Can You Make Money Blogging? November 2015 Revenue Report

novrev

Well now that it’s just about January, I suppose it’s time for Miss Bizi Bee’s November revenue report. Kaitlin was a bit lax with my deadline this month, and like any warm blooded human I gladly procrastinated until the eleventh hour.

We saw a bit of a downswing this month as the hectic Halloween season came to a close and things slowed down a bit. Let’s dig in!

The quick stats:

Traffic: 9,415 unique visitors; -15.6% m/m

Gross Revenue: $4,512.20; -36.2% m/m

Net Revenue: $2,918.69; -38.8% m/m

The Sexy Charts:

Down months are never fun, but they’re going to happen. The nice thing is Kaitlin’s finally starting to get a complete idea of what a 12-month cycle looks like for her business.

image

image (1)

image (2)

Miss Bizi Bee Traffic Breakdown

Blog traffic was down nearly 16% in November. This was expected. Popular halloween themed posts went quickly out of favor in November as we moved into the traditional holiday season. Kaitlin doesn’t have much content coverage for things like Thanksgiving and Christmas, so there weren’t any posts to pick up the slack.

Here’s a look at the different traffic channels compared to October:

Screenshot 2015-12-22 10.16.46

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic took a big hit of more than 20%. Again, this was largely due to the changing of seasons and far fewer searches for halloween costume ideas.

I’m not really expecting organic traffic to start picking up until January or maybe even February of 2016. Hopefully the next wedding cycle will start boosting posts Kaitlin wrote for last year.

Social Traffic

Social traffic took the biggest hit of all with a nearly 26% decline. This makes sense. Kaitlin took did not post every week like she usually does. That means fewer posts to social networks and fewer opportunities to drive traffic.

She only posted three times in November compared to her usual four. Unfortunately, this probably isn’t going to improve for a few months since Kaitlin and I will be doing a fair bit of jet setting in both December and January.

Direct & Referral Traffic

More of the same in this category. Direct traffic saw a nearly 21% decline. The only channel that saw an uptick this month was referral traffic. But drilling down here shows that this is largely spam related visits. Regardless, it’s a tiny part of the whole so we don’t pay much attention to this anyway.

Miss Bizi Bee Revenue Breakdown

November got off to an insanely slow start.

The first two weeks of the month drove less than $1,000 in revenue. That means more than 75% of Kaitlin’s Etsy sales came in the last half of November.

Needless to say, Kaitlin was a bit nervous the first two weeks. And while the rush of orders was welcomed, it was a bit overwhelming and stressful to go from being so quiet to suddenly busy.

Of the approximately $4,500 in revenue here’s how it broke out by channel: Etsy (93.3%), Amazon affiliate links (6.40%), Commission Junction (0.19%), digital revenue (0.11%):

image (3)

Etsy Revenue

As always, Etsy is the big revenue driver in again. I know Kaitlin would love to see her blog starting to earn more by itself, but it’s been difficult finding the time to invest in it.

Amazon Affiliate Revenue

Amazon pulled in $288.61 in November. Although this was off from October’s record $375.89, it was still a very impressive showing.

November was Kaitlin second best month for Amazon revenue ever, and it’s great to see this channel consistently pulls in nearly a few hundred dollars a month now.

Commission Junction & Digital Revenue

Commission Junction is much like Amazon revenue, Kaitlin gets a small referral fee when someone purchases products through her display ads. So a small $8.70 came through this channel. Digital revenue was just $4.99 which accounts for one eye chart sale on Kaitlin’s blog.

Miss Bizi Bee Expenses Breakdown

With no crazy bulk purchases or any other odd expenditures, Miss Bizi Bee’s expenses were well contained in November. Kaitlin spent a total of $1,593.51 which equates to about a 35% revenue to expenses ratio:

image (4)

Celebrating a Year of Miss Bizi Bee

Kaitlin’s first post went live on Miss Bizi Bee on November 26, 2014. Here’s a look at her daily traffic graph since then:

It’s been a lot of fun for me having a front seat on her journey from picking a domain name (which has seemingly become her new moniker) to fighting spam traffic, setting up her Etsy shop, going to bed after me and waking up before me, and becoming a profitable business. Since her extremely humble start, Kaitlin has earned a net, pre-tax profit of $19,199.06 — amazing!

Accomplishing all of this in just twelve months is incredible. I know that 2016 is shaping up to be a busy year for the Biziorek household already, so I’m not going to pretend to know what next year will bring for Miss Bizi Bee. But I do know that at this point nothing would surprise me.

Happy holidays to everyone. Thanks for reading!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *