Best month ever, that's how I can call April 2016. Read on my income report #8 to find out what made the month so great. What Happened Inย April April was…
January โ February 2021 Income Report: Taxes ๐ค, Personal Life Gets Priority ๐, Website Updates๐
Winter has passed so quickly that I barely noticed it โโโ๐จ Itโs all thanks for going away from seasonality in my online business! Having a stable income throughout the year was one of my core goals forever and finally, I achieved it this winter ๐
Thatโs saidโฆ
Welcome to my first bi-monthly income report of 2021!
I am now doing bi-monthly income reports because it saves me time โณ and reduces the amount of identical content in my blog ๐ด
Rather than creating yet another boring IR, I better spend time on writing other posts that are hopefully more interesting than money reports ๐ค๐ป
So read my income report #65-66 to find out what happened in January-February 2020.
Low Season became High ๐ข
Winter used to be a gloomy period for me. My websites used to be in niches that were seasonal with a high period in summer.
But this time, it was not the case ๐ I successfully fixed it!
I did a deseasonalizing of my online business by buying a season-agnostic site (๐ฆ Website) and working hard on winter content for my ๐ช Website (former Mother ๐ Website).
It worked so well that I barely noticed the winter ๐๐
Tax season ๐ธ
Itโs time to do taxes ๐ซ๐ ๐
My income for 2020 exceeded the threshold of $30,000 CAD and it means that I may need to file GST/QST a.k.a sales taxes.
However, itโs not clear whether I really need to do it since:
- the majority of my โclientsโ are from the US;
- I do not collect any sales taxes.
I suspect that I donโt but I need to make sure. So, I am currently investigating the matter ๐ต๏ธโโ๏ธ
BTW, if you are a website owner from Canada and looking for info about how to file taxes, I collect all the info I find in this post.
Website updates ๐
To refresh your memory about what the website nicknames mean, read here.
Unicorn ๐ฆ Website
Well, it got hit by January 2021 update and has not recovered since that ๐ญ The traffic went by 30% compared to the previous period ๐ญ๐ญ๐ญ

From what I see, at least two things happen to it:
- Imbalance between commercial and info content
- Missed opportunities on featured snippets
The commercial content means posts with Amazon products. My main goal with this website is to diversify my revenue away from Amazon so I do not plan to fix problem #1 (at least for now).
Meanwhile, scoring featured snippets, itโs something I do plan to work on.
However, I may not see the results any time soon ๐ญ I got the impression that Google reassesses featured snippets on a once-in-awhile basis, which seems to be once every few months.
Anyway, hereโs what I am doing in order to score them and hopefully, to recover from the hit. Given the success of ๐ช Website (see below), I am confident that I can fix this one too ๐ช
Ramping up link building
Apart from doing my own link building, I have signed up for ABC Plus from authority.builders. Itโs expensive but also sooo convenient! And everybody who tried the service claim that it was efficient.
Updating old content
A big chunk of work is to update old posts with outdated info.
The niche of ๐ฆ Website is very dynamic and the information gets outdated often, unfortunately.
On the plus side, Google really likes it when I update old posts and rewards with quick increases in ranking ๐
Also, apart from fixing the text, I add extra content in the form of videos. These are either somebody elseโs videos or my own ones ๐น
It greatly helps with ranking and traffic ๐
Improving old posts formatting
I have tons of How-to posts where steps are formatted as regular paragraphs with a number at the beginning.
My research showed that Google prefers when such articles have Ordered Lists instead. So, I am converting paragraphs into ordered lists.
Getting rid of old content
Based on the experience I had with ๐ช Website (more on it below), I decided to.. get rid of some content ๐ฑ I mostly removed posts that do not have any traffic and are not related to my main money-making verticals.
Formatting new posts in optimal way
I make sure that the new posts are formatted in an optimal way by using all suitable HTML elements (Ordered Lists, Lists, etc).
Camel ๐ช Website (Former Mother ๐ Website)
You may remember that I renamed Mother ๐ Website to Camel ๐ช Website at the beginning of the year.
This website is on the roll! ๐คฉ
Content can break it or make it
At last, I am so happy to see that after years (really, years! ๐ฌ๐ ) of struggle, my efforts are paying off ๐คฉ
In the middle of 2020, I finally understood what was holding the website from ranking.
Did you know that sometimes, in order to move forward, you need to delete a part of old content even if itโs ranking well and bringing revenue? ๐ฑ
I did not ๐คทโโ๏ธ But once I tried doing that, the results followed ๐
Now, in retrospective, it makes sense. Google does not like generic websites unless they are huge with high authority. And some keywords can be extremely โstickyโ and can โclogโ ranking of other keywords.
After deoptimizing for the โstickyโ keywords, the main content I wanted to rank went up ๐ In total, the traffic grew by 34% compared to the last year:

