Another month has gone by and February was as unique as any other.

The month ended up being my second-best month ever from a revenue standpoint.  I felt that the month was going well, but I never know officially until I write these income reports.

There are a few interesting things that have happened this month:

Sponsorships:  For the OneHourProfessor site I’m getting a crazy amount of brands looking for exposure and I work with them to find a win-win.  The deals I’m doing are unique to each brand, but it’s ended up creating a nice bump in income as I’m typically compensated.

Expenses were out of control:  If you look at my report on the surface, I had just over $17,000 in expenses this month.  While that sounds crazy, the thing that you may not realize is that a huge part of this is the fact that I purchased annual plans for my long-term software platforms that I use.

Why did I do that?

What if I told you that you could save somewhere between 10% to 20% on all of the software that you use throughout the year?

You can….and it’s an incredibly easily solution. 

Almost every software platform I use offers a discounted rate for those that purchase an annual plan.

Why?

Because software companies want to lock in revenue now and are willing to do so at a discounted rate. 

That said, this month I decided to buy annual plans on every platform I have used for the last 12 consecutive months.

These include SurferSEO, Ahrefs, Epidemic Sound, Active Campaign, Thinkific, and a few other smaller software platforms. 

Trust me when I say that this was painful, but I know that if I can spend the capital now it’ll save a ton of money in the future.  I did the math and by going this route, I’m saving about $1200 for the year.

This month my total income after expenses was $16,436 which comes out to $587 in profit per day. 

I should mention before we begin, if you’re looking to start your own blog, make sure you check out my free IGNITION course today.

February was a little bit hectic because my wife and I had our baby shower in Illinois.

We’re very thankful for everybody that attended and gave us gifts, but we had to do all of this in a weekend.  Needless to say, it was an exhausting weekend.

Ideally, we would have liked to have stayed a week to have a relaxing trip where we got to see all of our loved ones, but this was impossible because Thalita is close to the baby due date.

The doctor said that we should get in and out as quickly as possible just in she has a premature baby.

There was no indication that she was going to do this, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

The other personal update is that my wife and I decided to get our pool redone because much of the stone around the pool itself was chipping and dated.  Plus, it was a very ugly reddish color and frankly, I hated it. 

Now it’s been upgraded to brand-new travertine and now I don’t have to worry about any issues for the next 50 years minimum. 

That’s all for the personal update.

Things continue to progress with my website and while February didn’t break any income records, my site is attracting a lot of interest from bigger brands looking to get exposure.

It’s interesting because although my affiliate revenue for the site was slightly less this month than it was last month, the sponsorship opportunities gave me an overall bump in income.

The site itself continues to grow and while it’s definitely not hands-off, most of my day is spent managing my inbox with all of the opportunities coming in.

• Pageviews decreased MoM by 5% to 61k.
• This month I earned: $9,906. Earnings decreased MoM by 6%. 
• EPM decreased MoM to $161.
• PLAN: This site is in a good place now and I’m very happy with the team that I have assembled.  As of now, my newest employee continues to revise content and optimize it for SurferSEO. My writer continues to create content that I assign to her.  My VA helps post content and handles various random tasks.  My editor/assistant helps me manage guest posting opportunities and will jump in when an article needs revising or review.
  
  For now, I intend on doing exactly what I have been doing for the last few months.  One thing I’m going to switch about my content strategy is to focus more on software roundup posts as opposed to individual reviews.  I think that doing this will lead to more sponsored opportunities and additional guest posting opportunities.

I have done nothing on this site for at least 12 months except add Ezoic and it continues to print money for me.  In February I decided to change things up a bit and have a blog post published every week here.  The reason?  This site has made thousands of dollars for years without me doing anything and I’m thinking that I should reinvest more to continue to grow it.

• Pageviews decreased MoM by 20% to 137k.
• This month I earned: $3,676. Earnings decreased MoM by 22%. 
• EPM decreased MoM to $26.74
• PLAN: I’m going to keep publishing one blog post per week for the site.  It’s using a writer that I already have on staff and when I publish new content here it ranks quickly.  This site is primarily focused on display ads and while the earnings aren’t bad, I don’t want to focus too much here as some of my other sites have a much bigger opportunity in my opinion.  

I have done nothing on this site for at least 12 months except add Ezoic and it continues to print money for me.  I have no intention of working on it and will let it sit as I work on my other projects.

• Pageviews decreased MoM by 12% to 64k.
• This month I earned: $1,282. Earnings decreased MoM by 7%. 
• EPM decreased MoM to $20.10
• PLAN: This site is currently 100% passive and I do not work on it.  I intend on selling this site once I’m consistently making enough from other sites to justify it.

