Income Report – July 2012
Updated on February 29, 2020
Hey there…time for another of our income and traffic reports for July, 2012.
After having our second best month ever in June we were expecting things to slow down a bit in July, but that simply wasn’t the case. Joe “Hot Money” Magnotti decided to go on a tear and listed a ton of niche sites for sale on our Buy Our Sites page, which led to us ending the month out pretty strong. We are expecting a slower August though, as it will take some time to rebuild and we have some side projects that will be taking up quite a bit of our time.
No time to waste, so I’ll get right into the details. Overall, we were able to pull in a total of $23,272.14 for the month!
Traffic To AdSenseFlippers
We had a total of 21,541 visits in July, an increase of over 25% from June. Much of this increase was due to an excellent debate post on Niche Vs. Authority Sites delivered from Steve and Mike, bringing in over 4,000 pageviews on its own. Here are the next top content pages, in order of pageviews:
Income Report June 2012 – 3,553 pageviews
Diverisifcation Of Income Through Software Development – 1,493 pageviews
5 Business Failures That Nearly Killed Our Business – 1,318 pageviews
AFP 27: How To Use A Broker To Buy And Sell Websites – 972 pageviews
Podcast Statistics
We didn’t produce as much content for the podcast, but were still able to improve our downloads to 11,283 for the month. We decided to try something a little different and our most recent episode is a discussion between Joe and I, moderated by John The Intern, about exactly how we would go about starting a new business under set parameters. We’ll have that podcast episode out in a few hours! Do you prefer listening to podcasts or reading blog posts? Here are a few of the podcasts we’re listening to now:
Lifestyle Business Podcast
Foolish Adventure Podcast
Web Domination Podcast
Mixergy
AdSense Earnings
Even with quite a few site sales our AdSense earnings stayed pretty consistent and even went up a bit to $3,493.16. We had our best day at $149.71 on July 13th and our worst day at $78.79 on July 4th, due to the holiday. Our site sales were more staggered throughout the month which kept away the instant drop in income that comes with a large batch of sold sites.
Flippa Sales
As promised, we did hold another Flippa auction in July that brought in $2K. In addition to Flippa’s “verified AdSense earnings” addition, we were surprised to find that Flippa now allows you to set the maximum you’d like to bid on the auction and they will auto-bid up to your maximum as you compete with other potential buyers. This addition brought in quite a few more bids (80 bids total) and put us firmly in the #1 position of the Most Active section…a great place to be!
Private Sales
We followed up a strong June with another great month and pulled in $15,978.20 in private site sales. There seems to be much more interest in our single sites rather than our site packages and we’re really not sure why that is. We had a couple of questions in July that led us to believe some didn’t understand that you could click on the packages to get a lightbox that shows you all the same information available for the single site sales. In looking at the packages section, it just seems much less appealing than the single sites…I’m guessing that’s because there’s much less information given without clicking on each package. We’re going to make an adjustment to the page soon to show more information for the packages We’ve just added a bunch of individual sites for sale. Click here to check out our sites for sale now.
Niche Site Gold
We’re up to over 860 subscribers to our NicheSiteGold newsletter and were able to sell $550.00 worth of domains in July. (Down $50 from June) We’ve been getting quite a few questions via email about how to find profitable niches and we’ve forwarded them to NSG. A large percentage of our NSG email subscribers are also AdSense Flippers subscribers, but I think this service would actually stand on its own. I’m looking at ways to promote NSG outside of AdSense Flippers, but if you have any ideas I’d love to hear them in the comments!
Affiliate Sales
We had another strong month in July, bringing in $1,250.78. Much of that came through Long Tail Pro sales and I recently noticed we’re ranked #1 for “Long Tail Pro discount” and #5 for “Long Tail Pro”…sweet! We brought in $50 for SEOMoz which is pretty low considering the value I’m currently getting out of Open Site Explorer, Rank Tracking, etc. I’m thinking a post explaining exactly how I’m using it would probably be useful and will add that to our future content! In the meantime, click here to trial SEOMoz Pro free for 30 days.
