A Look at March 2021 for Apocalyptic Prepping Website



Extremely Successful

This month, March 2021, has been pretty successful for Apocalyptic Prepping. Below is the growth in different categories:

  • Money Made: $3.19 (up from $1.86)
  • Amazon Sales: 14 (up from 3)
  • Email List: 8 (up from 2)
  • Facebook Page Likes: 63 (up from 32)
  • Page Views: 1291 (down from 1797)
My main takeaways were that I had less people, but I'm attracting the right people. My content is also driving more sales to people who are coming to my website, so that is exciting. The increases in page likes and email list subscribers are also a sign that I'm attracting the right people.

I've been learning SEO

My biggest lesson of the month about SEO is about nofollow and sponsored marked links. There are ways you can mark your affiliate/money making links as sponsored. I was doing research and apparently google can penalize you for having your links not marked as such and they notice your affiliate links are in fact affiliate links and not just links to another site. You get good SEO points for linking to other sites, especially big authoritative sites. I didn't want a penalty, so I started marking them how google wanted. My search engine results took a hit when I started marking my Amazon Affiliate links as nofollow and sponsored. 

I wrote for Millennial Making Millions (this blog) in a way that was more about the writing like I would in an essay or a book. Take this post for example- my followers may be curious about how my website is preforming, but nobody is going searching the internet for my web success, at least not until its wildly popular. I've been writing in Apocalyptic Prepping to answer questions people are actually searching. My goal is to not let quality drop in my writing, but that refocus is starting to show fruits. 

Discouragement

I had also had a goal in February to publish a post every day. I actually did this for the month of February and the early part of March. Then I went back and reread some of the posts. I do a lot of my writing late at night and I'm a morning person. The writing quality was not good. In one of my posts I had actually left a note for myself in the writing saying ADD MORE HERE, just like that, in all caps. And I had published it anyways. As I had mentioned, my goal for this website was quality, and it was also discouraging to go back in and have to revise those posts.

After I had revised those posts I did notice that my SEO rankings (where I appeared on a google search) started to go up for those posts. That was definitely encouraging. I had enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment when I had been producing a post a day though, and I miss that. I realize it isn't really feasible for me, but I still miss it. Logically I know that slowing down and triple checking things before I hit publish is the right way to proceed, but I like fast results.

Slow Fast Growth

My web growth has been fast if you look at it in terms of percentage growth, but $3 for a months worth of work isn't a whole lot. I think most people could produce web content successfully, but it takes quite a few $3 months before this can have the ability to be a passive income stream. I can see how a lot of people can see that $3 for a while and decide its not worth it. I have to keep reminding myself though that if I continue to grow at my current rate, about 75% increase each month, I could be making about $3,000 per month from my website. I expect it will most likely taper at that point, but somewhere in there I could hire a writer to do a lot of the writing for me, at which point my website has the potential to be even more passive. 

Top 3 Most Popular Posts

My top 3 performing posts were

Bug Out Bag Essentials Checklist: an article on creating a bug out bag or 72 hour kit

How to Make an Olive Oil Candle: a fun activity, and an easy way to make a candle

How to Dehydrate Marshmallows: How to make dehydrated marshmallows like you find in lucky charms

Additional Revenue Avenues

Robinhood

Robinhood is the investment app I use. It also has an affiliate link built in, no approval necessary. It's incredibly easy. If you haven't checked out Robinhood, it's what I use. Check Out Robinhood>

Private Advertising

I was able to add options for private advertising to my website. I currently have one of the spaces filled by a Robinhood ad, one with an "open space" advertisement, and I am currently letting one of my brothers use another space for free (because that's what brothers do). His website is called THF Outdoors. I have also advertised for my other brother's site, Backyard Trail Camera

My Costs

I have been working to keep costs to a minimum. For image creating and editing I have been using Gimp. I use free limited SEO tools. I watch a lot of YouTube videos. I've reviewed a few books, but I've checked them out from my library instead of buying them. My main costs this past month came from some experiments I am doing, though these have been fairly low cost. The most expensive one so far has been starting a garden. I was planning on doing this, and other activities anyways, so the goal is to be able to recoup and potentially make money from these costs.

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