Income Report for December 2019
December STATS:
Note: The numbers in parentheses are from last month.
Pageviews: 32,833 (16,427)
So yes, my traffic pretty much doubled in December! I’ll get into the details of why that happened in a bit, but suffice it to say that the boost came entirely from Pinterest as that is what I was focused on this month.
For context: 76% of my traffic came from social (mostly Pinterest), 14% from organic search, 8% direct.
Sessions: 26,049 (12,986)
Users: 23,077 (11,339)
Mailing List Subscribers: 1553 (1212)
Pinterest Followers: 1042 (855)
Pinterest monthly viewers: 1.5 million (731k)
Facebook Followers: 4997 (4976)
Twitter Followers: 3149 (3119)
Instagram Followers: 146 (128)
Posts published: 10 (9) (One was a republished older post)
SEMRUSH stats
Organic search: 872 (759)
Backlinks: 1.2k (556)
Organic keywords: 1561 (1472)
I kind of let my SEO work slide a bit this month, so I’m not surprised that there was relatively little growth here.
December BLOG INCOME REPORT:
Advertising
Monumetric: $208.96 ($13.95)
Huge increase here! I actually applied to a new ad network on January 1st. By the end of December, I had enough sessions to qualify to apply to Mediavine. Right now, I am waiting to hear back from them.
Pageview RPM: $6.36 ($.85)
This number also increased a great deal. I do know that it can take a month or two for a new ad network to optimize the ads on your site, so I’m glad to see this improvement.
Amazon OVERALL: $59.15 ($20.53)
Note: I’m reporting everything in US Dollars.
Amazon US: $59.01 ($13.96)
Amazon CANADA: $0 ($3.01)
Amazon UK: $0.14 ($3.56)
My Amazon sales also more than doubled this month, mostly because my traffic from Pinterest was primarily hitting my posts that are targeted at Amazon purchases. This was not intentional, it just happens that Pinterest readers like those posts. What I’ve learned is that, at least in the case of my site, I *rarely* make sales of the things I suggest. Or in other words, the percentage of sales that are things I suggested are very small. But, I still earn whenever someone buys within 24 hours of clicking through one of my links. I got credit for someone’s whole grocery order!
Betterhelp: $300 ($300)
So, this has been steady. I’d really like to see this number grow, particularly since I am offering my readers a 20% discount off their first month, and because I truly think this is a good service for those who can afford it and for whom traditional face-to-face therapy just doesn’t fit.
Products: $53 ($71)
I sold 11 of my tripwire bundles this month. I’m looking forward to re-launching the Social Anxiety Masterclass in January to see how sales go for that product.
Total income: $621.11 ($405.48)
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
Tailwind: $14.99
I’m currently only using Tailwind to schedule out other people’s pins once a month. However, I still feel it’s worth paying the $14.99 a month for this service.
: $13.60 (use and discount code KSDISC to save 20%)
*You’ll notice I still don’t pay for Teachable. I’m considering starting to use their paid plan soon, just so that I can have affiliates and offer coupon codes. In fact, it may make sense to switch to their paid plan when I launch the Social Anxiety Masterclass so that I don’t lose too much in fees. It all depends on how many (if any) courses sell. Yes, it would be nice to have a crystal ball!
Total expenses: $77.59 ($77.59)
Net blog income: $543.52 ($327.89)
Thoughts about this month’s income report:
This was a pretty amazing month in terms of the progress I made with my traffic, even though it isn’t totally reflected in an increase in income. I think this is a bit of a lag thing though. It’s certainly not a bad thing that my traffic doubled, but I will say that Pinterest traffic does not equal Google traffic—not even close. I still have a long-term goal of getting at least half of my traffic from Google, because I know that user intent from Google is generally more serious.
So… what on earth did I do to get my traffic to double this month? I switched from an automated pinning strategy that I learned from Jennifer Maker (which I still recommend as a good foundational course), to a manual pinning strategy that I learned in a workshop run by Alison Reeves who blogs at Alison’s Notebook. I can’t go into details about the strategy itself, but I’ll just say that it allows me to better understand what is working on Pinterest and what isn’t, so that I can focus on the 20% that is getting me results and kind of let go of the other 80%.
As far as my goals that I had set for December, I would say I pretty much hit them all. I completed the Social Anxiety Masterclass final module, boosted my traffic through the Pinterest workshop, took my kids on a mini-holiday, kept up with day-to-day blogging tasks, and continued working through EBA.
I did not, however, start the Six Figure Blogger course, and at this point I think I will put it on the back burner until I’ve completed my course launch. I’m thinking this is one of those times I need to focus on one thing at a time.
So, what are my goals for January?
Goals for January:
- Complete all emails and training videos for the course launch
- Launch the course mid-January
- Keep up with day-to-day tasks
I think that will keep me more than busy! What about you, what’s on your goals list for January? Do you have a blog or are you thinking of starting one? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
Other Income Reports
- February 2020 Income Report
- January 2020 Income Report
- November 2019 Income Report
- October 2019 Income Report
- September 2019 Income Report
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