche sites doing well, but also this blog has started generating quite a good amount of money for diversification. You’re killing it man. By the way, I have a question for you. What theme and Amazon plugins you use on your niche sites? It’d be very helpful if you could clear these up. Thanks in advance.

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 8, 2015

    Hi Aakash,

    Thanks!

    I use a couple of different Thrive Themes for my niche sites. As for plug-ins, I actually wrote about this as part of my Bonus Content – you should really sign up to my e-mail list to get all these extras 🙂

    Here’s the Google Docs showing the plug-ins: http://www.nichesiteazon.com/plugins

    Reply
Anne - August 14, 2015

Congrats Mike. Wow, impressive figures. I hope one day I can achieve that amount of income… Haha

Btw Mike, do all of your niche site have the same layout as the “shower head” niche site?

I got about 6k -8k visitor per month but my income from Amazon is just ~$100. It was so frustrating. I don’t know which template to use to maximise the CTR & conversions of my site… Any idea/resources for me to look at? Or should I try using your shower head layout? But it’s skincare/beauty niche so don’t know whether it will works or not..

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 14, 2015

    Hi Anne,

    They generally follow a similar layout to the Shower Heads site, yes.

    That’s pretty good traffic. What is your click through rate over to Amazon, and how expensive are the products you promote?

    Reply
Stone - August 14, 2015

Hi Mike, I’m your new reader – great stuff! One thing that amazes me is your CTR to Amazon. >40% is unbelievable! What do yo do to get such a high CTR?

Reply
Raj Sidhu - August 25, 2015

Hey Mike,

Been following your income reports for the last 3 months now and i’m really impressed with your progress.

I’m just about to publish an interactive income report roundup (first of it’s kind I believe!) featuring blogs like Smart Passive Income, Entrepreneur on Fire and Matthew Woodward etc.. and would love to include your blog in it too if I may?

I may also be able to help you with your custom niche site building service. Let me know your thoughts Mike and keep up the great blogging!

Raj

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 26, 2015

    Hi Raj,

    Yes, that would be great — thanks!

    Reply
Mahbub Osmane Piyal - August 27, 2015

Hi Mike Bradford,

Thanks for your Income Blueprint.

I have started to build @ least 10 Amazon niche websites within a year with my 6 Team members.

What is the primary barrier I have to face, please write some point for me as your are expert…

and my second question: why ur was not building some more site in every year?

What is the real strategy? Make ten small niche site in a year or build three big niche site within a year

Regards,
Mahbub Osmane

Reply
    Mike Bradford - August 27, 2015

    Once you have found 1 or 2 winners, like I have, I like to stick with them and grow them out. It’s easier to grow out 1 successful site than try to create a brand new one from scratch.

    Reply
Al-Amin Kabir - August 29, 2015

Mike, I have 2 questions.

1. Did you calculate the $/Amz Visitor is it Unique visitors or number of clicks to Amazon?
2. I just calculated; you are getting around 9 % to 12 % conversion rate on Amazon. This is absolutely a crazy figure. Why are you getting a much higher conversion rate? What’s the secret?

Thanks for such a nice income report.

Reply
    Mike Bradford - September 3, 2015

    Hi Al-Amin,

    I calculate based on number of unique visitors, NOT clicks, so the conversion rate is not quite that high.

    Reply

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