April 2022 Traffic and Revenue Report

The April update, with traffic and revenue stats for four new sites.

Well, there goes my 2022 New Year resolution to publish at least twice a month on Yeys. Only one post last month (the March report).

A lot is going on here, both professionally and personally.

With revenue increasing, we keep investing more into the business – including hiring more team members.

If you want to keep publishing decent content en masse, you need more people – both content creators and managers. Scaling isn’t easy and comes with quite a bit of overhead.

On the personal front, we’re moving to Illinois next month! One of my sons was accepted to the University of Chicago grad school. We’re a close-knit family, so we’re going there to be near him.

We just bought a lovely house on 2 acres of forest in the southern suburbs of Chicago, and we’re excited about the move – and also swamped!

Speaking of swamps, I will have to say goodbye to my favorite alligators soon.

A typical day at the Orlando Wetlands Park, where I go for walks to clear my mind and… think about web publishing

Oh well, I’m sure we’ll be back visiting in wintertime!

Now, let’s get on with the monthly report.

The April 2022 Monthly Traffic and Revenue Report

A quick recap for those who are new to this blog:

I own a portfolio of more than 20 content sites, monetized mainly with display ads. Today, my business makes more than $150K in monthly revenue (I know! It keeps growing!).

I documented my progress in this blog, including detailed monthly reports covering all my sites. In 2022, I switched to reporting traffic and revenue on four new sites.

You can read the initial report here. That post also includes more information about my web publishing business and an FAQ. Please check it out first if you have any questions.

My system in a nutshell

The usual recap. My system is not very complicated.

  1. Find suitable topics.
  2. Create good content.
  3. Scale by outsourcing, using a good workflow.
  4. Rinse, repeat.

I blogged here about my workflow.

If you want to learn how to find suitable topics and produce the right content, check out the courses on my resources page.

I won’t repeat each site’s story – only the basic stats. Please refer to the initial report to learn more about a site.

The first report for these sites was back in January 2022, reporting the data from December 2021. I decided to make things shorter and more concise.

As of this month, I’m condensing both traffic and revenue data into one table. I hope that makes it easier to follow. The table includes a couple of new metrics –

  • Average daily pageviews for the month
  • Average daily revenue for the month

That should help normalize the data, making it easier to notice trends, regardless of the length of a particular calendar month.

Site #1

  • Niche: General (the site does have a unifying theme)
  • The first post was published on April 2, 2021
  • Number of published posts: 210
  • Monetization: Display ads + Amazon

The site’s traffic is pretty stable, with only a slight increase. It averages at slightly more than 300 pageviews per post – and that’s pretty much our network’s benchmark.

I’m going to wait for a month or two to see if there’s any seasonality. It’s hard to tell, with this being a relatively new site. I don’t think it will grow much more unless we add more content, but we’ll see.

The revenue drop is due to switching ad networks. The site used to be with Adthrive, and we’ve moved it to Mediavine one week into April.

Both networks are pretty awesome, and we still have sites with Adthrive as well. I just wanted to see if there would be RPM differences between the two networks. So far, RPMs are remarkably similar.

Whenever you move a site to a new network, it takes a few days for the RPM to reach its full potential, so this drop was expected –

Site #2

  • Niche: Home & DIY
  • The first post was published on June 11, 2021
  • Number of published posts: 226 (I accidentally reported it as 228 in previous reports)
  • Monetization: Amazon & display ads

This site is doing well. Still growing, and I hope to see more growth over the next couple of months since we still haven’t hit the “300 monthly pageviews per post” benchmark. No guarantees, of course.

Site #3

  • Niche: Pets
  • The first post was published on May 18, 2021
  • Number of published posts: 119
  • Monetization: Amazon
  • Special circumstances: I created the site on an aged domain that I’ve had for about 20 years as an in-house experiment. I knew the domain was clean, and all of the incoming links were on topic.

We’re seeing some slow growth with site #3, but it’s still low figures compared to our other sites. This month, the site will be one year old (although most of the content is younger than that).

At an average of 112 pageviews per post, I don’t consider this one of our most successful sites.

We’re seeing $25 RPM with this site. That’s on the lower end compared to other sites in our portfolio. With that in mind, we’re not likely to add more articles any time soon.

I’m hoping to sell the site later this year. It’s a fun pet niche, and I think the site would be an excellent match for a pet lover who enjoys writing their content.

Site #4

  • Niche: Home & DIY
  • The first post was published on August 23, 2021
  • Number of published posts: 216
  • Monetization: Amazon

Last, and also least, is site #4, our late bloomer (or so I hope).

The site seems to be doing a bit better. In April, we finally saw a significant increase in traffic. It’s still early days, but considering how the oldest content on the site is only eight months old, I’m still optimistic.

I just checked, and fewer than 50 articles are more than seven months old. I’m going to cut #4 some slack, considering it’s still in diapers. Yes, I would like to see it get on its feet faster, but at least it’s crawling in the right direction –

In Summary

That is all for this post. I hope to squeeze in one more post this month, but no promises. We may be too busy growing the business, packing, and saying goodbye to alligators.

As always, I’d love to hear from you! What was April like for your business? Did you see an increase in traffic and revenue? Leave me a comment and let me know!

28 Comments

  1. Don’t those alligators bite people? Are they harmless? They look terrifying.

    Is that Automotive site the biggest that you own?

