Travel Blog Income Report (June 2023)

So, in this month’s Income Report for my travel website, I’ll be sharing all the details of what we’ve accomplished, what we’ve spent, and any ups and downs we’ve encountered along the way.

First, let’s talk about the team. We’ve narrowed down the team on this website to save on costs, but we did hire someone from Fiverr to create better featured images for use on Google’s new AI-generated search engine.

My team consists of myself, my main VA, a part-time VA, a proofreader, three writers, a video editor, and a voiceover artist.

We’ve made some great progress this month, focusing on monetization, building better internal links, and experimenting with video to blog posts.

We’ve also seen a significant increase in organic traffic from Pinterest and a slow but steady growth on our YouTube channel.

Despite some disappointments with TikTok, we’re still committed to growing our presence on the platform. Overall, we’re pleased with the progress we’ve made and excited to see where this journey takes us.

Key Takeaways

• The team has been narrowed down to save on costs, but we’ve hired someone from Fiverr to create better-featured images for use on Google’s new AI-generated search engine.
• We’ve made progress in monetization, building better internal links, and experimenting with video to blog posts.
• We’ve seen an increase in organic traffic from Pinterest and slow but steady growth on our YouTube channel, but we’re still working on building our presence on TikTok.

Team Update

Current Team

I’ve been running this travel website for a while now, and I’ve been experimenting with different team structures to find the most efficient and cost-effective way to run it.

Currently, my team consists of myself, my main VA, a part-time VA, a proofreader, three writers who are specifically targeting this website, a video editor, and a lady who does the voiceovers for our videos.

New Hire for Featured Images

One of the areas that we’ve been focusing on recently is improving the quality of our featured images. We believe that having high-quality images is essential for improving click-through rates, especially with Google’s new AI-generated search engine.

So, we’ve hired someone from Fiverr to create featured images for us to use on Google’s new AI-generated search engine.

We’re also experimenting with different types of images and designs to see what works best for our audience. We believe that having eye-catching images is essential for grabbing people’s attention and encouraging them to click through to our website.

Overall, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve our team structure and processes to ensure that we’re delivering high-quality content to our audience.

We believe that having a strong team is essential for the success of any website, and we’re committed to making sure that we have the best team possible.

Progress Report

Snapshot from Dashboard

Taking a look at the snapshot from the actual dashboard on our website, we can see that we have 713 posts, with six left in draft to edit and publish.

We are just short of hitting the milestone of one million words, with an average word count of 1,339 per word. The average read time per blog post is about seven minutes.

However, we have noticed that 15 articles have not got an excerpt, which is something we’ll need to correct.

Popcorn Theme

We’re currently using the Popcorn theme, which is version two. There are a lot of cool features inside there, and we’re really taking advantage of all the free features inside there.

We’ve canceled a lot of subscriptions like I’m Amalink Pro for products, word counter block building tools, everything is inside Popcorn now that we need to make sure the user experience is as good as possible.

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Milestone of One Million Words

We’re about to hit the milestone that everybody likes to reach of one million words. You can see that the average word count is 1,339 per word, and obviously, that is an average from 713 articles. Some are around 3,000 words, and some are even as short as 600 words, but the average comes out around 1,300.

Alerts and Corrections

We have noticed that 15 articles have not got an excerpt, which is something we’ll need to correct.

We’ve been using Koala Writer to experiment with their new FAQ section, which is something we’re excited about. We’re also experimenting with video to blog posts using Koala, and we’re coming up with some really cool content at the moment.

Overall, we’re making progress, and we’re excited to see where this journey takes us.

This entire article was written by Koala.AI by just dropping My Youtube video URL into the tool and this is what it created.

We just formatted a little and added images.

Test Koala.AI out for yourself. Get free credits here.

Monetization Focus

As we continue to build and grow our travel website, we have been putting a lot of focus on our monetization strategy. In this section, I will discuss the different areas we have been focusing on to increase our revenue.

Affiliate Programs

One of the primary ways we monetize our website is through affiliate programs. However, we have not seen much success with the widgets provided by companies like Get Your Guide and Tickets.

Therefore, we have started to experiment with using text links instead. We are now creating simple sentences that recommend specific hotels or activities and linking those keywords to our affiliate programs.

We believe that this approach will make our recommendations more targeted and increase our conversion rates.

Internal Link Building

With over 700 articles on our website, we have a lot of opportunities for internal link-building. We have been focusing on creating a better crawl path for Google to find all of our content and make it more relevant.

By interlinking our articles, we hope to build a topical authority and increase our search engine rankings.

