Welcome to my 6th 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.
November was officially my 6th full month of blogging. I am literally at the half way mark for one whole year and I am very pleased with the progress that has been made with the blog. Including November, Cash Flow Diaries has made a total of $893.68. 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 decided that all my blog income is going to be put into my real estate account funds so that the money can and will be used for anything have 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. So far I have been doing a pretty good job as I made $2450 in passive income for the month of November.
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: $32.93
- These are the finalized earnings from November 1st to November 30th. Last month I made $50, this month it went down about $17. I did have less page views then the previous month so that may explain most of this. Either way, no complaints from me. I am completely happy with the $30 extra passive income made by the google ads.
- In 6 months of blogging, I have now made a grand total of $234.54 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: $.94
- Almost one full dollar made with amazon. Not much but its something. 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: $100
- So happy about this one, I made $100 from my Personal Capital affiliate. 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.
Coaching/Mentor: $50
- Periodically a reader will contact me and wants to speak on the phone with me about investing in out of state properties. If I am up to it, I will charge anywhere from $50 to $60 per hour and I will answer any questions and give my personal advice on how to begin or who to get started with and so forth. Believe it or not, I actually get emails almost every single day about people wanting more info on how I am doing what I am doing with my real estate investing. It’s pretty cool. So anyhow, with that being said, I was contacted in November from a reader and we spoke on the phone for an hour. It was great and a win win for myself and the reader seeking info.
So I made a total of $248.87 from blogging in November. This makes my yearly earnings to date a grand total of $893.68. Awesome!!
Expenses:
Paypal: $1.75
- This was the fee paypal charged me when I was paid for the coaching I did. Other than that I had no expenses in November.
Total Monthly Income for November, 2015: (Income minus Expenses)
$247.12
- 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:
Page Views: 10,428 (-2553 from last month)
- A significant smaller amount of page views then my previous month however I made more income. So with that being said, I am perfectly happy with this and I only hope I can at least maintain this amount. Of course I want to increase it but I think I will have to get lucky in order to start a significant amount of more page views. You never know though, so let’s see what happens.
Subscriber Count: 49 New Subscribers (332 total subscribers)
- I got 49 new subscribers in November. It was not as much as I have been averaging the last few months and the only reason why I can think this happened is because I have not been writing as many posts as I was before. I know for sure that in February, I will definitely put more effort into the blog and start writing more posts. For now I am okay with this. I do just love getting my emails when someone subscribes though. 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: 265 New Followers (1247 total followers) Follow me
- I finally made it over 1k followers. 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 only started late last month also but I probably spend a good 20 to 30 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: 141 New Friends (2,843 total friends) Friend me
- My FB friends keep increasing and I love this. 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: -9 New Followers (7,737 total followers) Follow me
- I actually lost pinterest followers in November. I admit I stopped spending time on this because it just is not providing enough traffic for me but it does provide a little bit. I will continue pinning my articles and hope for the best.
So there you have it folks, my 6th 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:
Check out these other posts:
Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – October 2015 (5th…
Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – September 2015…
Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – August 2015 (3rd…
Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – July 2015 (2nd…
Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – June 2015…
Real Estate Passive Income Report – November 2015
Looking good! Seems like this time of year (Holiday/winter months) traffic typically dips, so part of the norm for most blogs. Keep killing it!
Thanks Brian. This is my first holidays blogging and I was curious about what would happen. Thanks for the expectations.
I love reading your income reports!! I’m learning quite a bit from just watching what you’re doing 🙂 thanks for sharing!!
I just love reading income reports too! It’s great to get ideas and compare progress with other bloggers. Im glad you are learning from lil ol’ me! 😉
Awesome job. Passive income is my dream. Adsense is all over the place for me too, so I’m glad I have more than 1 ad network. Do you use Media (you don’t have to answer that on here), but they have so many great text ads you might do really well with how they mesh with your site (my unsolicited 2 cents) Great job this month!!
Thanks Kristin! I tried contacting media earlier this year and I never heard back. I actually met a person from Media at FinCon this year so I literally just sent him an email to see if I can get on board. Thanks for the push! It would be cool if I could have media and adsense going. Then I could remove the crappy amazon ads that dont bring me any money and just replace it with media.
Hopefully they will let me in, I thought they had page view requirements and that is why I think they never responded back to me. We’ll see.
This monthly following is awesome. You’re showing step by step how to build passive income by blogging.
Glad you like the monthly reports A.V! Thanks for stopping by and commenting. It means a lot to me. I just hope the income will continue to rise!
Outstanding Alexander. I think you resonate with readers because you eat your own cooking and provide a compelling journey. Bravo buddy.
-Bryan
Ha yes I do eat my own cooking for sure. I just really love what I am doing to reach financial freedom. It will be a dream come true for me someday. I appreciate the remarks. Thanks so much Bryan!
Awesome report one more month!
FlexOffers and Bluehost are performing really well, I am sure that one day you will reach more than $1,000/month.
Keep up the great job!
Hey Francisco, another good month for me. If I could make $200 a month from the blog I would be so happy. So far December is starting really slow for me so we’ll see what happens in the next report.
I am really impressed with how well you have done in such a short period of time. I will be definitely following along on your journey!
Hi Petrish! Thank so you so much for the words of encouragment. It has been a fun ride so far and im looking forward to 2016. I want to spend more time on making the blog better in 2016 and hopefully it will pay off.
Great work!
It’s always good to see when someone’s blogging efforts are paying off. Also kudos on the Twitter growth. I find its a nice way of increasing your social media reach even if you’re not necessarily posting updates as frequently.
