Income Report – July 2019

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Thirteenth Month of making money from Blogging!

Blogging Income Report – July 2019

I am officially past my first full year of blogging (for money)! It’s still so hard to believe that it’s already been that long.

Although in retrospect, I am very pleased with my growth over the last year, I will admit that my expectations were much higher when I first started!

By the end of my first year, I had a goal of making a full-time income from this blog. Yeah… That didn’t happen LOL. But, at the time I set that goal, I had no idea how hard it would be!

Be sure to check out my June 2019 Income Report for important lessons I learned in my first year!

July was the first official month of Year 2 in this blogging journey and coincidentally, I was out of the country for most of it!

My lovely boyfriend and I had a much-needed holiday in Japan and Korea for almost three whole weeks!

We didn’t plan it to be a blogging anniversary celebration, but it sure was a great way to celebrate my accomplishments in the last year!

AND July was a total breakthrough month for me. Especially because I barely did anything blog-related.

It was the first time I ever felt like I didn’t need to “babysit” my blog.

It made me realize that I might be at a point where I don’t need to constantly be working on this blog. More on this a little later in the report!

Today’s income report will be the start of me just doing shorter “monthly updates” instead of the extremely long income reports I usually do.

I’m at a point where I don’t really change a lot in what I do from month to month, so I’ll only talk about major changes in the reports moving forward.

If you want to see my in-depth reports, feel free to browse the rest of my Income Reports!

Here are the most recent months:

• June 2019: $1,343.96
• May 2019: $1,318.21
• April 2019: $3,461.75

Without further ado, let’s get started!

Affiliate links may be used in this post, which I may receive a commission from, at no extra cost to you. You can read my full disclosure here.

Why do I publish income reports?

If this is the very first blogging income report that you’ve stumbled upon, I bet you think it’s so weird that I’m sharing my income with the whole Internet! (It’s still strange for me, too.)

And if this isn’t your first income report, you already know what I’m going to say next!

1. Transparency is very important

I’m very honest in my income reports because I wish I had read more brutally honest income reports when I was just starting out.

Many times, bloggers make it seem like earning a significant amount of money from blogging is easy. And it totally isn’t.

It’s absolutely possible! But, it doesn’t come without hard work and a lot of sacrifice.

I hate seeing blogging being marketed as a “get-rich-quick” scheme because that belittles the amount of effort that goes into it.

So, I feel like it’s my duty to show you the real side of blogging!

2. I want to help other bloggers

If you’ve already started a blog, you know there is a HUGE learning curve in the beginning.

And if you haven’t started one yet, but you want to, fasten your seatbelts for the rollercoaster ride ahead!

Blogging can be super overwhelming, especially in the beginning, so if I can help you even in the slightest through my income reports, I’m a happy camper!

A little about me and this blog:

You can totally skip this part if you already know my story, but if you’re new here, I think it’s important that you know a bit about my blogging history.

Because even though this is only my 13^th month making money from blogging, this blog was started back in early 2016.

I was living alone in Japan at the time and my blog served as a way for my family and friends back home to keep up with me.

I didn’t do anything to promote it and barely anyone that wasn’t a friend or family member viewed it.

It wasn’t until I moved back home to Maui in 2017 that I started blogging about beauty-related things. But, I still didn’t do anything to really promote it.

I did barely any research on blogging at this point and was essentially writing for no one to read! I just hoped people would stumble across it by pure luck!

Finally, in July 2018, I got my act together and started doing this blogging thing properly!

I did already have a bunch of posts that were fairly well written, so I definitely wasn’t starting at nothing in July 2018.

July 2019 Income Report and Traffic

As I’ve done in my previous income reports, I will be reporting my income on an earned basis, even though this money hasn’t hit my bank account yet. The money I’ve earned in any given month corresponds to the traffic of said month, so I feel this is an intuitive way of reporting. This may change in the future, but I will always disclose my reporting method in every income report.

July 2019 Blog Gross Income: $2,448.99

• Mediavine – $2,228.05
• Rakuten (Ebates) – $125.00
• Amazon – $33.02
• PotPieGirl – $22.80
• rewardStyle – $25.41
• Skimlinks – $14.71

July 2019 Blog Expenses: $0

• Animoto Video Maker – $0 (paid in full previously for one year)
• Domain registration – $0 (paid in full previously for one year)
• Siteground Hosting – $0 (paid in full previously for one year)
• Tailwind – $0 (paid in full previously for one year)

July 2019 Blog Net Income: $2,448.99

July 2019 Traffic: 83,162 Sessions and 109,767 Page Views

Here are my stats from June for comparison:

It’s important to remember that July had 31 days in the month and June had 30!

