Blog Income Report: I made $15,545 in July 2023

Hello 👋 , and welcome to the blog income report: July 2023 edition.

July was a fairly well-performing month,

and by well-performing,

I mean the best one to date.

I presumed all the metrics for July would be in red compared to June ($12,373) because a spike in traffic from Pinterest usually goes down after a period.

But to my surprise, traffic was up 31% since last month, and that resulted in a 25% rise in overall income.

Anyways, ME VERY HAPPY!

Moving on,

This income report will encompass how this blog made around $15,545 last month, through what revenue models and other blog updates.

Nobody wants to share something that is so personal (especially when it comes to money) and potentially vulnerable to their competitors to show off, right?

The income reports are a self-documented report of my blogging journey so far, the monthly progress of a self-learned blogger, an inexperienced college student who just wanted to build a full-time income stream.

And therefore, I wanted to share all it took me to make this happen. But is this really a good idea?

There has to be another reason that transcends the risks…or people won’t make such moves that are clearly a gross error in judgment.

These kinds of “inside peek” blog posts often come with some incredible benefits.

For example, I’m publishing these income reports for 3 primary reasons:

1. To motivate YOU
2. To keep ME accountable
3. Boosts engagement (yup, I said it)

Expanding on these points…

1. It motivates people to start something for themselves

It’s no secret that people are primarily motivated by results!

Does a tiring workout ever inspire you?

Probably not; you are encouraged to have a well-shaped body or proper mobility, which is the result, and thus you work out.

It’s not the process that gets people moving but the euphoric feeling of having achieved the end goal that motivated them to start in the first place.

Hence, I share my results to motivate people who are on the fence.

And if, after seeing my results, you do decide to start your own blog, I’ll say this income report has served its purpose well.

As I mentioned before, my first impression of this whole blogging industry was through an income report of a wildly successful blogger with 6-figures in her monthly income reports.

And that was enough to start my very own blog.

Witnessing someone make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a month working for nobody, but themselves really gave me a strong dose of encouragement.

I wanted those results and the work-life independence that comes with them.

By giving you the inside scoop on what a blog really makes (which is usually kept hidden) by giving you those exact income digits, it’ll show you what is really possible and hopefully help you decide whether you should give blogging a shot or not.

2. It pushes me NOT to get comfortable

Publishing my progress (or sometimes the decline) and the blogging journey in general also serves as an advantage to me.

Sure, I make a little ad income every time people read through an article like this, but that’s not the most valuable thing I’m acquiring here.

Having a like-minded community that monitors and analyses my progress over time makes me do things more sincerely.

And this makes me want to give 110% in everything I do on this blog.

In short, It keeps me in check when it comes to slacking off (which is quite evident given I’ve skipped a lot of reports in the past).

Moreover, it will help me keep track of the blog like a well-sorted document and how far the blog has come regarding growth, readership, and income.

3. Boosts engagement

As much as many bloggers would hate to admit this publicly,

Posting income reports actually helps one gain a lot of engagement, helps in audience retention, and as a result, a boost in earnings.

For example, pick out any of my old Income Reports and compare the sheer number of comments and support I received from the people who follow these reports compared to other blog posts.

The difference is quite prominent.

Also, another side advantage is this kind of post gets a lot of backlinks when people make income report roundup posts highlighting various earning potentials from a wide range of niches.

And I’ve been featured in a lot of such roundup posts without any reaching out at all.

Now let’s jump right into the part you’re here for: The income breakdown for July 2023.

The Income Breakdown: $15,545.24

SOURCE	AMOUNT
Mediavine Ad Income	$12,007.48
Affiliate Income
– Proofread Anywhere	$1467.76
– Impact	$2070
TOTAL	$15,545.24

Mediavine ads revenue was over $12,000, which is absolutely insane.

I have never made so much just through ads in a month; almost every day was a $350+ ad income day.

And it kind of reignited the joy, the excitement I had to see the numbers of the day before.