Summary
Sites Created: 179 (202 last month)
AdSense Earnings: $3,493.16 ($3,262.14 last month)
Flippa Sales: $2,000.00 ($0.00 last month)
Private Sales: $15,978.20 ($22,312.60 last month)
Niche Site Gold: $550.00 ($600.00 last month)
Total Affiliate Sales: $1,250.78 ($1,254.13 last month)
- LongTailPro: $982.64
- HostGato: $50.00
- Virtual Staff Finder: $0.00
- Market Samurai: $93.12
- SubmitYourArticle: $40.84
- CTR Theme: $0.00
- 100K AdSense Blueprint: $0.00
- GoDaddy: $1.80
- Amazon: $0.00
- oDesk: $0.00
- SECockpit: $27.88
- SEOMoz: $50.00
- SENuke X: $0.00
- Agoda: $0.00
- Whoosh Traffic: $4.50
Total Income: $23,272.14 ($27,428.87 last month)
Thanks for following along on our journey! Want to hear a bit more from us? You can sign up for email updates, check us out on Facebook, or say Hi on Twitter! How did your July turn out? We’d love to hear about it in the comments below!
Discussion
Hi Justin, I have about $5000 i want to invest in several websites, i guess by buying them from flippa, or even you? Ive been doing ecommerce for about 8 years, but im quite new to affilating, adsense and the online money making techniques. Anyway, im hoping to buy websites that are generating a healthy monthly income. Can you give me some guidance on where to start and what to look for? Or let me know if you have any suitable sites. By the way im an expat living in the Philippines too 🙂
Hey Kris!
Where in the Philippines are you? Maybe we should meet up for a beer? Joe and I are currently in Davao, but will be in BKK in October and might end up stopping in Manila briefly.
I’ll have Joe reach out to you regarding our niche sites for sale. You can reply via email, but it would help if we knew what your plan was with the sites. (build out via ecommerce, expand with more content, etc.)
Kris, let me know your parameters and I will search our library for a package that suits you. Use our contact page for your personal details.
Gentlemen! Seems you have found an interesting way to generate income online!
I’ve published a post about the practice of blogging about one’s “blog income” and I invite you and your readers to stop by and offer a little pushback.
Hey Dave,
I left a comment on your blog, but I thought I’d leave my thoughts here as well:
Your main point seems to argue that those posting income reports are either doing it to brag or are “just plain stupid”. I’d argue they’re not mutually exclusive…sometimes I brag AND I’m acting stupid! 🙂
Seriously, though, there are probably other reasons/benefits you seem to be missing…wouldn’t you agree? Being transparent has led to others offering suggestions, improvements, etc. that they might not have been able to do otherwise, not knowing exactly what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, etc. It also holds us accountable in a very public way and shows others what’s working and what’s not.
You go on to argue that sharing information or putting yourself “out there” can get you in trouble or cause you problems. It’s an interesting point…but being authentic has done wonders for our business. I recently wrote about it in a post here:
http://adsenseflippers.com/internet-marketing/authenticity-as-a-multiplier/
I would argue that the benefits far outweigh the downsides when it comes to being open/transparent. I like the post from Derek Sivers about resisting the temptation to punish everyone for the mistake (or potential attack) of the few:
http://sivers.org/punish
Anyway…hope that gives a good alternative viewpoint!
I think overall posting income reports (regardless of whether you post expenses) is beneficial to visitors.
5 years ago very few bloggers and IMs were posting their earnings and it was difficult to really get an idea how much money someone could make online.
Since people like Pat, Justin and Joe started publishing their earnings other online entrepreneurs really have some context that compliments the content they produce.
At the end of the day I think it helps entrepreneurs and at the very least it gets people talking…and that’s probably the most important thing.
Phil
Thanks for the comment, Phil!
I definitely see the value of income reports, but I have some concerns about them as well:
A) Results Not Typical
Those with the largest earnings and traffic tend to get the most exposure, but are not even close to representing your “average” IMer. I guess it’s fine as long as people understand this, but I worry a bit that people think it’s “easy” or “typical”…which is definitely not the case.
B) Tempting To Lie
I think some get the impression that it’s the larger income reports that bring the traffic. Solution? Fake it… I can see how it would be tempting to fake income reports to build some authority. What’s the harm, right? The good thing is that it’s usually easy to spot those who are faking their “business chops”…so even if you’re not sure about their income, you can be sure they don’t know what they’re talking about…
Concerning…but I still think the positives outweigh the negatives here.
