Can You Make Money Blogging? April 2015 Revenue Report

Hey all! Miss me? I’m back for another month of blogging intel! Do I know exactly what I’m talking about? No. Actually, I’ll share a little secret with you – I haven’t really got a clue. And after talking to my husband (who, as I’ve mentioned, has a legitimate internet business) I realize I have no idea what I’m doing here.

What I DO know is, I love crafting. And I love writing about all my crafty adventures to teach others how to do the fun projects I do on the regular. And again, like I’ve mentioned before, my main objective is to create great, solid content that will be useful to people for years to come.

So in these revenue posts, I may not be the most technologically savvy. Heck, I may even sound naive in regards to traffic, monetization strategy, and goals. Ask me what’s in my pipeline, specific about users on my site, revenue per 1000 visits…. forget about it!!

But that doesn’t mean I’m any less successful than I would be if I was more technologically savvy. It just makes me like any other Corporate America dropout that decided to pursue their passion. It makes me a real person, and it makes you see how easy it is for any regular joe schmo – who works hard and just happens to love projects, crafting, and DIY – to make a legitimate business for themselves; no matter how much or how little they know about starting a business.

So below, I want to share with you how Miss Bizi Bee fared in April 2015 – it’s 5th full month up and running. I’ll give you some important metrics I view on the daily, what’s driving my traffic, where I need improvement, and (what most of you are waiting for) my profitability.

Can you make money blogging, even if you don’t know anything about the business of blogging? Absolutely! Read on to see how I’m doing it, and how (for the second month in a row) I’ve made a profit with my blog.

Now, without further ado, let’s get to it….

Google Analytics

The nitty gritty folks…

Hooray! As far as my site traffic goes, I grew in almost every category above. Users were up 80% in April over March, sessions were up 75% in April over March, and there were 76% more page views in April than in March. Where was all this traffic coming from and what was helping me grow?

Well, let me show you…

 

In April, I made a large jump in 3 categories: social media traffic (127% jump over March), direct traffic (91% jump over March), and organic traffic (46% jump over March). Referral traffic was down which, in large part, was a good thing. It ends of mostly being spammy sites that are infiltrating Miss Bizi Bee and mean nothing to my analytics, so I’m filtering them out as I go. I’m getting better at catching them, little by little.

But let’s talk about that growth, shall we? Pinterest has been a HUGE driver of legitimate traffic for me (I’ll explain in a bit how) and I am slowly gaining traction month over month with both direct and organic traffic. As I’ve said before, I attribute this to 2 huge factors:

1. Good SEO
2. Great Content

I explained in my March report how I am using Google’s Keyword planner in conjunction with the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast to check my SEO score before I publish EVERY post. Good SEO doesn’t mean my posts will be found right away. As my husband diligently explained to me, it can take months for Google to properly index each post. Once they are indexed, people need to find them. The more people find them, the higher their score, and so on goes the cycle.

Hence, my focus on good content. The more I publish, the more chances I have of being found, and the better favor I’ll find myself in with Google’s searching algorithm. It’s working thus far for my direct and organic, and that’s the strategy I have to keep it growing – keep producing great content that people want to read and Google picks up as strong.

 

Here’s what you can tell from the chart above. Pinterest and Facebook are the 2 main social media channels that are driving readers to my website. However, you can also see a HUGE shift in what is happening from March to April.

In March, 463 people came to Miss Bizi Bee from Facebook (which was almost 50% of my month’s traffic from social media) and 463 came to my site from Pinterest (again, alomst 50% of March’s social media traffic).

Well, in April (as I suggested was happening in last month’s revenue report) my Pinterest traffic absolutely SNOWBALLED. More people came to my site from BOTH Facebook and Pinterest, but while the Facebook traffic was rather steady month over month (469 users in April vs 463 in March), Pinterest traffic exploded to 1617 users (vs. 463 in March), and 77% of my social media visits (vs. 50% in March).

To be fair, I did stop my Facebook Boosts after April 8th. Why? As I have mentioned in my previous revenue reports, I was boosting each post on Facebook as I published them, to reach a wider audience. And although they were being seen my many on Facebook, they weren’t helping me gain longterm followers, or readers who would convert into paying customers.

Did this have any effect on the number of people visiting my site from Facebook? Probably. Were they users that would turn into loyal readers – probably not. Did I still see an increase in visits month over month – yes! So ultimately, I believe I made the right decision. And until Facebook comes up with a better way for me to share my content to people that want to see it, this is the way it’s going to stay. Pinterest all the way!

Pinterest

Again, as I mentioned in March, Pinterest has been a HUGE referral source for me! There is a reason why I didn’t lump in Social media with Direct and Organic traffic above… it’s because there is one specific post that is driving most of my Pinterest traffic. The picture below is from my March revenue report:

 

Now, this picture is from this morning:

 

Notice what’s different? Take a look at the little red “Pin It” button in the top left corner of both pictures. It’s been pinned almost 3000 more times….in 1 MONTH!!! Now, that’s not my only pin getting re-pinned, but it’s the one sending the bulk of traffic to my website. And it’s the one where the most people click on my affiliate links to buy merchandise to recreate the crafts in this post!

