Q2 2023 Blog Income Report: How Swift Salary Made $4,063.24

Halfway through 2023 already. Wish I could slow down time.

In this report, I'll break down Swift Salary's Q2 performance including revenue, expenses, highlights, stats, and more.

If you have any questions about anything, leave me a comment.

To see all of my past income reports (going all the way back to my first year of blogging), go here.

Highlights from Q1 2023

• 3 new articles published. 3 more than last quarter. 62 total.
• 47 new platforms published. That's 19 more than last quarter. 126 total.
• Added 43 new opportunities. 185 total.
• Added 3 new platform types. 8 total.
• 148 new user reviews added. 694 total.
• Whenever platforms are imported by WP All Import, auto-calculated editorial ratings are now re-calculated based on new data.
  • For example, our “minimum payout” rating for money-making platforms is automatically calculated based on a platform's minimum payout. Speaking of, I also hooked up a currency conversion API to the rating calculator code to convert a platform's minimum payout to USD (if it's not already) before calculating the rating, that way all platform's ratings are calculated evenly.
• Introduced “Save Money” goal on platform discovery tool.
• Introduced “Advertise” goal on platform discovery tool.
• Added dynamic title to platform discovery tool based on selected goal. For example, if you select the “Make Money” goal, the title of the page will change to “Discovery Money-Making Platforms”. These pages are also separately indexable now too, so hopefully will rank for target keywords.
• Published a page that lets users find surveys that pay via specific payout options (mostly as a programmatic SEO experiment)
• Built a simple Airtable formula field to check platform data for errors before importing to site.
• Re-ordered platform profile pages to show related content at the end of the page. A CTA for the platform discovery tool is now where the related content box used to be.
• Added new modules to platform comparisons: earner description, earner pros, earner cons, buyer description, buyer pros, buyer cons.
• Published 9 new payout option pages by adding additional text content. Now set for indexing.
• Made a simple function to display social share buttons on articles to replace Social Warfare plugin.
• Updated “How it works” section on platform main profile pages to make things more compact. All additional details for different user types (e.g. earners, buyers, etc.) are collapsed by default and can be expanded.
• Created a user review form for buyers.

Blog Income and Expenses for Q2 2023

All income and expenses are recorded in Canadian dollars. Income is based on money that has actually hit my bank account (i.e. cash basis accounting).

Income Breakdown: $4,063.24 Gross Revenue

Another drop in revenue this quarter, though smaller than the steep drop we saw last quarter.

Here's the monthly breakdown:

• April: $1,103.02
• May: $1,724.49
• June: $1,235.73

Revenue Sources Summary

• Affiliate Income ($1,918.76)
  • 1Q – $0.99
  • Adbloom $77.35
  • Clickworker – $6.75
  • Dynata – $688.58
  • GG2U – $16.88
  • Knowadays – $140.49
  • Panthera – $307.06
  • Surveytime – $1.35
  • Proofread Anywhere – $275.71
  • User Interviews – $403.61
• Advertising Income ($2,671.94)
  • Mediavine – $2,144.48

Expense Breakdown: $2,591.44 Spent

Notable expenses include:

• Bank Fees and Charges – $70.09
• Bullet journals – $52.18
• Freelance writers – $2,041.87
• Incentivized reviews – $14.61
• GSuite – $46.80
• Keywords Everywhere – $17.99
• Slack – $35.67
• Tailwind – $208.66
• Tapestri – $27.04
• UpdraftPlus – $56.67

* Total Net Profit: $1,523.25 *

Traffic Breakdown: 135,034 Pageviews

Woohoo! It's not much, but we saw an 11.2% increase in pageviews this quarter.

Platform Page Traffic: 7.63k Clicks

We're tracking platform-related search traffic until we hit 100k clicks/month.

Here's what we had for Q2 of 2023:

7.63k clicks and 444k impressions! That's a 250% increase in clicks compared to last quarter's 2,180. That's some really nice growth. Last quarters growth was only 100% compared to the previous quarter so I'm really happy with this.

Here's a quarter-by-quarter overview since the start of the project:

Quite a nice spike!

Email List: 5,714 Active Subscribers

Started Q2 2023 with 5,463 subscribers and ended with 5,714. That's a 251 subscriber (4.59%) increase.

The increased pageviews (and some optimizing I did with signup forms) helped increase subscriber growth this quarter, but I know I can still do better.

Swift Saturday Newsletter Stats

The Swift Saturday newsletter is a weekly newsletter with money-making ideas, money-management tips, and market updates.

If you're interested, you can sign up or learn more here.

Open rates for the newsletter this quarter sat at an average of 22.13%. That's a tiny (0.4%) improvement over last quarters 21.72% open rate.

Note: I use MailerLite as my email service provider.

Follow Up On Goals for Q2 of 2023

• Start investing in other types of content. I wrote one non-platform related piece of content (a guide to market indexes) but that's about it. Didn't invest in writers for this.
• Publish 50 new platforms. Got to 47 this quarter. So close! Can't even be disappointed tbh.
• Publish 5 new blog articles. Got 3 published. Wasn't a heavy focus so not bad.
• Continue updating older posts that have lost traffic. I did some quick updates to a few old posts, but nothing huge. Still, saw a small traffic increase.

Goals for Q3 of 2023

• Publish 5 “How to make money [insert opportunity]” guides. These will be based on some of the opportunities that already exist on the site.
• Publish 10 platform roundups. These are easy posts that feature a certain type of platform (e.g. get paid to search the web). 10 should be doable.
• Publish 50 platforms. Since we didn't quite hit it, I don't think I should increase this goal just yet. That said, I know this is doable, and I'd like to be able to pump out more each quarter eventually. But lets hit this first.
  • As part of this, I want to convert all my old reviews of platforms into platform pages. Still have over 20 to convert.

Main Objectives for 2023

• Invest more into the business, continue getting better at outsourcing
• Hit 100k clicks/month with the platforms project
• Reach 300 total published platforms (20.8/month avg.)
• Achieve 400k pageviews in a single month
• 10k email subscribers

Final Thoughts

Although I'm still nowhere near where I'd like to be with Swift Salary (and where I previously was), I'm seeing things start to come together.

I've never felt more confident in the long-term potential of the site.

I've never felt so productive working on the site.

And I'm having a lot of fun building this vision.

Let's keep at it. Happy Q3!

Want to start a money-making blog of your own? Check out my guide on how to start a blog, then read my post on how to make money blogging.

• Have any questions about this quarter's blog income report? Leave a comment below!