Well, it’s that time of the month again, time to share my revenue from blogging, specifically August 2021.

Overall it was a good month and numbers continue to rise. So let’s talk traffic, display ad revenue, and affiliate marketing revenue.

My Niche Blog Website Portfolio

Going into August  I had 6 websites, however, I am not counting this site as it’s more informational and I don’t have monetization or SEO plans for it. 

With that said, I now have another site bringing them to a grand total of 8 websites in my portfolio. 

I have niches spread out, from camping and hiking to grilling and pets.

If you are new yourself and just starting your research phase, I would recommend checking out my write-up on Niche Selection 101: Do Not Make THIS Mistake.

You never know, it might just save you some failures I experienced due to improper niche research. 

So, here are the sites in my portfolio:

	Niche	Launch Date	Article Count	Traffic	Monetization
Site #1	Camping	06/2020	133 (+3)	3,561 (+101)	Ezoic/Affiliates
Site #2	Dog Breed	09/2020	40 (+7)	4192 (+3,054)	Ezoic/Affiliates
Site #3	Grilling	09/2020	104 (+1)	47,752 (-2,423)	Ezoic/Affiliates
Site #4	Food	05/2021	38 (+0)	463 (+190)	None Yet
Site #5	Diet	01/2021	7 (-/+0)	182 (+88)	N/A
Site #6	Blogging	07/2021	6 (+1)	N/A	N/A
Site #7	Insect Farming	08/2021	2
Site #8	Wine	08/2021	1

Article Count

So, as you can see, I added 15 articles total in August. I’m happy with this number as I also sold my home and have been traveling with family for the last month. It was very busy sorting it all out but 15 articles with a house sale is a good month.

Traffic Overview

Ahh yes, my original site in the camping niche (site#1). This site was loaded with lots of cheap writers and poor affiliate-driven articles (Think Top 10, Best Of) in a highly competitive niche where the big players owned the first two pages of the SERPs. 

Fortunately, as you can see, it’s starting to recover, so we will monitor this and keep pushing. 

Here is the latest look at Google Search Console:

Site #2: Is finally starting to gain some nice traction, I can’t be too hard on its metrics here as it only has 40 posts and is less than a year old and had some huge growth this month around 200%.

Growth is good and the future plans are CONTENT, CONTENT, and more CONTENT. 

Site #3: Site 3 has always been my moneymaker. I found an underserved niche where the seed keyword has search volume estimations of 300K and very little real competition. 

As you can see, each spike is a Sunday as that is often a big grilling day nationwide here in the states. 

Traffic is starting to level off (and decline a bit) but this is a seasonal niche and expected. Onward and Upward!

Site #4: Site number 4 is a bit of an experiment. It is a “food” blog….BUT, it’s not recipes. Let’s just say it’s a popular food choice in the states and the posts are all information-styled response posts about that specific food item. 

As I said, it’s an experiment, but as you can see for only being 2 months old, it’s starting off strong. I’m happy with it. 

More content is coming and will monitor its progress. 

Site #5: This is a Diet site, I understand this area is highly competitive, potentially YMYL and it could be horrible. 

I plan on holding this long term, add content, and see how long it takes a diet site to rank with mostly informational content. 

Traffic, for now, is basically nothing but by looking at Google Search Console below, you can see it’s getting a touch of love from the Google Gods. 

Site #6: This site is the site you are on right now! 

It’s my only shared public URL and it’s not really anything more than a way to document this niche site journey and share it with you. 

Don’t really have many plans for it other than posting informational content and tossing in a few affiliates offers for plugins, tools, and themes I genuinely find useful to new bloggers. 

Monetization Overview

My monetization strategy has really evolved over the last 12 months. Previously, I would try to rank for competitive “best of” and “Top 10” articles with hopes for big affiliate conversions. 

But, like many of you know, Google doesn’t really like that and I have found that a better strategy is creating content that is informational, getting that organic traffic, and using display ads with limited affiliate offers.

So far, it works much better than hoping for the “top 10” crap to rank and fight for a few clicks after 18 months. 

For my ad network, I am using Ezoic honestly, I am very happy with them. 

Ezoic recently eliminated its traffic requirements and you can now join Ezoic regardless of your traffic!

If you want to join Ezoic, here is one of those affiliate links I told you I might peddle here and there, but I really do like Ezoic and definitely recommend any blogger to them over Adsense. 

Site Income Totals

Ok, here is what you really care about, the dolla’ dolla’ bills y’all.

As stated earlier, monetization is primarily displayed ads with a few hundred coming from Amazon, Avantlink, and Affinity. 

As you will see below, I have not even attempted to monetize Sites 4 through 8 yet, not enough traffic to even bother for a few bucks here and there. 

Full breakdown here:

	Ezoic Ads	Amazon	Avantlink	Affility
Site #1	$51.89	$29.65	$0	$0
Site #2	$49.28	$34.56	$0	$0
Site #3	$1,197.30	$312.61	$0	$158.39
Site #4	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Site #5	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Site #6	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Site #7	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Site #8	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

So, as you can see, the grilling site is top dog, but I suspect sites #2 and #4 to start doing well over the next 12 months. 

I also had $299 in affiliate commissions from promoting another course.

The total for the month of August 2021 is $1,833.68

This is a dip when compared to last month’s earnings (you can read that here).

Blogging Expenses

For the sake of ease, any purchase I made that was an “Annual” license will be broken into 12 payments and that single month price will be shown. 

So, after that explanation of hoisting, here are my expenses for August 2021:

• Hosting: $2.95
• Theme: $4.91
• Link Whisper: $5.75
• Amalinks Pro 3-Sites: $10
• Ezoic Premium: $220
• iWriter: $143.25 (including tips)
• Passion Posts: $427.50

Total Expenses for August 2021: $814.36

I spent less on content this month because I was saving a big chunk of money for a large order on Passion Posts (Highly Recommended).

Net Profit August 2021: $1019.32

Now is content an actual expense? Not really, it’s optional, but, I choose to re-invest most of my earnings to scale this operation, so for now, I’ll include it as an expense of the business.

Future Plans

Future plans are pretty simple! I’m going to crank out more content, do good keyword research, and hopefully, make more money!

I appreciate you guys and gals stopping by, if you ever have questions just shoot me a message, I’d love to hear from you!