Why this one drives so much traffic I still don’t know. What’s the key? Is it the wording? Is it the picture? Maybe it’s the content. Whatever it is, if I could just replicate this a few times with a few other posts, I’d be a happy woman! But I’m still trying to figure it out myself…

But what this pin DOES tell me is that Pinterest is an amazing platform for my blog. It directly targets people who are actually interested in the things I am writing about in my posts, and they are active readers who actually spend money online. They’re driving traffic to my site, traffic to my affiliate links, and I’ve even had a few buy thing in my Etsy shop who have come through a Pinterest link.

If there is one place in social media where I will be spending most of my time, it is 100% on Pinterest. It gives me the best ROI on my time, and brings the right kind of readers to my blog.

Etsy

My Etsy shop was BY FAR my largest source of revenue this month, as it grew 142% over last month!

What do I attribute this stellar growth to? A couple things…neither of which involve me paying to “promote” my listings in the Etsy marketplace.

As I mentioned last month, I was experimenting with paying to promote my Etsy listings. April was my first full month promoting, and here’s what I found…

Yes, I DID make money from my “promoted” listings ($116). And yes, it was more than I spent on advertising through Etsy ($80.95). However, what I didn’t know is whether those people would have found my shop and my listing they ended up purchasing, regardless of the paid promotion.

$100 of my “promoted revenue” came from one of my Britney Spears costumes. So I decided to do an experiment. I opened the Etsy app and decided to search for “Britney Spears” and “Britney Spears Costume”. Turns out, I am one of the ONLY people on Etsy selling a Britney Spears costume. What’s even more interesting, is that Etsy had my “promoted” listing listed first on both of my searches, but then the regular listing (the one I was not paying for) was only a couple items down from the “ad”.

What did this tell me? The person who purchased my Britney costume, most likely, would have found it regardless of me paying for that ad.

Now, this is probably not the case for some of the more competitive items I sell, such as my bridal flower crown, wedding signs, and shirts. But in looking at those, specifically my bridal flower crown, over time I was spending more money advertising it than I was making money from it.

So I have decided to scale way back on my Etsy promotions. I still have the same daily limit ($3) but I have taken some of the more costly items off promotion, as well as some of the more unique items I believe people will find without an ad. We’ll see how this works for me in May.

So if not from ads, what’s the reason for the huge jump in revenue on Etsy in April? Well,  I attribute this to simply adding more items to my shop. Items that are more expensive, have higher margins, and are more popular with shoppers.

Most notably, I added my DIY tank tops and both my Britney Spears “Slave for You” and “Toxic” costumes. When you add those to the Mr and Mrs shirts and calligraphed stir sticks I added to my shop in late March, my potential buyers snowballed! I began to expand my reach to people looking for random items, who would come to my shop via one listing and would end up buying another (or more than one)!

My plan to keep this growth up, is to continually ad more and more to my shop, as I complete more and more tutorials for the blog. It’s working well thus far, so I’m just going to keep cranking! And while we’re on the subject, if you have any ideas, please send them my way! I’ll be happy to make whatever you can think up, AND blog how you can DIY!

Ads

I mentioned last month that I would be tweaking my ads to better target my readers. Nope, I lied. I never did it. Why you ask? Simple, I was too focused on the blog and Etsy. And in return, they added NOTHING to my revenue. A big fat ZERO.

However, my banner ads ARE getting clicks, I can see that. 59 to be exact. Not a lot at ALL. BUt it’s something. I might as well be making money on those click, right?

So what my husband (you know, the person I lean to whenever I need any help with internet business advice) he suggested that I sign up for Google Adsense.

For those who don’t know what this is, it is a free program that allows Google to put random ads on your website. In return, they pay you a certain amount every time someone clicks on the ad. And THEY hand pick the ads based on the content on your site. Talk about real “set and forget.”

So I’ve already signed up for this program, and have plans to sit down with my husband so he can help me implement them onto my site for the second half of May. Hopefully, I’ll have more to report next month in terms of ads. But for now, I haven’t really been implementing them, at ALL.

Miss Bizi Bee’s Revenue for April 2015

And now, the section you’ve been waiting for (or just skipped right to). I’m extremely happy to report that last month, I was able to realize a profit once again! This was the second month in a row Miss Bizi Bee has been able to report a gross profit. And only being in business 5 months, I’m ecstatic!

Granted, it’s still not enough to live on. But I never expected to even be making a profit this early! And the fact that this is two months in a row. As they say in beer pong, “I’m heating up!”. I’m still expecting to see a  yo-yo in my profitability this first year, but for now, I’ll take the 2 month winning streak!

