Income Report for March 2020
How is your blog coming along? I assume if you are reading this, you are running a blog or thinking about starting one. That’s why I’m publishing my income reports. I realize that I write a mental health blog, but I also write about working from home (because it’s good for a lot of people with social anxiety).
I plan to keep publishing these reports until I hit a certain income level (which shall remain nameless for now). Hopefully, you find them helpful.
March STATS:
Note: The numbers in parentheses are from last month.
Pageviews: 29,325 (32,141)
Sessions: 23,634 (26,224)
Users: 21,113 (23,634)
Mailing List Subscribers: 2502 (2231)
Pinterest Followers: 2k (1.7k)
Pinterest monthly viewers: 1.6 million (2 million)
Facebook Followers: 5102 (5066)
Twitter Followers: 3196 (3199)
Instagram Followers: 198 (192)
(Instagram is my new “focus” as far as social media)
Posts published: 8 (9)
SEMRUSH stats
Organic search: 1.3k (1k)
Backlinks: 1.7k (1.5k)
Organic keywords: 1800 (1560)
So overall, traffic numbers are down again. I think the only way I’m going to boost my traffic back up again at this point is to go on a blitz of some sort, such as by writing one post a day. I do have an idea to do a monthlong “challenge” of sorts. Maybe I’ll do that in May.
February BLOG INCOME REPORT:
Advertising
Mediavine: $276.49 ($249.32)
Pageview RPM: $8.29
Affiliates
Amazon OVERALL: $45.21 ($40.71)
Note: I’m reporting everything in US Dollars.
Amazon US: $45.03 ($26.79)
Amazon CANADA: $0 ($11.01)
Amazon UK: $0.18 ($2.91)
Betterhelp: $600 ($0)
I have added Betterhelp into my welcome sequence, so I expect that to be a more regular/steady source of income from now on. Previously, I was doing an affiliate launch every few months (which I will still do, but exclude email subscribers from a recent time period).
ShareASale: $0
ShareASale is one of those companies that connects you to affiliates. Cratejoy moved to ShareASale this month, and I’m also signed up with a few other merchants there such as Restored 316 (I use the Anchored Theme from Restored 316 for my website).
Awin: $0
Awin is another company like ShareASale. I am signed up to Etsy through them. I currently don’t really have any Etsy links on my site, so this is something that I’m going to be working on. I think things like adult coloring sheets and mental health worksheets might do well. Etsy also gives you credit for other sales (like Amazon does) so there’s some benefit there.
Products
Products overall: $60 ($120)
Social Anxiety Masterclass: 0 sold
Art Therapy-Inspired Coloring Bundle: 1 sold
CBT + Mindfulness Workbook Tripwire: 8 sold
Total income: $954.53 ($432.24)
So close to $1000! Agh…. I really need to get the Social Anxiety Masterclass re-opened for April (I’m trying to finish a new Social Skills Workbook that will be added to the course).
Monthly expenses:
I’m not including and training/courses/Masterminds in here. But in the month of March, I was enrolled in a Mastermind group hosted by Faith Mariah. This group is helping me to stay accountable (and basically not quit!).
Email (Convertkit): $49
: $13.60 (use and discount code KSDISC to save 20%)
Teachable: $39
Canva: $12.82
Siteground: $239.40 (This was a yearly renewal fee. I had thought about switching to Big Scoots, but honestly was just lazy and didn’t get to it in time, and Siteground automagically renewed me. Oh well. I’m locked in for another year.)
Tasty Pins: $29 (Ok, I got a little spendy in March. Go big or go home, right? I finally broke down and bought Tasty Pins. I’ve known about this plugin for ages, but always felt like I didn’t need it. Then the world fell apart, the kids are home, I have zero time—and I need time savers. So I bought Tasty Pins to make it easier for me to add Pin descriptions to the images in my posts.
WordPress Support: $27 (This month I also added in WordPress support from iMark Interactive as a new monthly expense. Why? I had something really scary happen—my site got hacked and all my posts were redirecting to a spam site. Don’t be like me, get your site protected pronto. I went to Grayson Bell at iMark to fix my site, and then just decided it was time to get some monthly insurance.
One other interesting note for the month. I had signed up for a trial of Leadpages that I totally forgot about. They then charged me $300 for the full year. I wrote to them and pleaded my case that I could not afford it right now and it was a mistake. And, they gave me a refund, so I am thankful for that. But—I do eventually want to use Leadpages, and it gave me some hope to see that maybe, maybe someday soon I could afford it.
Total expenses: $409.82 ($129.41)
Net blog income: $544.71 ($302.83)
Thoughts about this month’s income report:
So, I made more money but I also spent more money. I’m glad that this month balanced out well between income and expenses. It’s never any fun having to plunk down a large amount of money all at once for hosting.
I think I can crack $1000 if I can get my course opened back up in April, so that will be my focus this month.
Goals for April:
- Finish Elite Blog Academy
- Write the Social Skills ebook & re-launch Masterclass
- Usual day-to-day tasks
That’s it for this report! If you have any questions or comments I’d love to hear them.
Past Income Reports
- January 2020 Income Report
- December 2019 Income Report
- November 2019 Income Report
- October 2019 Income Report