October 2014 Traffic and Income Report


Happy Thanksgiving! What better day to publish a blogging income report. Today I’m particularly thankful for my wife Abby. She is the hardest working, most tenacious, dedicated, and focused person I have ever met. There isn’t even a close second. At the same time she is sensitive, caring, and an amazing wife and mom. What are you thankful for today?
Before we jump into the income report you need to read this post by Lindsay from Pinch of Yum. Go there now. This income report will still be here when you’re done.
15 Ways to Avoid Blogger Burnout
I forwarded the article to Abby and she agreed with everything Lindsay said. As a husband it’s my job to support and encourage Abby. I don’t always do a great job at this but Lindsay’s article helped me understand the bloggers mindset and some of the daily struggles. The article is definitely worth a read.

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October 2014 Traffic and Income Report
This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.
Let’s get right into the numbers…
Income
- Framework eBook – $2,428
- Ad Thrive – $1,085
- Bluehost Affiliate* – $880
- Amazon Associates – $315
- Sponsored Posts (1) – $200
- Media Temple* – $160
- Evernote Essentials Affiliate* – $151
- StudioPress Affiliate* – $63
- Restored 316 Themes Affiliate* – $48
Total Income: $5,330
Expenses
- Gumroad Transaction Fees – $189
- Mailchimp* – $150
- Synthesis Hosting – $67
- Fizzle.co* – $35
- Domain Registration – $15
- Zapier – $15
- Crashplan – $14
- Viral Tag – $12
- Adobe Creative Cloud – $11
Total Expenses: $508
Net Profit: $4,822
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Income Analysis
Well that’s certainly a jump in eBook sales! Last month we barely broke $700 in sales. The reason for the increase? In October we announced that we were moving away from the Pay What You Want Pricing and to a fixed price of $24. In case you’re wondering, most of our sales occurred before the price was fixed, not after. From the chart below I’m sure you can figure out what day we moved to a fixed price.

Moving to a fixed price allowed Abby to make a few announcements to her email list as well as social media. This “buzz” always seems to drive new sales. Next month we’ll have more data to evaluate if moving to a fixed was a good business decision. I’m not so sure right now…
Speaking of the eBook…
We now have an affiliate program!
Head over to affiliate page to check out the program. We are offering 40% for every affiliate sale. I would love for you to check out the affiliate page, sign up, and go through the on-boarding process. Let me know how we can improve the process. Please leave your comments below.
After considering a few different solutions, we ultimately decided to use SendOwl to manage our affiliate program. Other services had more options but I just couldn’t take some of the ugly interfaces out there.
Unfortunately Gumroad doesn’t have a built in affiliate management system so they are going to lose some sales. Right now our affiliate partners direct traffic through their unique links to justagirlandherblog.com/framework. This new anding page uses SendOwl. The original landing page (justagirlandherblog.com/book) still uses Gumroad. They are identical otherwise.
Take a look at the payment processing on the new landing page. What do you think? We setup the system to allow for direct credit card processing (with Stripe) and a PayPal option. So far people seem to appreciate the PayPal option.
For those considering SendOwl, take a look at the beautiful dashboard:

And here’s eJunkie (don’t stare too long or your eyes will bleed):

Yes, eJunkie is a more powerful option, but so far I haven’t found anything that I wish SendOwl could do. SendOwl allows payment processing through a few different options, it integrates with Mailchimp, and provides our affiliate partners with an easy to use dashboard. If you sign up as an affiliate I’d definitely like to hear your feedback on SendOwl.
Three Legs of Blog Income
Our September blog income came from three categories:
- Product sales – $2,428 (46%)
- Ad revenue – $1,085 (20%)
- Affiliate income – $1,817 (34%)
Traffic Report

October was our best month ever for blog traffic. It’s encouraging to look back and see the steady increases over the past year:

There have been a few milestones along the way. When Abby’s blog turned a year old (January 2014) for some reason Google finally started to pay attention. We saw an immediate increase in traffic from Google. I think the Google Bots decided that Abby was posting consistently for a year and that she wasn’t going anywhere so they decided to send some love her way. This was big for us. It was about this time that Abby approached me about helping her make a little money from her blog.
This October was another big jump in traffic. It wasn’t because of any new posts but rather some big-time bloggers decided to feature some of her older posts. This should serve as a lesson… Even if a post doesn’t do well immediately, it doesn’t mean it was a dud. Sometimes a post may do nothing in the first week, then a few months later the thing blows up! This is true of Abby’s article about making labels in Microsoft Word. Abby doesn’t particularly like this post. It didn’t do particularly well the week she posted it. But then for some reason a few months later the thing absolutely blew up! It has 262 comments and 137,000 pins. We never would’ve guessed the post would do that well. Just keep publishing! You never know what will take off (even months later).
Email Subscriber Statistics
- 1,315 New Subscribers
- 11,715 Total Subscribers
RPM
RPM is a metric to track revenue per thousand pageviews. This is a measure of the overall effectiveness of the blog.
and to recap our income…
Net Income: $4,822
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
- February 2016 – $36,234
- 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
- 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.