This is the September 2020 update for the dating/relationship site. This will be a quick update again.
For the previous update (August 2020), check out this post, or check out all the posts here.
Historically, September has been one of the slowest months in terms of revenue and conversion rates for this site. 2020 is no different.
Let’s get started!
📊 September 2020 Traffic and Income Stats
📉 Pageviews
- May 2020 Pageviews: 40,316
- June 2020 Pageviews: 33,103
- July 2020 Pageviews: 33,367
- August 2020 Pageviews: 31,084
- September 2020 Pageviews: 27,032 (see note below about drop)
September 2020:
The large dip starting September 11-13 was due to my hosting plan harddisk space being full. The server crashed. I do automated backups with Updraft plugin which caaused large backup files. This maxed out my harddisk space which crashed the server. I upgraded the plan immediately and things went back to normal. The dip should be ignore.Year to date traffic:
📊 Search Engine Rankings
Here are the SerpRobot rankings over the last couple of months. No major increases nor dips after the Google Core Update in May.
💰 Revenue
The site’s revenue decreased significantly. Luckily, I have data from September 2019 to verify whether this is seasonal or something wrong with the site.
September 2019 revenue was $6,647 and this September was $5,888. There was a very strong recovery in November and December 2019 to finish off the year.
I imagine the same will happen for November/December 2020 as well; but who knows, with all that’s going around in the world.
Last 12-mo P&L
September 2020: Improvements To The Site
Conversion rates were low…
I usually see above 5% conversion rate on my highest paying offer which generates about $5,000 per month.
This month’s conversion rates were a low 4%.
Similarly, last September 2019, the conversion rates were also low.
September may just not be a good dating month overall. Unsure why but the data shows over two different Septembers.
Optimized 17 pages for earnings
I usually publish articles without adding any affiliate links. My reasoning is why make something 100% perfect if it doesn’t get traffic yet?
At the beginning of each month, I go through Google Analytics -> Behavior -> All Pages to find articles that receive traffic last 30 days and need to be optimized. I usually target pages that get over 50 views the last 30 days to make it worthwhile.
I optimized 17 pages that met the criteria.
New content added
This was mostly done to ensure freshness on the site. Most of the articles were informational.
I hired the same writer I used in the past through Upwork and had him do 10 articles of around 30,000 words.
He charges $30 per article regardless of word count. So the total spending was $300.
Call To Action (CTA) Improvements
In the previous update, I added CTA boxes showing my best affiliate offers. These were floating and fixed on the sidebar of the site.
Here is an example:
This experiment worked well and the site is generating revenue from these boxes. However, the CTA button is a very dull and non-optimized color. It does not stick out. CTA buttons should be opposite colors to your website colors.
I changed the boxes to look as follows:
Much better! The foreground was changed to grey with the CTA button to dark red.
I will keep tabs on this to see how it performs over time.
What Can We Improve in October 2020?
All we can do with the site now is optimize pages for earnings. That’s the goal for October; optimization!
Here’s the plan:
- ☑️ CRO on 95 articles: All of these articles have no affiliate links or have outdated links. Most of them get less than 50 visits per month so they flew under the radar for me. Fixing these up will boost revenue.
- ✏️ Interlinking: never put a big focus on interlinking on this site. Now that the site has many articles, a proper interlinking strategy can help the site. I do use the Link Whisper plugin to help with this.
The CRO on the articles will be the easy win in October. It should increase revenue. Let’s see what happens!
Wrap Up
That’s it for the September 2020 update. Leave a comment or reply with any questions, suggestions, and concerns. Happy to help!