How much did I make, you ask? Here are the concrete numbers:

If you go back and look at March’s revenue report, you can see I made a net profit of $177.74. Which means I’ve made 155% increase in profit month over month! If I could only keep up that pace, I’d be one happy girl!

If you read on, I explain where my money went, why I spent so much, and where my revenue came from.

Expenditures Explained

This month, I spent more than I EVER have on the blog. Almost TWICE as much as I’ve ever spent. What can I attribute this increase in spend to? A couple things.

First, it was my birthday in April. How can that effect my blog spending, you ask? Well, everyone close to me knows about Miss Bizi Bee. So for my birthday, I received $225 in gift certificates to Michaels, and $200 in gift certificates to Amazon. So to me, theoretically, this was like “free money” to spend on my supplies, even though the expenditures still go into my business costs. So I decided to bulk up on a few items, keep inventory on hand for future projects, and spend money when I normally would have waited to keep my expenditures low.

Second, I invested in a few expensive projects. I have a tutorial coming up that required some coding. As I said earlier, I am not very technologically savvy. So naturally, I came up with a great idea for an internet craft, and needed someone else to code that idea for me – so I could embed it into my post. That cost me $70 I normally would not have spent.

Additionally, I needed more packaging supplies for some of my larger Etsy items, and bought large shirt boxes for future orders.

Lastly, Jo-Ann’s was having a huge sale, and you know I can’t resist a good sale. So I bought a TON of patterns and fabric – enough for quite a few future projects and gifts for loved ones. Investing now for the revenue to come in the future… gotta love it.

I did save a bit of money on Facebook Boosts. As I have mentioned in my previous revenue reports, I was boosting each post on Facebook as I published them, to reach a wider audience. And although they were being seen my many on Facebook, they weren’t helping me gain longterm followers, or readers who would convert into paying customers. So I saved about $40 stopping my boosts after the 7th of April.

Coming next month, I do see my postage expenditures dropping significantly – as I just signed up for Etsy direct shipping. With this, I am able to weigh my packages at home, and print the shipping labels directly from Etsy’s site. They calculate the shipping charges for me, and get bulk rates! This not only saves me money on my shipping costs, but time at the post office as well (which is not measured in this report but is EVERYTHING to me).

So here’s to hoping I don’t overspend in May, and can keep the revenue rolling in (I can say that as I write this post, May’s off to a great start, so far!)

Profits Explained

Here’s the fun part- MONEY! Now although I spent more than I ever have in April, I also MADE more than I ever have in April, as well. Almost TWICE as much as I made in March, my best month until now. What do I attribute this to?

Obviously, #1 is Etsy. And as I explained above, even though I started to pay to “promote”my listing in the Etsy marketplace, I didn’t really see a great return on my investment. The majority of my profits came from adding more items to my shop. Items that are more expensive, have higher margins, and are more popular with shoppers.

Secondly, in addition to my Etsy listings, my blog content is starting hit it’s stride as well. As I mentioned above, my viewership in dramatically increasing. With increasing visits, come increased chance to make money from my affiliate links within my posts.

In EVERY post, I list every supply I used to create the craft or project, and I make sure to link to it through one of my affiliate partners. My favorite affiliate to link to is Amazon (as I have mentioned many times before) because they have most everything I need, and with Prime shipping, I KNOW I’ll have it within 2 days of my order. Make things super efficient when trying to run a business!

Anyway, since more readers have come to my site to use my tutorials, naturally, more items are being purchased through my affiliate links. While I saw a profit of $23.70 in March from my Amazon Affiliate links, this grew 102% to $48.51. And while writing this, I can tell you I have ALREADY surpassed this number for May.

As I say all the time and stick firmly to, creating great content is the key to everlasting success. Most of these residual affiliate earnings are being driven by one post that was written back in DECEMBER! I cannot imagine what will happen in a few months from now when I have more and more content out there for readers to find.

And for now, although Etsy sales are driving the bulk of my revenue, I can see the day where my CONTENT and affiliate marketing will catch up… now that’s the dream! And that’s exactly why I keep my head to the ground, and try to keep creating crafts and project people are interested in.

If I’m gonna do this, I’m not going to get boggled down in the numbers and statistics. I’m gonna do it my way (well, with a little help every now and again from my internet savvy hubby) and I’m going to enjoy every minute of it!

That’s not saying the numbers aren’t important. No, I’m not trying to say that at all. What I AM saying is that I’m not really delving deep into the statistics someone who is more internet savvy would be looking at.

Additionally, words like “pipeline” and “growth strategy” still make the hairs on my arm stand up from my sales career. I need to get away from that type of structure – for now. So for now, I’m growing this thing my way. And until I hit a wall or  plateau, I’m going to keep on keeping on keeping on!

I hope that’s enough information for you, for now. Until next month, business Kaitlin is signing off. I just received another Etsy order I must go fulfill…