I’ve got to be honest, January was a pretty shocking month for me. 

As I was going through the month it felt like things were going downhill.  Every single day I’d wake up and see fewer commissions than usual because my top-rated posts on this website lost their rankings.

Obviously, that didn’t feel good, and it put me in a state of frustration.  There were at least a dozen times this month that I asked myself why I continue to work on the OHP website.

I even complained to my wife about how it doesn’t make sense for me to continue in this niche because it’s just so darn competitive and my frustration boiled over more than a few times.

As with other months, when I’ve had this type of feeling, I continue on because I’ve already committed to working as hard as I can on this project until the middle of 2022.

I’m glad I didn’t give up….

The end of the month came and when I started to put this income report together….. I realized I was being very stupid.

Why?

Because it turns out in January I only had a 1.68% decrease in revenue.  And even more interested, my net income had one of the highest months it’s ever had.

This month my total income after expenses was $18,720 which comes out to $604 in profit per day.  

I was shocked when I ran the numbers and check them a few different times to verify that everything was correct. 

While I was getting frustrated at the fact that some of my core posts were no longer ranking as high as they once were, I’ve been creating other content consistently and the lost affiliate income from my main articles was more than compensated for by some of the new content I’ve created.

Needless to say, this was a breath of fresh air and I was extremely pleased with how the month turned out considering I expected a down month.

I should mention before we begin, if you’re looking to start your own blog, make sure you check out my free IGNITION course today.

January was a relaxed month overall.

Near the end of the month, my cousin came to visit and we got to enjoy the Las Vegas strip and some hiking.  Other than that, every weekend my wife and I make sure that we get out of the house and either go on dinner dates or out with friends.

In terms of the pregnancy, everything is going along as planned.  My wife is still due in April and we are extremely excited and literally counting down the days until our little one arrives.  It’s going to be interesting to see how this impacts my work schedule and how the family dynamic will change, but I’m sure it’s something we’ll be able to handle.

In terms of the investment that I’ve been talking about over the last few months, as time goes on and leaning even more towards either a single-family home, townhome, condo, or possibly a hotel/condo unit in one of the large Las Vegas casinos.

I really want to dive in and purchase a property as quickly as I can, but just as I mentioned last month, the market in Las Vegas is obscenely overpriced at the moment and it just doesn’t make fiscal sense to do so.  Plus, considering we have our first child on the way I’m making an educated decision that it would be best to not put any more on our plates until we understand exactly how things are going to change.

I’m still dreaming of getting a Tesla and still considering the idea of using Turo to rent it out, but I’m just not sure what to do yet.  As of now, my plan is to get through the birth of our daughter, pay off all of the expenses that we have, and then see where things are at to understand what moves we can make.

That’s all for the personal update.

Amazingly I only had $100 less in earnings in January than I did in December. This was a huge shock to me because as I mentioned in the intro, my usual affiliate posts lost some of their rankings.  But thankfully a lot of the other content that I’ve been creating over the last few months compensated for that and things are looking up for the website.

One of the worst things that happened to me this month is that I was too quick to hire a new content editor who started off well, but ended up using AI software and did absolutely no editing to increase my optimization scores on SurferSEO for my content. 

This was pretty terrible because I noticed it after 25 articles and I had to go back to revise everything and remove all the changes she had made.  Needless to say, I blame myself more than anybody else for this because I gave too much trust to the freelancer far too quickly and I learned a very valuable lesson.  At this point, I’ve gotten a new employee to help with this task.  I was able to find her on an external job board and now I am having her track her time with employee monitoring software and reviewing her work daily.  It’s all been fixed now, but I hope that any writers who read this understand that AI software may be able to assist you in writing content, but it’s definitely not able to write entire sections or articles.

• Pageviews increased MoM by 22% to 64k.
• This month I earned: $10,552. Earnings decreased MoM by 1%. 
• EPM decreased MoM to $163. I attribute this to more traffic coming to my site that isn’t monetized as well as other pages.
• PLAN: As of now, I feel really good with where the site is at.  I finally have all of my team members on the same page and even got a new hire to help me revise all of the content that the last writer screwed up.  The best part?  My new hire is from the Philippines and works for a very affordable wage that’s about 66% less than my previous employee.  Plus, she has plenty of room to grow and is extremely detail-oriented.  While her English isn’t perfect, and carefully training her each time she submits articles to help her understand what she’s doing wrong.  If you pair that with a premium grammar-only account, you can get some pretty good results.
  
