August was both a productive and relaxing month at the same time!
I visited my partner's hometown of Buriram, located in the northeastern province of Thailand, where we rented a car to drive through the (oddly well paved) country roads and visit her maternal family for the first time.
Life was slow and slumberous in rural Thailand - as if the only connection to the outside world was gas prices and the local airport which hosted two daily flights to Bangkok.
Building Websites With Claude
Last month, I completed a rebuild of my agency website using Claude Design and I was absolutely blown away by the creativity, attention to detail, and website performance.
It's completely changed how I approach building websites now.
The new website is a simple 1-pager, but it's fast and customizable, while still running on shared WordPress hosting.
Even without a CDN, the website passed Core Web Vitals and scored almost 100 on GT Metrix:
Going forward, I believe custom websites built with AI will become the norm, while plugins and page builders decline.
Derm Detective
- Revenue: $1,840 (+5% MoM, +275% YoY)
- Sessions: 6,646 (-4% MoM)
- RPM: $277
- % of Revenue (Amazon): 85%
Revenue inched up slightly last month while traffic was mostly unchanged.
Revenue from Amazon was about 50% regular commissions and 50% creator connections campaigns.
Earnings per click (EPC) from Amazon is now $38.95 per 100 clicks, up 2.7x vs. 2024 and 1.25x vs. 2025.
For Derm Detective, I'm planning to launch a new performance-optimized website built using Claude Design in Q4.
I'll be building the website purely as a custom WordPress theme, rather than relying on a page builder like Oxygen.
The strategy is to build a parent theme, then use a child theme for each individual website's branding and specific needs.
Shenzhen SEO Conference
Next up, I'm preparing to deliver a workshop on Monday September 14 at this year's Shenzhen SEO Conference.
I'll be speaking about how conversion rate optimization (CRO) is an indispensible tool for brands that can be leveraged to scale sales, improve user experience, and reduce customer acquisition costs.
This year, Convert Better will be an official sponsor of the conference and I'm really excited to meet all the attendees and presenters! Here's a preview of our marketing flyers:
After the conference, I'll be back in Bangkok for another month before returning to Canada by the end of October.
To Flexibility and Freedom,
Tom
Welcome back! It's been 3 long years now since my last income report in August 2023, and 8 years since I quit my full-time job to build passive income businesses in 2018.
I want to sincerely apologize to my readers for such a long wait - to be honest, I was going through a difficult time with my business from 2023-2025, which required me to pursue other opportunities to make ends meet (more on this later in this post).
Now, I feel that I'm ready to restart the F is F blog, and provide regular updates with the transparency that my readers have come to expect from me. This year, I'm also planning to refresh the blog and publish more related content about my journey - stay tuned!
Derm Detective: Traffic Down, Revenue Recovering
First, let me provide an update on TheDermDetective.com, the skincare affiliate website that I started in 2018.
Here's an overview of the annual revenue from 2019 to 2026 (YTD):
As you can see, 2022-2023 were the best years, followed by a 77% decline in 2024 following the September 2023 Helpful Content Update.
This was followed by some recovery in 2025 to 46% of 2023 revenue and in 2026 to 68% of 2023 revenue (2026 is projected to exceed 2022/2023).
So what happened?
In short, the entire affiliate marketing industry experienced an existential collapse as Google sought to eliminate "low-value" affiliate sites through a series of Helpful Content Updates, that were eventually folded into its Core Updates.
TheDermDetective.com was no outlier, with traffic down in October 2023 by 48% vs. September 2023 and 67% vs. August 2023. Revenue declined in October 2023 by 49% vs. September 2023 and continued falling to a low of $175 in February 2024.
It wasn't just a "tough time" to be an affiliate. It was the equivalent of a pandemic "going out of business" time for affiliates.
So how did I respond?
To be honest, I didn't make any changes - I actually stopped working on the website in any meaningful capacity, only checking it periodically to update WordPress and plugins.
Why? Did I give up on the website? Well, not exactly.
Post-HCU, I was waiting for the usual suspects like Matt Diggity, Gael/Mark, and Kyle Roof to help the rest of us figure out how to recover our traffic.
