June always feels like the month that will never end to me. Especially since, every June 25th or so, I wonder if I’ve missed Pioneer day (spoiler: it’s on July 24th). This June was no different – but with a few extra things going on in the family.
But you aren’t here for details on kidney stones or recaps of family visits. You’re here for the numbers – so let’s dive into how things are going. Because as of June 2021, I’ve earned my $1,000/month badge in Project 24. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
June 2021 Writing Statistics
- Articles published: 28 (down from 31)
- Videos filmed, edited, and published: 0
- Stories I wrote this month: 0
- Stories submitted to publications: 0
- Stories edited: 0
- New stories outlined and plotted: 0
- Total word count published this month: 61,157 (from 69,226 in May)
- Total Page Views: 65,930 (up from 65,733)
- Total on-cash received this month (earned in previous months): $972.31 (up from 561.61)
- Overall EPMP: $14.74 (up from $8.54)
So it’s been another Content Warrior type of month, where I managed to publish over 60,000 words of content.
Oh, and I wanted to share a few fun facts for my biggest niche site as kind of a fun, spoiler-type of thing.
- June saw a 20.01% income increase over May
- There was a 10%-ish traffic increase from May
Seriously – it’s awesome. But now let’s dive into things in more detail.
Month 23 of Project 24
June was my 23rd month with Income School’s Project 24 – and I’m well on my way towards meeting their metrics. Full disclosure – I’m a little bit behind because I opted to do multiple projects instead of the recommendation of sticking to one thing.
If you’ve read my other writing reports, then you know this was an intentional choice. If you’re new, well… now you know. I intentionally chose a slower road. But I am making a slight tweak going forward. More on that later, though!
Now, last month I did my final “official” ROI analysis of Project 24. Here’s a quick recap from May’s data:
- Investment fees to date (the yearly membership dues are paid through August 2021): $648
- Cash earned and on-hand solely attributable to Project 24: $6671.36
- ROI: $6671.36/$648 = 10.295
So if I include June’s data, then the ROI will be $7082.06/$648 = 11.795.
Later this month, I will renew my Project 24 membership. If I take that into account, then my ROI adjusts to: $7,082.06/$847 = 8.36.
Translation: Income School’s Project 24 is officially worth the investment. It passed the 10X ROI by month 22 – and I’ve still got another 12 to go before I’d need to officially worry about having met the 10X goal.
Now, you may be looking at the month count and thinking I’m unable to count. Technically, this is my 24th month with the program. But since I bought in at the end of this month – and then I took several weeks to absorb the information before I began my own project… I go with August being my “new year” as related to Project 24.
Is it kind of confusing? Yes. Yes it is. But so is the way we get paid net 30-net 60 for ad revenue, so… whatever. Because it means I’m always reporting the money I actually got paid that month – rather than what I actually earned.
If I were going to report what I earned this month? Well, it’s over $1000 – so I got my $1k badge in the P24 community forum. I just won’t get paid that money until next month. So total money earned in June was $1066 and change. Now let’s go into what I got paid.
In-Depth Site Analysis for June 2021
Here are how each of my sites are doing – now with pretty graphs. 🙂
Backyard Homestead HQ
This is my biggest site right now – and so I’m focusing on it pretty hard for the rest of 2021.
This site has a some big spikes in earnings from an affiliate program for a large ticket item. Last month, like in previous Aprils and December, had a payout. So it gives those months a nice hike in earnings.
Genealogy Pals
We’re finally moving forward with genealogy pals again!!
One post doesn’t seem like huge forward momentum, until you look back and realize that the last post was published in December 2020. So one post is huge – and we’re working on more.
June’s payout seems like a step back, but ad revenue normally decreases during the summer. So a slight decrease (it’s by like $2) really isn’t a cause for concern.
Kimberly C. Starr
The pre-planned nose dive has finished its course for this site. It’s going to start picking up – you may have noticed there’s even a few new essays on writing on here. If you’re a fan of writing, reading, and literature, then you’ll like those. If not… well… you’re missing out.
