Blog Income Report January: My Eighth Month Blogging

WELCOME TO WELL AND WEALTHY‘S EIGHTH BLOG INCOME REPORT FOR JANUARY!

Yes I know I said these monthly income reports were going to become quarterly but I just could not resist!

I also realized that they gave me an excellent chance to review how the past month went (something that I was in danger of not doing…)

So maybe they will be monthly, maybe not, but you have one for January at least haha!

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And my January was busy! So read on to find out what I got up to and how my first month of the year went…

WHY AM I WRITING AN INCOME REPORT?

This blog is all about education and my journey from quitting the 9 to 5 and making a living from blogging. I want to help you guys and I figured the best way to do that is to be honest with you. Particularly about what I’m doing that works, and what I’m doing that clearly doesn’t.

The best way to detail all that out is an income report.

Now if you haven’t previously seen an income report before you’re probably a little confused as to why someone would basically reveal all their business’s finances to the world. But that’s what I love about blogging.

It’s an entire industry obsessed with being transparent and helping one another succeed. The income reports are not released to brag, they are there to help everyone see exactly how you make money blogging.

And hopefully inspire them to see that it is possible to create a sustainable, authentic business that really helps people while supporting you financially!

HOW WILL THESE INCOME REPORTS BE STRUCTURED?

They will all loosely follow the plan below:

• Any major updates
• Number of posts completed this month
• Pageviews including most popular posts
• Social media stats
• Email Subscribers
• Income
• Expenses
• Profit/Loss
• What worked and what didn’t this month?
• Quarter Action Plan

I reserve the right to change this order at a later date if it would clearly make more sense written differently haha. Also if you think I am missing a vital stat that you would really love to see me track then please comment on this post.

PREVIOUS INCOME REPORTS:

FREE First Six Months Blogging Income Report Roundup Ebook

Blog Income Report December 2017: My Seventh Month Blogging

LOOKING FOR MY MOST RECENT INCOME REPORT?

As of May 2018 all my latest income reports are shared exclusively with my subscribers! Sign up below if you want a behind-the-scenes look at how I make a full-time income from home, online!

MAJOR UPDATES

Yeah a lot happened in January!

• I hosted a super successful blogging giveaway (more on that later)
• I did a mini redesign/ rebrand

• I had my biggest ever traffic month so far
• I basically doubled my email list (thanks to that giveaway…)
• I started a second blog!

So yes, January has been majorly busy!

PAGEVIEWS

Pageviews over January 2018: 5,306 (3,630)

Sessions: 3,725 (2,527)

Bounce Rate: 75.01% (75.74%)

Average Session Duration: 01:23 (01:29)

(Numbers in brackets are last months)

I REACHED 5,000 PAGEVIEWS KJHDFJGSJHGSHDJGBJSFHBJSFGBFHJ (can you tell I’m happy about that!) I feel like at last my efforts are paying off and I’m getting somewhere!

Here is the graph showing Well and Wealthy’s pageviews since I launched on 1^st June.

THE PAGEVIEWS ARE GROWING! It’s an actual trend you can see on the graph. Oh the happiness, at freaking last!

TRAFFIC ACQUISITION

Of course social media at the top there, but I’m seeing a nice increase in organic traffic too!

You might remember that last month I found out that some Instagram traffic is counted as direct traffic thanks to a technicality that happens when people use the app on their phones (and I mean who doesn’t use Instagram on their phone…)

So I set up a campaign in Google Analytics to track that and I actually have an additional 84 sessions coming from Instagram!

That means a total of 108 session came from Instagram in January.

Now realistically that isn’t a high number, but I think it’s important that I continue to build up my Instagram account because it may be necessary if I want to start working with brands in the future…

SOCIAL MEDIA

PINTEREST:

I had some promoted pins going for the giveaway during in January but apart from that my Pinterest strategy pretty much stayed the same.

Followers: 543

(Increase of 180)

Nice increase in my follower count there thanks to the giveaway!

I’m not going to bother with the screenshots of my Pinterest account anymore because I’m just not so sure they’re useful. Instead below you can see a screenshot from my Google analytics of my Pinterest traffic and my most clicked posts from Pinterest.

I think it’s super interesting to note here that my top post on Pinterest was not my top post overall!

Okay I’m actually going to share one Pinterest screenshot. Realistically your average monthly viewers actually means very little, but it sure is nice to see that line increasing and to finally get over 200k! What’s perhaps more important is that the number of people engaging with my pins on Pinterest has increased by a whooping 94% WOO!

FACEBOOK:

I began implementing my new Facebook strategy this month and then Facebook announced they were basically killing organic reach. Because I have been looking for ways to claw back more time I decided I would pretty much not bother with Facebook, apart from sharing any new posts, until the new algorithm is fully out and people know how best to deal with it.

Facebook has a really low ROI for me so it’s just not worth focusing on right now…

Likes/Followers: 281

(Increase of 118)

Reach: 6,202

(Increase of 6,060 as I ran Facebook ads)

INSTAGRAM:

Followers: 424

(Increase of 42)

Total Posts Published: 247

Total Number of Likes: 1.2K

Average Number of Likes per Post: 44.52

Total Number of Comments: 191

Average Number of Comments per Post: 7.07

LOOKING FOR MY MOST RECENT INCOME REPORT?

As of May 2018 all my latest income reports are shared exclusively with my subscribers! Sign up below if you want a behind-the-scenes look at how I make a full-time income from home, online!

EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS

Well I think we can safely say that the giveaway worked in increasing my email subscribers!!!

