November 2016 Online Income Report

With Pinterest algorithms constantly changing, fighting the good fight with Facebook, and all of the other social media channels, I’ve been excited to delve deeper into the world of affiliates, niching down, and really working my email list. And that means it’s time for another income report!

Even though page views have remained completely steady – instead of growing – I’ve been learning a lot about how to do more with what I’ve got. Ultimately, letting go of the page views thing has been a HUGE stress reliever, and I’m grateful for the new perspective.

Income:

During the month, I track both deposits (money I actually receive during the month, but that I earned in previous months), as well as Accounts Receivable (AR for short, the money that I actually earned within the month).

Make no mistake: both are important!

Deposits help me budget for next month (since we live on last month’s income) and AR helps me forecast for expenses and budgeting for future months. We try as hard as we can to plan ahead, and this blog’s income is a big part of that!

Ok, on to the income:

Ad Income: $490.20
Affiliate Income: $1.190.22
Sponsored Posts: $219.28

Total Income: $1,899,70

Ad Income

November was a low, low month for Ad income, but I’m really not worried about it. This can happen sometimes with ad budgets, when payments come in, and overlap (or in this case no overlap!). Looking forward to next month, I’m expecting between $800 and $900 in Ad Income Deposits. Welcome to the ups & downs of being a blogger!

Affiliate Income:

There was a time when once or twice a year I would get big affiliate payments. They were great, but part of my long-term strategy has been to create a steady stream of affiliate revenue each and every month to sort of even out my income.

This isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds and involves a ton of components. I have individual links to Amazon products, products that I’ve reviewed and have typically done well, sales on my favorite products that only come around once a year, and even roundup posts that have affiliate products in them. It’s a big, involved strategy, but it’s working!

Sponsored Posts:

I don’t often take sponsored posts, but one came my way in November that was really a perfect fit. I loved it, my audience loved it, and Wisebread even featured it in a roundup of posts. I didn’t expect that, but it completely reinforced the idea that I had in my had about being very selective about sponsored posts and really giving them my all.

These are not a huge part of my income strategy, but I’m not against them.

Income on a blog is something that can be super frustrating when you’re very competitive like me. I always want to beat the month before, and when I can’t do that I get frustrated. But something that I’ve started doing is comparing my income to where I was last year. Even though not every month is a win, seeing my income over the course of a year increase and remain steady from month to month is a HUGE victory in and of itself.

Key Metrics:

I really, really like metrics. Blame it on the accountant in me, but I can’t live without them.

So, even though income is great, equally important are these metrics for bloggers that I sort of live and die by:

RPM: $24.12 (down from $26.08 in October)
Daily Income: $61.28 (down from $82.47 in October)
Diversification:
- Ad Income: 25.81%
- Affiliates: 62.68%
- Sponsored Posts: 11.55%

Let’s break this down:

RPM

Your blog’s RPM is how much money you make per 1,000 Page views. The reason I LOVE this metric is because it takes the focus OFF of page views.

Here’s how you calculate it:

Income/Page Views x 1000 = RPM

And yes, I’m aware that page views actually go into the equation BUT for me it takes to focus off of page views and instead tells me how much I’m connecting with each and every person who comes to this website. If we’re connecting, then they’re clicking, and buying, and will hopefully come back.

Many people thing you have to have millions of page views to make a lot of money but you DON’T!

Blog Ambitions really opened my eyes to this, especially when they broke down the RPM’s of many big bloggers:

Isn’t this eye-opening?!?

It makes me happy to see that my RPM is really competing with tons of established bloggers.

So, if you’re seriously struggling with being happy with your blog’s income or I really suggest that you calculate your blog’s RPM!

Daily Income:

While I obviously don’t make a salary from my online income, it helps my mindset to think of daily income. Multiplying this number by the 365 days gives me sort of an annual number. It’s also a way to see fluctuations in the months – and helps the hubs and I project next year.

Of course, things can change in the blink of an eye, but again, Daily Income helps me take the focus off page views.

Diversification:

Lastly, I make sure to calculate the the percentage that each type of income takes of my total income. This is super important because like everything blogging, nothing lasts forever, and the more diversified I am, the smaller the hit my income will take if, say, one of those income streams was taken away.

It’s just like how we’ve diversified our household income, and it’s super important!