Hello 👋 , and welcome to the blog income report: August 2023 edition.
And yes, getting this out of the way, August was THE best-performing month income-wise to date. The numbers just keep on increasing every month since June, exceeding my expectations every time.
That too with the blog that has merely over 64 blog posts as of writing this.
- Yes, I take a lot of time writing/publishing a single post.
- Yes, I know I should have many more blog posts by now, as it has been a few years.
- Yes, I realize the income generated with respect to the small content pool is absurd.
I am aware of all of that!
With each passing month, my efforts are purely dedicated to catering to the needs of the users and to maintaining the steady growth this blog has been experiencing for the past few months.
This also means constantly updating existing content (the ones that are bringing in the profits) and removing ones that aren’t serving in the long run.
Increasing the “Quality Density” of the blog, one might say!
This is why my “plan of action” with this site will be NOT to fill it with fluff & regurgitated content while producing the ones that serve the niche of the website.
This year, a huge chunk of my time will be allotted to creating content around the vast topic of Blogging: The getting started part, picking a niche, creating, promoting, monetizing, all of it.
And I really hope I can deliver on the promise.
Moving on,
In this Blog Income Report, I’ll be sharing the exact income/expense digits, the reason for any fluctuation, traffic/email subscriber stats, and other blog updates starting off with the Income Breakdown of August 2023.
Also, I will discuss briefly how August was able to deliver an increase in income despite having the same traffic numbers as July.
Hint: The reason lies in the RPM…
Table of Contents
The Income Breakdown: $18,819.12
SOURCE | AMOUNT |
Mediavine Ad Income | $15,160.72 |
Affiliate Income | |
– Proofread Anywhere | $1318.40 |
– Impact | $2340 |
TOTAL | $18,819.12 |
Mediavine pulled a massive $15k (the highest ad income to date 🤯 ) out of the total $18.8k revenue made by this site, which is around 26% higher compared to last month and had almost the same traffic.
This did come out as a bit of a surprise.
There was a significant RPM bump, which was not at all expected for August,
A staggering $16.24 increase…
This change was so random, but it does give a hint of how Q4 might perform If this keeps on going.
I can expect a few $80-$90 RPM days in the month Of December (hopefully)
If you aren’t familiar with all the fuss about why bloggers and some business owners are excited about Q4 (Oct-Dec), let me clear that out for you:
Q4 is usually the time when advertisers throw cash heavily on ads because people become quite spendthrift during the holiday season.
So, advertising companies capitalize on this opportunity, and as a result, RPMs usually go high this time around every single year.
And subsequently, the RPM tends to plummet after this period is over.
But right now, with Q4 approaching, I can’t help but get excited over it.
Also,
In the early days of when I joined the Mediavine Ad network, I was making around 1/10 of what I’m making in ad revenue every month. Around $40-$80 a day was expected.
This July, I had my first $500 day, just through ads.
And in August, the blog witnessed its first $600 and $700 day, literally days apart. Image below for reference:
- $600-day on 17th Aug (not shown in the image)
- And $700-day on 26th Aug
After sharing my RPMs on X (formerly Twitter), I realized they are considerably high compared to what other bloggers are getting (this is a good thing)
I might publish a detailed blog post dedicated to increasing Mediavine RPM rates; get notified of that by signing up for my newsletter, which is mentioned below.
Also, if you want to get these income reports as soon as they get online directly into your inbox, provide your email below, and I’ll send the link the second they are published.
Blog Expenses for August 2023
SOURCE | AMOUNT |
Blog Hosting + CDN | $34.95 + $17 |
Email Service Provider | $49 |
Canva Pro | $12.95 |
Semrush | $119.95 |
Ahrefs Subscription | $199 |
TOTAL | $432.85 |
So the Net Profit for this blog turns out to be ($18,819.12- $432.85), which is:
$18,386.27
(up by 19.14% since last month)
On the fence about starting your own blog?
Building a personal brand online not only helps you build a steady source of income but also helps you in all sorts of not-so-direct ways, such as:
- High-income potential (a lot of established bloggers make over $100,000 a month)
- You leverage your blog to help your existing business
- Building a like-minded community
- You don’t need any technical or coding knowledge prior to starting a blog.
- Starting a blog is super cheap (only $2.95 a month)
- You can create your blog on any topic you like or are passionate about, ANYTHING!
- Create a passion project under your own name ( Example: yourname.com, I have another blog other than this, which is in my name, sayanneogie.com)
- What do you have to lose? (Other than those $2.95/month, a cup of coffee is more expensive than this.)
