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How I Made $110k in a Month in June 2023 👀

ByNina Clapperton Updated on

The most common question I got after hitting my first $100k month was “how did you do it??” and since I’m not one to gate keep, I’m going to share it all here!

I’ll start off by saying this was a MASSIVE jump from my income the month before.

For June, I had a goal of $50k for She Knows SEO, which typically made closer to $20k a month.

So $50k felt incredibly lofty and sort of insane. But I love setting minorly insane goals and then challenging myself to meet them.

Cut to June 30th when I made over $30k in ONE FRICKEN DAY!

That pushed me well over my long-term (I’m talking 2024) goal of hitting $100k/month from my portfolio of niche sites!

So how the heck did I do it? And is this all, as my dad asked, “real money”?

Let’s break it down so you can see exactly where the income came from for each of my blogs.

My Niche Site Portfolio Breakdown

Site 1

Niche: Travel

Pageviews: 202k

# of Posts: 302 (40+ no indexed)

Age: 6+ years

Affiliates = $21,810.72

Ads = $5,729.10

Courses = $182.00

Total = $27,648.67

Site 2

Niche: SEO/Blogging (This site you’re on right now)

Pageviews: 11k

# of Posts: 68 (10+ no indexed)

Age: 1.5 years

Affiliates = $8,287.91

Coaching/Services = $24,764.00

Courses = $52,254.30

Email Sponsors = $200.00

Total = $85,506.21

Site 3

Niche: Travel/single destination

Pageviews: 18k

# of Posts: 42

Age: 1 year

Affiliates = $102.37

Total = $102.37

Site 4

Niche: Pets

Pageviews: 2k

# of Posts: 33

Age: 6 months

Total = Not Monetized*

Site 5

Niche: Food

Pageviews: 300

# of Posts: 5

Age: 7 months

Total= Not Monetized*

*Well, they are, but it’s a few cents from Amazon on a shared account with my main site, so I bundled it into site 1.

Tweet from Nina Clapperton saying "Ended the month with over $114k in revenue from all my blogs"

June Income Total = $113,330.40

This total number dropped from the reports I did live on Twitter due to a couple cancelled hotel bookings and 1 refund for my course.

To be honest, I expected a WAY bigger drop.

This is the first time I’ve done a promo of my main course with the new refund policy (14 days money back guarantee on the paid in full plan).

I was kind of terrified of “losing” the money to cancelled tour bookings, or my ad provider being like “jokes, you don’t actually get that money”.

But as I write this 5 weeks later, 90% of that income is already in my bank account – and the rest haven’t had any major cancellations that would throw a spanner in the works.

Other Big Milestones in June 2023

I had some other cool milestones, then I’ll get into the “how the f*** did some random purple haired 27 year old from Canada earn over $100k a year after her first $10k month??”:

Screenshot of Nina's traffic for the 30 days of June on her main travel site showing 202,481 pageviews and 176,211 sessions

Milestone #1: 200k pageviews on my travel blog for the first time (up 25k pageviews from last month)

Screenshot from Raptive, Nina's ad network, sowing $5,729 earned in June from ads.

Milestone #2: First $5k month in ad revenue (up over $1.5k from last month)

Other Fun Milestones:

How I Made $110k in 1 Month From My Blogs

If you’ve been here since Black Friday 2022 , you’ll notice some similarities: 

1) I actually worked this month 😛

Since March 2023, I’ve been on the road full time with limited ability to work (thanks to my knack for picking places with no WIFI or cell service. Curse my love of the forest!!)

I found 2 Airbnbs to work from – the 2nd of which didn’t have WIFI unfortunately, so I lived in a Starbucks for 2 weeks essentially – and was able to actually work.

That meant stuff got done :p

It also meant my new customer service VA, Alex, got trained up and helped fix some broken stuff. She’s also one of the only reasons my Profitable Part-Time Blogger program promo emails were ready 3 weeks early and actually had pictures cause I hate adding them (thanks Alex!!).

2) I opened, closed, and changed a number of things

At the end of last month, I closed sales of Private Jet SEO Membership and 6 Months to 50k Masterclass to new students. They still exist and will continue to do so, but they’re now only going to be available a few times a year.

I was actually TERRIFIED to do this. I mean the Masterclass has been a bestseller of mine since January. I definitely thought I’d just sabotaged my whole business.

Then I opened 12 coaching spots that sold out in 4 days with 2 emails and a couple social posts. That was a big chunk of the income as you can see above.

Lastly – the biggest seller this month – the Profitable Part-Time Blogger (formerly SEO Roadmap) got a price increase.

I’ve been working for months updating the course with a new affiliate module, an in depth zero volume keyword module, and wayyy more.

So even though it induced a panic attack and I was pretty sure people were gonna yell at me via email, I decided to raise the price from $797 to $1,197.

No one yelled, and in fact a lot of people bought it – thank you if you were one of them!

I 100% believe the refund policy (which I added last year but I didn’t use in the marketing) helped people feel comfortable to try it out and then got in there and realized holy sh*t this thing is EPIC!

Changing things is terrifying. And offering refunds did make me worry about people being scammy about it, but taking those leaps massively changed my income this month.

Every time I’ve done something scary like this, it’s really paid off.

3) I got more page views

Tbh I don’t really know where they came from.

I got some great new rankings – I think the EEAT audit I did is continuing to pay off. (Psst.. I teach this in the Profitable Part-Time Blogger).

I posted a couple new posts but they’re just starting to rank.

I got 2 backlinks but since those usually take months to kick in, I’m not sure they’re actually the cause of this change.

The posts that jumped up also aren’t seasonal or related to my destination niche side of the site so I have no obvious explanations aside from the EEAT audit earlier paying dividends and my topical authority continuing to improve in Google’s eyes.

4) I shared my wins 🏆

I’m basically a golden retriever. When I get excited, I HAVE to talk about it.

So when I knew I was on track to hit $5k in ad income, I shared it.

When I saw my traffic climbing with me barely doing anything to the blog, I shared it.

Cause honestly, I’m kinda lonely and need people to be excited with.

That definitely built trust, although I didn’t do it for that reason. But people saw my wins were the real deal, not just a blog that hit Mediavine once then tanked immediately.

I think people also enjoyed me sharing actual screenshots of the stuff. Most people don’t screenshot their ad network as often as I do :p I think I shared 20 screenshots of it this month alone across 3 of my FB groups – although often repurposing the same pics.

5) I showed up A LOT

Like I said – I was incredibly lonely.

So I posted a ton on social media.

I’ve been traveling alone with my dog, and (I guess, thankfully) he doesn’t talk back to me when I try to chat with him.

So evenings were filled with tweeting and posting random instagram stories about SEO.

My audience saw a lot of me as I enacted my “Costco free sample policy” – aka. Letting them try an egg roll before they commit to a box of 800 egg rolls.

This is something I learned from a lot of other greats in the industry (Authority Hacker, Niche Pursuits and all its guests, Aisha Preece, Lizzy Goddard, etc. – there are WAY too many to name here and I’m not trying to snub anyone but this email can only be so long).

I’ve learned a lot from sooo many people and definitely wouldn’t have any idea what I’m doing without so many of them either teaching me directly via coaching/courses or via watching their success.

6) I recorded some fun, helpful stuff for free

I’ve been wanting to record a review of SurferSEO’s AI since Matt Diggity first teased it months ago. And I’ve been wanting to compare AI writers properly since a mini comparison I did of Jasper vs. ChatGPT when the latter was first being hyped.

Those massive Youtube comparisons were really fun to do for me, but they also really resonated with my audience – cause thankfully y’all are as into this stuff as I am!

This shows I know my stuff, but also shows the kinds of tests I like to do.

I’ve been running case studies in my Private Jet SEO FB group for months now and I often forget to talk about that stuff with people outside that FB group.

Missed it? Watch the AI Showdown here!

7) I promoted myself 📣

Things I usually skip, I actually did: sharing testimonials, asking for testimonials from past students, including links to my own courses in more emails and social posts throughout the month, actually promoting my email list on socials, etc.

I literally asked for the last couple followers for my Youtube channel and 2 more members for my Facebook group – I just ASKED! It felt so deeply uncomfortable to do, but it resulted in over 100 new members each.

I also promoted the Profitable Part-Time Blogger more often than I’m used to. I often assume everyone is tired of hearing about it, so I just leave it off. But I went back to the idea of the 18x rule: people need to see something 18x before buying it.

And I’m also just ridiculously proud of the course cause it really is so all encompassing and actually tells you WHEN to do each thing, not just what to do.

I was vibrating out of my skin with how uncomfortable I was most of this month with the things that were happening, but it really really paid off.

8) I got 1:1 with y’all

I actually respond to everything myself: emails, DMs (Instagram only now, I had to stop the others cause it was getting insane), replies to social shares, etc.

I’ve just started sending the more technical stuff to my VA now since tbh I’m not great with it, but even then she has a dif email, so you know when you message me you’re getting me – awkward jokes and funny pictures of Theo and all!

I also ask things of my community to encourage interaction. I run polls all the time, get them to help me name things, and ask them directly what they need help with.

It’s why this email community of 4.5k (well 4k were included in the Profitable Part-Time Blogger program promo since others were in do not disturb tags for welcome sequences) converted at a whopping 2% for sales of the course in June!

Most people go for ads – which I’ve been trialling but I’m not a fan. I currently only run them to a freebie. Or they just do posts to groups of people.

While I do encourage group sharing of qs because then everyone can learn together, I love to chat 1:1 as well – especially when people send me cute puppy photos (hint hint!).

This is something I’ve done since I started – I literally founded my business on offering free help in FB groups and then having people DM me for help.

I continue to do it month after month, which is why my audience trusts me so much compared to someone who just shows up on Youtube once a month and never replies to their comments.

9) I set limits

Having a deadline for the price increase did REALLY well. I made over $30k in on a Friday from that – I guess a lot of y’all leave it to the last minute 😉

And having a set number of coaching spots helped sell those out, too I’m sure. I also had an application process so I ended up turning down a number of people who I felt weren’t ready or who needed help with things that aren’t my specialty like ecommerce stores.

