YouTube + POD + Blogging

[itsaknife]

Hi guys, for the past few years I have been designing shirts and selling them online. Have my own niche website as well as posting on others (Spreadshirt, redbubble etc. but not much luck with these).

My niche website has potential but I'm still struggling to make it profitable. I have sold over 400 items thus far but for some reason it has gotten harder to sell than before (partly due to corona). It's not your classical POD, it's more of a brand with very high quality and original designs. I have a great niche which I'm very passionate about and actually love to create content for so I decided to combine my website with creating content for my niche and started writing articles and videos. Articles will be monetized by ads (Adsense, Ezoic etc.) and videos will hopefully run ads in the future as well + I will be plugging my shirts and website in the videos to hopefully drive sales. Articles/Videos will be in style of "Top 10 scariest", "The longest bridge in the world" but obv niche relevant and carefully chosen subjects. Hopefully the articles and videos will start ranking as well. Some of the subjects have a lot of traffic which I'm writing about.

Now I have already started with this journey from the 1st of January and have some articles and one video up but the progress has been rather slow. Will try to pick up pace going forward and start making monthly updates or maybe even weekly/bi-weekly.

July Stats
Articles published: 1
Clicks: 522
Impressions: 26.2k
Total Articles: 5

Videos published: 1
Views: 825
Subscribers: 13
Total Videos: 1

Articles ads revenue: 0 (not monetising yet)
Video ads revenue: 0 (not monetising yet)
Shirts sold revenue: 255$

My main focus for the next months will be on articles + videos so I expect shirt revenue to drop short-term and then start rising in 6 months or so as I have created more videos which will start to bring traffic as the shirts will be the merch for the channel.

I also use reddit and instagram to drive traffic. Thinking of facebook ads as well but currently lack funds.

I have attached pictures as well with some stats since I have started posting. One article is actually ranking first for my targeted kw which is nice and 90% traffic comes from it. I did change my website host right as the article started to get a lot of traffic from google which was unfortunate as I feel like it had a pretty big impact (see hole of impressions from 5/7/21).

The Video I posted to reddit and it got some traction but it hasnt ranked in YT yet and overall very few views.

I will dabble into SEO more as well, buying some services like links from the marketplace to try and rank better.

 

[MZI Palash]

I'm gonna follow your step. You're motivating me mate.

 

[Yrior]

Good luck man. Looks like a good journey to follow.

 

[googlebis]

Good luck, any updates?
I used to be on redbubble but i got suspended and amazon merch don't want to accept me so i've been trying to comeup with a method to sell spring shirts.... still nothing.

 

[itsaknife]

Good luck, any updates?
I used to be on redbubble but i got suspended and amazon merch don't want to accept me so i've been trying to comeup with a method to sell spring shirts.... still nothing.

Will make an update on the 23rd

 

[itsaknife]

Update #2 July 26 - Aug 22

Stats
Articles published: 1
Clicks: 572 (+50)
Impressions: 27.4k (+1.2k)
Total Articles: 6

Videos published: 1
Views: 1020
Subscribers: 16
Total Videos: 1

Articles ads revenue: 0
Video ads revenue: 0
Shirts sold revenue: 178$

The progress hasn't been that great. I was researching some tools for keyword search because I don't really want to waste time with writing stuff no one will read. I've found some good keywords but I could be doing a lot better in that department. I guess I've been very lucky, for my best article which I wrote around 6 months ago, I didn't know shit about SEO, keywords, and writing, and somehow it's my best article ranking #1 Google for a good keyword. The article I published in August has 2400 words and is ranking quite well for my keywords.

My Pinterest account decided to blow up suddenly. Now I have doubled down on it and started to upload loads of pictures. Though as a traffic source Pinterest sucks. I can get 5k impressions on a day but it will only result in 1-5 clicks to my website.


Search results arent really that great. I need to write more.


My Youtube video started to rank for some keywords which is nice! I have my second video finished but haven't had time to upload it just yet.




I have now the possibility to activate Ezoic on my site as well but probably the traffic is quite low and wouldn't really earn anything. My goal is currently to make 1$/day in 2022, 1st of January so I will wait till I get a bit more organic traffic and then activate it and hopefully will smash the goal. Though placing Ezoic ads is so irritating as the chrome plugin doesn't work with my site well at all, it's buggy as hell. Might need to use Ad Inserter. I've also read that Ezoic makes your site slow

 

[itsaknife]

Update #2 Aug 23 - Sept 20

(in the brackets, its the comparison to the previous period)
Stats:
Articles published: 3
Clicks: 484 (-88)
Impressions: 30.4k (+3k)
Total Articles: 9

Videos published: 1
Views: 1604 views (+584)
Subscribers: +35
Total Subscribers: 51
Total Videos: 2
Total Views: 3654

Articles ads revenue: 0.73$
Video ads revenue: 0
Shirts sold revenue: 0

I activated ads on September 11, so this is in 9 days. making 0.08$ per day which is not great but it is a start. Aiming for 1$ per day at the end of the year. Goal: 5 videos and 30 articles. 2/5 done. 9/30 done.

