2-Year Milestone: July Traffic & Blog Income Report

During my 1st Year Blogiversary post, I asked you all if you would be interested in my doing both a Pinterest post (since 60% or more of my traffic comes from Pinterest) as well as an income report now that I am actually making some money!  Your response was overwhelmingly “Yes!” so I’m going to start doing these Traffic & Income Reports on a monthly basis!

I believe that more bloggers should reveal their income, as well as some stats about their traffic to inspire and encourage others, so I’m am giving monthly updates about my income and traffic statistics. This is my actual blogging income, folks.

As I was putting this report together for ya’ll this month, I realized that this month marks 2 years for me – and for you!  It’s crazy to think that I have an almost 2-year old, a 2-year old blog, and how much my life has changed.  When I started this blog I was pregnant, working as an accountant, in a smelly, dark office.  I though I was living the dream.

But I wasn’t.

Fast forward 2 years and between this blog and my business, The Pinterest Assistant, I make a few thousand dollars each month.  I make enough that I can work from home, on my schedule, with my daughter on my lap (literally!) about half the time.  My husband does work, but we’re happier with our lives now than we ever have been before.

That being said, this is kind of a milestone Blog Income Report for me, so I’ll be including more detail than normal :-)

Let’s get started!

I am discovering that I’m less obsessed with page views now, than I ever have been before.  Page view fluctuations are completely normal, and I am more focused on having an engaged and present audience than on pure numbers.  That said, numbers still matter, so here are mine:

Traffic –

• Pageviews: 139,572 (up from 21,551.00 in July of 2015)
• Unique Pageviews: 96,241

Time –

I keep track of the hours I work as dilligently as I can because I want to know if I am spending my time wisely.  These hours include hours worked both here on the blog and on The Pinterest Assistant, for my Pinterest clients.

The month of May brought the highest dollar amount I’ve ever made per hour, at $28.94.  However, other months have been lower or higher.  Here are the hours I worked:

• July 1-4: 10 hours
• July 5-11: 28 hours
• July 12-18: 42 hours
• July 19-25: 40 hours
• July 26-31: 40 hours
• Total Hours: 160

I promised myself when I went into business for myself that I would NOT work more than 40 hours per week (averaged, not exactly) and so I love seeing these numbers!  Based on those hours, and the income I will spell out below, in July I made:

$10.37 per hour

I’m not thrilled with this number, but in July my website got hacked, which ended up costing me a ridiculous amount of money – I’ll explain in a little bit.

Income –

This is important: Previously, I was reporting the income I earned (not necessarily was paid) and actual expenses paid.  When this blog was smaller, it worked well, mainly because I was so excited to be making money – haha!

So now, I am reporting the actual income I received, as well as actual expenses.  This will make for a more accurate income report and hourly rate, but it will look a little bit deceiving, because some of the income I reported in previous months I will show as received this month – so just realize that as you read this!

This does not account for the 30% that I hold back for taxes.  Also, this does not take expenses into account – those will be covered in the next section.

My New Favorite –

My friend Cat, who is an amazing freelance writer, blogger, entrepreneur, and speaker has launched her course, Get Paid to Write For Blogs!  Cat started her business from nothing, living in Grenada, and now supports her family with her incredibly successful writing.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive course that will teach you everything you need to know about how to earn extra money by writing, you should check out her course!  Oh, and did I mention, there’s a bonus video and handout from yours truly about how to market yourself and your business on Pinterest!

Also, you’ll notice that The Blogger Network Manages my ads – which is a godsend because it takes that crazy technical stuff off of my plate.  Previously TBN was only open to bloggers with 100,000 page views or more per month, but they now have service for almost every blogger that has more than 10,000 page view per month.  You can check out their new adventure here

Retired by 40!

• Ad Networks: $390.82
  • The Blogger Network: $374.99
  • Media.net: $15.83
  • BlogHer: $0
• Affiliate Sales: $100.00
  • Commission Junction: $0
  • Tailwind: $0
  • EBA: $0
  • Amazon Associates: $
  • Other Affiliate Program: $100
• Sponsored Posting: $400
  • Moms Affiliate: $0
  • TapInfluence: usually this is around $400 – if you want to to participate in awesome, well-paid sponsored posts, check out TapInfluence!)
  • Clever Girls: $225
  • Kasai Media: $0
  • Other Sponsored Posts: $175
• The Pinterest Assistant: $502.00
• Freelance Projects: $700
• Total Income: $2092.82

If you want to start your own money-making blog, you can do so very cheaply.  I created a tutorial that will help you start a blog of your own in about 10 minutes, and very cheaply, with prices starting at only $3.95 a month.  This low price is only available through my Bluehost link, and when you purchase at least 12 months of blog hosting, Bluehost will even throw in a FREE domain name (a $15 value).  Again, this pricing + free domain name is only available through my link, and if you want to make money with your blog, then self-hosting through a company such as Bluehost is essential.

