You know what was an amazing month? December. December I made mad cash with my blog! The funny thing is, the month of January was huge for traffic, with double the page views and 10,000 more unique visitors… but I made significantly less money. It was a busy month for social media management thanks to #BringingFunkyBack, and overall I spent significantly more time working for my clients than for my own blog; so that’s reassuring when I look at the low blog income for January.

So, why did January bring mad traffic but not mad money? Firstly, we can’t forget that December is a BIG MONTH for a blog like mine. Christmas and Boxing Day promotions are a big deal for me, just like they are for the retailers I work with. On the flip side, January is a slow retail month, so I had fewer promotions to… well… promote! Additionally, my SheBlogs ad revenue was low because SheBlogs didn’t have many targeted campaigns. When there are fewer targeted campaigns, my readers are shown what are called “remnant ads,” and these pay $1 per thousand views. It’s also worth noting that in January, more than half of my readers were in the US. SheBlogs, my ad network, only shows “remnant ads” to American viewers. This has reminded me that I need to work on monetizing my US traffic better!

Why was my traffic so high in January? Two reasons: one, I hosted a Tula Giveaway! And two, I wrote a post that went kind of viral in the cloth diapering world.

January 2016

Page Views: 63,099 (almost doubled from December, which was 36,205) 

Unique Visitors: 28,329 (almost a 10k increase, from 19,759)

Income:

Affiliate Sales:

I am an affiliate for two Canadian cloth diaper shops and also for Well.ca. This income comes from people clicking through my on-site links (or social media posts) and making a purchase.

Bumbini: $0

Lagoon Baby: $17.71

Well.ca: $6.30

Total: $24.01 (Down from $39.86)

On-site Advertising:

My ads are supplied by SheBlogs Canada and by Media.net. I earn this income based on a fraction of a penny per page view. I also sell advertising at a monthly rate, and currently have two businesses that advertise monthly.

SheBlogs: $58.96 (Lower than December, despite higher page views)

Media.net: $45.46 USD/ $60 CAD (Higher as a result of higher page views)*

Monthly ads: $80

Total: $198.96 (More or less same, last month was $201.03)

*To start, I’m going to swap out my SheBlogs ads to show Media.net ads to my US readers, and we’ll see how that does for the month of March!

Sponsored Posts:

This month I did two sponsored posts.

Total: $225 (down from $1380)

Giveaways:

I charge a fee for running most giveaways. I ran one such Facebook giveaway this month.

Facebook giveaways: $50 (Down from $100)

Grand Total: $497.97 (Down by a lot compared to December, which was $1720.89)

Note that I do at times accept product in exchange for a review. I do not count this in my income because I cannot pay bills or buy household goods with a product. This month, I reviewed the Evenflo Symphony DLX car seat, Balm Baby care products, Leave Nothing But Footprints apparel, Best Bottom training pants, Skechers shoes, Bummis Potty Pants, Stonz Boots and Momzelle Nursing apparel, for a total retail value of about $900. 

Blog expenses:

It takes money (and time) to make money. These are my monthly blog expenses. For many services, you save when paying for a year or more in advance, so I’ve calculated a monthly rate when applicable. I’ve used an affiliate link for any services that offer this perk!

McAfee Anti-Virus software:  $2.91

Vault Press Website Back Up Plug in: $6.23

Web hosting by Green Geeks (3 year subscription): $8.33

PicMonkey Royal Image Editing: $3.91

Freshbooks accounting software: $24.50 

InLinkz Linky service: $1.67

This month I organized a Tula giveaway in which each blogger chips in to cover the cost of the carrier: $14

Mad Mimi Newsletter Service: $38.69 (thanks, low Canadian dollar!)**

Drop Box subscription: $9.08

Co-Schedule social media scheduler: $3.34*

** Thanks to a tip from a blogging pal, my Mad Mimi payments will now come straight from my PayPal account, where I have funds already in USD. That will make it a bit less painful…

*Thanks to many successful referrals, I saved a great deal on my annual Co-Schedule subscription last year. (In case that amount seems really low.)

Total Expenses: $113

January 2016 Gross Income (minus expenses) $385

Final thoughts:

I met my goal of reaching 25K UMVs! That said, that was just for the month of January, which was an exceptional month for traffic. I need to start capitalizing on my high US readership. I have to admit, I’m surprised to realize that higher traffic doesn’t always mean higher income.