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An Income Boost – Blog Earnings and Stats for May 2015

By Anne 15 Comments

An Income Boost!  Blog earnings and stats for May, and the lessons I learned along the way.

Oh, you want to read last month’s first?  Here’s all of the blog earnings posts.

Boarding Announcements

Money Propeller is my second blog, Unique Gifter is my first. My goal with it is to straight up make some money, while sharing what I believe is valuable information on all things money. With the goal of earning money, I am attempting to be (somewhat) strategic with how I go about this.

Online projects are my main side hustle; if that’s not your thing, there are some other ideas for you here.

The plan is to be totally transparent about everything and to let you know what is and is not working for me, so you can follow me down the path or avoid the mistakes that leave me in a burning pile of wreckage.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think of these posts, or if you have any questions you would like me to answer, or stats you feel I should include.

This post contains affiliate links.

The Strategy

Money Propeller is an experiment in “Spend money to make money.”  When I decided to launch this domain name (I have a collection, like most online hustlers), my rule for pre-launch was that I needed to have 52 posts written and scheduled. That represents six months of posting twice per week, so that I could focus on promoting the posts and developing other aspects of the blog, like the newsletter.

I have used up nearly all of those staff written posts and need to get hustling this summer to write more!

On Money Propeller I also wanted to have a bunch of different voices and perspectives, right from the beginning. Believe it or not, I don’t know everything! Other people know about topics that I don’t, like fashion, and insights into education. You can read about our authors here, and there are even more in the pipeline.

Do you want to tell your story? Give us a shout and come be our guest.

The Earnings and Stats for May

 

05 MP Pageviews

There were 7,446 page views in May, which is an average of 240 per day.  Last month had a huge traffic spike for two days, resulting in an average of 414 per day.  The growth rate is picking up nicely compared to the past few months, here’s hoping the summer traffic drops don’t hinder growth too badly.

 

Social media accounts continue to grow, which is great.

In March, I started working with Gretchen, from Retired by 40, on my Pinterest accounts. She literally wrote a book on Pinterest: Generate Traffic with Pinterest: Your Ultimate Guide to Using Pinterest as a Personal Finance, Money, or Frugality Blogger.

Followers are continuing to increase and traffic from Pinterest is growing, substantially as of late.  Look for a case study on ForProfitBlogging.com in the next few weeks.

Definitely consider picking up Gretchen’s book, Generate Traffic with Pinterest: Your Ultimate Guide to Using Pinterest as a Personal Finance, Money, or Frugality Blogger.

I’ve been using Board Booster and I love it.

It’s a Pinterest scheduling tool, that also has a “looping” feature. Looping repins things from your board, so that they get in front of new faces, and deletes the old pin so that there aren’t multiples on the board.

The scheduling tool is also awesome, you pin to a secret board and the tool then then feeds the main board from the secret board.  That means that you can schedule whatever you want, just as easily as you use Pinterest already.  There is even a 100 pin free trial.  I got hooked after that!

(PS: If you are a blogger and want a nice way to track your stats, For Profit Blogging has a free Blog Tracker available.)

The rest of the stats, like Moz, didn’t really change from last month.

The Dollars

Onto the fun stuff!

05 MP Income and Expenses

 

Best month yet!!  The big payment I talked about in April came through.  It is lovely to wake up to hundreds of dollars in your paypal account, my friends.

 

May Revenue

$13.39 – CPC and CPM Advertising  – The jump here is almost entirely due to the jump in traffic 🙂

$8.84 – Amazon Affiliate Earnings

$0.00 – Target Affiliate Earnings

$0.00 – Five Figure Writer: The email template and tips I used to earn $59k my first year of freelancing.

$221.76 – Direct Advertising

$25  – Airbnb – A great way to travel, read about it here. I checked out places in Rarotonga last night.

$0 – Tangerine – Use my Orange Key 23676924S1 to get a $25 bonus when opening an account

$378.39 – Digit – Use this app to help you save money by rounding up your transactions and saving the difference.

$0 – Vayable – Travel with personalized tour guides who are locals

$0 – Gazelle – Trade in your old electronics for cash, or buy refurbished ones for great prices.

$0 – PicMonkey – Add text to your pictures, for free!

