Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – December 2015 (7 months of blogging!)

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blog income report

Welcome to my 7th edition of my monthly blog income report.  Each Month I will prepare a report in which I will publish all my blog statistics and income that have been generated from Cash Flow Diaries.  If you would like to see all or previous income reports of mine, you can do so here.

December was officially my 7th full month of blogging.   Finally past the half-year point of blogging and I’m really excited to see where these final months take up until I get to my 1 year mark of blogging.    Including December, Cash Flow Diaries has made a total of $996.88.   A full break down can be found below.  Isn’t that amazing?  I am almost at the $1k mark and if I continue with these stats, I should make about $1700 for my first year of blogging.  Who knows what will happen of course with the next 6 months so I’ll just keep my fingers crossed and hope it does well.  I honestly never thought the blog would be making this much money this early.   And with zero blogging experience.

I have decided that all my blog income is going toward my real estate account funds so that the money can and will be used for anything having to do with my rental properties.  Whether its making repairs or flat-out buying new ones.   To think, that one day, a long time from now of course this blog will buy me a rental property.   Ha, that is awesome!

My ultimate goal is to reach financial freedom by generating enough passive income to be able to quit my job.

Cash Flow Diaries was born on May 22nd, 2015, that is day I bought the domain name.  The remaining month of May I spent creating the first posts and making the blog ready for showing the world.  June 2015 was the first full month which I was very pleased with.

Now let’s get to the meat and bones because I know that is what you really want to see.

Startup Costs:  (Born on date – May 22,2015)
Site Purchase from Blue Host for 3 years:  $-226.08  **Affiliate link**
Logo Purchase:  $-50
Total Startup Costs:  $-276.08

  • As of September 7th,  Cash Flow Diaries has officially generated more income to cover all my total expenses and startup costs since day 1.  We are running free and clear until May 2018.    So for all you new bloggers out there, if you are wondering how long it takes for a blog to recoup all its startup costs for a 3 year plan.  It took me 3 and half months (108 days) to earn enough money to cover it all.  Initially I had thought it was going to take me a whole year to do this but the blog has really taken off in my opinion and I am definitely making more money from the blog then I ever thought, especially this early in the game.  It has not been easy at all so don’t think it is but if you want to see how I created Cash Flow Diaries, you can check out my step by step guide I created.

Income Report

Income:

Google AdSense:  $29.19

  • These are the finalized earnings from December 1st to December 31st.   Last month I made about $33 so this was a small drop.    I am completely happy with the $30 extra passive income made by the google ads.
  • In 7 months of blogging, I have now made a grand total of $263.73 from AdSense.  I am very pleased with this number.  Of course I wish it was more and hope that it only gets better but it’s not easy generating traffic to my blog.

Amazon Affiliate:  $2.78

  • Wow I almost made $3 on this one. 😉  Not much but its something.  I have not been making much money at all from this but  I’m perfectly happy with just any money being made through amazon affiliate.  Every little penny helps me reach financial freedom just a teeny bit closer.  :

Flex Offers Affiliate:  $0

  • Big fat stinking zero.   I have been averaging about $100 from my Personal Capital affiliate so I’m sad I did not get any hits on this one in December.  I’m sure you already know what this is but it’s a personal finance manager online app that aggregates all your income and expenses and provides cool graphs and charts for you.   It’s completely FREE and I find it very useful especially for tracking my net worth.

Blue Host Affiliate:  $65

  • I seem to be averaging about one blue host sign up per month and this is really helping my blog income stats. At a $65 payout per sign up this affiliate is my favorite and I hope I can get more in the future.   I know people make money with this one, Pat Flynn makes over 40k per month on his blue host sign ups.  He is crushing it!  You can see his income on my Ultimate List of Blogger Incomes and of course he is ranked #1.

Media.net Ads:  $7.23

  • This is a new ads provider that I signed up for about mid last month.  I threw some of these ads out on the blog and was able to get about $7 from them which isn’t bad.  Especially because I put them in random places on the side widget only.  So I kept my google adsense ads were they were and just added these in other places.  I am now considering swapping my adsense ads with this one to see how I come out at the end of the month.   I need to figure out which one is going to pay me more money.

So I made a total of $103.20 from blogging in December.  This is a my lowest amount made since months 1 and 2 of blogging so it is very disappointing.   I really need to figure out a way on how to make more consistent money with the blog and 2016 will hopefully be the year I figure it out.   This makes my yearly earnings to date a grand total of  $996.88.


