October 2025: Monthly Recap 📈

Hello, my friend!

I’m popping into your inbox with my usual monthly recap — a behind-the-scenes look at what’s been happening in my life and business lately.

October was on fire! 🔥

Here’s the quick version:

✨ On October 16–17, I attended SEO IRL, the biggest SEO conference in Canada. It was two incredibly productive days where I got to validate my SEO approach in the age of AI. I also gathered tons of fresh insights from top industry leaders — sharing a few of them below!

💰 My website brought in $4,716.36 from affiliate partnerships and brand collaborations (more details below).

🎂 And on a personal note, I spent a few days in Vancouver, BC, celebrating my birthday, reflecting on the past year, and thinking about what’s next.

I have this little tradition of celebrating my birthday somewhere new every year, and I’m so glad I chose Vancouver this time. The city is so much cleaner and prettier than most people give it credit for! 🌆💙

Crushing website goals 🚀

Now, I'd like to share some great news about the website's performance over the past month.

Here’s a quick update on how September went.

✅ Total earnings: $4,716.36 (an affiliate report is coming soon…)
✅ 11 affiliate partners
✅ Made $1,500 from a brand sponsorship
✅ The highest amount earned from one affiliate partner was $1,340.03

So, my website brought in a total of USD $34,049.78 in 2025!

I’ll be putting together a detailed year-end review packed with everything I’ve learned, discovered, and tested, including the strategies that actually worked! 🚀 Stay tuned!

P.S. If you’re a Premium member, you can check out all affiliate reports here. You must be logged in with your email address to read it.

💰 Top partner of the month

My top affiliate partner in October, and honestly, for most of the year, was Semrush.

Their platform continues to improve, offering users increasing value. Since the brand already has people’s trust (and I personally use their SEO tools too), it’s been a solid source of income for me through their partner program. 🙌

But here’s the flip side, even well-known companies can surprise you… and not in a good way. 😬

To my disappointment, Writesonic, a growing AI and SEO brand, suddenly paused its Partner Program without notifying partners. On top of that, they stopped replying and haven’t paid out pending commissions.

I didn’t expect that from such a big name, but it’s all part of the creator journey, where not everything is sunshine and wins. Lesson learned.

So, now you know which company to stay away from in the future. 🚫

On a brighter note, I also closed a $1,500 deal by promoting a fast-growing business in one of my posts. 🎉

Working with trusted brands that align with your niche and expertise is always worth it — less risk, more reward, and way more peace of mind. 💡

All the insights from the top SEO industry leaders

It’s been almost a month since I got back from the biggest SEO conference in Canada, and I also got to meet legends like Aleyda Solis in person! 🤩 

I’ve put together a detailed recap of both conference days, including key takeaways, speaker quotes, and even presentation screenshots.

If you’re curious about what the top SEO minds had to say about AI and SEO, you can read the full summary on my website — it’s completely free. 😉 

P.S. It’s a deep dive (over 2,000 words) because I wanted to capture the most valuable insights from the event.

Enjoy reading! 🚀 👇

If I could mention one thing from the conference that I believe is worth knowing and actually doing, it is this:

Brie, an SEO from Australia and the CEO of White Light Digital Marketing, shared that their team built their own search engine to figure out what high-quality backlinks actually look like.

After analyzing thousands of websites, they found that two things make a backlink truly valuable:

1. It comes from a page that ranks for keywords related to your niche (topical authority).

2. It’s from a page that gets real traffic and links to your site naturally.

So yes, backlinks still matter in 2025.
But this proves it’s not about cold outreach or spammy guest posts. It’s about building real relationships with trusted brands and creating content worth linking to. 💪

You can dive into all the juicy insights in my full conference recap here.

What I worked on in October

✅ Published a new article on SE Ranking alternatives, which already ranks on the first page for a related keyword! (No link building. Just strong topical authority doing its thing. 💪)

✅ One of my top-performing posts on AI Marketing Tools got a +1 detailed review of the Holo.ai tool. If you are looking for ways to automate and speed up your marketing efforts, this article could be a great read.

✅ I updated my old post on SEO tools for agencies, which had been left without any updates for two years. Since it’s optimized around my target keyword, I finally gave it a fresh update. Here’s how its performance has improved within the past few weeks.

The goal is to recommend only the best agency tools and make well-deserved affiliate commissions from every sale.

As always, every piece I publish helps me move closer to my business goals.

This year, I’ve already surpassed my goal — making $20,000 from my website. That’s up from $8K last year, and I’m already planning even bigger things for 2026.

Spoiler: A full website redesign is coming soon, and it’s going to look amazing. 😍

👉 Have you done keyword research for your site yet? You can learn more about my keyword research and optimization process in my SEO ebook.

What you might have missed in October

The insights of a new research report about Quora and Google’s AI Mode that Semrush has recently published.

My SEO IRL conference recap.

Ever had your site suddenly get hit by a wave of weird backlinks? You know, those shady ones that make you wonder if a competitor got a little too interested in your rankings? 😅

Well… looks like it was my turn in the spotlight…

I published my September Affiliate Marketing report on October 14th, sharing all the insights about how my website brought in $8,102.18 in total income in September.

You can find all the affiliate reports since January 2025 here.

For the Premium members: 👋

Here’s what’s new in the content library:

• $20k+ from my website in 8 months —here’s how: It’s my 2,000-word case study, where I share everything that helped me grow & monetize my site.

• Google hit my site … then I doubled my traffic, where I show the impact of the Google Core Update on various websites (including mine), and highlight common characteristics of the top-performing sites.

• $12,000+ from my website in 5 months: I’m sharing my top-performing affiliate programs and landing pages that generate the most revenue.

• Optimize like a Pro: Here's what I do: I use these 9 content optimization strategies to rank on page one.

• My approach to affiliate marketing: Mistakes, learnings & new strategy

• How I ranked #8 on Google in just 6 days: The SEO strategy that got me on Google in a few days.

Want in?

You can become a Premium member for just $7 one-time payment. You’ll get behind-the-scenes tips, real strategies I use to grow my site, and answers to your questions. 🧠💡

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading and being part of this journey — your support means the world. 💙

See you next week with more updates, insights, and behind-the-scenes wins. 🚀

Victoria

P.S. You can review all previous monthly recaps here.