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
The beginning of the year marks the end of the shopping season. This typically results in a slowdown in affiliate income. We ramped up our advertising to combat this and it seems to have worked.
This marked another month without any sponsored blog content. January is typically slow for these opportunities, and they just aren’t our focus at this time anyway. This does not mean we don’t get opportunities for sponsored posts regularly, we just are not accepting most of them now.
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 – $150
- Retail affiliate income (Nordstrom, Shopbop, Macy’s and other affiliates. We love VigLink for beginners) – $21,240.87
- Amazon affiliate income – $1008.15
- Sponsored blog posts – $0
REVENUE EARNED FROM BLOGGING CONTENT
- HostGator (start a blog today!) – $10,500
- Studiopress – $556.20
- PicMonkey – $0.00
- Aweber – $26.90
Total Revenue – $33,455.22
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 – $9439.16
- Giveaway prizes (this falls under our marketing budget) – $150
- 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 – $9722.16
TOTAL PROFIT – $23,733.06
This is an excellent start to the new year. We are finding that we’re having to spend more on advertising to keep our earnings up. This is something that we’re always working on improving. Ideally, we wouldn’t have to spend any money on ads to make a six-figure income.
Looking forward to a good year!
If you’re feeling motivated after reading this income report, head over here to get your blog started right away!