March 2020 Blog Income Report – $2,059.82 Earned from Multiple Sites
What a whirlwind March has been. My month started off fine. I went to an Income School Mastermind event in Idaho and had a fabulous time. 15 bloggers, each making at least $1,000 per month, met up to learn more about taking our blogs to the next level.
I learned so much from that event that has already started to have positive impacts in my workflow and has already resulted in extra revenue (to the tune of $35…but still).
Working From Home
With everything going on I am extremely fortunate that my “day job” is able to let us all work from home. That means, thankfully, I won’t see a reduction in my main income source during these trying times.
I realize that for others, this isn’t the case. Things are tough right now and I know it has impacted and will impact the economy as a whole. That being said, I am so grateful I started this journey when I did.
Having over $2,000 a month in EXTRA income is huge. If I were to have lost my job I could have still paid all of my bills, including rent. Now I probably would have been eating rice and beans, but I would be able to get by.
If you are thinking about becoming a blogger, the only thing I can say is the best time to start is the day you start thinking about it. Most blogs fail before they even get started because the blogger over thinks the whole process.
New This Month
In other news, there are definitely things to be excited about this month. Here are some highlights:
- Traffic is Up – Most sites are seeing increases in traffic. I am sure this is part due to them gaining organic rankings, and part due to so many people being home. The only site down is the Personal Finance site and I do have some plans for that one in April to try and ramp things back up.
- Another Blog on Premium Ads – My Pets2 site is now on Premium ads, via Ezoic, which means revenue for that site has increased significantly over last month.
- Content Warrior Challenge – I know how important content is, but sometimes I wonder if I stretch myself too thin. Part of the Project 24 Community is the Content Warrior challenge that comes up once or twice a year. It pushed me to publish 60k words, which I am proud to say I accomplished.
March Income for my Niche Sites
- Niche Site Project 1: $1,588.83 (view report)
- Niche Site Project 2: $142.80 (view report)
- Niche Site Project 3: $213.71 (view report)
- Niche Site Project 4: $114.48 (view report)
- Niche Site Project 5: $0
- Niche Site Project 6: $0
- Niche Site Project 7: $0
Total Gross Revenue for February: $2,059.82
March Expenses
- Pinterest VA – $279
- Virtual Assistant / Editor – $366.50
- Domain Names / Renewals – $111.63
- BigScoots Hosting – $56.90
- Convertkit – $128.00
- Canva – $22.90
- Manage WP – $19.71
- Microsoft Email – $6.99
- Post Planner – $12.00
- Ivory Mix – $70.00
- SEM Rush – $99.95
- Pinterest Education – $15.00
- Graphic Resources & Templates – $63.80
- Office Supplies – $72.41 (Includes Quarterly PO Box Renewal)
Total Expenses for February = $1,328.12
Net Income for February: $731.17
Keep in mind that income values are income EARNED this month, but not necessarily received this month due to the way various companies payout. Expenses, however, are the actual expenses I paid this month. While I do a simple calculation for the difference, keep in mind that it isn’t quite that simple.
March Content Creation
- Upwork – $456.43
Total Content Expenses for March – $456.43
Net Income After Content Investment – $274.74
I am still playing catch up on content which means that a majority of this content won’t be published for a month or two.
Cutting Expenses
Once again I am cutting expenses this month. As I mentioned last month, I’m switching from ConvertKit to SendFox. I have already switched one site and am mostly done with the second site.
So far I am happy with the service. It does what I need it to. You can do lists and the program still needs some refinement but it’s new and that’s to be expected. I find it way better to use than FlowDesk which I had tried to switch too.
As of the end of this month, again due to the current situation, I’ve let all of my outside help go (but not my writers). I need to regroup and reevaluate what is a necessary expense. I also need to start drawing an income from this project, which I have yet to do.
It is possible, though, that my content creation expenses will go up this month as my writers are allowed to write as much as they want, two articles at a time. One writer has reached out to ask if that offer is still valid. I said yes.
Still, the average content creation expense, not including TextGoods, is just $411.68 per month for this first quarter. Not too bad.
Income Screenshots
Here are the screenshots from the biggest income producers. I don’t bother with the smaller ones, but these give you the general idea.
Interesting Read
I am always trying to learn and improve. I genuinely love blogging and I’m kind of a nerd about wanting to do numbers, projections, tracking and analytics. As I was writing this months blog income report I stumbled across an article about analyzing blog ROI based on word count on Jon Dykstra’s Fat Stacks Blog.
This was kind of a fun calculation. It only makes sense to play with once your blog has had time to start earning but, it’s a fun number.
Basically, I took the total number of words on the site: 407,840
Then I calculated the total revenue for the last six months (because blog income is too new on this site for last 12 months to make sense): $6,392.23
Then I calculated the Revenue / 1,000 words / 6 months by doing:
$6,392.23/407.8 = $15.67
That means that the current ROI for the big site, per 1,000 words, is $31.34 per year or about $0.03 per word.
Given that I currently pay $0.02 per word for content, I can immediately see that paying for content for the site is profitable. I highly recommend that if you like numbers, you read Jon’s post.
Of course, I can have more fun with this number. If I want to earn an extra 12k this year with this blog, I can then calculate out [ ($12,000 / $31.34 ) x 1000 ] to get an estimate of how many words I need to publish to earn an extra $1k a month.
That number, based on my current site stats, is 382,897 words or 319 response posts.
Goals for March
Each of my sites has it’s own goals. Overall though, I plan on focusing on creating content primarily and Pinterest when I can after that.
Income Reports Going Forward
Going forward I’ll continue to do a single income report to sum up the months wins, fails, traffic etc. but I will no longer do monthly individual income reports for sites.
The reality is, I have too much going on to spend half a day writing up the reports and grabbing the screenshots I think they need to be helpful. I should be writing content.
I may still write up a site individually here and there, just won’t put pressure on myself to do so every month.
I think income reports like these do help newer bloggers see a pattern. So few people run multiple content sites AND share income / progress reports. Content sites are more of what most people think of when they think about blogs, not necessarily affiliate content.
That just means that as a content site producer, I’m not worried too much about Amazon and buyer intent keywords aren’t my focus. My focus writing excellent content and getting visitors to the site.
Typically, new bloggers just see the miracle I earned $1,542 my FIRST month blogging reports, and not the reality that 90% of the blogging world actually has to wait out the sandbox.
I’ll continue to post income reports for the foreseeable future because I know how important it is to see someone else succeeding doing exactly what you are doing.
If you enjoyed this content, consider buying me a coffee.
MY NICHE SITE PROJECTS
Interested in reading about my niche site projects? Check out my Niche Site Project List to see my projects & their individual status.
RESOURCES I USE
I keep an up to date list of all of the tools and resources I use to manage my blogs, including how I create the awesome dashboards in my income reports, on my Tools and Resources page.
These are my top tools:
- ClickUp – It has easily helped me 10x my productivity.
- Big Scoots Hosting – (or, alternately, SiteGround)
- Tailwind for Pinterest
- ConvertKit for Email List
- Airtable for data tracking/spreadsheets when I first started (though I use ClickUp Exclusively now)
- Project24 the main course I took to learn how to blog, and my primary blog course recommendation.
- BloggerPlot for Analytics and Search Console Analysis in one place.
- Amalinks Pro for Amazon links and awesome tables.
- OnlineJobs.ph for my Virtual Assistants
- Pinteresting Strategies Course for Pinterest
NEWSLETTER SIGNUP
If you want to be updated when I write a new blog post, use this form below. It isn’t pretty but it works :D. I promise to try to remember to email you!
