Nov 2022: $32k Revenue = Head Blown!

Before you read anything else please read this...

I made $0 in my first 12 months after joining WA.

I worked on my websites FAR MORE than I do now.

I'm not a genius and I have A LOT more to learn.

• Nov 2018- upgraded to annual WA BF (joined in Sept 2018)
• Nov 2019 - $30
• Nov 2020 - $3.3k
• Nov 2021- $6.6k
• Nov 2022- $32k

First things first...

Apologies to any referrals that have joined WA through my link this year (it's not many!) but I haven't been as active this year as I have previously.

Here's why:

- I'm back working as a PE teacher full time...

- Enjoying time with my toddler (she's going on 15 btw), wife & family

- Trying to maintain some resemblance of a social life (kind of) The world cup was amazing in Qatar btw!

- binge watching crap on TV again (I think I'm rebounding how people do when they lose weight and cut out food)... seriously I hate the TV though, I gotta see someone about this.

- And then this...

Maybe this screenshot helps to explain more...

This is a very close insight into where my main focus has been over the past year or so.

I'm not running a little side hustle any more... I'm running a business (and yes there is a difference IMO)

Before you ask...

• PV = pageviews
• DR = Domain rating (an Ahrefs metric)
• Links = real websites linking to my site
• Avg DR = Average Domain rating of these links

I think everything else is self explanatory.

Personally, I find these things important to track as I can impact them and I feel these matter more than most other things to track.

If you're new here I remember thinking (not that long ago)...

I'd love to make $1,000 in one month.

But the truth is that it's not a whole lot of more work to make 5 figure months compared to $500 a month from a website. I'd even argue I work on my websites a LOT LESS than I did in my first year when I joined WA (and I made a total of $0).

STOP...

Re-read the last 2 sentences.

Bigger picture thinking

To be honest I'm only writing this to procrastinate on what I should be doing atm.

And also I just spoke to a close friend who is wanting to start out in this game.

So I'm going to say to you exactly what I want to say to him...

1. Do things yourself first

You don't know what you don't know. So hiring out content initially is a fools game and you will fork over a lot of money on something that won't work.

FACT.

Do it yourself until you get traffic & make money. But my word this can take ages!

2. Focus on ONE thing at a time

This is why WA is so good for beginners IMO. I wish I actually followed the training here properly at the start.

I used to be SUCH a BUSY FOOL!!

Such a fool!

Don't try and do social media or start a podcast or run an email list or anything else. It's stupid! (unless that's all you're doing!)

Saying that.. the podcast was actually helpful (for me) as I spoke to dozens of 6-8 figure online business owners. It was the proof of concept I needed... helped me network and I could ask them specific questions on MY mind.

I didn't really believe this was all possible until I spoke to tons of these people (and realised they are totally normal like you and me)

3. You gotta put in the reps

If you want to learn SEO... write content

Then write content

Then learn some more

Then write better content

Then write better content still

Oh and then...

You'll realise you suck and nothings happening!!

So go learn more and...

Yeah write fricking content!!

4. There's no magic number/ specific journey

Everyone is different.

Everyone does the "same thing" differently (create websites)

There's no number of articles you HAVE to write before it works.

There's no time frame for when it will start working for you.

You just have to trust this a process and it does work.

Be willing to work hard and enjoy the journey.

5. It really does take time

You CANNOT avoid the learning curve.

You can learn, read others mistakes or think you're smarter than most people.

But it will take time...

Do the reps (did I mention that?)

6. Recognise when you can outsource things

If you want this to be a business (and not just replace your 9-5 with a 5-9... 100% what I did when I was making $964 each month) you HAVE to outsource.

Don't do it too soon...

Then again don't do it too late.

There's too much to go into about this and you gotta read books and learn this separately.

And yes, I'm still learning.

7. Hire people better than you

Don't hire cheap.

Don't hire expensive.

Hire well.

Take time going through hundreds of applications.

Spend time interviewing them...

Find "A players" (they cost the same as B-C players, sometimes less!)

In fact, just read "Who" if you wanna know more about this.

8. Hiring doesn't equal no input

I speak to every one of my hires for 30 mins a week face to face (and I have 8 of them currently). That's my 4 hour work week before I do anything else... some weeks I actually don't do anything else funny enough!

(Hey maybe I should write a book called "The how to make other people do your work for you so you work less each week"... I can't think of anything more catchy than that to do with 4 hours a week anyway.)

Man I do ramble sometimes.

Anyhoo...

Every person you hire counts as more work (especially at first). Train them, speak to them, get to know them, help them, keep them accountable, get them to buy into what you're doing etc.

The magic of hiring A players is that will make your business better and take less of your time... eventually.

Don't make impulse/ bad hires (easier said than done... oh and you will make bad hires... sucker)

9. Track well... only when you start making money

I just added this.

Don't bother tracking things when you're not making money.

Check Google Search Console to make sure your impressions are going up and give yourself those small wins in the early days.

That's enough!

You don't need to track how much each affiliate makes you when you make $3.56.

You'll know!

Here I things I do track now which helps:

• - Each Affiliate revenue (did you know you can negotiate commission rates with individual affiliates... this can be a huge game changer- I increased my annual revenue by at least $20k the other day with 3 emails to one affiliate manager... that's like half of my annual teacher salary!)
• - Affiliate EPC (earnings per click) - prob more important than anything else as you can see which affiliate pays you the most per click
• - Revenue per page (it's hard to do this accurately sometimes but getting an idea is great to see where to spend more time and attention... we only have 100 articles published but spent a lot of time on our big 5-10- figure out what works and double down!)
• - Expenses
• - prob some other stuff but I can't think off the top of my head and this is long now

The bottom line

Sorry I started rambling towards the end.

But those main subheadings sums up what I wish I could go back and tell myself/ have told my friend.

I wish I could actually go back a few years ago and slap myself in the face and tell me to STOP doing a ton of stuff I was doing.

But I can't!

P.S. Ask anything, just not the niche/ website domain name- just know it's in the sport type space