Welcome to my first 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.
I am new to the blogging scene so expect the numbers to be horrendous however I won’t let that discourage me. The main purpose of my blog is to help motivate me and others generate enough passive income to retire early. Any income made from the blog is just icing on the cake.
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 and that is what I will be showing you today.
I started with zero blog experience and have been learning as I go. I have already spent countless hours since day 1 researching, reading about blogs and how to blog as well as writing blog posts. Unfortunately I have not kept track of hours spent but I assure you it’s a lot. Probably an average of 4 to 5 hours a day. Most of this time though has been just learning how to modify, tweak and update the website to my liking and reading everything I can find on blogging. Going forward I think most of the hours will just go towards writing blog posts.
Lets get to the meat and bones.
Startup Costs: (Born on date – May 22,2015)
Site Purchase from Blue Host for 3 years: $-226.08
Logo Purchase: $-50
Total Startup Costs: $-276.08
- I will not include my startup costs in my monthly blog income reports however until I generate enough income to cover all the startup costs. I will be in the RED.
Income Report
Income:
Google AdSense: $20.05
- These are the finalized earnings from day 1 up until 06/30/2015. I will not hit the $100 minimum threshold for payout for a long time so for now, I will just calculate what is made each month. I’m actually quite surprised I even made this much. I was expecting just a few dollars so this is a good sign and I’m proud I was able to make $20 my first month ever blogging with no experience. Hopefully this will at least stay the same or better yet grow. At this rate, I can have my startup costs paid off in one year of blogging. Not too shabby I guess.
Amazon Affiliate: $0
- Wasn’t expecting to make anything from this so I feel okay about this. Not sure exactly how to generate money from Amazon quite yet but I’m randomly throwing amazon links out there on some posts where I feel good about it. No hits yet although I’ve had clicks. Not many though.
Flex Offers Affiliate: $0
- I have 2 affiliate ads from Flex Offers that I’m using however there was zero money made from these my first month.
Blue Host Affiliate: 0$
- Expectations where zero for this also being so new but I really hope I can get this one going some day. It’s a good pay out.
Expenses:
0$
- Other then my startup costs, I have spent nothing but time on the blog.
Total Monthly Income for June, 2015:
$20.05
Blog Statistics and Traffic:
Page Views: 3,994
- I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the first month was a big success for page views. I read somewhere that if you can generate 10k page views per month then that is a good blog. And since this is only my first full month, I am very happy at just under 4k page views. Yay! It has been very hard though trying to advertise the site and generate page views. I’m truly hoping this number continues to grow. I just don’t know what else I can do that I have already done to generate more traffic. I will keep researching and learning to try to increase this number.
Bounce Rate: 68.69%
- This number seems high to me. My guess is I’m not writing good enough content to keep people engaged. Need to research and work on lowering this number.
New Sessions: 80.24%
- I have no idea if this is a good number or not but this makes sense because my blog is so new, I haven’t been able to get many subscribers and return visitors just yet. Need to work on getting returning visitors for sure!
Subscriber Count: 23
- I am quite pleased with this number for the first month. Hopefully as the blog grows I can get more subscribers. Need to write better content or think of better ideas to try and get subscribers. Any suggestions?
Social Media Stats:
Twitter: 227 Followers (Follow me)
- Since the beginning of June I have spent about 15 minutes a day liking, commenting and just trying to gain new followers. I think this is a very good number for the first month. If I can grow that many each month, that would be amazing to me!
Facebook: 489 Friends (Friend me)
- Same with this one, about 15 minutes a day making friend requests, joining groups, commenting, liking and just being active. I am super happy about this number. 489 is a lot of facebook friends. Hoping the trend continues. The cool thing about facebook is it seems after the first few hundred or so, I started receiving many friend requests which is awesome!
Pinterest: 727 Followers (Follow me)
- I spend about 20 minutes a day on this one looking for good pins to add to my boards and following people hoping they follow back. I am very happy about this number as well. 727 is a lot of followers. Now I just need to make pictures that people will actually pin. It is very difficult to do this and I’m still in the learning phases on how to make really awesome pictures to go along with my posts. I’m not super creative and am not even close to being a graphic designer so it’s a big learning curve for me to do this.
