October 2014 Income Report

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Table of Contents

Another month has come and gone, which means it’s time for me to reflect on how this blog performed in October 2014.

Those of you who read last month’s income report may recall that my main goal was to increase traffic and affiliate income. In this report, I will be looking at whether I achieved these goals.

As a reminder, my income reports only detail income generated through this blog, therefore income from other websites I own, such as Rise Forums, are not included.

Traffic Statistics

In August I published 21 blog posts on the blog. In September I published 22. In October my posting frequency increased to 31; which works out at one blog post per day.

I did not see an instant return on these additional blog posts, however over time this added content and higher posting frequency should increase my monthly traffic.

October 2014 Traffic

Visits and pageviews did increase, but you can see, there was not a significant jump in traffic.

  • Sessions (Visits) – 27,871 (+751)
  • Users (Unique Visits) – 23,904 (+240)
  • Pageviews – 40,135 (+3,008)

Readership & Social Media

Twitter remains the main social media platform that I am semi-active on. My subscription appears to be growing at around the same rate every month; regardless of often I update my accounts.

Income & Expenses Details

For a long time, I never invested the time and energy into this blog, but I was pleased with taking necessary steps in October to take the blog forward.

I activated a new WordPress theme for the blog at a cost of $99.00. I also placed an advertisement on the ProBlogger Job Board for writers. This has helped me increase posting frequency in the later part of the month from 4 or 5 blog posts per week to around 10 to 12.

Obviously, these additional writers came at a cost. In comparison to September 2014, I spent $1,214.20 more in October 2014 on writers. I am confident this investment will pay dividends in the future.

In total I earned $4,767.43 in October. I also paid out $1,828.10 in respect of guest posts and other expenses. This is the most I have ever invested in my blog during a month, though I hope to break this next month as I continue to increase my posting frequency.

Therefore my total profit was $2,939.33. This represents an decrease of $1,228.47 from September 2014.

Income

  • Freelance Blogging = $2,861.40 (-$747.20)
  • My Books – $98.35 (+$4.41). This includes digital and printed book sales.
  • Affiliate Income = $407.68 (-$347.48)
  • Advertising & Sponsored Posts = $1,400 (+$1,200)

Expenditure

  • Writing Expenses (Guest Posts) = $1,679.10 (+$1,214.20)
  • Theme Purchase = $99.00
  • ProBlogger Job Board Listing = $50.00
  • Advertising = $0 (-$25)

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

Overview

Traffic and affiliate income did not increase in October, though I can still be pleased with the developments I have made. A large number of the articles that I paid for in October will be published until this month (November), therefore the investment I made during October should hopefully bear fruit over the coming weeks. Plus the difference in profit from last month is more or less equal to my increase in writing expenses (income was actually $109.73 higher).

The key with an increased posting strategy is quality content. Simply increasing posting frequency will not help me drive traffic or readers to this blog. However, if the quality of content remains high, more articles should generate more social media shares, more incoming links, and more search engine traffic. So far, I believe that the quality of articles that have been published over the last few weeks have been great.

I am going to continue to invest in good content for this blog and contribute to the blog myself too. Hopefully, I will start seeing the benefits of this over the next 4 to 8 weeks.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

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