  As of now, the plan is to continue to have my team create content and post on the site and optimize as needed.  I’m also still working to build up my guest post pipeline as I allowed it to dwindle at the end of 2021 so I could enjoy the holidays.  But, now that we’re in the new year, I’m busting my butt to get more opportunities so that I can continue to build links and authority for the site.

I have done nothing on this site for at least 12 months except add Ezoic and it continues to print money for me. I have no intention of working on it and will just let this sit as I work on my other projects.

• Pageviews increased MoM by 40% to 172k.
• This month I earned: $4,699. Earnings increased MoM by 35%. 
• EPM decreased MoM to $27.25.
• PLAN: This site is currently 100% passive and I do not work on it.  I intend on selling this site once I’m consistently making enough from other sites to justify it.

I have done nothing on this site for at least 12 months except add Ezoic and it continues to print money for me. I have no intention of working on it and will just let this sit as I work on my other projects.

• Pageviews increased MoM by 5% to 73k.
• This month I earned: $1,381. Earnings decreased MoM by 12%. 
• EPM decreased MoM to $18.85
• PLAN: This site is currently 100% passive and I do not work on it.  I intend on selling this site once I’m consistently making enough from other sites to justify it.

I mentioned last month how I cause quite a few issues with this website as I had to go through a complete rebrand of what the site was. Unfortunately, those same issues did pour over into January but the good news is that it’s looking like Google is starting to understand that I did a full 301 redirect into this new domain.  While traffic hasn’t completely caught up yet, I’m starting to see daily visits that are comparable to what the site had prior to the transition.

For those wondering, I definitely say that doing a full 301 redirect of your site should be a worst-case scenario.  If you can avoid it, try to do so at all costs.  It’s quite a headache to get done and some of the pages that used to rank really well no longer rank at all, but interestingly others that never used to rank have started to rank really well.  It really doesn’t make any sense, but sometimes Google is mysterious like that.

One thing to note, I did a redesign of this site in January to make it actually look decent and have a functional theme that’ll allow me to expand in the future.

• Pageviews increased MoM by 193% to 12k.
• This month I earned: $220. Earnings decreased MoM by 32%. 
• EPM decreased MoM to $19
• How Much Have I Invested in This Website: $5,836
• How Much Money Has This Website Made? $4,460
• Total ROI: -$1,376 (If I were to sell the website today, I can assume I’d sell for an estimated $15k.  Which means a net gain of roughly $13,600)
• How Much Content is on the Website? 231 informational blog posts
• PLAN: Even though January wasn’t necessarily a breakout month, things are definitely trending up for this website.  Now that traffic is beginning to creep back up, I’ve got my writer back on track with creating content and have even optimized my posts further to increase affiliate earnings.  Not only that, but we found a better way to source some of the images that we use, and I’m very excited about the future of this site.
  
  As of now, my writer will continue to create content and I am full speed ahead with making this my secondary priority and I’m focused on creating links for the site.  In terms of the link-building tactics all use, that’s still undecided.  I’m thinking about creating some interesting graphics that other sites would be interested in linking to and also I’m likely going to be doing using a HARO link building service.  I’m still working on the details here, but I think this one is going to be big so stay tuned.

By no means am I disappointed in the site, but it did have a little bit of drop in earnings in January. I attribute this to the fact that ad rates are down and I’m confident that the only reason I’m having this dip in earnings is due to that.  Overall the site continues to do very well and I’m going to hit the gas pedal even harder coming into the new year.

• Pageviews increased MoM by 9% to 172k.
• This month I earned: $6,672. Earnings decreased MoM by 12%. 
• EPM decreased MoM to $39
• How Much Have I Invested in This Website: $40,460 ($900 Content budget each month)
• How Much Money Has This Website Made? $65,355 in
• Total ROI: $24,895 (If I were to sell the website today, I can assume I’d sell for an estimated $250,000. Which means a net gain of about $275,000)
• How Much Content is on the Website: Keep in mind that this is an informational type of website, not affiliate-related at all.
  • 1680 Informational pages on the website
  • 161 Informational Blog Posts
• PLAN: My writer and I have discussed the plans moving forward with the site and in 2022 the aim is to double her production. This typically would mean 10 articles to 20 articles, but what it actually means is that she needs to double the content budget each month.  So, moving forward I’ll be spending $1800 per month in content for the site, but I’m confident that this will end up paying off as this site continues to go up into the right.  In addition to that, I haven’t had to do any link building except for my first campaign over a year ago because now the site consistently gets links from other sources.

There was a very slight dip in earnings in January for the site and I suspect this is due to display ad rates falling. While the site still isn’t home run, I do have high hopes as this was the best month I’ve ever had from a traffic perspective and it looks like things continue to grow.