    • Oh, the gators are really cute when you get to know them. You shouldn’t try to pet them, but they’re not overly aggressive. They can be lethal if they decide to attack a human – those jaws are extremely powerful! But unless you provoke them or get too close, they won’t bother you. The most important thing is not to let pets or young children near the water, as they can be preyed on. Adults are generally safe.
      If you mean the automotive site that I mentioned in earlier reports, then it’s one of our biggest, but not the biggest. I think it’s at #2 right now.

      • So which is biggest? Gardening or home one which you used to mention in earlier income reports?

        And what percentage of your earning is coming from biggest site? Is it 80-20 like jon dykrsta?

        • Hey Zak,
          At this point, the home one is the largest of our sites but it’s not alone. We have 3 sites making more than $25K a month each, so it’s more balanced. I’m not sure how the 80/20 rule comes into this, though.

  2. Great stuff, Anne! I don’t think anyone can fault you for only doing 1 post/month here with how rapidly your business is growing. It’s just exciting to watch the progress.
    And as a fellow Florida -> Chicago transplant: Welcome (and buy a good winter coat)!

    • You mean we’re not the only people crazy enough to move from Florida to Chicago? 😀 Looking at the temperatures, I don’t think any winter coat will be warm enough for me. I plan to stay indoors between November and May at this point. But I guess we’ll see.

  3. Thanks!

    It would be great if you can include stats for the sites since the publish date so we can see and compare sites to each other and how fast they grow.

    • Hi Rodi,
      I occasionally posted the chart showing the numbers from day one, but yeah, it could be an interesting comparison to make. I’ll see if I can do that in a future report, thanks for the suggestion!

    • That’s right. At this point, no link building. I’m not saying link building is necessarily bad, but it’s just not something that we do with any of the sites. Links just come in naturally as content begins to rank.

  4. Hi Anne,

    How many sites do you have in your portfolio?

    What do you think about how many sites can you have at the most?

    Thanks.

    • Hi Oz,
      We have around 25 sites now, but a bunch of them are super new and still in the early stages of being created. Good question about the ultimate number of sites. I think I’d like to keep it at around 30-35 sites, selling sites along the way.

  5. In a previous post talking about Clickup and how you are managing your content system, you mentioned that you have a status for “Paypal” where you are the one that pays the writers.

    Surely, that is a huge time suck if you are pushing 100s of posts per month?

    How are you tracking the word counts of the writers? And are you paying them all in bulk once per month? And is it all through ClickUp?
    Thanks.

    • Hi Dan,
      Things have certainly changed since then. You’re absolutely right – it would have been a huge time suck and would have prevented us from further scaling if I had to keep paying per task. I no longer pay the writers myself, for starters. We also switched to paying writers once a month. Each writer has a spreadsheet that logs their submitted posts on our end (they can review that in real-time and make sure everything is accurate). At the end of each month, they generate an invoice based on that spreadsheet and that’s what we pay them. We also offer payment via other methods, including ACH bank transfers.

  6. Hi Anne,

    As someone as successful as yourself and who puts in a lot of working hours, Id be interested to know how you set up your working day to maintain such ongoing work discipline and a high productivity rate.

    Such things as:
    1) Do you have a set work routine? How many days a week do you work? What does your typical working day look like?
    2)What’s your working environment set-up, do you have your own office? 1 Screen or more?
    3)How do you avoid distractions and stay focused day in and day out (e.g avoid time wasting mobile phone apps or getting distracted while looking for keywords etc).

    In addition do you do have any further tips for staying focused and maximising daily productivity while minimising distractions?

    I (and hopefully others) would be interested in anything related to the above, which might seem a boring topic to yourself, but useful information to others.

    • Hi Adam,
      Oooh, interesting questions. If it’s ok with you, I think I’ll turn these into a post as there’s a lot to talk about there! I hope to get around to writing it soon (should be easy and fun to write about!)

  7. Hey Yeys you are my inspiration! I modelled my clickup system directly from yours, I’m amazed every month how easy content is to produce.

    Issue is my main sites nearly has nearly 500 posts but only 34k PV in the Tech niche, do you think I need to look at my quality per post as I haven’t edited a lot of content managers articles recently causing the standard to go down, thanks for any help

    One question, why are you not listing your monster sites in these monthly breakdowns?

    • Hi Dillon,
      I’m glad to hear Clickup works well for you! 34K PV for 500 posts is low, assuming the site and posts are mature. What I would suggest is going through the process I described here. As for not listing the big sites – I don’t think it would be too helpful to anyone starting out. And those who already have five-figure monthly revenue probably have little to gain by that either. It’s going to be additional work for me – with little benefit to anyone.

  8. Hello There Yeys,
    How are you doing today?

    I’m Shuvo Sarker, I have been in the online publishing business for around six months, and I have two sites now. I can see the number of post on your sites are the same from January.

    My questions are to you, Yeys:
    1. Targeted post for a site is good or bad?
    2. Are there any strategies you follow by limiting posting to diversify your revenue, or does a small site do well than a bigger one?

    Thank you so much for your contribution.

    • Hi Shuvo,
      When launching a new site, it makes sense for us to limit the number of posts at first. That way we can give the site time to mature and start ranking before putting more content in. Keep in mind that we have other alternatives, with mature sites where a post can rank within a couple of months.
      Also, in this case, we plan on selling the sites by the end of the year, so we don’t want to grow them too much. Growing them would mean increasing their potential value, possibly to the point where there are fewer potential buyers with the right funds.
      This makes sense to me in our setup, but it may not apply to publishers that only have a handful of sites.

      • Hello Anne,
        Thanks a lot for your reply.

        Now I understand a little more about the planning of the online publishing business.
        I really appreciate your valuable time, and Welcome to Illinois.

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