A site specific question. I am scared to change my theme and put a left hand sidebar as I don’t want to look spammy (it’s an authority site).
My current setup is link bar at the top (below menu bar), 336 Box in the top left of the content, 250×250 box at the top of right sidebar, and 468×60 below the content (before comments). Currently getting bulk of clicks in the 336 and very minimal in the other sections.
How would you advise I change this in order to get more clicks? Should I go for the left hand sidebar even though it may make my site not look at pretty? Also should I change the ad spot below the post and put it somewhere else? Or use a 336 box instead? What gives you the best results?
You could try removing everything but the 336. See if that actually raises RPM. Then slowly add other blocks in and see if the RPM changes. When your numbers start to decline remove the last ad unit and work with an optimized page!
Killer work here! Awesome numbers! Do you guys put all these sites on the same server and ip? Are they on a shared host or dedicated? I only have one adsense site I update every so often doing about $5-7.00 a month. I don’t focus on adsense but it’s awesome to hear someone make this work like you have!
We spread it around multiple shared hosting accounts. It’s great that you have one successful site, now just replicate and scale. You know the process!
Very good reports !! Hope we will be making such income soon !! 🙂
You guys inspire me 🙂 Anyway I’ve read pretty much all your posts and you mentioned a few times that it should be somewhat easy to outrank amazon and other shopping sites… Did this completely change for product searches in past few months ? Just do search for “messenger bags for men” no other then shopping results for first few pages. First non-shopping results appear on 4th page.
I see the same for majority of other products.
Would love to hear your take on this.
Cheers
Not sure what you mean Samir, but if anything the competition has gotten easier as all those sites with false links built to them are not ranking anymore.
Sure that’s true for non shopping niches but when you search for X product, example “messenger bags for men” you can’t find any non shopping sites within first 4 pages. With another words would you target keyword like “messenger bags for men” if you got EMD. (seeing that all other top ranking pages are shopping results and because of that I am assuming that it is impossible to get on page1 with non-shopping aka content page.)
Sorry for my English and I hope you understand it this time.
Best Regards
In that case look at URL match, title match and back links. If all are there stay away.
I think you still don’t understand what I mean 🙂 If you have minute check example keyword that I provided(messenger bags for men).In top10 more then half pages don’t have keyword in title,desc or url. Just 1 site have actual page backlinks according to majestic and 2 sites have them according to seomoz.
Sounds pretty easy to rank right? Also this keyword is extremely profitable with over 8000 local(us) searches and over $1 cpc with a lot of advertisers.
Problem? I found that it is almost impossible to rank here if your site is not shopping site because google knows that someone typing in this keyword is looking for shopping results…. that’s why all first 4 PAGES are filled with shopping results and no content/mns sites.
As usual you guys are killing it! Nice work.
It’s interesting how people are less likely to buy the packages. I think they might be a little confused by it, or perhaps they don’t want to have to manage multiple domains.
I’ve been selling a lot of sites on the lower $100-$500 end recently since it’s less of a risk than shelling out $1,000-$2,000. The nice thing is that all these small sales add up 🙂
You mentioned that your August income will be intentionally slow…I’m the same. I’m taken some time off to reflect and start building up my site portfolio again.
I too believe it is a price point issue. At the same time, packages have less inherit risk for the buyer and present them with the opportunity to experiment with one of the smaller sites for improvement. Alas, it doesn’t seem buyers are interested in this — they just want cheap sites.
I read this every month and I really appreciate the transparency and information. There’s great benefit from the info that you put out. Cheers, guys!
Thanks for stopping by Rob! Glad you like the report!
Another great month guys. I’m impressed at the multiples you’re able to get on niche site sales.
I can’t seem to sell anything for more than 15 times monthly earnings.
Any advice.
Phil
Tell everyone how you do it! Hold nothing back. Network and offer auctions with great deals. Go the extra mile post sale and make sure people are happy.
The niche site gold idea was great. $550 dollars just from domains!
I know, cool right? Love getting paid for all that keyword research!
Good stuff guys!
Thanks Ralph!
Awesome Stuff Guys!
Thanks Jordan!
Great stuff guys! Heading to download the new podcast na….
Yo Dan, it’s coming out soon, in final post production. It’s a long one too!
