April was yet another great month for my case study website and I am happy with the results even though there were some negatives.

This month I had a significant jump in traffic but did that increase my income?

In this income report, I am going to share with you all of my traffic, all of my earnings from Ezoic, Amazon Affiliate, and other affiliate earnings, as well as all of the things I did, to improve the site.

Website Traffic

Traffic jumped 10,000 page views at 61,034 and 49,865 sessions. YESSSS!

Traffic continues to climb and that means I am doing something right? I am pleased with the spike in traffic. I received more traffic from Google Discover and it has held for the last couple of months.

I guess the content being featured will stay there and keep sending me traffic. I'll take it...

Here is a snapshot of my Google Analytics so you can see my numbers.

This is a new record for this website and I am thrilled to see this growth each and every month. I hope it continues.

At the time of writing this my DR dropped to 12 from 21 literally in 1 day which is a bit odd. All of these spammy links keep finding their way to my website.

Update: the next day my DR went up to 27 which is higher than before. I am seeing some decent links but mostly just spammy links which I will disavow here soon. When the DR dropped my traffic also dropped. Now that it is back up I wonder what will happen with the traffic.

I am not really sure if my DR dropping is related to my lower traffic the last couple of days but I guess we will soon find out.

Content

I spent a lot of money on content this month for this website.

I spent over $2500 using Buy Sell Text as well as WriterAccess publishing 15 articles total.

I wanted to seed my case study website with a fresh batch of content hoping to rank better.

I am also working on building out more hub pages along with supporting content to build topical authority.

I have shown this in my recent live streams so if you haven't subscribed to my YouTube channel then now would be a great time to do so. Don't forget to turn on notifications so you will get notified when I go live. I show a ton of behind-the-scenes things regarding this case study website.

Hub pages have already started working for me and I am excited to see the results when they have a little more time to age. I started ranking better for head keywords that I wasn't ranking for before.

On-Page SEO And Core Web Vitals

I went through a lot of the content on my website and started an internal linking campaign. I linked heavily and added content to make it make sense in some places.

I spend time optimizing my images and preparing for the May Core update Google is doing. Who really knows if this is in vain but it is good for user experience so this scare tactic was a really good thing for me.

I have been putting off these tasks because they are tedious but thankfully I have a reason to do it now.

People keep saying it will backfire on Google and that this is just a scare tactic. While that may be true (we will soon find out) it still lit a fire under me to get some things done that I have been meaning to do.

User experience is a ranking factor after all and to give value to my audience I want to provide that on my website. That means a faster website and several other things but if you want to know more about what I did then this video will help you understand everything.

Future Plans

I have some big plans for this website. I am turning it into a business that will allow me to turn off display ads and focus more on creating income from my business.

I am planning to sell leads to countertop companies. My brand is growing each and every month and I feel that I can do even better by working with brick and mortar businesses (granite countertop providers) to help them grow their sales volume.

I am going to accomplish this by providing them with a page on my website like a directory and send leads their way. This may or may not work well but I am willing to test it out. I think I can make it happen.

I am also working on a lead generation tool to use for my new venture. It will be custom developed to fit my own needs and changed as needed.

My developer is doing some other really cool things to this site to increase user experience and maybe even traffic. I will update you next month when it has had some time to work.

Website/Blogging Earnings

Traffic was up but income was down.

It was not a significant drop in earnings but it was a drop indeed. Keep reading to get all of the numbers.

Ezoic Earnings

Even with more traffic I still earned about the same as I did in March for this month. I am not complaining as there was a small increase in my display ad revenue with Ezoic Ads.

In the month of April 2021, I earned $1,316.75 from Ezoic display ads on my website.

Not bad not bad but I had hoped for a significant increase. That is ok though maybe next month.

I will keep on publishing content, updating old content, internal linking, and everything else I do to make it better. I am sure I will be surprised soon with more and more traffic coming to the website.

The screenshot below shows my earnings over the last week. I am averaging about $50 per day with this website. I still need to work on my Core Web Vitals.

Amazon Affiliate Earnings

I honestly never have high hopes for Amazon Affiliate earnings. This is not a big part of my revenue and I will never let it be. Things change with them way too often and who knows one day they may do away with their affiliate program altogether.

I wont really be affected if they do.

In the month of April 2021, I earned $282.44 from Amazon Affiliate links on my website.

Now, this is down from last month's income report in March. Like I said though it is not a huge deal to me. I definitely hope for more income always but I know that my website is not really affiliate heavy. I prefer display ad revenue.

Here is a screen shot of my Amazon Affiliate earnings.

Home Advisor Earnings

This was another revenue stream that went down for me.

I made $155 with Home Advisor this month.

Even though this is the season everyone is buying countertops I still made less than last month.

I do believe this to be due to my testing. I am testing various link placements on my website as well as colors and many other factors. That is the paid traffic guy in me always wanting to test things and improve.

I am still going to keep testing for a few more months but honestly, if I cannot get it to increase my income significantly then I will do away with it as it lessens the user experience on any web pages that have the text link ad.

It is not always about the money. It is about a mix of income and user experience and I will gladly pay $150 per month for a better user experience on my website.

Here is a screenshot of my Home Advisor earnings. There is not really much to show just the amount total.

My Total Earnings

In the month of April 2021, I earned $1,754.19 from all three revenue streams.

My expenses were significantly higher. About $3500 but that doesn't mean my website is not profitable. That money comes back to me every month.

This is an investment which I know will earn me a substantial income over the coming years. My spending being more than my earnings is not really that big of a deal.

I don't spend this much on the site every month though I do plan to spend at least a grand monthly on content from here on just to grow my post counts and I hope that this will bring me into the 100k to 300k monthly pageviews.

Only time will tell.

Since I am publicly displaying this website in my income reports I cannot waste time and let it sit. People will start to copy me and try to out rank me so I have to get a move on. This is a good thing for me.

Am I Switching to Mediavine

I have been thinking about the move and have been talking to my rep at Mediavine about moving this website over. Honestly, I am probably going to make this move so that I can show you all how it affected me and my earnings. I wat to show what the process was like and more. That would be some great content.

If this site does not perform well on my Mediavine account then I will move it back to Ezoic and let it sit and then try AdThrive later.

Anyway, I have not fully decided yet but you will be the first to know when I do. Just subscribe to my YouTube channel and tick the notification bell if you want to be updated on my journey.

Here is my Ezoic affiliate link. Join Ezoic if you want to try to get your website accepted. Reach out to me after you sign up using my link and hopefully, I can get you accepted: JOIN EZOIC

Final Thoughts

This month was a good month despite not earning more than I did in March. I made about $100 less than I did last month which to me is not significant.

Despite the lowered earnings I still have faith that this website will do much better each and every single month. I am not concerned as there was a significant traffic increase.