So there you have it folks, the first full month blog statistics and income from a brand new blogger 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 30+ bloggers.
Do you think I did alright? How was your first month?
Nice idea on doing a blog income report! A suggestion that I have for graphics would be to use a free site called canva.com! I have had good luck with them and you can upload your own graphics to it as well.
Well done for the first month!
Thanks Steven! I appreciate it. Never thought blogging would be so time consuming. But I’m having a blast doing it! I actually just started using canva. It does seem pretty easy to use, its just a matter of being creative. For now I will be using the free images they offer but at some point, I’ll probably have to start paying for images.
Thanks for stopping by!
Managing is blog is time consuming. More so than most people realize I’m sure. However, like you, I have a blast doing it.
23 subscribers without a hook is pretty bomb. My best blog had a free e-cookbook with about a dozen recipes with step by step pictures. This seemed to be helpful for establishing authority and for building the list. People on your email list will nearly always be the most engaged on your site, and if your free product is good, they are the most likely to buy your paid products.
You’ve done well to create the blog as the centerpiece of your brand, but not the totality of it.
Your bounce rate is pretty high. I would be sure that you don’t have bots crawling your site. You might also want to consider a slightly cleaner design especially for mobile compatibility.
Hi Hannah,
Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it. I see a few bots on my site each day according to the referrers stats I have but I just dont know how to get rid of them and its typically only 1 or 2. Im not really sure how the whole bot thing works just yet.
I thought I had the site mobile friendly but apparently it might not be working anymore. Ill have to look into that, thanks for letting me know.
http://www.debtlessintexas.com/stop-blog-referral-spam/
This is one of the more straightforward posts on how to do this using google analytics. It is likely to help w/ the bounce rate.
Exactly what I needed Hannah! Working on modifying my htaccess file now. Hope I dont screw it up!! ha! Ill make a backup just in case of course. Thanks for the tip!
Congrats on a great first month and thanks again for the guest post! Networking is the key to growing a successful blog and you look like you’ve got a solid plan in place.
This is something I’m quite terrible at 😉
Cheers!
Thanks so much! I actually had the most page views in a single day I have ever had the day you featured my guest post. Was pretty awesome so thanks for that also!
Its tough to come up with good material to post on other blogs but I plan on doing it some more for sure.
Found your blog from the guest post on FI Fighter…I learned about out-of-state turnkey investing from his blog. I took the leap and bought investment property from a hybrid turnkey company I guess. I bought a foreclosure, the company will hire a contractor to renovate, and will also provide property mgmt. The guy I went with seemed to be reputable based on my research and talking to people on BP. I looked into the traditional turnkey companies and was going to go that route but the properties seemed to be in areas that weren’t that great and the numbers were just okay. I know Zillow estimates are not accurate but the price seemed over valued, but the TK companies contend that the houses they sold were completely renovated so that is why Zestimate may be off. I think even FI Fighter or some other blogger mentioned that appraisals are sometimes an issue with TK properties. In any case, the numbers you show look good and I’ll have to read more posts and look into what you’re doing as well!
Hi Andrew! Thanks for stopping by. Yeah FI Fighter has super similar investment strategies as I do and obviously we are both into purchasing turnkey properties for cash flow. For me its been working out great so far as you’ve seen in my posts.
That is awesome you are on your way too with that “hybrid” turnkey company. Would love to hear more about it. You should send me a private message at cashflowdiaries @ gmail.com
Lets talk shop!
Dude, I love your blog. Very easy to read and follow. Your theme isn’t responsive at all though, and it loads super weird on mobile devices. You might want to invest in a more responsive theme. I’m definitely going to be a regular reader. I’ll try to hit you up with your contact info soon as I’ve been wanting to get involved with rentals, but I’m very lazy and don’t have the strength to do and rehab or management.
Super good stuff man. Thanks for hitting up Retire29 and getting in touch.
Eric
Hey Eric!
