Another month has passed – and this was a bad one for my online business. While some websites saw a bit more traffic that they usually get, most of them are still declining on Google. Plus, since most of my sites are seasonal – with summer being the best season – I expect things to get worse.
Overall, we’re still at around 90% traffic lost on most websites. This is devastating, even though the drop in income is fortunately, not as big (yet).
But I have to admit that I am starting to get more and more worried about the future. You see, the thing is that I absolutely love blogging. I like everything about writing a blog post (and making money from it). I HATE it that, based on how things have been going for almost a year now, I will be forced to pivot just to be able to feed myself and my family.
It’s good that the sun is shining outside, because otherwise I think I’d be in a deep depression. I am usually optimistic, but I’m starting to believe that there’s no light at the end of this tunnel…
But, personal rants aside, let’s check out how things went this month!
July 2024 Website Income Report Overview
If you don’t want to go through the entire report, here is how things stand for my top 5 blogs. There’s some extra income from my other websites in the portfolio, but tiny amounts that don’t make any difference.
My gross earnings in July were $1,695.24.
These are my website-related expenses in July:
- Great hosting (BigScoots & WPX): $134.59
- GeneratePress Premium: $2.29
- WP Rocket Plugin: $19.76
- Domain-related expenses: 0
- Accountant: $182
- Other expenses: $0
- TOTAL: $338.64
Also, I pay social security and health insurance (around $286 per month), plus tax on profits (10%).
This means that, all in all, my net earnings from blogging in July were: $963,54. (-$372.57 vs. last month). This is terrible and coming after some boosts in traffic.
Website 1 (entertainment niche)
- Traffic: 27,984 sessions (+2,352)
- Gross income: $469.13 (-$420.12)
- Articles: 9 new, 0 edits
This is the first time since August 2023 when I see traffic increasing for this website. Sure, it’s a measly 2k sessions, but it finally stopped going down and went up instead.
Still, we’re A LONG way away from what this website was getting in terms of sessions (for example, in said August 2023, it had it’s all-time peak at 300,000 sessions).
So, despite the encouraging increase in traffic, we’re still seeing an overall traffic drop of 90%! Crazy!
And all happiness (hoping that Google is finally starting to show this website some love) vanished when looking at Analytics. Google traffic is still -5% month-to-month, but Bing saw a nice uptick of 17% in traffic:
We also had a nice 4 days of great RPMs on Mediavine (up to $32.18) which boosted the income nicely. Still, the RPM for July stands at $16.35 – which is still good for this niche.
And even though this one was beaten to death, it remains one of my main earners, so I will try to show it some love. The 9 articles published this month didn’t perform at all, but I have to keep trying.
Website 2 (local travel niche)
- Traffic: 12,568 sessions (+3,083)
- Gross income: $160.79 (-$9.17)
- Articles: 2 new, 3 edits
Despite a massive increase in traffic, earnings are down. This is what happens when your main traffic source is what advertisers consider a low-tier country.
And the traffic boost is only seasonal, with July (and hopefully half of August, at least) being hot months in this travel destination. I was hoping for a lot more, but I’ll take any traffic boost at this point. But the RPMs are atrocious:
But, even though that looks bad, it would’ve been A LOT worse of the website was on AdSense or other networks instead. So I am really grateful for Mediavine, I won’t lie. At this point, any extra $ is more than welcome.
Website 3 (health niche)
- Traffic: 12,628 sessions (+730)
- Gross income: $337.82 (-$17.50)
- Articles: 1 new, 3 edits
While this website is basically dead on Google (just 232 sessions for the whole month) and also declining a bit on Bing, it’s getting most of its traffic from Pinterest. So my plan is to focus on getting social media traffic here – I want to build its Facebook page too and look into promoting it on Reddit.
While the website lacks authority, it is a high quality one with solid information, as it is about a specific disease that I have direct experience with and I can address things that people who just study it can’t.
Many people reached out to me over the years expressing their gratitude for the information provided, so it’s really good and useful. Of course, search engines don’t know that and they put ahead various other websites which are not as helpful.
But I decided to take most of the articles on the website and write an eBook that I plan selling on Amazon and other platforms. The first draft is ready and hopefully, by the end of the month, I will launch it.
This is the final thing I can do to try and boost the income here, but ebooks are not something I have experience with, so it’s both time consuming and something I don’t like to do. We have to eat though, so I’m doing it!
Website 4 (entertainment niche)
- Traffic: 34,487 sessions (+317)
- Gross income: $518.37 (-$58.59)
- Articles: 10 new, 3 edits
Aaaand this website became the surprising #1 in terms of income this month. It’s not because of its amazing jump in traffic, but because the others are doing so badly.
This is the only website not really touched by the previous Google updates – although the big G is not showing it any true love either. But this is pretty much stable and I’m putting more work in it to hopefully get some momentum going in and extra traffic incoming.
Website 5 (travel niche)
- Traffic: 6,489 sessions (+183)
- Gross income: $209.13 (+$91.41)
- Articles: 0 new, 2 edits
I was surprised to see a slight increase in traffic from Google here, having in mind that I didn’t put much work in this website (and I don’t think I will). But I’ll take any wins on Google now and hope for more:
In terms of earnings, I some affiliate sales drove the numbers up – which was expected, as summer is the high season here. Compared to last year, traffic is down 85% so the hit is painful.
I will let this website sit for now and focus on other things that I hope will improve earnings sooner.
Check my previous earning reports:
If you want to get more in-depth with how things were in the past couple of months, click the links below:
Final thoughts
My websites – like most websites out there relying mostly on Google traffic (which are not ecommerce stores) – are still doing really bad.
It’s the fist month with net earnings under $1,000 in a LONG time. The biggest problem is that I have no reasons to be optimistic about the future. It’s pretty clear that Google has no love for small website publishers like myself (and probably yourself, if you’re reading this) so we have to find alternatives.
Pivoting to other traffic sources is not easy and the risks are similar to what Google did to us: things can change over night, without warning. But that’s the game we have to play and it seems that I have to start learning and testing with getting traffic from other sources. Or completely changing my business model (which is something I loathe because, as I said in the intro, I love blogging).
Not much sunshine in this monthly update, unfortunately. Let me know how your website(s) did in July – and any thoughts you have on the matter.
I hate to hear the decline in traffic. I hope new traffic sources work for you. Hope it will pick back up soon. HOLD the elephant tight. Keep moving forward 🙂
There’s no other way, is there? 🙂 Let’s see how the alternative traffic sources work… although I’d love to get that Google traffic back!