April 2016 Income Report = $7,464 {Lessons & Breakthroughs} - What Mommy Does (2024)

Hey everybody! Welcome to my latest income report! A bit overdue, but I told you eventually I’d publish it! 😀

This income report is for April 2016. It’s the 7th income report I’ve posted to date.

Here are links to the previous blog income reports:

• June 2015 – $3,391
• October 2015 – $7,495
• 2015 Yearly Recap – $33,500
• January 2016 – $9,997
• February 2016 – $9,026
• March 2016 – $6,026

If you landed on this post because you are interested in starting a blog, I wrote these posts to get you started:

• How to Start a Self Hosted Blog on Bluehost (step-by-step tutorial)
• How to Choose a Blog Name You Won’t Regret
• What to do if the Blog Name You Want is Taken
• How Do Bloggers Make Money? (example from my own blog)
• How to Know if You’ll be a Good Blogger

So let’s dive right into April’s income and expenses!

In April 2016, WhatMommyDoes.com brought in $7,464. It was from 4 different revenue streams – advertising, sponsored posts, affiliates, and my own ebook.

Let’s go over each one.

My Ebook – $840

This is income earned from my Blog Traffic Ebook

(How I Increased My Monthly Blog Traffic from 17K to 350K Page Views per Month)

I published this ebook in December 2015. It earned $1,000 last month and got close to that again! It’s completely taking me by surprise!
I never realized the power of having a product before. I could get used to this! 😀

My affiliates are continuing to sell a lot of ebooks for me. As more and more people read it and become affiliates, I hope this revenue stream will continue to grow.

MARCH 2017 UPDATE:

Just a heads up guys –After selling just over 1,000 copies to date, I am giving the Blog Traffic Ebook a much-needed overhaul. I am adding several sections and worksheets – I think you’ll really like it.

In conjunction with the update, I will be moving to a price that reflects the value. It will be somewhere between $67-90 depending on the final upgrades (still deciding what to include and what to publish separately because the ebook is getting sooooo long!). 😀

**Anyone who snags the ebook at the $25 price will receive the updates for free.**

AND

So many people have asked me questions about creating ebooks, that I put together a quick guide to explain my process now that I know what NOT to do. The second time around was way easier. TheEbook Creation Guidewill show you all of my mistakes (so you don’t have to make them!)

It’s only $17 so it’s affordable for beginners…I didn’t want to charge very much for this because it’s meant for people who are growing their business and may not have a ton of extra cash to spend. Iwould have paid many many times that to know what I know now about creating an ebook, so I feel like it’s a great value – I hope you like it!

Sponsored Posts – $1,100

This total was earned from a combination of 7 sponsored posts + social media campaigns through Clever Girls and IZEA. I did not do any posts with TapInfluence or MassiveSway this month.

I also did not pursue any opps with Influence Central this month because it pays the least of all my networks.

I am trying to be smarter about what I say yes and no to…..I feel like when I say yes to one thing I have to say no to another because I only have so much time in a week since I still stay at home with my kids.

Because I am focusing on figuring out what earns the most money for the effort on my blog, I haven’t pursued sponsored posts in general as much lately because they just simply take so much time & energy to write when I could be putting that time & energy toward other things.

Because of this, I expect future months’ sponsored income to go down because they usually operate on a 2 month delay (i.e. when I apply in March, it’s usually for a campaign that occurs in May). I am hoping to more than offset this with an increase in affiliate income, but it’s a gamble for sure. Only time will tell!

Advertising Income – $2,836

Overall ad income this month was $9.25 per thousand visitors. I am very pleased with that because I have lots of printables in the mix and those ads don’t pay very well.

Advertising income is one of my favorite ways to make money blogging because it is truly “set it and forget it.”

I did nothing to earn this money except place ads on each post (except the sponsored ones) and work on getting traffic to my blog.

I use a plugin called Ad Inserter to place the ads you see in my posts, and the ones on the sidebar as simple widgets.

I will say, though, that I am seeing an inverse correlation to ad income and affiliate income. What I mean is that when I enable ads on a post, I seem to have lower affiliate sales than when the ads are turned off. For this reason, I plan to disable ads on any post that’s squarely written for affiliate marketing purposes.

We’ll see how it goes over the course of the year!

Affiliate Sales – $2,688

My affiliate income went up this month, which was a good thing because I was doing my best to optimize my blog posts for affiliate sales, and I had a lot more page views than I did in March! 😀

If my affiliate income hadn’t gone up with page views, then I would know something was up. But it increased, which is a positive sign.