Expenses:

$0

  • Zippety doo dah!  That is my way of saying zip, zilch, zero, nada!  🙂

 

Total Monthly Income for November, 2015:  (Income minus Expenses)

$103.20

  • I love blogging and it would be a dream if I could quit my job someday and just blog and invest in real estate.  Of course that is a dream and if it does happen, it will be because of the passive income I make from real estate, not this blog.

Blog Statistics and Traffic:

 

Dec 2015 Blog and Income Stats

Grow your net worth today with your FREE Personal Capital account.

Page Views:  11,667  (+1,239 from last month)

  • A whole 1,200 more page views then November and I made less money.  Weird huh?  Just goes to show there is no rhyme or reason on how much money can be made.  I really want to figure out how to increase my page views.  It seems I have been stuck in this 10k area for months now.  The growth has appeared to stop.   I am planning on putting more effort into the blog this year so hopefully I can experience some growth.

Subscriber Count:  75 New Subscribers   (407 total subscribers)

  • I got 75 new subscribers in December.  That is pretty darn good.  I am extremely happy with that number.  I just love getting emails when someone subscribes.   So if you want to be part of the awesome feeling I get when I get a new subscriber!! ?? Then please subscribe just by typing in your email in this little box right here.  Nice and easy.  I promise you won’t get annoyed by my posts.  🙂

Social Media Stats:

Twitter:  859 New Followers  (2,106 total followers)              Follow me

  • Last month I was raving about how I crossed the 1k mark, this month I passed the 2k mark.   The twitter growth is definitely in high gear now.   This is the most amount of new twitter followers I have gained in one month and I owe it all to Steve Miller from WeRetiredEarly.   He wrote this twitter post on how to increase followers and I have been utilizing some of his methods.  It definitely works however it does take some time.   I probably spend 15 minutes on twitter per day messing around and trying to gain more followers.  There are some twitter accounts with millions of followers which is insane.  I want that!! 😉

Facebook:  535 New Friends  (3,378 total friends)              Friend me

  • My FB friends keep increasing and I love this.  I did make extra effort in December making new friend requests though.   I would say that apart from search engine traffic, facebook is one of my biggest contributors to page views.  I only hope to continue building this as it should help the blog increase traffic.  Hopefully!

Pinterest:  812 New Followers  (8,549 total followers)       Follow me

  • My pinterest referrers are starting to get a little better and as you can see, the followers are increasing.  I started using the free trial of tailwind to see what it would do and it seems to be working a bit.  Nothing crazy though.  When my free trial runs out, I will not purchase it.   I will however continue pinning my articles and hope for the best.

 

So there you have it folks, my 7th full month blog statistics and income from a new blogger who started with zero experience.  I hope you enjoyed reading the stats.  I seem to find great pleasure in reading how other bloggers do each month.  I really love the idea of posting the monthly income report which is why I created:

The Ultimate List of Monthly Blogger Income Reports where you can view actual monthly incomes from over 40 different bloggers.

How do you think I am doing so far? Any tips or suggestions?   If you would like to receive emails on future income reports and others posts when they are released, please subscribe here:

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24 Comments

    • Thanks Brian. I was definitely dispointed with how December went but it only made me super motivated to increase those numbers for January. I am working really hard right now on figuring out how to grow bigger. Hopefully next month’s report will be much better. Thanks for the feedback. How long have you been blogging anyways?

    • Hi Gordon,

      Im using the ProMax theme. I think I paid like $18 for it and it was one of the first ones I saw. I didnt spend a ton of time looking at themes. Its been working out pretty good for me so far. I may change themes in the future if i decide to start selling a product.

    • HI Dane,

      Thanks so much! I have spent a ton of time working on the blog for sure in the past 7 months but I admit it died off during the last few months. This year though in 2016 I plan on aggressively growing the blog so I will probably be spending a lot more time on it. I already have actually just this month.

    • Ha thanks bud! Ill keep writing for sure and I really am putting more effort now to grow so hopefully we’ll see these income reports get bigger and better! 🙂

  5. This is a really thorough analysis of your stats and I must say a learned quite a bit – like the importance of social media, which for some reason, I have been unwilling to consider important, up until about a month ago. Also, your traffic stats are pretty impressive…from my point of view 😀 I’m going to look around your site some more to see if you’ve shared what worked in that department. Right now, I’m really interested in organic traffic from search engines and it’s difficult getting the ball rolling, as I am sure you are aware.

