I put off writing this post all week because I’m so bummed at last month’s numbers. I can’t say I’m totally shocked, but I’m certainly disappointed.
My income nosedived last month, and the only silver lining is that I think I know why.
“Passive income” doesn’t work for my business. I decided to take the month of December off, and my traffic and income heavily suffered due to that decision. I was hoping my older posts would carry me through the new year, but they really didn’t.
I can sum up my feelings about this past month with the following quote: “I didn’t come this far to only come this far.”
I don’t know who said it, but they are damn right. In January of last year, I made a whopping $141.39. I’ve worked my ass of to get where I am and you can be assured I am not giving up on my blogging journey.
Let’s jump into the numbers.
Income
My income took a hit of just over 50% from last month.
| Source | Income |
|---|---|
| AdSense | $1.69 |
| Mediavine | $486.79 |
| RewardStyle | $781.76 |
| Shareasale | $6.22 |
| Amazon | $28.06 | Total | $1,304.52 |
AdSense and Mediavine are my two advertising networks. I use AdSense on this blog and my travel blog, while I use Mediavine on my interior design blog. My Mediavine Page RPM (the amount I get paid for each 1,000 pageviews) remained consistent from November to December, from $17.43 to $17.54 respectively, but due to the drop in traffic, my total Mediavine income dropped as well compared to last month.
RewardStyle sales were down, and when this happens I always look at conversion rates before jumping to conclusions.
Sure enough, my clicks and conversion were down heavily last month. I generated 2,998 clicks, which resulted in 23 sales, or a .77% conversion rate. This is down from a super high conversion rate of 1.41% last month (November).
I’m surprised Christmas sales didn’t carry me through December, but at the same time, I didn’t publish any gift guides like I did last year.
Expenses
I didn’t have any expenses this month, as I prepaid for my domain through Namecheap and my hosting plan from A2 Hosting was paid upfront.
Traffic
Traffic dropped significantly to 27,747 pageviews in December.
In the past, I would take a break from publishing, but my Pinterest queue in Tailwind was always full because I had so much content. This past month, I ran out of things to share so my pins actually stopped for the first time in a long while.
The Pinterest algorithm must take current activity into account, because my traffic took a heavy hit.
Sure enough, once I started pinning again, my traffic rose back up to normal levels.
If you’re a blogger reading this, it’s no joke: you must pin consistently!
Plans for Next Month
The good news about hitting the bottom is you can only go up from here. Last month was a wake up call for me. If I want to hit my financial goals (earning a six figure salary from blogging) I need to post and promote consistently.
How was your December income?
Love reading your income reports! I know you said your income is down this month but it is still goals for me! I made $380 last month which I was pretty happy with as I have only been blogging a few months! I am amazed at how much you make from your Mediavine ads & that’s defintiely something I’ll have to look into once I get my page views up!
Hey Coco, Congrats! It’s such a great feeling isn’t it? Yes, I would absolutely recommend working as hard as you can to get your website sessions up to around 25K so you can apply to Mediavine. Keep hustling! x