So, let’s look at the average sessions and page views per day of each month:

• July: 2,682.65 sessions/day and 3,540.87 page views/day
• June: 1,688.57 sessions/day and 2,2206.27 page views/day

Check out that growth! I am super excited to see such a large increase!

I set a goal of hitting 100,000 page views in July and YAY I DID IT – I’m a bit shocked, myself!

Looking at this graph makes me so happy!

Not quite up to the traffic I experienced after my crazy spike in April, but July felt SO MUCH steadier.

Income and Expenses

I grossed an amount of $2,448.99 in July, which I am very pleased with. The goal I set for the month was $2,000, so YAY I DID IT!

Also great is that I had absolutely no expenses in July. Everything that is needed to keep my blog running was paid for in advance.

And since I was on holiday for most of the month, there weren’t any opportunities for me to get FOMO over blogging courses.

(I totally get blogging course FOMO all the time!)

Looking at this graph also makes me really happy!

As you can see in the graph, the amount of money I make is directly related to the amount of traffic I receive.

That’s what happens when you rely on ad revenue for most of your income! And I am definitely okay with that.

I love ad revenue! It feels like the most passive money I can make. All I have to do is get people to read my blog!

Ad RPM

RPM represents the amount of money earned for every 1,000 page views or sessions.

Mediavine calculates RPM for both sessions and page views, but I’ve always used page views as the measure of RPM, so I’ll continue doing so.

In July, my RPM increased to $20.17 from June’s RPM of $17.98.

That is awesome!

The biggest factor in increasing my RPM was turning off the limit of ads shown in each post, as I talked about last month.

This change was made in the last week of June, so July was the first full month without limiting the amount of ads shown.

It’s the only change I made and by looking at the increase in RPM, it clearly made a difference!

Pinterest

Pinterest was so good to me in July, I can hardly believe it! (Knock on wood, though.)

And you know what the crazy thing is? I barely touched Pinterest while I was on my trip.

All I really did was schedule out pins through Tailwind before I left and prayed nothing would go terribly wrong!

I also made a point to go on the Pinterest app on my phone (didn’t take my laptop with me) every few days and manually pin a few things using the strategies from the PinTest Playbook.

And I guess everything worked! Because I had AMAZING Pinterest growth in July!

I haven’t changed my strategy at all – still pinning new pins frequently and sticking with the PinTest Playbook strategies.

If you haven’t bought that book yet, I HIGHLY recommend you do. Revolutionary is a pretty strong word, but after the growth I’ve seen since implementing the strategies, I kind of feel like it is revolutionary! (And I only started using it in the middle of June.)

Here are my Pinterest traffic numbers for the last three months:

• July: 98,003 page views
• June: 56,265 page views
• May: 50,078 page views

Average per day:

• July: 3,161.39 page views per day
• June: 1,875.5 page views per day
• May: 1,639.13 page views per day

It’s crazy to see how much Pinterest traffic growth I had in one month, but I’m not complaining!

Content Creation

I’m on a journey to have 100 blog posts receive 1,000 page views every month – which means A LOT of great content!

In July, I had 26 posts that received 1,000 page views or more, which is up from 20 (I think) in June!

I only managed to publish 4 posts in July since I was on a trip, but I was very happy to see many of my posts from the months before picking up some steam last month.

Having 100 posts that receive 1,000 views a month is much easier than having 10 posts that receive 10,000 views a month.

(And you’d obviously end up with way more than 100,000 page views since the top 10 will definitely receive way more than 1,000.)

So, I’m very much still focused on pushing out a ton of content every month, especially to encourage readers to click around and read a bunch of posts once they land on my blog.

My goal each month is 8 posts!

My Favorite Blogging Resources

These resources are what I attribute the success I’ve seen so far to. I wouldn’t have been able to make it this far without them!

(View my other income reports for more details on each resource – I’m keeping this short today.)

1. Pinteresting Strategies Course

The very first Pinterest course I took and what I attribute my solid Pinterest foundation to.

In just over a year since I started working on Pinterest, I got almost 100,000 page views to my blog JUST from Pinterest!

This is a great course for those who are just starting out and don’t know exactly how to get traffic from Pinterest yet.

Use code PINNING5 for $5 off!

2. P.I.Q. Pinterest Strategy and PinTest Playbook E-Books

I already mentioned the PinTest Playbook above, but BOTH of these books helped me take my Pinterest game to the next level.

They do not cover the basics of Pinterest, so they are definitely for those that already have a solid Pinterest foundation, but are not seeing the growth they’d like to see.

3. Easy On Page SEO and Easy Backlinks for SEO E-Books

If you haven’t started learning about SEO yet, you should definitely start with the Easy On Page SEO e-book. It covers every thing you need to know about how to properly optimize a post for SEO.

