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.  Read on!

January was a rough, rough month at least normal income-wise.  I lost my job, found a new one, and was extremely grateful that we had income from this blog to fall back on!

Let’s get started!

Traffic –

I was super angry that I didn’t hit 300,000 page views this month.  I was only 3,300 page views short, which really irked me, but I guess I’ll just try, try again!  On the bright side, my page views are higher than they’ve ever been, and so is my income!

Retired by 40:

• Pageviews: 297,748 (avg. 9,604 per day) (+15,948)
• Unique Pageviews: 120,964 (+30,026)
• Bounce Rate: 54.6%
• Daily Pageviews/Visitor: 4
• Daily Time on Site: 3:45

Time –

My biggest focus in January was on efficiency.  If I worked 5 hours in a week, great!  But I wanted them to be super productive hour.  The same goes for if I worked 30 hours in a week – hopefully I was able to accomplish a lot.  So, I’ve done my best to keep track of my time, in hopes that I’ll push myself to do more in less time, and to give you an idea of what I make from this blog per hour.

So, the grand total of hours worked during january was 79.5

Divide my income ($1,301.30 as you’ll see below) and I made $16.36 per hour!  That’s an increase of $0.50 over last month!

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.

My New Favorite –

A lot of people (my family, mainly – haha) ask me how I make money blogging.  Now, I don’t have crazy 5-figure incomes like Michelle at Making Sense of Cents, or Cat who supports her whole family, including a husband in med school, but I do make a pretty decent side income.  And I do that in about 12 different ways.  So, each month I’m going to start briefly highlighting the newest way I’m making money.  Believe me, income streams change as often as each month, or even more often!

This month I’m loving Clever Girls Collective.  They bring bloggers and brands together, and their pay for sponsored posts, blog series’, or social media promotion is higher than on any other site.  I’ve found several opportunities that were right up my alley, and I’m sure you could too!  You can check out Clever Girls Collective here.

Income –

Keep in mind, this is purely my income.  I have earned this, but I may not be paid on it for up to 3 months.  The actual income I receive is recorded in our Budget Updates on the blog income line!

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.

Retired by 40!

• Ad Networks: $593.79
  • The Blogger Network: $284.14
  • Blogher: $137.32
  • Media.net: $140.03
  • InfoLinks:$32.30
• Affiliate Sales: $581.66
  • Commission Junction: $469.45
  • Tailwind: $4.50
  • EBA: $0
  • MomsAffiliate: $40.00
  • Amazon Associates: $67.71
• Direct Advertising: $250.00
• Total Income: $1,420.95

Expenses

This month brought quite a few expenses!  I actually cancelled my ViralWoot Account, started with BoardBooster (review coming soon, and you won’t want to miss it!) but then ViralWoot still charged me.  I’m still working on that situation, but keep in mind this is an above-average month for expenses!

• ViralWoot – $15.00.  ViralWoot does my Pinterest scheduling so I don’t have to be plugged in constantly.  If you would like more information about how I drive 60% of my traffic from Pinterest, you can read about it here. **Update: I now use Tailwind for my Pin scheduling.  You can learn more about how to schedule pins for only $10 a month here.
• Canva: $10.00 – I decided to stop wasting time searching flickr for copyright free images for all of my posts, and am instead purchasing them for $1.00 each through Canva.  If this month is any indicator, using my time more wisely is paying off!
• Fat Cow: $250.52 – Fat Cow hosts this blog, and I absolutely love them!  I you’ll recall, I only paid $7.90 for my first year of hosting with them (after a $50 rebate) so I just renewed my hosting for 3 years, at the rate of $6.95 per month.
• MailChimp: $25.00 – I absolutely loooove MailChimp .  For those of us who are technically, and artistically challenged, this is the absolute best way to go for emails.  MailChimp is free up to 2,000 subscribers, and up to 12,000 emails a month, but in January I ran my 31 Days of Finances & Fitness eCourse, which resulted in 43,400 emails, and a $25 charged.  Well worth it, though!
• BoardBooster: $10.00 – I’m still using Tailwind, but this new BoardBooster is amazing!  It is literally a set-it and forget-it method of keeping your  content pinned to your boards at regular intervals.  Your first 500 pins are free, so you literally have nothing to lose!

• Total Expenses: $310.52

Some Highlights –

I got my mobile site up and running during January, but it’s still a little wonky, especially on Apple devices.  Hopefully that will get worked out soon, but in the meantime, I really appreciate ya’ll patience!

….From My Small Organized Life included me in her “2015 Budget Bloggers to Watch”  list along with some of the “greats” like Michelle from Making Sense of Cents, Alexa from Single Mom’s Income, and The Budget Mama.  I am truly honored!

Goals for January 2015 –

• Finish Elite Blog Academy – I’m done with all the reading, but I have a couple of assignments to finish up yet, including one of my big goals: write an ebook. – SUCCESS! I’ve done all of the reading, but it’s a work in progress.
• Make $1,000 – SUCCESS!
• What are “no follow” links? Ultimate no-follow plug in?  I’m pretty sure google is penalizing me and I need to figure out what this is. – FAIL!  I ran out of time :-(  However, as I’m writing this article, the plug in is download.  Better late than never?
• Average 4,200 daily page views – SUCCESS!
• Pitch 2 companies for sponsorships – SUCCESS!
• Work with The Blogger Network to get my mobile ads up and going – SUCCESS!
• Hit 1,200 people signed up for 31 Days of Finances & Fitness Series – SUCCESS! I ended up with more than 1,400 subscribers!

February 2015 Goals –

• Complete my book launch plan for September – Yes, it’s coming in September, my first really eBook!  I’m so excited, and I’m following Ruth Sokup’s launch plan for her book!
• Average 10,000 page views per day
• Make $1,500
• Delete 100 pins, 5 days a week (I am only deleting the pins that had 0, 1 or 2 repins to tell Pinterest that yes, I do pin great content!)
• Spend 1/2 hour 2 days a week, scheduling Facebook posts
• Queue up all Inspiration Tuesday posts coming in March!
• Write 3 eBook chapters (not the ebook coming in September, the next one :-)

One More Thing….

I am conducting a reader survey to find out what you want to read more about, what things you really don’t like, and to find out what types of posts you would like to see in 2015.  If you have just a minute or two, please consider filling it out here.

As a Thank You, everyone who fills out the survey will be sent a copy of my eBook “3 Ways to Stop a Derailed Budget In It’s Tracks”  at the end of this month.  Thank you!

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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