How to Make Money Blogging – May 2015 Traffic and Revenue Report

may 2015 traffic and revenue report

For the past five months Kaitlin has diligently been posting her revenue, traffic, and other metrics for Miss Bizi Bee. And for the past five months I have painstakingly listened to her whine and complain about having to write these reports as she procrastinates ever closer to her looming deadline.

As we all know by now, Kaitlin’s favorite things are pink, sparkly, and all things crafty. Notice lacking from that list are words like data, analysis, and strategic planning. In fact, the sheer mention of “math” is enough to send Kaitlin into a fit of convulsion that ends with something like “I need a glass of wine!”.

It’s no wonder why we’re tapped out of sauvignon blanc by the middle of each month as Kaitlin hits publish on her revenue report.

Luckily she has a husband who loves all things data and metrics related and just so happens to be a sucker for all things Kaitlin. Whether my title at Miss Bizi Bee is one of intern, lacky, or guest-star is yet to be determined. What has been established is that I’ll be dropping by each month to shed some light on the performance of Kaitlin’s blogging and crafting endeavors.

In these reports going forward you can expect a more comprehensive and in-depth look at the metrics and data that drive Miss Bizi Bee. What you won’t see are sporadically all-caps words in the middle of sentences and ‘80s inspired neon glowing fonts overlaid on screenshots. With that out of the way, let’s dive in!

Miss Bizi Bee by the Numbers – May, 2015

Each month I plan to start these revenue reports with a quick summary of Miss Bizi Bee’s Key Performing Indicators (KPIs). For now these are quite simple: revenue and traffic. But they may evolve over time.

We’ve chosen revenue and traffic as the KPIs for a few reasons. First, it’s obviously important to understand if Miss Bizi Bee is generating a profit or not. If it’s not a viable business, Kaitlin may need to rethink quitting her old day job or maybe picking up some more nannying shifts.

Traffic is important because it drives revenue, largely through Amazon affiliate links. The more traffic, the more affiliate revenue the blog should produce. More traffic will also give Kaitlin the luxury of testing other monetization strategies in the future.

Luckily, Kaitlin shattered last month’s performance on both fronts with nearly 6,500 unique visitors and over $2,300 in gross revenue:

aggregate-traffic-may-2015

p&l-monthly-may-2015

Now let’s dig into the details!

 

Miss Bizi Bee Traffic Breakdown

Traffic was up substantially in May, reaching 6,420 unique visitors and up a whopping 67.7% month-over-month:

may-2015-traffic

Monthly traffic since November has grown quite nicely. Leading the way is traffic coming from social channels of which nearly all of it originates from Kaitlin’s Pinterest board. Direct traffic is the runner up, but I’m not incredibly confident in this data. We’ve seen a pretty substantial amount of spam hitting the blog, and although we do our best to filter it out a fair amount still gets through.

Organic traffic continues to grow nicely, and this is a channel I’m excited to keep an eye on going forward. The laggard here is referral traffic which generally comes from other sites linking to the blog or specific posts. A lot of work could be done to improve on this channel, but Kaitlin simply doesn’t have the time to do so now (more on that later).

monthly-traffic-breakout-may-2015

Miss Bizi Bee Revenue Breakdown

Miss Bizi Bee generated a total of $2,329.76 in gross revenue in May. Total expenses were $1,054.46 for a net profit of $1,275.30!

Not only does this represent Kaitlin’s third consecutive profitable month, but it’s also a giant milestone for Miss Bizi Bee as a whole. I went back and compiled all of Kaitlin’s previous revenue and expense data… She doesn’t even realize it, but Miss Bizi Bee is officially in the black with $691.04 in total profit since inception!

cumulative-p&l-may-2015 So where did all of May’s revenue come from? As usual, the bulk of Kaitlin’s revenue came from Etsy. But Amazon affiliate links contributed more than they ever have in the past with $175 coming from that channel compared to just $49 last month. We also saw $8 from Amazon display ads (different than the affiliate, in-text product links).

revenue-sources-may-2015 As you can see, Etsy dominates Miss Bizi Bee’s revenue still. This makes it difficult to say that Kaitlin purely makes money blogging, because in reality her Etsy sales are allowing her the luxury of investing in and building her blog.

