Time again for another Side Income Report. Each Side Income Report reviews my monthly traffic information for Side Income Blogging and my income across all of my blogs, websites and Side Income Blogging Services work.
This report is for March 2013. You can expect new reports during the first half of each month. You can also review all of my prior Side Income Reports a well.
March Traffic
Unfortunately, traffic for March compared to February decreased. In March, I saw:
- A 13.51% decrease in Visits
- A 16.47% decrease in Unique Visitors
- A 12.07% decrease in Pageviews
I’ll attribute this drop to the same issue I had last month: Not focusing enough on search engine traffic. I’ll also add that I need to focus on more value add and unique content. However, saying this and doing it are two completely different things. I wrote two articles in March, that I spent a great deal of time on and that I thought would be huge hits: Build a blog you’re passionate about or don’t even bother and How to get noticed on Google+ and other social media. Neither of these articles received the traffic or exposure I expected.
Creating and finding the “right” great content is tough.
March Social Media
My follower counts on both Pinterest and Google+ increased in March:
- Pinterest followers increased from 131 to 163. A 24% increase.
- Google followers increased from 633 t0 839. A 33% increase.
Google+ traffic dropped by 29% from February to March and Pinterest traffic dropped by 60%. I was very disappointed in the Google+ drop, but the Pinterest drop wasn’t unexpected. I am just not spending much time on Pinterest lately. The bounce rate is too high, and frankly is not worth the time spent for me.
Subscribers
My mailing list subscriber count is down for March from February by 3 subscribers. My RSS subscriber count increased from 85 to 97. No big increase or decrease here at all. Mailing list subscribers aren’t something I plan to focus on, but it is a nice option for my subscribers to receive email updates. I had planned to really put a strong focus on building up my subscriber list. But after thinking on that over the past month, I’ve changed my strategy.
My total subscriber count is currently at: 425, a marginal increase from February. Pretty much a flatline here.
Income
With traffic down, fortunately my income was up. This was primarily the result of getting lots of Side Income Blogging Services work.
Here is my income breakdown across all of my sites and my Side Income Services work for March 2013:
eBay Partner Network: $42.70
Share a Sale (affiliate link): $50.80
Commission Junction: $122.75
Adsense: $0.00 (I didn’t make the $100.00 payout in March, but hoping to in April.)
Side Income Blogging Services: $2,517.50
Total: $2, 733.75
Expenses:
MyDomain (affiliate link) Domain Renewels: $16.13
Genesis Theme (affilate link): $79.95
A Small Orange (affiliate link) for hosting: $50.00
Total: $146.08
March 2013 Net Income: (Income – Expenses): $2, 587.67
Once again, the majority of the income is from my Side Income Blogging Services work and only a small portion of that from my blogs and niche sites themselves.
Thanks for sharing this info – it’s really interesting to not only see the stats but what proportion of your income comes from professional service as opposed to ad revenue. Does this represent an average month?
A very honest report on your income. Larry, you are brave to do this. I am not making enough income to mention.
You are doing a great job keeping your stats. I need to do a better job.
Hey Gary, March was not an average month. Generally my total revenue per month is around $800.00. I just happened to get a higher than usual amount of work in March.
Thanks Michael Belk. For me, it’s really an ethics issue. I really believe that if I am going to tell people how to earn money, I need to show them that I really do. Anyone can claim to be an “expert”, but are they?
On keeping my stats, I just have a Google Calendar reminder set-up, and I spend about 30 minutes updating a very simple spreadsheet I keep. Well worth the time, at least for me. But with that said, I’m also a pretty big data person.
Hey, Larry. Thanks for the honest report. I “Kingged” it on the IM Social Site- Kingged.com and I left the following comment:
It seems like an impressive report. Everyone who does business online would love to do an accounting about how they’re doing with their business, but it’s either we don’t have the time, we don’t know how, or it just seems like a daunting task. Seeing your report is just so encouraging to stay updated with our own numbers. Cool!
Riza, Kingged.com contributor
Thanks Riza, and glad to hear it’s encouraging.
Hi,
I am a full time programmer for past 15 years.
But newbie to blogging. your income report is inspiring.
I have a question. is the ebook being sold in your site written by you.
sales page doesnt have author name.
I will buy as I need the advice in ebook.
regards
vinodh
Vinodh, I’m assuming you’re referring to the Evernote ebook called Evernote Essentials?
No, that is not mine, but one that I purchased and got a great deal of value from, so I made my readers aware of tit.
thats my mistake larry. sorry. another site listed your site as a useful site on blogging. I thought you are the owner of that site. it sells blogging ebook.
Ah, no problem Vinodh.