Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats – October 2015 (5th month of blogging!)

Welcome to my 5th 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.

October was officially my 5th full month of blogging.   Honestly it feels really weird for me that I have been blogging for 5 months. I just can’t believe I have been doing this for almost half a year.   Time is flying by and I need it to slow down a bit!  It seems I travel at least once a month as well which makes life go even faster.   There are just so many things I want to do and write about there just isn’t enough time to do all of that.   I only wrote 5 posts in October.  That is the lowest amount of published posts I have had since I first started.  And I felt weird about not writing as much.  Is that weird?   Why do I keep saying weird?   Weird!!

Okay so back on topic here, I know you guys just love reading my blog income reports and I love writing them because I can see my progress on the blog first hand.  I have steadily been increasing my page views, social media and subscribers every month which is a great feeling.  I also have steadily been increasing my blog income which is amazing.   But of course what goes up must come down.   This month although I did increase my page views for the month and everything else, I did not increase my blog income.  The income went down and it was because I didn’t get enough hits on my affiliate links.    The affiliate links/programs that I belong to have been the reason why my blog is making decent money for such a new blog.   I mean don’t get me wrong, the google AdSense ads are great too and that number actually did increase in October which is awesome but it just does not provide big payouts like the affiliate links do.

Regardless what the numbers are, my ultimate goal is to retire early and the main purpose of this blog is to help motivate me and others generate enough passive income to retire early.  Any income made from this 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 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:  $50.18

• These are the finalized earnings from October 1st to October 31st.   Last month I made $34, this month it goes up to $50.  It’s strange because you will see in my page views below that I didn’t have a huge increase in page views.  It was a little more than last month but it does not make sense I made this much more.   Just goes to show that there is no rhyme or reason with google adsense.   I have no idea how much I am going to be making in the upcoming months but what I do know is that if I don’t get page views, I’m not making adsense income.   So I need to make sure I keep building momentum and hopefully someday I can be making some decent google money!
• In 5 months of blogging, I have now made a grand total of $201.61 from AdSense.  I am very pleased with this number and if I could maintain $50 per month, I would be very happy with that.  It’s not easy though generating traffic as my blog is a super weird niche that most people don’t know about it or are scared to try what I am doing.  You know with the whole out of state investing in rental properties thing?  That is not for everyone but it’s working for me and that is pretty much what the majority of this blog is about.

Amazon Affiliate:  $2.38

• Last month I made $0 with amazon. So as you can see, I am absolutely crushing it with Amazon.  I don’t know how they are managing to stay in business giving me these huge payouts and such.  It shocks me!  Ha!  In all seriousness, I have never really been able to make money with amazon on this blog mainly because I don’t leave reviews for products.  I don’t really plan on getting into that so if I can make a few bucks from amazon each month, I will be happy with that!   No complaints here!!

Flex Offers Affiliate:  $0

• I was really hoping I would make some income with this one but I unfortunately I did not.  Last month I made $100 with this one.  This month, nada!!    Loser = me!

Blue Host Affiliate:  $65

• Last month I actually had 2 signups with this and made $130!   It was super cool!  This month I only had one sign up but I am pleased with it.   A $65 payout per sign up is no joke and this is my favorite affiliate by far.   Plus 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.

So I made a total of $117.56 from blogging in October.  This makes my yearly earnings to date a grand total of  $646.56.  Who would have ever thought.  $646 dollars in five months of blogging.  Awesome!!

Expenses:

Zip, Zilch, Zero, Nada:  $0

• That’s right folks.  Zero expenses for September.  I am no longer buying anything more for the blog because I don’t think I need it.   We’ll see down the road but I am not planning on paying for advertising or anything else unless I decide to have something that I can actually sell on this blog.  Which may happen.  I just need to figure out what and how.

 

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

$117.56

• 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.  In October, I made about $2000 in real estate passive income which was great!

Blog Statistics and Traffic:

 

Page Views:  12,981 (+893 from last month)

• Last month I had 12k page views and this month I almost hit the 13k mark.  Not too shabby.   I 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:  72 New Subscribers   (283 total subscribers)

• I got 72 new subscribers in October and that is bad ass in m book!!   Last month I had 80 so this is a little bit less than before but I don’t care.   I’m amazed I get this many to be honest.  I love getting my 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:  161 New Followers  (982 total followers)              Follow me

• Oh man I am almost at 1,000 followers!  Whoo hooo!!  This is pretty cool.  Next month I should be passed the 1k mark which makes me happy.   I think twitter is a great way to market a post but the only thing I don’t like about is that it only lasts a few minutes.  But hey! I do get some page views from Twitter so I will keep doing what I am doing!

Facebook:  119 New Friends  (2,702 total friends)              Friend me

• The amount of friends I get on FB have been dwindling each month but that is partly because I don’t spend enough time on FB.  I pretty much just use it to promote some posts then I am gone.  I like that have almost 3k friends though.  Pretty cool!

Pinterest:  210 New Followers  (7,746 total followers)     Follow me

• I get very little traffic from Pinterest so I do not really spend any more time on this especially to try to gather followers.  I will one day figure out how to get some awesome pinterest traffic though so I will obviously keep tracking this and growing organically.  I read a lot of these blog reports and see there are bloggers who get the majority of the their traffic from pinterest which is exciting to see the possibilities.

 

So there you have it folks, my 5th 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: