Every month I recap what has happened at Brighter Vision, from website traffic to domain sales to all posts in-between. I do this because I want to have full transparency with my readers who are learning how to make a living online, as well as for my clients, so they know exactly who they are hiring (and why they should hire me).
Geeze. Mid-way through October and I’m JUST getting to the traffic report now. As you can imagine, things have been crazy busy here. Q4 is a big quarter for consulting companies as businesses realize they will have marketing dollars left over in their budget, so they might as well spend them, right?
That’s where we come in. Throw a little hiring into the mix and you have a recipe for ‘Delayed Traffic Reports’ (wow, that was cheesy).
OK. Onto the report!
What Happened in September at Brighter Vision
As I mentioned last month, our sites have recovered a lot of the ranking dip we experienced over the summer. That’s nice to see. Hummingbird has had a positive effect on all our websites. Unfortunately, summer is over so our bigger sites are in a slow decline until March.
Last month I wrote that Geeks Raising Geeks is off to a BLAZING start. Well, that fire continues to be lit! It seems we really found an under-served niche here and we’re doing our best to knock it out of the park.
I’ve been waiting to announce a super awesome announcement until all the wheels are in motion. Thought I’d get to announce it this month, but I am going to have to push it back another 1-2 months. This project is just taking far longer than anticipated.
Due to Brighter Vision’ growth, we’ve had to bring on some help. I’m excited to introduce the newest member of our team… next month :).
Posts From September
Here’s the round-up from September:
Running a Facebook Sweepstakes With the NorthSocial App
Why Link Building Strategies Should Focus on High Quality Over Massive Quantity
My Niche Site Income
Please keep in mind: This is only a very small percentage of my overall income. I don’t work nearly enough on these sites and almost all of it is passive income at this point. In case you forgot, here are all the posts in this niche site development series:
In Case You Missed It:
Want to Make Money Online? You Better Bring Hard Work
How to Mind Map & Find Topics For Your Website
Instructions on Beginning a Blog or Website (& Making Money From It)
Choosing a Niche & Performing Keyword Research with Market Samurai (video tutorial)
Installing WordPress
Learning From My Mistakes When Choosing a Niche
Crowdsourcing a Logo Design Through 48HoursLogo
Maintaining & Growing That Website
Using SERPS to Track Your Keywords & Progress
Please note: I don’t optimize my AdSense ads as much as possible. I put them in the sidebar to promote a good user experience. AdSense earnings would likely be 4-5x their amount if placed in the optimal position (top of content, blending in), but I care more about my users and social sharing than an extra 50 bucks via AdSense.
OutdoorEquipment – Shut down and content transferred to Glacier.
TheSnowboardingExperts
Avantlink – $155.54 (Last Month: $34.79 | Difference: $120.75)
AdSense – $1.78 (Last Month: $3.11 | Difference: $-1.33)
Amazon – $12.59 (Last Month: $57.27 | Difference: $-44.68)
Total – $169.91 (Last Month: $95.17 | Difference: $74.74)
Bicycle-Touring-Guide
Avantlink – $563.99 (Last Month: $268.17 | Difference: $295.82)
AdSense – $41.17 (Last Month: $41.10 | Difference: $-0.07)
Amazon – $6.79 (Last Month: $37.86 | Difference: $-31.07)
Total – $611.95 (Last Month: $347.13 | Difference: $264.82)
Geeks Raising Geeks (second full month live without an attempt to heavily monetize)
Amazon – $7.42 (Last Month: $10.45 | Difference: $-3.03)
Total – $7.42 (Last Month: $10.45 | Difference: $-3.03)
Traffic Level Breakdown
Below is the traffic breakdown for a number of my websites, including the percentage increase. This is a screenshot directly from Google Analytics comparing traffic in September to August.
Let’s break it down!
Bicycle Touring Guide – Another 5% drop in traffic. At this point, things are seasonal. Rankings have stabilized and people just aren’t planning bike tours anymore.
