Hello spring and hello MONEY! Guys, I have no idea why but for some reason, March was my best month ever for blogging income!
Ok, I do have some idea why, but I’m still a little surprised to see the 50% jump so quickly. Making $3,000 in one month is totally surreal. Of course, it’s still not a ton of money, and certainly not enough to live on when you live in an expensive metropolitan area like I do, but I’m so proud of the progress I’ve made to get here.
If you are new here, be sure to read my first income report and my guide on how to start a blog to learn about the blogs I run for profit!
It doesn’t even feel real to me right now, and it also sets the bar pretty high for April!
So, let’s jump into my March blogging income.
Income
Here are my income figures for March in detail:
| Source | Income |
|---|---|
| AdSense | $124.11 |
| Mediavine | $582.40 |
| RewardStyle | $1,780.06 |
| ShopStyle | $560.70 |
| Amazon | $82.94 |
| Skimlinks | $0.27 |
| Shareasale | $1.20 |
| Viglink | $3.93 |
| Total | $3,135.61 |
A few people made some pretty big furniture purchases in March resulting in some high commission for me more often than usual. Now I’m just praying they don’t return those items!
I earned over 500 dollars this past month from the fashion blog project I started back in October. I decide to track those affiliate commissions using ShopStyle, to keep them separate from the home decor affiliate income which is tracked using RewardStyle.
You can see in my income chart, that the bulk of the increase was from RewardStyle and therefore the home decor blog, which I really cannot attribute to anything! I’m guessing that it’s less common for people to buy furniture in the winter, and once spring rolls around, they feel comfortable ordering stuff online again! I actually barely worked on the home decor blog in March, so I know for certain it wasn’t because of me.
I noticed that my Mediavine income has also gone way up, especially compared to the same months last year! I am really pleased that Mediavine RPMs slightly increase every year. It’s kind of like getting a small raise for the same work each year!
I’d also like to transparent with you guys that I have not yet been paid any ShopStyle income. My RewardStyle income is usually paid out around 10% less than what I report on these reports (due to delayed customer returns and commission adjustments), but I cannot say for certain what the ShopStyle figure payouts will look like. They are a reputable company though, so I’m sure things will work out and hopefully the income I’m seeing in my reports won’t drop by more than 10–15%.
In any case, there have already been many returns on some of my sales, so those figures have obviously been deducted prior to calculating my generated income for this month. I do expect the return rate to be higher just because so many fashion e-commerce retailers offer free returns, and it’s much easier to return clothes than it is furniture!
Expenses
My blogging expenses to date are:
- Domain Name: I purchased my domains from Namecheap (they have coupons)
- Hosting: I started off with Bluehost, and eventually moved to InMotion once my traffic grew enough to warrant the additional expense
- Tailwind: Tailwind is my Pinterest scheduling tool that I use with my image-heavy blogs. Tailwind has helped me successfully grow my Pinterest traffic by 4X.
- LLC: I formed my LLC without a lawyer to protect my business and personal assets
Traffic
I had my best month ever for my travel blog and I reached 15,000 pageviews during the month! I’m pushing really hard this month to get that to at least 20,000 pageviews in 30 days. I learned recently that I can actually add a second blog to Mediavine with a lower minimum pageview count, but to be honest, I’d rather just push myself to get the traffic higher now. Once I get the blog into Mediavine, I won’t work on it as often as I am now because it’ll just be another passive income stream. I need to push for traffic now so I can relax later!
How was your March blog income?