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Hey there everyone!
As some of you may know I started this little bloggy right at the beginning of last year (2016) with yarn in hand, creativity abounding, and no expectations.
It’s been exactly 1 year and 3 months since then and BOY have things changed.
Below is a breakdown of my current traffic and income here on the blog, and some factors that led me here.
Now, you may be asking yourself “Why on EARTH would she put her income and numbers out there for all the world to see? Isn’t that part of the secret sauce?”
Nope! I started this blog a short while ago and have found great success (considering how long I’ve been working on it).
I want to encourage others to blog too!
Actually I put together my 3 Easy Steps to starting your own DIY blog HERE!
In the crochet niche of the internet, I’ve found one thing to be true – lots of people crochet, but not very many are publishing new patterns and putting out content.
There is a very small group of crochet bloggers out there (spend any time on Pinterest and you’ll quickly name several) dominating the market.
And this job is not hard to do!
Let me repeat that. THIS JOB IS NOT HARD TO DO.
It took me about half an hour to set up my blog initially and although I’ve made many adjustments along the way, my blog has been earning me good money with a really basic setup.
Now what do I mean by “good money”?
March 2017 Income
- AdThrive: $2,817.47
- Sponsored Content: $1,000
- Sponsored video: $1,000
- Sponsored blog posts: $0
- Youtube: $234.98
- Amazon Associates: $27.47
- Bluehost: $1,430
- Beautiful Dawn Designs Affiliate: $60
- Etsy Pattern Sales: $584.33
- MadMimi: $42
- Adobe Creative Cloud: $9.99
- Etsy Seller Fees: $70.90
- Supplies for blog posts: $80
- New Sewing Machine: $710
- Tailwind Scheduling App: $119.88 (paid for 1 year)
*Keep in mind that not all of this money is mine forever. I am the sole proprietor of my business and will pay taxes, am responsible for my own health insurance, and other expenses that a traditional job would supply. That’s still a lot of dough for playing with yarn though!
March 2017 Traffic
Some screenshots from google analytics:
Pageviews for the month of March
Top ten traffic sources:
- AdThrive is still amazing.
- My RPM (Rate per 1000 pageviews) has increased to an average of over $10 – that’s amazing! When I left Adsense last October, I was at about $4 RPM. AdThrive is a lot less work (I don’t place the ads myself) and it’s earning me so much more money.
- I’ve also JUST gotten onboard with their video player. Basically I’ll have videos play on my site through their ad network that earns me more money per view than on YouTube (whose ads are run by Adsense). It’s complicated, but basically most of my YouTube earnings come from views just on YouTube – not the YouTube embedded video players on my site – they don’t get many views so earn very little. It’s worthwhile (or hopefully will be!) to get the AdThrive video player earning me more per precious view with embedded videos on my site. I’ve just barely gotten this going in the last couple of days of March, so no earnings to report on that yet.
- I’ve worked on YouTube videos even more this month and it’s helping my channel to continue growing. I uploaded 5 new videos this month – not an all time high, but I’m starting to restructure things to devote more time to YouTube.
- More videos to come – make sure you’re subscribed to my channel!
- I’ve earned a few more dollars here than in previous months, but YouTube is not a world of quick gratification (maybe it is if you go viral). For my niche and my videos, its a slow and steady climb to great income. I’m still at the bottom of that hill, but with time and consistent watering – this plant is sure to grow.
- Sponsored content was not really great this month. This is one of those areas that’s always changing and will never be predictable income. So even though I’m super motivated to work with sponsors, this is the time of year that it’s really not in their budget to hand out sponsorships all day long.
- I’ve got several new sponsored projects in the works now, so next month there won’t be a big goose egg here (if all goes as planned!).
- Those page view counts are less than stellar, considering the counts I’ve had over the last few months. I took a big dip in a less than ideal direction but I attribute this to a few things:
- We are embarking on the slowest part of the year. For bloggers in general, and especially crochet bloggers, I hear that now through about August the numbers are pretty dismal.
- We are moving into Quarter 2 – which automatically means a big dip is coming. Companies I usually work with are pulling back on advertising expenditures and this is the part of the year when everyone is stingy with their pennies. The populous is spending less frivolously and creative industries are seen more as a luxury than a necessity.
- With getting my new spinoff business (Happy Yarn Mail) up and running, my blog has gotten less attention than it usually would.
- All of these things combined resulted in less traffic and less moo-lah. I’ve still got enough to pay the bills, though so I’m a happy camper!
- HAPPY YARN MAIL WAS BORN! (Click HERE if you haven’t heard of HYM!) Okay, it was actually born in February, but we did our first sales on the 1st of March and sent out our first month of subscription boxes on the 25th of March.
- I’m not including those numbers here because it’s really a separate business from my blogging business.
- Although we did a limited number of boxes for our first run, it was my first time putting together a product of any sort, much less one that was as intricate as this. So let’s just say March’s box was time consuming. Like hella time consuming. Dozens of hours just in the planning phase. There were hangups with suppliers. There was time spent trying to get the legality of the business up to code. Then there was the hand packing of every single box. Done by me and my fiance (thanks Mom for watching the baby!) for hours a day right up until the ship date. We barely made it and good lordy was it a LOT of work.
- Why do I go off on this tangent even though this isn’t a HYM income report? Because I’m still a one woman show. And every aspect of my businesses are run by me. I don’t have virtual assistants or folks helping me with design or pattern writing. So when I took on HYM, that meant all of my existing blogging business took a bit of a backseat while I figured out how to run the new business. I still got videos published, blog posts up, and social media managed – but this month it all barely got done.
- So moving forward, I’m restructuring how I spend my time. I’m cutting a few things that are no longer helping to grow my brand, or I’m simply not passionate about anymore. I’m in a place now where I can’t accept every opportunity that comes my way – that’s what I’ve done for a long time and I’ve dug a hole that I can’t really see the top of anymore. Here’s to moving forward with what’s in my heart, not my email inbox!
- Almost no money from Amazon Associates this month, but as a lot of my projects have been sponsored, I don’t link to separate affiliate items on Amazon. So that’s understandable. I haven’t posted anything with their links in a while, but I don’t usually make lots of money there anyway.
- Bluehost and Beautiful Dawn Designs have continued to do well – I’m so glad you guys are taking what I write to heart and starting those blogs! If you haven’t started your blog yet, need I say more?? Click here to get started!
- Expenses were low this month, without spending much money on reinvestment in my blog, and a lot of my supplies being donated or sent for free via sponsorship collabs. I bought some craft store supplies here and there, and spent a few bucks on putting together my new workspace but all in all, little was spent.
What do you want to see from my blog in 2017? I have so many ideas up my sleeve, it’s hard not to start them all at once! Leave me a suggestion in the comments below.
If you want to quit that dead-end job and make amazing money blogging at home, check out my
FREE START A BLOG GUIDE!
Rose says
True to ‘moving with what’s in your heart’. Thumbs up, Ashleigh!
Caitie says
Thank you so much for posting this info! So helpful and encouraging for a newbie like me 🙂