May 2015 Blog Income Report

My Blog Income Reports are made possible by my Blog Income Spreadsheet -- you can find out how to buy it here!

Here’s my latest income report.  I’ll delve into what I’m doing, how it’s working and how I’m trying to increase traffic and income!

Visitors

Users: 138,563 (up 10%)

Pageviews: 192,086 (up 18%)

*Padsquad fixed how they count pageviews so this is probably up more than it really is — but this is a TRUE pageview number, unlike the past few months.

Sessions: 156,375 (up 11%)

The links included may include affiliate links and I may be paid a small portion of your income with those companies with no cost to you! You can read my full disclosure here. If you go with one of my ad networks, please mention that you heard about them from me! I’d love the referrals!

Ads

Padsquad

Income with Padsquad was up 38% at just under $1100!  {HOLY COW!!!}   CPM’s were great and I obviously had great traffic.  Thrilled.  Yes, Padsquad puts a lot of ads on my mobile view, but that’s how I’m paid to write.  I apologize, but just just enjoy the process, friends. 🙂  If you’re interested in Padsquad be sure to check them out and tell them I sent you!

The Blogger Network

The Blogger network was up to just over $300 (3% higher).  They just upgraded my account to a team that is available to help me.  Each member of the team is doing what they do best.  Kind of exciting.  I love the service at The Blogger Network!

BlogHer

Blogher doesn’t compute the full income until later in the month.  The income I had at the end of the month was $183 — which is up 4% from the month prior.  Again, on average that increases by about 20% so I’m unsure what the total will be (but if I waited the post would be in a month).  Hopeful to get some more sponsored posts with BlogHer

Google

Because I started to use Google videos on a movie I did for my cake video, I decided to put a google ad back on my blog.  Surprisingly it made $28.58 — so I’ll keep it.  Funny little things, ads. 🙂

Total Ad Sales: $1590 (a 27% increase)

Really happy with this number.  I worry I will make less moving all my ads to TBN, but I do have faith in them.

 Sales

Amazon had a great month because I ran a free book promotion.  Everyone who “bought” that free book through my link had my “cookie” and if they bought anything before that cookie was up I made an affiliate sale.  That really made me re-think these book sales as I made $125.48 (a 393% increase) and I was thrilled.  As far as I am concerned that’s one of the top reasons to host your book ON Amazon.  Anyway, I digress.  Good news there!

Spreadsheet 9 bucks, 3 were bought.  Again, it wasn’t meant to be a money making machine (although, I wish it was).  You can buy for only 3 bucks for use on your own blog!  Through that link I even have a video to show you how it works (feel free to make your own, but it’s taken me HOURS to figure out all the formulas I want).  If anyone has ideas on how to sell it for more, let me know! 🙂

Kindle E-book I had a free book deal and it was featured on Money Saving mom which was SO exciting.  BUT, even after the sale I continued to make good income with it.  I made $87 and I sold a lot of Kindle Unlimited which will probably bring my total up another 50 bucks or so once it’s all calculated and my check is written.  Best book month, and almost 1300 people got it for free.  All great news!

A new venue of affiliate sales was with Dressing Your Truth.  I actually bought the system (because I wanted it) and started it all and then wrote a post about it.  It was popular enough that they contacted me to affiliate (giveaway coming soon!) and it’s all taken off from there!  I made $375 with them last month.  It’s a product I’m loving and I truly believe in.  That’s really exciting for me.  I had a lot of posts about them last month, and I know the “excitment” will die down a bit, but it’s still fun to make money off something you really believe in.  I also made $20 dollars with another program I’m with.

Sales total: $617.34 (Up 1383%!!!)

Again, I know affiliate is where it was at, so I am looking for more opportunities.  I still get a lot of LOSER opportunities, but there’s plenty out there that I believe in. 🙂

 Sponsored Posts:

I had one sponsored posts for $150 — I’d like to see 2 a month.  This seems to be the one area I’m lacking.  I’ve already got a couple through TapInfluence for the month of June though.  They are a great company to work with, check them out.

Sponsored post total: $150

 Blog income total for March $2358 (up 48%)

A GREAT month.  Supper proud of how it went.  See below for what I think I did right!

My entire blog CPM including all revenue streams was just about $12.28 per 1000 pageviews (because I am now using pageviews instead of sessions I’m not exactly sure how it compares).  If you just count ad revenue it’s about $8.28.  That means, for every 1,000 pageviews on my site — JUST ad income, I make $8.28 (keep in mind my visitors split between desktop and mobile, and those two sets see an entirely different site and ads)  In case you wondered (my spreadsheet calculates that all out for me!).   THAT means that I am now to the point that for every visitor that comes I make about a penny.  That’s big news.  I wasn’t near that for a long time.

My year to year change was great.  It’s 70% higher than last year in April, just over 1.5k more! That means a lot that my hard work is paying off.

The spreadsheet also calculates my percentage of income, which you might be interested in:

• Ads 67%
• Affiliate 22%
• Sponsored Posts 6%
• Self (book) 4%

I have a goal to decrease the percent made from ads (but not the actual income, I’d love for that to keep rising, and get more sponsored posts.  I’m also toying over a new book about Pregnancy….

 Blog costs:

• RFE hosting (love them — 14 bucks) — if you’re new, I recommend BlueHost for only $3.95/month
• PO Box 6 bucks (need one to have a newsletter)
• Boardbooster, 20 bucks/month.  Love them.  more below.
• Build a Better Blog Class $39.90

Total cost : $80

That puts me about $2280 for the month.  I try to spend about 10 hours/week on actual blog “work” (there is plenty of “spare” time used answering comments and posting on FB, but I don’t call that “work” as I just love it).  That means I spend about 50 hours/week which puts my hourly wage above 45 per hour.   That is great news.  In fact, that’s more than I make in my real life job.  It’s likely that I’m spending more time on the blog tha10/week.  Drew is home and when I’m on call for work, but even if it’s 40/hour I’m pretty dang thrilled!

What I’m doing Right:

1. I first off need to say that I am SURE that this month’s great income is from God.  My husband no longer has a job and my own job is iffy at times and we are SO lucky to have this extra income right now.  SO. THRILLED.  No really.  Very grateful and I am seeing the good in it.

2.  I changed my Pinterest pinning to around the clock.  That means ALL day, ALL night.  I was kind of “targeting” before — but I think pinning the whole day/night has actually really helped.  Does anyone else do this with positive gains?  Pinterest is a search engine, not a social media platform.  The end.

3.  The affiliate income has me thinking.  I’m just mulling over how to expand that type of idea.  I know I’ll do another book sale again in a few months.  My book is high enough on the “motherhood” section that I continue to get a lot of kindle unlimited sales, and even some regular sales every now and then.

4.  I’m just enjoying writing lately.  I’ve come up with posts I just HAVE to get out and that helps traffic when you’re excited about what you’re writing.  I also have a lot of social media programs that just carry out my new posts to all of the platforms.  Things including hootsuite, TTFN and Buffer.

5.  I re-did a lot of pins.  I had great posts who’s pins were just not doing well.  I bought a membership to Dollar Photo Club (in June) for 10 bucks and those pins have a whole new life!  If you check out my Pinterest feed you can see a lot of the new ones!  Have you worked on new images for pins and found it helpful?  I do love the Dollar Photo Club!

6.  I am increasing my pageviews with my “see my other posts about _____________”under my posts.  There may even be one here.  The plugin is called Content Views.  I heart them.

Don’t forget to check out my income spreadsheet to log all your growing income too!