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March โ€“ April 2020 Income Report: Biggest Revenue Ever (Again) ๐Ÿค‘, A New Site ๐Ÿฆ„, HARO, And More

Oh boy hasnโ€™t it been a totally crazy period! ๐Ÿคฏ 

Our life has completely changed since my last income report! A pandemic, economic turmoil, lockdown, Amazon Affiliate rates dropโ€ฆ 

At the same timeโ€ฆ 

Not sure about you but for me, these two months were very good! I again got the highest revenue number since ever! 

Aaaaand I also bought a new website ๐Ÿ™ˆ

Thatโ€™s saidโ€ฆ

Welcome to my second bi-monthly income report of 2020!

I am now doing bi-monthly income reports because it saves me time โณ and reduces the amount of identical content in my blog ๐Ÿ’ค

Rather than creating yet another boring IR, I better spend time on writing other posts that are hopefully more interesting than money reports ๐Ÿคž๐Ÿป

So read my income report #55-56 to find out what happened in March-April 2020.

New site ๐ŸŽ‰

In April, I bought a new site! Wooohoo! ๐ŸŽ‰

As you may know, I had been thinking about it sinceโ€ฆ well forever ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™€๏ธ And finally, I came across a site I felt was totally up my alley: the niche, the monetization, the way to grow.

I bought it at feinternational.com, an online broker I wrote about here.

Unfortunately, I cannot disclose the details of the deal because I signed an NDA.

I can only say that this is the biggest site purchase I ever made and itโ€™s also the biggest website I have ever owned.

Itโ€™s probably 2-3 times bigger than my Mother ๐Ÿ˜ Site that was my first purchase.

Also, the deal was closed at the beginning of the COVID-19 economical turmoil and it helped me to get the price close to what I wanted ๐Ÿ‘

The deal was closed at the beginning of April so the negotiations were going on during the second half of March. 

While everybody around me was freaking out about the pandemic, I found myself a perfect distraction ๐Ÿ˜‚ 

But seriously, it was very stressful. The whole world as I knew it was seemingly crumbling in front of me and I, instead of holding tight and saving cash for the uncertain future, was buying an expensive site! ๐Ÿ˜จ

I had many doubts but eventually, I decided to move forward.

When the Amazon Affiliate April rat cut came, I was glad I bought a new website because โ€“ ta-dam! โ€“ its primary monetization method is not Amazon Affiliate!๐ŸŽ‰

One of the reasons to buy it was indeed to diversify my income. But I did not know that I would have to do it so soon ๐Ÿคฏ

I gave this site a nickname ๐Ÿฆ„. Because itโ€™s rare! ๐Ÿ—ป

Website updates ๐ŸŽˆ

To refresh your memory about what the website nicknames mean, read here.

Mother ๐Ÿ˜ Website

This website is my prime focus. I keep working on increasing traffic and pumping money into the content ๐Ÿ’ธ

I published 36,600+ words of new content in March-April.

During this period, the site showed great growth in traffic. Itโ€™s because this is its high season plus it seems that the domain migration I did in February is finally finalized.

The organic traffic grew by 112.95% ๐Ÿคฏ

Mother Elephant Traffic March to April 2020

Baby ๐Ÿ˜ Website

In terms of traffic for this site, itโ€™s the same thing here. Itโ€™s the beginning of the high season for the niche.

The website saw a big growth in March-April despite the fact I did not add much new content to it. I only published one article of 2900+ words.

Baby Elephant Traffic March to April 2020

LivingOfCloud (this blog)

In this blog, I was very active recently. No wonder, given how our affiliate landscape has been shaken! So, I published many posts โ€“ check them out if you missed something:

๐Ÿ‘‰ DesignShifu Review: Should You Use This Unlimited Graphic Design Service?
๐Ÿ‘‰ LivingOffCloud SEO & Affiliate Marketing News Roundup๐Ÿ“ฐ: April 2020 Edition
๐Ÿ‘‰ Authority Hacker Pro Review And Why I Recommend It
๐Ÿ‘‰ ๐Ÿ’ฅโ˜ Amazon U.S. Slashes The Affiliate Fee Rates Starting From April 21, 2020 โ˜ ๐Ÿ’ฅ What Can You Do About It?๐Ÿคจ
๐Ÿ‘‰ COVID-19 Relief: Paid Courses And Tools That Are Free Now

HARO success

I scored a nice dofollow backlink from a 61 DR site for this blog ๐Ÿ˜ I used a service called HARO.

HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out and is explained in-depth on their website. Itโ€™s one of the ways to obtain white-hat links from high authority domains.

I answered one of the requests and boom ๐Ÿ’ฅ They published my answer! And gave a dofollow backlink to my blog!

The submission deadline for the request was quite short and I had to write the piece in the bed past midnight so that I could send it in time before 7 AM the next day ๐Ÿ˜…

My efforts paid off and in a few days, I received an email about the publication ๐Ÿ‘ I wonโ€™t give a link to the site here because I do not want to create reciprocal backlinks.

Ezoic contest video

Ezoic, an ad network I am using on all my sites, ran a publisher contest in April.

They asked their publishers to record a short video about our successes with Ezoic, how it helped us to grow our business, etc. The prize was $500 ๐Ÿ˜

I made this video:

The contest results were released a few days ago. 

I did not win the contest and did not get the prize ๐Ÿ˜ญ but it was fun in itself to record the video! ๐ŸŽฅ Plus, I got a push to create some unique content for my blog.

I embedded it in my Ezoic review that you can read here.

Also, as a nice reward for everyone who participated in the contest, Ezoic gave everyone a free subscription to Ezoicโ€™s Site Speed Accelerator to the Ezoic account ๐Ÿค—

Other websites

Whatโ€™s 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 wonโ€™t! ๐Ÿ˜›

My peers ๐Ÿ‘จโ€๐Ÿ’ป

In Canada, I already happen to know 4 other people who do niche websites

In March, we had our first meetup! Because of the coronavirus, we had to do it online.

