I missed writing about the income generated by my websites in November 2024, so today we have a two-in-one report. Things are not amazing overall, although these were indeed two of the best months of the year, as it’s usually the case.
November & December 2024 Website Income Report Overview
We’ll start with a quick overview, looking at the two months side by side.
Note: I am only sharing my top 5 websites, although I have more. However, all websites outside of my top 5 barely make a profit monthly, so are negligible (and I no longer work on them). Here’s the breakdown of my income:
| November 2024 | December 2024 |
|---|---|
| Mediavine Income: $1,550.26 | Mediavine Income: $1,280.89 |
| SheMedia Income: $205.20 | SheMedia Income: $240.34 |
| Affiliate Revenue: $80.60 | Affiliate Revenue: $558.45 |
| Journey by Mediavine: $68.82 | Journey by Mediavine: $71.19 |
| Other Income: $308.85 (Patreon & Books) | Other Income: $460.23 (Patreon & Books) |
| TOTAL: $2,213.73 | TOTAL: $3,071.33 |
Note: Affiliate income is higher than usual in December because that’s when I calculate Booking & Get Your Guide affiliate income for the past year. So those values cover the whole year, not just December.
I also have monthly expenses eating up the profits. Here is what I spent both in November and December:
- Great hosting (BigScoots & WPX): $134.59
- GeneratePress Premium: $2.29 (read my GeneratePress theme review here)
- WP Rocket Plugin: $19.76
- Domain-related expenses: $0
- Accountant: $182
- Other expenses: $0
- TOTAL: $338.64 per month
Also, I pay social security and health insurance (around $286 per month), plus tax on profits (10%).
All in all, the numbers are really low overall. Building websites and blogging in particular are no longer the money machines they were in the past. 2024, overall, was my worst year in terms of income since… 2014!
The worst part? I don’t have high hopes for things improving a lot in 2025, so pivoting and focusing on other things that work will be essential to keep things going.
With these in mind, let’s go a bit more in-depth with each of the websites I report on.
Website 1 (entertainment niche)
- Traffic: 15,329 sessions in November, 20,505 in December
- Gross income: $492.18 & $455.15
- Articles: 3 new, 12 edited
I mostly ignored my entertainment website, which was the main source of income for a long time. It was slaughtered by Google’s updates… but the end of December came with this surprise, caught by AHREFS:
While I did lose 2 of my top 3 keywords on Google, look at those MASSIVE gains! This is a much welcomed sign and I loved seeing (although I was a bit surprised too). It seems that Google is finally starting to reconsider my website, which was hidden from the rankings for a long time.
Sure, having plenty of keywords in positions 11-50 doesn’t mean much (as you can see from the traffic – not a huge increase), but it’s still better than nothing.
The biggest problem is that this is a website I no longer want to work on, as it is in the gaming niche and it’s not something I am interested in anymore. But hopefully the upwards trend will continue and maybe I will be able to sell this website in 2025.
It’s clear that it’s not completely dead in Google’s eyes.
So – what did I do to revive it? To be honest, I don’t think that my doings had much to do with it, but here are the things I tried:
- removed a ton of articles (those that had 0 traffic for months) – ~1,000 articles
- rewrote some articles, but a small percentage overall (and the said articles didn’t improve much in terms of traffic)
- reduced ad density a tiny bit
Website 2 (local travel niche)
- Traffic: 9,581 sessions in November, 12,684 in December
- Gross income: $209.43 & $646.56
- Articles: 8 new, 11 edits
This website did slightly better in December because of some Christmas-related content I have, but overall, not much has changed here.
I am making it one of my main priorities though in 2025, with plans to restart Youtube and work A LOT on improving the existing content, site structure and trying to dip my toes into Pinterest, as travel is said to do well on Pinterest.
Website 3 (health niche)
- Traffic: 10,803 sessions in November, 12,124 in December
- Gross income: $540.93 & $709.24
- Articles: 0 new, 7 edits
Finally, this website started to see some love from Google once more. Not to a similar extent to Website #1, but it’s great to see movement here as well:
This is the website for which I have self-published a book in October, and it’s been doing great so far. Maybe some of the boost came from that, since I didn’t change anything in particular here, apart from working on the overall site structure and rewrote articles.
But let me tell you about the book! It generated almost $400 in December, thanks to some heavy pushing on my Facebook group and newsletter (and a solid Black Friday discount).
This proved to me that having your own product to sell can be extremely lucrative, especially if you execute it right. I didn’t create that book to make money, but for it to be genuinely helpful. It already has 3 5-star reviews on Amazon and, ignoring the Black Friday boost, selling 1-2 copies per day, organically.
As a result, I want to focus a lot on this website in 2025, releasing a few more digital products. I also consider launching a Faceless (or talking head) Youtube channel for the website, although I am worried Google might still not push that content to viewers because it’s in the YMYL niche.
Website 4 (entertainment niche)
- Traffic: 40,205 sessions in November, 38,053 in December
- Gross income: $902.37 & $682.87
- Articles: 2 new, 5 edited
Surprisingly, this website started to decline slowly, even though it was the best performing website left in my portfolio. It wasn’t affected by any of the Google updates (at least not heavily), but traffic is dripping slowly… which is what I saw on the other websites before a massive hit.
Not much to do than to keep writing and rewriting and hoping for the best here… Since it’s also in the gaming niche (not something I am interested in anymore), if I get it back to 50k sessions again, I will consider selling it.
Website 5 (travel niche)
- Traffic: 5,398 sessions in November, 6,664 in December
- Gross income: $68.82 & $117.28
- Articles: 3 new, 8 edits
This one also saw a small boost in traffic, although numbers are still really low. I am happy with the RPMs from Journey by Mediavine (review coming soon!).
In a similar fashion to what I did to Website #1, I removed articles that were not getting traffic and heavily edited existing ones. Some Christmas-themed content performed better than expected this holiday season, so I will have to see if that’s what caused the boost or some extra love in Google’s eyes.
Check my previous earning reports:
If you want to get more in-depth with how things were in the past months, click the links below:
- October 2024 income report
- September 2024 income report
- August 2024 income report
- July 2024 income report
- June 2024 income report
Final thoughts & plans
Even though we had some positives in these past couple of months, relying solely on content websites to generate a living in 2025 is probably a gamble. One I am not ready to make, so I will start looking at the following potential sources for extra income:
- digital products (it’s clear that there’s still PLENTY of potential here)
- building a brand & community (could help with Patreon donations too – I unfortunately have to rely on these too, despite feeling like crap for this)
- Youtube (or video content) – I already have a channel with 2k subscribers, so it should be easier to monetize (but past rates were terrible). Plus start a new one for the health website to build brand/community/trust
- additional traffic sources, mainly Pinterest for the health website and the travel ones. Unfortunately, Pinterest is not something I can call myself an expert in, but it’s something I have to try.
Over to you know – how did the last months of 2024 go for your online empire? Anything in particular that seems to work right now? Let me know by sharing your thoughts down below in the comments section!