Scaling my website to 10000$/month: Progress Report

[saurav_556]

Hey everyone,
Since the forum has been restarted from scratch I won’t be able to bring back my old progress report from the past. But just to give you guys an insight. This site is in the gardening niche and I have started it back in SEPT 2020.
In 2021 we did about:
Total Income : $28000
Expense: $10500 (Including content of 9000$)
Profit: $17500
Here is the traffic and articles insight of last year.

Now bringing in the new year of 2022, the idea is to scale the income to 10000$ every month.
So, here is the insight for last month to begin with:

Progress update in January 2022: Month 17
Articles written this month: 42
Total number of articles: 513
Word count written last month: 85000(Rounded off)
Pageview:105000+
Total Revenue: 2592$ (Amazon: $206 Adthrive: $2386)
Expenses for the month: 900$ (Hosting: 40$, Plugins and theme: 30$, Content: 830$)
Net profit: Approx 1692$

December was the bottom of the traffic period, the traffic seems to have started climbing back up. It’s already near the peak of last summer and I am super excited about what this season brings in. The season kicks in by March and that should bring in a lot more visitors.

Also, my articles are constantly maturing and I have already got 200 matured articles with lots more in the pipeline of maturity. One year of consistent hard work should start ripping rewards by the end of this month.

Earning-wise, January was an unexpected bump and I got the same level of earning as I had in December. Although the RPM went down by 35% on average, the rise in traffic compensated well.

My plan for this June is to hit that 8-10k$ mark every month and that should be possible with lots of content produced throughout 2021 which are constantly climbing up in the rankings. I am also working on the info product on the sidelines which should be ready by June as well. So, let’s see what that brings in.

Also, the plan for the content this year is really simple, I ended Jan with 500+ articles and I want to reach that 1000 article mark by the year-end. So, lots of new content, own pictures, and a lot more coming this year!

The overall grand plan is to make this site one of the largest, dominating, and really authoritative in the niche making it tough to compete with.

[Ape21]

A small request.

Can you please repost the first piece of information you posted here? That information included hosting, plugins, theme, and other things you used for this website.

I remember the rest of the journey till here.

[saurav_556]

Sure.
Hey everyone,

I am starting a new blog in the gardening niche. I am not sharing the URL right now.

In this thread, I am going to log all my journey for the first two years. I will eventually make a site for my portfolio of blogs, but let’s keep it here for now.

The progress till today:-

Purchased the domain
Got it set up on my WPX hosting(already had one)
Installed the theme
Got the basic logo from canva
Setup GSC and analytics

Installed some plugin:-
1)Caching plugin
2)Perfmatter
3)Shortpixel
4)Elementor for sales page only
5)Wp external links for link management
6)Grow for social sharing
7)Easy table of contents

I am trying to keep the plugin to minimum to get the best on performance and reduce the bloat. Also, I am not using any SEO plugin as far as I have understood those are useless so i am skipping it this time.

I am skipping the about me, contact me, terms and conditions privacy policy and all other things for now. I plan to update these next month or once I get my first 50 article done.

Update since the beginning:

1. Moved the site to big scoots managed hosting with Cloudflare enterprise version for CDN.
2. Used perfmatter for other caching needs.
3. Eliminated shortpixel and page builder altogether and moved the site to Trellis theme by mediavine.
4. Removed all the sharing plugins as that was adding weight but no value.
5. Added about me, contact and other important pages to the site
6. Still focus is on content but used adthrive for ads monetization and amazon affiliate for basic affiliate sales.

Hope that helps!

[Ape21]

Some of my websites are on hostinger shared hosting with unlimited bandwidth, so I don’t know about the limited bandwidth. Even if I increase it, would it be enough or not. That’s why I am asking this question.

One of websites bandwidth get exhausted quite often when I re-upload images after compressing them manually. How do you deal with bandwidth exhaustion?

I don’t know how much GB is enough if I am uploading images frequently or changing the layout of my website pages.

[saurav_556]

I haven’t dealt with any bandwidth problem as most of it is covered by cloudflare in front end. And backend images upload is not an issue at least with bigscoots for now. You can always tweak that extra bandwidth for some additional $.
I upload a lot of images so I don’t think that’s an issue. Each of my posts have multiple images.

Also, if you are making a good amount of money and are over 50000pv then move it to a managed or cloud hosting. Shared hosting is crap. Just for beginners to test the water. Once a site take off, you must move it immediately.

[Ape21]

Okay. You must be on the professional plan of bigscoots, I guess?

Also, WPX offers 40 GB storage with unlimited bandwidth @$83 monthly[yearly plan] and Big Scoots offers 30 GB Storage with unlimited bandwidth @$99 monthly, so what made you switch if not the cost and offerings?

[saurav_556]

Wpx had some speed and ttfb issue, bigscoots gave me cloudflare enterprise version for additional 17$/month which adds an extra security and cdn layer and also improve ttfb by a lot.
Also I am with 34$ plan where you can add more site for additional 10$ so I have 3 additional site added in that. This plan should work for one more year after which I’ll upgrade.

Other good option I can suggest are agathon hosting. They work great as well!
If you can learn some more or get someone to do it then cloudways is also economical and great way to work around this speed issue. They are great as well. I find it a little technical so I am happy to pay.

The idea is to focus on what you are good at and pay for other stuff which others can fix. Simple as it is.

[Ape21]

I tried AWS EC2 in 2016, it worked really well. But since I had more clients, I had to switch to other hosting providers according to the budget of my clients. AWS has a steep learning curve and so does google cloud platform. I spent a lot of time configuring servers. I should have paid someone to do it for me.

Many new companies have come up with exciting stuff or they would have existed earlier too and I didn’t knew about them. Anyway, thanks for your response, it’s good to have someone to reach out to.

[rajdeep]

Is your website in Discover feed?

[Ape21]

If you are asking me I am not sure what your question is. Google discover feed? this forums feed?

[rajdeep]

asking @saurav_556 if his site is in Google discover

[saurav_556]

No, it’s not!
I don’t rely on discover as the traffic is very volatile.

[Gu_Ru]

@saurav_556

Now bringing in the new year of 2022, the idea is to scale the income to 10000$ every month.

[saddafkhan009]

Thanks for this info. I will try this

[Ankit_Kuarr]

Thanks for sharing your journey with us. I want to ask, how do you find new topics to write on? What’s your process. Since I write on my own for my blog, I can publish only 2-3 blogs a month. How do I speed up my process?

Thanks.

[Ankit_Kuarr]

@saurav_556

[saurav_556]

Try this.

Keyword Research Tutorial: Creating a New Site WITHOUT Link Building (2020)

It’s similar to what I do.
My process is a little more refined that can be tough to teach here.

[Ankit_Kuarr]

Thank you so much.

[Pavan]

Hi Saurav,

I want to start a blog on small pets niche for USA traffic
As of now I don’t have any experience in this subject, How can I start a blog on this niche…?
Please Guide me

[saurav_556]

I would not recommend starting with the pets niche today. It was less competitive two years back when I started with one.
Today, it’s even more competitive than the tech niche.
Still, if you wish to start one make sure you have something unique to beat the competition.
Like what? Real images, infographics, videos, and more.
Have a look at this site. https://bunnylady.com
It’s just for reference, but you will get an idea of what level of content is needed to make this work In long term.
Building a site in a niche that you have experienced with works best.