Here’s how to start your own blog in 10 minutes:
Head over to the article: Step-by-step guide on starting a blog, and you’ll be good to go.
Moving on to the blog expenses that were incurred last month:
The Blog hosting, CDN (content delivery network), email service provider, and Canva subscription are the only expenses the blog needs to keep it running, the cost of which is considerably low when compared to the income that it is generating.
Over 99% of profit margin! Think about that for a second. Rarely there are businesses that fetch such high margins.
Also, this time, I’ve included the SEO tools I’ve been using for quite a while now, mostly Semrush and Ahrefs.
Get a free trial for Semrush here and try it out.
From these SEO tools, I’ve been able to manage a few good keywords that show a lot of promise, and I am currently in the process of creating well-rounded blog posts around those topics.
Apart from finding new target keywords, these tools helped me find certain errors in the blog through a routine blog audit, which were affecting my site’s overall performance, and how to remove them, such as “Links to broken pages,” “missing alt text,” etc.
Fixing some of these is fairly easy, considering how grave their impact can be in the search results.
Creating a well-networked & properly internally linked article is what allows web crawlers from search engines to go through your website when they need to.
The easier that process you’ll make for those crawlers, the better search engines can make a map of your website.
Here is a better-worded article that explains the same in-depth & has helped me understand the mechanism: AuthorityHacker.com
Income Proof:
1. Mediavine
2. Impact
2. Proofread Anywhere
Traffic Stats:
There was no major change in overall traffic, but a steady inflow of good-quality traffic was maintained, which fueled the $70+ RPM of ad rates throughout the website.
You might already be aware of the fact that the majority of the blog traffic hails from Pinterest, and only a small percentage of the total traffic from Google.
Getting started with Pinterest might feel daunting for absolute beginners, and it is at times.
You can refer to the blog post: How to Use Pinterest for Blogging. For a simple-follow guide to getting started.
Question: Are you a fan of Google Analytics 4?
It just isn’t sitting right for me, and I know for a fact that a lot of GA4 users might feel the same. The interface isn’t as user-friendly as I hoped for, and I rarely check blog traffic lately.
Hopefully, they tweak it at least a little bit in the coming days because I don’t wanna get used to this.
Another anomaly that has happened related to GA4 lately is that my average engagement time has dropped to the floor; it’s down 61%, and I don’t understand why.
The Average engagement number used to linger around 50s earlier, and it has fallen to 19s.
The dots you see in the image?
Those are anomaly regions, meaning the numbers aren’t what they are supposed to be and that the analytics system itself has detected the same.
Email Subscribers:
Started the month with around 2400 subscribers and ended with 3000 on the list, gaining around 600 in a month, which averages around 20 per day.
To be honest, gaining email subscribers isn’t something I struggle with. The only issue with me having an email list is to maintain and nurture the audience; that is where I fall short.
In the past, too, I have curated high-quality subscriber lists from anywhere from 2k to over 8k subs, which I abandon completely solely due to the fact that I don’t interact with them enough to keep me relevant in their inbox.
And then I’ll start building the list all over again, from scratch! I have done it too many times than I’d like to admit.
But I have no plans to abandon the 3k subs I’ve garnered; oh noooo…
Instead, I plan to build an engaging audience base of subscribers that will be closely tied to the core business itself.
Starting with an achievable goal of 5k subs by the end of 2023.
I’ll be sharing a brand new email every week based on the 2 different segments of the email list, which are Money and blogging.
Stay tuned!
Previous Blog Income reports:
- Blog Income Report: I made $15,545 in July 2023
- Blog Income Report: I made $12,373 in June 2023
- Blog Income Report: I made $6747 in May 2023
- Blog Income Report: I made $4,767 in April 2023
- Blog Income Report: I made $4,801 in March 2023
- Blog Income Report: I made $4,753 in February 2023
Blog Updates:
There are no significant updates as of now, though I am improving a lot of internal errors that were neglected previously, such as the one mentioned about the errors that occurred in the blog audit.
And as far as the “other websites that I started in June” go, sadly, not much has changed either.
Site | Niche | Traffic | Income |
---|---|---|---|
1. Prosmartrepreneur | Finance & Business | 214k (S) | $18,819 |
2. SayanNeogie | Personal Development | 651 (PV) | $2.36 |
3. [Redacted] | Mostly Business | 0 | 0 |
4. [Redacted] | Travel | 0 | 0 |
5. [Redacted] | Personal Finance | 0 | 0 |
6. [Redacted] | [Redacted] | 0 | 0 |
Well, that was the income report for August 2023, I’ll catch you in the next one.
Cheers!