Miss Bizi Bee Revenue Report: July, 2015

Hey all! It’s Kaitlin’s husband, Travis, here again to do the heavy lifting for another Miss Bizi Bee revenue report. Last month I closed with a slightly ominous prediction:

“…I expect some headwinds in the coming 2-3 months. With little time to promote the blog, traffic growth is dependent on organic growth.”

I’m happy to report I was incredibly off-base with this prediction. Kaitlin managed to destroy her previous records on all fronts: Blog traffic, Etsy revenue, and Amazon earnings. Let’s dive in!

The quick stats:

Traffic: 7,938 unique visitors; +21% m/m

Gross Revenue: $4,761; +22% m/m

Net Revenue: $3,300; +57% m/m

The Sexy Charts:

There are a couple interesting takeaways from the above charts. First, July’s expenses were actually lower than June’s. I mentioned last month that there were a few one-time expenses. I’m glad to see there were no one-time expenses this month as it’s easy to fall into the habit of including a line item each month for “one-time” expenses which are really recurring expenses.

The other cool tidbit is that Miss Bizi Bee has generated more than $6,000 in its first nine months in existence. I’d love to see this cumulative figure hit $15,000 by November (the 12-month anniversary).

Miss Bizi Bee Traffic Breakdown

July traffic rebounded significantly after June’s scant growth. With a 21% increase in unique visits, I’m pleased with the growth rate in this figure.

Digging in a bit further, here’s where the growth came from (click to enlarge in new window):

In short, organic traffic growth led the charge again this month, jumping more than 37%. That’s huge! Social traffic grew nearly 17%. It’s nice to see the social channel continue to grow. But I’m excited for organic traffic to overcome social as the largest traffic driver. A couple more months like this and that could be a reality.

Direct traffic was down slightly (about 13%) and referral traffic had a huge percentage-based gain (224%), but the actual number of visits in this category is small. Another thing to note regarding referral traffic is that it is very susceptible to spam. Kaitlin does her best to filter the referral spam traffic out of the data, but it’s hard to catch them all.

Overall, traffic growth was strong and is well reflected in Miss Bizi Bee’s Amazon earnings (see next section).

Miss Bizi Bee Revenue Breakdown

Traffic growth is great, but it doesn’t mean much if revenue isn’t growing too. Fortunately, Kaitlin crushed all of her previous revenue records this month!

Gross revenue clocked in at $4,761.58 which represents a month-over-month increase of 22%. This is the smallest growth percentage we’ve seen, but that makes sense. Kaitlin is only a one-woman operation which makes it essentially impossible to scale her Etsy shop. Although she does still have capacity to grow, it will become increasingly more difficult to do so with Etsy.

What’s arguably most exciting about Miss Bizi Bee’s June performance is the growth in Amazon affiliate earnings. Kaitlin earned $250 from this channel which accounted for 5.25% of her total gross revenue. Her previous record revenue from the same channel came in May with $175 in earnings. This number may seem small, but let’s take a few things into consideration. Any Etsy revenue comes with a 35-45% cost. That means when Kaitlin sells $100 on Etsy, she’s only taking home between $55 and $65 before taxes.

Amazon affiliate earnings have much better margins. The only cost is the web hosting to keep the blog running and Kaitlin’s time to write blog posts. But those costs decrease over time. Blog posts that Kaitlin wrote six months ago are still earning revenue for her today. With Etsy, however, her costs really never decrease unless she can source materials from cheaper vendors.

Also, since the margins on Amazon affiliate earnings are essentially 100%, any revenue generated from this channel can be thought of as being much more valuable. Why? Simple. For Kaitlin to net $100 via Etsy sales, assuming costs are 40% of revenue, she would need to sell $166.67 worth of product. Viewed this way, $1 earned via Amazon is really worth $1.67 on Etsy.

That means Kaitlin would have had to sell an extra $417.50 to generate the $250 she made from Amazon. This doesn’t even include the time she would have to spend fulfilling, packaging, and shipping these orders. To me that’s pretty cool; you can see why I get so excited about the blog’s potential to generate digital revenue.

Total expenses were actually down from June to July. Kaitlin only spent $1,460.89 compared to the $1,790.80 spent in June. This is great because it obviously means more bottom line revenue. As a result, expenses only clocked in at ~31% in June, the lowest they’ve ever been on a monthly basis. This trend probably won’t hold. I know Kaitlin has already spent a fair amount on some bulk material purchases in August.

Checking in on Miss Bizi Bee’s Goals

Last month I reiterated the short-term goal for Miss Bizi Bee to achieve $4,000 in net, pre-tax revenue. June’s net revenue of $2,096.87 put us just over 50% there, but July’s net revenue of $3,300.69 put Kaitlin within striking distance of hitting this goal. I’m now 100% confident that she will reach this goal by the end of 2015 and probably much sooner!

If you recall, the medium-term goal is to get Amazon affiliate earnings to hit $4,000/month on a pre-tax basis. This would allow Kaitlin to start cutting back on Etsy and focus more on the blog which is the more scalable revenue source.

I still think there is a lot of work and patience before that happens. But don’t underestimate the pace at which that revenue stream could start to grow!

August is feeling like it’s off to a quieter start than July. There could be some seasonality at play in the next month or two. The truth is, we have no idea. Part of the first 12-24 months of any business is learning and understanding the ebbs and flows of purchasing behavior.

Regardless, I’m excited to see what’s to come. Until next month…