Side Income Report – February 2013

Howdy Side Income Blogging readers.  Today is March 7th, and a Side Income Report for February is way overdue, so let’s get to it!

February Traffic

Here is my visit graph from Google Analytics comparing January to February:

Up until February 18th, my traffic levels for February were lower than January – not a good thing.  Fortunately on February 19th, I published Why Google+ will be critical for your blog’s success in 2013.  This article was a big success on Google+ and on Pinterest, resulting in the big blue spike in the Analytics screenshot above.  The spike represents 621 visits in a single day, a large number for my site.

Following that  day, my traffic continued to stay up, resulting in:

• A 15% increase in visits
• A 14% increase in pageviews
• A reduction in my overall site bounce rate by 3.23%

While I’m incredibly pleased with the success of that article, I’m not pleased at all with my overall traffic increase of 15%.  The problem is that my search engine traffic has been dropping, which is interesting.    To be specific, from January to February, my search engine traffic dropped by 18%.

Thinking on this some, I realized that I’ve  really been focused on Google+ for the past two months.  I have not been focusing on SEO optimization by using keywords and tweaking my articles for search engines.  I haven’t really done any keyword research in the past month at all.

While certainly not a complete study, I think this is a pretty strong indicator that keywords and keyword optimization are still very valuable.  Honestly, I never thought they weren’t valuable, I guess I just got so caught up in Google+, I forgot to balance my writing – lesson learned.

February Social Media

As I mentioned, I’ve had great success on Google+ and Pinterest in February.    I just started tracking my Pinterest followers, so I don’t have a % increase yet, but I will next month.  On Google+, my followers increased by 56%, which I’m very proud of.  What’s also great is that the majority of these folks are very engaging.  I also noted a significant increase in the follower count on my Google+ Side Income Blogging page as well for February.

Here’s the full screen shot of my social tab from Google Analytics for February compared to January for those interested:

I find it ironic that my Facebook numbers went up, especially now that I’m not really active on it anymore.

Subscribers

Something new I’m adding for February is information about my subscribers, which includes RSS and Email.

My mailing list subscribers are up 10% for February.  On February 28th, I had 320 list subscribers, up from 289 at the end of January.  A small increase.  I’ll need to work on that.  I think finishing up my “freebie” eBook to give away to new and existing subscribers will really help with growth.

Some interesting email statistics:

• My open rate is about 14%
• Click rate is 1.6% – but I include the full article in my emails, so this isn’t a big surprise.
• 83.4% aren’t opened

Based on “industry” data in Mailchimp my numbers seem pretty close to normal industry numbers.

RSS subscribes, which I thought was a slowly dying technology, were up by 16% from 73 to 85.

This brings  my total number of subscribers on 2/28 to 405.

Income

Now for the part everyone wants to hear about: The Money!

Here is my income breakdown for February 2013:

eBay Partner Network: $30.83

Share a Sale(affiliate link): $0.00 (I have had some sales this month, but won’t see the earnings until next month)

Adsense: $104.07

Financial Affiliate: $79.66

Side Income Blogging Services: $390.00

Total: $604.56

Expenses:

MyDomain (affiliate link) Domain Renewels: $0.00 (no renewals in February)

Freshbooks (affiliate link) estimate and invoicing  software: $24.00

A Small Orange (affiliate link) for hosting: $52.00

Total: $76.00

February 2013 Net Income: (Income – Expenses): $528.56

As you saw in January’s report,  the majority if my monthly income is from my Side Income Blogging Services work.

I have recently added some additional affiliate offers to my Start a Money Making Blog series.  I’m already seeing increased affiliate clicks as a result.  I also published another article on BackupBuddy which contains affiliate links, and I’m seeing some clicks from there as well.  I would anticipate seeing my affiliate revenue increase for the March income report.

In February, I removed Adsense from Side Income Blogging.  While I did show Adsense earning this month for $104.07 that is Adsense income from three different sites and over the course of 3-4 months.  Side Income Blogging itself was earning less than $5/month.  I decided to use that ad space for other options to see if I could earn more.  I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

How was your month?