Well it’s that time again. Time for crafty Kaitlin to take her hat off and hand it to business Kaitlin. I’d like to pardon myself in advance for anything out of the ordinary, I’m still getting the hang of business Kaitlin OUTSIDE of the typical “business world”. It’s new and exciting and terrifying all at the same time. But here goes nothing…
If you all are following along with my posts, you may have read my last revenue report (for December 2014 – the first FULL month Miss Bizi Bee was up and running). I explained why I started the site, how I got it going, and how I am trying to monetize my new “business.”
January was the last month I was working on Miss Bizi Bee, while simultaneously employed as a full time medical device sales rep. To say it was a long month is an understatement, but I managed to make some big strides in only my second month online.
Below, I’m going to give you my current monetization plan, a few of the highlights, my site traffic, and what everyone wants to know, actual revenue numbers.
Monetization Plan for January 2015
As I explained in my December 2014 report, my monetization approach to Miss Bizi Bee has 3 points. To refresh your memory, first is through affiliate marketing. Second is through my Etsy sales. And third is through ad and digital media sales.
As of January, I was still only focusing on the first two methods of monetization. I had not had enough experience to create my own digital content, nor did I have enough traffic to solicit ad sales on my site. So affiliate links and Etsy sales were my focus.
Affiliate Marketing Monetization
As far as affiliate marketing went, I added a few more sites to the list of advertisers I associate with. As of December, I was affiliated with:
And in January, I added the following affiliates:
What did I do with all these partnerships? Well, for starters, I don’t link to all of them in my blog posts. Not even close. I only link to those advertisers when I actually use one of their products in one of my crafts. Amazon is still my #1 affiliate partner in terms of who I utilize the most for my crafting supplies. Jo-Anns and Fabric.com made a little jump in January, as you can see from my expenditures in the revenue section.
No, I began forming partnerships with other retails I believed would also appeal to my audience. Why, you ask, if I wasn’t going to be linking to their products?
Simple. In January I began to display what are called “set and forget” advertisements, in the sidebar and footer of my site. What these advertisements do is allow me to enter codes from my affiliate partners to display ads for their site, on my site. The “set and forget” ads are the ones that are not time sensitive, are not a special promotion, and do not require me to change them out often.
To do this efficiently, I downloaded a widget on my site called AdRotate. It’s the greatest, most simple way to display ads on your site. I was able to create categories of ads (ie: a “Michaels” category, a “Jo-Anns” category, etc) in which I put a few different ads from those retailers. Then, the widget automatically rotates between the ads to show them each an event amount, when different people come to the site. This allows me to see which ads perform the best within each category to better help me narrow my advertising focus down the road.
I also created categories for “Weddings”, “Children”, and “Business” depending on the different classifications I have for my posts. I programed these groups of ads to show up at the end of each post that was associated with the same theme as the category they were in. For example, my “Wedding” category ads would only show up at the bottom of categorized “Wedding” posts, and so on.
To be completely honest, this was my first month using any advertisements on my site (besides linking to products within my posts) and it was a bit overwhelming. Figuring out which ads perform the best under optimal circumstances takes time, alot of which I do not have at the moment.
While focusing on my career change and site content, I let the ads just sit and didn’t pay much attention to them whatsoever once I had them in place. So I didn’t make hardly any revenue from the ads in January 2015. All month, my revenue from ads was:
- $4.55 – Fabric.com
The commission site I’m working through – CJ.com – doesn’t pay you out until you reach a minimum of $50, so I have a long way to go. But hey it’s a start. And as the months go on, I am hoping to devote more time and effort into digging deeper into my advertisers to see how to optimize their ads on my site.
As for my affiliate product links, Amazon was my biggest revenue maker, for a second month in a row. Not surprising, however, in seeing that most of the links from my tutorials link back to Amazon products. I am obsessed with them. They have most everything I need (besides fabric) with the best prices.
From Amazon, in January 2015, my total revenue was:
- $16.23
Now, I consider that a great accomplishment. Why? Well, if you read my last revenue report, you know that I only made $7.24 from Amazon in December 2014. I grew my revenue by 124% in one month. If I could just keep that up, this time next year, I would be a happy woman 🙂
So how do I plan to keep the growth? Starting this month, February 2015, I plan to up my blog posts from once per week to twice per week (hence why I’ve been working so hard on creating content). The more I post, the more opportunities I’ll have for growth. Here’s to hoping!
