It’s time for the July Portfolio update!
July has been a bit of a mixed bag for me. If you recall my previous portfolio update, you know that the Beauty Site got hit by an 80% and the Accessory Site got hit by the May 2022 Core Update, losing about 30% of its traffic.
That was a pretty rough start, but I was happy to see that the 80% drop rebounded, and the Beauty Site was back at its original levels.
At least, that was until the end of July. Because it happened again. Yep, another 80% drop. It honestly feels unreal to keep seeing such drops, but I’ve seen it happen to other people as well.
Luckily, the Accessory Site is on an upwards trajectory again, so that’s a relief.
Overall, July has been decent, but like every year, July and August make up for the summer slump. We’re seeing super low RPMs across the board, so even though my traffic was up across the board, income was down.
My Strategy & Portfolio
I could talk for hours about my strategy and goals for my portfolio, but it boils down to this:
- Do keyword research
- Write a good-quality article
It really is that simple. I have two videos on my YouTube channel where I go over my keyword research methods (one free method and one method using KeywordChef), but in essence, I look for low competition keywords and questions that aren’t answered properly.
From there, I either write the article myself or outsource it to my team, and the goal here is to give the best answer possible.
As for my portfolio, I currently own 6 websites:
- English Beauty Site
- English Accessory Site
- English Consumption Site
- English Home Site
- Dutch Beauty Site
- Dutch Boating Site
That’s a lot of sites, and if I’m honest, it’s a little too many. Currently, I just cannot keep all these sites up, but since they are all running profitable, I’ll just leave them be for now.
The goal is to keep expanding the portfolio, but in order for that to happen, I need to build a solid team around me.
Total Traffic & Income Overview
As stated before, July was a mixed bag (again). Traffic was up across the board, as we saw an 18% increase, but the income was down by about 8%. Of course, this can be attributed to the summer RPM slump, but it’s still not a nice sight.
But in all honesty, I’m not too worried about this. The low July RPMs were expected, and what matters the most is that my pageviews are up.
Although I suspect that next month, I won’t be reporting the same. Seeing that the Beauty Site once again lost 80% of its traffic, and has not yet recovered, I think the pageview levels will be down substantially next month.
Here’s an overview of my total pageview levels for July 2022:
And here’s an overview of my July 2022 total income:
Disappointing to see yet another 80% drop (trust me, you don’t get used to those), but like always, we keep moving forward.
Let’s now look at all my sites individually!
Site #1 – Beauty
Ah, the Beauty Site. What a rocky road this site has been. It’s the very first site I ever started and I grew this to 250.000 monthly pageviews with an income of $8000 a month.
Then, the Google December 2020 Core Update came along, and I lost 80% of my traffic. Since then, the site stayed steady at a consistent 35.000 or so monthly pageviews. However, over the last two months, I’ve seen even more 80% drops.
It looks horrible, and I honestly have no clue what’s going on. Anyway, I was in the middle of trying to revive this website; see if I can get it back to its original numbers (or at least partially so).
These new 80% drops won’t stop me from trying to revive this site, but it does push this a little further down the list of my priorities.
That being said, July was pretty steady. The first 80% drop had rebounded and the second 80% drop only started near the end of July.
The pageviews this month nicely went back to that steady 36.000 a month, but the income lacked behind. This is probably because we’re in the summer slump; a period where RPMs are much lower and where people tend to be more outside and less on the web.
Anyway, $822 is still nothing to scoff at. Now that we’re nearly out of August, I wish I still had those numbers!
As for future plans, this site is included, but it’s not a big priority. I want to focus more, so taking on more tasks and projects isn’t really the right way to go.
Site #2 – Accessory
This here is what I consider to be my most promising project. This is my Accessory Site and I started this one in December 2020, right as my Beauty Site was hit. I started this site because it became apparent that I needed to diversify. I had all my eggs in one basket, and this site was supposed to be a new basket.
However, the Core Update hit on my main site took a toll on me and I didn’t really work on this site as much as I should have, or would have liked.
I even wrote this site off as a failure, seeing that after 10-12 months, the site was barely pulling in any traffic. But then, suddenly, traffic started to come in.
It’s now at a point where we pull in 30.000 monthly pageviews, but it was even higher in May. Back in May, there was another Core Update, and this time, the Accessory Site was hit. We lost about 30% of the traffic. Not horrible, but no fun either.
We are back on the rise again, so that’s good to see. Before I know it, I’ll be back reaching new all-time highs.
That said, I could really use more articles on this site. So far, my impressions aren’t really growing, so I’m not capturing new eyeballs. What is growing is my CTR, meaning I get more clicks on what’s already there. That’s also really nice, but ideally, I want both to grow.
I’ve set myself a goal to reach the 175 article mark before the end of September. That’s going to be a lot of writing, but I will get there. I ordered some more titles from WeWriteBlogPosts to help me reach that goal, and I’m writing myself a lot as well.
Ideally, I want this site to get on Mediavine within 4-6 months. That’s going to be very difficult, but I’m going to give it my all.
