May 2022 London On My Mind Income Report

It’s hard to believe that, all in, I’ve been blogging for almost nine years – and as a full-time role for four years. When I left my last traditional job, it was a leap of faith, and the pandemic certainly made me question my plans (as it did for many). However, by starting new sites – including London on My Mind (LOMM) – I’ve been able to weather the storm and actually grow in the past few years.

As a result, I decided to start sharing income reports for this site, since it’s a travel site, a “new” site (almost 1.5 years old), and one I started during a pandemic when travel wasn’t an option. If you’re curious whether you can start a travel blog right now, the answer is yes – but only when you have a strong strategy, which is something I feel was always crystal clear in my mind for LOMM.

Okay, ready to dive into this month’s numbers on my best newer site? Let’s do it!

Blogging in May

After several months of almost rocket ship-type growth (25%+ month over month for four months!), LOMM began to slow down in its growth rate in May (and projecting even slower in June! 🙈). This is a natural part of the site lifecycle as a site matures – I don’t know of anyone who has never had a bad or slow month! In any case, LOMM did still grow in May and that’s something to appreciate even as I look at my strategy for the second half of the year.

• Pageviews: 44,744 (↑13% from April 2022, ↑2056% from May 2021)
• Unique Visitors: 38,573
• Traffic Breakdown:
  • Organic: 89%
  • Direct: 8%
  • Social: 2%
  • Email: <1%
  • Referral: 2%
• Total Articles: 126

Most Popular New Post: Visiting London in June: What to Pack, Weather, Events & Things to Do (2022) – This is a new post in a series of monthly articles I plan to update each year to try and capitalize on timely traffic (rather than just evergreen). So far, these posts are doing quite nicely, much as similar ones did (and continue to do) for Space Tourism Guide.

New Posts I Published in May

After a few months of “sprints” in 2022, my team and I are slowing the pace with LOMM for the remainder of the year; still, we published a healthy number of posts this month:

• 13 Creepy & Curious Cemeteries in London
• 20 Actually Interesting Things to Do in London with Teens
• Visiting London in August: What to Pack, Weather, Events & Things to Do (2022)
• The 7 Best Cheap Hotels Near London Euston Station
• The 19 Best London Apps to Simplify Your Trip

If you’re curious about why we won’t be sprinting, it’s mostly in an attempt to let Google “catch up” with the content published so far. Google certainly sees and has indexed everything that has been published, but I think that when we publish a lot in a short span, it takes a while for all of that to not only get indexed and ranking but also for the AI parts of the algorithm to get a good sense of the E-A-T and other important parts of the content that aren’t so easily quantified quickly.

Business in May

As you might guess from reading my Valerie & Valise income reports, income growth always slows as traffic growth does – though usually not by quite as much. So it goes for LOMM this month, which still saw income growth but at a much lower rate than in past months. One milestone worth noting is that the site had its first $1k month on Mediavine in its second month!

May 2022 Income Report

• Advertising income: 88%
• Affiliate income: 9%
• Product income: 3%
• Sponsored content/campaigns: 0%

Total income for May 2022: $1,163 (↑20% from April 2022)

tRPM: $26 (↑4% from April 2022) (What is tRPM and why does it matter?)

Months I’ve been blogging on LOMM: 16

Overall, I can’t complain at all about the performance and growth of LOMM this month, even if it wasn’t as exciting or bombastic as in months past. The almost decade I’ve spent blogging tells me that this is normal and not to dramatically adjust my strategy as a result; instead, we’ll keep plugging along and keep creating great content.

One other exciting note is that we booked our first post-pandemic trip to London for September 2022. Most excitingly, we’re flying first class in lie-flat seats! 🎉 This is a life goal of mine and was quite an investment, but I’m excited to arrive well-rested and have a week+ to explore my favorite city (and a few others!).

And that’s it for London On My Mind. This is only my second monthly recap, so I welcome any feedback you have. Have any other questions about this month’s recap, or other data you’d like me to share? Let me know in the comments.