    • Thank you Fehmeen! Im really glad you are learning from my income reports. Social media is very important especially if you want to generate more traffic to your blog. I havent created a blog post just on how I do my social media but I have left random tidbits in comments and other income reports that may help you. Ultimately the key is to just keep friending/following other accounts and automating your posts to the social media sites.

      My search engine traffic has been getting better but its not amazing. It takes time and good SEO practices I think to get better at search engine traffic.

  6. Omg I’m so glad I found your blog I was thinking my blog was way behind. You’re definitely doing better than I was at month 1-2 I haven’t made any sales.

    I do want to know if you experienced any times with Media.net that your impressions didn’t earn you anything?? I’ve read other blogs that said they had issues with this.

    • Hi Laria,

      Thanks for stopping by. It’s great to compare how your blogs do with others because it motivates you to do better for sure. I have been trying hard to promote the site so I have had pretty good traffic but I want more of course! 😉

      I literally just started using Media.net at the end of December so I have not had it enough time to be able to tell how good its going to be. I have to see what happens this month before I know if its better then adsense or not. So far though, i have not experienced any issues with the impressions not earning anything. I earn at least a little bit everyday.

  7. Good to see things progressing for you. Having ups and downs is all part of growing, and that will never stop!

    The best thing I see going for you is your increase in email subscribers. That’s pretty good and would probably be even better with a couple strong lead magnets and call to actions.

    Income will follow, I’m sure. Have you considered putting out your own product? That would really boost your monthly income.

    • Hey Nathan! Having that down month definitely just made me more motivated for this month so at least I got that drive out of it! Thanks for the feedback. I have that pop up for subscribers but other then that, nothing really. I just feel bad bombarding the readers with a ton of pop ups. If you could send me some more details about the strong lead magnets or call to actions, I would appreciate that.

      I have considered making an ebook on how to buy a turnkey rental property but just havent had the time to learn about how to do it properly or to think about how I would even do it but it does make sense for me to do something like. I will keep pondering that but eventually I do need to provide some kind of product to generate some more income, youre right!

  8. While it might seem like a down month because of earnings, you still did quite well. Adding 75 new email subscribers and 2206 followers is pretty impressive! I just started trying to boost my twitter followers but haven’t even started on Facebook, that’s a whole new beast! I wouldn’t be surprised if this month or next is a new earnings record for you. Either way keep up the good work!

    • Hey CF Addict! Love your blog name by the way! And thank you for your input. The subscribers I have been getting is pretty awesome so I should not take that for granted.

      Its taken me months to try and figure out twitter/facebook and pinterest but I think I finally get it and will be able to grow all of them pretty good although right now to be honest, I am concentrating heavily on pinterest and twitter. My facebook referrers seem to be dropping and I have been reading that facebook only shows love if you pay for advertising and I refuse to do that unless I was actually selling something.

      I can tell you that so far this month in January I definitely have already made more then I made last month so I am pleased with that and I could break my record of I think $276 in one month I would be very pleased.

      Thanks!

  9. Congrats on the great stats! I must admit I’ve been blogging for over two years and you’ve added more Facebook subscribers in one month than I have total subscribers. Would you make a post outlining how you’re gaining so many followers?

    • Thanks Thomas! Haha yeah well Im sure I put a lot more effort in growing my facebook friends. One different thing that I do is that I keep it a personal profile page, I dont do a facebook blog page like most others do. I am planning on pushing out an article on how I grew my social media so fast soon so be on the lookout.

  10. You’re smashing it Alex :)!
    Congrats bro, loving how well you’re going.. What is really great to see is the engagement that you have from your audience

    If you haven’t noticed I’ve started my blog as well, would love to have you on to guest post at some stage

    Cheers!

    • Hey Jef! I really do love the engagement from the readers and other bloggers. One of the best parts of having a blog is responding to the comments. At least for me. 🙂

      I did check out your blog when you first started it but I think there was only one post, let me check again. Thanks

      • yeah definitely agree on this one Alex.. thanks for stopping by I’ll be sure to reply to your comment 😉
        looking forward to watching you continue to grow!

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