In April, we decided to repeat it ๐Ÿ˜

Itโ€™s very nice to have a community that understands and supports you ๐Ÿค—

Personal life ๐Ÿ‘ฉ๐Ÿป

In March-April, I was working hard and had tons of remote parties!

We went into the quarantine in the middle of March, which was even before Quebec announced the provincial quarantine.

During the lockdown, I have been being much more social compared to the regular non-quarantine time ๐Ÿ™ˆ

Every Tuesday, we have a remote game night with friends and every other Sunday, we have a remote Coron-Apero party with Samโ€™s parents ๐ŸŽ‰๐Ÿ˜†

I also train 5 times a week at home in exactly the same way I did before the lockdown.

After a workout March 2020

And I made some progress in my flexibility!

Wheel Pose Progress from 2017 to 2020
W

And had some fun with a curtain ๐Ÿ™ˆ

Revenueโž•

If you are doing Amazon Affiliate US like me, I bet you enjoyed how much Amazon sales grew in the US in March & April due to the quarantine imposed on the country. 

This revenue stream accounted for 60% of my total revenue ๐Ÿ˜ฎ

Meanwhile, the ad revenue dropped because due to the economic turmoil, many companies cut down their marketing expenses ๐Ÿ˜Ÿ

Despite that, the income in March โ€“ April was โ€“ guess what!?!?! โ€“ again the highest I ever had ๐ŸŽ‰ April was the best month ever ever EVER since I started this business and March was the second-best ๐Ÿ˜๐Ÿ˜†

I know I wrote the same thing the last time about January and February. But I could not help to grow my revenue even more ๐Ÿ™ˆ๐Ÿ˜‰ My new website that I called  Unicorn ๐Ÿฆ„ already contributed some income in April; you can see it in the table.

Numbers

Got lost in my Elephants ๐Ÿ˜, Rats ๐Ÿ€, and other creatures? Read here to find out what the website nicknames mean

Letโ€™s look at the income numbers in the details.

All numbers are in USD.

Website Amount
Mother Elephant $3,117.41
Baby Elephant $6,905.79
Unicorn $1,294.30
Rat $52.71
LivingOffCloud $803.07
Other websites $1.85
Total $12,175.14

Hereโ€™s where my income is mostly coming from:

  • Ezoic is great for display ads; read my review ๐Ÿค—
  • Amazon Affiliate ๐Ÿ˜’
  • Other affiliate programs (diversification is the king now! ๐Ÿ‘‘)
  • Guest posting (yes I do sell guest posts on my websites ๐Ÿ˜ฑ)

March and April were the best months ever in terms of revenue ๐ŸŽ‰ 

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!

Hereโ€™s the proof from Ezoic:

Ezoic March to April 2020

Hereโ€™s the stats chart from Amazon.

Amazon US:

Amazon US March to April 2020

Amazon Canada:

Amazon Canada March to April 2020

Expensesโž–

In March โ€“ April, the expenses were on par with my average expenses. I invested some money into content but nothing more than I usually do.

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.

All numbers are in USD.

Expenses minus content

Expense Amount
Tailwind $59.92
Mailshake $33.17
GSuite $23.74
ActiveCampaign $15.30
GeneratePress $5.00
Elementor Pro $6.13
AAWP $10.05
Ad Inserter Pro $2.99
Perfmatters $6.41
SerpRobot $9.98
Other tools $43.54
Hosting $110.98
Domains $12.02
Virtual Assistant $381.06
Digital marketing apprenticeship $0.00
Graphic design $29.00
Link building $0.00
Courses $0.00
Misc $25.98
Total $775.25

The hosting expense went up โ€œthanksโ€ to my new site 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, itโ€™s a must to use a tool for that (and GSuite to avoid your emails going directly into spam ๐Ÿ˜ฑ).

On the WordPress setup side, I use a premium WP theme GeneratePress since itโ€™s fast and highly configurable.

I also use a few premium WP plugins:

My virtual assistant (VA) is my right hand. My business would simply die if I didnโ€™t have one! My last VA hire is from onlinejobs.com.

Apart from having a VA, Once in a while, I get a digital marketing apprentice. I find apprentices at Acadium (former GenM). If you have never heard of this service, read my review.

For graphic design, I ordered one image from Design Shifu, an unlimited design service โ€“ read my review!

Content

Content is an investment in your business. I decided to track it separately since itโ€™s 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 Website $1,663.41
Baby Elephant Website $0.00
Unicorn Website $58.48
Other Websites $545.11
Total $2,266.99

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 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 ๐Ÿ’ต

All numbers are in USD.

Here are my totals for March โ€“ April 2020.

Total revenue $12,175.14 minus general expenses $775.25 minus content expenses $2,266.99 makes a net profit of $9,132.90. This number should be divided by two since itโ€™s for both March and April.

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):

In April, I made pretty much the same amount of money I used to get when I was a dev lead at my last day job ๐Ÿ˜ I can definitely overcome it in the future!

What am I going to do with all this money? ๐Ÿค” 

Well, nothing special. 

I contributed a bit to my pension account on WealthSimple (itโ€™s a robo-investor platform; if you sign up with them through my link, youโ€™ll get $10,000 managed free for the first 12 months). 

I plan to invest another bit into a regular investment account. For the rest, I will keep it on high earning savings account for the rainy future. 

The rest, I am reinvesting it back into the business. I want to grow! ๐Ÿ˜


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Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. I will receive a small fee if you choose to buy after clicking on any of these links. Thank you if you do! ๐Ÿค—

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