Welcome to my January 2021 income report!
While the earnings are down this month from last month, overall I’m super excited about where things are headed.
You’ll see in January that some sites are booming, while others fell off a cliff in January due to the content (cookies don’t do so well with people’s New Year’s Resolutions!)
However, January also has the lowest RPMs when it comes to ads for the year, which means that in January 2021, I made more than September 2020, October 2020, and November 2020.
As usual, a quick explanation of why I keep these income reports: I was so inspired by people’s income reports when I was trying to figure out if blogging could be a career for me, and having these to help me keep track of my goal to make $25,000 per month from blogging is so helpful as it makes sure I know I’m on the right track.
If you’re also trying to make money from blogging, feel free to ask any questions or make use of the experiences I share!
Past Income Reports to Check Out:
September 2020: $1,361
October 2020: $2,532.79
November 2020: $2,436.12
December 2020: $3,239.04
Blogging Tools I Use and Love
- Website hosting: GreenGeeks (cheap and have always had good service)
- Keyword research: Keysearch (also inexpensive and has helped my SEO tons!)
- E-mail marketing: Sendfox (SO MUCH cheaper than what a lot of people use and great for 99% of bloggers who don’t have intensely complicated e-mail marketing campaigns)
- Organization: ClickUp (offers fantastic organizational space, including calendars, charts, storage to upload photos and more.
- Affiliate networks: I use a few, but Awin and ShareaSale are two major ones (they are free!)
January 2021 Total Income: $2,618.46 (down $620.58)
All-American Atlas
Number of posts: 217 ( + 47 from last month)
December Traffic: 42,807 sessions (+ 18,672 from last month)
Ad money: $1,695.47 (+ $210.36 from last month)
What went right: All-American Atlas did great last month. People tend to search for travel more in January anyways, and the work I did on articles in the past clearly started to kick in.
I also set up my e-mail list and opt-ins so I can reach people in other ways.
What went wrong: Nothing went hugely wrong for this site in January, though I still am not doing as much on Pinterest as I want.
Into the Cookie Jar
Number of posts: 140 (up 1 from last month)
Traffic: 14,618 sessions (down 5,704 from last month)
Ad money: $259.56 (down $330.43 from last month)
Product sales (cookie classes): $0
What went right: Not too much went right this month for Into the Cookie Jar. It still made money, so that was good, but I didn’t have much time to work on the site. The organic traffic isn’t doing well, even though it has 140 posts, and I need to spend a lot more time doing keyword research and only writing posts that I think will eventually rank.
What went wrong: Traffic was down, sessions were down, and the sessions that do exist are mostly from Facebook sharing. The hardest part is that I don’t want to keep baking all of the time as we don’t have anyone to share it with so it’s a lot of calories around the house!
Girl Gone London
Number of posts: 279 (+ 1 post)
Traffic: 22,629 sessions (up 2,963 from last month)
Ad money: $257.68 (up $158.64 from last month)
Affiliate money (Amazon): $135.98 (up $85.11 from last month)
Product sales (Girl Gone London book, sold on Amazon): $269.77 (down $331.78)
Product sales (Calendar, Girl Gone London merch): $0
Course sales (Moving to the UK course, sold on website): $0.00
Youtube channel subscribers: 81 (up 19 from last month)
What went right: In January, traffic went up, probably because more people were hopeful about travel. I was able to start up a consistent Youtube posting schedule (twice a week), and went up about 20 subscribers. Affiliate money from Amazon was also three times what it was last month, which is really confusing as I would have thought more people were purchasing before Christmas than in January.
What went wrong: It’s still hard mentally to focus on this blog, as the UK just isn’t showing signs of opening up for travel anytime soon. Ad revenue went down, despite more traffic. Book sales also were down quite a lot, but that’s because people tend to buy in December as gifts.
Goodbye, Self Help
Number of posts: 135 (+ 1 article)
Traffic: 8,556 sessions (+ 2,946 from last month)
Money: $0 – this site is not monetized yet
What went right: The traffic for this site went up, and it’s all organic traffic because I haven’t been posting on it. I like an increase!
What went wrong: Nothing has gone wrong so much as I want more to grow right as I want to grow it more quickly. Getting a site up to almost 10,000 sessions per month in a year is a nice accomplishment, but it could be better.
No Fuss Kitchen
Number of posts: 28 (+ 4 articles)
Starting traffic per month: 229 sessions ( + 137 from previous month)
Money: $0 – this site is not monetized yet
What went right: Traffic grew, the most it ever has, which is a positive and exciting sign! I also posted 4 new overnight oats recipes.
What went wrong: Nothing much went wrong, besides slow growth, but that’s to be expected with 28 articles. This is still more on the back burner, but I am excited about it so should focus more on it.