Display ads

I switched off all the video ads inside Ezoic and the vinaigrette ones.

I’m trying to increase bookings to hotels and these ads just distracted people from clicking the Book Now button.

So, far the ad revenue didn’t go down too much but bookings for the hotels only increased a very small amount.

Subheading Clarity

We have also been focusing on making our subheadings as clear as possible. Instead of getting too creative with our subheadings, we are now using straightforward headings that clearly indicate what the section is about.

This approach will help Google understand our content better and improve our search engine rankings.

FAQs and Koala Writer

Finally, we have been experimenting with using FAQs and Koala Writer to create more engaging content. We have found that using FAQs can help us answer common questions that our readers may have, while Koala Writer has allowed us to convert video content into blog posts.

While Koala Writer is still in its early stages and not perfect, we believe that it has the potential to be a valuable tool for creating high-quality content.

The NEW feature allows you to add at the end of your AI-generated content a section for FAQ’s and they actually surprised me with how good they were.

Questions and keywords that could rank on their own were pulled through by Koala.

Pinterest Update

Organic Visitors

In May, I was a bit disappointed with Pinterest. I did a lot of work uploading pins, but we saw a drop in impressions and outbound clicks.

However, it seems to have picked up in June, even though I published fewer pins. Currently, we have 120 organic visitors a month from Pinterest, which is free traffic.

While it may not sound like a lot, it’s an 86% increase in outbound links, which is all I care about on Pinterest.

I’m tracking outbound links because I want to know how many people find a pin and click through to my website.

Investment in Pinterest

I’m prepared to invest in Pinterest because I think it’s a great secondary source of organic traffic, and once you build it up, it can be there for a long time.

I’m considering finding someone experienced in Pinterest to help me with it.

I’ve seen some people on Twitter who are getting millions of outbound links to their websites, so it’s a reliable and realistic source of organic traffic that I want to explore further.

Overall, I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made on Pinterest, and I’m looking forward to seeing how we can continue to grow our organic traffic from this platform.

YouTube Channel Growth

Subscriber Count

I’m happy to report that our YouTube channel is starting to grow, albeit slowly. As of June, we have around 170 subscribers, which is a small increase from the previous month.

While I would like to increase the number of videos we upload per month, we’re currently adding around four or five videos each month, which is a manageable pace at the moment.

Video Creation Methods

We’re using two different methods to create our videos. The first method involves taking videos of anywhere I visit, whether it’s a holiday, a business trip, or just a day off. I’m taking videos no matter where I am in the world and creating original content from that footage.

The second method involves using AI to create a script, which then goes to a voiceover artist. The video editor then takes any footage or images we have and creates a final product. If there are gaps in the footage, the editor can add b-roll or stock images to enhance the video.

I’m really impressed with the quality of the videos we’re producing, even when using stock images. The editor is able to make images look like videos by zooming in and adding focal points, which is incredibly smart.

Overall, I’m happy with the progress we’re making on our YouTube channel. While the growth is slow, we’re steadily adding new subscribers and creating high-quality content that we’re proud of.

TikTok Progress

Video Views

In terms of TikTok, we’ve been putting out a lot of content, but unfortunately, we’re not seeing the views that we were hoping for.

All of our videos seem to get to around 200 views and then just die off. We’re not sure why this is happening, but we’re going to keep trying.

Follower Growth

We have 109 followers on TiKTok, which is an increase of 21 followers from last month. It’s not a huge increase, but it’s something. We’re going to keep putting out content and hopefully, we’ll see more growth in the coming months.

Overall, we’re a little bit disappointed with the progress, but we’re not giving up. We’re going to keep trying and experimenting with different types of content to see what works best.

Traffic Report Google

June Traffic

In June, we saw a strong comeback in traffic after a disappointing May. We added a lot of content in May, but we saw a significant drop in traffic, and we couldn’t figure out why.

I think the latest Google update worked well for us as we saw a 19% increase in June after a disappointing May.

It could also be the Haro links we have been adding?

I’m not sure, I don’t have enough data yet to call that.

May Traffic Drop

In May, we experienced a drop in traffic, and we couldn’t figure out why. We had added a lot of content, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. We’re not sure if it was due to seasonality or something else.

However, we’re glad that we saw a strong comeback in June, and we’re looking forward to seeing more traffic in the coming months.

We’re also experimenting with different ways to monetize our website, such as using text links instead of search widgets for affiliate programs and building better internal links.

We’re always looking for ways to improve the user experience and make our content more relevant to our audience.

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