Awesome! I love that you love my blog! It means a lot to me. You know youre the 2nd person to tell me about the theme thing. I’m going to fix this ASAP, hopefully today, I bet its deterring other readers from the site I would imagine.
Thanks for the advice and yes absolutely contact me when youre ready to start buying real estate. I would be more then happy to help you out, provide advice or anything. Talk to you later.
I just started blogging. A whole two weeks in lol. This is inspiring! Thanks!
Hi Tasha! Thanks for stopping by. Wow you really are brand spanking new. 2 weeks is basically a new born! 😉 Im about 7 weeks old now but it feels like months! Good luck with the blog and let me know if you need any help with it or something. Im not an expert but can at least teach you what I do know.
Congrats on a solid first month of blogging. Those are some very solid numbers. Keep it up!
Thanks so much Tawcan! I appreciate the words of encouragement. Im trying to hard to get out there for sure and will keep busting my butt.
I’d say that’s a really good month. You’re smart for implementing ads early. Sometimes people like to wait – but then the audience may get mad when they have to relearn the site a little because it has ads to navigate through/around.
Hi Will! You know that is exactly what I read also which is why I thought it would be better if I just include the ads to start off.
Thanks for checking out the stats!
Those are some pretty impressive numbers for your first month of blogging. Keep on working at it and you’ll continue to see more growth.
Hi JC! I will keep trying! It’s nothing compared to what Im seeing on the The Ultimate List of Blogger Income Reports but I hope one day to be near those guys at the top!
As a relatively new blogger, these income reports are definitely appreciated! It really helps me compare “apples to apples” as well as giving me some ideas about what I could be doing or what maybe hasn’t necessarily worked for other bloggers. Thanks so much for this!
Hi Isabel! you are very welcome! It really helps me get new ideas also seeing how other’s make money with their blogs. Its great!
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
Congrats on starting the blog, one step at a time and I’m sure you will enjoy it the entire way!
Thanks so much Even Steven! This whole blog thing has sort of changed my life already. In a good way of course! And I am looking forward to see how it all plays out in the future.
Congratz. This is very good for a start. $20 from adsense is great considering the blog is very new.
Also, for bounce rate, don’t worry too much about that. I have sites that get 80% bounce rate and also some at 50%. It doesn’t affect your organic search rankings much.
The bounce rate does not determine value. When one comes to your site and has found what they wanted in 1 single post and leaves, you have provided value.
Thanks so much Kenny! I would be happy with 20 per month but July was even better for me. I’ll be posting July stats really soon.
That is great news on the bounce rate. I wasn’t sure how to gauge that. Thanks for the info.
Hey how are you? Hope you are fine.
Wow you get income from adsense in the first month. Good going dude. I just want to ask few things.
How did adsense approce your blog with that much little traffic ?
And the second is how many posts were there in your blog ?
And finally how did you manage to bring 100 hits per day?
I just want to know that my blog is also a month and a half old but i cant get good organic traffic.
Have a look at blog.techydome.com.
Please advice how to increase traffic. Thankyou 🙂
Hi Harris! Im great man thanks for stopping by and commenting!
When I applied for adSense I just did it, I didnt look into any requirements or anything like that. I just applied and they accepted. I never told them how new my site was or anything. Maybe I got lucky?!
I had about 10 posts when I applied for Adsense.
The 100 hits a day mainly came from social media. I hit social media really hard and its been good for me on traffic. Mainly facebook.
Hey big congratulations! First month of blogging and such solid numbers! You really are doing some amazing work. You’re totally inspiring me(a newbie) to work hard and achieve as much as I can!
Thanks for the share!
Hi Priyanka,
Thank you so much. I really appreciate the feedback. Im so happy I am inspiring you. 🙂
Wow these numbers are amazing for your first month blogging! I’m wondering what was your strategy that you ended up with almost 4K pageviews – is it mostly that social media strategy you described there?
Hey Jaymee!
Yeah that first month was pretty wild and looking back, Im not really sure how I got so much traffic to start out with. I definitely did the social media stuff but I also spent a lot of time commenting on other blogs and getting my name out there. I think there was a lot of curiosity from other bloggers because I was the new guy on the block.