How Do Blogs Make Money? December 2014 Revenue Report

Hi! Business Kaitlin here. I don’t come out that often, and I’m still trying to get my bearings straight, so bear with me here. I’m going to try to give you these updates on the 15th of every month, so you know how the blog is doing financially. Let’s hope I don’t regret committing to that….

For those of you that don’t know me (those of you that do can attest to this), I am an extremely energetic and imaginative person, although a true type A personality. I’m extremely smart and hardworking, but 100% typical female. I love pink, I love anything that sparkles, and (much to my husband’s disdain) I cannot miss an episode of any of The Real Housewives.

For the past 8 years, I have spent my weekdays as a medical sales representative in the San Francisco Bay Area. Typical, type A personality job. However, I have never been truly fulfilled. I needed an outlet that the feminine part of me could shine. Hence, where Miss Bizi Bee came in…

There are MANY reasons people start blogs. The reasoning behind me wanting to start Miss Bizi Bee is two fold. The first reason, was as a creative outlet . I truly ENJOY crafting and DIY. It’s where I find my happy place (besides the gym occasionally) and what I’ve always said I’d like to do for a living if I could do anything in the world. It allows me to indulge in all things feminine, and gives me to satisfaction of being able to tell others that the cute bag I’m carrying, “Ya, I made it myself”.

After my wedding last August, I had no excuse to continue my crafting. Starting the Miss Bizi Bee blog gave me the opportunity to continue what I loved to do, and to share it with my friends.

However, in my mind, crafting was just a hobby. Nobody was going to pay me to do it, and if they did, I certainly couldn’t make a decent living on it. Therefore, the practical, money hungry person that I am (well, let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want to make the most money they possibly could) – I went headfirst into a sales career in the San Francisco Bay area.

This is where my second reason for starting Miss Bizi Bee comes in – MONEY. Me, being so corporate focused and single minded for the past 8 years, I never had any idea that people were making money blogging. However, my husband Travis is very into the tech world, and brought it to my attention. How DO blogs make money? I wouldn’t even know where to start… but Travis did.

The Costs Involved in Blogging

Travis started his own company 5 years ago, and was doing fairly well (if you haven’t checked out Kibin.com yet, you should). And although they do MUCH more than blogging, the traffic they do do on their blog went from a few hundred unique visitors per month, to tens of thousands in just a period of 6 months.

He explained the technique to me, and said I could use Miss Bizi Bee as not only an outlet to continue doing what I LOVED to do, but to build a business for myself through sales and affiliate marketing. I was finally intrigued enough to get my blog going. Hey, money talks!

I knew at first, the blog would only be visited by my friends and family, and that it would take a while to build up a following. But crafting and DIY was something I was doing anyway, so why not put it all on the internet and take my time building my “business” up? I was in!

I started getting the logistics in place for my blog in November 2014. During that time, there were a lot of upfront costs:

• Server Hosting on BlueHost: $47.50 for 12 mo
• Domain Name Rights: $10.87 for 12 mo
  • I wish I would have known, but BlueHost gives you a free domain name when you sign up with them as your server. Hopefully that’ll save you $.
• Genesis WordPress Framework: $59.95
• Design Palette Pro: $36.75 (I’m horrible at coding and wanted this to help me customize my site)
  • Total: $155.07 before I even started

And in December, I incurred more costs to get the materials to complete the step by step tutorials I had in mind. Overall I spent the following on crafting supplies in December 2014:

• Amazon: $120.63
• Joann Fabrics: $78.18
  • Total: $198.81

Alright, now I was ready to start blogging! I already had a TON of content I was looking to post, just from the multitude of crafts I had done for my own wedding. So I knew what I wanted to write ABOUT. And I had already bought the materials I needed to craft with. Now, I needed to sit down with my business partner (aka, my partner in life – Travis) and go over the logistics.

I was going to have a three pronged approach to try and monetize Miss Bizi Bee. First, would be through affiliate marketing. Second, would be through sales in my Etsy shop. And third would be ad and digital product sales.

