October wasn’t all that bad!  Granted, I’m still trying to figure out what to do after these Google updates….but just as I was looking into things they announced ANOTHER core update and a review update next week. 

That all said…I give up lol. 

What’s the point in stressing about something you have no control over?  Working on a few things to try to make my sites better based on best practices I know, but we’ll see what happens. 

The biggest positive this month: Overall, revenue increased by 10% this month.  This is very interested because traffic has definitely DROPPED, but I guess this proves that targeted traffic is all that matters.

The biggest negative this month:  OHP traffic dropped 34%.  While that does suck…..I’m happy revenue climbed.  At least I’m losing traffic to pages that don’t matter all that much.

Here are the numbers behind my business for the month:

• Revenue: $13,727 (This includes revenue from all sources)
• Expenses : $8,958 (This only includes business expenses. I no longer include my own pay, healthcare expenses, or 401k investments here as it’s all a distribution of revenue that no one else reports on either)
• Net Income: $4,769

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.

Another thing to mention this month is an easter egg in this report that I don’t discuss, which hints at a new business venture.  If you think you see it, comment and let me know!

October was full of a whole lot of nothing.  I continue to work on my sites and have a solid team in place to minimize the need for my time as much as possible.  At this point, I’m basically in charge of content strategy and keyword research.  The team handles the rest for all of the sites I have that are still active. 

Halloween was pretty fun!  Saara was kind of a nightmare because the stimulation was REAL.  She ran after so many trick-or-treaters trying to get a hug, she’s a sweet kid and very nice to everyone.  It’s sweet to watch, but a nightmare to keep her by your side.

That’s all for the personal update.

The OHP site lost 34% of traffic, but increased earnings by 10%.  Kind of seems like a weird oxymoron as those things usually go hand-in-hand, but that wasn’t the case in October.  The craziest thing about this site though?  My RPM is now $349 overall.  I’ve never had a site earn this month off of a small amount of traffic.  I’m excited to see what happens in November as my site is now adjusting due to the traffic changes and it’ll be interesting to see where things settle.

PLAN:  I’m diving deep into various silos and producing around 15 pieces of content each week.  This is a lot of work and hard to manage, but I think it’s a good path moving forward based on what I’ve seen from my site.  Honestly, I’m not sure how Google will react, but I’m doing my best to get topical relevance for anything I do and seeing how Google reacts.  Assuming things don’t drop off a cliff, I’ll know if this strategy works in about a month or two.  Early signs point to yes, this is a good strategy, but we’ll see what happens.

Of all the sites I have, this is one I haven’t touched in literally two years or so and wouldn’t you know it?  Google gave it a ton of love with the new updates (lol).  Overall, traffic is up 81% for the month and earnings are up 134%.  This is just…weird to me. 

But who am I not to embrace it? 

At this point in time, I’m creating AI-assisted content on this site in an effort to increase rankings.  But the more interesting part of this is that I’m using Chat GPT’s ability to understand an image and write what is in a picture to do it. 

I can’t give more details than that, but it’s a pretty remarkable breakthrough to see just how good ChatGPT is at this at present. 

PLAN:  As of now I’ve got a new VA/writer assigned to this site, and we’re producing 2-3 articles per week.  If I start to see positive trends, this will increase significantly as they are an affordable solution for what I need.

Traffic for this site fell 43% this month, and earnings fell 27%.  As of now, this site is basically dead.  That’s fine though, I’ll just let it sit till Google decides it likes it again.

PLAN:  No future plans for the site, I just want to let it sit and see what happens.

Yet again, it was a solid month for website 10.  Earnings increased 86% from last month to $650 with a 51% increase in traffic to 3,013.  This is a very impressive little site, and although it doesn’t have a ton of traffic, it’s making a surprising $215 RPM, not as good as OHP….but still impressive.

PLAN:  Continue on with 15 articles per week.  I previously focused on commercial-intent content, but as of the last few weeks, we’re 100% focused on informational content.  This is increasing the traffic to the site, so I’m going to stay on this path until it makes sense to adjust. 

I have some levers I can pull to get more clicks to various affiliates in the hopes that I make more sales, and I plan on implementing a strategy to help with that soon enough.

Link building continues on this site with HARO and resource link building where I can find the opportunity.  It’s a slow process, but it’s definitely working.

I threw ads on this site in October and have my first month of data.  Interestingly, it made $16 off of 1,521 pageviews – this means an RPM of about $11.  This was REALLY surprising to me as I don’t see a reason for this target audience to get high RPM’s, but I guess I’m wrong on that.  It’s not bad, but MUCH less than the affiliate marketing I’m doing in other areas. 

PLAN:  For now I’ll let this site sit.  It is a 100% AI play and considering I have bigger sites doing much more, I don’t want to distract myself.    

Traffic this month increased 19%, and it had earnings of $9 for 1,807 pageviews.  This is crazy to me as I assumed THIS site would be the one making more with ad revenue, but I guess not. 

PLAN:  Similar to sire 11, we’re going to let this sit for now.  I could make some more with AI-assisted content, but I just don’t want to distract myself.  

The OneHourProfessor YouTube channel continues to sit.  Subscribers/earnings/views are all falling, and I understand why but still can’t go back to it.   

PLAN: Things still on hold here.