Welcome to the monthly report for December 2016. This is also the final report for 2016.

For those of you who are new, I share these details since mid-2016 to document my journey of growing this travel website, as well as the lessons I picked up along the way.

I am ecstatic about this month’s report. The number of unique visitors and revenue charted an all-time high even with the site running on complete autopilot.

What happened? Let’s dive into the numbers now!

Profit and Loss Statement

Last month, kuaby made a loss of $23.53.

Revenue

From November to December 2016, revenue increased by 103% to $18.71.

• Google AdSense: $13.02 (+57%)
• Amazon Associates: $4.52 (+397%)
• Booking.com Affiliate Program: $1.17

TOTAL REVENUE: $18.71 (+103%)

The increase in revenue from Google AdSense correlates with the higher amount of unique visitors and pageviews in December.

Amazon Associates revenue is from this Christmas gift ideas content piece that I published in early 2016. It did not get much traffic until very recently.

Last year, I also published two content pieces covering accommodation options in Kuala Lumpur:

• 8 Kuala Lumpur Hotels with a View of PETRONAS Twin Towers: The Ultimate Guide
• 25 Kuala Lumpur Hostels in a Convenient Location

On average, the affiliate links in these content pieces receive less than 20 clicks every month. December is also the first month they generated revenue. Moving forward, I am planning to share them with readers who are consuming travel guides for Kuala Lumpur attractions as well as email subscribers who signed up lead magnets related to Kuala Lumpur.

Expenses

Expenses for December stayed the same as November.

Here is the detailed breakdown:

• DigitalOcean: $12.00
• Adobe Creative Cloud: $9.99
• Grammarly: $6.25
• Google Apps: $5.00
• ActiveCampaign: $9.00

TOTAL EXPENSES: $42.24

Traffic Update

In December, kuaby had 5,006 unique visitors, which is an increase of 31% from November.

December is when students get a month-long school holiday in Malaysia. I see this spike in traffic as seasonal since all the content on this site are about travel attractions in Malaysia. I don’t have the data to back this statement now, but it will be interesting to revisit this assumption next year.

Here are the top traffic sources for kuaby in December:

And these are the most visited content pieces in the same month:

Interested to read the Top 5 content pieces? Here are the links to them:

• KL Sentral
• KLCC to Bukit Bintang Pedestrian Walkway
• Sungai Chiling Fish Sanctuary
• KLCC Park
• KTM ETS Train in Malaysia: The Ultimate Guide

Revenue per 1,000 Impressions (RPM)

Revenue per 1,000 Pageviews or RPM is a metric to measure a website’s efficiency in monetizing its page views.

kuaby’s RPM for December 2016 is $2.66, up by 58% month-on-month.

I do not know what the industry average is for this metric. Please share if you are tracking this metric for your blog. It is not a metric that I am focusing on right now.

Community Update

• Email Subscribers: 32 (+45%)
• Instagram: 470 (-5%)
• Twitter: 318 (-1%)
• Facebook: 93 (+2%)

I continued to ignore my communities in December, but I have plans for this area this month. Read about it here.

What Happened in December?

As mentioned in the introduction, the site was running on its own throughout December. There were no new content, and zero marketing activities.

So what was I up to in December?

My Trip to Taiwan

To celebrate the New Year with my girlfriend, Shook Ting, I went to Taiwan for 18 days with a plan to circle the country along its coastlines. It was the first trip that we took together after I got serious about building up kuaby.

The trip was fun. It was planned in such a way that we can fully experience every single attraction, mingle with more locals, and experience the local culture better. However, it still feels hectic. 18 days is simply not enough to circle the entire island when you want to travel deep and do it slowly. Also, we didn’t schedule for work.

As a result, nothing was done for kuaby and its social media channels. Moreover, for every attraction we visited, locals gave us two or three more places to visit. Many of them are fascinating, but they didn’t show up at all when I was researching about Taiwan before our arrival.

When I was planning for the trip in June, I noticed the amount of travel content in English is very limited, especially if you are planning a trip beyond Taipei. This, coupled with the fact that many locals outside of Taipei do not understand English, makes it hard for foreign travelers to navigate around the country.

To me, this presents an opportunity for kuaby. Stay tuned. I am heading to Taiwan again soon!

The Struggle with Hustling While Traveling

Let’s just say taking photos or videos, and putting them on social media is not as easy as it seems.

To make things trickier, we didn’t insert any work time into our itinerary. During certain stretches of our trip, we were constantly on the move. Even when we were not, I was simply too tired to work.

Here are the takeaways for myself after this trip:

• Stay put at the same place for at least three days before moving again.
• Schedule days to work, chill, wander, interact with people, or for serendipity to do its job.
• It’s okay to miss what was planned.

I don’t know how things will turn out next time, but I do hope these takeaways will make future trips more productive.

Planning to Go on the Offensive with Marketing

If you have followed these monthly reports since the very beginning, you know that Gary Vaynerchuk inspires me a lot. I learned a lot by watching his videos and following him on social media.

In one of his videos, an interviewer asked him, “(Between) Snapchat or Instagram, what do you do?” He answered, “Both!”

“I need to be everywhere!” I thought to myself.

I listed down all the social networks, online communities, Q&A websites, and forums where travelers hang out. I then looked at Google Analytics to find out which of these websites contributed the most visits to kuaby. With the data, I prioritized those that deserve my attention the most.

This screenshot gives you a glimpse of the outcome.

To be honest, I don’t know how it will go, but I will make the time for them. I want kuaby to succeed, badly!

Focus for January

In January, kuaby will be moving full steam ahead.

Content creation is my biggest priority. I am still aiming to produce at least six content pieces a month. On top of that, I want to execute all the daily marketing tasks that you saw earlier.

It’s all grind, and I’m so excited about it that you would think I’m mad.

More Lead Magnets and Commercial Content

The PDF version of KL Sentral guide is the only lead magnet I have so far. I am planning to create two more lead magnets in January to acquire more email subscribers.

Aside from that, I also want to experiment with a piece of content around travel gear recommendations.

When The New York Times announced that they are acquiring The Wirecutter for slightly more than $30 million in October, I started paying attention to the monetization model that the latter is using.

People believe in the reviews and product comparisons coming out of The Wirecutter. Although I cannot have the trust that The Wirecutter has from its readers overnight, what they are doing is worth dissecting.

I’m Eager for the January Grind, Are You?

That’s everything I have for this month’s report. As you are reading this, I already started rolling out the content production and marketing plans. I cannot wait to show you the results next month.

What will you be working on this month? Share them with me in the comment section below.

The post kuaby in December 2016: All-Time High Revenue with Zero Work appeared first on kuaby.