Blog Income Report: May 2017

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This month marked a significant turning point for my blog. I pulled myself up from the doldrums of April and went flying into May! And this is the month I qualified for Mediavine!

My May 2017 Blog & Social Media Stats

• Pageviews: 68,653, up from 35,117
• Sessions: 27,741, up from 17,759
• Users: 18,681, up from 13,797
• Mailing List Subscribers: 7536, up from 6179
• Pinterest Followers: 16,441, up from 12,787
• Posts Published: 8 (best post: Easy Butterfly Card: DIY Pop-Up Tutorial)

My May 2017 Blog Income 

• Advertising Revenue: $170.13, up from 43.31 (Google Adsense and Mediavine)
• Affiliate Revenue: $64.15, down from 68.39 (Amazon Associates)
• Product Revenue: $16.15, down from $18.82 (License sale)
• Sponsored Content: $0

Total blog income: $250.43

Below is a breakdown of my monthly expenses:

• Tailwind monthly fee: $14.99
• BoardBooster monthly fee: $30
• ConvertKit: $109.64
• Plugin (Essential Grid): $20
• Etsy Fees: $2.69

Total blog expenses: $177.32

Net blog income for May 2017: $73.11

Another gain from the previous month! Hooray!

My Blog Income’s Running Total: $-905.97

My running total since starting the blog is now -905.97 (still in a deficit). I am eight months into my blog at this point and have had five months where I made money and three months where I lost money. I have spent a total of $1817.64 on my blog now.

My Blog Goals

This month my blog goals were as follows:

• Continue posting twice a week (I did it!)
• Create more freebies for my posts to build my mailing list (5 more new freebies made and released!)
• Get more serious about promoting my freebies (done!)
• Keep working through Elite Blog Academy (done!)
• Send out weekly newsletters (4 newsletters sent this month!)

Blog Lessons Learned This Month

I get out of something what I put into it. When I was putting minimal effort into my blog, I was getting minimal results. When I went all in and buckled down, amazing things happened.

This month I reached 25,000 sessions and immediately applied to Mediavine, who accepted me. Mediavine is a full-service ad network very popular with bloggers. I learned about it while network in blogging-related Facebook groups. Once I joined Mediavine, I saw my advertising income go up dramatically. I knew it would be more, but I didn’t realize that it was not just a small percentage more, but a factor of X more! It was a great boost and very encouraging to me. I love Mediavine — not just for the income, but for their customer service and attitude. They are awesome and I highly recommend them.

To make it to 25,000 sessions, I got really serious about promoting my freebies. I paid a LOT of attention to my photography to make my freebies as appealing as possible. (Learn about my blog photos here.) I consistently shared these colorful and eye-catching photos of my freebies in high-traffic and highly relevant Facebook groups (just a few big ones) to get my name out there. And I brought older visitors back with my letters to my mailing list. Here’s one of the newsletters I sent this month.

This month I began to see how my mailing list was helping me connect with my readers and making a difference. This was a big deal, and it would change my attitude about my newsletters. For example, here is an email I received this month from a reader:

“I just wanted to say thanks for doing what you do! 
When I get your emails, I look forward to opening them. 
You write them like you are one of my BFF’s and just HAVE to tell me something and I really like that. 
So many bloggers/crafters just link and send… it isn’t personal or heartfelt OR it is full of woe-is-me and it almost seems exhausting to read the emails.
I open yours to read them each and every time! 
So ya… Just a big Thanks for doing things the way you do! :)”

I also started a Patreon account toward the end of this month, at the recommendation of my daughter. She thought it would be a good way for people to support me monetarily and might help me bring in more funds. If you’re not familiar with Patreon, it is essentially a simple membership system where your fans can support you with small monthly or project-based fees (think $1-$5). Patreon is very popular with YouTubers, which is no doubt where my daughter got the idea. But it’s also used by some influencers in my niche, so I gave it a try. Several of my fans joined immediately and by the end of May I had 152 pledges (though I didn’t get the payout for it until the next month). This was a wonderful boost to my self esteem and confidence! (I know some of you may ask me if I recommend Patreon. I think it works well for some, but — spoiler alert — I realized later that I preferred to my efforts in different directions. I still have it, but I do not put effort into marketing or growing it.)

And that’s it for this month! I hope this has inspired and educated you.

Read the NEXT month’s income report or view more of my income reports here!

Love,

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