Ideally, the blog would be able to pay the bills and Kaitlin could do as little or as much on Etsy as she pleased. This is why I’m also now tracking Miss Bizi Bee’s revenue by channel as a percent of the total over time. revenue-sources-by-percent-may-2015 This chart doesn’t tell us much right now, but I expect the Etsy revenue (blue column) to become a lesser part of the total over time.

The Plan Going Forward

As I alluded to above, the ideal situation is one in which the blog revenue is generating enough where Kaitlin doesn’t need to do anything else. Crafting away in the guest bedroom that is now “the craft room” and blogging every so often would be Kaitlin’s ultimate dream.

Selling on Etsy is rewarding with the built in instant gratification, but it’s also time consuming fulfilling orders, interfacing with customers, running to the post office, etc.

Short-Term Goal – Creating More Time!

This leads us to the short-term goal. Kaitlin’s biggest challenge right now is time. Between blogging, Etsy, and nannying three days per week, there’s little time left to promote the blog and work on building traffic beyond simply doing the bare minimum (publishing and posting to social media).

The first step is finding more time. Whether that time is used to promote the blog or simply take a step back and enjoy the ride… it’s clear that Kaitlin needs to cut back somewhere. For this reason, she’s decided to only post to the blog once each week rather than twice.

She originally started posting just once a week, and I encouraged her on that path. But Kaitlin wanted to accelerate things, and blogging twice each week seemed like an obvious way to do that. But it’s tiring and stressing her out. I’m glad to see her taking a step back here.

Medium-Term Goal – $4,000 Net Revenue

Kaitlin absolutely loves her nannying job, but she constantly wishes she had more time to focus on Miss Bizi Bee. She’d love to work on blogger outreach, more promotion, and driving traffic to the blog. But she simply doesn’t have time.

We’ve talked a lot about what it would take for her to be able to blog full-time, and it looks something like $4,000 in net revenue/month. Given the growth she’s built over the last seven months, it’s not a stretch to believe she could be putting up these kinds of numbers by year-end.

That’s the goal!

Long-Term Goal – Net Affiliate/Ad Revenue of $4,000

At first glance this doesn’t look much different than the medium-term goal, but it’s significantly different!

As stated above, in an ideal world Kaitlin would sell on Etsy because she wanted to, not because she needs to. To do this she’d still need to earn the $4,000/month but it would need to be coming 100% from blog affiliate links and ads.

This is a bit harder to project considering this channel is still developing, but I think it’s at least 12 months out.

Stretch Goal – $12,500/month in Combined Net Revenue

Kaitlin’s ultimate “F-you, corporate America!” goal would be to make more than she was making at her lucrative medical device sales position. To do this though she’d have to pull down an impressive $12,500 per month in net, pre-tax revenue.

This is no small feat, but it can be done. I know Kaitlin… she’s determined, talented, and smart. I have no doubt that if she wants to achieve this level of success she absolutely will.

Looking forward to dropping back in for June’s report!

Comments

  1. says

    Hi Kaitlin and Travis, found your blog via Matthew Woodward’s income roundup post.

    Really liking your income growth – very inspiring!

    I’m currently putting together a mega post on income reports on my blog and would love to feature your blog on it if I may?

    It will be published very soon so I’ll keep you guys posted.

    In the meantime, keep up the great blogging!

    Raj

  2. says

    Sir,

    I love reading your online income report and it has inspired me to work harder.

    I’m a blogger from Malaysia and currently generating online revenue about $200 per month through Google Adsense and only joined the affiliate marketing recently. I really admire to be as successful as you.

    Cheers,
    Skytech

Leave a Reply

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