June turned out to be the best month for my niche sites so far.
Since June is the last month of the quarter, the display ad RPMs are really good.
Despite a Google core update which did impact some of my sites, the overall growth of the portfolio remained strong.
Google Core Update June 2021
Every time there is a Google core update, I expect to lose some traffic. It may not always be the case, but in most cases, I see a 10-20% fluctuation in traffic.
I see these updates as a refinement of the search results to make them more relevant for the people searching for a query.
In most cases, this means that some of my pages, that were ranking for terms that are not too relevant for it, would lose those rankings while continuing to rank for terms that are relevant.
Given that the content on the web keeps expanding, with every update, Google gets more options to choose from and can refine the result to show more relevant pages for queries.
I see this as a part of my work and it doesn’t bother me a lot.
June 2021 core update was a mixed bag for me.
Below is how the traffic of the sites was impacted in June 2021 (compared with the preceding 30 days)
- Site 1 (Home Improvement): -14%
- Site 2 (Home Improvement): -20%
- Site 3 (Pets): -5%
- Site 4 (Outdoor): -8%
- Site 5 (Tech): +38%
- Site 6 (Broad Multi-niches): +60%
- Site 7 (Home Improvement): +130%
Not too bad overall. While my bigger sites (#1 and #2) declined a bit, it was compensated by decent growth in site 5 (which is doing a lot better than I expected)
De-Elementored My Sites
While I really like Elementor and how it makes it easy to build clean and good-looking sites, I don’t need all the functionality on my most of my niche sites.
These sites are simple blogs where I keep on adding new informational articles.
I don’t need fancy headers or pop-ups and my readers are more interested in the content that can be consumed easily.
So, I decided to remove Elementor from most of my niche sites (including all the sites that I cover in this income report).
I still use it on a couple of sites (including Craft of Blogging), but that’s because I need some extra functionalities that Elementor provides.
For the rest, I now completely rely on the GeneratePress theme. The sites look clean and load super fast (which also helped me improve my Core Web Vitals).
I was a bit worried that it may lead to a loss in rankings, and to be honest, I can’t be sure. Since I did it while a Google core update was going on, I don’t know if I lost/gained ranking because of the update or the theme change.
But I am happy I made the change.
Mediavine is Killing it
I added site #5 to Mediavine a few months ago and it’s doing quite well.
While the traffic continues to grow (crossed 150K pageviews in June 2021), the RPMs on Mediavine are off the charts.
In June 2021, Mediavine gave an overall RPM of $50.38.
I am a huge fan of AdThrive, but I am starting to feel that Mediavine is slightly better.
Now let’s get into the income and expense for June 2021.
Niche Sites Income in June 2021
- Site 1 (Home Improvement) – $2,157
- Site 2 (Home Improvement) – $2,368
- Site 3 (Pets) – $1,405
- Site 4 (Outdoor) – $221
- Site 5 (Tech) – $9,258
- Site 6 (Broad Multi-niches) – $8
- Site 7 (Home Improvement) – $884
If you’re interested in learning more about the sites, check out the first income report.
Total Income in June 2021 – $16,301 (vs. $11,281 last month)
Some $$ screenshots:
Now let’s have a look at the expenses.
Expense in June 2021
- Kinsta: $ 200
- Manage WP: $ 13
- Jarvis.AI: $ 99
- Upwork Writer: $ 791
- In-house writer: $ 500
- Shutterstock: $ 299
Total Expense: $ 1,902 (vs. $ 6,714 last month)
Expenses related to some of the plugins/tools are paid yearly. I will add these whenever they come up for renewal.
Net Income for June 2021: $ 14,399 (vs. $ 4,567 last month)
What Am I Reading?
For June 2021, our book club chose The Almanac of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson
It’s a compilation of tweets and interviews by Naval Ravikant (who is a popular investor).
It was a miss for me and I didn’t really find anything new in it. Most of the things covered in the book were either not relevant for me and my business, or something I have already read about.
Hopefully, we will pick a better book for July 2021.
3 thoughts on “Niche Sites Income Report – June 2021”
Hey bro,
Thanks for providing these income reports.. they do serve their purpose (of inspiring) well. 🙂
Bro, since I know you as someone who’d never trade anything with quality, how do you see the performance of AI writers (like Jarvis) in content creation? How was your experience and do they provide anything that is worth the readers’ trust? (I am asking because I want to try them out but think it might be like deceiving (again, I can be wrong) the readers).
I also noticed you have shifted from agencies to upwork and in house writers. Are they better (in terms of quality and expense) than agencies? If you’d still have to recommend an agency which one gets your nod?
Thanks so much. 🙂
Thanks Swadhin… Glad the income reports are serving their purpose.
I have been playing with these AI content writing tools and the quality is not up to the mark. In many cases, it takes me less time to write the content myself.
Also, Jarvis can’t fact-check and many times spit out utter garbage. A little bit of success I have had with these tools is in writing a short and generic introduction or while expanding on a section (again something generic).
I have also tried the AI writing tool in the Frase add-on, and I found the results to be better. Still too early to recommend it though.
I am still heavily using Content Agencies. The UpWork Writers are only for one website, and so is the in-house writer. As of now, 80% of my content still comes from agencies.
For info content, I recommend WordAgents and WriterAccess. WordAgents is good for generic content. You don’t know who writes the content, but in most cases, it is well-researched and up to the mark. They are also quick in delivering (within 15 days, no matter how many articles)
If you prefer working with a writer or team of writers, you can find some good ones on WriterAccess. I have a couple on WAccess that I regularly use for my pets sites.
And if you’re on a budget, Content Development Pros does a decent job (at less than half the price)
Thanks so much for the insightful reply bro.. This is so helpful.
Thanks again.
-Swadhin