Based on this fix, I managed to convert the website from seasonal to two-seasonal ๐ Winters are no longer low-season, nope ๐
Improving revenue
In February, the traffic reached the all-time high ๐คฉ
The number of GA sessions finally exceeded 50,000 and it meant that I was eligible to apply for Mediavine, the next after Ezoic tier of ad monetization platform.
And I did.
It is my third time (third!!! ๐ฑ) attempt with two previous applications turned down ๐ญ I hope that this time, Iโll finally succeed ๐ค
LivingOfCloud (this blog)
Unfortunately, my resources for this blog are getting scarce.
Between prepping for personal stuff (more on it later), link building, recovering from Google updates, pushing the YouTube channel, I am having less and less resources and energy for sharing my experience here ๐
As you can see, itโs already mid-March and I only now post my income report ๐
This is what I posted here during the last two months:
๐ February 2021 News Roundup๐ฐ: Whatโs New In SEO & Affiliate Marketing
๐ January 2021 News Roundup๐ฐ: Whatโs New In SEO & Affiliate Marketing
๐ My Business Year 2020 In Review: Successes ๐ Struggles๐ฃ And Plans For The Next Year ๐
Other websites
Whatโs included in this part are the sites that are currently either on hold, at the very beginning of the growth, or the ones that I did not work on during this period.
It makes no sense to write about them every month so I wonโt! ๐
Got lost in my Camels ๐ช, Elephants ๐, Unicorns ๐ฆ, and other creatures? Read here to find out what the website nicknames mean!
Personal life ๐ฉ๐ป
Personal life was intense in January-February ๐
One of my longest personal goals finally came into fruition ๐ท I cannot share any extra details because nothing is official yet as I am still waiting for the last step to complete.
Initially, I thought that I would have at least one more year before this project getting into active state, especially given the pandemic. However, it got an unexpected development and now, the whole year 2021 wonโt be as I planned it ๐๐
I will have to travel in late spring / early summer. Then, during the summer and maybe early autumn, I will be busy with the project, which meansโฆ no time for my online business ๐ญ
I will be stepping away for at least three months ๐คทโโ๏ธ
But I do not want to lose my team, at least not the core members who are doing content creation.
Fortunately, this part of my business is relatively well outsourced and does not require my daily attention ๐ The only thing I need is the content plan with briefs.
So currently, I am working day and night preparing enough content to cover the summer months ๐ซ
Also, I am afraid that I will have to put my LOC blog on pause ๐คทโโ๏ธ I am not even sure if I will be able to release the next income report ๐
Now, back to business!
Revenueโ
The revenue in January-February was given that it was winter, which was supposed to be a low season. Not anymore ๐
Numbers
Got lost in my Camels ๐ช, Elephants ๐, Unicorns ๐ฆ, and other creatures? Read here to find out what the website nicknames mean!
Letโs look at the income numbers in the details.
๐ต All numbers are in USD ๐ต
Website | Amount |
---|---|
Unicorn | $4,047.18 |
Camel | $2,710.63 |
Baby Elephant | $3,211.46 |
Baby Elephant 2 | $86.07 |
LivingOffCloud | $682.23 |
Other websites | $2.55 |
Total | $10,740.11 |
My top three income sources (in the highest revenue order):
- Ezoic, which is great for display ads ๐ค (read my review)
- Amazon Affiliate (still ๐คทโโ๏ธ)
- Other ad platforms and affiliates (this is mostly for ๐ฆ Website)
Income proof
Now that I have reached a certain level of income, I feel like I should also post proof of it. I am myself having a hard time believing these numbers!
Hereโs the proof from Ezoic:

Hereโs the stats chart from Amazon; I used a new Consolidated Summary report showing the earnings from all the Amazon stores in a chosen currency (USD):

Expensesโ
In January-February, the expenses were highest in the last 12 months. Itโs because I was actively building backlinks on two websites. I shelled off $500 for ABC Plus from authority.builders ๐ฌ and paid for other backlinks.
I pay for many services on an annual basis. However, in my income reports, I spread these expenses on a per monthly basis as if I were paying for them every month. It should give a better understanding of my expenses each month.
๐ต All numbers are in USD ๐ต
Expenses minus content
Expense | Amount |
---|---|
Tailwind (a tool for Pinterest) | $29.98 |
Mailshake (cold outreach mailer) | $72.17 |
GSuite (paid Gmail) | $11.87 |
GeneratePress (a WP theme) | $5.00 |
AAWP | $17.92 |
Surfer SEO | $98.00 |
SerpRobot (a SERP tracking tool) | $19.96 |
Other tools | $127.26 |
Hosting+Emails | $252.03 |
Domains | $12.39 |
Virtual Assistant | $174.23 |
Graphic design | $585.00 |
Link building | $945.99 |
Courses | $0.00 |
Misc | $177.32 |
Total | $2,555.14 |
The hosting expense is high โthanksโ to my ๐ฆ Website that has dedicated hosting on CloudWays. In 2021, I moved all my other websites to the same hosting. Read my review of CloudWays here.
For SEO, I use Surfer SEO. Itโs a tool for keyword research, on-page optimization, content planning, and many other tasks. It allows me to greatly streamline my content research โฅ
Tailwind (an app for Pinterest and Instagram) has been crucial to growing my revenue. If you wonder how I do Pinterest marketing, go ahead and read my post about it.
I use MailShake for cold email outreach. When you are building white-hat links in an efficient way, itโs a must to use a tool for that.
On the WordPress setup side, I use a premium WP theme GeneratePress since itโs fast and highly configurable.
I also use a few premium WP plugins:
- AAWP to insert Amazon Affiliate links and create comparison tables; read my review
- Ad Inserter Pro to insert ads into pages
My virtual assistant (VA) is my right hand. My business would simply die if I didnโt have one! Well, not I have two of them and all my VA hires came from onlinejobs.com.
Iโve also got a graphic designer, from onlinejobs.com as well. The graphic designer creates Pinterest images and makes video content.
Content
Given the nature of our business, content is an investment in the business. I decided to track it separately since itโs an important part of future success.
Here, I will give you a breakdown for (almost) each website. Each content expense includes content editing, management, and formatting.
Website | Amount |
---|---|
Unicorn | $1,176.89 |
Camel | $1,742.27 |
Baby Elephant | $0.00 |
Baby Elephant 2 | $234.55 |
Other Websites | $27.96 |
Total | $3,181.68 |
For content, I have in-house writers who I found myself on various platforms including ProBlogger and Upwork.
Also, once in a while, I use the services of a writing agency called ContentPit. If you want to try them out, I have a promo code for you: LOCPROMO10 ๐๐๐ The code will give you a 10% word bonus for the same price for new customers ๐ค
Totals ๐ต
Here are my totals for January-February 2021.
๐ต All numbers are in USD ๐ต
Total revenue $10,740.11 minus general expenses $2,555.14 minus content expenses $3,181.68 makes a net profit of $5,075.62. This number should be divided by two since itโs for both January and February.
Here is a chart with my revenue vs expenses history for the last 14 months. I used the 14-month timeline instead of the 12-month one to show you how these months performed compared to the last year (click on the image to enlarge):

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