I am actually glad my page views aren’t what they once were at the end of 2015/early 2016. It seems easier to spot trends in page view swings when the numbers are lower.

I have been asked to disclose revenue per affiliate but I have decided not to do so. Although I don’t mind publishing my overall income by income stream, I am not comfortable detailing my revenue down to the line item because that is private information unique to my blog, and I have worked very hard to achieve a certain mix of income.

I will continue to share examples of blog posts that bring traffic and earn me money in my ebooks, though! I suppose you can consider access to this information a premium feature!

If you are experiencing lower than usual page views but are familiar with affiliate marketing, then I encourage you to spend a few months focusing on this area. It’s taking me quite some time to understand how it all works, but I feel like it’s really starting to come together.

I can confidently say after a couple months of focusing squarely on affiliate products that this is a great strategy for increasing my blog income with less overall work. Chasing page views is hard! I can work less for higher income by focusing on affiliate products.

Caveat: I would like to point out that page views DO matter to an extent. More eyeballs to an effectively monetized blog is the name of the game. But eyeballs without a plan won’t earn you any affiliate or product income. You CAN earn a good amount of money with no master plan and lots of traffic through ads and sponsorships, though. It all boils down to what you want out of your blog. I am in the early stages of a flagship course on this topic – how to build all of those income streams and drive traffic effectively. I am limiting the number of hours I work, though, so it’s gonna take several months at least (late summer/early fall is my best guess). I will be releasing smaller products a.k.a. building blocks to the overall picture between now and then – starting with my Blog Income Boost guide discussed below.

MARCH 2017 UPDATE!

Since April 2016, I’ve been working on the income strategies necessary to grow my income despite decreasing or stagnant page views. I’m excited to say I actually documented several of them in a new ebook called Blog Income Boost.

I’ve found that focusing on affiliates and products are the best use of my time, so these strategies will work if you are familiar with affiliate marketing. These new strategies are not dependent upon page views, although more traffic never hurts. 😀

I will work hard on documenting all of my strategies for the full course, but in the meantime, you can get a jump start on this with Blog Income Boost.

One thing people always ask me when they learn my income numbers is how much traffic I had that month. In April 2016, WhatMommyDoes.com got 306,685 page views.

My page views were down from my new year high of over 400K, but that’s okay because my income stayed up.

My revenue per thousand visitors was right around $24. I am super duper pleased with that! I’ve been working hard on earning more from the content I already have, and I think it’s beginning to pay off.

I earned $7,464 and had 306,685 page views, which means my revenue per thousand visitors, or RPM, was $24.34. This was down a tiny bit from March’s RPM of $25.99.

I recently created a landing page to house all of my income reports! Until now, you had to go digging through my blog to find all of the income reports, but now they’re all in one place.

If you’re a blogger who writes a lot about a single topic, I highly recommend creating a landing page for related content like this. It’s been so easy to simply refer people to this one page instead of finding each individual link when I need it. 😀

I’ll be posting all income reports to this page going forward, so if you want to have access to them all, make sure to pin it or otherwise bookmark the page.

Here’s a pin if you want to just pin this one (if you do, thank you very much!!) >>

Blogging has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I never believed I would have the opportunity to speak to millions of people every year but it’s a reality now!

My blog has allowed our family to do so many things and dream bigger than we ever thought possible.
If I can do it,anyone can. I hope to see you on my adventures.

• Blog Startup Guide
• Resources to Grow an Existing Blog
• 7 Proven Ways to Boost Your Blog Income
• 17 Strategies I Used to Increase My Monthly Page Views from 17K to 350K+ per Month
• Simple Ebook Creation Guide

I’ve tracked my monthly income for years using the same Excel spreadsheet. Recently, I published it so everyone can download it! You can request a copy here >>

Using this spreadsheet, you can get a snapshot of any amounts paid or owed to you for a given month and determine what to do with that income.

Who doesn’t want to make better informed financial decisions?

I review mine several times a month to chart my progress and also brainstorm ways to strategically increase my blog income (or not) depending on how much I want to work that month.

This spreadsheet also allows you to see at a glance if different revenue streams are trending up or down.

If you would like to get access to my spreadsheet, go to this link or click on the image below. When you request the spreadsheet download, you will also receive a series of weekly emails designed to help you use the spreadsheet to maximize your blog income.