The second quarter of the year is over already. Time is flying by way too fast and it's making me feel like I'm not getting enough done!
All in all, the blog grew steadily this month and it's continuing in the right direction. I tried out some new things, made a bit more money than last quarter, and I'm hoping what I've learned will help you on your blogging journey!
If you haven't already, go check out my 2019 Q1 income report.
New Things I Tried in Q2
This quarter was really good for the blog. I came up with a new system for writing posts which has been pretty efficient and I tried some new things out:
- Media.net Ads – I finally put some paid ads on my blog using the Media.net ad network. If you want to see the results, read my Media.net review.
- Swift Saturday Newsletter – I tried this in the past and now I'm revamping it. Basically every 1-4 weeks I'll send out a newsletter with blog updates, interesting content from around the web, and other things. If you want to read it, sign up for the newsletter here.
- Had my first guest post – I finally decided to start accepting guest posts on the blog, you can read the first one here. I like getting different perspectives on money so that's why I started accepting them, but I still have pretty strict rules for them as I don't want to attract people just looking for backlinks.
Blog Income for Q1 2019: $499.21 Net Profit
If you've read my other income reports you know how this works but basically, I only post income in my reports that has actually hit my bank account. No nonsense or shenanigans here.
All expenses and income are listed in Canadian dollars.
Income Breakdown: $1192.18 Gross Income
- ShareASale (from HealthyWage mostly which pays you to lose weight, and some coupon downloads) – $131.59
- Flexoffers (promoting Trim and Paribus) – $50.84
- MaxBounty (survey site offers) – $290.06
- Panthera (survey site offers) – $185.94
- 5-Dollar Meal Plan – $19.34
- VIPKid (online tutoring platform) – $161.97
- Mylo (financial tool) – $260
- Qmee (cashed out for a review, this isn't really affiliate income) – $5.19
- Checkout 51 (great tool to save money on groceries) – $87.25
My earnings for this quarter were pretty diversified across different affiliates which is nice to see. Also, I'm really happy to see that I hit over $1,000 gross profit this quarter as last quarter I was just short of $1,000.
My ad revenue would have been on the report for this quarter but payments haven't gone out yet so that should be in the next report.
Expense Breakdown: $692.97
- Gsuite – $20.93
- AppSumo – $128.49
- Freepik – $118.73
- Tailwind – $226.71
- Think Build Blog Course – $132.84
- Blog Revenue Engines Course – $65.27
This quarter was a big one for expenses. Probably the most expensive quarter of the year. In the past seeing all this money go towards expenses would have bummed me out but now, not so much.
The reason?
Each of the expenses above only helps grow my business and/or make it better. For example, Tailwind helps me get more traffic to my site and it saves me a ton of time. Freepik gives me awesome and unique graphics to use on my blog.
The reason I made a purchase from AppSumo is that they had a deal on DepositPhotos so I purchased that for future graphics (e.g. Pinterest pins).
The two courses at the bottom ended adding quite a bit to my costs as well. Here's what both courses are for:
- Think Build Blog – This is a web design/coding course run by Paul Scrivens (creator of Dare to Conquer).
- Blog Revenue Engines – Another course by Paul Scrivens, this one shows you how to take a blog from $0-$1000 in 6 months.
I bought both of these courses in order to learn more so I know they're worth the money. I never feel bad about investing in myself.
Traffic Breakdown: 100,120 Pageviews
I don't like to worry about pageviews too much as of recently because it can just end up being stressful, but I'm pretty happy with over 100,000 in 3 months! Last quarter I got 71,756 pageviews so I've seen an increase of 28,364 this quarter.
I still have over 50% of my traffic going to only 5 posts on my site (while I have over 40 published) so that's something I want to continue to work on.
The big perk of hitting these traffic numbers is that I can now apply to MediaVine! They require 25,000 sessions minimum a month and I've finally hit the threshold 🙂
Email List: 239 Subscribers
I had 175 subscribers at the end of the last quarter so I've only gained 64 new subscribers in the past 3 months. I think I can do better than that.
One of the new things I'm doing with my email list (that I mentioned above) is a newsletter every 1-4 weeks. This is for the subscribers who don't want to receive an email for every new post, and it organizes and wraps everything up in one place.
I still need to work on segmenting my list more and I want to create a new email course as well so look out for that.
Things I'd Like to Try Going Forward
- Applied to MediaVine – I officially applied to MediaVine in the last week of June which is pretty exciting! I'm still waiting to hear back from them.
- Creating a product – This is still something I've been thinking about a lot but I still don't have any solid ideas. I'm going through the 100k Climb Course in Dare to Conquer to learn more about strengthening my brand and creating a product.
- Sponsored posts – I had this listed in my Q1 income report as well, still haven't found the right opportunity.
- Start paying for guest posts – I've noticed a lot of people only want to guest post to get a link on the blog, and it just ends up attracting low-quality articles. I'm thinking of reaching out to people in the future and actually paying them to guest post on my blog as I think that would bring some high-quality, useful content.
Want to Start Your Own Money Making Blog?
As I see my blog slowly growing, there's one thing I can't help but think:
I'm so glad I started when I did.
I'll be honest, I thought my blog was going to grow faster and make money faster. When I first started I was overly optimistic.
As I continued working on it I realized just like any other business, a blog takes time to grow. Building a brand takes time.
That's why I'm so glad that I just started when I did. If I had waited I would have just been putting myself further and further behind.
The sooner you start, the sooner you'll start seeing success.
If you don't start, you'll never even discover what could have been possible.
All this sounds pretty corny but it's true. If you've ever thought about starting your own online business but you just haven't made the leap, I encourage you to just give it a go.
If you're interested, learn how to start a blog that makes money in just 6 steps.
Hi Dylan, Great post, very informative. I too have a personal finance blog although mine is only 6 months old and I am still learning new stuff every day.
I do monthly income and blog growth posts and get good responses from people sick of seeing the “I made 15,000 in my first-month” posts. Seeing your quarterly posts was a bit unique as I havent seen that done before but it makes sense I suppose.
So I am now secretly stalking your site to see some of your other great posts. Congratulations by the way on being accepted to Mediavine, That is one accomplishment all bloggers want to achieve. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Lee! I get tired of seeing those sort of unrealistic reports as well. Good luck with your blog!