Welcome back to Flexibility Is Freedom!
This month's income report will be short & sweet.
In April 2021, I launched one of my new websites, completed the branding & design, and published one target article along with a few supporting articles.
Now, I'm waiting to see how Google responds in the next few weeks by checking whether my articles are getting indexed and ranking in the top 100.
Based on my last website, this process may take about 1-2 months, assuming you're going after very low-competition keywords.
I'm also waiting to see when the site is able to rank for its own brand queries (website name) as it's an indicator that Google "knows about" the site.
During April, I also migrated to a clean Wordpress install with Oxygen Builder and a handful of essential plugins.
Just like how an old computer gets slower over time, my previous Wordpress install accumulated data tables and junk files from the hundreds of plugins that I've used over the years!
Now, here's a summary of the business results.
Revenue was lower this month, but I'm not too concerned right now because I know there's a lot of untapped potential in getting back to where I was in Oct/Nov 2020 ($1K per month).
There were a few days of partial downtime as well during the migration process.
In Q1 2021, I mostly left the website alone, in order to isolate the effects (if any) of my link disavow submission in late Dec / early Jan.
However, by late March 2021, it became clear to me that I needed to improve my website holistically, from technical to content to backlinks, if I wanted to rank again.
So I plan to optimize existing content and add new content in the next few months, with a primary goal of restoring revenue to $1K per month ($2 per month by the end of this year).
The good news is that I now have valuable data about:
And I've created a new spreadsheet to track keyword search volume:
This is a powerful competitive advantage in SEO: if you know the actual search volume instead of relying on estimates, you'll make better content decisions and unlock secret keywords.
My priorities have changed a bit since my March 2021 Income Report.
I've decided to focus on rebuilding from a content and revenue perspective (holding off on backlinks until I've fixed the major issues), as I believe I can grow revenue back to its previous level of $1K per month (and then some!).
I have a much better understanding of which keywords I need to win, how profitable different types of keywords are, and what I need to do to maximize conversions - all of which gives me confidence that I can achieve this task in a much shorter time period than before.
To Flexibility and Freedom,
Tom