• Pageviews increased MoM by 51% to 12.5k.
• This month I earned: $210. Earnings decreased MoM by 3%. 
• EPM decreased MoM to $17
• How Much Have I Invested in This Website: $8,964 ($400 Content budget each month)
• How Much Money Has This Website Made? $1,531
• Total ROI: -$7,433 (If I were to sell the website today, I can assume I’d sell for an estimated $7k. Which means a net loss of about $433)
• How Much Content is on the Website? Keep in mind this website is mostly focused on affiliate content with some informational content. 
  • 292 Informational Blog Posts
• PLAN: While this site still hasn’t seen the big pop that I’ve been hoping for, it has found a way to hit its highest traffic month ever.  Needless to say, this is a very positive thing to see and I feel that it will continue to grow in the coming months.  While I’m not actively working on this site as a priority, I am keeping my eyes open for link-building opportunities, and when I see one I do my best to secure a link for the site.  This typically happens in guest posts that I write and while it doesn’t happen often, once in a while I can make a relevant insertion.  As of now, my plan is to continue to get content created and insert links wherever I can to try to increase the domain authority.

• Pageviews decreased MoM by 30% to 827.
• This month I earned: $21. Earnings decreased MoM by 72%. 
• EPM decreased MoM to $25
• How Much Content is on the Website?
  • 25 Informational Blog Posts
• PLAN: This site continues to sit; I have done nothing for it in years.  Production has been paused.  This site is currently 100% passive and I do not work on it. 

This is month 11 of the (100% Outsourced Authority Website Built by BrandBuilders). Interestingly, this site actually decreased in traffic in the month of January.  This is a little surprising to me because I’ve been consistently adding new backlinks whenever I found an opportunity.  But, I haven’t done a very good job with updating content and haven’t had any new content published in some time.

Like site 6, I did a redesign of this site in January to make it look nicer and also to make the site look functional for others.  Up until this point, the site was built on the default 2021 WordPress theme and looked terrible.

• Pageviews decreased MoM by 11% to 1192.
• This month I earned: $0. This site is not yet monetized. 
• EPM remained at $0.
• How Much Content is on the Website?
  • 33 Informational Blog Posts
• PLAN: As I have been in prior months, my plan for this site is to continue to build links whenever an opportunity arises.  While it hasn’t done much good for the site yet, I feel a big reason for that is because I haven’t had any content published either.  The good news on that front is that I decided to bring on a writer to help me create a piece of content every week for this site.  I feel like it’s a requirement at this point because it’s just ridiculous that I’m not publishing something on the site that has so much potential considering it has a DR in the 40’s on Ahrefs.  As of now, I still have to find the writer and complete keyword research, but that’s on my agenda in February.

This channel performed pretty well in January and had a slight increase from how it performed in December.  I was happy to see this trend considering ad rates not only fall for websites in January but also fall for YouTube channels.   If you’re interested in building an outsourced YouTube channel like this, I recommend that you check out this webinar.

• Views increased MoM by 35% to 273k.
• This month I earned: $1,090. Earnings increased MoM by 3%. 
• Subscriber growth increased MoM by 31%.
• How Much Did We Invest in This YouTube Channel: $3,920 (Estimate of $350/month in expenses)
• How Much Money Has This YouTube Channel Made? $11,610
• Total ROI: $7,690 (If I were to sell the channel today, I can assume I’d sell for an estimated $35k. Which means a net gain of about $43k)
• PLAN: The team that my wife and I (mostly my wife to be honest) have built continues to publish videos 5 times a week and we’ll continue with that as it’s working well.

Interestingly the OneHourProfessor YouTube channel increased views this last month and I haven’t published anything to make that happen.  While this channel is still near and dear to my heart, I have to keep fighting the urge to go back to it because I have other higher-priority projects that are taking up all of my time.

• Views increased MoM by 21% to 22k.
• This month I earned: $528. Earnings increased MoM by 24%. 
• Subscriber growth decreased MoM by 2%
• How Much Have I Invested in This YouTube Channel: $3,927 (Estimate of $120/month in expenses)
• How Much Money Has This YouTube Channel Made? $13,523
• Total ROI: $10,124 (If I were to sell the channel today, I can assume I’d sell for an estimated $15k.  Which means a net gain of about $25k)
• PLAN: I still want to jump back onto the channel, but it’s just not possible at this time. I know I keep going back and forth with each income report I published because I really do want to go back to the channel, but I have to get all of my ducks in a row from other sites first in order to make that happen.  I’m not making any promises at this point, but just know that I appreciate all of those that watch my videos and as much as I want to get back to creating YouTube content, I know it’s not the best use of my time at this point.