Expenses

Finally! After a couple of really high expense months, things are finally down to a manageable level!  Also, you should know that these are just the expenses for the blog, the income you see from The Pinterest Assistant is net of expenses already.

•  Tailwind for my Pin scheduling.  You can learn more about how to schedule pins for only $10 a month here.
• MailChimp: $50.00 – I absolutely loooove MailChimp .  For those of us who are technically, and artistically challenged, this is the absolute best way to go for emails.  Check out these 11 Reasons why Every Blogger Needs Mailchimp for more info!
• BoardBooster: $15 -I have almost completely stopped using BoardBooster.  You can read a case study of why here
• Productive Inbox: $5
• Website Hack: $227.63
• New Domain Names: $118.93 – I may have a domain collection problem….
• Misc: $49

• Total Expenses: $416.56

Some Highlights –

I was featured on 3 different high-profile sites this month – Pretty exciting stuff!

• LearnVest
• Forbes
• Business Insider

July was crazy because my website got hacks and went down for about 48 hours – which DID NOT make me happy.  I tried sorting it out with my host, but there were horrible to deal with, so I contacted Grayson, from iMark Interactive who recommended BigScoots as a new host with amazing customer service.

Boy, did they deliver!  I’m only paying $1 a month more for their services, they migrated all 11 of my domains over, and have been absolutely amazing each and every time I have a questions!

Also, Alexa Mason sent me a really cool SEO spreadsheet to help me think through and then carry out an SEO strategy on my blog.  I loved it, ya’ll!  One of the things I’ve been trying to get more serious about is my SEO strategy and Alexa has had some crazy success with her, so this booklet was really helpful.  If you’re interested in developing an SEO strategy for your website or blog, and don’t know where to start, Click here to view more details.  It’s only $9 :-)

Oh, and one more thing: If you love Canva like I do for it’s free, amazing design program, as well as affordable images for purchase, then click here to register for early access to Canva for Work – just another way that Canva is changing the face of online design!

July 2015 Goals

• Get all of my Pinterest boards in Tailwind – SUCCESS!
• Comment on 5 blogs, 5 days per week – FAIL!
• Change the eBook download that you get with a subscription – FAIL!
• Figure out how to offer free printables in exchange for an email address – SUCCESS! If you use the Double Opt-In For Download (free!) plugin, you can collect email addresses in exchange for free printables right inside of a blog post – amazing!
• 150,000 page views – FAIL – but, it was a pretty good increase over last month
• Make $4,000 before expenses – FAIL!

August 2015 Goals

• 150,000 page views
• Start a grocery budget challenge
• Make $3,000 before expenses
• Schedule 3 FB posts per day

Finally, how about a little trip through how much my stats have changed in the past year?

• Pinterest 2014: 1,191 followers – 2015: 12,803
• Twitter 2014: 2,400 followers – 2015: 5,512
• Bloglovin 2014: 0 followers – 2015: 174
• Google + 2014: 0 followers – 2015: 321
• Email Subscriptions 2014: 0 – 2015: 2,898
• Facebook followeres 2014: 334 – 2015: 1,991
• My most popular posts:
  • 21 Things Frugal People Don’t Do – 220,256 views
  • 5 Things I’m Giving Up To Get Out Of Debt – 26,690 views
  • 8 Affordable Gifts For Men – 22,748 views
  • Feed Your Family on $300 a Month – 19,653 views

2 years of blogging has flown by like nothing else!  Granted, we’ve had a lot of life changes in that time, but I can honestly say that I am energized and excited each and every morning when I get to wake up and work at my own business, on my own company, and during the hours that I want to work.

Mostly, I want to thank you all – my readers.  This humble little blog would not be here if it wasn’t for you, so thank you.

From the bottom of my heart.

If you want to start your own money-making blog, you can do so very cheaply.  I created a tutorial that will help you start a blog of your own in about 10 minutes, and very cheaply, with prices starting at only $3.95 a month.  This low price is only available through my Bluehost link, and when you purchase at least 12 months of blog hosting, Bluehost will even throw in a FREE domain name (a $15 value).  Again, this pricing + free domain name is only available through my link, and if you want to make money with your blog, then self-hosting through a company such as Bluehost is essential.

How was your month?  I would love to hear about it!

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