If you have a website/blog and are contemplating if Mediavine is a perfect fit for your blog, this Mediavine Review might help you decide.

The RPM for the month was $56.61, kind of decent for July.

Now I wanna talk a bit about affiliate earnings and how I think I suck at it.

Yup! I admit it!

From the table, you can easily conclude that my affiliate earnings are nowhere near the ad revenue.

One reason could be that my affiliate programs aren’t very diverse; I am promoting merely 2 affiliate programs throughout the website.

Or maybe because I don’t have proper affiliate-specific content pieces that would incentivize readers to make the purchase.

Whatever might be the case, I might have to do some trial and error to figure out the issue.

Blog Expenses for July 2023

Below mentioned are some of the expenses that must be incurred to keep this blog up and running 24/7

SOURCE	AMOUNT
Blog Hosting + CDN	$34.95 + $17
Email Service Provider	$49
Canva Pro	$12.95
TOTAL	$113.9

I had some other expenses that were not necessarily needed to run the blog, but I used them anyway for keyword research & competition analysis purposes.

Semrush and Ahrefs are the ones I use for the mentioned, and I think they provide sort of rough numbers and data I need for my next piece of writing.

I have also received a lot of emails from blog owners asking about the theme I use on this website and its pricing,

I use GeneratePress,

Not only for this website alone but for all of my 6 websites (4 of them are pretty new). And I can’t recommend this enough for its lightweight application and customizable options.

So the Net Profit for this blog turns out to be ($15,545.24- $113.9), which is:

$15,431.34

(up by 25.66% 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.

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.

Income proof:

1. Mediavine

2. Impact

3. Proofread Affiliate

Blog Traffic (Numbers & Traffic Sources)

As I mentioned previously, I honestly didn’t expect to get continued high traffic from Pinterest since the June spike, but it kind of surpassed last month’s numbers as well.

Although I was not actively pinning during this month, I did not see any drop in reach whatsoever.

Again, Pinterest for the win!

In case you want to know how to drive massive traffic from Pinterest,

Head onto this article about getting started with Pinterest and learn the strategies I use to receive over 200k sessions from that platform.

Email Subscribers:

I would say there was a steady influx of email subscribers, both from embedded signup forms and from X (formerly Twitter).

I have even joined the Creator network from Convertkit, which allows you to recommend other creators when visitors subscribe to your email list and vice versa.

On July 18, you can see the sharp climb in email subs;

That is because I imported an email list I had on a different email provider that I had forgotten about before joining Convertkit.

So yeah, made sense to include (all 800 of them) in the new list.

At the current rate, my target would be to have a list of at least 5,000 active email subscribers before 2024, which I think might actually be possible.

Previous Blog Income reports:

• 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:

Site	Niche	Sessions	Income
1. Prosmartrepreneur	Finance & Business	211,278	$15,545
2. SayanNeogie	Personal Development	367	$2.15
3. [Redacted]	Mostly Business	0	0
4. [Redacted]	Travel	0	0
5. [Redacted]	Personal Finance	0	0
6. [Redacted]	[Redacted]	0	0

Zero content was added to any of the websites during this period, as most of my July was dedicated to creating homepage designs & setting up suitable blog themes, logos, and proper customization on each of the sites.

Of course, it isn’t done yet, feels like a never-ending process at the moment, but we’ll get there eventually.

And since I literally have a lot on my plate, the best thing can do is to allot time to each project according to their priority.

Here’s the thing,

I’ve learned lately that you can’t grow multiple sites all at once, not by yourself, at least.

I may have started 4 extra websites, but it would be pointless and grossly ignorant to give equivalent time to all of them, as only one of them is my #1 priority right now.

You guessed it; it’s this one.

That means most of my time and resources will be spent on further growing Prosmartrepreneur.com and assigning the surplus to build the other 5 sites.

Mostly because I have to cater to the existing readership first, then to the non-existent ones.

That’s it for the July 2023 blog income report! See ya next month! Cheers!