Monthly Income Report – September 2016

Please note some of the links in this post may contain affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. As always any recommendations that I make are always based on my personal experiences with the product and I have not received any free products or anything else by these companies.

Welcome to my fourth monthly income report on How I Make a Living Online.

Each month I will publish my revenues, expenses, learnings, activities and various statistics on how I make a living online.

Latest Going-On in September

Spring is here!
This month, I made a few cosmetic changes to my blog.

I added an Income Report Page so you can see a complete history of all my income and expenses on my blog.

I also changed my side menu to include my most popular posts which is “How to Start a Blog”.

Facebook Ads Experiment

Continuing on from last month I ran another Facebook Ad campaign this month. However instead of running a “Boost Post” campaign, I ran a “Website Click” campaign.

With this campaign, the minimum daily spend was $5 per day, so instead of $25 which I originally budgeted, I had to spend $35.

But it gave me a lot more control on how the ad was going to be displayed on Facebook. It allowed me to

• Choose my audience
• Placements i.e. Desktop / Mobile
• Ad Format i.e. Ad Size, Image and Copy

I made a Boo Boo

After running the campaign for a week, I discovered that I made a really big mistake. I forgot to put in an “Email Opt-in Form” on the page, which meant that I lost an opportunity to re-engage the user at a later time.

Here are the results

• 11,000 views
• 31 people clicked on the ad
• $1.13 per click
• 0 Email Sign Ups
• 0 Likes

I didn’t even get a like! Money well spent, not. They came, they saw, they left.

Though I did get more insight on the audience, out of the 11,000 views, 81% was clicked on by people in the age group between 45-65.

Next month I will try another campaign but definitely be adding an email opt-in.

Extra Cash

I normally don’t do this BUT…

I found an old Dyson sitting near the rubbish area of my apartment block, so I it picked up, listed it on Gumtree.com.au and sold it for $125. Well it took a few enquiries to sell it but it was well worth it.

As the saying goes “Someone else’s trash is another man’s treasure”. To be honest it felt weird picking up rubbish, but in the end it paid off handsomely.

Have you ever done something like this before?

Post Published

This month with an extra “Thursday”, I managed to publish five posts.

My favourite post was blogging about the 65 Books that influenced my life.

Followed by, How to Choose a Niche, which is the first blog posts for “Building a Niche Empire”.

I was also inspired to write about “Microwave Success Syndrome” after an interesting experience with selling the Dyson.

I also published a post on blogging tips and my usual income report.

Work by Numbers

• Posts – 5
• Images – 13

Visitor Statistics

This month I had a small increase in new visitors. The good thing is I can see a larger percentage are returning visitors.

Most Popular Content

Drum roll, well no surprises here “How To Start a Blog” is still my most popular…though it may be skewed a bit because I have advertising targeting this page. The monthly income report is still a big winner.

Traffic

Not much has changed. Though it is good to see some “Google Search Traffic”.

Subscribers

This month really sucked. Zero changes from previous month

• Facebook- 80 (80)
• Email – 5

Income Report

Affiliate Earnings

• Bluehost – $0.00

Expenses

• $35.00 Facebook Ads

Grand Total: -$35.00 (Previous -$26.00)

Conclusion

Growing an audience even for a seasoned digital marketer like me still takes a lot of work and hustle.

There are a lot of things I can do to grow my blog but I know there is only a finite of time I can spend on it each week.

But as you can see the blog is slowly evolving, one step at a time.

Until next time, have a great month.