Instead, there was just silence, with only a handful of case studies shared at SEO conferences, many of which involved 301/302 redirects to new domains, instead of recovering the existing domain's traffic.
As the months and years rolled on, people moved on - Authority Hacker closed down with The Affiliate Lab following soon after. Once thriving Facebook groups were abandoned, shut down, or slowly faded into irrelevance.
Affiliate SEOs also moved on - whether to new frontiers like AI Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), old frontiers like local SEO, or back into industries and agencies.
As for Derm Detective, it's seen a meaningful recovery in revenue but almost no recovery in organic traffic from Google.
And yet, the website continues to receive visitors from alternative search engines (DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo) and generate income from Amazon Associates, returning to similar revenue levels as pre-HCU after November 2025.
Convert Better: A New Chapter
I, too, moved on in 2024 - starting an agency, Convert Better, to help brands use conversion rate optimization (CRO) and A/B testing to maximize revenue growth.
Convert Better was the direct result of years of experience, working on both my own and clients' websites, where I observed that relatively small changes to landing pages often led to substantial increases in conversions.
As traffic becomes more difficult and expensive to acquire, businesses are adapting by optimizing their sales funnels and user experiences, and I believe I can leverage my skills to assist with the transition from traffic-first to revenue-first SEO.
To date, I've had the privilege of working with over a dozen brands from around the world, helping them unlock new revenue opportunities through user-led design and experimentation.
I've also had the opportunity to present my work in front of hundreds of attendees at last year's Shenzhen SEO Conference and in September of this year, I'll be returning as both a sponsor and speaker.
Affiliate Marketing: The End, A New Beginning, Or Something In-Between?
Naturally, many of you are probably wondering, "is affiliate marketing dead now?"
Well, I think the answer mostly depends on your goals and risk tolerance.
Is affiliate marketing still the beginner-friendly passive income side hustle of c.2018-2023? A time when you could copy and paste a GeneratePress template, hire freelance writers to publish a few hundred articles, and generate $1,000+/month within a year?
Probably not.
If I had to guess, I'd say over 90% of traditional website affiliates have shut down, slowed down, or remain on life support, with popular courses like The Authority Hacker System (TASS) and The Affiliate Lab closing their doors forever.
In short, the competition has left town, leaving behind a legacy of abandoned websites, blogs, and aged domains.
But is affiliate marketing still a viable business model? A business that requires no staff, no inventory, minimal overhead costs, and can be scaled into a 6-figure or even 7-figure income?
For me, the answer is still absolutely.
In the last few years, affiliate marketing has blown up on social media, with TikTok leading the way and influencers cashing in on the growing popularity of video-based shopping.
This trend will no doubt continue, with brands and creators rushing in to reach audiences through TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
Yet, traditional search and websites are not yet extinct. While challenges abound, I think there are still opportunities to build high-quality affiliate websites that can grow and compound over time, and generate $1,000-5,000/month in revenue.
This year, I plan to launch another affiliate website in the skincare niche, applying design principles and CRO lessons from the last few years to create a conversion-first website.
The new website will run on the latest Oxygen Builder 6 with fast LiteSpeed caching and WordPress-optimized Quic.Cloud CDN.
I'm also building AI automation directly into this new project, so content creation only takes a few clicks, not a few hours.
I'm excited to bring this new project to life and will give an update as soon as it's ready!
Key Metrics (July 2026)
- Revenue: $1,750 (-38% MoM, +248% YoY)
- Sessions: 6,927 (-3% MoM)
- RPM: $253
- % of Revenue (Amazon): 90%
Last month, TheDermDetective.com earned $1,750, down 38% MoM from $2,819 in June 2026 (which benefited from higher commission rates from Creator Connections campaigns related to Amazon Prime Day).
This now marks 6 consecutive months of revenue exceeding $1,500 in 2026.
Traffic has been steadily growing this year from 5,000 sessions in January 2026 to ~7,000 sessions in July 2026.
