That time of the year have come and it's time to wrap up a round up income and traffic report post for the last quarter of 2016 (October, November and December).
If you are new to my blog or just wondering why I'm sharing such data, here is a brief explanation on sharing data on traffic and income:
In short, it helps me to track my online success of failures. It makes me accountable. I have been collecting and sharing data for my online success or failures since January 2014, back then my blog was 3 month old and I decided to start an online experiment - can someone actually make money through blogging? Now, I know - yes, you can, but it takes a time and determination. Back in January 2014, I made enormous eight dollars. I hope my online income reports could inspire you as well.
Last quarter of the year for me was pretty easy, not to say lazy, I spent some time on a few day trips around Georgia, photographed a lot and made dozen of Georgia related articles. At the end of the year I went to the United States to handle some financial issues (latter on that). I believe the last quarter of the year was the long deserved rest after Q3 and Q2 spent on home remodeling works.
Anyway, despite being easy and slow I experimented for the very first time with Google AdWords and put some money into Facebook ads to build brand recognition.
As usual I managed not to miss a single day without a blog post - that has been one of mine corner success strategies since day 1 when I started this blog.
About Blog traffic in Q4 2016
Last quarter of the 2016 set a new record in terms of visitors coming to blog and yes it did set a new record on income (see bellow). Almost 200,000 users in three months. By now each month my blog gets about 65,000 monthly users, compared with previous quarter blog have experienced a small but nice 15% traffic gain. Awesome.
For the second quarter in the row I have completed my goal I did set up at the end of 2015, to get more than 162,000 users quarterly.
About Income Q4 2016
Combined income from affiliate sales and display ads in Q4 made me a nice revenue of $7,342.01, which actually is more than amazing and awesome.
About half of that money was made during December holiday season. For the second year in the row I have noticed following pattern - October is one of the slowest months in terms of affiliate sales (thus for the first time this October cracked $1,000 milestone), with the real deals starting at the end of November (Black Friday and following Cyber Monday) and December is just a killer in terms of sales in internet. Holiday season, after all.
Combined RPM from all revenue channels stands at $26.05 for Q4 2016, what is up from $22.77 at Q3 2016. RPM - stands for earnings for 1000 page views/impression - Reach per Mile. Again this have been one of the highest RPM values so far this blog have experienced.
That's actually double I got at the start of the year, when reached RPM just $13 at Q1. I believe a RPM rate close to $20 per 1000 page views is pretty satisfactory. Of course raising this number more would increase overall income, but as long it is close to twenty - I'm a happy hippo.
About expenses Q4 2016
To earn some money, you should spend some money on some basic or advanced things. In last quarter I spent in following positions:
- Facebook Ads: $53.95
- KeyCDN: $29
- Linode VPS: $107.50
- Godaddy: $16
- Google Adwords: $58.4
- Other: $156
Total: $420.85
Other Stats:
- Twitter: 6,347 followers (-154)
- Facebook: 2,895 likes (+375)
- Email subscriptions: 68 subscribers (+7)
- Alexa global rank: 175,075 position (+4,726)
- Web push subscribers: 4,963 (+4,508)
Thoughts on Q1 2017
Now, speaking about goals for the first quarter (January, February and March) of 2017 - Traffic combined should be at least 220,000. I have that good feeling that soon blog should start cracking 100,000 page views per month. Speaking of Income - I will stick with a positive $5,000 goal.