If you buy something through a link in this article, I may receive a small commission. (Disclosure policy).
 

december 2016 blog income reportPin

December. The month that I have always – always – earned less and had less traffic than the month before. Since I’ve had this blog for over 10 years, I know its traffic patterns quite well. December is always down. People prepare for Christmas, they don’t search for baby feeding tips or miscarriage stats. It’s ok.

Well, this December was different. Very different.

I made more money in one month than ever before. When I sat there in the beginning of February 2016 and compiled my first blog income report, a dream passed through my head – what if I could be making $10,000 by year-end if I do everything I can to get there. I let go of that dream as quickly as it appeared – totally unrealistic! I didn’t get there. But I wasn’t too far off either. December brought in over $7000. Unbelievable and super cool! Back in January 2016, when I started these blog income reports, I made less than $800.

December 2016 is my 12th blog income report. You’ll find earlier blog income reports here.

Now, let’s see how I did with Easy Baby Life during December!

Blog Income December 2016

  • Amazon – $881. Last month was $409, so a nice increase, due to a combination of Christmas shopping and me knowing a bit more of what I am actually doing thanks to the course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing that I enrolled in a couple of months ago.
  • Other affiliate income sources – $16 – Less than the $37 I made last month
  • Mediavine Ad Network – $6,179. Wow, 29% up compared to the $4,800 I made in November:-)

Grand total – $7,076 That’s a 35% increase compared to November. AND my first ever month above $7,000! I had my first ever month over $5,000 last month. This is truly super cool for me!

Blog Expenses December2016

  • Boardbooster – $10. I love Boardbooster for pinning to Pinterest and bumped up my allowed pins per month, so now I pay $10 per month instead of $5. If you haven’t given it a shot yet, please do! It is FREE to try out.
  • Aweber (email service) – $29.99 (Still considering other alternatives – maybe ConvertKit – what do you think..?)
  • Sucuri for website protection – $16.66 per month (I paid for a full year immediately during spring, $199, but count cost for 1 month each month of the year. SO. VERY. WORTH. IT.) My site hasn’t been hacked once since I started with Sucuri. (And I know that IF it would be hacked, they will help me clean it completely without any extra costs at all.
  • Cost for my new host A2, where I now splurge on a Managed VPS account – $55 (per month with all bells and whistles, 2-year contract)
  • VA services – $95
  • Elite Blog Academy – $499 This is the most expensive course I have ever invested in. It is all about making a business of your blog. I’ll write a little bit more about it below.

Total costs – $689 Superhigh expenses, but only due to the course. Otherwise a completely normal month.

Net Income in December 2016 – $6,387

First ever month with net income above $6,000. :-)

I am so happy that my affiliate earnings are increasing. I am still learning a lot from the course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing that I am taking and I have only implemented the tips and strategies on a fraction of the website. So much to do, so little time…

As you can see, though, ads through Mediavine were amazing in December. I thought they would be lower than in November, but not so! January is way lower, but that is completely expected.

My Investment in Elite Blog Academy

$499 in a blog course – is the woman insane??!! Yeah, maybe! :-) The course starts in February, so I don’t even know yet if it is good or not. I bought it because many of my blogger peers who have attended it have seen massive improvements to their blogs and earnings. And since writing is my passion, I really want to make something out it. The best I possibly can. If I understand correctly, the course will take me on an intensive journey with lots of work during spring. I am already receiving prep emails with things to think through. I think this will be good. But it will definitely take commitment from my side. Would you like to follow my journey? I’d love that! I’ll report in these income reports during spring.

Now, let’s have a look at traffic numbers and finally RPM for the month.

Blog Traffic December 2016

Here are some screenshots from Google Analytics to show my traffic for December 2016.
december 2016 blog trafficPin

Page views were up compared to November; from 472,155 to 541,413 – first time I am over half a million page views! Quite surprising, since December is usually a weak traffic month for me. Google traffic increased by 5% and Pinterest traffic was up by 96%! My direct traffic also increased, so overall people came visiting my website more than ever before. Wonderful!

(If you are one of my new friends – welcome! If you are a returning reader – I love ya! :-) )

I believe that all the steps I am taking to improve my presence on Pinterest (through this course), sharpen my SEO even more (here’s a good course for that!) and being more active in the blog community overall hopefully contributed. Now the “only” things left are email marketing and Instagram. And a million other things…

I’d love to have you come with me on my Pinterest journey, that started from scratch in late spring 2016. Follow me on Pinterest here!

You can see my traffic sources here below.

december 2016 blog traffic sourcesPin

Now putting all this together and calculating RPM (revenue per 1000 page views)…

Grand RPM is $13.1

This is a nice improvement compared to the $11.1 in November. It is almost a seven times increase compared to January 2016. I am doing something right! :-) BUT comparing December with January is totally unfair. The real test comes next month!

That was all for my December 2016 blogging income report! I’d love to hear any thoughts you may have on this. Please share by leaving a comment below! :-)

Find all my blogging tips and income reports here.

Leave a Reply

This Post Has 9 Comments

  1. Empowee

    By the way good luck with your EBA course. I am sure your blog will grow due to it.

    1. Paula @easybabylife

      Thanks! I look forward to it! Have you attended it?

      1. Empowee

        I haven’t attended it but I see it’s popular with the Pinterest ladies. I hope you plan to write a report about it

      2. Empowee

        Hi Paula, I sent you an email for a mini-interview request through your contact form because I don’t have your email address.

        1. Paula @easybabylife

          Got it, thanks! I’ll answer. :-) And yes, I will report back on EBA later on. It just started yesterday!

          1. Empowee

            Great I look forward to hearing from you. Can’t wait to get your feedback.

  2. Empowee

    Hi Paula, thanks for your income report. I have heard great things about ConvertKit, I plan to sign up in the future but for now I am testing Getresponse, it’s okay but it’s a bit too clunky, the interface looks like something that was designed in 1909 lol.

    Why are you leaving Aweber?

    1. Paula @easybabylife

      Hi! Thanks for visiting! 😀 Great to hear your thoughts about Getresponse – then at least that’s one service I won’t try. Aweber – I find it extremey user unfriendy. Creating newsletters or even webforms from their templates is a hassle if you want to customize. There just have to be better options! I hear a lot of positive views on ConvertKit but not everyone loves it. And I believe they have a good affiliate program so sometimes I worry that some reviews are a bit biased. I don’t know. Which other services have you tried?

      1. Empowee

        Hi Paula, I love MailChimp the user interface is so great and Userfriendly. However it’s not robust enough. You can’t create landing pages from it like Get response. You can’t do much segmentation and it’s not flexible enough I.e if you have 3 lists and you want to send a single campaign to all 3 you can’t do it at the same time.

        I am probably being a dramatic queen so i think you should test out GetResponse. It’s only £10 for 1,000 records and you can build landing pages with it. They also have a 30-day free trial.

        I have heard great things about active response and it’s £9 for 500 records. I would like to test it out.

        I have tested out Mailer Lite, which is very user friendly and cheap. It’s free for the first 1000 records and you can do automation for free unlike MailChimp but it’s still a growing brand and so if you use WordPress it’s best to stick to the most popular software because they have the most intergrations with plugins.