Monthly Report - October 2014 (MY FIRST SALES)

byDustinG

3.9K followers

Updated 9 years ago

I know, I know, I know...this is super late. It's been difficult to find time to dedicate towards both my WA profile and my website and if time is limited, WA has to take a backseat. After all, I'm working to make money, not to improve my WA rank!

Speaking of making money, October was the first month of any significant income, $37.50 to be exact! I had my first referral to WA go premium as well as an affiliate sale from a theme provider that I referred one of my readers too.

October had been 7 months since I started my website, so it's nice to finally see some income rolling in! Now, to continue that forward in the months and years to come.

My traffic continued to increase, almost exponentially, compared to September and surpassed the 2,000 visitor mark. I remember when I was ecstatic that I received 100 visitors a month and now I'm getting that in a day.

Those numbers are just from organic traffic. I also started Course 7 in the Affiliate Bootcamp and dove headfirst into PPC advertising with AdWords. I only made it through the first 2.5 lessons so I'm not to the point where my campaigns are working too well yet. Hopefully by next month I will be able to say that my campaigns are running profitably.

Anyways, now I will get to the interesting part and show you all of my numbers. As usual, I will show you this month's numbers followed by the change from last month in parenthesis.

Traffic Reports

Total Visitors: 2,440 (+1,399)
Unique Visitors: 2,190 (+1,264)
Pageviews: 7,093 (+3,826)
Pages/Session: 2.91 (-0.23)
% New Visitors: 88.81% (+1.59)
Average Session Duration: 1:52 (-0:12)

You can see how the overall traffic has slowly crept up throughout the month. The spike in the last two days is a result of my launching of my first AdWords campaigns. Boy can AdWords burn through money quickly!!!

Traffic Sources

Direct: 262 (+110)
Referral: 107 (+41)
Organic: 1858 (+1058)
Social: 15 (-8)
PPC Adwords: 198 (first month)
PPC BingAds: 106 (+36)

Look how those numbers have increased! I had over 1,000 more organic visitors in October than I did in September. I'm telling you all, just follow the training and be patient and dedicated, and you can expect to see the same results.

If you're feeling discouraged with your traffic because it seems like no one is coming to your site, I want you to look at these two charts. The first is my overall traffic since I launched my site and the second is only my organic traffic.

Overall Traffic

Organic Traffic

I just want you to look at the first four months. My organic traffic was basically nonexistent for FOUR MONTHS. The only traffic I was getting was from you kind souls here at WA visiting my site to make me feel good.

Despite the seemingly dismal traffic, I stuck with it until, suddenly, towards the end of my fourth month, the organic traffic started coming. And you can see what has happened since! Just stick with it people and follow the training!

Social Media Reports

I must admit, the time I have spent on my social media profiles has been next to nothing. I know this is not good, but, as I mentioned earlier, I have limited time to work on my online business. Because of this, I have to prioritize what I do first, and what gets pushed back. I think at this point, the most important thing for me to do is to continue to publish new content on my website as I continue to build my authority in my niche.

Despite this, all of my profiles (except Twitter), actually gained followers over the month, so I'm happy with that. I'm guessing this is simply because of the increased traffic to my site. It's definitely not because I have been engaging with my followers.

The most exciting part of this is that my email list doubled in size! I know it's still relatively small right now, but it's a start. It seems like having an email list is one of the most prized possessions when it comes to internet marketing, so I'm happy mine is beginning to grow!

Facebook Page: 25 Likes(+5)
Twitter: 272 Followers (-10)
Google Plus Business Page: 48 Followers (+4) & 9094 Views (+1,967)
Pinterest: 78 Followers (+10)
Email List: 18 Subscribers (+9)

Also, I would be incredibly stoked if you decided to follow on any of my social media profiles! Especially Facebook, since I really want to get to the 30 likes mark so I can get access to my page insights.

Just to add a little more color to this report, here is how my email list has grown since the beginning.

Revenue Reports

Like I mentioned in the beginning of this update, October was the first month I have actually gotten more than $1 worth of sales. I am still running at a net loss for the month, but that loss is shrinking!

Total revenue: $37.50 (+$37.50)

Last Month's Goals

I was able to meet all of my traffic goals, but I grossly overestimated the amount of time I was going to be able to put towards my website once I started my new job. As a result, I was not able to publish nearly as much new content as I would've liked.

• Post a total of 10 new posts/pages NO
• Five sales of any kind NO (I got 2 though)
• Have a net profit for the month NO (getting closer)
• Over 1,750 non-paid visitors to my site YES
• Over 1,500 organic visitors to my site YES
• Over 100 paid visitors to my site YES
• Complete Phase 7: How To Scale Successful PPC Campaigns through lesson 5 NO
• Increase my social media following to:

  • Facebook

    : 30 page likes NO

  • Twitter: 325 followers NO
  • Google Plus Business: 55 followers NO
  • Pinterest: 80 followers NO
  • Email List: 15 subscribers YES

Goals For November

The goals I have set for November are not too different from October's. However, I am being more realistic in terms of how much time I will have. This means less content published and less training completed. I am also going to begin tracking the amount of time I spend working on my website. I think it will be cool and useful to be able to see how much I am making per hour of work, especially to see how my hourly rate increases over time!

• Post a total of 5 new posts/pages
• Five sales of any kind
• Have a net profit for the month
• Over 2,550 non-paid visitors to my site
• Over 2,250 organic visitors to my site
• Get 10 conversions from my PPC campaigns
• Complete Phase 7 of Affiliate Bootcamp through lesson 8
• Track my time spent working on my website
• Increase my social media following to:
  • Facebook: 30 likes
  • Twitter: 300 followers
  • Google Plus Business: 55 followers
  • Pinterest: 85 followers
  • Email List: 25 subscribers

Personal Notes

I always like to share a bit about what's going on outside of my online business as well. After all, I spend more time around my WA folks than I do most of my family, so I figure I can let you in on a bit! ;)

I've mentioned it a few times, but I've started a new job. This was desperately needed and it seemed to just fall in my lap. I had been searching and going to interviews, and more searching and more interviews when suddenly I saw a new ad online for a place literally a mile away from where I am living. I sent in my app, had an interview the next morning and was hired that day.

I am now a graphic designer for a memorial company. This means I spend my day designing gravestones! It's sounds kind of morbid, but I actually am enjoying it. It's definitely something I never imagined I would be doing, but alas, here I am. It pays decent too, so it will be a good job until I am able to go full time with my online businesses. I'm hoping I can do this in a year, two at the most.

In terms of Hezel and me, we are slowly but surely getting our documents lined up so I can officially submit the application for her fiance visa. The whole process is supposed to take 5-6 months once I first submit it, which seems like forever. We're going as quickly as we can, but there are some things she needs to get sorted on her end and working with government bureaucracies (this is possibly the hardest word to spell in the English language) to get documents is always a painfully slow process.

Finally, just because I enjoy everyone complimenting me on my beautiful fiance, here is a picture of us a couple days before I had to leave. I proposed to her somewhere on those rocks in the background.

I hope you enjoyed this update and I really hope it can serve as a bit of motivation for all of you who are at the point of feeling like giving up. Go back up and look at my organic traffic and how flat it was for the first four months! Sorry again for it being almost two weeks late!

Finally, this is really just a brief version of my full report. I put 7.5 hours (I've started keeping track) int my full report over on my website. It has lots of pretty charts and graphs and much deeper analysis of everything. So, if you're interested in checking that out, please feel free to do so here and leave me a comment if you feel so inclined. I always try to reciprocate and leave a comment on your site in return.

Any questions? Comments? Ideas on where I should go next? Things I can do better?