How to Read This Income Report
Every month, we will be sharing our blog’s income in posts like this one. We do this to motivate and inform you. If you’re ready to start a blog of your own, click here and follow the steps to get started.
These reports will include money earned and expenses from the given month. Some affiliate income gets adjusted due to returns, but usually by the end of the month, it’s been worked out. We also take the difference out of the next month’s affiliate income on the next report.
Also, the number you see in the title is our take-home amount after expenses. As opposed to the inflated, before expenses number that 98% of bloggers who do income reports post. Please also note that none of this money is taxed yet. We make monthly payments to the IRS based on our income and tax projections and recommend all bloggers making thousands per month do the same.
Important Happenings This Month
We expect to finish the year strongly, given that December is the biggest online shopping month of the year. Because of that, just like last month, we pulled back on the sponsored stuff to focus on retail content. We did do one sponsored post this month though, which provided a nice income boost.
December is a month that really highlights the beauty of working for yourself as a blogger (or blogger team!) We spend countless hours with family this month and were able to scale back our work hours and put in time when we wanted. We probably worked 20 hours between the two of us from December 23rd through January 2nd. It was nice to be able to pull back and just enjoy the holidays.
That being said, we plan on heading into January full-force and really making amazing things happen with regard to our blog and business.
The Report
The links below are affiliate links. When you click them and make a purchase, we earn money. Thank you so much for all of your support!
LIFESTYLE BLOGGING REVENUE
- Sponsored Instagram posts – $300
- Retail affiliate income (Nordstrom, Shopbop, Macy’s and other affiliates. We love VigLink for beginners) – $19,907.63
- Amazon affiliate income – $1177.40
- Sponsored blog posts – $700
REVENUE EARNED FROM BLOGGING CONTENT
- HostGator (start a blog today!) – $5250
- Studiopress – $176.66
- PicMonkey – $0.00
- Aweber – $26.90
Total Revenue – $27,538.59
EXPENSES
- KnownHost – We started with HostGator, but outgrew them after a few years. $55
- Aweber– the best email service for creating, building and managing email lists! – $29
- Social Media Advertising – $5672.28
- Giveaway prizes (this falls under our marketing budget) – $100
- PicMonkey – the best online image creation and editing software – $5.00
- Long Tail Pro – keyword research software that helps us show up better in Google. $25
- Optin Monster – create beautiful optin forms to collect email addresses – $9
- US Global Mail – online PO Box to use with our email service so we don’t have to use our personal address – $10
Total Expenses – $5905.28
TOTAL PROFIT – $21,633.31
What a great month to wrap up the year! We definitely could have done better in this, the biggest retail shopping month of the year. With a little more planning, next year should be even better!
We’re so excited to continue these in January and tally up an entire year’s worth of income!
If you’re feeling motivated after reading this income report, head over here to get your blog started right away!