As always, great job this month guys! You know, I’ve thought about putting up screenshots of our adsense earnings on our income reports, but I’ve been very hesitant because I’m afraid it might draw extra attention to our account and put it at risk. Even though I feel that everything is legit, I’m still impartial to having it displayed. Are you guys not worried about this at all?
Josh I understand your hesitation but according to AdSense TOS you can reveal revenue and page views. As long as you don’t don’t the other stats, you should be fine.
its a great idea to add it if you can it really helps validate what your doing.
I remember onlineincomelab doing it one time and it showed a lot of not so great performance. But that is the only downside.
Openess is going to increase your exposure as most folks love seeing the results and validation of the model, Something adsenseflippers have dont to a great extent
Great stuff guys and thanks heaps for the mention, that’s a pretty elite bunch of shows to be in amongst. What are you using for your podcast stats?
No problem Dan, you deserve it — using libsyn here for all our podcast needs.
Congrats on another awesome month! Great to see that your AdSense income is climbing even after selling off sites! Out of curiosity – what tool do you use to view your podcast download statistics? Thanks!
Thomas
Thank for stopping by Thomas. We use libsyn for our stats and podcast distribution.
You guys should do an expense report in addition to your income. That will help us get a better understanding of the business.
Great work guys on another awesome month. Gotta agree with MDP here though, in fact it is one of my topics next week on the podcast…
You guys really want us to open up the books here huh? Something we will consider, but we’ve always said our cost is about $40-$50 a site putting overall monthly costs between $7k and $9k.
I don’t think it is so much having to open up the books, but more a question of what is the purpose of an income report? Is it aspirational? Is it to demonstrate trustworthiness? Openness? etc.
If so, a “profit report” would do better, in my opinion. Sorry to be the beancounter here… 😉
Everyone’s costs will be different – I think the numbers provided are more than good enough.
Aside from the extra work involved, breaking down our costs would including displaying payroll and salaries for all to see and moves in on our outsourcing business which we are still NOT as open about. Kind of uncool for the employees as well…
That being said, our costs per niche site are right around $40 per site right now…maybe a little less, actually. That puts our costs at around $7K for the month. Joe probably spends around 20 hours a week working on actual niche site stuff and I’m probably at 10 hours per week or so…
I am going to push back on you a little bit here, you could include a total salary cost and wouldn’t have to display individual salaries.
The “godfather of income reports” Pat Flynn displays a single expense number, but it looks accurate and adds credibility in my opinion.
+1 to damian (does anybody still care about +1!)
But i agree. however Justin we dont need details on the cost side at all.
Just one number would be fine e.g. Cost fo july total $12K is just enough INMHO
this is all it takes r.e. Pat Flynn – july 2012
Expenses: ~$3,598.09Major expenses this month include virtual assistants (one full-time, one part-time), hosting account for SPI (dedicated server), hosting for other websites (bluehost), recurring payments for various tools, CPA (Certified Public Accountant), attorney fees, website security tool
But if you really dont want to Im more than happy with all the free info you give away!!
regards
with respect to podcast or blogs. I’d say i prefer blog casts. You get more info from the spoken word and style that.
i actually prefer the video (podcast) model even more especially for interviews and debates.
Blimey i bet John had a job moderating you guys 🙂
cheers
Another great month guys! You are doing extremely well with the private sales.
As you can see mini niche sites are still a great way to earn. Are newer sites still doing as well as the old sites (post penguin)?
Thanks Kris, considering we don’t do any link building now I think are sites are doing very well. However, they do seem to rank lower post penguin.
Joseph, if your not doing any link building, what methods are you using to get your sites to rank?
Well done on smashing your previous figures!
All on page SEO — good content, structure, and keyword research.
Congrats guys.
Good to see NSG is doing well. Not sure i have any great ideas on promotion as most places are to expensive (flippa) or to low key (http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-forum-classified-ads/) rafficplanet.com/forum/22-domains-for-salewebsites-for-sale-free-classifieds/ for example.
Personally I’d just develop the brand with more content on teh site about the benefits you offer etc etc and tweet it out from adsense maybe.
Hope thats helpful.
It’s always helpful to get a different opinion, Steve. At this point, I think you’re right though — we just need to build the NSG brand slowly and attract repeat customers over time, just like we did with AdSenseFlippers.