Welcome to the 17th online income report. Today I will write about my online earnings and spendings in month of May 2015. I have been doing those report since January 2014 (Back then I earned enormous $8.37) and they help me track my online success or failures. I hope they can inspire you as well.
Speaking of previous month (May) earnings - in short last month has been the lowest since September 2014 (Although I was very pleased with my results in September, that was my second month of using Affiliate marketing and I was proud to report $287.25 in revenue).
There are a few reasons I find why my earnings felt sharply last month. In total my blog earned $433.59 what is a -41% decrease if compared to previous month (April) earnings.
As usual I like to compare how my online earnings stand to minimum and average wages in different countries. Turns our my earnings in May would equal to about a minimum wage in Latvia and would give me a pretty solid average salary in Georgia.
My daily earnings in month of May: $13.99
Blog traffic in May 2015
May was the record breaker and did set up a new personal record resulting in 20,843 unique users. What we can learn from that? Well, in this case nothing much. A lot of traffic not necessary means a lot of income. So for example in December 2014 I made 5 times more in online revenue with traffic just 13,000. I believe it's all about quality of traffic, seasonality and lit bit of luck.
Blog Traffic Report May 2015 Source: Google Analytics
Now I have already starting to figure out how to break 1,000 users per day milestone. But I believe it should take some more time (some 4-6 months at least)
Income streams
For the past months I have reported that I have 3 streams (Amazon Associates, Google Adsense and Amazon CPM) but in fact I have another stream, a very passive income stream - Booking.com
So lets divide my 4 income streams into a two subgroups - Affiliate Marketing and Display ads:
Affiliate Marketing
Amazon Associates - $412.95
Booking.com - $0.00
Display Ads
Google Adsense - $16.67
Amazon CPM - $3.97
Total: $433.59
Although Booking.com affiliates made me a flat 0, there is a reason I included this channel in my report. The thing is - Booking.com is the first affiliate marketing program I familiarized myself. It's about 3 years since I have been using it on different digital activities. About a year ago I was very eager on promoting hotels via Booking.com platform, but then I found that hotel affiliate industry is way too competitive and I decided to stop my activities on it and concentrate my forces on other channels.
As summer season is approaching I noticed a few bookings made via my blog (I'm writing both hotel reviews where I have stayed and I'm listing best of kind hotels in cities I have visited) and for now there is a pretty fat commission waiting for me in June, July and August. I decided to continue using Booking.com affiliate marketing system just as a passive income stream. I will add more hotel reviews this summer, and lets see then at the end of this summer the results.
Speaking of a drop in Amazon Associates I believe the reason is the same - it's summer season and sales are down. Month of May reported me the lowest CTR rates so far staying a low as % 1.85. I believe this trend will continue till the end of summer, but I hope for first good results already in this August. In August it will be one year I have been using Amazon Associates and last August was a pretty good in commissions (low, but good).
And let's not forget about expenses:
Expenses:
Linode VPS - $40.00
Linode VPS 2 - $10.00
Linode Backup Services - $10.00
Total: $60.00
I'm spending some $60.00 per month just to power my blog... well not only, I have a few development services on these servers as well. The good thing I'm spending my hard earned money in the backup services.
GROSS TOTAL: $373.59
Right, what's next? What about a comparison how much I earned a year ago?
May 2015 vs May 2014
A year ago I made the 5th online income report. And back then I earned a very modest $6.01. Technically speaking if compared this May with previous May, I have earned 72 times more. That's an AWESOME growth, right?
Forecast/Goal for June
Right, although I like to make my forecasts very humble and I have already stated that I believe this summer season I won't crack a $1,000 milestone I will set up a goal for this month to reach $600. Anything bellow will be a bad result. That means just one, this month I will focus more on my affiliate marketing channels.
Hope you did find useful this online income report, please, share your thoughts in the comments section.