Thanks so much Jenna! The twitter growth has been nice but I admit, its not really providing a whole lot of traffic. Twitter is a weird social media, the tweets only last minutes and its gone. For now I will continue doing what im doing though because it does provide some traffic and it does not take up much time at all for me to get this going.
I just really need to figure out pinterest! I have a ton of followers but no traffic.
congratulations on your success – MAY YOU BE BLESSED!
Thanks Andi!
Well done mate! The main suggestion is have is to keep going ;)..
I’ll shoot you a note offline rather than having to write a novel here however you’re personality is great.. Not sure if you’re already doing this however guest posting.. I’ll elaborate more by email!
I agree and will definitely keep going. I plan on spending more time on the blog in 2016 and really try to grow it. I appreciate the feedback on my personality, Im actually a lot more lively and energetic in person but its sometimes hard to emit that in writing. I have done a few guest posts already and I want to do more, but its hard enough trying to find writing time for my own blog right now which is why I havent really seeked that out.
Hopefully that will change next year.
Thanks
I feel encouraged when I read income reports like yours. Thanks for drilling down each category!
Thanks Vidya! I have been receiving very positive feedback from making these reports and I am happy that it encourages you.
Great work.
I can really see the progress in this blog.
Way to go 🙂
Hope you’ll get more traffic this coming year 🙂
Thanks CRS! I plan on spending more time on the blog in 2016 so I am also hoping it brings in more traffic. We’ll see!
that’s a great start! keep up the good work. we just got over 130,000 unique views. always make goals!
Hi Katrina! 130k unique views in one month!!?? Holy cow! That is amazing. I would love even half of that! Thanks for checking out my stats. 😉
These income stats are very detailed and helpful because I’ve been blogging for a while and am still figuring out a few things. It does still surprise me to see affiliate income surpassing regular advertising income. I’ve seen people write about it for years but it is only now that I’m seeing the actual figures and there’s usually a huge disparity. Thanks for sharing and good job on the blog!
Hi Fehmeen! Thank you so much for the feedback. Im thankful to see that the reports are helpful to you. It surprises me as well how affiliate income always ends up being the clear winner and does better then google ads. Maybe someday i will completely remove the google ads and just do 100% affiliate ads.
I just started following your blog (Around an hour back :-))!
You might want to include the number of hours that you are spending each month maintaining the blog. I am sure, readers will find this information useful.
Theoretically, while calculating the earning from the blog, you should be factoring in your hourly wages as well!
Just a suggestion!
Ha, im glad you found my blog and have been following it for a few hours ;)! I have considered indicating the amount of hours I put in but I don’t currently keep track of them as I do it periodically throughout the day and night sometimes for just minutes at a time.
If i had to guess, on the days I do not write posts I probably spend about 1 hour a day messing around on social media, comments and stuff like that for the blog.
On the days I write posts, you can add another 2 to 3 hours on top of that. I write anywhere from 6 to 8 posts a month so with that being said I probably dont spend more then 55 hours a month, which is about 14 hours a week maximum. Sometimes much less.
If i broke it out per hour it would not be good at all, I can guarantee that. It takes years to build a successful blog in which the income is worth the time spent and although I would love that some day. I really enjoy doing the blog as it keeps me super motivated to continue what I am doing and I don’t want to stop doing this until I am financially free!
Thanks for the reply 🙂
Hey Alex — Congrats on gaining lots of Twitter followers in one month, that’s awesome. In addition to using Crowdfire for gaining Twitter followers, consider using ViralContentBuzz if you haven’t yet.
It allows others to tweet your blog posts and allows you to schedule tweets of other people’s blog posts. On Monday, I spend about 30 minutes and go through and find articles inside of ViralContentBuzz and have them tweet once an hour between the hours of 6 am – midnight (when most people use Twitter). I schedule an entire’s week of tweets in advance in those 30 minutes.
Another thing I do each day is to retweet any article that someone else tweeted of mine. That puts your article back in Twitter stream.
Finally, I repurpose my blogs on Medium and Niume. Check out my Success page, it shows how I do some of this stuff:
http://www.weretiredearly.com/Blog/success/
All the best!
Thanks again Steve for writing that post. Since I created this post I have actually added another 400 followers. Its growing really fast now and I have been using viral content buzz as well so I think that is helping. One thing to note though is that I am not paying for any of this, I am using the free editions on viral content and crowdfire. It does have its limitations but so far I am happy with the growth considering the limited exposure to it. I also started using unfollowers.me as well which is just like crowdfire and I am using their free version also. So with both of those, my limits are multiplied and a little better.
What do you mean by “repurpose my blogs on mediume and Niume”. Repurpose in what way exactly?
Wow, you’ve done a great job of getting traffic to your site in only six months–much better than I’ve done in a year and a half! That’s probably a big reason for those nice AdSense payouts 🙂
Congrats–keep up the great work, and I know you’ll continue to get plenty of visitors!
Thanks Froogal, its been tough getting traffic but social media has been pretty good to me so far. I do feel I have got lucky with the adsense pay outs though but Im not complaining one bit. Thanks so much!
Great stuff Alex! Just started a new site to keep track of my monthly cash flow. I like how you include your traffic stats (including social media) might need to incorporate that into my income reports. Any tips on rock solid social media strategy, you seem to be gaining traction?
Logan that is great news you started a site to keep track of that. Its a great idea and it will definitely keep you motivated. I really like the idea of including traffic and social media because ultimately I want to grow both of those and tracking it each month is inspiring me to grow it more!
As for tips on social media, each platform really is a different beast but the common tip to success is just to keep adding/following people and hoping they reciprocate.