Welcome to the First Ever Start a Mom Blog Income Report!

Hey there momma’s! John here (aka Mr. Startamomblog), and I’m the guy lucky enough to pull back the curtain and share all the amazing results my beautiful wife has been working towards.

As a husband and father with a full-time job, I have struggled to get my own online projects off the ground. I KNOW it is tough, and can be demotivating. One thing that always keeps me energized is seeing the results, both good AND bad, of other people I follow and respect.

Suzi and I both want to be fully transparent with you all, because we are right there beside you.

So What Can You Expect From These Reports?

The unapologetic truth. We will dive deep into our numbers – both the $$$ as well as how the blog is doing with engagement, visitors, etc.

We also want to share some of our lessons learned throughout the month, as well as our goals for the month ahead.

In any business, you need to stop every now and then and gauge your progress.

At first, it can seem like a waste of time. Why stop for 2 hours, log into 15 different websites, search for the fine print, copy it into a spreadsheet, and start making graphs? You could spend that time networking or creating content, right?

These pauses are so important. It lets you zoom out and look at the big picture. If you keep your head down and just run full speed ahead, you’ll never know if you’re still on course or if you’ve veered off and are heading towards a cliff.

So without further ado, let’s get into it!

Major Milestones:

*This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of the links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Sound the trumpets! June marks the launch of the Blog by Number ebook! This was an inspiration for us, because it really cemented in our minds that we can do this! Blog by Number is the first paid product that we have sold online, and we were a little scared of how it would do. After all, she wrote the entire ebook in a month! We knew that we had value to share, but it was a challenge deciding how much to ask for our work.

We didn’t want to charge an arm and a leg for the book. We know a lot of you moms are looking for ways of making a side income, and asking $100 for an ebook just isn’t right by us.

Boy what a surprise the launch was! We went for a soft launch:

• Emailed our newsletter (1800 at the time). It is a great feeling emailing to your friends, and getting a PayPal notification 30 minutes later with a sale!
• Posted on a few social media groups. We didn’t go hard on this tactic, but a few groups were already aware that we were working on this project.

We received great feedback almost immediately! The sales were steady, and we would wake up in the morning and check Personal Capital (where we track all our finances), and see something like this:

For anyone who is struggling to get their first product out there, I hope this is motivating. It sure was motivating for me seeing all my wife’s work pay off immediately!

The Numbers:

So let’s get into the nitty gritty. We love using Personal Capital to manage all our finances, so I’ll include some shots from our June:

Launch week was definitely a high for us, breaking $500 of income. The next few weeks slowed down a bit, but it has never trickled out completely.

Here, “Deposits” means E-book sales. “Online Services” are the affiliate sales through Bluehost (last month before we switched) and SiteGround.

Let’s Get Down to the Details

BLOG INCOME

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Blog By Number Sales: $827.54

Siteground: $150

Other Affiliate earnings: $29.94

Total Income: $1007.48

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BLOG EXPENSES

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Affiliate Payouts: $156.70

Convertkit: $49

SendOwl: $15

Total Expenses: $220.70

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For a total profit: $786.78! Like I said before, it was amazing to see this come in so quickly. We are so grateful to everyone who bought the ebook and found real value in it! It was a big effort that is already paying off!

 

But How’s the Blog Growing?

Along with the money, we are going to report out our subscribers, page views and # comments that the blog receives every month. These are the easiest metrics to pull out of Google Analytics and WordPress, and I think it gives a good feel for how healthy and engaging the blog has been.

So let’s get to it!

New Subscribers: 1840

In June, we switched to Convertkit, and all our previous subscribers were transferred in mass. But it was still a strong month for new subscribers. Convert kit has some great tools to help find new followers and have prepopulated campaign emails to help you write amazing emails that convert!

Page Views: 15,313

It’s funny, we are consistently worried that all of a sudden traffic will fall off a cliff if we don’t stay on top of Facebook all day long. But during May, Suzi had to seriously cut her social media time down so she could focus on her book. But we still had a strong month for page views. It shows that…

New Comments: 66

Looks to me like you all had a good time chatting with Suzi this month 🙂

 

Lessons Learned

The big lesson for me as a husband is that blogging is a team sport! We had a great time pushing the babies through the neighborhood and bouncing ideas off each other to complete the book.