Interestingly, organic traffic consisted of DuckDuckGo, Bing, and Yahoo - and no that's not a typo:
The standout, however, is profitability (RPM) which has gradually increased from $100 in 2021-2023 to $130 in 2024, then from $170 in 2025 to $250 in July 2026.
Overall, it was another strong month for TheDermDetective.com and I expect continued revenue growth this year.
Final Words
Thanks for sharing a moment with me, I plan to publish more income reports and related content soon - stay tuned!
To Flexibility and Freedom,
Tom
On June 22, 2018, I walked away from a promising career in finance at Canada's largest pension plan to become an entrepreneur focused on building passive income businesses.
Since then, many things have changed, but many still remain the same.
So what's still the same?
- My continued passion and determination for creating durable digital businesses that generate passive income for me and my family.
- My voracious appetite for new knowledge, experiences, and connections.
- And my desire to live a life with no regrets with flexibility & freedom.
What's changed over the last 7 years?
- Digital publishing (a.k.a. blogging) has become a saturated market with traditional publishers like Forbes, New York Times, and cable TV networks like CNN and FOX squeezing out smaller, independent publishers from Google's search engine results pages (SERPs).
- This increased competition, along with Google's constant algorithm updates that generally favor larger publishers, made it difficult to scale income from my first content website (TheDermDetective.com).
- In 2021, I purchased a house in Hamilton, Ontario to protect the value of my savings from what I expected to be high and persistent inflation. Unfortunately, my timing could not be worse as my variable mortgage rate subsequently increased four-fold from a low of 1.55% to a high of 6.30% while general housing market valuations have weakened over the last 4 years.
- In 2021, I also worked in-house at a digital marketing agency based in Newmarket as an SEO Specialist and later SEO Lead. This opportunity greatly enhanced my understanding of client SEO, agency life, and eventually led me to start my own agency in 2024.
- In 2022, I travelled again for the first time since the COVID pandemic, going from 3 weeks in Croatia to 5 weeks in Greece, to over 3 months in Bangkok, Thailand. Since then, I've explored numerous cities and new countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, South Korea, and Japan. And with each experience, I gain a little more understanding and shed a little of my prior misconceptions.
- In 2023, I met the woman who means everything to me today. We met by chance during my travels and have forged a strong bond despite being oceans apart at times. I feel grateful to have someone as kind, creative, and intelligent as her by my side.
- In 2024, I started a conversion rate optimization (CRO) agency, Convert Better, to help digital businesses scale their revenue and profits with data-driven CRO methods like A/B testing. This began largely as a side business that grew out of my internal CRO work and eventually turned into my main business and income source today.
- In 2024, I also created my first online course, CRO for Beginners: More Profit, Same Traffic, that was published by IMG Courses and became the 5th most watched course in Q3.
- In 2024, I started my first joint venture partnership to create an online retailer focused on flooring products, Value Flooring Direct, which currently operates in Ontario.
This pretty much takes us to the present day. As of June 2025, my top priorities are:
- Convert Better: building brand awareness, presenting at conferences, creating case studies, and continuing to serve existing clients while paving the way for a scalable agency business
- Value Flooring Direct: scaling the paid ads traffic channel to a profitable ROAS, expansion to additional provinces (Quebec, Alberta), adding high margin products, establishing SEO foundations
- Derm Detective: diversifying into social media (IG, TikTok), experimenting with paid Google ads, migrating website to a new WordPress structure, focusing on high margin/commission products, reaching out to brands for sponsorship opportunities
- Property: final preparations for a second rental unit in my house which will help turn the property to cash flow neutral instead of cash flow negative
- Investments: exploring additional vehicles to grow my wealth long-term and preserve its value against what I expect to be continued inflationary pressures in next 10 years (government debt/spending, de-globalization, trade policy). I'm buying gold ETFs and gold miners on weakness but also big tech with earnings growth runway, as I believe both will hedge against the inevitable erosion of purchasing power in fiat currencies.
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Welcome back to Flexibility Is Freedom!
It's been a relatively quiet summer and I mostly spent this month working on home renovations. Hopefully, after another month or two, I can wrap up the reno's and rent out another unit of my house.