Subscribers: 743

(Increased by 301)

If you want to find out exactly how I ran the giveaway and how I got 300 subscribers in 14 days just click the button below! (Just be aware the PDF hasn’t got any fancy graphics or things like that, it’s just the info, I hope you don’t mind!)FIND OUT HOW I GOT 300 SUBSCRIBERS IN 14 DAYS!!!

Newsletter Opens: 34.56%

Newsletter Clicks: 7.56%

Pretty similar figures to last month and I’m okay with that.

Some interesting news, right now I use ConvertKit as my email service provider, but I will be switching back over to MailerLite in February. Honestly the price of ConvertKit is just too high, and now I’m only a few hundred subscribers off their next tier pricing I can see that it’s not the right option for me. Especially when MailerLite can literally do everything ConvertKit can do (and a little bit more…)

EMAILS I SENT

My weekly emails were as follows:

• Giveaway is LIVE + Happy 2018!!! (Open Rate – 27.2% Click Rate – 9.4%)
• Dec Income Report is LIVE + Let’s resume our weekly chats  (Open Rate – 34% Click Rate – 8.3%)
• How I write a blog post every.single.day. ?  (Open Rate – 38.8 % Click Rate – 6.7%)
• And the winner is……..  (Open Rate – 41.5% Click Rate – 22.6%)
• ? SEO, the E stands for easy!!! ?  (Open Rate – 36% Click Rate – 5.9%)
• How to get 300 email subscribers in 14 days!!!  (Open Rate – 36.8% Click Rate – 7.5%)

INCOME

I know really this is the bit you’ve been waiting for! Also I’ve just realised that for the past fourish months I have not been using affiliate links where I thought I was, so potentially I lost a lot of sales doing that time, particularly over Black Friday/Cyber Monday… Good one Sammy…

INCOME EARNED IN JANUARY:

Blog By Number: £13.50 ($18.80)

Elegant Themes: £28.78 ($40.00)

Interact Quiz and Giveaway Builder: £12.52 ($17.40) (This is actually two months worth of earnings but I hadn’t realised I have made an affiliate sale with them until January!)

Google AdSense: £4.88

Total Income Earned in November: £59.68

Total Income Earned Since Launch: £407.63

***Want to start making money from you very own blog? Then check my tutorial on How To Set Up A Professional Blog for Profit!***

INCOME ACTUALLY RECEIVED:

The money that actually hit my bank account this month is: £58.03

In case you were interested, since I started blogging £279.82 has hit my bank account!

EXPENSES

January hit me freaking hard in the expenses, mainly from ads to be honest, from both that month and previous months!

January Expenses:

Promoted Pins: £54.86

Facebook Ads: 65.48

BoardBooster: £11.47 ($15.00)

ConvertKit: £21.67 ($29.00)

Facebook Ads Side Hustle course from Millennial Money Man: £180.58 ($247 I think)

Carly’s new affiliate marketing course (this is amazing!!!): £28.14 ($37.00)

SiteGround (second blog stuff): £22.74

iMark Intereactive (to sort out my SSL certificate: £30.71 ($42)

January Expenses Total = £415.65

PROFIT/LOSS:

Currently at an overall loss of: £1,329.61 (slightly painful to write but I’m here to be honest!)

WHAT WORKED AND WHAT DIDN’T THIS MONTH?

Well my giveaway certainly worked, hello 300 subscribers in 14 days!!!FIND OUT HOW I GOT 300 SUBSCRIBERS IN 14 DAYS!!!

Plus my redesign/ rebrand was a great success!

What didn’t work is I  have finally realized that ConvertKit is just too expensive for where I’m at in my blogging journey. So I will be switching back over to MailerLite (which can do everything ConvertKit can do but for less!)

Now I’ve taken the Facebook Ads course from Millennial Money Man I also know that my Facebook ads were bad with a capital B! But hey I got acceptable results from them so just imagine what I will be able to do now I actually know how to run them properly!

LAST MONTHS; Q1 TO-DO LIST:

Well, I thought I was only going to publish a quarterly income report from now on but that obviously didn’t happen… So I clearly didn’t get everything done in one month that I expected to in three! But I did do pretty well!

• Run a successful giveaway DONE
• Create annual content plan DONE
• Create Facebook plan after reading Strategies Worth Sharing DONE (then the new Facebook algorithm happened and ruined my fun…)
• Do redesign/rebrand!!!! DONE (well okay I still need to update all my posts but pretty close to being done!)
• Get a few months ahead with written blog posts I’M WORKING ON IT
• Start my niche blog and associated course DONE
• Create and launch my starting a blog course DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND THIS WILL NOW BE A COURSE ON EMAIL MARKETING!!!

FEBRUARY, AND POSSIBLY MARCH’S TO-DO LIST:

Am I going to write an income report next month or will I actually move to quarterly? Who knows (not me) but right now it’s looking like they might stay a monthly fixture. Either way I’ve got enough on my list to last me two months!!!

On Well and Wealthy:

• Move back to MailerLite

• Update all posts

• Complete training in the Billionaire Blog Club

• Make new freebie (relevant to email marketing course)

• Create my email marketing/ how to get ConvertKit results with MailerLite course!!!

On my second blog:

• Get seven posts published in each of my four main categories

• Create an email opt-in

• Get a good Pinterest system going

***Want to start making money from you very own blog? Then check my tutorial on How To Set Up A Professional Blog for Profit!***

As always comment below with any thoughts, questions and especially if you can think of anything that would improve the site for you or that you want me to write about!