How to Read This Income Report
Every month, we share 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 and we factor in a 10% loss for that in these reports. 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. Most income reports you see with a big number in the title is a number that comes before expenses. We feel this is misleading, so we don’t do that. 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.
On rare occasions, we will include free products in our profit line. We don’t normally include free products into our income reports unless is is 100% something that we were planning on buying anyway. In these cases, we look at it as profit because it is keeping money in our pocket. We do not count the retail price of the product, we count the amount that we were planning on paying for it- since that amount is what we saved. I hope that makes sense!
Important Happenings This Month
A big life-change is that Zack is no longer teaching as of June. His school unfortunately closed for good at the end of this year and he won’t be seeking another teaching job. He’s already been working on blog stuff basically full-time, so it’s not a huge change, but it is a loss of the only stable income we had! Losing a job shortly after buying a house could be a very, very stressful situation, but we’re not looking at it like that. It’s extra motivation for us!
Sponsored content was very light this month. No paid Instagram posts and only one blog post. We’re still trying to find our balance of focusing on other things while still trying to get a few sponsored opportunities each month.
We made a big change this month with our ads. We felt like we had been losing our handle on which ads were performing and which weren’t. Numbers were looking worse and worse, so we REALLY pulled back on our ad spend. You can see below how little we spent when compared to other months.
We’ll ramp it up next month with a more simplified approach, new ads and better tracking.
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 – $0
- Retail affiliate income (Nordstrom, Shopbop, Macy’s and other affiliates. We love VigLink for beginners) – $14,134.58
- Amazon affiliate income – $473.71
- Sponsored blog posts – $500
- Free Products (see note above) – $0
REVENUE EARNED FROM BLOGGING CONTENT
- HostGator (start a blog today!) – $5,100
- Studiopress – $727.66
- Aweber – $26.90
- Convertkit – $17.40
Total Revenue – $20,980.25
EXPENSES
- WP Engine – our current host. We outgrew HostGator and a couple of other hosts and we found the BEST one for high-traffic sites. Our site’s speed is unparalleled with WP Engine and their security and support is amazing. $65
- Aweber– the best email service for creating, building and managing email lists! – $29
- Social Media Advertising – $4,700.67
- Developer Costs – $100
- Giveaway prizes (this falls under our marketing budget) – $0
- 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 – $4,943.67
TOTAL PROFIT – $16,036.58
Very disappointing month this month. Pulling back on the ads didn’t seem to have much of an effect though. We could have been better at some Facebook boosting, but overall, I don’t think we were spending ad dollars in the best way we could.
Looking forward to turning things around in July! It’s projected to be our best month of the year with Prime Day and the Anniversary sale taking place. We’re shooting for a 6-figure month!
If you’re feeling motivated after reading this income report, head over here to get your blog started right away!