During the last week of August, my family and I also went on a road trip to Finger Lakes in New York State, a series of parks and waterfalls. It was very nice and relaxing, just like I remembered from our previous trip there many years ago.
Now, onto the business performance for August 2023.
Key Metrics
- Revenue: $1,468 (-23% MoM, +14% YoY)
- Sessions: 14,285 (-19% MoM)
- RPM: $103 (-6% MoM)
- Amazon Risk: 75% (up from 74% last month)
Overall, revenue and traffic came in weaker MoM, as rankings slipped slightly for my top post (which contributes an outsized chunk of total traffic). While there was an algorithm change in late August, I did not see any negative impacts from it, perhaps even a slight boost afterwards.
Profitability in August also benefited from Amazon's promotional commission rates from August 14 to Sept 8.
Going forward, my plan is to continue running tests on a monthly basis to optimize conversion rates, and slowly add new content to the site with the help of VAs.
My goal remains to hit $3K by the end of this year, although that seems a bit farther away now with the slowdown in August.
Welcome back to Flexibility Is Freedom!
After a long hiatus the last few months, I'm back to producing these monthly income reports, and have filled in the last few months that were previously missing.
Since I returned to Canada in mid-April, it's been a bit of a blur - my sister had a successful surgery, my mom went back to China, and I started another reno project - and before you know it, it's already August!
This is why I love traveling and "smelling the roses", it helps slow down the chaos of life and allows me to explore the world around me more. But as of right now, I'm working towards making my next trip happen by building another rental unit in my house and continuing to work on TheDermDetective.com.
Needless to say for most people, this year and last year have been pretty tough, with the non-stop interest rate hikes, fears of a recession, and layoffs/bankruptcies in many sectors.
I consider myself fortunate to have bought my house in 2021 when it was easier to qualify under lower interest rates, even though I'm paying a lot more than I did back then in mortgage payments.
As for the business, I've been working on a revised content format that uses Lasso displays but provides slightly more detail than my previous ones. You can see an example of this format here.
Other than that, I'm more focused on the renos at this moment, so when that concludes, I plan to develop a more comprehensive plan for TheDermDetective.com, as well as new projects to work on.
Key Metrics
- Revenue: $1,919 (+1% MoM, +4% YoY)
- Sessions: 17,543 (flat MoM)
- RPM: $109 (+1% MoM)
- Amazon Risk: 74% (down from 77% last month)
Overall, revenue and traffic were flat month-over-month, and my reliance on Amazon continues to remain high, thanks to the increased commission rates this month. Longer-term, I will work on promoting alternative merchants to diversify from Amazon (as I've done before).
This upcoming month, I plan to chill and hang out, take the month off to enjoy the good weather in Canada (one of the only times we get to do this 🤣), see friends, and eat good food.
To Flexibility and Freedom,
Tom
This month, I continued the renovations on my house - currently building out a shower - with a tentative plan to rent out another unit by September or October of this year.
Alas, with interest rates continuing to rise again (thanks, Tiff Macklem! 😒), I've had to make this decision in order to provide myself some breathing room as my mortgage payment keeps rising every month.
This month, I worked on a few initiatives, including:
- Upgrading my internal reports from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4, as the old UA properties will no longer receive new data after June 30, 2023
- Introducing Google Adsense's Auto-Ads to my website to test its earning potential, as well as its impact on user behavior, most notably - conversion rates, bounce rates (replaced by engagement rates in GA4), and overall profitability of each post
- Fixed some technical issues with the site, such as shortcodes not working on archive pages
Key Metrics
- Revenue: $1,907 (-5% MoM, +6% YoY)
- Sessions: 17,569 (+2% MoM)
- RPM: $108 (-7% MoM)
- Amazon Risk: 77% (up from 71% last month)
Overall, not much change this month compared to last month. There was higher commission rates from Amazon for about 3 weeks of this month, which was roughly the same as in May.
To Flexibility and Freedom,
Tom
This month, the main development was Amazon Associates sending me a targeted campaign with higher commission rates from May 15 to June 18, which is 5 full weeks.
This helped pushed revenue back above $2K while traffic firmed about 17,000 sessions.
