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Last Updated on September 30, 2022
Can you truly make money blogging? In my Blog Income Report for November 2019, I’m sharing my online business strategy tips and ideas that helped me earn nearly $20,000 in just one month online. A combination of Adthrive display ads on WordPress, affiliate marketing (read: passive income!) and digital course sales helped me reach my goals of being a full-time blogger.
Welcome back to our blog income reports! You might remember back in January 2018 we published our very first income report over on my blog, Root + Revel–it was actually for the entire year of 2017 (hint: I earned over $75,000 blogging in just my second year of blogging!).
It’s hard to believe I’ve been blogging for just over 4 years now, and even more amazing that my income went from $6,500 in my first year of blogging to $150,000 in my third year (including $58,000 while on a four-month maternity leave), and I’m getting dangerously close to hitting my target of $200,000 in revenue in my fourth year. #fingerscrossed
I know sharing my income with you might seem a little crazy, but let me explain.
TLDR: If this isn’t your first rodeo and you’ve been following allowing with these income reports for a while, you can skip to the next section titled Total Income.
For years, I’ve been reading the income reports of many successful bloggers, like Pinch of Yum, Making Sense of Cents, Smart Passive Income and Show Me the Yummy.
And they’ve inspired me so much, not only to know what’s possible in the world of blogging as a business, but also with their incredible ideas and generosity in sharing their mistakes and successes along the way.
And now, I want to return the favor. I feel like I’m at a point with Root + Revel where I have something valuable to share about making money online, something that I hope will help you learn how to make money doing something you love, something that lights you up every day and makes you excited to get to work, something you’re passionate about, something that impacts others for the better, something you can do from your couch in your jammies or on a beach in the Caribbean or at a desk in a co-working space at whatever dang time you please because YOU’RE YOUR OWN BOSS.
Please know, the goal of these income reports is not to brag or show off or pat myself on the back (though it’s always a good idea to celebrate your own successes, too!). Rather, my goal with these income reports is three-fold:
I’ve been self-employed for nearly a decade at this point, but since I began blogging full-time in January of 2017, my life has exponentially improved.
I’m finally writing the stories that I want to tell, I’m finally helping others to live happier, healthier and more fulfilling lives, and I’m doing it ALL on my own terms.
I’m so proud and happy to report that life is so much better now that I’m truly my own boss and a full-time blogger. I look forward to each and every day–I wake up excited to work, I’m always learning something new and I love the challenge of running your own business, constantly coming up with new ways to monetize and help people, simultaneously.
Alright, enough talk. Let’s take a look at the numbers for Q3 2019.
*Note: $19,401.01 is what I earned on an accrual basis, but I’ve recently started using Quickbooks and have switched over to the Cash method of accounting. So my revenue for Q3 using the cash method was actually $12,956.33. I only mention this because now I only use the cash method for tracking expenses, and to compare apples to apples, I will be sharing those numbers below.
I’m changing up how I report my expenses a bit here to streamline and simplify. Instead of listing out the exact expenses for each item, I’m just going to list out some of my favorite resources and services that I use every month to help me keep the blog up, running and profitable.
*Note: I did not include my owner’s pay and shareholder taxes expenses above, although I do pay myself a salary from Root + Revel’s gross revenue.
After a few months in the red, I am SO excited to report that we are back in black!!
Whew! I know that’s a lot to take in. One of the things I hope people will takeaway from these reports is just how much work, energy, thought and heart goes into running a blog. It’s not just as simple as slapping up a few words and an iphone photo and pressing publish.
Before we get into the details, I also wanted to share my traffic totals for October 2019.
*Note: I’ve been talking a lot about the Google Medic/E-A-T update that took place this summer; it has really hurt my traffic, and thus my revenue. Before the update, I was getting around 225,000 pageviews per month. I lost over 70% of my organic search traffic after the update. But, we’ve started to see an increase in our traffic starting at the end of September, and our revenue has continued to increase since then as well. Fingers crossed this trend continues.
*Note: We saw a lot of changes in October in our top posts, with recipes taking 3 of the top 5 spots. To help protect us from future Google algorithm updates, we’re planning to start doing 1-2 recipes per month in 2020 since that type of content is a bit more sheltered and less controversial than health content. Plus… yum! But this month, we had some of our old standbys come back into favor with Google, which is equally exciting.
Note: This screenshot comes from my dashboard in Active Campaign.
My goal for 2019 was to get 1,000 new subscribers per month and while it looks like we did way better than that, we’ve been dealing with a ton of bot subscribers that are totally throwing our numbers. In terms of new active subscribers, we actually only grew by 1,509 contacts, so we met our goal (which is AWESOME) but not by nearly as much as the above screenshot would lead you to believe.
