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July โ August 2020 Income Report: My Team Expanded๐ฌ, New Challenges ๐ , Website Updates๐
In July-August, the world was still crazy but a bit less compared to May – June ๐
The turmoil in the US went down a bit – or at least, it became less acute. Instead, the recession has begun and I am feeling its effect on my online business ๐
Thatโs said…
Welcome to my fourth bi-monthly income report of 2020!
I am now doing bi-monthly income reports because it saves me time โณ and reduces the amount of identical content in my blog ๐ค
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 #59-60 to find out what happened in July-August 2020.
My team has grown ๐ฌ๐ฌ
Now, I have 6 people on my team!
In August, I hired a graphic designer ๐จโ๐จ (in addition to 3 writers, an editor, and a virtual assistant) to do graphic design and videos. I found him on onlinejobs.com, a platform for hiring freelancers from the Philippines.
Hiring new people is always stressful for me.
First of all, it takes a lot of time ๐ I need to write a job posting, come up with tests, review the applicants, send the tests, review the tests, conduct voice interviews, choose the best candidateโฆ
Second of all, itโs just tiring. All parts of this task involve critical thinking and consume a lot of mental energy ๐ซ
In order to track the hiring process, I even created a spreadsheet. I keep everything there, from applicants to test results to voice interviews and I even assign scores to the candidates. It greatly helps with the cognitive load ๐
For this position, I processed 24 applications ๐คฏ before choosing who to hire.
So far, I am happy with my new team member ๐จโ๐จ Heโs a professional designer and his day job is also creating graphic design ๐๐๐
Planning for a new hosting
My current BlueHost plan expires in October and I have been wanting to move to some better hosting for a while.
Iโve spent quite some time researching various WordPress hosting solutions to find the one that suits me the best. And I did find it! ๐
I plan to write a blog post about it so stay tuned! โ
Website updates ๐
To refresh your memory about what the website nicknames mean, read here.
Unicorn ๐ฆ Website
This is the site I bought in April. It is the biggest website in my fleet as well as the most expensive among the sites I have ever bought ๐
Given that, no wonder it is my prime focus. I have been actively improving it trying to increase revenue.
The site is starting to require less and less of my attention when it comes to content making. It now needs less babysitting compared to the previous period of May – June.
However, instead, I am spending a lot of time on producing high-quality original video content ๐ฅ๐ I am working very closely with my designer on it. Video making is a new area for both of us so we are learning on the go and thus itโs moving quite slowly ๐๐
During this period, I also updated the server to the latest PHP 7.4 and Maria DB 10.3.
It was easy to do thanks to the CloudWays hosting. It offers a very convenient way of deploying a new server with a carbon copy of the website. This allowed me to test all the new changes without touching the live website.
It does cost money but the cost is super manageable since they offer an hourly rate ๐ The testing cost me only about five bucks to keep the test server alive for a couple of days ๐
All this was possible thanks to CloudWays that is now my official favorite hosting ๐ I will write a review soon, stay tuned!
Mother ๐ Website
This website has now become my second focus. I keep working on increasing traffic and pumping money into the content ๐ธ
In July, the website got under a black-hat attack and it was flooded with spammy backlinks. I noticed it only when my ranking dropped ๐ญ
In hopes to mitigate the lack of action on the ๐ฉ attack, I did a lot of internal SEO that I have been postponing due to my laziness ๐ such as disallowing thin pages, nofollowing non-essential stuff, and more. But it did not helpโฆ ๐คทโโ๏ธ
The ranking has started recovering only recently, after about 4-5 weeks after I submitted the last disavow file (I made three of them ๐ฌ๐ because I kept finding new spammy backlinks again and again ๐ฃ).
In total, I disavowed 800+ backlinks and domains ๐คฏ But thanks to my approach of manual disavow, it took me just a few hours ๐
The hosting for this website also needs to be updated to the latest PHP version. But since itโs BlueHost, I could not test the upgrade safely without affecting the live site. So, I postponed the upgrade until moving to a new hosting.
Baby ๐ Website
Despite its name (Baby ๐ถ), this site has been a mature adult that brings a steady hefty paycheck every month without any babysitting ๐ (not like some other horn-owning sites ๐๐)
It did Ok during July – August. Given that its main income comes from ads and ad rates were not doing super well, its income went down ๐
Baby ๐ Website 2
Meanwhile, I got yet another Baby ๐ Website ๐๐๐
It is in the same niche as the first Baby ๐ Website but with a narrower focus. I pumped some money into its content using the same strategy as for its sibling (a convenient way to scale!)
It has been growing a bit but its income is still very small.