As a direct result of the higher commissions from Amazon, EPC (100) rose to $19.31, up from the $13-$14 range in the previous four months.
Key Metrics
- Revenue: $2,010 (+34% MoM, +29% YoY)
- Sessions: 17,308 (+4% MoM)
- RPM: $116 (+29% MoM)
- Amazon Risk: 71% (up from 58% last month)
In terms of business activities, I've been reviewing content performance and adding unique tracking IDs to my posts in order to track their revenue separately in Amazon Associates.
I've also been updating and fine-tuning my internal reports in Google Data Studio (now Looker Studio) as well as my Keywords spreadsheet.
I've also started using Taskade again (similar to Notion), specifically to create a content calendar that I can (hopefully) stick to, in order to meet my goals of creating new content, which the website has been lacking for some time now.
To Flexibility and Freedom,
Tom
This month, I returned to Canada via Singapore after almost 6 months abroad.
I had an unforgettable experience and cannot wait to travel again later this year!
Key Metrics
- Revenue: $1,497 (-17% MoM, -9% YoY)
- Sessions: 16,624 (-15% MoM)
- RPM: $90 (-3% MoM)
- Amazon Risk: 58% (up from 53% last month)
Performance for this month was pretty weak, both revenue and traffic sliding ~15% each. Now that I've returned home, my focus is to shore up the website and work on optimizing existing content.
To Flexibility and Freedom,
Tom
Sawadeekrap / สวัสดีครับ from Bangkok, Thailand!
This month, I'm back in the largest city in Thailand after making a visa run to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for 3 days.
I must say I really enjoyed the change of scenery in KL - a sprawling city inside a dense jungle - with some amazing street food to boot! Here's me at the famous Petronas Twin Towers:
This month, I turned 30 and celebrated at The Continent Boutique Hotel in Bangkok, with breathtaking views of the city skyline, and a fantastic Thai restaurant on the top floor.
Key Metrics
- Revenue: $1,812 (-18% MoM, +34% YoY)
- Sessions: 19,609 (-12% MoM)
- RPM: $92 (-8% MoM)
- Amazon Risk: 53% (down from 58% last month)
Overall, traffic continued to decline from January highs, likely due to a bit of staleness in the content as I've been traveling for a few months now.
Revenue dipped below $2K and Amazon risk held around 50%.
Other than the results, not much else to report. My world trip will be ending soon as I have my flight booked back home for April via Singapore.
To Flexibility and Freedom,
Tom
Sawadeekrap / สวัสดีครับ from Nakhon Ratchasima (a.k.a. Korat), Thailand! 🇹🇭
I am currently in the third largest city in Thailand, Nakhon Ratchasima, which is the capital and largest city in the northeast province of Isan.
In February, I also travelled to popular destinations like Pattaya and Phuket to experience the beaches of southern Thailand that I missed out on during my pre-COVID trip in 2019.
Without further ado, let's look at business performance for February 2023:
Key Metrics
- Revenue: $2,221 (-10% MoM, +55% YoY)
- Sessions: 22,179 (-12% MoM)
- RPM: $100 (+2% MoM)
- Amazon Risk: 58% (up from 56% last month)
Overall, February results were pretty good and maintained a similar pace to January, albeit a bit softer due to the shorter month.
It's now been a few months since I began overhauling my content using Lasso displays, so I've collected enough data to form a more educated opinion of how the new format affects conversion rates and product purchases.
In other words, do users actually end up buying the products I recommend in an article?
From my observations so far, I have seen increased click-through rates and conversion rates from posts that were upgraded to the Lasso format, compared to their previous long-form formats.
In some cases, though, the performance was similar, or even slightly worse, than the prior format.
Nonetheless, my next steps right now is still to continue upgrading my existing content, and start to create net new content to compete for higher search volume and more competitive keywords.
With Q1 about to wrap up soon (it's March already!), my goal for the year remains to double revenue to $4K a month, with a near term milestone of crossing $3K, hopefully before end of Q2.
That's it for this month, stay tuned for more updates on my business and travels!
To Flexibility and Freedom,
Tom