2016 started off better than expected with a net income from 2 niche sites of $32,429.
Important:
Please note this income report pertains solely to 2 niche sites of mine. One site is a large B2C website serving a broad audience. The other site is a focused B2B niche site (not Fat Stacks). This income report does NOT include net income/revenue from Fat Stacks (which continues to grow due to the popularity of my authority website course (now called Niche Tycoon)
This income report also does not include my local offline marketing clients or any other niche sites (I’ve expanded my niche site portfolio in recent months).
Here are the numbers.
January 2016 Income Report:
Niche Site #1 (Large B2C Magazine Style Website):
Revenue:
Display Ad Revenue: $23,972.80 (Media.net revenue alone was $8,702.61).
Affiliate Commission Revenue: $4,855.48
Total revenue for site 1: $28,828.24
I explain how I generate this revenue from these types of sites in my guide here.
Niche Site #2 (Targeted Niche Site):
Affiliate commission revenue: $9,796.72 (this is total affiliate revenue for site #2).
I explain this model here.
TOTAL REVENUE BOTH SITES: $38,624.96
Expenses (applicable to both Sites):
- Instapage: $55
- AWeber: $288
- WPEngine: $500 (moved all sites to WPEngine which I explain why in detail here).
- Dropbox: $10.99
- Outsourcing: $3,500
- Stock Photos: $366
- GoodBarber App Maker (monthly subscription): $48
- Amazon S3 Server: $753.90
- Facebook Ads: $0
- Outbrain Ads: $614.10
Total Expenses in January 2016 (both sites): $7,028.61
Net Profit for Both Niche Sites: $32,429.97
Screenshot Proof
Here’s a few screenshots of my larger revenue sources just so you know I’m not making this stuff up 🙂 .
AdSense
Media.net
Affiliate check
Jon Dykstra is a six figure niche site creator with 10+ years of experience. His willingness to openly share his wins and losses in the email newsletter he publishes has made him a go-to source of guidance and motivation for many. His popular “Niche site profits” course has helped thousands follow his footsteps in creating simple niche sites that earn big.
Hey Jon!
Very impressive income. Hoping to reach your level in a couple of years…
Do you ever publish your income results from this blog or is that kept secret?
Cheers! 🙂
Hey Ilya,
I have never published income/revenue for Fat Stacks because the point is not to reveal all of my income. The point of the income reports is to show that niche sites can make okay money. I only profile 2 niche sites that are 2 very different models.
I think it would be weird if I included Fat Stacks income. Basically it would be telling you to make money online by showing people how to make money online. That doesn’t really make sense.
Hi. it’s a great joy for me that you haven’t spent anymoney on face ads. it means profit came from organic traffic. could you please state your traffic stats as always? i think you forgot to write that.
Hey Deyan,
Yeah, I stopped FB ads in January but picked it up a bit in Feb and March.
Traffic stats – yeah sometimes I put a screenshot of traffic in the income reports. I’ll try to add it shortly. Thanks for the reminder.
Awesome and very inspiring income report! Do you have a rough idea of the number of page view Niche Site 1 received in January? Also, how was this traffic divided in terms of search engine organic vs social? In your experience, which type of traffic clicks on ads more? Thanks!
Hey Vincent,
That’s 850,000 page views. Organic search is about 60%. Social the balance (less some direct which isn’t too much). Generally FB traffic is the most lucrative per 1,000 visits followed by native advertising followed by organic search. Organic search is best for affiliate offers (by far).
Wow, so an RPM of close to $34! In my opinion that’s insanely good and more than double the amount that I would have expected with a display ads website 🙂 Hopefully with the Adsense nessie arrow issue does not have too much of an impact on this RPM!
Yeah it’s good but keep in mind that’s all revenue sources which is quite a bit. It also does go up and down.
Hi Jon,
you mentioned above
“Generally FB traffic is the most lucrative per 1,000 visits followed by native advertising followed by organic search.”
How can you track Display Ads revenue per traffic source?
Thank
Hey John,
When you integrate AdSense with Analytics you can see the AdSense revenue by traffic source in Analytics.
Thanks, I didn’t know about this before
Awesome and inspiring income report.
for B2C website what RPM that is considered good to have a breakeven with FB ads?
RPM to break even will vary depending on cost of traffic. Some niches can pull in traffic for $.01 while others cost more.
Hi Jon,
Its me again 🙂 Over the last few days, after reading your income reports (still really amazed btw!) and some other case studies on SEO, like the one where you were interviewed on authority hacker, I have really been thinking deeply about how I can start scaling my sites to earn more.
So my question is this – you earned $32 K in January. What’s stopping you from reinvesting all of that money back into high quality content? Apart from daily expenses, savings etc, I am sure you have enough cashflow?
My thinking is something like this: lets assume you have to pay $40 for a top notch article. I am sure you could get this for cheaper but I say $40 to be extremely restrictive. So $32K gets you 800 articles.
On the authority hacker interview, you said that 1000 articles gets you around 12 – 19 search engine visitors a day. I also recall that you had mentioned somewhere that only a fraction of your content was keyword researched, so I am sure with some good keyword research, you could get more than 19 visitors on average, per page. However for now lets stick with (12+19)/2 = approx 15 visitors per page.
Lets assume it takes 6 months for content to be produced and to age in the search engines. After 6 months, you would be receiving 800*15*30 = 360000 visitors a month. With an RPM of $34, that’s $12,240 per month. So that means after 9 months you would break even and would have built an extra passive income stream of almost $150K. And again, I have been restrictive in terms of traffic.
I have been thinking this way because the only thing stopping me from doing it is that I have very limited cashflow at the moment and am slowly trying to build things up. If I had the cash, I would have already pulled the trigger.
Are there any flaws in my thinking?
As always, thanks Jon!
Also, I would like to mention that I am pretty much assuming that you aren’t already doing this, but you might be, maybe even on a larger scale!
Hey Vincent,
I like your thinking. I’ve done that with some large capital investments into content. It looks like it will pay off, but there are obstacles to what you suggest. They are:
1. My articles cost $75 to $250 so volume is expensive.
2. The delay in return hurts cash flow.
3. I’ve also invested a lot in my affiliate store, which used up capital.
Overall I agree with your strategy. Your strategy makes even more sense with sites that have established authority because content ranks faster which generates a return faster.
I’ve done some massive content production in the past 6 months, but have eased up on the throttle now to get content ranking, focus on Facebook, build my affiliate store and other things I’m doing on the site.
congratulations jhon , I am very impressed with your income, your writing has always been my motivation, thanks jhon
Thanks for sharing such type of information
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