February 2016 Traffic and Income Report
It’s income report day! Each month Donnie crunches the numbers and figures out how much this blog of ours has made and how much it has cost, and we share all of our findings with you!
I know it may seem weird to see an income report on a home decor blog, and I promise we’ll be back with more home and organization posts next week! Being able to make an income from this blog has been a total game changer for us, though, so our hope is that by sharing what has worked for us and what hasn’t, we can help other people on their blogging journeys as well.
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Here’s Donnie with the numbers…
Income
This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.
- Framework eBook and course – $10,668
- Webinar Bundle – $8,698
- Bluehost – $8,645 –> How to Start a Blog
- Simplify eBook – $1,956
- AdThrive – $1,804
- Media Temple – $1,516
- Paperless Home eBook – $814
- ConvertKit – $759
- Amazon Associates – $489
- Genesis Framework – $454
- 2016 Intentional Life Planner – $410
- Restored 316 – $181
- Shay Bocks Themes – $131
- PicMonkey – $109
- Misc. Affiliate Income – $50
- Food Photography School – $30
- Fizzle.co – $27
- Pretty Darn Cute Themes – $21
Total Income: $36,234
Expenses
- Framework Affiliate Payouts – $1,495
- Design Work – $1,100
- Assistant – $623
- ConvertKit – $439 –> We We Switched from MailChimp to ConvertKit
- Creative Market – $289
- Gumroad Transaction Fees – $208
- PayPal Transaction Fees – $195
- Stripe Transaction Fees – $179
- Autopilot – $100
- Training – $97
- Instapage – $69
- Synthesis Hosting – $67
- Adobe Creative Cloud – $53
- Zapier – $49
- Meet Edgar – $49
- Wistia – $41
- Hover Domains – $26
- Flywheel Hosting – $25
- Asana – $25
- SendOwl – $24
- CloudFlare – $20
- Board Booster – $15
- BackBlaze – $10
- Google Apps – $10
- Backupify – $3
- Fizzle.co – $0 (usually $35)
February 2016 Net Profit: $31,292
February 2016 Review
February was an exciting month with lots of changes! Here are a few things we did in February:
New blog!
At the end of February Abby and I launched BuildingaFramework.com. For a while now we’ve wanted to write and post more about blogging and business, but it just never felt natural on this site besides our monthly income reports. We started the new blog as a hub for our blogging-related articles. We’ll definitely be talking more about our unique strategy with the new site in future reports.
Our most recent post is a review of the best email marketing services. We’d love for you to take a look!
New host!
We’re testing out Flywheel hosting on the new site. You can read my review of my favorite hosting companies to see how Flywheel fits in with my other hosting recommendations. We’re loving it so far! I’ve been impressed with the speed and simplicity of their service.
That being said, we have no intention of moving Just a Girl and Her Blog to a new host. It would be nearly impossible to find the same level of hosting we are getting with Synthesis for a comparable price.
As you can probably see from our list of income streams, eBooks have played an absolutely huge role in helping us monetize this blog and turn it into our full time business. Because they have been so pivotal for us, we are so excited to be putting together a course called BookBoss: Write + Launch a Profitable eBook in 90 Days or Less that will be available for pre-sale in just a few weeks!
Periscope
Do you “scope”? 🙂 Donnie and I have taken to Periscope (a live video streaming app) recently to talk about some of our favorite blogging strategies and tips, and we’d love for you to join us! You can find us at @justagirlabby , and we try to scope every Monday at 1 pm EST (as long as the Cs cooperate)! 😉
Webinars
I was thrilled to be able to do my first live webinar in February and had so much fun hanging out with so many of you and learning from the webinar master, Mariah Coz of Femtrepreneur! In fact, we loved it so much that we are planning a little webinar series of our own in the not-too-distant future, so keep an out for that via email and on the blog!
Three Legs of Blog Income
- Affiliate Income – $20,582
- Ad Revenue – $1,804
- Product Sales –$13,848
Top Posts of February 2016
- How to Organize Every Space in Your House
- Printable Student Binder
- The Konmari Method: Organizing Clothes
- 5 Reasons You’re Failing at Organization
- How to Organize a Small Closet
Traffic Report
February’s traffic stayed with the trend from the past few years– it came down significantly after a record high January, but it is still higher than it was in the months prior to January. With all of the new Pinterest changes happening recently, I’ll be interested to see what traffic numbers we’re sharing in future income reports.
Email Subscriber Statistics
- 5,950 Net New Subscribers in ConvertKit
- 62,085 Total Subscribers
It’s exciting how Abby and I continue to add thousands of new subscribers to your list every month. I appreciate ConvertKit for making that as easy as possible. In the next income report you’re going to see a huge dip in the number of total subscribers. More on that next month!
RPM
RPM is a metric to track revenue per thousand pageviews. This is a measure of the overall effectiveness of a blog and is a handy benchmark for comparing blogs even if they have vastly different traffic numbers.
February 2016 RPM: $67.96
So to recap…
Gross Income: $36,234
Net Income: $31,292
Click here to see a running tally of all past income reports.
Another month is in the books! I’m excited for all of the new projects we have rolling out in the next few months, and we look forward to sharing how they went in future reports!
As always, thank you so much for taking the time to visit the blog, follow along, and really just be the best readers EVER! You really have no idea how grateful we are for all of you. Thanks for being awesome!