June marks an important change in the traffic trends. I’m quite proud of this site for having weathered so much weirdness over the last couple of years. It may have been torn down in terms of income and traffic, but it’s going to become even better because of it.
Sleep Training Kids
Sleep training topics are ones that rely heavily on Pinterest. So I knew that scaling back from Pinterest would affect the traffic some – but with Pinterest’s analytics being so unreliable, I wasn’t willing to bet how much. Spoiler: it’s not been as bad as Pinterest said it would be.
Instead of sinking all that money into Pinterest (where it resulted in lots of eyes seeing my pins, but didn’t translate into revenue for the business), I’ve been investing it into research, content, and improving the websites. And that’s had a huge impact in helping readers and in revenue.
So I’m going to call this experiment a success. Will I still re-implement Pinterest in the future? I’d like to. Because so many people use it – and I’d like to be able to help them via the platform of their choice. But I can’t dive into it until I’ve reached certain metrics first.
Other Niche Sites
My as-yet unnamed niche sites are coming along. Two are still heavily in the development phase. The third is getting its first few articles published – and already seeing some organic traffic. It’s hugely encouraging – but I don’t want to reveal those just yet.
There will be more information coming – over future months. So stay tuned!
Diversification Reports
As a risk-averse person, I’m a huge fan of diversifying as much as possible. So I’ve started keeping an eye on how my portfolio is diversified in its current form – and comparing that to how I’d like it to look in the future.
Now, keep in mind that I’m still starting this journey. So it’s not matching my end goal yet. And that’s just fine.
Looking at the percentages, you’ll notice that one site kind of took over. It now accounts for almost 70% of the business’ revenue. That’s far more than I’d like. However, given how quickly that site is growing, it’s okay for now.
Ad revenue also continue to account for a huge majority of the business income. Affiliate payouts increased this month (due to the high-ticket affiliate from the homesteading site). That affiliate has a pretty high payout threshold, though, so payouts don’t happen every month.
In other words, this has been more of a step back than forward. But sometimes you have to take a couple of steps back in order to keep going forward.
Teamwork Report
June continues May’s trend of taking a step forward with the team.
- Writers – I work with 10 freelance writers and 1 writing service. If you look at May’s report, you’ll notice I’m down two writers. This is because a few writers opted to step back, but the ones I work with are amazing.
- Virtual Assistant – I work with an amazing VA who’s taking on a ton of tasks to make all of this multitasking possible.
- My family – they’re so excited to be helping with the as-yet-unrevealed sites and YouTube channels – because it’s time to get back to those, too. We’re all excited to see how this goes.
So the teamwork thing has been amazing. And it’s all centralized in ClickUp, which is pretty much my favorite piece of software right now.
Fiction Report
Deep Magic had announced its closure some weeks ago now, but its last Summer 2021 issue just went on sale. They’ll still release their final collection in the fall – and their Anthology #2 is available on Amazon.
If you’re into reading clean, family-friendly fiction, I highly recommend you check out Deep Magic. And make sure you check the front page – the board is so kind to always acknowledge First Readers by name.
No other fiction has been written lately – with all of the things going on, it’s been a bummer not being able to write stories yet. I’m working on it, I promise. It’s just not fast.
June 2021 Final Thoughts
June was month #3 in the “business overhaul plan of awesomeness!!” inspired by women like April of bloggersontherise.com and Anne Moss of yeys.com.
Figuring out how to invest wisely, scale, and keep moving forward has been a huge learning curve. But getting the system into place so that things could continue, even while I checked my sick spouse into the emergency department with kidney stones? That was an amazing moment.
Of course, now I’ve got a good number of articles to edit and publish – but they’re amazing resources across all of my sites. So you’ll love them, I promise. Just like you’ll keep loving these writing reports. So make sure you come back next month for more!