I’m happy to report that I’ve gone through a full website redirect successfully.  February was the month that this site bounced back in a big way and now it looks like it’ll continue to grow from here on.

If you recall, a few months back I changed the URL to the site and did a full redirect.

The good news?

The migration seems to be taken care of and now I’m seeing some crazy traffic numbers for the site. 

Check out the screenshot below and you’ll see what I mean.

I spent time this month reviewing my competitors and it’s astounding to see what their traffic numbers are.  After doing this research, I’ve concluded that it’s not out of the question to assume that the site could get over a million views every single month. 

In terms of monetization, it’ll be focused on display ads but affiliate revenue will be a piece of this and if things go really well, I could see bringing my own e-commerce products onto the site as well.

Obviously, it’s going to take some time but I’m getting ready scale and already have an AWESOME team in place to get things going. 

Speaking of my team….

I’m happy to report that my wife has decided to help with the site.  She’s mostly in charge of assisting with link building and managing communications for guest posting. 

In exchange, I’ve agreed to pay her 20% of earnings after $1000/month, at a minimum of $200/month and a maximum of $10,000 per month.  I think this is a fair deal because it’s going to allow her to have equity of the website and she’s going to be much more enthusiastic and excited about helping me grow it.

I’m curious…..does anyone think it’s weird that we negotiated this way?  Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear if you all have ever done anything similar with your significant other.

This project is going to be my primary focus in 2022 (aside from the OHP website). 

It’s starting to show some fierce momentum and I’m confident that when I  pour gasoline on the fire it’s going to explode in growth.

• Pageviews increased MoM by 102% to 24k.
• This month I earned: $501. Earnings increased MoM by 127%. 
• EPM increased MoM to $21.45
• How Much Have I Invested in This Website: $6,236 ($800 Content budget each month)
• How Much Money Has This Website Made? $4,961
• Total ROI: -$1,275 (If I were to sell the website today, I can assume I’d sell for an estimated $15k.  Which means a net gain of roughly $13,700)
• How Much Content is on the Website? 236 informational blog posts
• PLAN: I’m working with my team to create content that focuses on topics that have over 50,000 searches every single month. What’s interesting though is that even though these topics have a very high search volume, they aren’t very competitive.  Some of the sites that I’m facing have a domain authority in the 70+ range, and mine is still in the 30’s, but the thing that I’ve noticed is that their posts barely have any links pointing to them directly.
  
  I think this is a huge mistake with most online business owners.
  
  People hear that they need to do link building for their site and they spend time on HARO or other tactics without ever linking to the deep pages on their site that will actually bring them traffic.
  
  It looks to me like many of my competitors in this niche are doing exactly this and I intend to capitalize on that weakness.  While I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to beat them in ranking, I do think that it’s very possible I’ll be on the first page of Google quickly and while I may not get the #1 spot, just appearing on the front page will bring in a LOT more traffic than I currently have.
  
  My content strategy has evolved, but what about link building?
  
  I’m also excited to open the floodgates for link building as well.  In terms of the tactics, I’m focused on right now, these include:

• Shotgun Skyscraper: My wife and I have created a VERY in-depth post on a topic much better than competitors.  We’re hoping by reaching out we can get links back to the site.
• Image Link building: In the same post mentioned above, we’ve created multiple graphics and we’re hoping some of these will get picked up in the SERP. 
• Guest Posting: Thalita will be in charge in canvassing the internet for guest posting opportunities. 
• HARO Link Building: I’ve engaged with Niche Website Builders (Click here to get 10% off their services) to help me with their HARO service.  Could I do it myself?  Yes, but I’ve never had much luck hiring it out and I’d rather work with professionals who do it regularly.
  
  One thing I have noticed in this niche is that most of the link-building opportunities are asking for payment.  I absolutely loathe this and I’m not looking to fill my site with a bunch of paid links.  My hope is that as she dives into the research, we find good opportunities that don’t cost a bundle.

My goal for this site is that by end the of March we’ll hit over 50,000 pageviews.  It’ll be hard to meet this goal because Google night take their sweet time indexing the new content, but I’ll try my best.

For the first time in a long time this website had a decrease in decrease compared to the prior month.  I analyzed it and it looks like it was because I lost the featured snippet of a very popular search term.  While this isn’t ideal, I’m not upset about it because I continue to publish a lot of content here and the site continues to grow and diversify.

My plan is to continue creating content as quickly as my team is able and then eventually I’ll go into maintenance mode and revise high traffic content in an effort to win back rankings.