Unfortunately, this YouTube channel is starting to show some pretty bad signs.  While my wife and I agree that the content is very good, we’re not exactly sure how we screwed this up and we’re having a slice of humble pie.  My hope is that will be able to rebound or some of the videos will start to go viral, but this channel is proving to be a big challenge.  If you’re interested in building an outsourced YouTube channel like this, I recommend that you check out this webinar.

• Views decreased MoM by 66% to 7.2k.
• This month I earned: $13. Earnings decreased MoM by 40%. 
• Subscriber growth decreased MoM by 74%
• How Much Have We Invested in This YouTube Channel: $4,100 (Estimate of $640/month in expenses)
• How Much Money Has This YouTube Channel Made? $34
• Total ROI: -$4,066 (If I were to sell the channel today, I can assume I’d sell for an estimated $400. Which means a net loss of about $3,600)
• PLAN: While we saw some early signs of this channel doing some exceptional things, that was very short-lived.  Basically, we had a single video that ended up going viral and YouTube recommended it to tens of thousands of people.  This was a huge boost for the channel and we thought that we finally figured out how to make significant income from YouTube with a faceless channel.  However, since then we just haven’t had much luck with anything that we’ve been publishing.  Sure, some of the videos are bringing in organic views, but considering each video costs somewhere between $80 – $100 to create, it isn’t looking like a very viable business model. 
  
  The good news though is that we already have 18 videos in Queue that still need to be published.  So, the plan at this point is to work on getting those published and watch to see how the channel does.  Our hope is that one of these videos goes viral or that YouTube begins to show some love because even though our metrics seem pretty solid for the channel overall, YouTube just doesn’t seem to want to rank us very high and isn’t recommending our content to other people.  We’ll see what happens on this one.

Thalita’s vlog channel continues to chug along.  I announced last month how we plan to create a family YouTube channel so that we have something to look back on and possibly make money from, but that entire idea was canceled this month.  After discussing exactly what we want to use the channel for, we decided that it’s best to just use this channel for that purpose.

This is a little problematic because the channel is in Portuguese, but my wife has an editor that can translate content from English to Portuguese for the viewers, so I’ve been able to participate in the blogs a little bit and that makes me much happier as it’s a happy medium for both of us.

There are still income issues with this channel because it’s in Brazil and quite simply doesn’t pay as much as a US channel would, but my wife really enjoys this the most and has a goal of making between $2000 to $3000 a month.  Considering that is her end goal, we discussed and decided that it’s probably best she just focuses on this vlog and grows it over time.  She wasn’t very active on the channel this month and that’s reflected in the numbers below.  The reason for this is that she was trying to decide how she continued doing this channel and make it profitable.  I think we have a strategy moving forward, but will see how it works out.

• Views decreased MoM by 35% to 47k.
• This month she earned: $53. Earnings decreased MoM by 62%. 
• Subscriber growth decreased MoM by 20%
• How Much Did We Invest in This YouTube Channel: $1,950 (Estimate of $300/month in expenses)
• How Much Money Has This YouTube Channel Made? $655
• Total ROI: -$1,295
• PLAN: As of now Thalita will continue to publish two videos per week with the eventual end goal of selling a product. 

Lessons Learned

Every month, I’m going to reflect back and tell you a few different lessons that I’ve learned. My hope is that the lessons each month will be a cautionary tale for you that makes it so that you don’t make the dumb mistakes that I do along the way.

• Careful With Trusting New Hires: Simply put, I made a rookie mistake and trusted one of my new hires way too early and it is not cost me over $1400 in lost wages and hours of my own time to fix the mistake.  When you hire someone new, you need to keep a close eye on them and then check their work randomly and often to make sure that they continue with the level of quality that you expect.  Over time once you trust them it’s okay to let your foot off the gas pedal, but at least for the first few months keep a close eye on them.
• AI Software Isn’t Ready: I think that AI writing software definitely has a future in this industry, but it’s not even close to ready to create a full article or even paragraph without editing.  Obviously, this is something I learned through my new hire, and it was scary to see just how poorly some of the content was written.
• Stop Tracking Daily Numbers: I really need to work on this one, but it’s common for me to log into various income sources each day to check how things are going. I usually do this because it gives me a small dopamine hit and helps me realize that things are going well.  That said, I really should only do this once a week or ideally once a month.  As long as my traffic continues, the earnings will be there and I just need to trust that tracking every single day doesn’t help anybody.

What are your goals for the month?  What questions do you have?  Let me know in the comments below!