First quarter of 2017 has been very interesting, tried and applied some new ideas, launched two separate websites and started to generate first real passive income from peer to peer lending.
As there have been a lot of changes in the past three months, this year's online income reports will be different from previous quarter reports, they will cover not only earnings from this blog, but will include earnings from other websites and earnings from investments.
In short first quarter of 2017 (January, February and March) earned $6,335.20 what is an awesome more than double growth if compared to the first quarter of year before (see: Q1 2016 Blog Traffic and Online Income - 136,784 Users / $2,467.48), though if compared to previous quarter that's a little decrease (see: Q4 2016 Blog Traffic & Income Report - 197,850 Users / $6,921.16)
About website traffic in Q1 2017
Now, I've already mentioned that in the past 3 months I've started two new websites, I decided to include all of them in this report.
ReinisFischer.com
Main blog, the one you are currently reading - First quarter of the 2017 set a new record in terms of visitors coming to blog. More than 200,000 users in three months. By now, on average, blog gets about 70,000 monthly users, compared with previous quarter, blog have experienced a small but nice 11% traffic gain.
Website traffic Q1 2017. Data source: Google Analytics
Page views are up to 100,000 per month. Seems I could soon crack 100K users per month milestone, first originally set in July 2014.
I should also add that if compared with the first quarter in 2016, blog traffic in 2017 have increased by more than 60%. Now, that's some serious growth. If things will go as this I could report about 350,000 users in first quarter of 2018. Hope so.
Q1 2017 vs Q1 2016 website traffic. Data source: Google Analytics
Tourgeorgia.EU
Originally first launched in 2011, this website made a re-launch from scratch at the last days of March 2017. There is nothing much to report for the first quarter of year, but I'm adding it here just for history and a basic reference point, as I find personally interesting seeing where how well visited this website will be after one year:
tourgeorgia.eu website traffic Q1 2017
Just 25 users and a lot of page views which are mostly generated by myself while developing this site.
tourgeorgia.eu is a side project for tour booking in Georgia, as my blog receives a lot of travel requests about Georgia, at the start of the year I partnered with some cool local tour operators in Georgia, and as a minimum viable product approach decided to test idea in the frames of blog by launching organized tours in Georgia service. The result was really good, got 30 bookings in first quarter of year, that's why decided to go with a separate website.
If you are planing trip to Georgia, you could make tour reservation.
Site 3
Now, I;ve decided to keep in secret domain name, as this website is made as a SEO experiment. All I could tell right now - it's is in very competitive though lucrative income niche. Again, originally launched already in 2016, I still abandoned this project after first two weeks. Now a year later I decided to use this website as a SEO experiment for 12 weeks. Re-lauched at the start of March 2017, this website can brag with a lot of visitors as well, just 22.
Site 3 website traffic Q1 2017
I'm really eager to see how the next quarters of year will turn for these websites. If for tourgeorgia it seems it will be easy to crack 1,000 user milestone per month, then with site 3 I'm more humble in my future forecasts. Would love to see about 500 users for the next three months.
About income in Q1 2017
As already mentioned in the first paragraphs at start of this article, there are some fundamental changes in my online portfolio, with investments in peer to peer lending and new website/business projects
In first quarter of 2017, main blog still made a lions share (tourgeorgia.eu and site 3 didn't generated any income yet), though I can report first returns from peer to peer lending.
Affiliate marketing:
- Amazon Associates: $5,884.6
- Booking.com: $55,55
- Tour bookings in Georgia: $140
From tour bookings in Georgia, I created a separate website and online business start up - tourgeorgia.eu
Display Ads:
- Google AdSense: $255.05
Investments
- Mintos.com peer to peer lending: $10.03
You can read more here: Invest in Georgia - Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending - Mintos.com and Review of Mintos Peer to Peer Lending After One Month of Investing. My earnings here are relatively low, as I'm investing relatively low amounts yet. Though 10 dollars here gives me about the same I got from Google AdSense about 3 years ago.
Total: $6,335.20
Expenses
This quarter I spent money on hosting, Facebook Ads, CDN, new domain names and virtual assistants / freelance writers
- Facebook Ads: $102.96
- KeyCDN: $49
- Linode: $17.5
- Domain names: $20.04
- Google AdWords: $16.89
- Virtual Assistants: $203
- Other: $39.35
Total: $448.74
I used Facebook ads and Google AdWords to promote Georgia related content. Starting January 2017 I've hired few content writers to help come out with articles in series: Living in Georgia, Digital Photography school and for tourgeorgia.eu project.
If compared to the first quarter of 2016, expenses have risen by more than 4 times.
Other Stats:
- Twitter: 6,211 followers (-77)
- Facebook: 3,645 likes (+750)
- Email subscriptions: 132 subscribers (+64)
- Alexa global rank: 177,701 position (-2,628)
- Web push subscribers: 7,709 (+2,746)
Goals for Q2 2017
Goals are my favorite part of such reports. My goal for second quarter (April, May, June) of 2017 - Traffic combined for main blog should be at least 220,000.
Income - goal is to crack $5,000 at the end of second quarter, I hope my additional projects and investments will help generate additional side income. Additional activities should be able to help me reach $5,000 in the next quarter.