And once you get the on-page/in-post things down, the next thing is to start acquiring backlinks to increase your Domain Authority (DA)! The Easy Backlinks for SEO e-book is a great way to learn how.

4. Dare to Conquer (formerly Billionaire Blog Club)

The mecca of all blogging resources. The one-stop shop for all your blogging needs.

Seriously. Everything you need to know to start and build a successful blog is in Dare to Conquer.

It’s not the cheapest of resources, so I recommend going through the free bootcamps to see if the teaching style is right for you. (I love it.)

Here are the bootcamps:

• Online Business Bootcamp
• Biz Idea Creation
• Brand & Tribe Framework
• Creating Killer Content
• Understanding SEO
• Principles of Pinterest
• Acquiring Affiliate Marketing Dollars
• Perfect Info Product Creation
• Storyselling Sales Funnels

5. Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers Course

This course is a great intermediate level course to teach you how to make conversions.

You’ve signed up for affiliate programs, you’ve put affiliate links in your posts, but people are just not buying anything. This course shows you how to change that.

6. Tailwind

I wouldn’t be able to live without Tailwind! I mentioned earlier that while I was on my trip, I scheduled out pins through Tailwind and it kept my Pinterest game afloat!

Consistency is very important for Pinterest success and Tailwind allows me to be consistent even when I’m not even paying attention to Pinterest!

Get a month of Tailwind for FREE ($15 credit) when you sign up here!

August Goals

With the absolute smashing of both my traffic and income goals in July, I can’t help but set even higher goals for August!

My page view goal is 125,000 and my income goal is $3,000. I think it’ll be tough, but I’m optimistic about hitting both of those goals!

How will I reach these goals?

Content and Ad Revenue!

I didn’t emphasize this too much in this income report, but if you’ve read any of my other reports, you know how much I love ad revenue!

It’s my biggest source of income for this blog and I like it that way!

I love knowing that I’m making money every time someone is viewing a post. Even when I’m sleeping!

Some bloggers will tell you to diversify your income streams, and yes, that is the smart thing to do.

But, in my mind, lianadesu is an ad revenue type of blog sprinkled with some affiliate sales here and there.

I have no intention of selling my own products or building a “tribe” with this blog – I want it to become a “set it and forget it” type of blog where all I have to do is write the content and make sure everything is working correctly from a technical standpoint.

And once this blog becomes pretty much a passive stream of income, I’ll start another blog where I’ll cultivate an engaged audience and maybe sell my own products.

So until then, content, content, and more content for more traffic and more ad revenue!!

Final Thoughts

Even though I had a massive traffic and income spike in April and have been calling it my breakthrough month since then, I actually think July was more of a breakthrough month.

I say this because nothing crazy happened in July – no spikes in traffic that is hard to replicate month after month.

July felt completely natural, steady, and like it’s not going to all disappear in an instant – unlike the viral post in April, where it did all disappear in an instant.

More so than ever, I feel like the goal of making a full-time income from blogging is within reach and I’m not freaking out about it. 

I’ve been surprisingly calm and not getting too excited about my traffic and income growth. And I think that’s because it really did feel natural – like all my hard work is just really paying off now and it’s nothing to be surprised about.

And that’s a great feeling to have. I think I’ve reached a point where I’m not obsessing over every drop or spike in traffic and I can trust that it’s not all going disappear overnight.

(Unless Pinterest shuts down, but let’s not jinx that! Can you even imagine not having Pinterest?!)

EDIT: Literally a few hours after I initially wrote the draft of this post (before publishing), Pinterest blocked my entire website as spam. That means absolutely NO Pinterest traffic right now! UGH. I jinxed it! Pray for me that it’ll be resolved soon!

UPDATE 8/9/19: Pinterest unblocked my site this morning. Traffic is kind of back to normal. BUT, that lost me 2 1/2 days of revenue!! This is why it’s important to diversify your traffic sources…

With that my friends, I shall end this income report. I said it was going to be a short monthly update, but it still ended up being almost 3K words LOL.

It’s about 1K words shorter than last month’s report so pat on the back for me! And pat on the back for you for making it to the end!

If you’re a regular reader of my reports, you are a real champ for always sticking it out through my ramblings!

And if you’re new here, welcome and thank you for reading all the way to the end! You are awesome!

If you are a fellow blogger, please leave me a note down in the comments! I’d love to know more about you and your blogging journey! 🙂

Thank you for reading and until next time. <3

Previous Income Reports:

• June 2019: $1,346.96
• May 2019: $1,318.21
• April 2019: $3,461.75

You can view all of my income reports on my blogging page.

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Blogging Income Report – July 2019

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