Below you’ll find the July 2012 Monthly Income Report. You’ll also see an update on my purchase of a niche site from the AdSense Flippers, something so many of you have asked for.
First the updated leader board:
| Rank | Name | Main Website | Trailing Twelve Month (TTM) Gross Income | TTM Average Monthly Income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pat | Smart Passive Income | $571,337 | $47,611 |
| 2 | Justin & Joe | AdSense Flippers | $229,611 | $19,134 |
| 3 | Crystal | How I Make Money Blogging | $164,086 | $13,674 |
| 4 | Matt & John* | Lifestyle Business Design | $112,136 | $10,194 |
| 5 | Trent | Online Income Lab | $107,194 | $8,933 |
| 6 | Mike | The Financial Blogger | $91,206 | $7,601 |
| 7 | Kirsty | Nerdy Nomad | $81,897 | $6,825 |
| 8 | Anton | Grand Online Profits | $77,169 | $6,431 |
| 9 | Phil | My Online Success Diary | $64,164 | $5,347 |
| 10 | Dave | Travel Blog Success | $56,693 | $5,154 |
* Only began publicly disclosing in September 2011.
The major happenings this month:
The first item you’ll notice is that Dave from Travel Blog Success is back on the list. I re-ran some numbers on Spencer and, since he hasn’t really been sharing monthly income reports or even revenue numbers for awhile, he has dropped off.
So welcome back, Dave!
Secondly, I have to point out that recently-added member Phil had an interesting July. He sold off most of his sites and was banned from AdSense. It’ll be interesting to see how (quickly?) he bounces back.
My AdSense Flipper niche site update
So for those of you wondering, the niche site I bought from the AdSense Flippers took a massive hit following Google’s webspam algorithm update. The site went from raking in over a dollar a day to… well, just $1.31 in all of July.
So since I’ve acquired the site at the beginning of December 2011, I’ve “made back” only about 28% of the price I paid. Yea. Not even a third of what I paid…
Thankfully, the site is still earning more annually than it costs to renew the domain name (and it’s hosted along with a bunch of my other sites), so it still makes sense for me to hold onto it until I figure out an alternative. And part of me is still curious how it’ll fare in the coming months (and years!).
Am I pissed at the AdSense Flippers?
No.
They have a business model, and whenever you’re buying something (business-wise or consumer-wise), it’s always with the unspoken understanding that — by and large — the buyer assumes the risk. AdSense sites, as I’ve pointed out before, are extremely risky in nature, especially micro-niche sites.
I knew what I was getting into. And, if I had to do it again, it still would’ve been the AdSense Flippers that I went to for my purchase.
(Interestingly enough, there were two sites I was eyeing. I’m curious whether the other one survived Google’s update. In which case, I might be kicking myself right now. So maybe it’s better if I don’t know!)
Obviously, it’s unfortunate and disappointing that it will take years (maybe even a decade — heh?) for this site to “pay” for itself. But if I had wanted to prevent this, I should’ve built my own backlinks, added my own additional content, targeted my own additional keywords, and really built this site out into a much more expansive site.
But my idleness cost me. Let it be a lesson if you’re in the market for a site of your own. And rest assured I’ll continue updating everyone to see how it does over time.
If you’re interested in receiving ongoing updates on the bloggers on my leaderboard — or how the site I purchased from the AdSense Flippers will continue to perform — drop your email address and name here:
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Always good to see those guys`s reports!
Anyway, im sorry that website didnt pay for itself just yet, but you learned a good lesson after all!
And…are you doing these reports from the future? You just wrote that you brought (or will buy perhaps) the website in december 2012 LOL haha..
B. Regards,
Matheus
Woops, that was a typo that I’ve now corrected. I purchased the site from them during December 2011.
But to answer your question, I probably will continue to update on the site’s success (or lack thereof), especially if anything interesting develops or I do decide to make any changes to it.
You should consider building some more links for your site and see if you can then boost your rank back up again that way.
Vary the sources and mix up the keywords.
One of the main things that the algorithm change targeted was keyword density in your back links. Spun articles where also recently targeted – if an article is too closely matching another article then only the article with the most links will show up and the others won’t count.
Adam
Thanks for adding me to the list again.
Sorry to hear about the site. To be honest I am really questioning the longevity of the current Adsense niche website model that so many are using.
I predicted earlier that this model will be A LOT less profitable than it has been in the past and it’s time to change our focus.
I could be wrong…..but for now I’m staying away from smaller niche adsense sites.
Phil