Geeks Raising Geeks – Wowsa! 275% increase. How does that break down? Well, we went from 30 Pinterest visits to 3,000, 400 direct to 1,100, 360 Facebook to 425 and 260 from Google to 274. Our strategy of creating a community and developing highly sociable, viral content is working well so far.
AllBestBinoculars - Nice to see almost a 5% increase!
AllArtCareers – 3.5% increase.
Camping Tent Reviews – 35% drop! OUCH! Not as bad as it looks though. For the last 3 years, we’ve always seen a drop of 20-40% in this month for this property. People just stop buying tents.
Criminology Degree – Up 5%.
Fulfilled Homemaking – Whoa! This caught me by surprise. I don’t spend any time with this site after we acquired it a few years back. Digging in a little deeper, we actually saw close to a 17% increase in Google traffic compared to the previous month. However, that was coupled with a 26% drop from a site that sent us a lot of referrals, 56% drop in direct and 96% drop in Facebook traffic. Holy cow. Well, either way, it doesn’t matter all that much. The site makes what it makes and trucks along as it does. Social media traffic doesn’t seem to have any impact on its revenue.
Glacier – 9.32% drop. Most of the drop is direct and social though. We’ve finally righted the ship, stopped the bleeding and have been regaining our rankings. Nowhere near where it was in the peak 2 years ago, but solid enough that I am feeling good about it. There is a major pending problem though: Our newsletter subscribers are dropping like flies. After their trip, they unsubscribe. This is a major problem for the brand moving forward and something I’ll need to address in order to continue growing this business.
Brighter Vision – A drop of 6.5%. This is due to a massively popular article in the Domaining community that I wrote in August. All other metrics are up.
Snowboarding – 47% increase! Wow. That’s an increase of 70% in the last 3 months. And the site is stale with mediocre content. Due this across 100 websites and, with similar revenue, you’re seeing $17,000 in revenue/month. As Google’s standard become murkier and murkier, going the scaling crappy website route approach becomes more appealing.
Domaining Updates
Please know, I’m far from an expert in Domaining. If you want more expert opinions on Domaining, I’d recommend checking out Domain Sherpa, ElliotsBlog, DomainShane, DNJournal, RicksBlog, Morgan Linton and AccidentalDomainer. I’ve spent countless hours on all those sites, increasing my Financial IQ so that I could go out and kick ass in domaining. And I’m getting there, one sale at a time.
Once again, in September I didn’t make a sale. Bummer. That’s 2 months in a row now. I also haven’t focused any of my energy into marketing names for a few months. Without the effort, there’s no reward. I could hire someone to do the marketing for me, but it’s just not where my focus is right now. As things are, Brighter Vision is getting about 90% of my attention and my sites the remaining 10%.
I use BuzzStream to streamline my sales and marketing process. Click here to learn how I use BuzzStream to create a list of end-users and market my domain names to them in a time-efficient (and cost-efficient) manner.
September Round Up
September was a great month. Our earnings for Bicycle Touring Guide were through the roof (compared to its average) and completely caught me by surprise.
Great things are going on behind the scenes at Brighter Vision and I feel we are positioned for tremendous growth over the next few months. Can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on…
GeeksRaisingGeeks is rocking along. I wish I had more time to dedicate toward it, but we are successfully growing our audience and community, one epic article at a time.
My number one goal for September was to get Geeks Raising Geeks’ Facebook page to 1,000 Likes. I knew it was ambitious and we just didn’t get there. BUT, we are at 544, which is an increase of close to 400 from where we were before.
My number one goal for October: It’s been a little too long for a domain sale, so I’d like to get one of those wrapped up in the 3-4k range.
What’s your biggest goal for October? And did you meet your September goal? Share in the comments!
The post September 2013 Traffic Level Report: What Happened at Brighter Vision appeared first on BrighterVision.com.