 

[ahenna]

good luck man, I'm following your journey...

 

[k2h2]

Good luck. Keep is updated.

 

[itsaknife]

I got a semrush trial account and it was pretty fantastic. I had never really used tools for SEO except for rankmath and seeing what pops up in google autofill, questions etc. I already found all the topics I need to write the rest of the articles this year, which is fantastic!

I can write one article per day now pretty easily, even 2 articles if its a topic that doesn't require too much research. I can also write monster articles 3000+ words with very heavy research in a couple of days. Would love to do these in a day as well but I'm still getting used to writing in English.

For some bug my websites css couldn't be loaded and it rendered my website unusable. I didn't notice it for a couple of days at least which tanked my visitors and I believe rankings etc. got hit. I was steadily getting more users and search visitors but due to the bug I only got around half of what I believe I coudl've gotten the past days. (search visitors dropped from 50-60 to around 27 on the lowest.) But happily more organic keywords were added and great articles written!

Update #2 Sept 20 - Oct 3

(in the brackets, its the comparison to the previous period)
Stats:
Articles published: 3
Clicks: 296 (-188)
Impressions: 20k (-10k)
Total Articles: 12

Videos published: 0
Views: 891 views (-50%)
Subscribers: +12
Total Subscribers: 63
Total Videos: 2
Total Views: 4546

Articles ads revenue: 0.66$, because of the css problem it affected the revenue as well, I got 4 days with only 0.02cents, which is not normal, and went back up as I fixed my site.

While my videos are very good information wise and authentic, I struggle a bit with bringing in emotion, which means people are as hooked on them. Only people who really want to get the information watch them to the end 10-20% in one video, 20-35% on other video. I've been studying storytelling a bit and leanring what makes a good video and will take this into account on my next ones. Overall a lot of things learned a lot still to learn.

Goal: 5 videos and 30 articles. 2/5 done. 12/30 done. (by the end of this year)

Life is pretty amazing and painful at the same time. Past few weeks I have made Years! of progress on my mindset, connection to myself and universe, what I want from life and so on. I'm letting go of a lot of my attachments and fears and past relationships, which is hard but I wan't to be drawn into the future and not constantly live in past and relive the painful emotions. I do more meditations, read hella lot! I've read Elon Musk, Alchemist, a book about the Digestive system and Dr. Joes Becoming Supernatural in 20 days, all of which I recommend a lot. Now I'm reading Mindset by Carol. I've learned that anxiety and depression are just past feelings etched into your brain which you keep resurfacing because you are stuck in a certain pattern, in the end you draw "joy" from the feeling of sadness and misery because that's all you know and because of it that's also all you draw into your life because you are a match for that type of energy keeping you inside of a loop. Breaking the pattern is hard and it might feel uncomfortable at times but needs to be done if you want to advance forwards in life.

 

[wextery77]

Good luck with your journey

 

[itsaknife]

Update # oct 4 - nov 1 slow but steady

(in the brackets, its the comparison to the previous period)
Stats:
Articles published: 0
Clicks: 824 (+528)
Impressions: 56.9k (+36.9k)
Total Articles: 12

Videos published: 0
Views: 2351 views (+50%)
Subscribers: +20
Total Subscribers: 83
Total Videos: 2
Total Views: 6962

 

[itsaknife]

Archiving this journey. The work I started will continue, it has new energy and I'm going forwards, goals are regular 1€-10€ days and then I will upgrade my hosting and go for 10€-200€ days. Generating a lot of content currently and things are picking up fast this year. Soon I want to start to outsource content creation as well: articles, videos etc. Things are good and money is coming in. I have some other projects in different avenues as well which is cool (books, mobile apps), get to build big global products now. Work-life balance is super, I'm relaxed and healthy and have a lot of freedom + can work from whenever I want.

 

[itsaknife]

Update on my journey. I got a lot of cash, thinking what to do with it. I can work from anywhere, anytime which is amazing and since I don't have to anymore, I choose only the things that I really enjoy and are cool for me and other people. I will be an investor in the endeavours I have currently started and support them. I will work through all the processes and automate + hire people for the needed roles. I want to finish my book and work on helping humanity in the ways I know, make use of the gifts god has given me and help others grow.

 

[bottingisfine]

Update on my journey. I got a lot of cash, thinking what to do with it. I can work from anywhere, anytime which is amazing and since I don't have to anymore, I choose only the things that I really enjoy and are cool for me and other people. I will be an investor in the endeavours I have currently started and support them. I will work through all the processes and automate + hire people for the needed roles. I want to finish my book and work on helping humanity in the ways I know, make use of the gifts god has given me and help others grow.

How did you earn the cash?