July Income Report

Well, I have reached the dreaded mid-year slump. As I mentioned way back in January, most bloggers experience slumps at both the beginning of the year, when businesses are tapped out from the holidays, and again in July. While my July income report will reflect this, I think that I may be having a delay.

What I mean by that is that I am not getting as much of a slump as I expected. Maybe it will turn out to be a mild year, but my guess is that I will see some sort of effect on next month’s income to balance things out.

Fortunately, July is typically when I reach my annual peak for traffic on my home improvement blog. That helps to level out the drop in ad income which occurs this month. How much any blog feels the July slump really depends on the niche.

For instance, an accounting blog is probably not going to get a lot of traffic during this time, but a travel blog may see a bump. The only way to compensate for these slumps is to try to come up with some popular seasonal material to help drive traffic, which I spoke about in May’s income report.

Networking for the Month

I really enjoyed my time at the Haven conference this year. I met several bloggers in person that I have been getting to know through social media and a few others that I didn’t know at all. I also made a few wonderful friends that I can’t wait to see again next year.

Blogging conferences are an exciting and wonderful way to meet and network with other people in your niche. If you have not attended any yet, you really should plan to do one or two within the next year or so.

July Income Report – 2019 Analytics

Moving on to the numbers for this month. I am finally back over that elusive 100k pageview that I briefly hit back in March. Yay! Unfortunately, I expect that I will dip back down below this amount during the fall. But one can hope.

I always see a slight dip in traffic once the back-to-school time period rolls around. It’s just one of those things that happen with all blogs. People redirect their attention to things that are not aligned with our niche and we see a temporary drop.

It took me several years to accurately predict when my traffic would take a hit and to what degree. So, at least it won’t be an unexpected turn. But for now, I just want to enjoy reaching my goal!

This Year’s Pageviews – 110506
Last Year’s pageviews -50681
Increase -118%

Email Subscribers

I did not get as large of an increase this month in subscribers as I normally do. Part of this was because of a natural decline that I always experience for the last half of the year in subscribers.

But it is mostly because I did another clean. Once you establish a reasonable list, it is a good idea to always update it. Without these regular cleanings, I would amass a lot of subscribers who do not engage.

While it may seem like a good idea for posterity to be able to say that you have a huge list, it also costs a lot of money to carry around all of that dead weight.

As you can see in my expenses further down below, I pay a nice little chunk of change for my email service. Since the cost is based on the number of subscribers, it is a good idea to delete anyone who goes 6 months without opening a single email.

This Month -12871
Last Month -12312
Gain/Loss -559

So, I know I went on and on about the July slump, and I am now about to show you that this is my highest earning’s month so far this year. I know, it doesn’t seem to make sense.

But keep in mind, that even though advertisers are pulling back on their payouts, this is also a high traffic month for my home improvement blog. That means that those advertisers are more likely to target my blog as the place where they want to be seen during this month.

That combined with the bump in viewers tends to maintain my ad income at or close to the same that I receive for the month of June. That being said, if you struggle with income this month, just remember that it is normal.

Total Monthly Earnings: $ 2703.71
Amazon…$342.45
Amazon.ca…$8.70
Advertising…$2346.61
Other Affiliate Marketing…$5.96

Total Expenses: $356.57
Hosting …$103
Email Services …$194.62
CDN…$9
Subscriptions… $40.95
MiloTree…$9

Total Profit:$2347.14

Goals for the Rest of the Year

Now that the summer is coming to an end, people will start to focus on getting ready for back-to-school. I will be taking this opportunity to clean-up my blog.

I mentioned before that I have completed my annual blog audit. So far, I haven’t had the time to really dive into the updates that are needed. But, I plan to devote a great deal of time to do that over the remainder of this year.

I also will be focusing on doing some projects that will lead to an increase in backlinks. These are good projects to do during fall and winter because there are always bloggers out there looking to collaborate on Halloween and/or Christmas promotional material.

One thing that I already have lined up for my schedule is the One Room Challenge as part of Better Homes and Gardens media partnership. I will be a participant in their designer’s challenge.

Final Comments

Group projects are just one example of how a blogger can reach out to spread their viewership and to establish quality backlinks. But, there are a lot of other ways to get those elusive backlinks and increase your authority score.

Join Facebook group boards in your niche and check in often to catch opportunities. Follow in-the-know Instagrammers in your niche. They often post things like this.

There are so many ways to get involved with a network of other bloggers in your niche. Doing so can be as good as gold for your growth. Start networking today to see more future growth.