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Hey there everyone!
As some of you may know I started this little bloggy right at the beginning of the year (2016) with yarn in hand, creativity abounding, and no expectations.
It’s been 9 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”?
October 2016 Income
- Google Adsense (this month I left Adsense and joined Mediavine – see why below): $355.56
- Mediavine: $1,257.87
- Sponsored Content: $1,925
- Amazon Associates: $39.68
- Bluehost Affiliate: $130
- Beautiful Dawn Designs Affiliate: $13.50
- Infolinks (this month I left Infolinks): $43
- Etsy Pattern Sales: $386.31
- Blog Redesign: $550
- Bluehost hosting (paid for the whole year at once): $107.28
- Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course: $210
- MadMimi: $42
- Adobe Creative Cloud: $9.99
- Etsy Seller Fees: $53.67
- Supplies for blog posts: $80
*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!
October 2016 Traffic
Some screenshots from google analytics:
Pageviews for the month of September:
- I dropped Adsense and got accepted to Mediavine’s ad network. On the 14th of October I started running Mediavine ads on my site and dropped my other ad networks, Google Adsense and Infolinks. Now let’s look at the numbers:
- from the 1st-14th I earned $389.56 from these two ad networks. Not too shabby, but I had heard (and was told by the Mediavine team when I applied two weeks prior) that if accepted, my income would see a big improvement on their network.
- from the 14th-31st I earned $1257.87 from Mediavine alone. WOW. Over triple my income from the other two. I’m so glad I made the switch!
-I made the move because of the increase in pay and because Mediavine is more user/viewer friendly. Their philosophy is that less is more. I now run far fewer ads on my site and they pay more per ad placement than Adsense or Infolinks ever did, even on their best day.
-Mediavine does this by being very exclusive when matching Ad networks to influencers (bloggers like me). Not just anybody with a brand new blog will be accepted to Mediavine – they have certain requirements as far as who they bring on to their network.
-I waited to apply to their network until I had well over 100k pageviews per month and was confident I would be accepted. Adsense and Infolinks were a great place for me to start, as there is a lot less screening to become a part of their ad networks, but now that my blog is really rocking and rolling, it was time to move on!
- I put together my Start A DIY Blog tab on the top of my blog. This instructional guide will always live there in my menu bar, teaching anyone and everyone to start a blog!
-This opened the door for some affiliate marketing. Currently I am an affiliate for Bluehost and Beautiful Dawn Designs and these links are placed on my Start a DIY blog page. I’m planning on writing several other articles to go along with this page and branch out into more affiliate marketing.
- I hired Laura from Pixel Me Designs to redesign my blog. This was a decision I made months ago, as I put together the old design of my blog myself. And let me tell ya, I’m no web designer. So once I was earning enough to afford it, I reinvested in my business and I think it looks LOADS better! Don’t you?
-Laura had a waiting list, so after I signed up in the end of June, my redesign date finally came up at the end of October! This investment really racked up my expenses for the month (I won’t be spending $550 on redesign every month) but I still came out with a very profitable bottom line.
- I invested in an online marketing course. I’ll be writing much more about this in a later post, but I invested $210 this month into my own blogging education.
-I knew that I could be doing a lot more with my affiliate marketing strategies, so I signed up for Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing which is a course designed by a very successful blogger. The course helps you to understand and incorporate affiliate marketing strategies to your blog and diversify your income. It has already proved to be a worthy investment because just this month I’ve earned back my investment with just my affiliate income after applying what I learned in the course!
–CLICK HERE to check out this awesome asset to any blogger!
- I did my first Social Fabric blog posts! Social Fabric is a website that connects brands with bloggers. You go on, make a profile, and can apply to different “shoppertunities.”
-Basically a brand will list a job (like the Command Hooks brand listed a job for selling their hooks with an autumn DIY tutorial), a blogger applies for the job, and the brand chooses who among applicants to offer the job to, you can then accept or deny the opportunity. I took two shoppertunities this month that you can see HERE and HERE.
-It was so much fun to shop for supplies with a budget from the brand, create something new, and tell my readers about a product. Doing the shoppertunities brought in some extra cash and helps to push me outside my comfort zone – I probably wouldn’t have made a wreath if I weren’t working with Command Hooks!
I’ll catch you back here next month for our next Income Report!
Jessica says
How long have you been up and running? How long was it before you saw an income rather than just expenses of start up? Do you pay for AdSense? Or is it a free service? I noticed I didn’t see it under your expenses, but as I am totally new to this whole idea of blogging, I thought I would ask.
I haven’t committed to this idea yet, but as a stay-at-home home who loves to crochet and loves to surf blogs, your posts have sparked some serious interest. Why not make a bit of income while doing the thing I love to do. I have to admit, your numbers seem WAY too good to be true, and I have doubts that I would ever have a blog quite as popular as yours. That being said though, even a couple hundred bucks a month would be more than I am earning now, and it may just pay for my serious yarn addiction.
I haven’t ventured too far into the world of creating my own patterns yet, which is one thing that is holding me back a bit. But, I am sure with some practice and some motivation I could come up with some unique ideas.
Thank you for taking an interest in helping others get started! I seriously never even considered starting a blog until I came across your posts.
Looking forward to your response,
Jess
AshleighK says
Hi Jess! I started my blog in January of this year (2016), saw my first dollars (about $50 per month) in March, and by June it had increased to several hundred dollars per month. I worked on projects as I pleased while on maternity leave and posted once or twice a week during this time. So it wasn’t necessarily a full-time job but I did do a lot of research during that time on blogging, social media, and how to get viewers!
No, you don’t pay for Adsense – it’s free to use. You can apply after your site has been active for a minimum of 6 months. I had an Adsense account from years ago when I first toyed with the idea of blogging (I think I posted once or twice back then, when there wasn’t a waiting period on Adsense and never did anything else with that blog – ha!). So my account was already ready to go when I started this blog. I integrated ads in February and it slowly started making money for me.
I’m so glad I’ve got you thinking about blogging – it’s been the best choice I’ve ever made and I honestly thought when I started that if it made any money at all, that would happen years from now. Like I thought the baby I was having would be in school before this thing ever made enough money for me to work from home. Oh, how wrong I was and how blessed I am! So don’t doubt yourself – truly, anything is possible.
Even if you don’t create your own patterns yet, go ahead and start your blog. You’ll have to wait at least 6 months before you can monetize anyway and that is the perfect time to figure out what you want to blog about exactly and slowly build up some content. As far as design, I started this blog before I ever designed a single thing on my own! My first couple of posts were just versions of other patterns, or me posting about another person’s pattern I made – nothing fancy. The more you work on it and the more you crochet – it will come to you. Just put it all on the blog!
I truly believe creativity is like a muscle – the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets 😉