Shopllc
Power Member
- Apr 13, 2017
- 622
- 234
Wow! Amazing! Congrats! Awesome journey! You're so inspiring!!!Update - Year-End Report
It's been a long year with plenty of ups and downs for all of us.
Many of us had casualties throughout the year that may have set us back or messed up plans we had or goals we intended to reach. I'm sure quite a few of us had our fair share of flops and failures.
Personally, I didn't quite hit the target I set out to accomplish, or at least in the way I had intended to do so.
Initially, when I started this journey I wanted to hit $10,000/month which would work out to about $322/day. For the entire year, I've had 27 days that I've hit that daily revenue and 6 days of those where I've hit $500/day.
It's sad that I didn't actually make it the way I wanted to but I feel like things were slightly out of my control and my way of scaling.
I think the scaling method I had was flawed because I tried to do all my scaling manually. And there's a physical limit to what a single person can accomplish in 24 hours.
Furthermore, I didn't build my sites like most people where they are constantly doing link building. If I had done that maybe I could've hit the target easily? Who knows, but I couldn't afford to risk my passive bread doing something I'm not sure would work.
I'm great at writing content, optimizing said content, and structuring my site and articles to rank from the relevancy and authority of my site. I've also successfully implemented 301 redirects so that will now become a part of my strategy going forward.
At the end of it all, the year went how it did and there's nothing I can do anymore to change the results.
Now you might be wondering...
What's the result?
Fucking great!
I couldn't have asked for a better year!
Earnings for 2021:
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Total Monthly Earnings AMZ + ADs: $72,663
Total for 2021: ~$238k
Of my earnings for last year, about $2000-$3000 was spent on various expenses such as tools, hosting, domains. I bought the 301 redirects for the site I sold in 2020 so I'm not counting that into the costs.
The site I sold this year is the Project with Code Name OBF which was the second site I started after getting into Amazon affiliates in 2019.
The total costs for that site were around $4000 and it took about 3 months of work to build in 2021 although I've had it since late 2019. So having a six-figure exit was great for me.
What Are My Takeaways for the Year
One major theme I see across lots of journeys that I watch and even in my own is the notion of selling or keeping your sites. Last year was a big wake-up call for me that changed how I view my sites.
Initially, I wanted to have sites on top of sites to the moon until I'm making six-figure months from my site portfolio.
I was well on track with this plan with a site making $9k/month and another on the way to make $5-$6k/month which would bring my earnings to about $14/$15k easily and with a few more on top of that I'd be set.
But the reality was anything but that with the Google Product Reviews Update.
That was the biggest wake-up call for me that let me know that Google will never be in favor of affiliate sites. Especially ones that send traffic to another potential customer or monopoly such as Amazon.
They will continually develop ways to keep their traffic to themselves so their ads revenue keeps growing. I feel like they get a kick out of wrecking sites by the timings they have and it's not to spite us the small guys but the other big players.
To give an analogy, it's like when two countries go to war. It's usually over things that have nothing to do with their population and only about the interests of the President and leaders. But the ones who truly suffer from their whims are the small common folk like us.
It's the same way with Google.
Here's the site I had going well that Google wrecked:
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Everything was seemingly done right, the content had better reviews than most of the competition. But it still got wrecked in the product reviews update. I worked on it and added a good chunk of info articles but nothing helped until this last update ran and the site seemingly fully recovered in terms of keyword positions.
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Granted it's not fully back to where it was with the daily average. But the keywords are back on top and I even have more top spots than I did at my peak. I figure that it will take a while for the traffic to peak again.
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So the bottom line is that affiliate websites will never be a long-term game. You can have your affiliate sites for years but at some point, you'll lose them. In general, I'd say affiliate sites have a lifespan at peak performances for 6 months to 2 years if you are very lucky.
Other site types on the other hand seem to be doing just fine and can have a lifespan of 3-10 years if they are well maintained and worked on.
With this knowledge, I can't swear that I'll be keeping any affiliate site I create. Even the one I'm showing above which is my only earning site might be listed for sale this month. From then on I'll be ranking and selling affiliate sites and keeping sites monetized through ads or info products.
I don't think I'll stop doing affiliate marketing, but I want to try to become more diversified this year. It's pointless to have all the work that you've invested into wrecked every year on end. At the end of it all, you'll reach nowhere. So for others on the same path, make sure you diversify your site portfolio.
At the same time, if you are building affiliate sites; having multiple is never a bad thing. As you can see in my case, immediately after my big site crashed I went back to earning $4k and then $6k per month. Then after selling my other site I'm now back up to $4k/month.
Earnings for Last Month: $4,257
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This month is the right time to sell this site as I might be able to get a ~40x multiple at $3k+ which would give me about $120k at the end.
I could risk it and say "oh, it's gonna go back up to its peak" but there's a higher chance of Google wrecking it again than there is that I'll get another 6 months of ~$5k+ earnings.
So don't be surprised if I say I sold this site as well.
With all that in mind, I hope y'all can take something away from my journey. I'm not sure if I should end this one or keep it going. I might just keep it going as I'll still be doing amazon affiliate sites and continuing with the program.
I'll just keep the updates monthly.
I've also come up with a business name for a company I plan to start this year to do all of my work for me so I can truly scale up my processes. So this year should theoretically be different and more successful in terms of productivity. I don't think I can make more in earnings this year than last year but I'll surely give it my best shot.
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To the past me and the present you... Do you SEE what you can Achieve in JUST 2 Years with Dedication, Work, and God?
What will you do about it? Do you want it badly enough to do the work it takes? Nothing comes easy, we all have our ups and downs as you can see throughout my journeys. I've been at this whole IM marketing thing since 2013 and this year has been my best in profit.
I've finally found what I love and will keep working even harder at it. Will a similar journey be yours?
Do you want success as badly as I wanted it? Prove it.
PS. for those that hate seeing God being mentioned or don't believe, piss off to the side or just keep acting like you didn't see it. I'm just a normal, intelligent, passionate, hardworking guy and can't do without his blessings.
How many articles do you have per site now?
