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I survived winter! While I write this, the sky is blue and it is (sort of) warm outside. Not really warm – it is middle of March and I live in Sweden – but warmish and really nice. I bet the first small flowers will appear any day now.
So, I guess a perfect day to look back at my traffic and income for February 2017 and hope they will make me happy too – and that they’ll inspire you wherever you are on your blogging journey.
I started writing these reports in January 2016 as a way to help myself focus on turning my 10-year-old (!) blog into a business. I had and have lots of traffic but earnings at that time were pathetic. You can check out my very first blog income report here.
You’ll find all earlier blog income reports here.
Now, let’s see how I did with Easy Baby Life during February 2017!
Blog Income February 2017
- Amazon – $426. Last month was $663, so a clear decrease. I am not quite sure why. It is a shorter month, but that doesn’t explain it all. Maybe a temporary hiccup. On the other hand, in February 2016, affiliate income was a whopping $68. :-) To learn about affiliate marketing, check out this course, that I have been following for the past 5 months. It’s been worth the investment many time over for me!
- Other affiliate income sources – $22 – Less than the $32 I made last month
- Mediavine Ad Network – $3,536 – Last month was $4,156, so a decrease, but still very good for February!
Grand total – $3,984 That’s significantly lower than the $4,821 last month, but still more than 5 time higher than in February 2016. Maybe complaining is out of place…
I think focusing on earnings and learning things like Pinterest and Affiliate marketing was quite a good idea, don’t you agree?
Something to note – I changed the site to secure. This means it now starts with https instead of http. This is safer for my visitors – more about that below. It also means slightly fewer advertisers competing for my placements and hence lower income for me. Not fun, and RPM (revenue per page with Mediavine actually fell more than I had expected. Annoying, but I hope good in the end because it is good for my visitors.
Blog Expenses February 2017
- Boardbooster – $10. I love Boardbooster for pinning to Pinterest and bumped up my allowed pins per month, so now I pay $10 per month instead of $5. If you haven’t given it a shot yet, please do! It is FREE to try out.
- Aweber (email service) – $29.99
- Sucuri for website protection – $16.66 per month (I paid for a full year immediately during spring, $199, but count cost for 1 month each month of the year. SO. VERY. WORTH. IT.) My site hasn’t been hacked once since I started with Sucuri. (And I know that IF it would be hacked, they will help me clean it completely without any extra costs at all.
- Cost for my host A2, where I now splurge on a Managed VPS account – $55 (per month with all bells and whistles, 2-year contract)
- VA services – $50
- Technical web services $50 – I paid for help with converting Easy Baby Life over to SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) -this means that any information transferred between a visitor and my site is going through an encrypted link. This is better for my visitors and so important that it is included or will be included soon in SEO ranking signals by Google! If you want to do this too, contact Charles at WP Opt. He did a great job for me and very quickly too.
Total costs – $212 Normal except for the online classes.
Net Income in February 2017 – $3,772
Now, let’s have a look at traffic numbers and finally RPM for the month.
Blog Traffic February 2017
Here are some screenshots from Google Analytics to show my traffic for February 2017.
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Page views were down a bit compared to January, 589,194 to 554,076. This was due to two things, I think. First of all the obvious – February is 3 days and hence some 57,000 page view lower. (This more than explain the difference!) In addition, it appeared to me as if my Google ranking went down a bit at first after converting the site to SSL. I’ve heard other site owners noticing the same thing. This more than improved a bit later, though.
You can see my traffic sources here below. Pinterest went way up from 40,000 to 59,000 page views, which feels great. Haha, and I want MORE! In February last year, Pinterest page views were 694 in total! Melyssa’s course has been golden for me!
If you want to up your blog traffic, consider investing in one or both of these courses:
- Pinfinite Growth
- The Ultimate SEO Guide
Other Stuff Going On This Month
This month, the doors the Elite Blog Academy opened. I bought the course in December. Crazy price and high hopes!