You can see our other income reports here:
- December 2016- $41,700
- November 2016 – $40,124
- October 2016 – $51,803
- September 2016 – $33,659
- August 2016 – $44,940
- July 2016 – $34,721
- June 2016 – $32,913
- May 2016- $37,967
- April 2016 – $48,900
- March 2016 – $40,358
- January 2016 – $34,662
- December 2015- $20,441
- November 2015 – $23,663
- October 2015 – $17,639
- September 2015 – $18,225
- August 2015 – $17,162
- July 2015 – $18,334
- June 2015 – $26,041
- May 2015 – $10,593
- April 2015 – $13,322
- March 2015 – $13,887
- February 2015 – $11,138
- January 2015 – $13,991
- December 2014 – $5,841
- November 2014 – $4,920
- October 2014 – $5,330
- September 2014 – $3,396
- August 2014 – $3,254
- July 2014 – $2,659
- June 2014 – $6,956
- May 2014 – $1,620
- April 2014 – $894
- March 2014 – $1,010
- February 2014 – $2,446
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This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.
Your income report is amazing. It’s really great and inspiring to know that you’re making that much from blogging. Great work.
Your income report always gives me hope that making a living blogging full time iss possible. I am at the part time income range, which I never even thought possible. I always find a few new ways to earn things from your resports. Congrats on the new blog!
Hey Abby! Thanks so much for all the blogging tips! You are literally my inspiration! I hope that one day my blog can be as big as yours and I can make money off my blog too. Thanks for all the posts about blogging, and for all the encouragement you provide in your ebook, “Building a Framework”. I’m in the middle of reading it and implementing the tips in my own blog! It’s so helpful!
Aw, thank you so much, Sadie! You are TOO sweet! I’m so glad the blog posts and Building a Framework has been so helpful to you. LOVE to hear that! Have a wonderful weekend and happy blogging!
~Abby =)
Omgosh!! How exciting!! =)=) Do you ever just sit in awe sometimes when you see your own income reports?! It so amazes me that there are still some people that don’t even know what a blog is and yet there are people like you who are making more in a month than they make all year! Gotta love it! Super congrats guys!!
Wow Great job You are both so blessed to have each other . I haveas Co worker that wants to start a blog . I will be sure he sees this. Thank you for posting
Thank you so much for being transparent about where your income comes from! I’m new to the blogspace, and this is so encouraging.
happilyhillary.com
OH my god!!! Great hosting.
I so appreciate when bloggers share these reports! I also really enjoy the blogs that have a husband/wife team behind them. My husband was so supportive of me starting a blog….just did Nov/15…because he thinks there’s potential to turn it into something. If I actually showed him reports like these….he would lose his mind…LOL! Great job….I enjoy your blogging posts. Congrats on another hugely successful month!
Hi Abby, I appreciate what you and Donnie are doing on your blogs. I’ll be launching an ebook soon and it sounds like BookBoss is gonna be right on time! (I hope it’ll be affordable for me!)
Im working part-time and hoping to monetize my blog and turn it into a full-time business like u and Donnie have so brilliantly done!
You are so blessed to be able to work together, with you writing and him on the technical stuff. Admittedly, that’s one on my biggest challenges as I’m learning to write and create an effective blog while also trying to learn all the back end stuff. It gets really overwhelming and scary sometimes but you guys help me to keep forging ahead!
Bless you guys and thanks again!
Robin-
This is just amazing, and I so appreciate people like you, who help put blogging into reality for full-time income! After just launching my blog in November 2015, I am slow to start, but I have hope that it can truly become not only an outlet for my passion, but connect with others to inspire their passions as well! Keep up the good work! 🙂 – http://www.projectmatleave.com
Abby, your clear writing and generous desire to share this information is truly appreciated! I stumbled upon your blog last night and haven’t been able to stop reading! Thanks so much.
You’re too sweet, Maria! Thank you! So glad it has been helpful to you. Have a great week!
~Abby =)
Very cool that you post these! It’s encouraging to me as a new blogger.
Congrats on another amazing month!
The Pinterest changes are making life interesting, that’s for sure. Kind of glad I’m not the only one seeing a dip in traffic. It’s been a little confronting after an incredible January. What is it they say about misery and company? 🙂
I absolutely LOVE the new site. So much information, so little time!
Keep up the great work guys.
Cheers,
I just came across your blog and I just wanted to thank you both from the bottom of my heart for posting these monthly income reports. I know that is must not be that easy to put that kind of information out there like that, but reviewing all of the reports and seeing how far you have come in such a small amount of time has been very inspiring and motivating! Thank you again and keep up the good work!
Aw, thank you! So glad they have been helpful for you! Have a great weekend!
~Abby =)
Income review posts like this (and Pat Flynn’s, and others) have convinced me to finally take some control of my portfolio of sites, and to take the income side more seriously. For a long time, I’ve just built sites because I enjoy it, and because I liked an idea, and any income was a nice-to-have afterthought. I’ve now done my first income report ( https://getpostcookie.com/blog/taking-stock-february-2016-income-report/ ), and it’s been enlightening. Thanks, and please keep it up!
Abby,
This income is super impressive. I hope to some day reach your current levels of blog income. Very motivating and inspiring – keep up the awesome work!
WOW! Congratulations, this is amazing. I can’t wait to see March and April, especially with the uptick from Book Boss!
Wow! The last time I looked at your income reports was back when the amount was a third of this – and that was amazing. Now you have just gone further and further. Jaw dropping and inspiring. Congratulations. Your hard work and dedication is paying off.
Thank you so much for your encouragement– it really means a lot! Hope you’re having a wonderful week!
~Abby =)
WOW! Really so great. I m surprise very motivating and inspiring for me. Thank you so much for sharing this post.
So glad it was helpful for you, Ernestine!
~Abby =)
Hey Abby! I just wanted to drop a note and let you know that this post is featured in this article on affiliate marketing for beginners for some inspiration here: https://www.techyourblog.com/affiliate-marketing-for-beginners/
It’s so awesome to see the stats you and other bloggers share of their success. Thanks for the inspiration!