April 2016 Blog Income and Expenses Report

Welcome to my monthly income report!

April was the good month that could have been so much better. One of my posts went viral on Savvy Scot just when I had taken down my ad banners. With over 100,000 pageviews just for that one post (that’s about 80% of a normal month traffic), I lost quite a bit of revenue. Lesson learned.

I also took some time off in April, as a few family matters required my support, and I didn’t get to work on improving the blogs as much as I had wished. Make Money Your Way still got a redesign, and I would love to hear what you think!

Blog Expenses

April was a normal month, where my only expenses were my VA, a Godaddy domain and Hostgator hosting. Since the  blog redesign was paid in January, that’s about it.

$300 my 20 hour a week VA

$10 for a couple of Fiverr gigs.

I am using Tailwind for my pins, which is paid for the year ($120, use the link to get a free month) and it saves a ton of time managing Pinterest.

Total spent: $310

I am planning on investing more on the blogs during Q2, but don’t know where to as of now.

Blog income

• Reach Financial Independence $2,505
• Make Money Your Way $1,995
• Savvy Scot $1,090

Freelancing for other sites and non blogging ventures: $1,850.

I made $770 freelancing in March and $4,000 in February. It seems like the work/time involved in the $2k range is a good balance between income and commitment.

Total blog income for April 2016: $7,440

• Net income: $7,130

An $1,500 increase from last month that could have been much more had I taken advantage of the extra 100k visitors on Savvy Scot. I’m still happy with the results.

I set the bar quite high this year, after making about $70,000 in 2014 and $60,000 in 2015 (with less than half the work), to make $100,000 after expenses in 2016. That translates to about $10,000 a month as I want to invest a lot in content and delegating tasks, like I did in Q1.

I should have made $33,333 net so far, I am $11,820 behind haha.

But it is OK. May is looking like it will be the first month where I don’t dig a deeper hole in the ground for myself, and hopefully it will only get better from there.

In January, it felt like I was getting ready for this year. I worked hard on the design makeovers, pushing social media, making lists of where to get published for more exposure (and got into HuffPost!). So I am not too worried about being so much behind on my goal.

With a busy April and May, I lost a bit of motivation when it comes to growing my income so much, but now I also have new investing goals and I’ll be needing some cash. These blogs are the perfect way to try to increase my income.

As usual, 10% of that income will go to finance an education project in my village, I am in the red at the moment as the project costs about $800 a month which is well over 10% but it is going well! I am adding more computers and more English classes for the kids.

What are your blogging goals this month?