Income Report for November 2019
Welcome to my November 2019 income report! I’m happy to report that I earned money again in November. I think I’ll keep the introduction short this month, other than to say the reason I am posting these reports is to motivate anyone with social anxiety who wants to work from home to start a business.
Part of my focus on this site is to help you work from home if you want to—not to avoid people but to make your life easier overall. And, blogging in particular is a wonderful way to challenge your social anxiety as there are endless things that will push you outside your comfort zone.
Anyway, without further ado here are this month’s stats.
November STATS:
Note: The numbers in parentheses are from last month.
Pageviews: 16,427 (16,441)
For context: 50% of my traffic came from social, 37% from organic search, 10% direct.
Sessions: 12,986 (12,819)
Users: 11,339 (11,235)
Mailing List Subscribers: 1212 (1034)
Pinterest Followers: 855 (763)
Pinterest monthly viewers: 731k (759k)
Facebook Followers: 4976 (4962)
Twitter Followers: 3119 (3098)
Instagram Followers: 128 (122)
Posts published: 9 (9)
SEMRUSH stats
Organic search: 759 (484)
I’m happy to see this number finally moving upward again, since this was one of the things I was working on in November. It hasn’t translated into more pageviews, but then it’s more of a long-term strategy.
Backlinks: 556 (490)
This month I started posting to other sites to generate backlinks, which seems to have worked! I am using the strategy outlined by Debbie Gartner in her ebook Easy Backlinks for SEO.
Organic keywords: 1472 (1090)
I’m glad to see this moving in a positive direction too! This means I am on the right track for SEO.
November BLOG INCOME REPORT:
Advertising
Monumetric: $13.95 ($7.61)
Pageview RPM: $.85 ($.46)
So, this number is nothing to write home about. BUT – if you look, both metrics doubled from October through November. This suggests to me that it’s going to take some tweaking for Ads to make money. I am continuing to add Related Links to the bottom of every article, which is good both for encouraging visitors to click on more pages, and also for SEO.
Amazon OVERALL: $20.53
Note: I’m reporting everything in US Dollars.
Amazon US: $13.96 ($8.19)
Amazon CANADA: $3.01
Amazon UK: $3.56
Okay, so this is another interesting Amazon saga this month. You guys, I live in Canada, but for some reason it took me a year to sign up as an Amazon Canada affiliate. I think I expected the process to be hard, but it was actually very simple. At the same time, I also signed up for Amazon UK. Now, when someone from the UK or Canada clicks through to Amazon, it shows them products from their own local site and I can earn commissions. Why didn’t I do this sooner? I’d also like to sign up for Amazon Australia but there seem to be a few more hoops to jump through as far as banking issues.
One other funny story about Amazon this month: someone else bought that Star Wars Storm Trooper Voice Changer Helmet I mentioned last month. Did they see it here on my blog, or was that a total coincidence? Is this the new hot thing for gifts this year and I’m just not aware? Anyway, I thought that was hilarious.
The other thing that happened with Amazon is that one person bought like 25 things all at once and I got credit for them all. That helped boost my earnings this month. I also wrote a post about gifts for people with depression, similar to the one I wrote about anxiety.
Betterhelp: $300
I’m still not totally sure where these conversions are coming from. It could be from my emails, from the review post I wrote, or elsewhere. I suppose I could do a better job of tracking this. One thing I did this month as a launch of Betterhelp to my email list following the strategy outlined by Rosemarie Groner (Core Affiliate Strategy). I plan to do a similar launch in December for the Get Your Pretty On affiliate.
Products: $71 ($106)
This was a combination of my tripwire sales (9 bundles) and the tail end of the launch of the beta version of my course on Teachable. Product sales seem to be pretty consistent, so what I really need to do is increase my traffic and get my course launched in January!
Total income: $405.48 ($723.75)
Monthly expenses:
(Note that I don’t include my training expenses in here for courses I’m taking. I consider that part of my education).
Email (Convertkit): $49
Since I have more than 1000 subscribers my fee for Convertkit has increased.
Tailwind: $14.99
(If you sign up for Tailwind using the link above, you will receive a $15 credit when you choose the PLUS plan. This is the one I use and highly recommend as a time saver if you are using Pinterest. Seriously, don’t think about it just get it and find a way to make an extra $15 a month).
: $13.60 (use and discount code KSDISC to save 20%)
I use Keysearch to check keywords to make sure I am working on posts that I have a chance of ranking for in Google.
*You’ll notice I don’t have an expense for Teachable. I’m actually grandfathered into their free plan where I am charged an amount for each sale. I’m not going to switch to a paid plan until I know I am earning enough to cover it.
Teachable: $0 (use my referral link and get a $25 credit when you sign up for a plan)
Total expenses: $77.59 ($192.59)
Net blog income: $327.89 ($531.16)
I’m happy with that even though it’s lower than last month. At least I still made money and I expect there to be fluctuations.
Thoughts about this month’s income report:
Overall, my numbers were pretty stagnant in November with the exception of my mailing list and Twitter followers, and my income went down. I think one thing I need to get back to doing is regular posting to Facebook and Twitter. I had been trying to do this once a week with schedulers, but instead I’m trying a system where I do the scheduling five days a week (to post 7 days). I find I’m better doing a little bit each day than a bunch at once.
I STILL think I have an overall traffic problem. I considered posting daily in December but quite honestly I tried doing that in August and it nearly killed me. Kudos to bloggers who pull that off! I may still try it in a different month, but I don’t think December is the month for me to do it.
November was focused on building my Baby Seed Launch (EBA term) course, so that’s taken a lot of my time. So, I guess I should be happy that things have not slid backward too much.
Goals for December:
I think I will make a bullet point list of my goals for December:
- Complete Module 4 for the Social Anxiety Masterclass (then the course will be complete)
- Focus on Pinterest growth (I’m taking a workshop offered by Alison Reeves)
- Take my kids on a mini-holiday near our house (okay, not a goal but still fun! We like to go to a local hotel with a huge atrium with pool/hot tub/greenery that feels like you are in Florida).
- Normal daily blogging tasks
- Continue working through EBA
The other thing I literally *just* did was to purchase the Six Figure Blogger course offered by Create and Go. I’m not sure if I’ll have time to start it in December, but I’m looking forward to it.
Other Income Reports
- October 2019 Income Report ($723.75)
- December 2019 Income Report ($621.11)
- January 2020 Income Report ($460.55)
- February 2020 Income Report ($432.24)
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