Welcome to already fourteen of my blog's online income report. Today I will cover earnings I made solely with my blog during month of February 2015.
I'm doing those report since start of 2014 and they (reports) help me track my online success or failures. I hope they can inspire others as well.
About Online Income in Monty of February 2015
In total I earned $940.05 what is up by 25.02% if compared to my earnings in month of January, when I earned $752.65
$940.05 in a month equals to $33.57 in a day
Technically speaking, my February earnings would be the same as a minimum wage in Malta or a little bit more than average salary in Croatia. I haven't been to neither of these countries yet, but I would like to visit them one day for sure.
About Blog traffic in February
Blog Traffic February 2015 (Source: Google Analytics)
In February I got a major traffic drop, when overall traffic dropped my some -25% and resulted in 14,579 users. Despite a traffic drop I managed to earn more this month than last month - pretty interesting trend to observe I must admit.
On the other hand my blog is attracting pretty much international traffic, so for example in month of January I got a major traffic spike when post about minimum wages in European Union kinda went viral on Facebook. Those visitors made a huge traffic spike but didn't qualified as a profitable if looked from point of view of generating some income.
About Income Streams
There were 3 streams which generated some money last month - I prefer to divide them into two subgroups - Affiliate marketing and Display Ads:
Affiliate marketing
Amazon Associates - $920.32
Display ADs
Amazon CPM - $4.66
Google Adsense - $15.07
As you can see the wast majority of earnings were made using affiliate marketing. But that doesn't mean I'm looking to abandon Display Ads any time soon, though they are making pennies, I prefer call them really valuable pennies. And at least I have somehow diversified my online income streams.
Speaking of display ads I believe I could earn more by placing more aggressive ad units - but this time it's not the case. I'm pretty confident right now of my display ads strategy, of course I could fine tune something.
Speaking of affiliate marketing - I'm a little bit worried right now - I'm relying just on one anchor earner - Amazon Associates, I must admit it's a damn great partner program which offers brilliant conversation rates, but for a past couple of months I have been looking into other affiliate programs as well, the problem I haven't yet find anything so brilliant as Amazon Associates.
On the other hand I haven't tried hard enough. I'm looking to add another affiliate marketing program on board this year to diversify my income streams.
About Expenses in February
Starting this year I'm including all expenses in my reports as well, because of I believe they plays if not a major, then at least a minor role in generating income.
Last month I spent only on my Linode VPS.
Linode VPS - $40.00
Earnings per 1,000 Pageviews
My combined RPM Stands for $43.79 in February
Those of you who are using Google Adsense, are already familiar with term of RPM - which stands for earnings for 1000 page views/impression - Reach per Mile.
I decided to create my blog's overall RPM covering not only Adsense, but all other income streams combined, to measure RPM I must reveal how many page views I got this month.
For tracking website visitors statistics I'm using Google Analyitics, and according to it I got 21,467 page views last month.
February 2015 vs February 2014
A year ago my blog was about five months old, back then in February I created my second online income report and earned very modest $9.60.
So what has changed a year latter?
My traffic is up from 331 to 14,579
I have added Affiliate Marketing as my top earner
A year ago I was relying just on Google Adsense and earned $9.60, a year latter if I would stick only with Google Adsense I would earn just $15.07 - not so great performance overall, right?
Well as I said, I'm glad I have diversified my income streams, on the other hand I believe my Google Adsense earnings would be higher (I believe I would use more aggressive ad unit placement)
Anyway - growth from $9.60 in February 2014 to $900.05 in February 2015 is an awesome growth, I'm more than delighted with such results.
Frankly speaking it's strange how my mindset has changed over a last year - year ago I was happy to see $10, $20 earnings over a month.
Today by looking my past reports I though - hmm, just $900 this month - it's a pretty bad result..
Well, this is not the right attitude, I must be more humble or bad things will happen. Every dollar cent is worth of it.
About other's online income round up posts
I must admit I'm reading how other bloggers are performing and how much they are earning with their blogs, probably many of those bloggers I have discovered thanks to round up posts of online income reports. I must admit - reading others success or failures has given me faith to continue improving my results.
This February, my humble blog has been included in following blog round up posts:
Weitere internationale Blogs und deren Einnahmen im Januar 2015 (In German)
Honestly speaking, of course it's cool to be noticed and showcased on other blogs as an example or inspiration (hopefully)
Goals/Forecasts for March
I have decided to add more review style articles with affiliate links included. I have a plan to ad 4 reviews this month.
Speaking of forecast - It would be great to crack $1,000 milestone this month. But I have an ambivelnt feeling to this, so I actually will downgrade my forecast to $500 for March.