I’ve only just started, but really look forward to stepping back and take a very critical look at what I do, how I write, how I organize the site, the design (yes, VERY dated, especially the logo, I know!), and much, much more. I can’t really say anything yet about how effective this course is, but I will definitely let you over time!
Now putting all this together and calculating RPM (revenue per 1000 page views)…
Grand RPM is $7.2
This is a a wonderful improvement compared to the $2.30 in February 2016. Cross your fingers that I can look back next year and think that $7.2 in RPM was low…
I’d love to hear any thoughts you may have on this. Please share by leaving a comment below! :-)
Find all my blogging tips and income reports here.
Paula Dennholt founded Easy Baby Life in 2006 and has been a passionate parenting and pregnancy writer since then. Her parenting approach and writing are based on studies in cognitive-behavioral models and therapy for children and her experience as a mother and stepmother. Life as a parent has convinced her of how crucial it is to put relationships before rules. She strongly believes in positive parenting and a science-based approach.
Paula cooperates with a team of pediatricians who assist in reviewing and writing articles.
Congrats on your amazing traffic and monetization. I’d recommend for you ads that you look into Monumetric or Adthrive as you may easily be able to make more money w/ very little effort. Monumetric requires 80,000 pageviews and adthrive 100,000 so you easily qualify. Because they have higher requirements, they are able to get more for their bloggers (i.e. you keep a higher %).
I applied to both and was accepted, but adthrive takes much longer to approve (I think a month), so I went with Monumetric. Both are great, but I’m actually glad I went w/ my 2nd choice as I think it’s gone better (as I’ve learned more now). I think I’m earning in the high 7’s RPM for ads alone…and I don’t have many ads on my site (and less than you do).
Thanks Debbie! :-) I was actually with Monumeric for a little while before moving to Mediavine. I agree, Monumeric is great too. Haven’t tried Adthrive, but maybe I should. The people at Mediavine are so nice, though, so I am reluctant to leave. And RPM is good too. Similar to Monumeric. :-)
Hey Paula,
Have you tried using/applying to other affiliate programs instead of using Amazon affiliate? With the latest commission changed it might make sense to look into other programs as a blog with as much traffic as yours shouldn’t have any issue with getting accepted into nearly any program you would like to join.
It looks like you’re already a member of some other affiliate programs (like the Pinfinite one), but I’m not sure if you have any reviews of each program or not.
Your domain stats are pretty powerful so if you publish a detailed review for some of the products you own (whether physical or virtual) you could rank in Google and boost your income.
Also, thank you for letting us know about the Pinfinite course. I’ve been thinking of getting into Pinterest, but I feel queasy about paying $300 for one course…
Cheers!
Hi Ilya!
Thanks a lot for your thoughtful comment! You are totally right about Amazon – their latest commission change is really bad. I am part of several other programs actually, but Amazon has always been the most relevant for my readers.
But you are totally right – I can certainly do product reviews for some products and services – and Pinfinite Growth is definitely one of them.
Speaking of that course – I agree fully that the price is really steep. That said, I increased my page views so quickly with that course, that it paid back in only 2.5 months. I write about that here: https://www.easybabylife.com/october-2016-income-report.html
I am sure there are cheaper, also valuable Pinterest courses, though!
Again, thanks a lot for stopping by and kicking my XXX to expand my affiliate sales. I need it! :-)
Hi Paula, I will like to complement your organic traffic as well, simply amazing! which VA service do you use for outsourcing?
Thank you Flaky! Sorry for missing your comment. I have had great help from a VA that runs her own business. Let me know if you need help, I can let you know who she is. :-)
Great post! I am currently taking Melyssa’s Pinfinite Growth course as well and her strategies in the course have helped a lot. :)
H Tegan! I can’t believe I missed your comment! Great to hear that we are classmates. :-)
Ok, based on the fact that your organic search is AMAZING, I think I’m going to have to buy that SEO guide! And it’s only $10!
It is definitely worth $10!! Good luck! (And be patient!)