• Pageviews decreased MoM by 9% to 158k.
• This month I earned: $6,753. Earnings increased MoM by 1%. 
• EPM increased MoM to $43
• How Much Have I Invested in This Website: $41,360 ($1800 Content budget each month)
• How Much Money Has This Website Made? $72,108
• Total ROI: $30,748 (If I were to sell the website today, I can assume I’d sell for an estimated $256,000. Which means a net gain of about $287,000)
• How Much Content is on the Website: Keep in mind that this is an informational type of website, not affiliate-related at all.
  • 1715 Informational pages on the website
  • 165 Informational Blog Posts
• PLAN: As mentioned last month, I’ve adjusted the content budget for this site and I’m now going to be publishing twice as much as I previously did. Of course, the biggest worry when doing this is that content quality will drop.  But, I’ve been keeping an eye on the quality, and it seems good so I’ll keep moving forward.
  
  My hope is that in the coming months I’ll start to see a significant bump in traffic and though this hasn’t happened yet, I think it will.  There are still at least a thousand posts that my writer needs to write before this site is full of content and it’s going to keep her busy for the rest of 2022. 

This site is stagnant compared to others.  I’m not upset about it, but this site hasn’t met the expectations that I had for it.  I did realize recently though that what I’ve learned from website 6 will also be applicable to this website.  While the sites aren’t in the same industry, they have similarities in the content model.

• Pageviews decreased MoM by 19% to 10k.
• This month I earned: $153. Earnings decreased MoM by 27%. 
• EPM decreased MoM to $15
• How Much Have I Invested in This Website: $9,364 ($400 Content budget each month)
• How Much Money Has This Website Made? $1,684
• Total ROI: -$7,680 (If I were to sell the website today, I can assume I’d sell for an estimated $7k. Which means a net loss of about $700)
• How Much Content is on the Website? Keep in mind this website is mostly focused on affiliate content with some informational content. 
  • 300 Informational Blog Posts
• PLAN: As of now the plan is to continue to publish 2 to 3 blog posts on the site every single week.  Though I haven’t seen a spike in traffic here, publishing is bringing in consistent traffic and earnings.  I’m also doing a small amount of link building as well when I see an opportunity arise.  In this last month, I was able to build four links pointing to the site and while that’s not too significant, it’s a few steps in the right direction.

• Pageviews increased MoM by 6% to 880.
• This month I earned: $15. Earnings decreased MoM by 29%. 
• EPM decreased MoM to $17
• How Much Content is on the Website?
  • 25 Informational Blog Posts
• PLAN: This site is currently 100% passive and I do not work on it. 

This is month 12 of the (100% Outsourced Authority Website Built by BrandBuilders).  While the site hasn’t exploded in popularity yet, this month had the highest pageviews I’ve ever gotten and I’m hoping this trend will continue. 

I still haven’t published any new content on the site and I’m still building links when I get the opportunity.  I tried to hire two different writers for the site in February but neither of them met my expectations.  It wasn’t that the content was terrible, but for the amount that they were charging I expected better content to be written. 

• Pageviews increased MoM by 71% to 2k.
• This month I earned: $0. This site is not yet monetized. 
• EPM remained at $0.
• How Much Content is on the Website?
  • 33 Informational Blog Posts
• PLAN: The biggest hurdle of the site is that it hasn’t been a priority for me.  I’ve had 33 posts sitting on the site for some time and haven’t been publishing new content.  The positive news there is that I am confident I can lean on one of my writers who has been with me for 6 months to create the content moving forward.  He’s charging $0.06/word and while that’s a little pricey, I expect that he’ll create great content. 
  
  The next thing I need to do is proper keyword research to make sure I have my writer focusing on the right content.  After that, I’ll just have him write one article per week.  If I start to see a huge increase in traffic and the earnings are following closely, I’ll hire a second writer to help out as his bandwidth is already limited due to the work he does for me on the OHP site.

Another month of this YouTube channel showed a steady increase in earnings compared to the past.  This is one of the most boring parts of my income report because we do the same thing every month, but it’s cool to see the income continue to steadily grow.  If you’re interested in building an outsourced YouTube channel like this, I recommend that you check out this webinar.

• Views decreased MoM by 10% to 245k.
• This month I earned: $1,099. Earnings increased MoM by 1%. 
• Subscriber growth decreased MoM by 7%.
• How Much Did We Invest in This YouTube Channel: $4,270 (Estimate of $350/month in expenses)
• How Much Money Has This YouTube Channel Made? $12,709
• Total ROI: $8,439 (If I were to sell the channel today, I can assume I’d sell for an estimated $36k. Which means a net gain of about $44k)
• PLAN: The team that my wife and I (mostly my wife to be honest) have built continues to publish videos 5 times a week and we intend on keeping that publishing schedule.

