Income Report for December 2020
Welcome to my final blog income report for 2020! I have to admit, this year has been the hardest of my life. It’s kind of a miracle that I continued to work on this site the whole year.
I lost an aunt (my mom’s sister) to breast cancer in March. My mom passed away from ovarian cancer in May after a five-year battle. My son also broke his arm that same week.
My children were home because of COVID-19 from March until the end of August. I was responsible for translating online school to them from March until June. I was juggling my freelance work with their school work with this blog.
And I know many more people who have had the worst year of their lives. We survived, and this one will be in the history books. When it feels really hard, know that’s because it IS really hard. I’m not going to tell you “you’ve got this” because sometimes you know things just suck and it is what is is. We get through it.
That being said, I don’t stop. I promised myself at a bare minimum, I would post two blog posts a week and send out one weekly newsletter for my blog, basically for the rest of my life (when I say it that way, it sounds a little scary).
But, because I’ve seen the behind the scenes of the traffic of what a huge site can do (I work for the site previously known as About.com which was started back in the 90s), I know that Rome was not built in a day. Slow and steady wins the race.
And so, I’m bringing you my income reports, because you know I’d look silly if some day they did not show that I succeeded.
Here we go.
December STATS:
Note: The numbers in parentheses are from last month. I’m retrieving these numbers from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Semrush, Convertkit, and my social media platforms.
Pageviews: 30,109 (33,688)
Sessions: 24,769 (27,424)
Users: 22,317 (24,426)
Organic Sessions (Google): 7,863 (10,532)
Social Sessions: 12,728 (11,820)
Mailing List Subscribers: 3038 (2968)
Pinterest Followers: 4.1k (4k)
Facebook Followers: 5.4k (5.3k)
Facebook group members: 63 (57)
Twitter Followers: 3.3k (3.2k)
Instagram Followers: 385 (358)
Tik Tok Followers: 1230 (593)
Total Social Media Followers: 14.5k (13.5k)
Posts published: 11 (7)
So, nothing stellar going on here this month. My Google traffic was definitely down (more on that in the next section). Social was kind of down. I tried to do a big push on Pinterest but lost interest middle of December. Pinterest is my least favorite thing to do.
What I have been having fun doing though is Tik Tok and that is reflected in my growth there. Eventually, I will have even focus on all my social platforms. That time is not right now.
Google Search Console stats
Google Search Console total impressions: 279k (420k)
Google Search Console total clicks: 6.41k (9.06k)
Average Click through rate: 2.3% (2.2%)
Average Position: 18.8 (18.4)
My Google traffic was cut in half. I noticed that another big site in my niche (Social Anxiety Insitute) seems to have taken a big hit as well. I’m wondering if this is a Google algorithm update (probably should look into this). Anyway, I’m not overly concerned about it. I do need to jump back into Stupid Simple SEO.
SEMRUSH stats
Organic search: 5.1k (8.9k)
Backlinks: 2.9k (2.5k)
Organic keywords: 2172 (3233)
MOZ Domain Authority: 18 (18)
Again, you see here that I lost a bunch of keywords and organic search in December. One big keyword I lost for was “I hate my life.” I’m not totally sure that was helping find my ideal reader though anyway.
An interesting little side note… I’m realizing the importance of writing only about your niche topic on your blog, if your goal is email subscribers.
I don’t see this topic talked about a lot, and maybe it’s because this problem is unique to my site. But my top ten posts are not about social anxiety specifically, they are about anxiety. For example, “Vitamins for anxiety” or “Art therapy for anxiety.”
The thing is, these are relevant to people with social anxiety as well. But they don’t draw in just my audience, they also draw in people with anxiety not about social situations. It’s a dilemma that I don’t know how to solve. Do I keep writing broad posts because they get the traffic? Or do I only write posts that are specific to people with social anxiety (and not general anxiety?).
December BLOG INCOME REPORT:
Advertising
Mediavine: $507.41 ($411.87)
Pageview RPM: $20.49 ($15.02)
So, having a full year of ads monetization under my belt, I am now starting to see how the RPMs change. The start of the month, and start of the quarter, RPMs go down.
So, December being the last month of the year and last month of the quarter, RPMs go way up. Add to that the fact everyone is shopping online, and it’s good for ads.
This was my best month so far with Mediavine. I know a lot of bloggers say that ads are a bad way to monetize, but I disagree.
The company I write for (Verywell) makes millions of dollars of advertising revenue. They employ hundreds of people. For the most part, they don’t sell products.
Ads are a viable source of revenue, especially when you are starting out. You do need to have traffic to make them work though.
