November 2017 Blogging Income Report: My Sixth Month Blogging

Well and Wealthy is officially six months old!

So welcome to my sixth income report for November 2017.

This month has been really good. High pageviews (I think I may have finally cracked Pinterest), I made some money and got loads of new email subscribers from my first go at using paid advertising!

Plus I have an excellent long term plan coming together!!!

So 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. I am planning on doing ‘Net Worth Updates’ as well so that way you will see (hopefully) exactly how I’m making money through blogging and then how I’m managing my money, including my budget and investments. But in fairness, that’s a while off!

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?
• Month 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 or chuck me an email at [email protected]

Previous Income Reports:

Launch Day Income Report: Day 1 stats and figures

June 2017 Income Report: My First Month Blogging (I made money in my first month!!!)

July 2017 Income Report: My Second Month Blogging

August 2017 Income Report: My Third Month Blogging

September 2017 Income Report: My Fourth Month Blogging

October 2017 Income Report: My Fifth 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:

Like I mentioned above I tried out some Facebook ads and promoted pins this much, with in my opinion, great success for a first try!

I wanted to try and get to grips with them before my big giveaway in January so that I could use paid advertising to promote that.

It was also my highest traffic month yet!!! Waahooo!

Posts Completed this Month:

• October 2017 Income Report: My Fourth Month Blogging

• How to make money blogging: A beginners guide

• 10 Mistakes New Bloggers Make When Monetizing Their Blog (an awesome guest post from Krista over at Reroute Lifestyle)

• How to save money on your groceries

• An introduction to minimalism: Save money and be happier

Pageviews:

Pageviews over November 2017: 3,542 (2,461)

Sessions: 2,391 (1,652)

Bounce Rate: 73.86% (75.42%

Average Session Duration: 01:18 (01:44)

(Numbers in brackets are last months)

I finally hit 3,000 pageviews, it’s been like a secret aim of mine ever since I started and I finally did it! So massive celebrations over here!

I can pretty much attribute this to Pinterest and my new strategy, and the paid advertising I did.

Plus my bounce rate decreased which is awesome as well.

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

I love to see how many pageviews I’ve had since launch, nearly 15,000 how amazing is that!

Top Posts:

Top 5 posts this month:

The Ultimate List Of FREEBIES For Bloggers – 560 pageviews (this is where my paid advertising was sending people…)

June 2017 Income Report: My First Month Blogging – 275 pageviews

Your Blog Post Needs These 15 Things – 188 pageviews

How One Family Paid Off £111,000 Of Debt In Only 4.5 Years – 160 pageviews

10 Mistakes New Bloggers Make When Monetizing Their Blog – 148 pageviews

Top 10 posts of all time:

June 2017 Income Report: My First Month Blogging – 1,860 pageviews

The Ultimate List Of FREEBIES For Bloggers – 1,505 pageviews

Introducing Early Retirement and Financial Independence; plus the maths behind it – 1,028 pageviews

Your Blog Post Needs These 15 Things – 775 pageviews

7 Top Ways To Save Money Every Month – 417 pageviews

How One Family Paid Off £111,000 Of Debt In Only 4.5 Years – 398 pageviews

My 6 Worst Money Mistakes: I made them so you don’t have to – 355 pageviews

How to set up Google AdSense ads on your blog – 343 pageviews

The Basics of Blogging Ads: A guide to putting ads on your blog – 311 pageviews

What is a Millionaire Mindset? – 296 pageviews

Traffic Acquisition:

It’s always social media at the top, but it’s increased a lot since last month. Plus email traffic has also increased.

Every social media account had an increase referring traffic, but in fairness I was doing paid promotion on both Pinterest and Facebook. Plus when you promote on Facebook you can automatically promote on Instagram which I did.

I also joined an Instragram pod to increase engagement and connect with other bloggers so that may have helped my traffic as well.

Social Media:

Pinterest:

I feel like I did really well with Pinterest this month. I’ve developed a strategy that I feel confident with and I tried out some promoted pins with a good amount of success!

Followers: 324

(Increase of 52)

Here is my Pinterest account overview. I’m now sure the numbers relate to the last week

I’m now sure the numbers relate to the last week as I did so well on Pinterest this month, but the last week my traffic hasn’t been as high, which would explain the decreases.

Here is my reach, so the average number of people who see what I pin (93,012) and the average number of people engaged with my pins (2,828). A significant improvement on last month.

And here are the views that pins from Well and Wealthy get.

This graph shows the number of repins (or saves) that pins from Well and Wealthy get on Pinterest. A increase from 17 average daily saves by others to 30! Woohoo!

This graph shows how many times pins from Well and Wealthy are clicked taking people to the site. This is the graph I’m most concerned with. Average daily clicks have increased by 13!

Facebook:

I’m really not focusing on my Facebook page right now, just keeping it ticking over. However the Facebook ads did boost my stats a little.