LivingOfCloud (this blog)
In this blog, I was not very active recently. All my focus has been on my niche websites ๐ However, I hope that thanks to the things I am doing, I will have more material than ever for this blog! I only need time to write it ๐
This is what I posted here:
๐ Frase: Your New Secret Content Research Tool (The AppSumo Deal Is Closed, Alas ๐ข)
๐ August 2020 News Roundup๐ฐ: Whatโs New In SEO & Affiliate Marketing
๐ July 2020 News Roundup๐ฐ: Whatโs New In SEO & Affiliate Marketing
In August, I managed to score a handsome AppSumo deal ๐ I bought Frase, a content tool that helps you to create new content based on low-competition keywords and to optimize old content by analyzing your competition and the keywords you already rank for ๐คฉ.
I have been using it for a few weeks and I quite like it. I even wrote a short preliminary review – read it here!
Other websites
Whatโs included in this part are the sites that are currently either on hold or at the very beginning of the growth, or the ones that have just been acquired.
It makes no sense to write about them every month so I wonโt! ๐
Got lost in my Elephants ๐, Rats ๐, and other creatures? Read here to find out what the website nicknames mean
Personal life ๐ฉ๐ป
In July-August, I was getting back to my regular routine of working hard non-stop ๐ฃ
July weather was still nice and we spent quite some time eating out outside and doing kayaking on the St-Lawrence river ๐ถ
In August, the weather got worse so I had less motivation to go outside and more reasons to stay inside.. and do workโฆ and do work-outs! ๐๏ธโโ๏ธ
I have started doing some serious handstand training and even bought 3 weeks of live online training sessions ๐คธโโ๏ธ๐
Thanks to that, my shoulders have been growing like crazy ๐ช๐๐ And I like it! ๐ Having strong shoulder muscles came very handy when we did kayaking ๐๐ถ

Revenueโ
The revenue was not bad but could have been definitely better. The ad rates dropped because of the pandemic and recession in the US. Amazon affiliate sales went down as well because my ๐1 Website lost ranking.
However, in August, my ๐ฆ Website had the best revenue since I bought it so it made the overall revenue picture less gloomy ๐
Overall, the revenue numbers were on par with the previous May-June period.
Numbers
Got lost in my Elephants ๐, Rats ๐, and other creatures? Read here to find out what the website nicknames mean
Let’s look at the income numbers in the details.
๐ต All numbers are in USD ๐ต
Website | Amount |
---|---|
Mother Elephant | $1,828.87 |
Baby Elephant | $3,626.91 |
Baby Elephant 2 | $10.67 |
Unicorn | $4,588.98 |
Rat | $204.51 |
LivingOffCloud | $918.78 |
Other websites | $2.98 |
Total | $7,780.23 |
My top three income sources (in the 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.
Amazon US:
Amazon Canada:
Expensesโ
In July-August, the expenses were also on par with the expenses during the previous period.
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) | $59.92 |
Mailshake (cold outreach mailer) | $33.17 |
GSuite (paid Gmail) | $23.74 |
ActiveCampaign | $15.30 |
GeneratePress (a WP theme) | $2.50 |
AAWP | $17.92 |
Ad Inserter Pro | $1.50 |
Perfmatters (a WP plugin for site speed) | $6.41 |
SerpRobot (a SERP tracking tool) | $19.96 |
Other tools | $134.09 |
Hosting | $204.18 |
Domains | $9.92 |
Virtual Assistant (outsourced formatting etc) | $445.09 |
Graphic design | $98.11 |
Link building | $0.00 |
Courses | $0.00 |
Misc | $428.71 |
Total | $1,500.50 |
The hosting expense is high โthanksโ to my ๐ฆ Website that has dedicated hosting on CloudWays.
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 (and GSuite to avoid your emails going directly into spam ๐ฑ).
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
- Perfmatters for the website speed
My virtual assistant (VA) is my right hand. My business would simply die if I didn’t have one! My last VA hire was 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 and management.
Website | Amount |
---|---|
Mother Elephant | $1,051.65 |
Baby Elephant | $0.00 |
Baby Elephant 2 | $0.00 |
Unicorn | $858.39 |
Other Websites | $0.00 |
Total | $1,910.04 |
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. The code will give you a 10% word bonus for the same price for new customers.
Totals ๐ต
Here are my totals for July-August 2020.
๐ต All numbers are in USD ๐ต
Total revenue $11,181.70 minus general expenses $1,500.50 minus content expenses $1,910.04 makes a net profit of $7,771.16. This number should be divided by two since it’s for both July and August.
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 to the last year (click on the image to enlarge):
My financial goal of 2020 has been reached ๐
In my 2019 review, I set the revenue goal for 2020 at $40,000. If you take a look where I am now, you can see that I have already exceeded that number by $984.33 ๐
๐ต All numbers are in USD ๐ต
Yes, partially, itโs happened thanks to the incredibly good April. But even if I subtract the $6,000 I made in April, my progress would still look good ๐๐ค
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