Only opening coaching a few times a year makes it more desirable I’m sure, but that’s not why I do it. It’s just that I genuinely don’t plan far enough ahead to know where I’ll be to always have it open – as we saw with my limited WIFI the last couple months.

And I want to spend time not doing coaching.

If I was coaching every single day, I’d probably get sick of it. Especially cause I’m such an introvert.

I’d rather keep it fun for me, and give myself time to travel/work on other things in between sessions.

I last opened it in January where it sold out for the first time with 2 packages I realized aren’t quite right for me. I started a new package this time that’s better suited for me not doing coaching calls from the front seat of my car at a campground.

10) I worried about money

This might sound counter intuitive, and it probably is.

But this month I was PANICKED about money.

Well, I was panicked about other things and displaced that onto the money.

But it meant that I tracked my income more closely this month.

Usually I just track exactly what I make, but this month I decided to go for a goal of $50k for She Knows SEO in one month (last month was $23.3k for reference). I knew coaching would boost it a lot so it was really only a few thousand extra that I’d need to bridge.

Having the little bolded number of my goal beside my total in my spreadsheet meant that every single day I wanted to do something to bring myself closer to it.

That inspired me a ton to do things I mentioned above like adding testimonials and promoting things more.

It’s why I tell everyone to have their goals in front of them in their workspace every day.

It fricken works!

11) I did my own thing 🤷‍♀️

Everyone monetizes in their own way.

Most course owners I know have their biggest course closed except for 2-3 times a year. And the rest use FB ads to funnel people in.

I’m way more about organic marketing and showing my people that I’m worth their money.

I like to help people grow with my free tips so they can 1) see that it works and 2) start earning the $$ to afford my services.

I don’t think there’s a wrong way to do things, just a wrong way for you.

For me, I love getting to put myself in front of my audience and help them. Ads don’t really let me do that the way I want, and I think it’s odd to pay for leads that aren’t even as high quality as you’d get from a summit or a podcast interview.

But if that works for you, do it up!

I prefer my small but powerful She Knows SEO community <3

Key Takeaway

Overall I think what I did wasn’t anything super special.

It’s basically what you should do in every blog post: add EEAT elements, build a community and ask them what they want, and keep things updated regularly with topical news and any industry changes.

Sure, I did it on social channels as well as on the blog. And yes of course the sales of the course and the 1:1 services are a huge chunk of this.

Honestly, I was scared to even share my income earlier this month waiting for people to try to denounce my success as “just course sales” or something.

But screw that, I’m sooo proud of what I accomplished and I want to scream it from the rooftops!

I am definitely still pushing for $100k months for each individual site, and especially for my travel site so it’ll be more from SEO (ironically my SEO site mostly runs by FB and email at this point since I keep barely posting on the site itself).

But I also think what I did is entirely replicable in any niche:

I showed up. I proved myself and built trust. I connected with my audience and offered them a ton of value. And then I asked for sales later.

Sure, She Knows SEO has only existed for 18 months, but long before that I was showing up in FB groups helping people out – even if it was misguided sometimes cause I thought I knew what I was talking about but I definitely didn’t.

And I kept helping people for free until I felt confident in my skills and had the stats to back them up. Then I monetized it.

It’s exactly what I do with my newer sites – when I actually work on them (seriously, does anyone have the ability to clone me or freeze time?? I should not have started them knowing how little time I have to actually work on them).

Do I think I’ll hit $100k again in July?

Honestly, no.

I won’t be offering coaching again, there didn’t want to do another SEO Roadmap (now
Profitable Part-Time Blogger) price increase promo, and I’m still kinda worried about having closed a bunch of stuff while also increasing this price.

Do I hope I do? Hell yeah!

And now that I know it’s possible, I definitely plan to hit $100k/mo again this year.

But I also want to chill a bit this summer and get back to what I really love: writing for my blogs and analyzing SEO data.

I’m keeping my income goals high though – as you should! And focusing on continuing to offer value above all else.

Learn My Secret Sauce to SEO Success

Want to learn more about the methods mentioned above? Profitable Part-Time Blogger program covers how to get these traffic gains, how to monetize them via SEO and an email list, AND how to build successful digital products. Join now!

Read More About Monetizing Your Blog

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Nina Clapperton is the founder of She Knows SEO.

She started blogging in 2018 and spent years doing everything “right” while earning $0. Then she stopped guessing and learned how search actually works. She rebuilt her travel site around audience intent and structure and grew to 50,000 sessions in 6 months. Within a year, the blog was bringing in $30,000 months and later crossed 243,000 pageviews.

She took the same audience first SEO approach and built her education business into multiple $100,000 months.

Now Nina teaches bloggers and online business owners how to build search powered businesses grounded in strong positioning, clear structure, and monetisation that actually supports their audience. She covers traditional SEO and AI driven search without the tech bro noise, and she’s known for explaining complex strategy with analogies you won’t forget.

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