Views dropped for the OneHourProfessor YouTube channel this month I’m hardly shocked.  It’s been  quite some time since I published content on the channel and while I’ve explained many times that I want to do this, it just doesn’t make sense from a business perspective. 

I’m already very busy managing all of my sites and while focusing on YouTube would be fun, it’s just not in the best interest of my business.

• Views decreased MoM by 18% to 18k.
• This month I earned: $442. Earnings decreased MoM by 16%. 
• Subscriber growth increased MoM by 1%
• How Much Have I Invested in This YouTube Channel: $3,927
• How Much Money Has This YouTube Channel Made? $13,965
• Total ROI: $10,038 (If I were to sell the channel today, I can assume I’d sell for an estimated $15k.  Which means a net gain of about $25k)
• PLAN: At this point I must stay away from publishing new content on my channel. My sites take a ton of my mental capacity and history has shown I’m more skilled in this area.

We’re still waiting to see if this channel ends up doing well.  While it hasn’t flopped completely, the growth has slowed significantly and were not sure what’s going to happen.  Our only hope is that one of these videos goes viral and we end up seeing a big increase in views and earnings.  If you’re interested in building an outsourced YouTube channel like this, I recommend that you check out this webinar.

• Views decreased MoM by 12% to 6.3k.
• This month I earned: $11. Earnings decreased MoM by 13%. 
• Subscriber growth increased MoM by 43%
• How Much Have We Invested in This YouTube Channel: $4,100 (We’ve stopped investing here)
• How Much Money Has This YouTube Channel Made? $45
• Total ROI: -$4,055 (If I were to sell the channel today, I can assume I’d sell for an estimated $400. Which means a net loss of about $3,600)
• PLAN: After discussing potential paths moving forward, my wife and I have decided to completely stop investing in this channel.  It doesn’t make any sense to continue to create content for a channel that isn’t showing signs of growth.  As of now there are still 13 videos that have already been completed that need to be published and hopefully those will bring more subscribers and earnings into the channel itself, but I haven’t seen it happen yet.

Thalita’s vlog channel had nice growth last month now that she’s actively working on it.  We hope that this continues.  This is a personal vlog YouTube channel and though I’ve mentioned in the past how I have my reservations because it’s primarily for a Portuguese-speaking audience, and the ad revenues are low, you can’t argue with progress.

• Views increased MoM by 59% to 75k.
• This month she earned: $115. Earnings increased MoM by 116%. 
• Subscriber growth increased MoM by 57%
• How Much Did We Invest in This YouTube Channel: $2,110 (Estimate of $160/month in expenses)
• How Much Money Has This YouTube Channel Made? $770
• Total ROI: -$1,340
• PLAN: While this channel still isn’t profitable, there was a huge jump in February and now that Thalita is really focusing on it, I think that we’ll have some solid growth in March as well.  Due to her channel being focused on a Brazilian audience, this isn’t going to be the most profitable channel in the world, but she’s made a shift in the content to focus more on mom-related videos and this seems to have increased her earnings per 1000 views by about 20%. 
  
  This is one of the only jobs that she can have while simultaneously being a busy (and exhausted)  mother, so we’ve decided it’s the best path moving forward.  All she’ll have to do is record her day as a mom and while it’s not my cup of tea, there are tens of thousands of her followers that love to see her content. 

Lessons Learned

Every month, I’m going to reflect back and tell you a few different lessons that I’ve learned. My hope is that the lessons each month will be a cautionary tale for you that makes it so that you don’t make the dumb mistakes that I do along the way.

• Buy Annual Software Plans: If you have the funds to invest in software that you use year-round, do it.  Although it’s a big expenditure in a single month, the fact that you’ll be able to save 10%-20% over the year is the right move.
• Guest Posting is Very Much Alive: I remember years ago that Google was pushing the narrative that guest posting was dead.  I very much disagree with this.  I recently did a podcast with Doug Cunnington and explained how myself and my team have written over 250 guest posts since I started focusing on my brand and it’s grown exponentially.  While the exposure for the brand is nice, the links have also helped tremendously.  I intend on using the guest post workflow that I’ve created with the OHP site to secure guest posts in other niches.  If I do this right, I’m confident I can crush my competitors because most niches don’t have marketers who are nearly as savvy as they are in online business.
• Focus: One of my biggest downfalls in the past was my love for shiny object syndrome. Meaning, I’d think of a new idea and act on it quickly.  Truth be told, many of those ideas did work, but by doing this, I hurt my long-term growth.  Ever since focusing 100% on the OHP site, my mentality has changed.  Now my goal every single year is to go as hard as possible on a single site to see how large I can get it by the end of the year.  As of now, that site is going to be Website 6 and I’m excited to see the progress I make in 2022.