This is a special income report to write. For the first time, I’ll be able to report the difference compared to one year ago and see what the development of my blog income has been.
When I sat there at the beginning of February 2016 and compiled my first blog income report, I was actually a bit embarrassed to publish it, because I knew my earnings were pathetic compared to my traffic. But I felt that publish reports would help me focus and also, hopefully, help other bloggers who also try to make some sort of living or at least income online. Back in January 2016, when I started these blog income reports, I made less than $800.
January 2017 is my 13th blog income report. You’ll find earlier blog income reports here.
Now, let’s see how I did with Easy Baby Life during January 2017!
Blog Income January 2017
- Amazon – $633. Last month was $881, so a decrease, of course, but hey, December is Christmas month. I am quite surprised by how well my earnings held up. To learn about affiliate marketing, check out this course, that I have been following for the past 4 months. It’s great!
- Other affiliate income sources – $32 – Double $16 I made last month
- Mediavine Ad Network – $4,156. This was a huge surprise. I expected much lower since January is generally one of the worst months for display ads earnings.
Grand total – $4,821 That’s more than 6 time higher than in January 2016. I think focusing on earnings and learning things like Pinterest and Affiliate marketing was quite a good idea, don’t you agree?
Blog Expenses January 2017
- 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 host A2, where I now splurge on a Managed VPS account – $55 (per month with all bells and whistles, 2-year contract)
- VA services – $100
- A few online classes on Instagram Marketing, Writing SKills and Canva Graphic Design. – $45 in total (I bought them on a sale.) :-)
Total costs – $257 Normal except for the online classes.
Net Income in January 2017 – $4,564
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…
I am also (almost) in love with my display ads partner – Mediavine. If (when) your blog has more than 30,000 page views per month, definitely apply to join their network!
Now, let’s have a look at traffic numbers and finally RPM for the month.
Blog Traffic January 2017
Here are some screenshots from Google Analytics to show my traffic for January 2017.
Pageviews were up almost 40,000 compared to December 2016; from 541,413 to 589,194. Not too surprising, since the last week of December is usually really low. Compared to January 2016, traffic is way up. Pageviews were 393,806 in January 2016, almost 200,000 less. I’ve seen strong growth from both Google and Pinterest.
(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, 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, which started from scratch in late spring 2016. Follow me on Pinterest here!
You can see my traffic sources here below. Pinterest was down a bit compared to December, but from what I’ve heard, Pinterest traffic in generally low in January so I hope it is temporary. Compared to January 2016, the increase is massive – from 713 page views to over 40,000. I guess I shouldn’t complain.
Now putting all this together and calculating RPM (revenue per 1000 page views)…
Grand RPM is $8.2
This is a a wonderful improvement compared to the $1.96 in January 2016. RPM more than quadrupled. Wow. It’s been an amazing year. I wonder what I can achieve this year..? Cross you fingers that I can be as happy in January 2018!
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.
Paula Dennholt founded Easy Baby Life in 2006 and has been a passionate parenting and pregnancy writer since then. Her parenting approach and writing are based on studies in cognitive-behavioral models and therapy for children and her experience as a mother and stepmother. Life as a parent has convinced her of how crucial it is to put relationships before rules. She strongly believes in positive parenting and a science-based approach.
Paula cooperates with a team of pediatricians who assist in reviewing and writing articles.
