July 2022 Writing Report

Summers may be awesome, but they’re also full of lies. At least, that’s how I see them right now. You start the summer thinking there’s plenty of time. Then you blink and it’s almost mid-July (and you’re not even done with the monthly reports yet – fixing that now!).

In any case, June felt especially busy as I was conducting another round of hiring for my team (which is still ongoing), and it’s taking longer than anticipated. It always does. Good thing we don’t measure business building in the millions of years scientists use in geological terms, anyway.

In any case, it’s report time. Let’s do this.

June 2022 in a Nutshell

May and June saw some new Google algorithm updates. The one in May hit site #6 a good bit. However, part of that was due to some new laws that went into effect. I made sure to update those articles to showcase the new laws.

To date, that seems to have slowed the decline, but that’s about it. Ah well. Time to do a whole-site analysis on that, I suppose. More on that in a bit, though.

The other big thing for June was hiring, writing, and working with my editor to do a few more tasks. It’s been a success – enough so that my family and I were able to take our second real family vacation in years and go spend a few days in Yellowstone.

We saw bears, y’all. Grizzlies and black bears. That and Old Faithful were the highlights, but it was still a gorgeous getaway from in-person people, even if we still had to deal with a lot of cars who didn’t quite follow the “don’t stop in the middle of the road to gawk at wildlife!” rule.

That’s generally good advice for anyone driving, though. Pull over somewhere safe so you can evaluate things – or just look at the 1,295th bison of your visit.

Site Reports

While there’s been a slight dip since May in that one site, all of the other sites are doing quite well – enough that things are still looking pretty solid overall.

This is especially true given that it was June – the month when most sites report their lowest traffic and revenue of the whole year. This is a huge part of why I want enough diversity to spread the risk around.

• Having a gardening site helps offset the parenting site (which definitely has a summer traffic dip based on historical data).
• Having a site based on sports also helps offset the “summer slump,” although it’s still a baby, so it won’t be a heavy hitter until next year at the soonest is my bet.

Total gross revenue is still over $2,000 monthly.

• Going from $0 to $1000 monthly took me 24 months.
• Going from $1000 to $2000 for the first time took 4 months.
• Getting to above $2000 monthly consistently took another few months.
• I’m so close to the next mark of $3000 monthly, but I’m not there yet.

Here’s how the sites look individually.

June Achievement: 46%

So I had high hopes for June, and I didn’t quite make it. I shot for the moon, and I didn’t quite make it. But at least I’m still a Starr?

All told, I only managed to publish 16 new articles. However, I did also make 20+ videos – I lost count. There’s a lot of feedback and time that goes into training new team members. That’s still ongoing, so I’m working with them. It should help things ramp up here in another month or two, though.

However, I did do pretty well on the goals I set in May. Here’s how they look compared to how they panned out.

• Getting a long list of articles prepared for my writers.
• Keep moving forward with the sites and publishing.
• Finish and test the new hiring system.
• Make my friend Renee crazy with my wrong uses of statistics on my spreadsheet. (ongoing but still a win)
• Enjoy the summer with my family, while also preparing for fall.
• Get ready for Q4, because it’s going to be a wild ride.

Okay, so I’m nowhere near 100% ready for Q4 yet, but I’m definitely in the “getting there!” phase.

Here are the goals for July:

• Keep on swimming (both literally and figuratively).
• Get the new writers onboarded fully.
• Focus on ideation and topic creation.
• Publish 45 articles for the month.

In any case, the kids are up and it’s time to get back to real life with them. Once they’re settled, I’ll get back to writing, editing, and publishing across the portfolio. I’ll see you all again soon!