January 2015 Income Report

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Table of Contents

It is time for another income report. As you all know, my income reports detail how much I earn through this blog and through the freelance services I promote through this blog.

January was certainly a month of ups and downs. The low point occurred on 26 January when this blog received a DDoS attack. The following day, Rise Forums was taken down too.

Due to this, my websites were offline for a couple of days and I had to spend a long time securing my servers. However, if I look at this incident positively, I am more knowledgeable about protecting my websites and my websites should be more secure in the future.

I do know who performed this attack. A part of me wants to publicly share all the information I have about the guy, however I do not want to get involved in a tit for tat fight. Especially when this person has nothing to lose.

I will, however, be contacting the authorities with all the information I have about the attack.

Without further ado, let us take a closer look at how this blog performed in January 2015.

Traffic Statistics

In December 2014, I published 34 blog posts and back in November I published 39. However, in January 2015 I only published 22 blog posts.

This included a detailed review of Nelio A/B Testing and an overview of how to make money with an online arcade.

Publishing less content was a conscious decision. I noticed that publishing more blog posts was costing me more money and taking up more of my time. Yet my traffic levels have not changed since July. I was effectively making less money through this blog as a result of this.

In my blog post “It’s Time to Focus on High Quality Content“, I spoke in detail of the need to reduce my posting frequency and publish longer more in-depth articles. This is something I hope to implement over the coming months.

January 2015 Traffic

Despite publishing 35% less content and experiencing an attack that put my websites offline for a few days, my traffic increased in January. This is partly due to the fact that people are usually busy spending time with family and friends in December.

  • Sessions (Visits) – 26,351 (+1,230)
  • Users (Unique Visits) – 22,765 (+1,306)
  • Pageviews – 36,888 (+1,089)

Readership & Social Media

I have seen a lot of blogs removing their Facebook page since Facebook has become such a poor way to connect with readers.

The Blog Tyrant, Ramsay, recently advised keeping your Facebook page, however the idea of removing my page from Facebook appeals to me. Particularly since Facebook sends no traffic and is very problematic (post updates are frequently missed due to the Facebook API not working correctly).

Another issue I may have stumbled upon relates to my newsletter. I noticed recently that my subscription widget was not working. I was then informed that subscribers were not being accepted since GetResponse requires permission to use single opt-in in non-official solutions. What this means is that all of the subscribers that I have gathered via pop ups over the years have been lost.

I hope that is not the case, but if it is, my email list could be thousands of subscribers lower than it should be as a result of this. I am annoyed that I did not realise this sooner.

Income & Expenses Details

In total, I earned $2,004.23 and my expenses were only $219. Therefore, my total profit was $1,785.23, which is $866.99 higher than December 2014.

Am I happy with this amount? No. My income is way too low. My aim is to be making several thousand dollars per month. I should not be scraping by with such little income.

Moving forward, I need to make a lot of changes to this blog and to how I approach freelancing. I am tempted to stop writing for others altogether and write for my own blog 100% of the time.

I need to review whether that is the best use of my time in the short term so that my income does not drop too much. However, without doubt, I will be much happier writing for myself.

Income

  • Freelance Blogging = $550.00 (-$471.6)
  • My Books – $62.15 (-$1.58). This includes digital and printed book sales.
  • Affiliate Income = $492.08 (+$209.17)
  • Advertising & Sponsored Posts = $800 (+$600)

Expenditure

  • Writing Expenses (Guest Posts) = 200 (-$450.00)
  • WordPress Plugin = $19 (+$19)

* Difference in income and expenditure from previous month shown in brackets.

Final Thoughts

January 2015 was a difficult month for me due to problems in my personal life. It is not something I want to discuss on this blog, however the problem did affect my work greatly as I lost all motivation to work. Thankfully, things are looking a little better now.

You all know that I am striving to make this blog more profitable and more popular. My other labour of love is Rise Forums. The forum is growing every week and I am excited by the high quality of internet marketers who have been signing up recently. If you have not already signed up, I encourage you to drop by, sign up, and introduce yourself.

A big thank you to Kris Hoja and Boris Beo who went out of their way to help me when my servers were attacked. I cannot thank you enough for the way you supported me through that ordeal.

As always, if you have any questions about this month’s report, please leave a comment below.

Thanks,
Kevin

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