Suzi got into serious blog-mode during May, and I would see progress on the book every day when I came home. She would set a goal every day to knock out, and would work through the nap times and late into the night making progress.

Top Advice & Take Aways for You

If you read nothing else in this report, read this. Here is my best advice for you so you can make money from your blog too!

1. MONEY: Create a product. Even if it’s just a small printable or ebook. Offer *amazing* advice in it! Have something to sell on your site to keep you motivated to bring in traffic!
2. MONEY: Sign up for the Amazon Affiliates Program so you can start monetizing your blog from day 1. While you are working on your amazing product, read and follow the steps in this post: How to Make $1,051 in a Month.
3. TRAFFIC: Join group boards on Pinterest and use Tailwind to auto pin your posts. Once you join the right group boards, your traffic will skyrocket! *Update* I am currently tweaking my Pinterest Tailwind strategy and it’s giving me super results! I’ll post the strategy soon!
4. TRAFFIC: Guest post on sites where your audience is. When you publish great content promoting that product you created in step 1 on the right blogs, you will see results! (more to come on this topic in the July income report!)

Blog Goals

Hi there, it’s me, Suzi, the mom behind StartaMomBlog! I am so thankful that my hubby is helping me do the blog’s income reports. It’s fantastic to be a team on this side hustle and help other moms start blogs and learn how to manage their time better.

One of my big goals is to use my talents and give back to the community. But it’s difficult for me to go to a soup kitchen or community event and help, especially with a baby and a toddler that does not like to sit still. I’m much more helpful building a profitable business while the little ones sleep and donating 10% of my profits to charity. So as a way to keep me accountable, I am writing this down here publically, so you guys can keep me accountable too! 🙂 Yesterday I wrote my first check of $70 and donated it. (I still have $8 to donate according to my profit from June – so if you know someone who needs it, let me know!)

“Hi!”……New here? If this is your first time stumbling upon my site, welcome! My background is in Industrial Engineering, so I’m a huge nerd. After my first daughter was born I became a SAHM. But deep down I missed the challenges of corporate life. Of course motherhood is amazingly challenging as well, but I needed something to allow me to have a creative outlet. So I started blogging. And in my ebook & course, I share super practical advice, time-saving tips that come from Lean Six Sigma and I break down the technical side of blogging step by step. Just wanted to share a quick intro if you’re new,…. now back to the income report!

The focus for July will be on affiliate marketing. It’s been a great month launching Blog by Number and I’m glad we have a fantastic product we can share with the world now! The reviews have been so humbling. We are so thankful. And I’m so happy I can encourage other moms to join me on this amazing journey!

I plan to reinvest most of my blogging profits back into the blog. And for the month of July, I signed up for a course on affiliate marketing by Michelle from Making Sense of Cents. It is a big investment, but so worth it! *Update:* Since taking the course I’ve increased my affiliate income by 633%!

Michelle makes over $50,000 consistently with affiliate marketing with her blog every.single.month! It’s amazing. If you want to check out the course here are quick links below.

So to be completely honest with you, I have been extremely nervous to publish my income reports. I want to share with everyone the amazing progress of my blog so I can encourage other moms. But it’s super scary putting my numbers out there! What if I don’t grow next month? What if this? What if that? But I won’t let fear stop me, I can do this, and so can you!

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Update – What about July & August Income Reports?

It is now September and my income for July was $1,779.55 and for August it was $4,044.25. I needed a few months to build up my confidence before publishing these numbers. So please forgive me for only now publishing my June report. The detailed July and August income reports will be published soon! Sign up to my newsletter to be alerted when I publish them.

Since June I’ve launched the Blog by Number course designed just for moms who want to start blogs. It contains step by step videos, workbooks and special tips & motivation tailored to moms like you! Oh yes, and I’ve helped my neighbor start a blog and make $22 in her first week! Whoop whoop!

The Course Designed Just For Moms Who Want to Start a Blog

Also, if there is anything else you’d like to see in the report above, please let me know and I can include it!

And if you want more of Mr. StartaMomBlog, just let me know, I can get that handsome guy on my blog again 😉

Update 2017

Since this post is getting a lot of readers, I wanted to give another update. Below is my income graph since publishing this post. 

If you want to contribute to your family finances, have a creative outlet and start a successful blog, I’d love to teach you how in my Blog by Number course. 

You can do this. It takes time. It takes effort. It doesn’t happen overnight. But gosh, it is possible!