Affiliates
Amazon OVERALL: $106.57 ($63.34)
Note: I’m reporting everything in US Dollars.
Amazon US: $69.16 ($46.37)
Amazon CANADA: $29.52 ($2.92)
Amazon UK: $7.89 ($14.05)
I finally made more than $100 from Amazon in a month! That’s been a goal of mine for a while.
Betterhelp: $0 ($0)
No Betterhelp conversions this month. I’ll have to start looking at seasonality on this affiliate to see when is the best time to run my email promotions. I did it the week after Christmas which I think may not have been ideal.
ShareASale: $28.79 ($0)
Surprise here, I had a Cratejoy conversion! I think I need to do some more poking around Cratejoy to find the best fit for my audience. I ran a promotion for Therabox and got one myself, but it’s still kind of too general self care.
Awin: $42.44 ($60.58)
Again, Awin did really well this month. Part of this is me driving people to my Etsy shop for the gratitude worksheet that people seem to like, and then they end up buying other things.
Clickbank: $0 ($0)
Rakuten: $40
Now, this was a total surprise. I decided to do an affiliate launch to my list to promote Rakuten (the cash back app) since it was December and people were shopping online. I’ve had 10 people sign up and one converted!
In order to count, people need to actually spend money using my link. The amount depends on what promotion is being run at the time. In December it was $40 for spending $40, which is pretty sweet.
Products
Products overall: $96 ($183.80)
Teachable Products
Total Teachable Revenue: $85 ($145)
Social Anxiety Masterclass: 1 sold (1 sold)
Art Therapy-Inspired Coloring Bundle: 0 sold (0 sold)
CBT + Mindfulness Workbook Tripwire: 3 sold (8 sold)
Interesting that Tripwire sales were down quite a bit. But also, my email subscribers increased by very little in December.
Social Skills Workbook: 0 sold (0 sold)
Self Confidence Journal: 0 sold (2 sold)
Etsy Products
Total Etsy Revenue: $11 ( $38.80)
Sunburst Gratitude Worksheet: 2 sold (14 sold)
Rainbow Set of 12 Gratitude Worksheets: 1 sold (2 sold)
It’s still funny to me that people are buying this worksheet. It’s such a tangent from my site.
Total income: $821.21 ($781.21)
Income per subscriber: $0.26 ($0.24)
I need to increase my income per subscriber! I’m so reluctant to get people on my list when I don’t know how to earn from it yet.
Monthly expenses:
Email (Convertkit): $79
: $13.60 (use and discount code KSDISC to save 20%)
Teachable: $39
Canva: $12.82
Tailwind: $14.99
WordPress Support from iMark Interactive: $27
Leadpages (annual subscription): $129.60 (Black Friday Sale)
Yay! I finally added in Leadpages and I’m redoing my Opt-in, Tripwire, and Core offer sales pages.
Total expenses: $316.01 ($186.41)
Net blog income: $505.20 ($533.18)
Thoughts about this month’s income report:
Even though this was not my highest month, I’m kind of pleased that I’ve had two months over $700 that did not rely on Betterhelp conversions. I’d love to have a $1000 month doing that. I see progress even though it is super slow.
Goals for December:
Did I meet my goals for December? Let’s review:
- Do one affiliate launch & one product launch
- Redo sales pages in Leadpages
- Do the FB ads course
- Do the funnel course
So, I did not launch a product, but I did do a Betterhelp launch. However, I did create a new product! Or at least the start of one. I’m calling it the Phobia Free Workbook for Performance Anxiety and it will be launched hopefully in January and added to the Masterclass. I plan to increase the price of the Masterclass as well.
I’m still working on my Leadpages sales pages, but I’ve made huge progress! So what I’ve been doing is listening to the modules from Ruth Soukup’s Product Launch Playbook while I have free access this month. And a lot of things are coming together in my mind from having done that. I’m not following all the advice, nor am I ready to, but I am understanding a lot more things.
The FB ads course I purchased was from Ruth as well, so I hope to start running those soon. And the funnel course I purchased is Browser to Buyer from Abby & Donnie Lawson. I find that their stuff gets right into the technical details so it’s really helpful.
Goals for January:
Here are my goals for January!
- Launch the Phobia Free Workbook and relaunch the Masterclass
- Finish the Leadpages sales pages
- Finish the FB ads & funnel course
Do you want to learn to start your own blog? I’ve put together my ultimate guide to starting a blog in this post.
Past Income Reports
- July 2020 Income Report ($515.94)
- August 2020 Income Report ($1347.67)
- September 2020 Income Report ($640.32)
- October 2020 Income Report ($1327.26)
- November 2020 Income Report ($719.59)
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