Etsy Monetization
With the shop being open for the entire month, I was able to focus on adding to my shop, to create more visibility for myself. Not only did I sell the wedding items I had added in December when I opened the shop, but I was able to add women’s, men’s, and baby’s accessories. The more people I could get to click through, the more opportunity I would have to sell!
And I was right! January was a great month for my Etsy sales. No longer was I just creating small trinkets for my friends, at a fraction of the price, just to get my name out. No, now I was actually being found by legitimate shoppers, and had a couple significant purchases come through.
Altogether, in January 2015, my Etsy shop made:
- $168.60
However, as I mentioned in my previous post, Etsy has all sorts of fees (listing fees, processing fees, etc). The total I spent on these fees was:
- $8.69
Not too shabby! Again, my net revenue from December 2014 was only $1.16 ($6.28 in sales with $5.12 in fees), where in January 2015, it was $159.91. Woo hoo! Still, with all my other expenditures (as you’ll see in the revenue section of this post) I am still not making a profit. But I have to keep focused on the task at hand and trust in the process. If I’ve already grown this much in one month of work, I can only imagine what I can do in another 6 months.
Highlights for January 2015
One huge highlight for me was being featured on The Wedding Chicks Blog on January 26th. All my crafts and DIY wedding ideas were featured as a “romantic, handmade wedding” – with links to both my blog and Etsy shop. Late in the month, yes, but it still sent a wave of traffic to my sites.
In addition, since the feature was so well received, I was chosen to be one of The Wedding Chicks “Featured Vendors” for the year. Was does this mean for Miss Bizi Bee?
Well, it meant that I had to pay them $100 to secure my spot as a featured vendor (wah wah). But it also means that I am a preferred vendor on their site, and they don’t accept just anyone. I have my own profile when brides search under vendors for “Favors and Details”, and I get to post my work to their “Wedding Inspiration” board as much as I want.
And although weddings aren’t my only focus, they provide a HUGE opportunity to showcase my work. From my first posts on their “Wedding Inspiration” board, I received over 110 views in my Etsy shop in 1 day! Usually, on a good day I’ll see MAYBE 25 views, so that was incredible traffic for me.
Being a featured vendor on a site that has over 3 million page views per month and 1.1 million Facebook followers is an incredible promotional opportunity that I plan on taking full advantage of, for both my blog and my Etsy shop.
Site Traffic for January 2015
Also exciting, I began to see an upswing in the traffic to my site in January! You can see the peaks on the days my posts go live, but in January, the valleys aren’t as deep as they were back in December.
Yes, I had the feature on the Wedding blog which helped. You can see my referral traffic went up from 107 in December, to 193 in January. But I also began promoting more on social media, as well as seeing the hard work I put into prior posts paying off for organic traffic. Let me explain.
In January, every post that went live, I put on Facebook and boosted for $5. If you don’t know what Facebook “boosting” is, it’s basically paying Facebook to show your post in certain people’s news feeds. I specify what target audience I am looking for, and they supposedly deliver it to as many people under those parameters as possible for the budget I specify.
In January, I boosted 7 posts, at $5 each, costing me $35. I also took those posts, and put them on Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter (for free) hoping to catch someone’s eye. And I saw an upswing in traffic from both social media sites as well as direct traffic. It was helping!
But the biggest surprise was my organic traffic. I was obviously doing something well on the back end when writing my posts, because people were finding me organically! More than 300% growth in organic visitors over December.
The one thing I can attest to this upswing, is good content! I never write a blog post without making sure it’s worth while to my readers. Additionally, I ALWAYS check my keyword usage in the Google Keyword planner to ensure I have good SEO on each post, before I post.
January 2015 Revenue Numbers
Now, for the nitty gritty. Here were my expenditures and profits for January 2015:
As you can see, I still have a LONG way to go. However, I am front loading a lot of my projects now… spending money so I have extra fabric and finished product on hand. I am hoping that in the coming months, I’ll have less output of cash and more inflow. Well, isn’t that the goal of business anyway?
Well that’s it for January! Come visit again on the 15th of March to check in on how Miss Bizi Bee is doing. For now, business Kaitlin is signing off. Back to the craft room I go….
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