$0 – Genesis Framework – An awesome, customizable platform for websites

$0 – Big Scoots – Web hosting that rocks

$0 – Dropbox – Free document storage and sharing, in the cloud

$0 – Rover – Pet sitting, a side hustle or an affordable way to get your pets looked after

$5 – Board Booster – 100 pin free trial – a way to repin your pins and schedule pins precisely

$0 – ViralWoot – Another free pin scheduler, and way to promote your pins

$652.38 Total (Net of Paypal fees)

I can (duh!) highly recommend that you check out the eBook I cowrote with Kathleen, on creating a brand and getting a blog up and running quickly and efficiently (and no, it doesn’t involve spending this much money on your site!):

On Your Mark, Get Set, Blog!

(Feel free to sign up as an affiliate, as well. You get half of the sales price!)

May Expenses

$211.06 – Writers and VA Time

$5.00 – Board Booster – Pinterest scheduling tool

$ 211.06 Total 

For simplicity’s sake, all of the VA costs are charged to MP, but she does work on other sites of mine as well.  If you’re curious about what she does, I’ve covered some things here.

 

May Net Earnings

$441.32

The best month yet, by a long shot!  That said, a huge chunk of this was the Digit referrals earned in April.  I’d love for that streak to continue.

05 MP Lifetime Earnings - Looking up!

Bounce! I like that trajectory!

Definitely not at zero, but if months like this could continue, it would only take 3.7 more.  Unfortunately, I don’t think that is likely at this point, especially as we head into summer.  Onward, though!

Lifetime Earnings
($1,596.39)

That’s a big jump up from last month!  It doesn’t look like this site is trending to be profitable after a year, but it should be slightly past the one year mark (which is mid July).

Don’t forget, everyone: it is absolutely possible to start a blog without spending this much!  I am funding this with past earnings from my other site.

Next Steps

 

I have a solid chunk of vacation coming up, and some hazy ideas around “write lots of posts.”  Let’s hope they come to fruition, shall we?  I might get distracted by reading books.  Worse things have happened in life, my friends.

On that note, does anyone have summer day-time activity suggestions for Toronto and surrounds?  I’m planning to hit up the aquarium and at least one matinee theatre production (we are always the youngest people there by several decades!).

Things that I *did* Do in May

I wrote this section in February, because I felt like I didn’t get much done.  I liked it, so it’s here to stay!

 

In May I finally formatted some monster staff written pieces that I have had sitting in draft mode since January.  Yes, January.  There are more in there, too!  Plus a bunch of half written posts by yours truly.  I also redid some more Pinterest images, and I put a lot of time into helping out a blogging friend with a site design overhaul.

Deplaning

Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoyed your flight! I really do appreciate you taking the time to read all of this, and I especially hope that it is helping you to learn from my wins and major losses!  It is all of you fine folks who got me started on this blogging adventure in the first place, and it really won’t go anywhere at all without you.

If you have any suggestions, again, I would love to hear from you with a quick email or comment.

Here’s all of the blog earnings and stats posts, if you want to read more.

Filed Under: Blogging, Career Tagged With: blog earnings, blog stats

About Anne

Anne dreams of financial independence and is working her way towards it, whilst still enjoying life. She has a penchant for gift giving, which got her started with her first blog, Unique Gifter. She also loves money (who doesn't?) and needed an outlet to discuss it. Her likes? Seafood, figure skating, road cycling and skater shoes.

Comments

  1. Fig @ Figuring Money Out says

    July 26, 2015 at 12:54

    That’s awesome! That amount would pay my rent for the month so it’s definitely nothing to sneeze at!
    Fig @ Figuring Money Out recently posted…Bits & PiecesMy Profile

    Reply
  2. Erik says

    July 10, 2015 at 09:46

    Excellent website that you have set up here! Best of luck to you in the future for increasing your earnings from this. 1 year in the books, I think that this next year will be much better.

    Have a great day!
    Erik
    Erik recently posted…Optimal Time AllocationMy Profile

    Reply
  3. Dan @ Our Big Fat Wallet says

    June 17, 2015 at 12:34

    Wow impressive growth. For the digit app/program, is it a 3rd party app that has access to your banking information?
    Dan @ Our Big Fat Wallet recently posted…Simple Money Rules That Are Often OverlookedMy Profile

    Reply
    • Anne says

      June 17, 2015 at 13:50

      Well… Canadians can’t get it 🙁
      In part, yes. They are connected to your savings or chequing account, and then skim little bits here and there. It’s mostly handled by text. You can get Digit savings account balance updates via text and you can also withdraw (put it back in your main account) via text.

