Money Propeller

Propelling you toward your money goals by discussing lifestyle, career and savings.

Progress! Blog Earnings and Stats for January

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Blog Earnings and Stats

 

I’ve been juggling which posts to put when, which is an unusual challenge for me!  This one has been ready to go for weeks now.

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.

The Strategy

Money Propeller is an experiment in “Spend money to make money.” And I am a-spending!  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 can focus on promoting the posts and developing other aspects of the blog, like the newsletter.  That time has come and gone and I am in the process of scheduling out to approximately June at the moment.

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.

I am slowly (ever so slowly) working to incorporate affiliate programs that I can stand behind and that offer you value (and bring in revenue for the site). If you have some affiliate programs that you can recommend in the personal finance space, I would be grateful.

The Earnings and Stats for January

Drumroll please…

These stats are all as of the morning of February 1, 2015.

MP - Jan DA MP - Jan PA

MP - Jan Moz MP - Jan PV

 

There were 4,535 page views in January, which is 140 per day, on average.  That’s a huge jump back up, whew!  It’s actually the best month ever for Money Propeller.  A lot of the traffic driving plans that I hadn’t been getting around to for ages, I finally got around to!  That primarily included commenting and organizing a post that created value to a lot of other folks (the Pinterest People to Follow Round Up), and some other posts that I quite liked.

The plan for February has been to focus on social media following – you should follow me on twitter @moneypropeller and on Pinterest!

(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 Dollars

This is the part that you all actually care about, I know. Here goes:

MP January Income

Woohoo!  The largest blue bar yet!  Also the largest orange bar yet, which is great, but not great enough yet.

The expenses are the red bars and the revenues are the blue bars, and they are both positive values, so that it is easy to see their size in relation to each other.

The taller the blue, the happier I am! August was a blip due to receiving funds from other bloggers who participated in a giveaway.  The site went live at the beginning of July, so December represents six months of posting and word on the street is it takes six months to make money, and it’s now starting to trickle in.  It can’t come fast enough!

January Revenue

$6.17 – CPC and CPM Advertising

$10.63 – Amazon Affiliate Earnings

$404.40 – Direct Advertising

$0  – Airbnb – A great way to travel, read about it here

$0 – Tangerine – Use my Orange Key 23676924S1 to get a $50 bonus when opening an account (until Mar 31/15)

$0 – 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

$0 – 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

$421.20 Total (Net of Paypal fees)

There is an assortment of affiliate links live on the site (PicMonkey, Fiverr, Amazon), and they are slowly starting to trickle in funds. Until the stats are higher, I expect revenues to be rather low, but here’s to the trickles turning into a flood.

If you know of any advertisers or affiliate programs who would be willing to work with the fledgling site, I would be very grateful if you could send them my way.

I also 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:

On Your Mark, Get Set, Blog!

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

January Expenses

$238.40 – Writers and VA Time

$19.99 – InLinkz annual fee

$258.39 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.  I paid for a few articles in January.  January was a bit higher due to the articles and having some annual fees, like switching to InLinkz for the Jet Fuel posts.

January Net Earnings

The big old total is $161.82.  The best month yet…but a long way from where I want to be!

MP January Total Income

It’s kind of like a yo-yo… I’m more interested in a V!

So things are looking up again.  That said, at this rate, it will take just shy of 12 months to hit zero again.  That’s much too long!

YTD Earnings
($1,944.27)

Here’s to that being a more positive number.  Perhaps per month.  Yes.  Let’s get there, shall we?

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

The big announcement has come, and On Your Mark, Get Set, Blog! is here.  This is your guide to setting up a new website and brand, quickly and efficiently, by laying out all of the information that you will need and and all of the steps in the right order.  Faster blogging.  For everyone.

I spur of the moment purchased a niche site in December, too. It isn’t entirely complete, yet, but I am now the owner of CoonHuntingClub.com (yes, you can laugh, I do).  I was able to find some writers for it, which is fantastic.  Determining a balance of spending too much on the site vs. not having sufficient content is going to be tricky, especially when my time is stretched thinly over many projects.

Interviews

The Jet Setter Interview series on Tuesdays was going well and then I dropped the ball on scheduling them.  They will return in January, as soon as I make some more graphics. Let me know if you’d like to be featured.  I am also interviewing people about their experiences with Airbnb, if you are interested!

Guest Posts

Can I guest post on your site?  Pretty please?  I’m also happy to have  you post here.  I won’t lie, it takes me a bit of time to get them together.

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 posts, if you want to read more.

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. EL @ Moneywatch101 says

    I just want to say thanks for being transparent with your earnings. Many will post vague numbers and never share where its coming from. This was fun and looking forward to you making it towards profitability. Good luck and let me know how I can help you.
    EL @ Moneywatch101 recently posted…Do you want to Be Rich?My Profile

    Reply

  18. Brian @ Debtless in Texas says

    Hi Anne,

    Excellent info here, looks like January is the start of the upswing in that V – keep it up! Having posts scheduled is a brilliant idea…lots of upfront work but will make things so much easier.

    Your site increasing in PA/DA is generally a reflection of links, perhaps you should include a link count to the metric and see how more links = more PA/DA/visits.

    Cheers!

    Reply

    • Anne says

      The rankings tend to depend on links, yes, but you never know which ones are going to “count” …so for now I stick to writing and building relationships with other bloggers. If links come, they come 🙂

      I HIGHLY recommend being scheduled out in advance. It is so, so much less stressful, and it lets me focus on one thing at a time. With all of those scheduled, I can then turn to having the VA schedule social media for all of them, for example, while I focus on other sites and commenting.
      Anne recently posted…Progress! Blog Earnings and Stats for JanuaryMy Profile

      Reply

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Money Propeller is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. Money Propeller also participates in other affiliate programs from time to time. That means that if you click through a link and make a decision to purchase, Money Propeller will receive some compensation from the vendor, at no cost to you.

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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