Monetization Approach #1 – Affiliate Links and Partnerships

For those of you that may be unaware (as I was when I first got started) affiliate partnerships are agreements you have with retailers to promote their products. In return, you receive a small commission for sales that came from links off your blog. For example, if I put a link to a product in my blog, and you click on that link and buy that product, I’ll receive a small commission for that sale (usually between 4-6% of the total cost).

Easy enough of a concept. What I found in doing my research, is that most sites that have affiliate marketing do it through Commission Junction. It’s a website that aggregates all the retailers that offer affiliate marketing, lets you apply to those retailers, get links for your site, and pays you out when you have commission sales.

What I learned very quickly is that you MUST have content on your site before you try to apply as an affiliate marketer. I was rejected at first by a couple retailers because although my domain and site were set up, I tried to apply BEFORE my first post went live. I have since reapplied to those same retailers and have been accepted. The retailers I currently have affiliate status with are:

• Michaels
• Fabric.com
• Hancock Fabrics
• Home Depot

And not on Commission Junction:

• Amazon

You can sign up right on the Amazon homepage to be an affiliate marketer. It’s the easiest one I applied to, and thank goodness, because I swear I have an Amazon addiction. I probably get 75% of everything I buy (not just for crafting, but for life) through Amazon. I swear they’re going to take over the world one day.

I was able to link to some staple products I used for my first few crafting posts. And through affiliate marketing in December 2014, I made the following revenue:

• Amazon: $7.24

To be fair, I didn’t link hardly at all to my other affiliates. I’ll be curious to see what these numbers look like a few months down the road, once I have more of a breadth of posts and links to different retailers.

Monetization Approach #2 – Selling Product

Alright, now for my Etsy shop. Miss Bizi Bee is all about DIY and crafting. Everything that I make for my blog post tutorials, I put for sale in my Etsy shop. I was able to get my shop up and running on December 10th.

For those of you that don’t sell on Etsy, this is how they work. For every listing you put up, it’s good for 4 months and Etsy charges you a $.20 listing fee. So basically, if you have 1 listing running for 12 months, you’ll pay $.60 in listing fees. Not too bad if you ask me, and MUCH easier then setting up my own interface to sell goods (right now as I’m just starting out, anyway).

Then, for every sale you make, Etsy takes 3.5% cut from the selling price. Not too bad, either. That’s probably why Etsy is so popular. Favorable seller fees, AND the interface is probably the best I’ve ever seen. It’s EXTREMELY easy and intuitive to start a shop and sell goods. So from the 10th until the end of December 2014, spent the following in Etsy Fees:

• Etsy Fees: $5.12

And I made the following revenue:

• Etsy Sales: $6.28

The reason high fees and low revenue is two fold. One, when I created my shop in mid-December, I loaded it with 20 listings- and hence, had 20 listing fees all at once. Second, I only had a couple small items that I made for friends to get my shop up and running ( and I charged them almost nothing for them).

Etsy deposits your earnings into your bank account weekly. They take your fees out of your revenue, and only deposit what is cash positive. So I got a whopping $1.16 deposited into my bank account in December 2014. But hey, I gotta start somewhere!

Monetization Approach #3 – Ad and Digital Media Sales

Finally, for ad and digital sales, I came up with NADA! I am hoping that once I get a few thousand unique visitors to my site per month, and build my following up a bit, I can start fishing for advertisers who would want to space on my site, and making my own digital content. But since my blog was literally only a month young in December, those are revenue tactics that are more of a long term play for me.

MissBiziBee’s Financial Numbers for December 2014

So in conclusion, just to put it all together, here’s a breakdown of the money spent on and earned from MissBiziBee.com in December 2014:

December 2014 was my first full month of blogging. I am so looking forward to seeing what I can create through the channels that I love, doing the things I enjoy. Making money doing what you love is everyone’s dream. And although I am FAR from making a living (I came up negative for goodness sake) the spark is there.

As I write this post, I’m only 11 days into January so far, and I’ve already doubled my December revenue. I can’t wait to update you again in February on my progress of making money from blogging! But for now, business Kaitlin must say goodbye. I much prefer creative Kaitlin. See you again next month!