Site #3 – Consumption
The Consumptions Site was started in September 2020 with the idea of turning it into the largest site of my portfolio. The overarching niche can house thousands of articles.
But, I think I bit off more than I could chew here. Back then, I was writing everything myself and I still had the Beauty Site going strong. So I quickly stopped working on the site, and to this day, there are only 40 articles on there.
I also wasn’t the biggest fan of writing articles for this site either, for some reason. All of that combined led to me making the decision that this site is probably best off if I sold it. So, I started to prepare this site for an exit!
I started that process in January 2022, and by preparing it for an exit, I really just mean I started monetizing the site. I did that with Ezoic ads, and although the initial results were nice, I’m starting to get a little disappointed by the low RPMs.
I even contacted Ezoic about the abysmal EPMV, which just keeps dropping month on month. It’s currently at $2! That’s just insane. It started at $11 or so, now it’s at $2.
Anyway, I actually have a couple of people interested in the site as of now, so hopefully, I can get this one of my hands quickly. That money will of course be invested right back into my other sites.
Site #4 – Home
The Home Website is a brand new site that I started in November 2021. I started the site to see how front-loading a website with a ton of articles would affect the sandbox period. Since this was a cool case study, I also follow this specific site and its progress on my YouTube channel.
The site did run into some indexing issues, but that’s all resolved now, so the site is slowly and steadily growing.
As you can see, I’m a bit slow with updating this particular site. I do have one dedicated writer for the site, but there should be more content output. The plan is to outsource a little more. Maybe get 15-20 articles a month on this site.
The site could also really use some touch-ups. I need to add images to the majority of articles and I need to interlink, just to name a few.
I’m still not decided on what the future plans are for this site, but I’m debating a couple:
- Hold and grow the site as-is.
- Sell the site once it’s earning decent money and lock in that profit.
- Redirect the site into a new domain that covers a much, much larger niche and build this site into a giant.
Dutch Site #1 – Beauty
As a Dutch guy, it made sense to me to try and start a site in Dutch. I found that Dutch sites typically have way less competition, but also lower RPMs. I wanted to test that tradeoff and see whether or not it was worth it to start Dutch sites in the future.
So I started this site back in June 2019 and it’s basically the Dutch version of the earlier discussed English Beauty Site. I didn’t completely translate it, but I covered similar topics.
But at the time I started this site, the English Beauty Site was growing like crazy, so I rather quickly stopped writing for this site.
Currently, there are only 22 articles on the site, but it does get some decent traffic. It also earns some decent income, at least to the point where the site runs profitably.
This site is nothing crazy at all, but it runs in the background and funds some more articles for the sites that I do work on.
Dutch sites are in my opinion still a fantastic opportunity. I would definitely want to explore this unique option further, but I’ll need to find a way on how to do that. I’m building a team of writers, but those are all English, so I would need to build 2 separate teams if I am ever going to start a serious Dutch portfolio.
Anyway, for now, I’ll leave this site be. This site is funding itself and it earns me a little on the side, so I have no issues with the lower numbers here. I also don’t think that I’ll work on this site in the near future either, but who knows.
Dutch Site #2 – Boats
Since I hadn’t learned my lesson with the first Dutch Site yet, I started this one right here. I do still think there’s a lot of potential in Dutch sites, but I’d need to give it the proper attention.
Anyway, this is a rather seasonal site; it does much better during the warm summer months. And that really shows in this month’s numbers:
Just over 9000 monthly pageviews is really solid for this site. It doesn’t have that many articles on there, so getting nearly 10.000 monthly pageviews is very solid in my eyes.
The site also earned a pretty solid income this month. During the winter, I see a monthly income of around $20, but we’re now just over $70.
Of course, this will end soon as we’re approaching fall and winter, but I’m enjoying this now that it’s still here.
But just as with the Dutch Beauty Site, I really don’t have any short-term plans for this site. I would love to grow every site to its fullest potential, but I just don’t have the time or the team to do that. Maybe in the future I will, but for now, I need to focus on the most important parts of the portfolio.
What Are The Plans Moving Forward
Things have been going well for me again. Not necessary in pageview or income numbers, but mentally. And that’s the biggest win for me.
I already shared my short-term goal of getting the Accessory Site to 175 articles, and that’s going to be my main focus.
Furthermore, I have some articles that are ready to be published on the Home Site, which should up the article count pretty significantly.
Of course, the long-term plan is still the same:
- Build up the Accessory Site and the Home Site to about 150 articles each.
- Reassess from there.
- Add articles to the sites in a ratio that equates to the site’s growth.
Everything That I Use
Content Services:
- We Write Blog Posts (Use code JASPERPIET10 for 10% off your first order)
- Passion Posts (Use code A4U0QMJZ1F for 10% off your first order)
Courses:
Keyword Research Tools:
Hosting:
Themes:
- Acabado (Comes free with Income School’s Project 24)
- Popcorn Theme
Plugins:
