August 2014 Traffic and Income Report

As more and more people in my “real life” discover this blog and these income reports, the more self-conscious I get about it. I’m a no-nonsense, fairly private person. I don’t really do social media and it makes me nervous to share too much about myself. Posting income online would seem to go against all my natural tendencies. Most people would consider these income reports an excessive and unnecessary over-share.

When I start to doubt the prudence of posting blog income online I have to remind myself that it’s just money we’re talking about, people. If we’re hesitant to talk about money and income, could it be that we’ve let it define us? To some, it’s like sharing a deep, dark secret. Money is an off-limits topic.

If I ever start to feel that way I need to examine myself and make sure that I haven’t attached my self-worth to our monthly income (or lack thereof). Money is a good thing. It’s a fantastic tool. But that’s all it is.

August 2014 Traffic and Income Report

I usually don’t highlight many of Abby’s posts in these income reports, but it was a joyous occasion when I finally finished remodeling our bathroom after 12+ months! (don’t judge my procrastination) You can see the tile work below. Click on the picture for the full post.

 

(*asterisk denotes affiliate link)

Let’s get right into the numbers…

Income

• Framework eBook – $1,077
• Bluehost Affiliate* – $760
• Google Adsense – $562
• Sovrn Ad Network – $242
• MediaTemple Affiliate* – $160
• Amazon Associates – $146
• StudioPress Affiliate* – $104
• Evernote Essentials Affiliate* – $78 (residual income from one post)
• Restored 316 Themes Affiliate* – $68
• Riot Ads – $28
• Media.net Ads – $15
• Advertising.com Ads – $6
• Namecheap Affiliate* – $5
• Rivit Ads – $3

Total Income: $3,254

Expenses

• Gumroad Transaction Fees – $78
• Mailchimp* – $85
• Synthesis Hosting – $67
• Fizzle.co* – $35
• Zapier – $15
• Viral Tag – $12
• Adobe Creative Cloud – $11

Total Expenses: $303

Net Profit: $2,951

Income Analysis

Ad Networks

It is such a pain keeping track of all those ad networks! In August I tested, tweaked, and attempted to optimize our ad networks. It’s no fun, trust me. Ads aren’t really exciting to me. They’re more of a necessary evil. I’ve talked to many people who think that I should just scrap all our ads and promote our own products and affiliates with all the free space on Abby’s blog. This sounds great but I’m certain that at this point we wouldn’t come close to making up that lost $856. Maybe in the future, but certainly not now.

Another issue I had with testing various ad networks is that I had to constantly monitor the type of ads that were displayed. None were terrible but quite a few were distasteful. When I would notice this, I had to email the ad network and request it be taken down. That’s a terrible way to spend your time.

If you remember, back in July I wrote a post and presented 5 ways to monetize your blog with ads. Well as of today, we are using option number 4; managed ads. We are just at the beginning of this process but in the future you’re not going to see a list of a half-dozen ad networks. Just one.

 Framework eBook

Big news from Abby this week. Here’s the email she sent to her list:

 

We decided to fix the price of the eBook for a few reasons:

1. The average price paid seems to be dropping:
   • June – $10.25
   • July – $9.73
   • August – $11.21
   • September – $9.51
   • October (so far) – $8.01
2. An affiliate program will work best with a fixed price. 

I can’t wait to see how a fixed price and the soon-to-come affiliate program will impact sales. It will sure provide plenty of data for an interesting case study!

Three Legs of Blog Income

Our July blog income came from three categories:

1. Product sales – $1,077 (33%)
2. Ad revenue – $856 (26%)
3. Affiliate income – $1,321 (41%)

Affiliate income for the win! It’s all “how to blog” related affiliate income from her eBook readers. So while I separate out product sales and affiliate income in the breakdown above, you could argue that most of our affiliate income is a result of the product sales. It goes hand in hand. The ad revenue is the un-related distant relative.

Traffic Report

This is Abby’s best traffic month ever! It’s always exciting to hit new milestones and 250k pageviews in August was a new record. It had a lot to do with an 11 part email auto-responder series that we implemented. It helped revive lots of great old content and re-engage email subscribers. Here’s a little taste of the magic of Mailchimp:

Email Subscriber Statistics

• 2,835 New Subscribers
• 8,110 Existing Subscribers
• 10,945 Total Subscribers

RPM

RPM is a metric to track revenue per thousand pageviews. This is a measure of the overall effectiveness of the blog.

Previously I stated that my goal was to consistently break $10 RPM. Well three months in a row we’ve been above $10! Let’s see how long we can keep that up!

and to recap our income…

Click here to see a running tally of all past income reports.

P.S. If you agree with the opening section of this income report, I encourage you to leave your recent monthly income from your online endeavors in the comments below. Remember, the numbers don’t define you. I’m fully convinced that they don’t legitimize or de-legitimize what you are trying to accomplish online.