Likes/Followers: 157

(Increase of 20)

Reach: 3,900

(Increase of 3,858 thanks to those Facebook ads)

Instagram:

As I mentioned earlier I joined an Instagram pod and since then my traffic from Instagram has definitely picked up! Plus the paid advertising would have definitely helped!

Followers: 332

(Increase of 61)

Total Posts Published: 185

Total Number of Likes: 963

Average Number of Likes per Post: 38.52

Total Number of Comments: 272

Average Number of Comments per Post: 10.88

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 those paid promotions worked like a charm as I go lots of lovely new email subscribers.

I also tried a Black Friday/Cyber Monday email promotion to my list. The type where you send multiple emails and actually try and sell.

Well I can report back that I didn’t like and it wasn’t particularly successful. This prompted me to completely re-evaluate my blogging business and the direction I want it to go. There will be some big changes coming up in the New Year but I haven’t got them completely ironed out just yet…But I will let you know when I do!

Subscribers: 373

(Increased by 128)

A fantastic increase there!

Newsletter Opens (excluding sales emails): 43.6%

Newsletter Opens (including sales emails): 32.45%

Newsletter Clicks (excluding sales emails): 8.03%

Newsletter Clicks (including sales emails): 4.58%

So my sales emails got a really low open and click rate and I wanted to show that. It’s one of the many reasons I just don’t think that style of income creation is right for me, at least not right now!

Automation Opens: 56.65% (decrease of 6.7%) (Ultimate Freebies and DIY Blog Audit automations)

Automation Clicks: 16.8% (decrease of 1.8%) (Ultimate Freebies and DIY Blog Audit automations)

Both my automations clicks and opens were also down, but I turned off the two-step confirmation process so I think that’s why.

In case you were wondering, I’m still completely in love with ConvertKit.

Emails I sent:

My weekly (and a few more extras ones this month) emails were as follows:

• Weekly tips, Oct Income Report and a Roadmap to Starting your Money Making Blog
• Weekly tips + Monetizing steps you MUST be doing as a NEW BLOGGER
• Things are a little bit different this week… (I was introducing the sale)
• Yasss the sale is LIVE + more deals you can shake a stick at (sales email)
• EEEK best sale ever ending soon! (sales email)
• Only a few hours left!!! AHHHHH (sales email)

Income:

A little bit more income earned so I’m very happy about that! There has not been a single month where I didn’t earn something so for that I am very thankful!

Income Earned in November:

Tailwind (Pinterest Scheduler): £11.64 ($15.73)

How To Make Your First Affiliate Sale In 24 Hours Using Pinterest from House of Brazen: £7.34 ($10.00)

Google AdSense: £4.61

Total Income Earned in November: £23.59

Total Income Earned Since Launch: £342.73

***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: £0

But that’s how it goes when you’re a newbie blogger working to make your income regular!

Expenses:

With all the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales I decided to invest in a few things that I knew I would want in the coming months. Combined with my ad spend, November was an expensive month!

November Expenses:

BoardBooster: £7.66 ($9.67)

Strategies Worth Sharing Facebook Course: £22.23 ($30.00)

Upgraded my Elegant Themes Membership: £111.93 ($125.00)

Upgraded my SiteGround hosting: £17.28

ConvertKit: £22.99($29.00)

Facebook Ads: £50.05 (I talk about whether these were worth it below in the ‘What worked and what didn’t’ section)

November Expenses Total = £232.14

(I will be paying for the promoted pins next month but they cost me £29.26 in case you were wondering)

Previous Expenses:

Hosting with SiteGround 24 months: £101.94

Divi Theme from Elegant Themes 12 months: £90.15 ($106.80)

Haute Chocolate Stock Photo Membership 6 months: £105.26 ($125.00)

Scan my Post PO Box 12 months: £15.00

Tailwind Pinterest Scheduler 12 months: £73.80 ($89.00)

Traffic Transformation eBook: £42.04 ($50.00)

How To Make Your First Affiliate Sale In 24 Hours Using Pinterest from House of Brazen: £19.92 ($25.00)

BoardBooster: £8.01 ($10.00)

The Core Affiliate Strategy: £36.72 ($46.00)

How to Blog for Profit Without Selling Your Soul: £14.74

Income Journey eBook and Email Bundle: £63.73 ($80.00)

BoardBooster: £7.94 ($10.00)

Pinteresting Strategies: £21.59 ($32.00)

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing: £136.12 ($169.00)

BoardBooster Strategy by Pot Pie Girl: £22.58 ($29.42)

Microphone Headset: £19.99 (Actually brought it in September but forgot to add it last month)

ConvertKit: £23.16 ($29.00)

Pinterest Promoted Pins course by Pinterest: £0.95 ($1.20) (Yes it really was this cheap!!!)

Total Expenses Since Launching = £1,071.99

Profit/Loss:

Currently at an overall loss of: £857.37

So what worked and what didn’t this month?

