Hey everyone, it’s time for my monthly visit to the Miss Bizi Bee blog to drop some sweet, sweet revenue and metrics knowledge.

September was a bittersweet month. Kaitlin set revenue records for both Etsy and Amazon, but she all set another record… spending! I’ll get into why she spent so much in the details later, but let’s jump into the raw numbers first.

The quick stats:

Traffic: 9,059 unique visitors; +4.1% m/m

Gross Revenue: $6,135.89; +40.2% m/m

Net Revenue: $2,700.02; -1.0% m/m

The Sexy Charts:

My gosh that huge spike in revenue looks delicious, but the corresponding spike in expenses prevented Kaitlin from making any more profit than she did last month.

But much like August, the good news is Kaitlin is still turning a decent profit. Last month I said I had no doubt she’d be crushing through the $10,000 cumulative profit mark. Well, she didn’t even spend time in the 10k range, jumping to more than $11,500 in net profit since she began Miss Bizi Been in November 2014.

That’s awesome!

Ready to get into the details?

Miss Bizi Bee Traffic Breakdown

Blog traffic was up a modest 4.1% from August. This isn’t stellar, but traffic does continue to grow. In fact, the blog has not had a down month in terms of unique visits yet!

One factor that probably had an impact on traffic was Kaitlin actually missed a week of posting to the blog for the first time ever. With so many orders coming through Etsy, she just hasn’t had much time.

But top-line traffic doesn’t tell the whole story. As you know, I like to dive a little deeper to see which our best performing channels are. Here’s the side-by-side comparison of September and August traffic stats by channel:

Organic Traffic

Last month I hinted that I was expecting organic traffic to soon overcome social traffic as the biggest driver of new visits. I’m happy to report that’s now the case.

Organic traffic was up a very respectable 24.5% in September. Without this growth, Kaitlin’s traffic would have surely declined.

I expect organic traffic will continue to build on itself, especially if Kaitlin continues to post awesome, meaty content.

Social Traffic

Social traffic dropped a pretty significant 11% in September. It’s hard to know exactly what’s caused this.

One guess is seasonality. Some of Kaitlin’s most successful pins are ones related to weddings. People generally aren’t in wedding planning mode from September through December. In fact, you can see that by looking at the Google trends data for the search term “wedding ideas”. It tends to peak in July/August and bottom out in December:

As Kaitlin’s content becomes more broad perhaps this seasonality won’t be such a factor. If it really is a factor, we’d expect social traffic to pick up again in January.

The other factor is Kaitlin was pretty terrible about getting new images pinned to Pinterest in September. Without fresh content on her boards, people were probably less engaged, not re-pinning as much, and therefore resulting in less exposure.

Hopefully she’ll have more time soon!

Direct & Referral Traffic

Direct traffic was down a touch in September, but largely unchanged. If you’re a regular reader, this isn’t a category we watch much. Like all channels, I hope to see this grow going forward. It would make sense that as Miss Bizi Bee garners an increasingly engaged audience that more people will come back and visit the site by typing it into their browser.

Referral traffic was up in September nearly 7%, but the number of visitors here are so insignificant that it really doesn’t move the needle. In the future though, this could be a great growth channel to focus on.

Miss Bizi Bee Revenue Breakdown

Revenue is where things really go interesting in September with a whopping $6,135.89 in gross revenue! This is incredibly impressive, and I’m extremely proud of Kaitlin to be putting up numbers like this in less than a year since starting this journey. Amazing!

Here’s how the revenue sources broke down for September: Etsy (94.11%), Amazon affiliate links (4.13%), direct orders (1.73%), and Commission Junction (a paltry 0.04%):

Etsy Revenue

Etsy is still Queen of the castle in terms of revenue generation. I keep hoping Kaitlin will be able to diversify her revenue streams more, but it’s been hard to do with so little time. The good news is it seems like we’re done with the summer doldrums and moving more toward holiday spending season. It’s a welcome uptick.

Amazon Affiliate Revenue

Amazon affiliate revenue finally hit a new monthly high, but just barely. The $253 in revenue generated from this channel barely squeaked by July’s previous record of $250. But I have a feeling we’ll start seeing this channel pick up some steam heading into the end of the year.

As traffic improves I also expect this channel to grow. We haven’t had a big month of growth in blog traffic in a while, but I’m hopeful.

Miss Bizi Bee Expenses Breakdown

This was the tough pill to swallow in September. Kaitlin’s total expenses for September were $3,435.87 — that’s 108% higher than August! But Kaitlin wasn’t just spending money frivolously (she never does).

Last month I foreshadowed this uptick in expenses,

But Kaitlin has been planning an even bigger bulk order for raw materials in September. She hasn’t pulled the trigger on the purchase yet, but it’s going to happen and it’s going to be expensive.

And pull the trigger she did! In fact, about $1,500 of all expenses were really investments in raw materials for the goods she makes on Etsy.

So while it’s a bit of a disappointment to have a stellar month and not set a net revenue record, Kaitlin’s setting herself for an amazing run over the next few months. With these bulk purchases out of the way, she should see her expenses drastically decrease at least for awhile.

You can see the big jump in Kaitlin’s expense/revenue ratio. It came in at 56.0% this month, a level she hasn’t seen since April:

Goals and Challenges

Kaitlin has been chasing her short-term goal of generating at least $4,000 in net, pre-tax revenue before the end of 2015. Without the bulk purchases in September, net revenue would have been about $4,200. Oof!

So, while it’s tempting to call this goal complete… it really isn’t. That’s life I suppose.

But the good news is I don’t believe September was a fluke. Miss Bizi Bee continues to grow. Blog traffic is ticking up, Kaitlin’s Etsy shop is getting busier, and her offerings seem to always be expanding as new customers request new, custom items.

Short story: I predict this goal to get checked off in October.

Kaitlin will also start having more time very soon. Her nannying position is ending in less than a week. And while I know she has big plans for our Halloween party, I’m sure she’ll been hard at work blogging and coming up with new ideas very soon.

Until we meet again… Travis signing off.