July Blog Income Report

Hey there mommas!

It’s John again, and I’m super excited to be able to share another income report with you all. July has been an incredible month for us, as we continue to blog online, find out what works (and what doesn’t!), and begin to see the true business potential of blogging.

Publishing income reports every month serves a few purposes for us.

• We want to inspire other moms to have confidence in themselves and take action. We are just normal people, having fun and trying to share what we know. If we can do it, we know you can too!
• These reports let us reflect on the month, what worked? what didn’t? It’s so easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. There are shiny objects everywhere trying to drag you off course. We have our own special way of keeping on course that we will share with you at the bottom 🙂
• We want to chronicle this journey so that one day our children will be able to see that anyone can be entrepreneurs, and their mom and dad started this business for them. As a corporate dad, one of my biggest fears is missing out on crucial moments in my children’s lives. We invest in this business so that we can secure our freedom, and be there for our kids always.
• If you want to learn how to start a mom blog, we’ve got the perfect tools for you to take the overwhelm and hassle out of it!
• Quick little update: this blog was launched on January 18th 2016, by October it was bringing in over $6,000 per month. We will publish a post on it very soon!

Phew, that last one got deep! But as I write this, I know it’s true. That is our compass that drives us. Yours may be different, and that’s OK! That’s the beauty of being entrepreneurs, only you can decide what direction to go.

[bctt tweet=”Be Confident and Take Action” username=”startamomblog”]

Without further adieu, let’s get to the …

THE NUMBERS

*This post contains affiliate links.

INCOME

Blog by Number ebook – $629.65
Siteground – $1,100.00
How I made $40k blogging – $49.90

Total July Income: $1,779.55

 

EXPENSES

Convertkit– $49.00
SendOwl– $15.00
Tailwind – $15.00
Affiliate Payouts – $57.44

Total July Expenses: $136.44

 

TRAFFIC TOTALS

New Subscribers: 279
Total Subscribers: 2,119
Page Views: 17,919

We use Convertkit to grow our email list. It’s simple to use and super effective. More than half of our ebook sales come from our email subscribers! The automatic drip campaigns that we set up in Convertkit brings in amazing passive income!

 

TRACKING OUR GOALS

Suzi and I are both engineers by nature, so pretty much everything we do requires a spreadsheet or graph. Why should blogging be any different!? As I mentioned above, there are distractions everywhere pulling our attention away from what matters.

To help ourselves stay focused, we sat down and set two Wildly Important Goals (WIGs): Make $10,000 per month, and have 10,000 subscribers by July 2017. They are SMART goals: specific, measurable, attainable (let’s hope!), realistic, and timebound. As we publish these reports, part of our reflection will be on if we are on track to achieve our goals.

So now the cards are on the table, so let’s see how we’ve done through July 🙂

So far we are tracking well towards our goal, but we will see as time moves on! Thank you all for all the support along the way. It’s been extremely fun, and we hope we are helping you learn this crazy world of blogging!

 

TAKEAWAYS

Hi, Suzi here! It’s so scary publishing these income reports! But I do it because I want to give you confidence that starting a blog and making money from it is possible. Even if you have little kids at home. Even if you’re a mom. Even if you’re strapped for time, you can do this. I’ve developed tons of time-saving techniques to help me manage a baby and a toddler while building a success blog from home.

Why did I start blogging? I needed to feel like more than just a mom. I needed a creative outlet for all of my passionate energy and of course, I wanted to help out with the family finances. As our family is growing, so are our expenses. I want to use my God-given talents to support my family and give back. And besides, blogging is a much more productive hobby than watching Netflix while the little ones sleep. (Even though I still do that from time to time when I need a break)

10% of profits will be donated back to the community: For those of you keeping me accountable and keeping up with the income reports, I’ll be writing a $164 check this weekend and sending it to a charity. Thank you all for making this possible!

So thank you to my hubby John for going over the numbers above. Now I’ll get a bit more detailed on the actions I took in July.

WHAT WORKED?

Posts That Worked:

I published a post that shows you how to loop your social media posts to Twitter and Facebook for free. It’s like MeetEdgar, but without the $50/month price tag. The comments on this post are insane! I created a video on my site to show users step by step how to do it. But the tutorial with screenshots are published on my guest post on Social Media Examiner.

I also published a quick how to tutorial post on how you can setup an email account that uses your domain name. So instead of being startamomblog at gmail.com, I now use suzi at startamomblog.com. It is much more professional and also prevents less of my emails going to spam folders.

Productivity:

I slowly started testing out a new productivity method using the bullet journal. Here are a few more examples. At first, I was interested in it because of the pretty doodles – but the more I read about it, the more I fell in love with the simplicity of it. I use it along with my Blog Vision Board 2.0 to manage my time effectively.

Giveaways:

At the end of July, I ran a small giveaway for 1 year of SiteGround hosting and a copy of my ebook, Blog by Number. I was mostly testing a bit how giveaways work and realized it’s not something I like doing, right now. I want to collect email subscribers by giving away amazing value, not just a chance to be in a drawing for a giveaway. Because in a giveaway only 1 person receives the value, and the rest are left empty handed. That is why I use the following method to grow my email list:

Grow My Email List:

To grow my email list I make sure to have amazing optins for each of my top 10 posts. I regularly check Google Analytics to make sure I’m optimizing my top posts. If one post is starting to gain traction, I will think of a fantastic optin for it and add it to the post. My highest converting optins are my 130 Blog Post Headlines, How to Start a Blog Guide, and optins that relate directly to the post and add to its value, like the one on my social media looping post. 

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK?

Becuase of my background in Lean, I am constantly testing new things. It’s called ‘try storming’. And I’m sure you do it too to some extent.

Failed Roundup Post:

So in July I posted a few posts that did not pick up traffic as I thought they would. One was 7 Ways to Get Out of That Mom Funk, it’s a roundup post. The pin image needs to be improved and the title too. Eek!

Popular Topic Fail:

Secondly, Pokemon was huge in July. So I tried to ride that little wave of traffic. Eh, nothing. But the only thing I lost was an hour or so of creating the post (hubby helped me with it too) Thank yo,u John! But sadly, and obviously, the post did not do that well. Maybe I should take it off?

Poor Marketing:

Then I really thought this post would do great. I use this method all the time and I think it’s a critical exercise we all need to do as moms. Because we are so easily guilted into saying yes to every request. I need to work on this post again, I like it. I want it to get more traffic.

FINAL WORDS OF WISDOM

I hope this post inspires you to have confidence in yourself and to take action.

Is it hard to make money online? No. It’s not difficult. But it does take a lot of time and dedication. If you have passion, you can make this work!

Do you need to know everything? No. Just think about this for a minute… even the most successful CEO, or well-known artist, or mompreneur did not do it all herself. All you need to know is how to do the next step or who to go to for help. You can do this!

What if you’re not technical? It helps, but it is not a necessity. Any skill can be learned. I’m not the best writer, but I blog because I want to share my passion for being able to be a mom + run a business from home + share my productivity tips. And for those times you need help, there are tons of resources and people to help you.

Need help? In my Blog by Number ebook and course I will hold your hand and show you step by step how to start a blog, especially if you need help with the technical side of it!