My Pinterest strategy is definitely the best it’s ever been. I’m not saying it’s the best it can be but I’m certainly heading in the right direction.

But like I said earlier I want to focus on whether the paid advertisements were worth the amount I spent on them.

Did the paid advertisements ‘work’?

The main aim of the paid advertising was to increase email subscribers. It’s difficult to put a value on subscribers but the general rule followed in the blogging world is that one subscriber equals around one dollar per month.

Therefore for the purposes of this I will assume one email subscriber will be active with me for 12 months, so each subscriber is worth $12. (I get this is very woolly but it will at least give us some idea if the ads were worthwhile.)

Facebook Ads:

I actually ran two different Facebook ads for a total cost of £50.05 which were conversions ad with the aim of getting email leads.

Ad 1 had a cost per lead (subscriber) of £2.19. It resulted in 16 leads and £35.05 spent.

Ad 2 has a cost per lead (subscriber) of £0.88. It resulted in 17 leads and £15.00 spent.

Clearly ad 2 was much better than ad 1! If ad 1 had converted as well as ad 2 I would have gained around 56 new subscribers, rather than the 33 I did get.

However according the value I put on each lead (email subscriber) both ads are profitable.

Promoted Pins:

Now the promoted pins are a little less sophisticated than Facebook ads, and you can’t choose to create an ad for conversions. Instead you have to set up an ad for traffic to the page with your email opt-in and hope people subscriber.

The total cost was £25.02 (but they have billed me £29.26 so I’m looking into that). Like with the Facebook ads I did two promoted pins, the first pin completely flopped, no one clicked on it, so there was no traffic to the page, but on the plus side I was not charged a penny.

That’s the great thing about promoted pins in comparison to Facebook ads, you aren’t charged for impressions (unless you choose to be).

Ad 2 had a cost per click of £0.14 and resulted in 184 paid clicks.

What’s good to note is that because I chose the traffic/clicks option for my promoted pins I also got 419 saves/repins free of charge. Promoted pins are the gift that keeps on giving.

But how many of those clicks resulted in email subscribers?

I tried to do a fancy Google Analytics thing to find this out but it didn’t work… Yay.

But I do know the conversion rate of people visiting my landing page to actually signing up for my freebie, which is 30.06%

That would mean around 55 people signed up assuming the average conversion rate, which I know isn’t a perfect way of doing this but right now it’s the best I’ve got.

I know I spent £25.02 on getting those 55 subscribers, so that means each conversion is estimated to have cost me £0.45.

At this point the promoted pins are far more profitable than the Facebook ads. If I had spent the £50.05 on promoted pins rather than Facebook ads I would have, on average, gained an additional 111 new subscribers. Awesome!

Plus of course, even once you have stopped promoting the pin it stays in circulation on Pinterest and can grow organically.

So to conclude, the promoted pins were more profitable for me than the Facebook ads, however right now I do not have a strong monetisation strategy in place (I have no courses available for sale or anything like that) so I won’t be profiting much at all haha!

But I would definitely use both sets of paid advertising again and I would say they really aren’t as hard as everyone says!

Lasts Month’s (November’s) To-Do List:

• Write five blog posts NOT about blogging DONE

• Create and launch an early retirement/finance freebie STARTED

• Finish confirming my giveaway prizes (yes that’s right in January I will be holding an epic giveaway!!!) DONE

• Start creating my ‘First 6 Months of Blogging’ FREE ebook NEARLY THERE (It’s done woo, but I finished it in the first week of December.)

• Continue experimenting with promoted pins DONE

• Experiment with Facebook ads DONE

• Insert pop-ups on the blog (in a non-in-your-way) DONE

• Sort out all my opt-ins on different blog posts so they are more reflective of the posts WILL BE DONE BY THE TIME YOU’RE READING THIS

I didn’t get everything done on my list but that’s okay, some things just take longer than you anticipate.

December’s To-Do List:

• Finish and release my FREE First Six Month of Blogging Income Report EBook

• Plan giveaway (including designing graphics, writing terms and condition, creating a landing page and checking the giveaway software is working)

• Set up another promoted pin for my Income Report eBook freebie

• Do further planning on my rebrand, with a particular emphasis on content and pages needing to be written in January

• Write my early retirement/finance free eBook (I’m not going to kill myself over this but I would like to get a good chunk of it done)

They are the main things I want to get done. I’m also planning on taking a good amount of time off to enjoy Christmas with my family. But below are a few others things I would like to do if I have the chance:

• Research changing themes

• Do promoted pins course

• Read through Strategies Worth Sharing Facebook course

So that’s it, my excellent November is over. December will be more focused on enjoying the holidays with friends and family and I like that I can allow my work to come in second place for a few weeks. Christmas really is the best time of year for me so it’s wonderful to have the freedom to enjoy it!

***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 or email me at [email protected] 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!