January 2016 Income Report
Welcome to my online business income report! I love reading the income reports of other bloggers and wanted to start sharing mine as a way to be transparent, as well as motivate myself (and hopefully others!) to create a successful business. I’ll also be including my traffic and social media stats as well as goal tracking since those are important parts of the business and it’ll help me keep track as I move forward.
Please note: Due to pregnancy + maternity leave I put my business (mostly) on hold for about a year between October 2014 – October 2015. This is me basically starting over! Just thought I should clarify.
JOURNEY TO $5,000/MONTH
Tracking my income is part of my goal to make $5,000 per month by October of 2016. I recently made that a goal and gave myself a year to achieve it. Join me on my journey!
WHAT’S INCLUDED
I include all of my online business income and expenses from blogging, design, and any of my other business income streams. The only income I don’t report are my Jamberry commissions (due to their policy to not share earnings) as well as any extra income I make selling items which I do regularly to simplify and declutter. All other sources of income and the related expenses will be shared here.
JANUARY INCOME
Even though January is a little bit down from December I’m calling it a good month. I got my design project done and I’ve been working on a course that should make February a great month! I also started a small etsy shop which I’ll share about in a couple months once I have a better idea of what’s going on with that. It’s a fun little shop for me and gives me some passive income even when I’m not working on it.
Income for January 2016
How to Sell on Instagram Ecourse: $24
Google & Youtube Ads: $9.34
Amazon Affiliate: $3.11
Design: $570.50
Etsy: $10
Total: $616.95
Income Tracking
Last Month (Dec 2015): $637.97
Difference: -$21.02 (3% decrease)
Total for 2016: $616.95
JANUARY EXPENSES
My expenses were pretty high in January. I bought a webcam and a microphone for my computer so that I could start recording video for my course that I’m launch in February and doing webinars, too! So stay tuned for that. Other than that I had several domains renew recently so I had to pay a good chunk for that.
Expenses for January
Payment Fees: $46.65
Dreamhost (domains): $59.75
Boardbooster: $10
Squarespace: $12
Dropbox: $9.99
Leadpages: $37
CreativeMarket: $6
Etsy Fees: $16.32
Convertkit: $29
Buffer: $10
Items Purchased: $102.81
Total: $339.52
Last Month: $196.07
Difference: $143.45
TRAFFIC & SOCIAL MEDIA
I’m happy to report that after one month of traffic being significantly lower than usual, I’m back up! When I removed all of my lifestyle posts, a lot of pinterest traffic to those posts went away. Though I didn’t like seeing the numbers down, I knew why and I knew that the traffic I was getting was more my target audience. But now I’m back up thanks to consistent pinning and a post that went viral on Pinterest (How to Cut Distractions and Be More Focused)
As far as social media goes, I’ve been working on growing my pinterest account and am starting to really work on Instagram too. Facebook isn’t something I’m focused on and twitter I’m not 100% focused on, but I am popping in there daily.
AileenBarker.com Statistics
(Last months numbers in parenthesis)
Pageviews: 5,923 (4,268)
Users: 5,388 (2,760)
Bounce Rate: 83.05% (82.73%)
New vs Returning: 89.3%/10.7% (84.4%/15.6%)
Pages per Session: 1.35 (1.36)
Average Session Duration: 51 (54 seconds)
Facebook: 301 (298)
Twitter: 480 (466)
Pinterest: 995 (811)
Instagram: 65 (15)
Email List: 428 (295)
**I have removed the statistics for Miss Tightwad because, although I am going to continue making youtube videos, it’s not my main focus.**
JANUARY GOAL REVIEW
HIT 400 EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS
SUCCESS!!
STICK TO BLOGGING SCHEDULE & SYSTEM
I have for the most part. I’m still working on staying ahead. I was sick for the majority of January so I cut myself a little slack.
SURVIVE DESIGN PROJECT
SUCCESS! Check out my latest design project at TinyPawsStudio.com
FEBRUARY GOALS
Launch my blogging course
This is my #1 goal for February and something I’ve been working on in January as well. I’m so excited to share it with you guys in the coming weeks.
Hit 600 email subscribers
Continuing to grow my email list is going to be one of my top priorities. I hit my goal last month and I think I can hit it again this month!