Some other cool stats: our highest open rates come on Fridays, Sundays and Thursdays. Our best times to send: 11 am EST (by a landslide!), followed by 12 PM, 8 AM and 9 AM. My top opt-in was for my Library of Resources, followed by my DIY Cleaning eBook, Green Beauty Swaps and PCOS Recipe Guide.
I get all of these reports in Active Campaign which is easily one of the very best email service providers around! One thing that Active Campaign offers now is Predictive Sending (they’ll send your emails at the most optimal time for each individual subscriber), which I know has increased our open rates as many of our customer automations have over a 60% open rate. My goal this year was to increase my open rate to 25% so we’re well on our way. Last month, we averaged around 39.33% open rate across the board. It appears our Welcome Series open rates have dropped to less than 20% opens though, so we’re working on revamping those to make them more relevant and valuable to our subscribers. This will involve some heavy segmenting!
I also wanted to increase my click rate to 5%. Last month, our average click rate was 8.81%, so we have FINALLY met (and exceeded!) our goal. Happy dance!
Another goal I set is reducing our unsubscribe rate. Last month we deleted 8,282 subscribers, which is almost entirely due to those aforementioned issues of bots. It can be brutal to prune your list so religiously, but it’s always worth it to make sure you’re only emailing your true fans, and not paying for subscribers who aren’t active.
This is a new metric I’m adding to my income reports, as SEO is such a focus for us right now and I want to track how our efforts are working.
Note: DA is a ranking metric developed by Moz that predicts how well a site will rank on Google, and is measured on a scale of 1 to 100. The closer you are to 100, the more traffic and better ranking you’ll have.
Note: RPM stands for Revenue Per Mille, or the revenue earned per 1,000 pageviews. When you look at RPM, you put the focus on optimizing your revenue as efficiently as possible, rather than just getting the most people to your site. For example, a site with 100,000 pageviews and a $1 RPM makes $100, while a site with 20,000 pageviews and a $10 RPM makes $200. This is good news because it means you don’t have to have TONS of traffic to make a great income. In fact, when you niche down and focus on providing as much value as possible to your current audience, you earn more money.
Running a blog is a TON of work and each month I feel like I could fill an entire notebook with “what I focused on” details. But for everyone’s sanity’s sake, I’m going to keep this list simple and straightforward, and talk about the 3 key areas we focused on in November.
Alright, I’m gonna wrap up here and just let you know that my plans for next month center around getting ready for Launch #3 of the Six-Figure Blog Academy, which includes a new sales page, email funnels, webinar and more. That, and spending time slowing down, focusing on spaciousness and being present, asking for help and doing less overall. I hired a new VA who is a total rockstar and a personal assistant to help me maintain our house and personal life, and I’ve started delegating a lot more as I work on letting go of control and limiting beliefs and really stepping into the visionary role of my business. I feel so much better, lighter and happier already!
Convinced you need to jump on the blogging train? Get started with our free quiz below!
Each month, I feature one question from a reader. But sadly we didn’t get any questions last month. We did, however, receive an amazing testimonial from one of my 6FBA students so I want to take a minute to do a student spotlight. This comes from Ashlee from simplholistic:
I signed up during the Black Friday deal and cannot wait to implement these changes in my business. After just the first day of going through the course, I signed two new brands that I had been stuck on how to word the deal with. Now, we are working together for the rest of 2019 and all year for 2020. ALL IN ONE DAY. Kate, you are rocking my world. Thank you so much. I love it so much. I really am going to recommend this to ANYONE. Thank you and you did a fantastic job at explaining every part. Even for a “not new” blogger, it was more than helpful to go back and do things I never have. I credit the success I will see soon, to you!
For next month, please leave a comment below if you have a question that you would like me to answer.
Please know, I am keenly aware that I have the flexibility, freedom and finances to work on this blog as my full-time job because of YOU–dear reader, sharer, Pinner, commenter, Liker, customer or silent follower of Root + Revel. Your support and participation in the R+R community reaches beyond just this website.
This month, I donated to Nicholas House in your name, as I am so blown away by their incredible mission and want to do as much as I can to help these families make the transition from homelessness to self-sufficiency.
I love the structured but home-like environment that requires they earn a living wage, maintain the physical, mental and social health of parents and children, and maintain safe and stable housing. They’re also highly rated on CharityNavigator for their accountability, transparency, and performance. Join me, won’t you?
I am so incredibly grateful for you. Thanks for showing up!
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Thank you so much for sharing all of this! It’s really powerful and insightful to see your strategy around email marketing and how you plan to grow your list! So happy to hear that it all seems to be working!
Thank you so much Mara! I love being able to share my experience to help others on their journey! Let me know if you have any specific questions as you set-up your own list!