      Reply
  4. Vanessa says

    June 17, 2015 at 11:10

    Yay Anne! Here’s to more $400 months!
    Vanessa recently posted…MAY!My Profile

    Reply
  5. DC @ Young Adult Money says

    June 16, 2015 at 21:12

    Congrats on your success in May! That’s great that you were able to get so much revenue from Digit referrals, that’s great. I think anytime you can get revenue from affiliate referrals you are doing something right. It’s an area I desperately need to work on.
    DC @ Young Adult Money recently posted…10 Ways I’ve Made Side IncomeMy Profile

    Reply
  6. Kristin says

    June 16, 2015 at 20:46

    Yippee, great job! I get so excited when I read these kinds of reports because there are sooo many ways to earn income online. Affiliate sales are awesome – congrats. I am going to check out that app! I love that you are so transparent with sharing your pageview stats. I love seeing the correlation! Congrats!!
    Kristin recently posted…Cheap Things To Do In The Summer With AdultsMy Profile

    Reply
  7. Femme Frugality says

    June 16, 2015 at 12:54

    Only because you asked, had a guest post from a travel blogger a couple of years ago about Toronto:
    http://femmefrugality.com/2012/12/seven-free-or-inexpensive-activities-for-families-visiting-toronto-a-guest-post.html

    Woot for a great May! Doesn’t matter where the money is coming from, as long as it’s coming in! Can figure out optimization for the post/links to keep it coming!

    Reply
  8. Anum says

    June 16, 2015 at 10:06

    Wow congratulations on the great month! Thank you for sharing all these tips! As a newbie blogger, I should really check out using Pinterest.

    Reply
  9. Chella says

    June 16, 2015 at 08:49

    Congratulations for work well done, and thank you for sharing these tips. they are very important for freelancers like me.
    Chella recently posted…Why It’s Worth Renting Power Tools To Save MoneyMy Profile

    Reply
  10. Jayson @ Monster Piggy Bank says

    June 16, 2015 at 05:05

    What a fantastic month you have had. April looks really good! Congrats! Good luck on the following months.
    Jayson @ Monster Piggy Bank recently posted…6 Interview Tips You Need To KnowMy Profile

    Reply
  11. Petrish @ Debt Free Martini says

    June 15, 2015 at 21:03

    I have been enjoying following your progress and thank you so much for sharing your earnings. For someone like me who is looking forward to blog for a living its always motivation to read about how other bloggers are making it happen. Thank you for the motivation.
    Petrish @ Debt Free Martini recently posted…Fab Reads of The Week of 6/7My Profile

    Reply
  12. Thomas @ i need money ASAP! says

    June 15, 2015 at 16:05

    Way to go Anne! Congrats on your biggest month yet. I’m sure there are many more of those to come. Its awesome when things start to gain momentum. It can be easy to sit back and relax a bit but this is really the time to go harder and hit that tipping point. Keep up the good work!
    Thomas @ i need money ASAP! recently posted…Blog Ideas + Start A Blog For 60% OffMy Profile

    Reply
  13. diane @smartmoneysimplelife says

    June 15, 2015 at 14:22

    I’m sure the momentum will build now and you’ll soon be in the black. I’m looking forward to the day my little blog reaches the same point.

    At the moment, the steepest curve in my blogging experience is: the learning curve! It’s all fun though. 🙂
    diane @smartmoneysimplelife recently posted…30 Day Challenge – Try Something New for 30 DaysMy Profile

    Reply
  14. Nicola says

    June 15, 2015 at 13:06

    Way to go! A great month for you 🙂 here’s to that upwards trend continuing!
    Nicola recently posted…The Weekend Edition #46My Profile

    Reply

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The Bottom

You made it all the way to the bottom! Thanks so much for reading.
Did you know that The Bottom is the name of a town on the island of Saba, in the Caribbean? I went there on a trip once.
The other bottoms I think about are my own bottom, and the bottom of the champagne bottle. Often when I find the bottom of the champagne bottle, my own bottom grows. Funny, that.

Thanks for reading!

- Anne

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