For this month’s blogging income report, I have decided to change how I show my analytics just a bit. If you look back at the first few reports that I posted, you will notice that I only showed the numbers for the current month. From this point onward, I will be showing you the current month laid over the same periods for last year.
Why am I doing this? Well, I am doing this for a couple of reasons. The first is that if your blog is your business, or you want to turn it into a business, then, knowing how to analyze it with a business model is important. Year-over-year growth is just one of the many different ways to analyze a business.
April 2019 Monthly Analytics…
Every year, I begin to see a slump during the month of April. If my trend continues as it has each year, this slump will not end until Memorial Day.
It is one of those things that all bloggers experience. It is also one of those things that we learn to overcome with strategic planning.
Of course, it may take a few years of analysis to actually see where improvements need to be made. For me, this is a holiday issue. Easter in April and Mother’s Day in May are what causes my site to stagger each year.
I haven’t really covered topics related to these holidays on my blog. So, naturally, I am not getting as much traffic during these months.
Yes, I saw a significant increase in growth over this time last year. However, my month-over-month still took a drastic dive.
Year-over-year is definitely more important as far as showing sustainable growth. But, this is an indicator of where I need to make improvements. More on that in the future goals section.
Blog Stats:
- This month’s pageviews – 99,586
- Last years’ pageviews – 44,376
- Gain/Loss –124% increase!
Email Subscribers:
- End of this month – 10,668
- End of last month- 9577
- Total Gain/Loss – 1091
April 2019 Blogging Income Report
- Total Monthly Earnings: $2224.24
- Amazon…$327.67
- Amazon.ca…$3.34
- Ads…$1851.45
- Sponsorships…$0
- Affiliate Marketing…$41.78
- Total Expenses: $437.70
- Hosting …$240.00
- Email Services …$138.75
- CDN…$9
- Subscriptions… $40.95
- MiloTree…$9
Total Profit:$1786.54
This month, my hosting and email have both increased over last month’s report. If you will recall in January’s statement, I mentioned that I had just changed to a new host at the beginning of the year.
This month, I also had several domains transferred over from my old service. When I chose my blog name, I purchased variations on that name to make sure that no one would be able to take my name and use it for some other type of site.
I also grabbed both dot coms and dot net versions. It results in a nice little chunk of cash each year, but I feel that the security is worth it. My hosting fee reflects all of those domains this month.
You will also notice an increase in my email expense. Last month’s fees for this site were pro-rated. The full amount is included above. I also am regularly seeing bumps in fees because my lists are growing at a decent pace.
Future Goals
Next year, I plan to have several posts directed towards the Easter holiday. As with anything on a blog, there are a lot of strategies that can be used to increase growth.
However, growth is accumulative and mostly based on the number of quality posts available. So, I don’t expect to pull out of this holiday slump in one year.
But, I want to at least stop the bleeding when next April rolls around. By April 2021, I should be seeing growth instead of a decline for this period. I am basing this pace on a strategy that I implemented for the previous Christmas numbers.
Just to clarify, prior to December 2018, I was seeing similar drops during the Christmas holidays. Last year, I went all out and did a lot of Christmas projects and posts. By doing that I was able to prevent my Christmas traffic from dropping.
I plan to go all out again this year. Based on the change in percentage last year, I should see a full turn around this year.
This is the same strategy that I plan to implement for next Easter. I believe it will work, but we will have to wait until next year’s blogging income report to know for sure.
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